Nick Reyes: [00:00:00] Can you imagine running a business so wildly profitable that you can just walk from as many customers as you want? Yeah. You are now listening to the PushPress Podcast, helping gym owners succeed one episode at a time. 

Dan Uyemura: Today's PushPress Podcast is brought to you by Quest bars. Eight grams of protein and only 80 calories in this tiny ass bar.

Dan Uyemura: This is a work of food manufacturing wonders. 

Nick Reyes: That's another industry. We'll save for another day. Yeah. But today 

Dan Uyemura: I just found the empty wrapper. 

Nick Reyes: I didn't really eat that. 

Dan Uyemura: Is it pretty funny that like every episode starts with me eating something or drinking something? 

Nick Reyes: I feel like I am missing the boat.

Nick Reyes: Like I need to get

Dan Uyemura: I’ve probably eaten 1000 calories of nonsense. Just to say his sponsored us.

Nick Reyes: Yeah. That's for the next one. Yeah. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't snap into a Slim Jim just yet. 

Dan Uyemura: Oh, this is a Slim Jim? That's disgusting. I love those things. 

Nick Reyes: Okay, so, Dan, [00:01:00] if I told you that there was an industry that was so predatory.

Nick Reyes: Mmm. That it was charging, In many cases, more than double what it should be charging. More than market rates, more than, um 

Dan Uyemura: You mean they're fucking people over? 

Nick Reyes: Yep. Oh. What would you do about it? 

Dan Uyemura: I would fuck them back. If I could. Okay. Am I allowed to cuss on my own podcast? Okay, yeah, no. I mean, this is our MO, right?

Nick Reyes: 100%.

Dan Uyemura: Like, we started PushPress because we saw this in payments. Yep. I have a feeling this, this is gonna be the episode that gets me maybe kicked off a Spotify or something, but we're gonna, we're gonna go on a fiery one here. 

Nick Reyes: Yeah, yeah. So let, let, let's actually start there. Let's talk about the payment side.

Nick Reyes: Because this, I know this, there's a, there's an origin story here about payments and payment processing and, and. Uh, there's a reason why we've gone the path that we have, [00:02:00] and many others have not. Uh, do you mind maybe I 

Dan Uyemura: feel like most have at this point, but 

Nick Reyes: Well, they came full circle, but it took a while.

Nick Reyes: Yeah, 

Dan Uyemura: yeah, yeah. 

Nick Reyes: It took a while. Why did we, what, how did payments end up being a stepping off point for us? 

Dan Uyemura: Uh, ultimately when I opened my first gym, uh, I, I lost, I'm gonna use the word lost, a month of my life negotiating with some payments guy, For the payments contract, uh, for my first gym. And during that process, he had me fax in fucking everything.

Dan Uyemura: This is still in the days of fax. Let me say, of course it was a fax too. I mean, fax in like so much stuff, bank statements, birth certificates, like IDs, children, everything. And then it was like, Oh, we need supporting evidence on these banks. Like just negotiate. Like I, what I realized now. Is what he basically did is just put me through this whole psychological sales ringer to make me feel on the other [00:03:00] end of it that he did work and he did work on my behalf and he went to bat and he got me this phenomenal rate.

Dan Uyemura: 1.9% is what he told me, uh, and hey, like, congratulations, you whittled me down to 1.9%

Nick Reyes: Good for you.

Dan Uyemura: I thought I had 1. 9% for probably four months. And then one of my first members at my gym who was a banker or worked in the banking industry came in and he said that is not possible.

Dan Uyemura: Like literally, he just knew off the bat that that was a lie. And I said, how do you even know? You haven't looked at my contract yet. And he said, because I know interchange charges more than 1. 9% once you mix in like American Express. Like he started going through the whole thing and I'm like, oh, well, I didn't know about any of that.

Dan Uyemura: Can you look at my comp? Can you look at my stuff? So he looked at my stuff and then he realized or he showed me that we were paying like 4.4 plus some fixed fees on top of that like, you know, probably close to 5% [00:04:00] and Needless to say I was pretty pissed off, right? Like I thought I was 1.9 out the door, right?

