LIFTS Episode 84 - Wellness, Hospitality, and Recovery Trends and Events Popular with Gen Z | Star Sage of Hyperice

0:00Time is our own worst enemy, but it's also the most precious thing that we're trying to account for in this. And hotels are looking at that. There's been clearly an explosion of wellness tech, but only 15 % of them, and that's being generous of these modalities, have actually had strong clinical validation. I think the term recovery means that you're injured. I think the term recovery means you're tired and sore. So reframing recovery as a fun thing, like we're calling it, like recovery is now synonymous with wellness.

0:33Matthew Januszek:Welcome to this week's episode of LIFS. I'm Matthew Januzek and I'm here with my co-host Mohamed Iqbal and Mo, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. We were just kind of talking about our two different trips next week. You're going to be headed out on vacation which you've yet to book and I'm going on a whirlwind trip to Japan and Malaysia and I'm trying to figure out it's one of the trips where you've got to schedule your sleep, you've got to schedule your meals, you've got to reschedule your meeting, obviously the workouts, right? When is all this stuff going to happen? It's complex because when you're in the air each way for about 25 to 30 hours and you've got layovers and you've got work meetings and everything else to work in there, but you can't forget, and we'll get more into this today, but you can't forget your recovery, You can't forget your hydration.

1:26You can't forget not to eat foods with too much salt in it. You've got to get your sleep in. So I'm actually, what I do is I put everything on the calendar, especially in just like this. I typically, my workouts, and I have been doing it with my sleep, I just put it on the calendar. So it's there. Nothing kind of can get booked within that. But when you've got to do it for a week, when you're in a time zone that's got a 12-hour difference and your circadian rhythm is completely messed up, But you've got to, I've been busy trying to understand that along with everything else. It's been a good week.

2:00I was actually supposed to come out to the West Coast, Matthew, this week. We might have been doing this in person. But just because of everything going on, I decided to cancel the trip. I'll make it back out there, hopefully in the next few weeks. But that's what I've been up to.

2:15Matthew Januszek:I know we normally start with a little bit of a wellness health hack. And this one's probably going to be interesting for you. but I went to see the guys at Light Stim, which is not far from where you're based actually, Sage. They're in Orange County. And I had a deep dive on red light and everything that I didn't know about red light and everything I didn't know and should know. And then he was also kind to give me a session on his beds. And I took my daughter and my wife. We went down there this week. So I think it was definitely an eye-opening subject and definitely a lot of what was smoke and mirrors around the sort of whole red light industry, which hopefully we'll get a chance to talk about today.

2:57Matthew Januszek:But yeah, it was a good session and I'd definitely recommend maybe you, when you get back from your travel, booking one of those sessions because apparently it sort of helps you when you've been through a lot of time zones and had a lot of stress and recovering from jet lag. You know, that's not a bad idea. Actually, our friends at Immortal offered up a session with one of the clinics here in Virginia. So maybe when I come back, I'll get some recovery in with that. But I'm excited for the episode today where we are getting a bit into not just recovery in the athletic sense. Typically, recovery has kind of been viewed with pro-athletes.

3:35But we're also talking about, I think, the cultural shift of recovery into things like events, hospitality, gyms, tech, and beyond. Our guest for today is someone who we've both known for many years, and I think the industry knows well, Star Sage, who I thought, by the way, was the head of human performance at HyperRise, but she also does development and partnerships. So we're going to talk about that offline. Star has worked at the forefront of recovery from the backstage at the PGA to even the Super Bowl, collaborated with brands like Nike, Diplo's Run Club, which I want to try, and several global hotel chains.

4:14a viewer as being a smart strategist, a storyteller, and really a force behind how recovery is reshaping the one's experience. Star, welcome to Lyfts. Well, thank you guys for having me on the show. Matt and Mo, as you guys mentioned, definitely have some recovery tips for your future travels as much as, well, in all these different spaces that we can get into. So I'm excited to be on the show today.

4:37Matthew Januszek:Well, I thought a good place to start off. I did a bit of research before this, and I was looking at some of the exciting things that you're doing on social media and looking through your LinkedIn profile and you you it seems like you have an absolutely fabulous role I think many people would be envious to to get to to be involved in the highlight reels but but one of the things I thought would be a good place to start is is um is is recovery and events uh that we as an industry I think we're starting to see these fitness wellness events uh increasing in their popularity And one of the things that HyperEye seemed to be great at jumping on is being able to sort of activate the brand at some of these events.

