Ep. 9 – Jason DeBruler – How ARX is Innovating the Most Profitable and Efficient Business Model in the Fitness Business Industry
Jason DeBruler is the Chief Operating Officer of ARX, which stands for Adaptive Resistance Exercise. ARX is innovating “next generation” technology in fitness. In this interview, Jason talks about the science behind strength training and how ARX is advancing both hardware and software technology to produce the most efficient strength training dose possible for everyone, while simultaneously improving safety and reducing injuries. We also discuss the most common problems in the typical fitness business model and the work they’re doing to eliminate those obstacles and engineer the most profitable and efficient business model in the industry.
Learn why big names like Tony Robbins, Dave Asprey, and Ben Greenfield are using and endorsing ARX and the incredible potential this technology has to transform our industry forever.
In this episode you’ll learn:
- What makes ARX such an innovative step forward for the fitness industry.
- The science behind the adaptive resistance technology and how ARX evolved and emerged into the market after years of research and development.
- How this technology solves so many problems within the typical fitness business model, from reducing square footage of a fitness studio, to allowing fitness to be more accessible to everyone.
- The biggest opportunities that ARX can provide for fitness business owners to grow (and be less vulnerable to clients being poached and people leaving).
- Why big names like Tony Robbins, Dave Asprey, and Ben Greenfield are such big promoters of ARX.
- And much more…
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Secrets To Their Fitness Business Success Podcast
Podcast Transcript
Sean Greeley: Okay. Welcome back for another episode. I’m here with my friend Jason DeBruler from ARX. Jason is the COO of ARX. He’s based in st Petersburg, Florida, where I lived in in Florida. Not too far away from where I lived in Florida for many years. So Jason, very excited to have you here today. We’ve got a lot to talk about. Thanks for being on the show.
Jason DeBruler: I appreciate you having me. I’m excited.
Sean Greeley: Awesome. So for people that are unfamiliar with RX, which is we’re going to talk about a lot in this episode, with a groundbreaking lean technology that is really innovating strengths for in a major way. But what is the ARX in like your short elevator speech so we can give context to this conversation?
Jason DeBruler: Sure. ARX is adaptive resistance exercise. So it’s motor driven, computer controlled. There’s no weights, there’s nothing to drop. The machine is adapting to you in real time to make sure you get the most out of every single repetition. So it’s a dramatic departure from anything that’s come before it. Most people when they walk in, they see a computer screen and a machine with no weights. They don’t really know what to make of it, but it’s the first piece of adaptive resistance equipment throughout your full range of motion. It’s a big step forward.
Sean Greeley: Awesome. And it really is. I like to refer to it as the Tesla of exercise strength training equipment. It is innovative. It is constantly evolving because you’ve got hardware, you’ve got software and you’re breaking through some of the traditional limitations of strength training, since people were picking up rocks.
Jason DeBruler: That’s been the goal since the beginning, is that people have been throwing around metal weights for years and years, hundreds of years and that has worked just fine. It’s just really inefficient and there are some inherent dangers that come along with it. And so with adaptive resistance exercise, what we’re trying to do is bring the masses under the tent of resistance training. It’s so incredibly important, especially as we age. And yet for the average person who maybe didn’t grow up in a weight room as an athlete and is just trying to be healthy throughout their life, they’re busy, got kids, got a job, spending hours in the weight room just isn’t really possible for a lot of people. And even those who are willing to put the time in are usually pretty disappointed with the results. And the problem isn’t the people, the problem’s the equipment.
Jason DeBruler: So when you bring in the adaptive resistance, you’re getting way more out of it for every single rep, which means you need less and you’re much less likely to get injured. So now we can bring people in who are completely untrained, without the intimidating factor of wandering around a facility trying to figure out what machines do what. It’s a really intimidating environment for a lot of people, with most of the concepts that are out there. And so what ARX is doing is making it accessible. It’s much, much safer, but it’s also entirely quantified. So the computer is controlling the experience and you see what you’re capable of in real time.
Jason DeBruler: Most importantly, you see how different your potential is throughout the range of motion. And we can get into some examples later. We like to do a little example about a chest press, but when you feel it for yourself it is totally different. And our internal team, people always laugh when we say this because we sound like the old … Remember the old, what was it? Eight minute abs, six minute abs, whatever the heck it was. Our team averages about eight minutes of actual effort per week, and that’s it. Across the board. That’s usually accomplished in about 15 to 20 minutes. But that’s all you need. If the stimulus is strong enough, the adaptation will happen later and you’ll get better results in a lot less time.