Dan Uyemura: There was 1. 9 in there, but he was like look this 1.9 contract clause basically says you have to swipe the card. It can't be a rewards card. It can't be this, can't be that, which is never gonna be the case in a gym. So it was just like a false promise. Yep. 

Nick Reyes: Absolutely. Uh, okay. So from that time period we started, or you started PushPress.

Nick Reyes: Payments were a big thing. I know we were one of the very early, early, early customers of Stripe. And a big part of that was transparency. And, you know, there's technology benefits and all that stuff as well. Right. But I think ultimately, like one of the things that we've tried to do is be transparent with our pricing with, uh, so that gym owners know whether or not they're getting sold a bill of goods or not.

Nick Reyes: And we have, we've largely talked about on the payment side of things. Where as an individual gym owner, can you imagine all 4, 000 plus PushPress clients [00:05:00] having to do that song and dance a month worth of negotiation every time there's a contract? 

Dan Uyemura: This was the industry 10, 15 years ago. 

Nick Reyes: Absolutely.

Nick Reyes: Absolutely. And we saw a chance to say, screw that. We're not doing it. We're going to negotiate rates on the gym owner's behalf. And that's what we went to work to do. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. I mean, honestly, to be completely transparent, we didn't negotiate anything. We just charged them what Stripe charged, which was the average rate when you blend everything together across credit cards.

Dan Uyemura: And that's what they charged. And what I liked about it is there was no bullshit. There was no like transfer fees, ACH, like PCI compliance fees, monthly batch fees. There was none of that stuff that made you have to break open a spreadsheet, do a bunch of abacus work and figure out how much you're paying for your fucking payments.

Dan Uyemura: Like it was just, Oh, I'm paying three points, three points on it. And that's just that. 

Nick Reyes: Right. Yeah. Right. Okay. So there's another industry and I think it's time it's time for us to, uh, maybe shed a little light [00:06:00] on how this industry works too, huh? 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, I mean, I could tell you this. I have a feeling if we go one by one through any financial product, this is going to be the case.

Dan Uyemura: So insurance was the next one. Um, we got approached by a company who was doing tech enablement and insurance. And we kind of started looking into it. I started talking to customers. And so this is what I did with payments too. I started talking to other people. I'm like, yeah, how much are you paying? And everyone was like, oh, I'm paying this, you know, this much.

Dan Uyemura: And it was wrong. I did the same thing with insurance. I started talking to people and they're like, Well, I'm paying this much, but it used to be this much. Like I got the common story, right? Like, Oh, before COVID insurance was like a hundred bucks a month. Now it's like 250. I don't really know why, but like, I guess things are more risky now.

Dan Uyemura: So hearing that a lot. So I went to this, this company that started, that wanted to work with us. And, um, we started prodding them, like, Hey, tell them, like, basically like giving them our culture. Like, uh, you can't rip them off. It has to be priced fairly. It has to be transparent. You know, it has to [00:07:00] be good service.

Dan Uyemura: It has to be good quality, like all of these demands. And they're like, that's what we believe in. So we're like, cool. We looked into it. Um, and what we found immediately was we were saving people right out of the box. Like. 50% on their insurance, like with no work, no lift, same policy, same coverage, sometimes even better coverage.

Dan Uyemura: 50%. Wow. Wow. And so, I mean, I don't know why this has happened, but I also know human, how humans work and it's like, Hey, if you're making a bunch of money, no one's questioning it and you raise rates and no one's questioning it. It's more. Yeah. Just give me more. I'll take that. Yeah. And I mean, I think the biggest thing about us that, that like differentiates this is there's, there's a few, right?

Dan Uyemura: Like. I'm not in the insurance business. I don't need to make a ton of money as long as like the tech enables it and we don't have to pay salespeople. And you know, it's like the whole process is just handled like through technology. We have more data, like we understand the customers better. We know if they're new or if [00:08:00] they're fly by night or if they've been around forever, like we know too much.