5:18Matthew Januszek:The ones I saw on your LinkedIn profile was the NFL. I also had a look at this Diplos Run Club where you're there in presence. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing in that space, whether it's pro sport or things like run clubs and that. And why are they sort of adopting, looking at more of the sort of recovery angle than anything else at the moment? Hyperice historically actually started in the pro training room in the NBA. Gary Vitti, who was the head athletic trainer at the time, was using our products on the same time when Kobe Bryant was in the league. and those athletes were using recovery and spending more time doing that just as much as their practice time and as much time as they were playing on the court.

6:06LeBron James, as you've seen, spends over a million dollars a year on his body and that includes a lot of recovery maintenance. And I would say that during COVID and outside of COVID, we finally had the opportunity to give back to what it is and that's experiences for us. And we had the opportunity to no longer just have our products accessible to pro athletes, but double down on consumers experiencing our products. So I would say the first times, like when you talked about the NFL, NFL has been a longtime partner of ours. The athletic trainers for all the teams were using it on the players. But then you look at who the prosumers are.

6:43These are the agents. These are the brands that are sponsoring in the space. These are the brands that are providing for consumers like that we talk about a lot on fitness. So when we looked at this, a lot of these events, let's call it, have been evening times, cocktail hours, if you will, that are sponsoring a huge thing and you get a lot of content out of it. And our team realized that what can be most impactful is for someone to experience it. The efficacy of our products happen in 90 seconds, but a Norma Tech compression therapy session is like a nice 15 minute break. And so during the NFL, when we signed with them, we created, was not like a cocktail hour, but we created a Norma Tech experience like the pros do.

7:28And it's evolved since then to people now expect an IV drip plus a Norma Tech. Plus, you know, when you look at something like a Diplo's Run Club, that was the precipice of Diplo's trainer at the time. So he went to a place called Heart and Hustle. It's a very, very high-end celebrity gym. And those trainers were using the products on Diplo. So when Diplo decided to no longer just be known as a DJ, he wanted to be known as someone who cares about his health and wellness, how could we be a part of that? And that was a very organic tie to his team wanting to have our experience there. So we joke that we're like this premium water cooler moment that someone wants to stay longer and the teams love it.

8:10And these experiences love it because outside of, you know, you're bolting through a run. This one was in San Francisco and they had multiple locations like Seattle and New York and Philadelphia this year. we were able to say look we want your vips we want everyone that's running it to stay for another hour longer listen to diplo play recover learn from it but i think just continued back to tied to the community um you know we're seeing that a lot and we can talk about it more but in the gen z community is that most of our experiences that is what they're craving outside of just going to their happy hour spot on a week night and i think we're playing in that space a lot and it's been And honestly, it's just trying to be in so many places at once.

8:49So Matt, you're saying my job is so fun. I think our team is trying to be in all the right places at all the right times at this very moment. As you think about, you mentioned Gen Z, really kind of focusing on recovery and making it a priority. And obviously, we've seen wellness spas like remedy plays to growth of othership and some of those things. But it's interesting. I have a 15-year-old son who is running cross-country and kind of fading in the summer heat in D.C. right now. Matt's got young kids too. And I noticed this summer, he actually is grabbing one of my hyper-rise guns, recovery guns, and he's like doing it himself.

9:29And I'm like, wow, what made you do this? Well, no, it's going to help me recover better so I can train more the next day. So there's this element of awareness. And he's 15, by the way. So there's this element of awareness that we never had five years ago. What do you think is, and certainly, you know, what Diplo's doing, which is more mainstream running and the growth you've had there, what do you think it is about the younger generation and I guess the older generations too that created, what created the awareness for recovery? I'm an analogy person. So bear with me on this analogy, but you know, your dentist tells you, you should be flossing every day.

10:10Right. And you go back in and you're like cringing. Cause maybe you didn't floss enough. I do, but it's like, it's something important. And pro trainers, athletic trainers always told their athletes and their clients, they need to foam roll every day. And the reason why was that as painful as it may feel because of the delayed on muscles soreness, which Mo, your son is probably already feeling at 15, is what soreness feels like. And the thing to help expedite that, removing that muscle soreness is something like foam rolling that can feel painful. And so the thesis of our company and all the innovation we make is how do we help someone recover faster, more effectively, so they can feel better.