Sean Greeley: Amazing. And I know we’re going to talk about this with broad use cases for everybody, like you said, bring everybody under the tent for fitness. Seniors, people with injuries, rehab, physical therapy, wellness practitioners. Really, this is super safe for everybody, and to give some history to the context, this is built out of … The ARX is really a massive leap forward, and we’re going to talk about that, but coming back into the niche of super slow training, and the broader methodology of hit training, as a subset of strength training.
Sean Greeley: So this is a massive step forward and that’s really some of the lineage for people that know the history and want to understand more about it. And that’s where I want to kind of jump back and talk about the origins of ARX and Mark who I’ve gotten to know a bit is the, the original founder of ARX, and for those who know him, he’s one of the founders of also the event every year, Paleo FX, and also comes out of the strength world and ran a couple of facilities and let’s kind of start with his story and what kind of kicked this off.
Jason DeBruler: Yeah. Mark’s story is a great one. I believe he was the first, if not the first, one of the very first super slow certified trainers in the state of Texas back nearly 20 years ago, at this point. And Mark was always very innovative compared to most in that world. He was always looking for how do I provide more value to my clients? How do I get them better results if I can do it in a shorter period of time? His whole concept was based on efficient exercise, so that was always a starting place. So how can we do it in a shorter amount of time and get better results? So ARX was born out of this recognition that there is a limitation to metal weights. And maybe this is a great example of … Great time to give the example of let’s say you’re laying on a normal bench press that everybody’s done in their life and where’s the hardest part to move the weight? Right there off your chest.
Jason DeBruler: That’s the weakest part of your range of motion. When you get out here, you’re much, much stronger resisting that force coming back down to you. Now there’s a couple of problems there. One, you have to … In order to get properly loaded throughout that range of motion, you need spotters on both sides. You need to put a really unsafe amount of weight on there. Just because I could handle a bunch of weight out here, doesn’t mean I trust my buddies not to drop that thing on me when I’m not strong enough to lift it off myself. So the inherent dangers of metal weights was always there. The real bummer about that is that all the magic, or at least a big part of the magic that happens from resistance training happens on that loaded ecentric, to get nerdy on the terms here, but doing the negative is probably what people are more familiar with.
Jason DeBruler: When you’re resisting anything, you are doing more for your muscle, you’re doing more for bone. That is where all the magic happens, both in terms of bone and muscle growth. Unfortunately, to get that type of load, again, you’re having to create a really unsafe environment. So Mark kind of started with this notion of if you’d asked everybody back in horse and buggy days what they needed next, they would have said faster horses. And in our world it was actually the Model T. it was a complete change from where things were. And so what happens when you take the weights away entirely and you start with a motor system that you can never be stronger than, it’s always going to win the battle, but you’re going to give it your best effort against that in a safe environment. So Mark went through many, many prototypes and linked up with a lot of people in the early days just trying to figure out what does this world look like if there isn’t a weight involved? How do we provide the resistance?
Jason DeBruler: So ARX evolved for years in a research and development phase, lots of prototyping, and then came to market with our current day machines about four years ago. The Omni and the Alpha typically sold as a pair. But with those two machines, you can replace an entire footprint of 15 single purpose. Walking into any normal fitness studio, for example. You see basically the same stuff, and you’ve seen the same stuff for 20, 30, 40 years. There’s been little improvements along the way, but ARX replaces that entire space, which we’ll talk about, I’m sure, at some point about what that does for business owners and the size of offices they need, and it has dramatically changed the landscape.
Jason DeBruler: So it was really founded for Mark in how do I get more for my clients? And then it evolved into a product that he kind of made a decision a few years back of he can keep growing his multi-location fitness concept or focus the time on the technology itself. And that was really going to be the only way we get it out to millions and millions of people rather than just a handful of lucky people in Austin.
Sean Greeley: Yeah, amazing. And I think that really is so important to talk about here with as much as the fitness industry has grown and exponentially grown and really boutique studio space is growing 300, 400% year over year. We’ve got massive evolutions in so many areas of fitness and in fitness, participation, engagement. Yet the fundamental technology for strength training is not changed. So you pick up a rock, you know it’s the same weight when you pick it up. Because when you put it down, you progress to metal weights and barbells and kettlebells and really any metal piece of weight. It’s the same thing. It really hasn’t changed. Whether you’ve got a cable or pulley, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. This is the first innovation ever really in decades and decades of the fitness industry to where we can optimize strength.