Dan Uyemura: We know so much about these customers. Like it only makes sense that a, we get the best rates and B. I don't have to pay a salesperson to go out and sell it who's trying to make a living off of it. And that's where the big costs come from with most of these financial products. Like if you really, really like peel back the onion across all the financials, it's a financial service industry where they're selling financial service products.

Dan Uyemura: And that's a huge profit margin to say, like, I'm going to sell you my investment advice. For 8, 000 a year, you get my investment advice. 

Nick Reyes: It's, it's no secret that the bankers on wall street made a killing during the Oh, a financial crisis or leaning up to it. Right? Like the finance industry is one that absolutely do they ever not make a killing?

Nick Reyes: No, I mean, they always make kind of mark goes down, they make killing market goes up, they make a killing and to me, you know, insurance, uh, like there's so many adjacent industries there. There's the reason why they've been around for hundreds of [00:09:00] years. And that these big, big, big insurance companies have grown to where they're able to say, sorry, Florida, we don't want to do business in your area.

Nick Reyes: It's now too risky. Our profit margin is 

Dan Uyemura: not good enough anymore. 

Nick Reyes: Exactly. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, exactly. Like, imagine that type of a business to be in to just be like, I'm not going to do business with the whole state of Florida anymore. Like y'all are on your own. Yeah. Right. We're just ensure the rest of the world and just raise rates over there.

Nick Reyes: Uh, there was an insurance company that dropped the cyber truck. I have a Tesla cyber truck that I got. And so I'm in these groups and I just saw same thing. They're just flat out. We're no longer going to insure it. It was like Geico or something. So it's just immediately we're not going to take your home policies.

Nick Reyes: Take the whole thing if you want to. We don't care. Can you imagine running a business so wildly profitable that you can just walk from as many customers as you want? Yeah, seemingly as many customers as you want. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah, so I mean it just doesn't tell you like how mathematical they are with their business like they can just look at and be Like this will no longer be profitable.

Dan Uyemura: It doesn't matter if we lose the home insurance. It [00:10:00] doesn't matter. We'll lose everything else. Just kill it all because you know, the hurricanes are killing us or the fires are killing us or whatever. So California is not insurable either. Now 

Nick Reyes: let's, let's, let's double click into this a little bit further.

Nick Reyes: I want to understand the thought behind it. And you mentioned, you said the words, uh, I'm not an insurance salesman. And I think since we've launched, I've heard a couple things related to, you know, uh, Who does push, who is, why is PushPress selling insurance or, you know, like, what gives us the right to sell insurance type of thing?

Nick Reyes: And I know we've discussed it a little bit internally, but I think this is a good chance to maybe, uh, to talk through it on a, in a public forum. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. Um, I guess the first thing to say is to be clear, like we are connecting our clients with a reputable insurance firm. That we've pre negotiated and, you know, pre structured to deal with in the lens and the vein of like what we culturally believe if their intention was, we need, we need to make as much [00:11:00] profit as possible.

Dan Uyemura: We wouldn't be selling insurance for them. So I want to make that distinction. Like it's not, we didn't spool up our own insurance program out of the, you know, out of the ground. Um, this is actually like a reputable established company that does insurance. It's just. Um, in a different, like the way they package these insurance products, it's all special to the niche they're selling into.

Dan Uyemura: So what gives us the right? Uh, I think it's a couple of things. One, it's our, our understanding of the client. Like, again, we under, we know more about our clients than probably anyone except themselves, which is a kind of insurance, kind of important with insurance. Right. Um, two, It's the fact that we were able to tech enable it and negotiate it in a way that is in defense of the gym owner.

Dan Uyemura: And we can only do that because that is not our livelihood. You know what I mean? So, I mean, to be completely transparent, uh, if a PushPress client gets a great price on PushPress insurance. [00:12:00] And they can only get that price if they're a PushPress client, then I'm hoping they don't quit PushPress as a customer.

Dan Uyemura: That's my motive. Right? And they can have all the benefits around all the other products and services in the world. I don't care because that's not what, that's not what we are here to make money on. In fact, we're here to make them stronger businesses. And all of these things that they have to buy around these other areas of their business helps them do that.

Nick Reyes: Right? Right. Can I say that we don't officially count push, uh, insurance as a profit center? 

