This week, on the Fitness + Technology podcast, host Bryan O'Rourke welcomes friend and advocate, Emma Barry. Emma has lead key senior roles including Director of Group Fitness for Equinox and as a founder for group fitness exercise for Les Mills International. As an author, speaker, and advisor, Emma is considered one of the leading thinkers in the personal betterment sector. Listeners will enjoy Emma’s views on the space as she and Bryan discuss implementation, user experience, and the business model behind boutique studios.
If you are interested in Emma Barry’s article publication “Customer Engagement in Boutique Studios” featured in EuropeActive’s Retention Report, you can purchase it here:
https://blackboxpublishers.com/en/publications/customer-engagement-in-boutique-studios/
One Powerful Quote:
4:31: “I think the surge definitely is going to continue and increase because we are living in times of convenience with technology and able to take experiences with us… some of these experiences aren’t the same in person, and it doesn’t matter.”
4-10 Bullet Points (w/ timestamps) - Highlighting key topics discussed:
3:00: Emma shares her insights on the boutique studio phenomenon and the impact use of technology. She says these facilities have an advantage in marrying technology with their customers because it delivers high touch, personalized experiences.
6:26: Bryan asks Emma her opinion on the augmentation of at home streaming from boutique facilities. Emma agrees that this is a great option for those who want convenience in their lives, but there still may be those who attend in person events for unparalleled experiences.
9:21: Emma discusses the gap in understanding the millennial generation and the boutique craze phenomenon. She says that operators should adjust their offerings accordingly to the market, particularly for boomers who may participate in small group activities. She and Bryan also discuss how this is a competitive advantage and the opportunity it gives owners for scalability and value to their customers.
11:58: Emma and Bryan discuss innovation and noticeable trends in the space. Emma mentions the proliferation of offerings in the boutique sector including “hybrid” clubs and how their options have changed into a more specialized service.
15:00: Emma offers some pearls of wisdom and advises listeners to know their “why” and purpose for wanting to be in the boutique fitness space. She mentions that new owners should due their due diligence and understand all of the factors before committing to enter into the market.
Bullet List of Resources:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-barry-51ba6a3/
Guest Contact Information:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-barry-51ba6a3/
https://www.facebook.com/emma.barry.33
https://twitter.com/emzboobarry
https://www.bryankorourke.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryankorourke/
http://www.fittechcouncil.org/
https://www.youtube.com/user/bko61163
Podcast:
Host: Welcome to the Fitness Plus Technology podcast for club owners, operators and fitness professionals. Each week, host Bryan O'Rourke brings you an expert interview with a global influencer at the crossroads of fitness and technology. You gain the insights, tools, and inspiration you need to stay connected to the pulse for what matters most for your business in the age of exponential technologies.
Bryan O'Rourke: Hello listeners and welcome to the Fitness Plus Technology podcast. Bryan O'Rourke here and we have a another super, super guests today. She doesn't need much of an introduction, but for those who don't know, and I've known Emma for well over a decade. Emma was one of the founding members of the group fitness brand Les Mills International, and she also served as director of group fitness programming for Equinox. She advises you know, globally a number of well known brands. She speaks and works on product development and training people in culture. Emma has several books out. You'll see in the, in the show notes from black box publishing. I've written some books with Emma as part of the EuropeActiv offering through black box and you know, just a super lady who is a great mix of both a futurist of views on the space and pragmatic aspects of implementation user design and business models.
Bryan O'Rourke:So I'm, I'm very, very happy to have Emma on the program. I hope you enjoyed this interview very much and you know, wishing you a fabulous rest of October. So without further ado, here's Emma Berry. You know, as I mentioned in the intro, this is a lady that I had to chase down over months because she's so globally around the world, you know, for people that give me a grief about how much I travel, she makes me look like a neophyte for certain. Emma, where are you talking to us from? Are on the West coast of California?
Emma Barry: I am. I'm at home Bryan. I'm very happy to be home telephone, Redondo beach.