Sean Greeley: I mean, I guess some of the early roots, you could say analysis with cam drive, but really compares nothing to what we can do now with maximum efficiency on the ecentric and concentric loading of the muscle to get the most bang for the buck in the least amount of time and ensure no one ever gets hurt. I mean, if you can eliminate injuries from strength training, you open up the door for so many people to engage and to get the benefits, young, old, kids, seniors, knee replacements, hip replacements, you name it, everybody can participate, and they can find time to participate when it’s efficient. So it’s really … It really is dramatic and it’s just exciting to be a part of supporting the movement and the evolution, which is a lot to do out of the biohacking space. Maybe you can talk about that for the moment as well because that’s a lot of some of the connections here that are evolving the science.
Jason DeBruler: Yeah. The biohacking space has been … It’s been a huge one for us. We’re kind of at the center of roughly 90% of the facilities out there that are doing a biohacking recovery performance type place ARX is typically the beating heart of, of that facility, and then we’ve got great new technologies. I think what you’re seeing is a demand in the market for something different, and there is a big opportunity out there to bring more people in, like we talked about earlier, but if you think about all the markets that are very well-served at this point, group fitness stuff, if you like group fitness and you like doing body weight type stuff, there are plenty of options for you these days. If you like more of a self service, global gym, walk in, pay your 20 to $40 a month, do your own thing. There’s plenty of those. There’s one on every couple of blocks.
Jason DeBruler: But what we found is that there was … If you’re familiar with the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, we’ve been seeing that there’s a lot of people that want access to better technology, but don’t want to spend $1,000 a month for personal training and the highest of high end places. So we’ve really found this sweet spot that you have ARX and then we’ve got a lot of other companies that are responding to the market saying, “We want better health, we want to do it faster. I don’t have time to spend two hours a night at the gym anymore. We all did that when we were younger, and you had the time back then. But with kids or a busy work schedule, it’s really difficult.” So we’ve linked up with other supporting technologies like Caroll Bikes out of the UK, you’ve got Pulse Centers and Vasper and Bio Charger, Fit 3d cold tubs.
Jason DeBruler: There’s so many different pieces of equipment out there now that don’t look and feel like your traditional fitness piece of equipment, not all of them. Obviously you’ve seen bikes before, Caroll does bikes in a very different way. So combining a lot of those technologies together, we’ve got a lot of customers who are bringing people into the fold that’ve never been a part of a facility before. And that’s really remarkable when you think about the people who need it most are the least likely to be a member of a gym right now.
Jason DeBruler: If you’re 55 and up, bone wasting is going to become a problem. Muscle wasting certainly also a problem. But how do I fix that? I’m certainly not going to send my 65 year old recently retired parents to X, Y, Z group fitness class and hope they don’t get hurt doing a weighted squat. That is just not where they need to start their fitness journey. So we have a lot of customers that have kind of started with ARX, added a few other pieces, many just have ARX in a small little footprint and it works great for them. But to be able … It starts with the end user. It starts with that client. They need a better experience, they need it to work better, they need better results. And if they can do it in a lot less time, that’s a huge win.
Sean Greeley: Awesome. Yeah. And I love that. You know, we’re taking a demand and need in the market and we’re innovating technology and really the business model to better serve the market and get more people engaged and solve all those problems. So I want to kind of go into that a little bit more depth because this is not just technology that produces a more efficient experience and result for strength training, but it solves so many problems in fitness, business ownership for business owners and operators. So let’s kind of go down the list of that, because it’s just so fascinating to see how this ticks the box of so many roadblocks we see people run into all the time, in our work at MP around the world. And I know we’ve talked about injuries being one of the biggest ones, right?
Jason DeBruler: Injuries are huge and if they’re … If they’re hurt, they’re not coming in. If they’re not coming in, they’re probably going to cancel their membership or stop paying for sessions. Injuries are a big deal. And if you go research some of those statistics out there across various types of workout protocols, it is really scary how often people are getting hurt. And the worst part is there’s a culture out there that says if you got hurt, “Hey dummy, you did it wrong.” Blame the injured party, which is crazy. But I hear people try to defend it all the time. I got hurt. But it was totally on me. I did this thing wrong, which I like when people try to take responsibility, but the fact is you are using technology that is inherently more dangerous than alternatives that are out there.
