How to Leverage Technology to Buy Back Your Time with Jacob Heppner, Ignite

Who is Jacob Heppner? [0:28]

Why leveraging technology is so important. [4:42]

At the end of the day when your head hits the pillow, what are you passionate about? [8:28]

Putting a price on your time. [9:11]

Capital, People, Technology. [12:42]

Trends in technology in the fitness space. [15:31]

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Dan Uyemura  0:00
Welcome to the gymOS Podcast, helping fitness professionals become better business owners one episode at a time. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the gymOS Podcast where we're working on making you a better business owner one episode at a time. Dan Uyemura here the CEO of PushPress. And I am joined today talking about something exciting and near and dear to my heart and that is technology in the fitness space with one Jacob Heppner. Jacob as you know, the CrossFit Games athlete, influencer if you're into those kinds of things I actually didn't know you're an influencer, Jacob no offense. I just don't pay attention to that.

Jacob Heppner  0:47
I don't like the term influencer. So you could leave that out.

Dan Uyemura  0:50
Yeah, he's not wearing his cashmere robe or anything today being an influencer. That is, and lo and behold, tech entrepreneur. I don't know if any of you guys knew that I didn't until a few months ago. Funny story there. About a year ago, there was a guy named Mike Baglio, who was asking in the like software owners forum groups, questions about how to build a tech company. And he was building a company that competes with PushPress and I was like, openly giving him advice. And he's like, yo, why are you giving me advice. And I'm like, cuz this shit is gonna be so hard. And you don't even know what you're facing that I will give you every piece of advice, and you're probably still gonna have a hard time doing this. So it's not a problem. Fast forward, like a year or two later. And he's part like, Jacobs partnered in and you guys have kind of pivoted that company, and why don't you like, let everyone know kind of what that company is?

Jacob Heppner  1:37
Yeah, so I originally, so I have an online programming company Grit. And I had looked around for options for a program called program delivery services, right? Like, I want to get programming from my hands into someone else's hands. So I did some shopping around trying to find some good companies that fit my exact needs. And I honestly couldn't find anything that focused more on me and less on there is a lot of companies that will focus on their retention of coaches and less on my retention of the athletes underneath me, I just felt undervalued. And I stumbled across Mike and I thought Mike, for the lack of better terms, had a Ferrari engine in a Cadillac body, she wasn't a really pretty application, but she functioned really well. And that was Boxscore Fitness. And so I after using it for a couple months, I pulled Mike aside, I said, Mike, I think you're really good guy, I think you have a good platform here. I said, but I think we can really change the space and we work together and throw some different, that's really how it started. He just he allowed me to come in and partner up with them. And that's how it began. And we just started, you know, coming up with ideas of Okay, how do we fit the fitness niche and really attack that one to many program because I think that's become becoming more important in our fitness space is a lot of a lot of gyms or program delivery services, focus on the one to one true coach does a very good job at it, but not really many people have really attacked and perfected the one to many, it's that's kind of what we're going for not only the one to one, but let's crush the one to many.

Dan Uyemura  3:08
And I find that to be very, very interesting right now, especially in the COVID time because since COVID, popped up a sphere PushPress were always kind of on the forefront of like, what is the trend of group fitness gonna look like? Right now my positioning is basically this hybrid model that includes a couple times a week in the gym. And then like your training from home doing homework, that's where my mind is going with this allows you to scale your gym to three times more potential clients for the same square footage, you know, creates a lot of efficiencies operational, and actually gives them a better service. If you're kind of like programming. What seems to be for them, it could be one of the many could be probably isn't one to one, I don't think that's really efficient. But we're calling it kind of this hybrid concept, right? So that's pretty interesting to me, because Ignite is the name of it would fit right into that type of a concept. I'm going to preface this episode as we're kicking off that Jacob is doing this podcast from the front seat of his car because his home is getting internet installed and the WiFi at the coffee shop wasn't sufficient. So while ironically, we're talking about technology in the fitness space, you might hear him glitch out and we're just gonna let it roll because technology has glitches.

Jacob Heppner  4:19
I mean, I'm in Kansas City, man, we're still figuring out how WiFi.

Dan Uyemura  4:22
Oh man, you guys have Google fiber or whatever that shit is right?

Jacob Heppner  4:25
No, the Google Fiber is like it's like, five miles away from me. I'll trench it myself, but they'll let me but it's like 5 miles away from me right now.