Bryan O'Rourke: Great. You know, we're actually both at our home, our offices. That's amazing. It's what does that, well, how often does that happen? Once every like a hundred years or 10 years.
Emma Barry: No, no, no it's good. No I try to travel half less than half my time and working on bringing that back for sure. Cause now we have all the technology can take all our ideas out there. Brian,
Bryan O'Rourke: That's exactly right, you know as I mentioned in the intro, you've got some great books out there. I've loved watching you present. You know, you have such a great background. So we were talking in advance of this and you know we are, we already got the conversation started. So tell me about boutique phenomenon and the impact of technology for the listeners. In your view, what is a recent trend? You pay a lot of attention to this stuff. What do you, what are your comments on that? What do you see?
Emma Barry: Yes. I mean we've seen boutique really peaking in different markets. So we always look at New York and LA sort of as the prime movers. London of course isn't boutique hysteria right now as are parts of Asia. And then it's sort of coming to secondary cities. You know, all you have to do is follow class past and know pretty much where boutiques are sort of going into a frenzy next. And I remember, you know, fairly recently, Amsterdam and Oakland by way of example, two cities close to my heart all of a sudden got ClassPass. So look, it's traveling around the world. It starts in the more affluent cities and not always, I shouldn't just say that because things like orange theory actually started suburbanly and are actually have long legs into areas that aren't perhaps, you know, some of them will influence cities.
Emma Barry: They're much more applicable in communities and smaller cities, et cetera. So they tend to be guided by, I mean flat iron. If you're gonna choose a one, epicenter in the world. It's probably flat iron in New York city and it usually goes through a couple of years of absolute hype where everyone is running around town trying every new thing. There's not much loyalty. You basically go and try whatever the intro offers and then rush off to the next one. Then my observation would be is that there's a little bit of fatigue in people sort of get sick of running around town, working out if there'll be a shower in the car park. And then they start to pick the ones that they really love. Now in the boutique market, because it's very specialist, you've got to fall in love with that workout to go back. It's not just a matter of I go to a club and it's kinda got all the equipment that I like.
Emma Barry: It's got to be, I love this. It's not just like it or think it's good. It's gotta be awesome because you're actually dealing in the currency of experience now. So and it's got to be amazing to want to go back and for me to then go from my intro offer to typically 18 or 20 block or I might go onto a monthly memberships. So we're sort of saying they're happening and I'm following the trends around the world from a technology point of view. The boutiques have had a big advantage because they just focus on one thing and they also have a much smaller membership typically. So you might in a boutique, which is a specialist offering or small set of offerings delivered very purposefully with high experience, high touch all the way through and you can do a bunch of things. You can pay as you go.
Emma Barry: I can book online, I pay right there, I can order my shake their typically. So I get this one experience beautifully promoted, beautifully carried through from the moment I arrive at the studio. And some of them have tic plays with the near workout. Some you might be wearing technology to work out what hat rates happening for orange theory, you have the option at eight 45 to use MyZone, etc. Others are purely the experience and queen of a category. Soul Cycle is really about turning the lights off and not measuring metrics but really trying to shift your soul within an environment where you're shoulder to shoulder. Tapping back with a whole lot of people who are also the at a pretty much take from the, the church of soul cycle. So you've kind of got those range of experiences and then what they do is they follow you out of the studio, you have this wonderful experience and then you start getting the little nudges through the day, how you feeling that you're coming back tomorrow and there's two bikes, Lyft in the class at four o'clock tomorrow, your friend's going to be there.
Emma Barry: So you've basically got this relationship that is touching you all the way through the day, whether you're in the studio or not. And because it's a very small community, like maybe two to 300 active users, they're familiar that people just like you and they're motivated just like you. And motivating that small group of people as much easier than a club base of thousands of people who are there for hundreds of different reasons. And you know, we're all struggling with the retention issue, but it is much easier to deliver when it's a small, tight offering of something that you love surrounded by people. Well, just like you. So I see the technology and the boutiques enabling it in all sorts of different ways. They predominantly use social media. Very few are using traditional, unless they're part of a hotel track chain or a mall or something like that.