Jason DeBruler: It started with that idea of how do we make it safer? How do we quantify it? How do we get better results? But also if you don’t need to go as often, then you don’t need the same square footage. And our founder, Mark, was really forward thinking. You’re living in a city like Austin that’s growing like crazy. And what he was watching over the years was the cost of commercial real estate just going up, up, up, up, up, and to get two, three, 4,000 square foot in an urban environment in particular, you’re talking about big, big rental dollars and it kept a lot of people out of the fitness market, because that is just a rather massive commitment to make. So it made sense to then say, “What could we do to shrink the footprint?” And we’ve got a tremendous number of customers who don’t have anything more than 750 to 1,000 square foot seems to be about the sweet spot.
Jason DeBruler: When you compare that to several thousand in most fitness concepts, keeping that rent low is a really big deal. Cash is oxygen, as they say. And if your fixed overhead is really high, it can be really stressful getting enough members to break even and then eventually turn a profit. So what we’ve really enjoyed, and we actually just had an installation yesterday, I believe it’s around 400 square foot, might even be slightly less, but that is a really efficient little space. One Alpha, one Omni and they’re often running and they are going to provide so much value to their clients and do it in such a tight footprint that the profits are going to be through the roof when compared to a traditional fitness business.
Sean Greeley: Yeah, no, I love it. So we’ve talked about the safety piece with injuries. We’ve talked about reducing square footage and overhead and fixed cost. The other big part, and we see this as really some of the biggest challenges for fitness businesses that are growing, is the staff. So to scale delivery of fitness services, you have to continue to find great talent, recruit them, hire them, onboard them, develop them, manage them, keep them engaged, and the bigger you grow, the more staff you need. And you’re only as good as the bench, which is very new skill sets for operators to grow and develop and to keep consistency and create consistency, really, in the client experience.
Sean Greeley: So making sure every client is served the same way every time, always happy. And how do we keep that journey? And it’s … For everybody we’ll tell you it’s ongoing work, and they’re one month away from some guy quit, some guy, gets fired, some guy starts across the street with coaching clients and it’s a challenge. It really is a challenge. Even for everybody that’s even doing it well we run into roadblocks here. So you know, this model and some of the way we’ve integrated the technology eliminates a lot of those issues. And I’d love for you to speak to that further.
Jason DeBruler: Yeah, there’s so much to unpack there and it’s a big part of this. So I would say in full disclosure for those listening, NPE and ARX share quite a few customers at at this point and our customers are really excited because NPE brings the knowledge base from an operations perspective across the board, how to run this thing, which was was certainly needed for a lot of our customers who are passionate about fitness in the technology but needed help when it comes to the structure of the day in day out, but even when you’ve invested the money and the time to learn the mechanics of the business, the recruiting, the training, the mentorship, what happens when they leave? And inevitably the best ones typically leave, and that can be really frustrating when it becomes about turnover, and when they leave, what usually happens? Clients go with them, and they go to the new home.
Jason DeBruler: If the business is built on nothing more than the relationship with people, then your most vulnerable point in the business will always be the people, and what ARX does and what some of these other technologies are doing in this, we kind of call it next generation fitness studio, it gives you a way to differentiate your business based on something other than the people. And so what we’re seeing now, we have quite a few customers who still come from a one-on-one personal training, that’s their model per session. But the majority of our customers have moved into more of a a premium subscription model. I guess for, if we were to look at it globally. And what we find is that from a labor model perspective, that has always been, next to rent, the biggest killer of profits or the potential for a business to make it is how do I pay my staff and have enough leftover to make any of this risk worth it?
Jason DeBruler: So what we’ve found is that we have a lot of customers who have a couple of ARX machines. They may add some other things to it. They typically have one person onsite, and they’re not so much a trainer as they are a facilitator of if there’s any problems, somebody just there to address those problems, answer questions, Hey, I forgot how to do XYZ on the software. So somebody’s there to support them typically. I know we’ve got some customers experimenting with a keyless model. I will be very curious to see where that goes in the future, but when you can get premium memberships, most of our customers are charging between two and $300 a month, and these aren’t just the big markets. You can do pretty much anything in Manhattan and Los Angeles, but I’m talking middle markets where two to $300 a month, that surprises some people that that number is so achievable. But if you go look out in the marketplace right now, there’s unlimited yoga studios and bar classes and there are tons of people spending two to $300 a month on their fitness. Some people have $150 memberships at multiple places.