Dan Uyemura: It's not even recognized in anything that we do. Like, nowhere in my, my financial reporting, nowhere in the report back to the board. Insurance is just an asterisk. 

Nick Reyes: Right. Yeah. I would say, as a CRO, it's not even in my modeling whatsoever.

Dan Uyemura: If, if, if it wasn't a point of me, you know, like actually pushing it back into the, like there, it would be forgotten in that realm. Yeah. But I actually want to make sure that we keep pushing it forward as a product because it's helping [00:13:00] people. Exactly. So it is an important metric still to track, but yeah, like.

Dan Uyemura: You don't care, not like you don't care about it, but it's not, I'm not KPI ing or your head's on a block for it. 

Nick Reyes: Right. Right. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. 

Nick Reyes: I think that's just an important takeaway, because it really contrasts. what the rest of the industry is built around, which is it's a standalone product for profit. It's doing all these things for the for a separate business.

Nick Reyes: And we we look at it as how can we help gym owners claw back margins, claw back savings? How can we get the gym owner in a better position to invest in their clients? And that's The entirety of the reason for us doing this. Yep. 

Dan Uyemura: Yeah. I mean, if I had to, um, if I had to put this in layman's terms, not layman's for our audience, because this will not relate to our audience, but this is actually a pretty cool analogy.

Dan Uyemura: Insurance is like fountain soda at a restaurant. The, the markup on it is not reasonable. You know, we sell [00:14:00] burgers. I don't have to make pro like I want to make like where we make our money is on the burger. So I can cut that soda down to near cost and still be happy. Because, you know, we don't have to make the profit on the soda.

Dan Uyemura: Like our burger business is just fine. It's kind of like how I see it. Come to PushPress, get a 10 cent big gulp and free diabetes. Probably the word, the bad analogy, bad analogy for 

Nick Reyes: industry, but point well received, we don't sell big gulps by the way. So, uh, are there any other areas that you think are, uh, worth us scouting?

Nick Reyes: No commitment on potentially doing in the future. 

Dan Uyemura: I mean, I think anything in the financial services area is fair game. Anything a gym owner uses in the financial services area probably has a markup on it that. Um, it's not reasonable. So that could be payroll has already been tech [00:15:00] enabled. So I think pay, so think about payroll 20 years ago when you're going through ADP.

Dan Uyemura: ADP has already taken the cut on that. Like Gusto and some of these new providers have now cut it down to like, Hey, it's 50 bucks plus 7 per person you're paying. But I think back in the day that would have been thousands of dollars already. So these people have already taken like the cut out of. Out of the, uh, fat, right.

Dan Uyemura: We would, we would probably work with a company like that. Bank accounts. Again, another area that's already been kind of cut. So if you really look at this, this FinTech area, um, and this insurance and one of the last ones to get cut, but like bank accounts, um, lending, insurance, uh, payroll, like all of these services that are out there, there's somebody innovating like a new version of it.

Nick Reyes: And this is no different than like. Industrial revolution, completely changing manufacturing. This is just tech doing what tech does, where it comes into industries that haven't been disrupted in a while and says, guess what motherfuckers I'm here. And we're going [00:16:00] to, we're going to level set. 

Dan Uyemura: If you go back through the history of tech.

Dan Uyemura: And I mean, let's talk about like horses, the car is tech, right? Like back when horses were, uh, you know, and then cars becoming more modern, all technology does is try to make. The cheapest convenience available or the cheapest benefit available to the people who consume the benefit and generally speaking what that drives is democratization and access to Said service, right?

Dan Uyemura: So this is my favorite example like you go back 20 years Who had a car service that could take you to the airport? 

Nick Reyes: Yeah, 

Dan Uyemura: okay Well, not like a like a nice car service. Oh like a black car sir. Oh only the rich only the rich Yep, only like only I was trying to think of like one of those rich people from a movie But I can't know like the home alone family Exactly, right who can take a black car to the airport now?