10:48So most people are okay feeling sore and tight and things like that. And in the 10 plus years I've been here, education's been always part of our marketing. And I think, yes, we can talk about the social medias, things like the TikTok and Instagrams is that most brands in our space have to, in a organic and very thoughtful way, educate what's the benefit of it and do it in a really fast headline and doing it. But I also think with our products specifically, like the Hypervolt or percussion massage device, or the Normatec, the compression boots, it made it more enjoyable than the foam rolling that we needed to do, but it's all different types of tech that are doing the same thing.

11:30It's just increasing circulation, blood flow in the body, helping expedite lactic acid and helping the fascia, the soft tissue that I was talking about is going to help that make it healthier. And that you can go really sciencey on, but I think it's just, we're realizing like if we make more touch points for people to access it, it light bulb goes off after, you know, like you said five minutes of your son using it and they feel better already. And we didn't do that when I joined the company. We were very much siloed into niches of if it was Ironman or if it was specifically in the running category for marathons, or it was for physical therapists to use it on their clients post rehab.

12:09And when we got into fitness, I would say in like 2017, we were creating certifications and relying on specifically personal trainers to educate a client on how to use it. now we don't have to look at the personal trainers as just being the one educating it instead consumers are coming in or it's the gen z or it's the older let's say prosumer that's our main demo that are expecting this now and so i think it's just like quick bite-sized education is what we're seeing and people asking for the efficacy of it and i think just like our products just feel like so good to use that it's an instant like it's a very sticking point um that it allows us to continue to get this popularity around using it.

12:51Matthew Januszek:One of the things that I think relates to events in some way is that you'll go to an event, you go to the Super Bowl or stay over for Diplo's Run Club, and then you're staying in some form of hotel in most cases. And I know this is another sector that is going through a bit of a, I guess, a change when it comes to some of the amenities that it offers and I've always thought of hotels being a place that probably are more relevant for recovery style treatments and fitness even though I think fitness is important when you're traveling a lot of cases like Mo you arrive you've been on a long flight probably the last thing you want to do is is to sort of put even more stress on your body whereas some of these kind of recovery types of therapies would would actually probably be better for us to to do in order to recover and get ourselves ready to be able to do what we need to do.

13:50Matthew Januszek:I noticed one of the links that I saw online was this Fairmont Century Plaza where you've created this Hyperice Reboot Room. So I was just interested, maybe you could give us a little bit of an overview of the journey that you've seen in hospitality for where they were when you guys sort of got involved in this category and where you're seeing that hospitality sector moving towards specifically as it relates to fitness, but also recovery. Totally. So recovery, I would almost say like put this in the center of the Venn diagram. And so you have fitness, you have hotel and spa, and then you have like almost wellness clinics, let's call it.

14:32So it's like your pause, your restores of the world where someone can come in and get their quote unquote wellness treatments. And we play in those three a lot, my team and I do. And we've been fortunate to work with a lot of the key decision makers across hospitality specifically. And I think I saw the shift personally when COVID hit and you had these traditional spa settings with multiple rooms, let's say 12 plus rooms and a staff that typically wasn't going to be a full staff that's not going to be there. They don't know how to book it. And you have all these massage rooms that are not being utilized as they should.

15:04And I think this was like a frontier moment for a lot of technologies, including us. You know, we talked about red light at the beginning that goes, how do we fit into this space specifically for the traveler and what that looks like? My training when I travel is very different than when I'm at home in my regular routine. And so it took a lot of feedback and understanding what the traveler needs and wants, and also realizing we're limited on booking as many people. And I also think the traditional spa space, at least in the US has been one-to-one, you go in, you check in, you have a 90 minute massage, and then you leave and you go in with your day.

15:39And you guys mentioned like things like Remedy Place and other ship. And like this image you have here is that we are looking at things that are more communal and more space. So that Fairmont Century City Plaza, for example, was a cycling room. It was not being utilized because they didn't think guests are going to book a cycling. They didn't know if they're going to be able to get the cycling instructor there in time. They don't know if people are going to choose a six and like they didn't know what the supply was and they didn't know what the demand was on both ends. So this was an opportunity for a lot of these spaces to go, what if we created a recovery room that's 24 seven and unlock, we're putting trust in the consumer now that they are intuitively know how to use our products without a practitioner or a specialist or someone on staff to do it.