Emma Barry: So social, they have online booking and paying systems and then they have awesome trackability. So whether you're with an aggregator, like ClassPass or one of the mini local varieties or whether you do it yourself, you know, who came, how often were you set, what you like, and then if you are on a bigger aggregator, you also know that they go to that yoga studio, that martial arts place. And then they're also getting their massages there and their haircut there. And it's becoming this catchment for all services. So that's what I'm seeing anymore in the experiences. I'm seeing a lot of tech, whether it's something like the 45 dropping in the actual workouts, which are algorithm based to feed their circuit format or whether it's wearing my zone or similar heart rate zones, orange theory, very heart rate driven. Of course. That's the whole promise. So you're sort of saying that to bring life to the experience, whether it's through the measurement of metrics or whether it's enhancing light sound, the actual experience in the room. And then you, you're definitely seeing it in the after service as well. So, sorry, very long answer to a very short question.
Bryan O'Rourke: Thorough answer. And when you're, you know, we were talking about some trends like, you know, working remotely all these other things that are changing with technology, our lifestyles and and so, and you know, we, whether it was Les mills, you know, streaming classes or we see class pass live now we actually wear the heart monitor and the coaches streaming or you know, all these even mind body, all these different Wexler has a product, all these different at home, even some brands doing their own content. Like um basic fit, you know, with Renee and that group, they have their own content production. What do you think about the on demand marketplace and really the at home, the Peloton offering, these kinds of things. Is this something that you see continuing to surge? You see it as as slight augmentation of the boutique experience, what, what are your observations on that?
Emma Barry: Yeah, I think the surge is definitely going to ah, continue and end increase. I think both because we're living in times now of convenience. We with technology, gee, we're now able to take experiences with us and some of those experiences aren't the same as being in person and it doesn't matter. Sometimes some are getting damn good. As you know, with VR and AR sort of coming online and finally getting good. We just sort of at the clumsy end of all of that. But it's going to be amazing. I mean you and I had had VR experiences. We're physiologically your body is responding as if you were there. So it's only a matter of time just watch the movies. Guys, you know, you just, you just have to be ready player one, you're there, you are in the experience, you're immersed in it. And so I think it's definitely going to surge and I think it's growing as well.
Emma Barry: And when I mentioned before that people don't always have the same expectation around an experience. I think that's interesting. I always use the example of me sitting here at home as you are at home, I sometimes don't have time to drive across town, find a car park, go and talk to people. I don't want to talk to people. I just want to get my 30 minute workout in and I want to get back to my whatever presentation I'm working on next. So if that's what I need that day, that is what I value. I don't value the time, the two hours it's going to take me to do a round trip. I don't value the conversations, I just want the damn workout. So if that's the case on that day, my expectations are different. And even from an experiential point of view, think about our concert. You and I buy music, we want it beautifully produced, but then we'll still go and see Pink live or you know, some great performer because you are in the room with brilliance and that has a different offering.
Emma Barry: There's only something that's going to happen on that day and you had to be there to experience it or to be in the front row or to be amongst all these crazies, outside the side. I mean that's a different experience. So I think sometimes we seek those festival feelings and that's what everyone's catching in on. And on, when you go to something like a day breakout or you go to an event that has a top DJ and in it's got a top influencer and then it's got a great, all the products and all the lotions and all the food and all the apparel, they're all coming together to create a super experience and, or I just want to get my workout in. So I think there's different ways the at home market is absolutely exploding and you know, first half of my career, 25 years with Les Mills, I mean, they're doing it probably one of the best in my humble opinion, because they've been doing it for many, many decades.