Dan Uyemura  4:33
I heard they're putting in Kansas. I'm like, what happened to California, man.

Jacob Heppner  4:36
You guys get Google. We just get the fiber.

Dan Uyemura  4:39
I'd rather have the fiber. Anyway, the first topic I want to talk about is actually, to me the most important concept of probably everything we're going to talk about today and that's, that's leveraging technology to buy back your time. And I've I've actually just run a book club with a bunch of PushPress clients, talking about the book e myth and It lends kind of into this. And I really had an epiphany reading that book in terms of this topic. But I want to know, like, what is your feeling about using technology? Buy back time? How should a gym owner go about doing this? And why is it important?

Jacob Heppner  5:12
Yeah, so I can't necessarily speak specifically to a gym owner, but I can speak from the online coach program. And I think they're going to be very similar regardless. But I think what you see in our space right now, is a lot of gym owners and online programming coaches may have degrees in, you know, some sports or physical education. And that's great, and they love they're passionate about what they do. But they tend what I found a spend too much time on things that just aren't worth their time. And they're not delegating it correctly. Or they're just not using the platforms and services that are out there. Because cost, which to me, is when I approach my day, a lot of people will say, oh, wow, you know, how do you put this much stuff in your day? You approach and you say, What do I value my time, my cost that, and then I figure out, is that worth my time? Is it worth my time to do that? Or should I find someone else that can do just as good a job, and I might lose money from it, but I can have them hire them to do something. But I think that's what coaches need to look at is not necessarily hiring somebody, but finding solutions in the software industry to fulfill certain tasks, you know, still people out there writing workouts. I love Scott Panchik to death, but Scott Panchik still writes workouts on paper, and I was appalled. I was like, dude, you got Google Sheets, you've got PushPress, you've got all these program delivery services out there, and you're still writing it on paper. And so I think there's just a lot of options out there that people just don't explore for some unknown reason, right?

Dan Uyemura  6:41
So let me tell you the epiphany I had so we were reading E Myth. Have you read E Myth?

Jacob Heppner  6:45
I have not but I've been recommended a few times though.

Dan Uyemura  6:47
Yeah. So it's funnily enough, it was written in 86, as in 1986, right? So like, 20 something years ago, and in the book actually describe about buying back your time by hiring employees. Right. And it was like, okay, so you open a pie shop, and you're really into baking pies, and you love baking pies. But then at night, you got to go home and do your accounting. And that sucks, because you don't want to do accounting. And then the whole time I'm reading and I'm thinking of a gym owner, right is totally a gym owner. And then they're like, Okay, so what you're going to do first is you're going to hire an accountant, to come and sit in your office, and do your books for you every day. And you never have to do that again. And I'm like, holy shit, because that was like $4,000 a month back then to hire an accountant comes in your office in your books. And now you can do for $200 a month using some technology platform, right? And we've become so spoiled today where we look at something we're like, $200 for software, that is not I can't I can't afford that. Right? But look at the alternative. You can have, you know, Jane, the accountant, come sit in your in your office and we charge you $4,000 a minimum to do your accounting work, right. So we live in a day and age that like, I think everyone's taken it for granted how much you can scale your attention and scale your abilities because you have software working for you. Right. And to me, that is such a huge concept. Because once you think of it that way, like I've actually started using, start using this with my co founder, he's the the purse strings grabber of our group. And the joke is now it's like, oh, this software is gonna cost $1,000 a month. And he's like, $1,000 a month. And I'm like or we can hire an engineer for $15,000 a month, you can pick and he's like, Okay, get the software. So it's a huge, huge opportunity to use software and technology to scale your day. Right?

Jacob Heppner  8:27
Yeah, totally agree. And I just, I don't understand why it's, it's something I think it's slowly working its way in there. And I think you need to look at it and say, What are you passionate? Like, why did you start this company? Why did you open this gym? Why did you start this tech company? What do you enjoy what at the end of the day when you head hits the pillow? What makes you think, man, I that's why I love running this business. And then you do that. And if it's for me, you know, I love the big brand. I love coming up with good ideas. I love talking to people, I love connecting with people, you're never gonna see me be like, let's run the numbers on this cuz I'm just gonna hate myself for that. And so that's why I pull in people to do certain things to program and do like things like that, because I'd rather do things that I'm passionate about.