16:25And sure enough, they are. And so the Fairmont Century City Plaza is across from the CAA. So you have a lot of people that are residences there. You have a lot of people that are going there for a wellness treatment, whether it's a beauty treatment, whether it is their massage, and they want to kill more time. And so our measurement, and a lot of the hotels are looking at this as going, how do we get someone to stay on property specifically within the wellness amenities longer? Basically more usage of our things. And that's where high price came into play, because I think our products can be used.

16:59And especially when you're traveling different time zones, you're trying to get over and recover from jet lag. There's a lot of studies and tests on it, but I think it's so taxing and we don't even know how taxing it is. And that you can spend your time doing recovery in a walk and see the same benefits as if you were trying to do your same routine at home. So I think we really leaned into that and create these really fun spaces that someone's trying to get over jet lag or let's say stay awake when they would land in LA from a European trip and they can turn on the European football league and turn on the TV in there and sit in Norma Tech session like the pros.

17:33So I think we're trying to play off like how to make something entertaining and relaxing and not like a forceful thing while you're already trying to not think about the jet lag you have. And that's something that I think the hospitality space has been craving. And they're also looking at a way of what's scalable too. And this isn't something that is just tied to LA. I was reading a recent report from Skift, which was released in 2024 and kind of covered the growth of wellness amenities. And Skift is a travel kind of insights publication. They stated that 67 % of travelers now prioritize wellness amenities when choosing accommodations.

18:15And that's, I mean, I'll just speak for myself. And I know, Matthew, when we travel, one of the first things we look at, and we've traveled internationally together, but is what kind of gym does the hotel have? Or is there a gym nearby? Or I'll look for like a running crew. For instance, I'm traveling, as I mentioned, to Tokyo and Malaysia. When I looked at the hotels that I would select, I am looking at their amenities. I am looking at are they close to a park? Are they close to a trail? And I just think that because in so many ways, because of digital and screens and just, you know, work is more immersed and is not, I think, dictated from like nine to five anymore.

18:53We're always kind of connected. We layer on travel on top of that. And now when you get somewhere to your point, so when you're home, it feels like a safe space. You're a lot more comfortable. You have your routine. You have your food and all those things. I think amenities for hotels, if you're not focused on this, it's kind of like a pretty negative experience for your entire trip. And I want to name a hotel, but Matt and I, this year we were in the UK at a hotel that wasn't so great, which we kind of knew going in, but we didn't think it would impact us as bad, but it did. And we were like, if we ever go back here, we're not staying there again.

19:33We're going to go ahead and pay a little bit more and go somewhere else that's got the amenities. So when you think about travelers and hospitality, do you think that the hospitality industry, not just the Fairmonts, but I would even argue going downstream a bit, are thinking about recovery and wellness? Yeah, absolutely. So when you're saying that, I think it's a fair assumption for us three, and I think a lot of people who listen to this, that as a business traveler, you're not most likely staying at a resort style hotel that has the full spa that has all the full techno gym. And it has, you know, your cold towels and like maybe even a trainer.

20:10I am staying at sometimes economical brands because it's closest to my meetings. And I'm lucky if maybe they have 25 plus dumbbells in there and that's their version of wellness room. Right. And so we play the spectrum of we are premium technology you know the price point is we sell in major tech and we sell in Dick's Sporting Goods and Best Buys and we're known as this high-tech item but how do we make it accessible so we actually challenge with the hospitality groups of the Hilton Hyatt Marriott's and we sit and talk with them a lot about this of how do we make it accessible for the economical brands right like if you're staying at a Hyatt place or you're staying at a Hilton Inn do you remove one of the treadmills or do you make room for maybe a couple of our hypervolts one of our most popular items right now it's we call it it's we have a commercial line now we never really did and we finally started to like phrase that is that we have a tethered version it holds two guns and it stays charged and someone knows how to pick up and grab it with a simple infographic and because they've been stiff because they've been went from a five-hour plane ride across the East coast.