Emma Barry: So very, very good at that. They've just filmed at Fox Studios in Australia, they filmed at the dome. I mean they're filming at places where Gaga, you know, presents concerts. So it's absolutely phenomenal. And you know, we've had Thor, you know, he's gone out with a net. We've had all the big brains are beginning to have a digital footprint as well because they know that when you leave that studio, all you need is set kids a busy day, you got to work at home. Snow can't be bothered going out, don't want to put a face of makeup on whatever it is. They want the option. Now, Peloton schooled us a great example. We won't talk about the IPI cause that wasn't so stellar. But let's talk about what they actually did. And everyone said, no one's going to pay two or $3,000 to ride on a bike at home.
Emma Barry: You're not going to be able to connect an audience. You can't do that unless we're in person. It's not going to be good enough. People aren't going to get a workout. And then what did they do? They went and sold a million of them. People paid $3,000. They, there are people who are more patient about Peloton. Then there are a number of live face to face classes that I could quote, you know, off the back of my hand, it is incredible. They bought in leaderboards. I could be cycling against hugh jackman. I know what my metrics are. I love the Aussie guy who cracks all of these jokes. So they we're able to hyper personalize and make a community in a very connected way, in a way that no one's thought possible. But of course it's possible because they've done it. And look how addictive gaming is for a 12 year old boy social media for all our teenage children.
Emma Barry: It is the same crack. And the good thing is we've stitched exercise to that. So it's actually, for me, I love it because it's a positive habit. You know, we have all these negative habits that are out there. This is a positive habit. So is there going to be more of the STEM straight? There is and it's going to be an option and we are going to operate, I believe in a greater ecosystem, which is sometimes live. Sometimes it might be somewhere in between and sometimes it's going to be something that's projected from my phone, well in my ear. Sometimes I just love to be guided. I don't need to see something, you know, pumps are great examples of made. I've done a few deep lifts in my time. I know what it didn't have looks like. I can just have that in my ear and just be out in nature, you know, I don't necessarily want to be watching a screen. So there's just, you're going to get all of those proliferations for sure.
Bryan O'Rourke: Yeah, I absolutely agree. So we were talking early about the boutique phenomenon, these streaming home phenomenons, for example, as being very millennial focused. And you and I were talking about this whole millennial thing with respect to some of the observations that boomers, that was all the talk years ago. Now you hardly hear about it anymore. And then something about the fact that what's, you know, millennials and now the, the key influence. But as we were discussing, you know, boomers net worth in the Western Europe in the United States is some 12 times larger. They have a lot more money. And then also who aren't in their fifties or sixties. I know you're only 20 on mic, you wouldn't understand this. They, they, you know, they, they don't see themselves as being that age and it doesn't mean that they're opted out. Like I surprisingly tests as a millennial. When you take the Pew the Pew survey online, it tells you, and there are some general miss notions about that and, you know, the boutique phenomenon. It's very much tied to that. What do you give us, your insights on that and having worked so closely in the market and these, this millennial phenomenon? Please,
Emma Barry: You know, the first thing I would say, and my husband sent me this this morning as there's a fabulous chair and maybe we can put those in. I don't know if you have notes that maybe we could reference that, but I'm Simon Sinek just at it. Probably the best, most comprehensive rundown of millennials for me. And it was, it came very much from the perspective of we've actually created these poor souls. This is something that actually happened to them because of the environment they're in because of the technology they've had to absorb because of us being over-parenting and telling that they are amazing and they can be whatever they want. And then them hitting the real world and working out in a nanosecond that maybe it's going to be a little bit harder than that. So Simon really addresses some things which I think are very, very important, you know, just out in the world.
Emma Barry: So that's the first point I'd say. And I'd point to that cause I think it's revolutionary thinking and I think we all need to help our guys. I mean I've got teenage kids, I know you guys have got, you know, we're always looking at how we can help these guys. So that's the first thing. I completely agree with you. I haven't heard a boomer conversation and several years now it's like they all died. Now I know they didn't because I still make them and all of these things. But you and I always talk about being millennial behavior. You know, your behaviors. A millennial, UTS millennial. And my good example is I've just come from midtown athletic from a les mills event actually, and we were presenting with a whole lot of club owners. And a guy came to me at the end, Michael, and he said, look, you know, this has been great presentation.