Dan Uyemura  9:09
Yeah. Yeah. Have you there's a philosopher out there and a guy in the startup world named Naval Ravikant. Have you heard of him? If you have, yeah, dude, he changed my life this year when I read or listened to his podcast on how to become wealthy without being lucky. And in it, he talks about this concept of value, like putting a price on your time. And he ran this experiment. It's funny, he's like, Okay, everyone, right now think. And I'm gonna run this with you guys. Like everyone right now, put a price in your head on your time per hour. Right? What would you put price on your time per hour?

Jacob Heppner  9:40
$75.

Dan Uyemura  9:41
Okay, so this this was his exact point. He's like, whatever you picked, you're probably like five to 10 times too low. Because you are worth way more than what you think you are. So he's like, you should pick a number that is uncomfortable to say. He's like when I was 22 years old. I ran this exercise and I put $1,000 an hour on my time. He's like, that's probably a little bit too high, but not not that much, right. So really like $500-$700 bucks an hour is what you should put on your time. And he's basically like, if whatever you're asked to do doesn't return that much to you. And in return, you shouldn't do it. Or just ignore it, or hire someone else to do it for any amount less than $500, whatever your number is, right. And I think that's how people need to look at stuff. Right?

Jacob Heppner  10:25
No, I totally agree. The problem is, you're dealing with people that don't think like that, like, the people that are using your platform, the people that are using my platform are coming to them, because they want to save time, but it's still hard for them to sign up for it. And then it comes down to us as companies to drive our prices down lower to become, you know, like, hey, I want you to sign up, I want you to sign up. But I have to keep showing them value in an actuality. I'm hoping they're coming to you. I would love if people thought like that I would love again, say $75 it's just too low. But I would love if people said Oh, no, like, I could totally sign up for Ignite or totally sign up for PushPress, because I know that I value my little $500 an hour and I can save an hour of my time using PushPress' back end.

Dan Uyemura  11:06
Yeah, exactly. So there we go. I love giving my guests something you can leave here from now on valuing your time at $500 bucks an hour. Game changer.

Jacob Heppner  11:14
Game changer! So I'm never mowing my lawn again.

Dan Uyemura  11:17
The guy around the corner will do it for $20 bucks. Why would you?!

Jacob Heppner  11:20
We found that out. Like we said we own two properties at once for now for like a couple months. Now. We just recently moved. And I had some kid who wanted to train with me, mowed my lawn and came and trained with me and loved it and he mowed my lawn. It's a three acre lawn. So it's not a lawn. It's like a frickin farm. He mowed it for $80. And I was like..

Dan Uyemura  11:41
Was he on a track?

Jacob Heppner  11:43
Yeah he's out a zero turn.

Dan Uyemura  11:44
Okay, at least.

Jacob Heppner  11:46
Yeah, I was like, Why will I I looked at my wife and I said, I will never mow my lawn again. I was like that is listening to a podcast, which I do. I was like, that is a waste of my time can on my lawn or under saying that to someone, actually to my family? And they gave me a look of like, Oh, that's weird. Why would you say that? Like you're not above mowing your lawn? But I'm thinking to myself? No, I think at some point, you have to look at it like that.

Dan Uyemura  12:09
Absolutely. But here's the key. You can't pay a kid 80 bucks to mow your lawn. Or fuck pay, PushPress whatever to you know, help you manage your business and then go play the Xbox. Now, right? You have to use that time to realize that $500 valuation you put on yourself, right? Or else you might as well just save the money and mow the lawn.

Jacob Heppner  12:30
Exactly. Totally agree. But when I realized that I could just not do that. I was like 80 bucks. That's nothing. Like how you value your time. I don't want him to think his time is $500 because I'm not gonna pay him $500.