Jason DeBruler: So the the market is out there for it. It is a blue ocean strategy like we talked about before, but that labor component, when you can get 200, 250 300 a month, multiply that out over 100 clients getting started and you only have one person on staff most of the time, it’s a very, very profitable model. So we’re really excited to see where that goes, both in terms of shrinking the square footage required and then shrinking the amount of labor needed. And then when those clients come in, they fall in love with lots of things, hopefully. If you’re doing it right, they’d like the operations, they like you, they like the people. But people get hooked on technologies they can’t find anywhere else. And ARX had been around a while now, we’ve got 250 machines out there and counting, but we’ve barely scratched the surface. Most markets still don’t even have a machine. All the big markets have a couple. But the opportunity is huge. So when they fall in love with the technology, now you have something stickier, and if somebody leaves, you’re less vulnerable to clients being poached and people leaving.
Sean Greeley: Yeah. Because it’s less about the relationship and it’s more about the technology and the results, which is not everywhere, right?
Jason DeBruler: No.
Sean Greeley: And let’s talk about that a little further. How we’re kind of de-risking the model for operators and for owners. So before you’ve got to have a great personality, you got to be entertaining and motivating as a coach, you’ve got to be an incredible programmer. You got to be great at assessing everybody. You’ve got to be great at teaching technique and all these things that are lots of domains and skill sets you have to be to be successful as a fitness coach delivering a client experience and results. And with the model here and with the technology, that goes away and you’ve got now software that is dynamically doing the programming, managing the methodology and the experience. And there really is just a little bit of training and then how takes over, right? The technology takes over. So explain that a little more in depth for everybody here.
Jason DeBruler: Yeah. So what’s great … What comes to mind, Jim on our team who is our director of fun, has something he likes to say a lot, which is too many people major in the minors. And so what we’ve found over the years is that the more down the rabbit hole you go in any training discipline, I don’t care if it’s super slow or any, you name it, any protocol out there, there are lots of different opinions on the most efficient, the fastest way to get stronger, and we tend to say that’s majoring in the minors, is you get focused on this minutia, the smallest little details and what we really need to focus on is the systemic stimulus. Get 95% of it right. Leave the one to 5% for the experts who want to drone on about the nuances of resistance training.
Jason DeBruler: The average person, what they want is a result that happens in a short period of time. So what happens when somebody comes into an ARX-equipped facility, you’re going to go through an orientation, but the software creates a profile for you. Just like you have an account on 1,000 other sites that stores some of your information, it’s going to store your data in our cloud. It’s accessible from any ARX equipped facility out there. So if you’re on the road traveling, you can pop into another location, download your data and get an experience that’s very similar. But we simply programmed the beginning and the end of a range of motion. So you have somebody, it’s the only time you really need an operator there holding the remote and move it to this position, here’s the start, okay, here’s the finish. That’s it. It needs to points at the beginning and the end point.
Jason DeBruler: From there, the software is capable of any programming under the sun, any protocol you want to run. And we’ve got customers experimenting with all kinds of stuff. I want to do a five second positive concentric and a 17 second negative. Why? Where did this come from? Who knows? But the software can program that however the user wants to go. So it’s so flexible, but it’s storing in real time. And what I found is that even competitive people, they’re going to want to see their personal best. We tend to refer to our software. It’s a little hard without seeing it, but maybe we can a link to a screenshot of our software. But what you’ll see on the screen is a graph that’s showing your strength output in real time. And every time you do another set, you see the last set, or whichever select you want to compare against.
Jason DeBruler: It’s in gray in the background. And for those of roughly our age, you’ll remember Mario ghost cart. So when you’re racing around that track, you’re always trying to beat your time from the last track, or the last lap. Very, very similar with ARX. And I have found it to be really rewarding to watch people who don’t even claim to be competitive. There is something about seeing your progress from last time and wanting to beat it that drives people. And what we know about strength training is how important the stimulus is. So the more effort they’re putting in, the harder they’re working, the more they’re going to get out of it, the faster they’re going to get results. So when you can see that past performance, it is amazing. And there’s nothing more fun than taking somebody off the street who’s extremely well-trained, walk in, looking great. Tons of muscle. They get it on it for the first time and they can’t believe it.