Emma Barry: I was presenting on building a bad ass boutique. Hey, you can put those learnings into your club. And he said, yeah, this is great, but it has nothing to do with my demo cause they're all older. And so we sort of started going through those points one by one. And then he gave me this example of an 82 year old member who had just taken a selfie by the leaderboard on the my zone at, you know, he was wearing his my zone strap and he was on the leaderboard 82 years old. And I said, dude, I said. That's exactly what I'm talking about. He just took a selfie. You know, he had all these millennial facing behaviors and in fact millennials don't take selfies. They, we, I take a selfie, my kids hate me for it. So, you know, point was everything we're learning. About the boom about the millennials can be applied to the boomers.
Emma Barry: My parents were actually quite tech savvy because it's their only way to keep in touch with the world and they happen to have more time now than they used to. They are very interested in studies, they're very interested in metrics. And I think we assume things too much. I also attend a lot of boutiques and while they are still skewing very female, typically 80% and very young, typically millennial, if you go into an orange theory or something that's more community based or something in a particular area, it is going to skew towards the natural community of that area. So I go to plenty of places where maybe I can't run as fast on the treadmill, maybe I'm walking on the treadmill or maybe I'm going to a Barry's like workout and maybe I'm just doing a double floor program instead of, you know, hitting the high impact type stuff.
Emma Barry: So I think they are finding their way cause they still love the environment. Everyone still wants a great environment. They still want high service. They might not necessarily like to pay $35 a ride or a treadmill. Cause my parents certainly laugh at me when I, when I talked to them about boutiques, you know, they, they are very value conscious but they certainly love the touches. And I see, I see the boutiques once it's more accepted as just another model that we're doing. And as we see, start to see them back in tons of clubs, which I know we're going to talk about shortly. I think we're going to be able to share these forms of exercise with a much broader age range. And I've, you know, I've had a number of conversations with people, for goodness sake, do something that's age appropriate for your market.
Emma Barry: Maybe take the impact out, maybe change the choice of music a little bit. Maybe look at some of the activities and maybe look at your screening process and what sort of technology would or would not make sense because you can do it experientially or you can do it measured and does your membership care. And those are, those are the key drivers. I mean, you and I know we're in data lead times. Our market will tell us what they want, but they might not know what they want. So you've just got to try stuff and then whatever works works and you keep going. So that those, those would be my views. Yeah.
Bryan O'Rourke: I love those views. I think they're, they're right on. We were talking about, you know, also ideas of, of concepts where the, whether they be boutique or not and makeup and some of the innovation happening in the market. And we know some of the things you cited in the use of tech with the boutique market and the fact that they do similar things and the integration around that. Then also we were speaking earlier about some of the innovative ideas happening with tech and without. So one of the things we discussed was lifetime fitness, putting in these we work type spaces because of the percentages of workers working remotely. We talked about Renee and basic fit again and how automated their processes are with their heavy use of highly sophisticated camera systems that have intelligence built in. We see, you know, just all these different examples of operators, no matter what their market's in and may be low price, it may be a, you know, maybe very high value, high service but just the continuation of innovation in some ways that are less sophisticated. And others, it's just understanding what you said, what is your market and what are they really seeking and understanding that. What do you, you know, what do you see in the realm of innovation, be it boutique or otherwise you know, being full service and budget w what you see as some other trends that you find Very notable if you travel around.
Emma Barry: Yeah, I mean everyone is sort of the phase that we're in right now. It's very me too. Like every market I go to, there's a, Barry's look alike, there's a rumble look alike, there's a, you know, we're beginning to see, like I mentioned before, a proliferation of pricing models of business models. So pretty much whatever you can think is beginning to happen out there. So you're beginning to see low cost budgets, you know, things like more yoga in the UK or people beginning to perhaps bring the functionality or perhaps all the bells and whistles down a little bit in order for it to be a little bit more affordable because there has to be a point, especially if we hit into a recession, which everyone's warning is coming, you know, people are not going to be paying $30 a ride or $25 every workout.