Dan Uyemura: everybody everybody everybody and you can [00:17:00] choose to take a normal car a Kind of fit like an electric car a black car a limo like and it's all relatively affordable at this point Back in the day, 20, 20 years ago, who had a vacation home on the lake? Fucking nobody, like the rich, like everybody does now.

Dan Uyemura: This is what technology does. Like it actually democratizes the availability for everybody to participate in things. And that's where, that's how I see us. Like we're a technology company and we're helping these small, like small businesses did not have access to machine learning data sets before. Did not have, wouldn't have had access to AI, right.

Dan Uyemura: And a lot of these other things. And that's our job to democratize that into the gems. It's no different for all the fintech shit. 

Nick Reyes: I'm fired up. There we go. I really am, dude. Like, this is, this is, I think the exciting thing for me is like, the way that, hearing how you explain that makes me understand and realize just really how much we're dealing Right at the tip of the spear.

Nick Reyes: Like we're just getting started. 

Dan Uyemura: That's the, and the cool thing is the beauty with everything is like timing is everything. [00:18:00] And 20 years ago, PushPress couldn't have been built. Right. And 20 years from now it'll be too late. Like we are right at the right time where cloud computing has made this available and open AI and other, the race for AI has made these.

Dan Uyemura: AI models cheap enough and accessible enough and everything is converging at a point. APIs are around, mobile phone technology has been around, like all this stuff now is converging to a point where it can be done right now, this moment, and we're fucking sitting in the glorious moment of it, which is great because gym owners, God, think about being a gym owner 30 years ago.

Dan Uyemura: Rough sled. You know, and I guarantee like, I don't have the stats in front of me, but there's probably like 20 times less gyms than because it was just so hard to build, operate, collect money and do all that shit. You know, my goal is like 20 years from now there should be 20 times more gyms because it is so easy.

Dan Uyemura: To do everything you need to do. And so many people need access to a gym that it's like, we are actually rising the tide for everybody. [00:19:00] 

Nick Reyes: I don't know how we wrap this episode up any better than that, dude. I feel like I'm ready to like shut my laptop. This, this kill the podcast. Let's get to work. 

Dan Uyemura: It's good to work.

Dan Uyemura: We got a lot of work to do. I mean, I'll say this much, like with the insurance stuff, I'm, I'm, I'm pumped because like on average, we're saving people about 45 to 55%. What that turns into, um, I mean, right now it's, it looks like across the board on average, including our martial arts gyms, which pay double what everyone else pays.

Dan Uyemura: The average gym is paying 1, 200 a year for insurance. Um, and in talking to people and looking the quotes come through, it's like most gyms out there are paying between 000 a year right now. So doing, you know, just extrapolating that type of savings out across all our gyms. If every one of our clients, let alone, like if we were able to offer this to the world, everyone of our clients use our insurance.

Dan Uyemura: We would save our members 3 million a year. Our clients 3 million a year, like that's some money that they can actually deploy back in their own business. Right? That's very real money, 

Nick Reyes: right? When we talk about focusing on your focusing on your members [00:20:00] that are in your gym, imagine that 3 million spread across every client and what the, what the gym owner could do.

Nick Reyes: That's like hiring additional staff. So that you can now focus on, you know, building culture. Can we, I mean, there's so many ways that you can impact your business. If you call that money back. Yeah. 

Dan Uyemura: And in the big picture, it's like, okay, I save a hundred dollars a month. What is that really going to do? Not a whole ton, but the point is like, it's a hundred here.

Dan Uyemura: It's 50 there. It's 80 there. It's 200 there. Like our job is to cobble all that together and make sure that, you know, you're able to take home more money to your family, or you're able to reinvest that back in your business as you see fit, whatever it is, it's, it's your money. 

Nick Reyes: 100%. Job's not done. 

Dan Uyemura: Job's not done.

Nick Reyes: Well, let's get, let's get back to building. 

Dan Uyemura: Right on. Thank you. All right, man. 

‍

[01:48] PushPress origin story

[03:07] payment hustlers

[5:22] The bullshit fee circus

[6:10] Insurance rip-offs

[8:41] The banker’s playbook

[15:48] Tech is smashing scams

[19:00] How much PushPress insurance saves gyms