Jason DeBruler: It’s so different than anything they felt before, because especially as you get stronger, if you’re really up there and you’re really well-trained, you have a ton of lean mass, that means you’re capable of some big forces on your ecentric, but are you really going to throw 400 pounds on the chest press bar and hope your spotters take care of you and all that? That’s not how they typically train. So when you experience a fully loaded ecentric, it changes the way you view strength training. But I want to give a little disclaimer there that just because you can drive your Maserati 120 on the freeway, it doesn’t mean you can’t also take it to the grocery store.
Jason DeBruler: So ARX will adapt to you. Whatever you put into it, it’s going to get back. So if you’re just starting out in strength training, oftentimes people will get on our YouTube channel and they’ll see people going crazy and screaming and nuts at a conference. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do that. That isn’t necessary. You can build up to that. But oftentimes I always feel like we have to preface it with, just because most of our marketing, you see a bunch of crazy people. That’s not actually how most people train on ARX.
Sean Greeley: Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. And look, this is … We should share with people, this is working in small studios, very small footprint. This is working in any other wellness practitioners, physical therapy clinics, chiropractors, corporate wellness space. Even you’ve got some high end hotels that are now looking to put this in to create a unique experience for the amenities for guests. And that’s the commercial side, but you also have a really exciting, high end home market. And this is for like millionaires and billionaires who I know you can’t … We get to talk about it, but you’re not allowed to share all the names that are using the product and having it in their homes. But you have some people that have income to buy the best in the world of anything a hundred times over and they’re ordering an AX to put it in their home gym and they’re using every day. And maybe you could just share a few of the names that people would recognize that are using the product and using consistently every day that we can talk about.
Jason DeBruler: Sure. Yeah. I mean, like you said, we’re a commercial grade product, so it’s not a traditional … The question we get often times is, is this like a new Bowflex? No, it’s most certainly not. It’s a commercial grade product, but for those who want the best, Tony Robbins has been a big promoter for us, a big supporter over many years. He actually had one of our first prototypes many, many years ago out in California actually. And now he’s got our latest technology in his home in Florida. So he’s been … He’s just been a big supporter. He loves what we’re doing. And Dave Asprey, we’re incredibly grateful to Dave of Bulletproof fame. People know Dave as kind of the godfather of biohacking, if you will. He kind of started this movement with his buttered coffee and kind of pursuit of getting the most out of his out of his biology.
Jason DeBruler: I mean, the term biohacking for even those that might not be familiar, the hacking of, hacking coming from the computer hacking code, this is hacking the body. So getting the most out of it, it’s the reason we wear these nerdy blue blocking glasses, not because they look good. I certainly know they don’t, but to eliminate some of that blue light. So we do really well in a group of people that say, “My health is more important than virtually anything else. It’s my health and it’s my family and I want the things that give me the best shot at living a long, healthy life.” And so for those people, getting an ARX for their home gym makes total sense. But Dave’s just been a huge supporter of what we do. He’s got ARX equipment in his Upgrade Labs concepts, started out as Bulletproof Labs, transitioned to Upgrade Labs.
Jason DeBruler: But ARX is big in there and he’s also got an ARX up at his alpha lab at his home. So yeah, Dave’s been a huge supporter. So those two guys, we’ve got lots more, but as you mentioned, oftentimes the celebrity group doesn’t really want their name plastered all over the place. We try to protect their privacy in that front. But in reality that’s still a very small portion of our overall business. Our bread and butter is the fitness community, it’s the biohacking community, it’s the recovery physical therapists, chiropractors, like you mentioned. We think one of our biggest growth opportunities is really in that chiropractic and physical therapy space where, because the equipment is so space efficient, you can put one in a room that maybe is under utilized. Now, how many chiropractic offices do you go into that have three, four, five waiting rooms or adjustment rooms, I should say.
Jason DeBruler: For the average chiropractor who can go in there and say, “Wait, I can throw this piece of equipment, create a new revenue stream that is almost entirely staffless. I can teach the person at the front desk how to set people up on it and now it can just create additional revenue while I’m doing adjustments in another room?” That’s a really big advantage for somebody who’s trying to eke out, revenue per square foot is something we focus on a lot, but there are a lot of markets out there and then you get into the corporate wellness and people want their employees to be healthier and they don’t necessarily want them … If you go off site to go get a workout in, how long does that take? Especially out where you’re at, traffic. By the time you leave the office, drive 15, 20, 30 minutes, get your workout in and come back.