Emma Barry: They're going to have to find other options. Like, could I do this cheaper? Could I get a, an app or an on demand app that, you know, perhaps I'm paying $15 a month and I'm still getting all these great workouts and I can do them wherever I am. So I think, you know, that's part of the innovation. I think your example of life has a really good one. We started building stared spaces and equinoxes and people just start hanging out there and you make your money back there in your bricks and mortar more often. That buying at the cafe, they're bringing their friends, their friends are liking it and joining you know, all of that stuff. So I think there's a good intention behind it, but there's also a financial payoff because people are spending time here as well. You know, I think of LA fitness LAF, you know, that bought an hit by LAF.
Emma Barry: So the whole concept of putting a boutique back into a club and are speaking very patiently with Philip Mills the other day and they've just built, you know, basically three beautiful studios and renovated basically garage in Aukland, you know, spend a few million. So not doing here's a few million, but to be able to reimagine that and have an immersive studio with the trip, you know, if you're even talking about really living in a, in an immersive environment and then having their conquer in the ceremony class as well, which their versions of boxing and in high intensity training, so this is beginning to happen. And Philip gave the great example and someone said, well, how can you prove that it's working? And he said, well, before we did it, we had a CrossFit gym in there that had 500 people coming through a month and now we have 5,000 people coming through a month.
Emma Barry: So he'd say that's a pretty sturdy metrics. So by reshaping and moving with the times, I think there's ways to redo your facility regardless of what it is. We've also seen some brands, not all, but we've seen some brands like yoga traverse from studio, which was, we used to be a studio, but we didn't have tech, we didn't have high customer service. It was just expertise. You were paying for yoga or you were paying for martial arts or something like that. We're beginning to see some of those like Gotham or like, or a lot of the yoga begin to introduce some of the boutique aspects, the automation, the booking, online paying online and lifting of service towels and drink bottles and juices afterwards and things like that. So you're beginning to see all, all roads kind of leading to a more specialized service. And then the great examples in the clubs, I mean I think David Lloyd was one of the first movers, I mean Jim bolts if you're going to go right back.
Emma Barry: I mean they were a series of boutiques anyway out of the UK. You've got you know, blaze which has been separately marketed and that's a, you know, sort of our treadmill, martial arts and an athletic training blend. Let's work out how hard we can work. You put you in three of the most on train things, put club and a club, market it separately, put a whole programming team on it and roll it through the brand LA for doing the same thing. Les Mills looking, doing the same thing. Mid Town Atheltic I mean, great example, Let's, let's have a field which is a studio and I did a class there the end of the day voltage phenomenal there over 30 people all doing box jumps and treadmill running and ropes and skipping ropes and all that stuff, loving it. And we were sitting there blended with the personal trainers and blended with people just working out on their own.
Emma Barry: And sure you have to work out the music thing and they've done a great job of that. But this is the new studio, the new studio. And then you go to yoga, which is just, you feel like you're in India somewhere. So this is the new world. People are, you know, wanting to be delighted. And so there's a number of ways you can do it. Price, facility you know, and stepping into the future. And everyone always asks me what's going to happen with boutiques? I always answer, you know, the good ones will scale and the bad ones will fail. And of course clubs will start to get the lesson around lifting service and automation and segmentation of customer data, et cetera, et cetera. And it's been, it's going to be a very expensive lesson for some, some clubs won't make it either, I don't think because they're getting stuck in the middle, they don't have enough service or they don't have enough cost cutting and automation like basic fit where basically you're operating a club on the head and a half, you know, I mean, good luck or no heads, you know, like there's plenty of models out there now that are 100% just check your cell phone.
Emma Barry: We'll put a cleaner through occasionally. And that's about it. You know, everything's made it, it's all app based or it's all off some kind of console. Yup.