21:19They went in a taxi, they got there and they want to try and squeeze in maybe a 30 minute run and lift some weights, but they don't have any of the time to stretch or any of the tools that they have at home. So we are thinking of that person first, like the business traveler is very different than the, what is you go on a wellness retreat and you're staying at a resort and sure you have time to do it. So time is like our own worst enemy, but it's also the most precious thing that we're trying to account for in this. And hotels are looking at that. And it's a part of it is selling internally, right?

21:53So you have these heads of wellness for major hotel groups, but it's franchise and hotel and real estate developers that are looking at this on how to maximize usage rates and hotel night stays. So how do you make something that's economical for a hotel group to buy into and have it? And so we have to have a lot of conversations around saying, look, the hotel down the street has a couple of our hypervolts. I'm going to make a bet that someone's probably going to stay there over your hotel if you don't consider some type of wellness. So we place these small bets and challenges with the hotel owners specifically in major business areas, let's say where it's happening and how they get on board.

22:32And it's fun to see that honestly, the best way when we're talking and we're pitching this to the hotel groups is they go, oh yeah, I've seen that at my lifetime. Oh yeah, I've seen that at my Equinox and they go, I can carry that too. And so like the Venn diagrams are finally starting to merge between hotels and fitness. And that's really fun to see. And I think what used to be like very segmented and thinking like, oh, consumers are not loyal to one thing. They're not because they want to be able to travel again. It's just a matter of like how many touch points can we be at for our final consumer?

23:02Matthew Januszek:You mentioned the conversions between hospitality and the health club brands um if recently certainly in the us anyway uh you've got uh brands like crunch ufc eos vasa that are now creating these recovery style spaces um i think planet fitness has a version some of these are a premium uh charge some of them are included um what are you seeing in terms of the shift of of the how the the members are integrating with the gyms as a result of this because if you think about fitness for most people it's something that's quite painful that they don't necessarily always want to do and getting into the gym maybe two or three times a week is a challenge particularly when you've got to work hard and it's easier to sit on the couch now going to the club where you could arguably sit on a on a chair looking at watching the NFL in your Norma Tech boots it's a slightly different experience so are you seeing anything or any information or data that's coming through where having something like this within a facility is actually creating a slightly different experience or journey for the consumer that's positive.

24:11Matthew Januszek:Well, I'm probably not saying positive because I'm sure it's positive, but it's moving the business in a slightly different direction. There's a little bit of a culture shift. I'll give a personal anecdote is that when I go out and see my family in Phoenix, whether out in the outskirts, like southwest of Phoenix in Surprise, Arizona, it's a small suburb, and there's a huge EOS there. And you see on Thanksgiving day, when most people are at home, EOS is open. And there's people obviously in the weight training area, cardio area, they have a movie theater room, but they have this area called the tank with eight to 12 of our Normatex and our Hypervolts in there.

24:49And it is a premium to go have access to that area. That space was used the entire time I was there. And when I asked the GM there afterwards, he goes, it is our most utilized space. And the metric that we're seeing is that most people are using it for on average 30 minutes. It is always used over 90 % of the day. And people are coming in instead of three to four times a week, they're coming in five to six times a week just to have access to this area. So that case study alone, and this is for EOS, which is I would put them as like premium, but very accessible in terms of price point as a health club, is we are trying to understand the culture across all health clubs.

25:31So between a crunch versus a lifetime, a different consumer in a different city, they might want to have the trainer take them in there, or someone wants to do it on their own and have it feel very autonomous. And they might just based on staffing. I think for us, we try and play that up and figure out how to best educate members coming in and justify having that product there. And, you know, I think for us, the, we're trying to figure out how to make more Norma techs we can squeeze in there because most people are looking and justifying it as their wellness treatment. Like in surprise Arizona, there's not that many more places you can try it unless you want to buy it at home.

26:10But someone wants to now spend what used to be on average 75 minutes of spending over an hour and a half because of our products. So I I think like our kind of trophy in the health club space is longer time spent in the gym will be beneficial to people. And that's like the culture shift we're talking about, that it's like seeing people in the Normatex hangout is the same thing of seeing people go to other ship now at night. It's just depending on where you live and what's part of your day-to-day routine. So time, I think more time spent is how we're measuring success of it. No, I think you're right.