Jason DeBruler: You’ve lost a big chunk of your afternoon. ARX can sit in a conference room somewhere, get an eight minute workout and get right back to the desk feeling great. So there’s a lot of potential for growth. We think about all the coworking spaces out there. Those would be tremendous opportunities for us. So the next year or two is going to be really exciting. We want a million people to call ARX their workout of choice over the next couple of years, and we need more facilities that make the technology accessible to people. So we’re pretty excited about where it’s headed.
Sean Greeley: Yeah. Well, we’re excited to be supporting so many of the operators and owners and helping them really take off and, and be successful in the skills and things that, that help them really pull it all together. And I want to reinforce, this is for brand new startups. This is also for people who want to add to the existing operations. We’ve had existing MP customers who are saying, “What if I just kind of corner off a room here and put the equipment there and I can just let that thing turn over?” And now I serve another demographic that I’m not targeting today in my current offerings, and really, as you said, it’s affordable, it’s sustainable. And you can bring in, again, especially the 60s plus market, they’re not going to go spend 1,000 a month on a trainer and necessarily, the average person in demographic.
Sean Greeley: They’re not going to large scale, high volume group classes with 20 year olds, and they’re not going to go to LA Fitness to try to figure it out on their own. So this is bringing in something special to a market that’s underserved and really is going to benefit …. I mean, I look at my parents and my dad and my mom and how much … My mom is very diligent about working with a trainer and does strength training consistently and how much that’s impacted her health in a positive way. And my dad is the other way. He’s not as disciplined and in his fitness routine, but he’s doing some physical therapy, and it’s made a tremendous impact on his quality of living. And everybody 60 and up needs needs to be doing … Unless you want to just sit on a couch and to pop pills, you’ve got to be engaged in fitness and wellness and this makes it possible for everybody in terms of affordability, in terms of safety, and in terms of efficiency.
Sean Greeley: So it’s an exciting time. And I know we’re going to look back on this in a few years time and see, the results of, hopefully, people that heard this show and went to learn more about what you guys do and find out how they might explore being a part of it. And I guess maybe we can just kind of shift that for everybody and just tell people where can they learn more about ARX and about the technology and the opportunity and the model?
Jason DeBruler: Yeah. I mean, number one starting point would certainly be the website ARX Fit F-I-T, .com. That would be the entry point. For those considering opening a facility. If this sounds interesting to you, we have a 30 minute webinar that you can sign up for right on the website. Kind of walks you through A to Z on that. And then our sales team can can hop on the phone and really just have a conversation about where you’re at, what you’re looking to do, maybe different pieces of technology you might want to add to it. As I mentioned before, we partner with a lot of different technologies. So we try to be very consultative, if you will. When somebody comes into this, oftentimes they’re very excited about the technology. NPE can provide that structure of how to set everything up, and then when it comes to what tech is going to be in this space, it starts with ARX because it’s the easiest to advertise, by the way.
Jason DeBruler: People know they need to work out. They don’t know what that means, but they know they need to be doing something, and then you bring them in, you expose them to whatever else you have in the facility. So getting on the website would be the starting point. The webinar’s a great place, and our YouTube channel has a tunnel of walkthrough videos and customer experiences, and we post new stuff on there all the time, but that would be the starting point if you’re curious about checking out the equipment. We can also get you set up with a demonstration at our Austin headquarters or here at our showroom in st Petersburg if getting your hands on it, which we always recommend. You can see it, you can think you understand it. Until you feel it, it’s a completely different animal. So we’d be happy to chat with anybody who wants to add it. Whether it’s home, business, or thinking about starting something new, we can support them.
Sean Greeley: Awesome. Well, Jason, I’m excited for our audience and community to learn more about this and to go check out everything you guys have and what you’re doing. It is truly the most innovative technology that is advancing strength training and bringing more people under the tent that’s ever been done in fitness. And this is really the early stages of that movement. So this is a great time to learn more and to look how you can be a part of better serving our aging population and really everybody in a powerful way. So thanks so much for spending time with us today and we look forward to hearing more about ARX in the future.
Jason DeBruler: I really appreciate you saying that, Sean, because the number of customers you’ve worked with in this industry, you’ve seen it all at this point, and to know that that’s your view of what we’re doing means a lot to us, and I’m sure it means a lot to your audience as well. So appreciate you having me on and look forward to talking soon.
Sean Greeley: All right. Will talk to you soon.
Jason DeBruler: See you.