Bryan O'Rourke: No, I agree. And it's all part of the maturation where all these brands have to either reinvent themselves or you know, or suffer the consequences. Right. I mean that's, and it's challenging. Some of them are going to be able to do it. Some of them aren't. And that's just the way it is. It's just the way it is in this kind of era of change. Well Emma, you know, I know that the listeners, I want to ask you something I didn't tell you before as a question. I'm surprised you. What advice would you have in general? You gave some advice before for fitness professionals today, given your experience level and for operators, what are a couple of the words or gems of wisdom you might want to share with with those, those folks who are listening in?
Emma Barry: Right. So I guess the pros and you know, there's a lot of people circling health and wellness cause we know it's part of the four point $2 trillion health and wellness. You know, we know that there's a lot to be got from our area financially. We also know that, you know, health is the new wealth and you know, pretty much you lose that, you lose everything. And I think people are really finely tuned around that right now, especially with, you know, the uprise of obesity and mental health issues and all of that stuff. So I think there's a there's a romanticism I think around our industry right now, which is as well as obviously a big economic engine. But my advice would be, you know, interrupt for the right reasons, you know, know why you're doing it. And you know, whether you're trying to attract millennial workers or you're trying to motivate yourself over the decades of hard work, that work always turns into for goodness sake, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons.
Emma Barry: So you know, I'm big on passion, you know, understand your why, know what you value and that's always going gonna you're going to need those on the days you don't feel like getting up and your staff are definitely gonna need it as well. So always be founded on a deep why and then really do your really do your due diligence around things. And you know, there's friends that I've told that they, I think they should get into a franchise business for fitness. And there's others that I've seen. I don't think they should because I don't think it's a great idea. So from a business perspective, if you look at the things that are really working right now, so you want to enter a boutique market, you know, are you going to be able to get a good, good enough real estate deal? Are you going to be able to get enough payroll costs?
Emma Barry: Cause I was going to be your big hurts. And if you can't make that work, and if I look in London right now, there's a bunch of businesses that cannot make that work. The rents have gone so high. The employment law has become such that it's very, very hard to employ. You know, I think it's great that we have workers' rights, but at some point you have to make the machine work. And then if you're all having to discount your on various aggregators and you're having to compete with the nine other boutiques on the same block, you get pushed into this price war. So I just think it's very, very important that you understand this is the business, this is the area I'm serving. I need 300 active members paying this amount of money at a discounted rate in order for me to survive and get what I believe I'm valuable. And then I better have a better contingency because if there was a bit of a recession around the corner, what am I going to need for that? Who do I partner with, you know, to get out of there. So it's just having a level head but also being driven by the passion as well as the business needs that need to be in place. I think
Bryan O'Rourke: That's great advice. And Emma, thanks for making time. I know you're such a busy lady and we very much appreciate, you know, I certainly appreciate you for all the kindness, Senate advice and support you've given me. And I know a lot of people out there. I appreciate you for all the passion and effort you make for the industry at large. And so very fortunate and thankful that you spend a few moments with us today sharing your views and thoughts on what's going on in the world out there. And I'll be giving you shameless plugs for your books and other things in the show notes and as the listeners heard in the intro, so I appreciate you so much.
Emma Barry: Oh, that's great. Thank you so much. And you know you're one of my fabulous mentors and I wouldn't be in this industry and certainly hitting in the right direction without you. So thank you for your podcast and the many businesses that you influence and for the special influence that you have on me as well. Thank you.
Bryan O'Rourke: Oh, you're very kind. Appreciate it.
Bryan O'Rourke: Hello listeners, this is Bryan O'Rourke and thanks so much for listening to the Fitness Plus Technology Podcast. The podcast is made possible by the Fitness Industry Technology Council, a consortium of global brands working together to enhance the adoption of technologies in the fitness space. Our company Vedure Ventures, which is invested in Vertimax, Motosumo, Gold's Gym Houston, Texas, and Fitness 24 Seven Thailand. Also underwrites the podcast along with our service companies, Integrus Advisers, Moon Mission Media, and others. Please feel free to share this podcast with your colleagues, and if I can be of any assistance to you, don't hesitate to reach out bryankorourkegmail.com or find me on any of the major social networks. Have a great day and thanks for listening.