Dan Uyemura  12:41
Haha yeah he's not there yet. Yeah, so I mean, that's the trap. I think I fell into that when I opened a gym. I was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna hire this person to do my programming for me, right? While they're programming, I'm out in the gym dicking around members, like, you know, playing, you know, grab ass with people and not wait not leveraging my time for what I just bought it back for. So the key to this is like whether you use in Naval's thing. So if you're listening to me, you haven't heard this this podcast from the vault, How to Grow, he calls it How To Grow Rich Without Being Lucky. It's really how to be wealthy without being lucky. But he describes there's three levers you can pull in order to buy back your time ones with capital or money, ones with people, which is hiring people, and ones with technology. And he basically says like capitals impossible when you're starting. Once you have the money, you can get the money, but you don't need the money. So capital is kind of out of the equation. People are the messiest ways to leverage growth, because they'll sleep with your clients. They argue with you. They have their own opinions, you know, like people is a tough one because they have egos and feelings and all these others and desires and these things. So he said it was a tough one, let technology. His argument is, there's this concept that the bots are taking over. And really they are because software platforms like PushPress, like ignite, these are things that are running out on the cloud in a server room somewhere doing work for you. They're robots doing work that's repetitive and consistent. That is going to save you time so you can go and do stuff. So his his and it's, what 200 bucks a month to save yourself 10 hours, right? Like, like, what is the ROI on that? It's insane. So anyway, bottom line, use technology to save yourself time, use that time to do something that only you can do as a creative human being to make yourself more money, or more more networking or whatever it might be...

Jacob Heppner  14:32
What you're passionate about, what do you love to do?

Dan Uyemura  14:35
Yeah, exactly. Don't spend that time messing around or doing something that the robots can do for you cheaper, or a kid who has a zero turn can do for you.

Jacob Heppner  14:42
Right. In your company, in PushPress what makes you passionate about PushPress like what do you like, man, that was a great day, like I enjoyed that.

Dan Uyemura  14:50
Yes, I mean, so for me, it's the same thing. Same reason I opened a gym it's because I like helping people and this allowed me to scale that right. So instead of just helping my gym community, I'm helping gym owners help them gym communities and that returned to me all of the returns, right? Also, I've always been a game player. And in my mind business is the ultimate game because the decisions you make, like affect people, it affects your family, it affects your future. So I mean, it's waking up in the morning and knowing by the end of the day, I've made my I've gone farther in this game, you know? And those are the two things that really moved me with PushPress. Not that's what I'm here for. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Let's skip ahead. Let's talk about next another topic. So let's talk about trends of technology in the fitness space. And in that, let's actually talk about something very pointed, right? Mirrors, Peloton, these type of technology devices that are bringing fitness to the quote unquote, masses. What's your thoughts on that?

Jacob Heppner  15:47
Yeah, so I think it's I think it's the next step is where it's going. I mean, I think mirror did a great job and peloton did a great job. I got to use a peloton for the first time a couple months ago, myself. Oh, so fun. Like I mean, it wasn't even a live class. It was pre recorded. This, I was like, This is amazing. I remember, I actually bought my wife one a few months ago. And I bought it. I told her I bought it and she said she didn't want it. So I had to send it back. I had returned, I was so upset. I was like, I want to buy you a bike for yourself, for me pretty much. But I think that's what fitness classes are going is these live pre recorded classes that are doing being very successful during this this pandemic period. But I'm thinking, let's just assume tomorrow COVID-19 gets cured and goes away. And that would be wonderful. But it's not going to happen. And I think as soon as it does go away, or filter off of the news and media, whatever the case may be. I think people are realizing they don't have to go into a gym. I think people are realizing how much they've enjoyed being with their family. I think people are realizing that, hey, I can get just as good of a workout in my house because I have three kids, it's really hard for me to get out of my house and go to the gym and take them to daycare. I think they're realizing they can get that done using a near using a peloton using a live or on demand fitness streaming service. Once COVID disappears, this trend of working out at home isn't gonna disappear along with it.

Dan Uyemura  17:09
Yeah, I mean, I do think if anything, hopefully got more people up off the couch, and into fitness. My stance on it is it's all well and good that people are working out from home and leveraging technology to connect with some type of fitness experience. But nothing beats community. And I think that's, you know, in the CrossFit world and boutique fitness in general world, like that's what they've leveraged his community, they've created a church out of fitness is what they've done. So my thinking is like, just like everyone's like, Yeah, get to work from home now. This is awesome. Um, pretty much everyone out there thinking like I wouldn't mind going into work and just be messing with with john again, or, you know, hanging out with Mary, you know, at lunch. We all miss community, we all need connection. So I think this is why my hybrid, in my mind, the hybrid model is kind of the future of boutique fitness because it gives you both, like, home and community. How do you in order to do that, though? I think you absolutely have to leverage tech. Like there's no way you're going to be doing a home. Like you're not sending people home with no pads, right? Yeah. So for the gym owner out there right now who's like stuck tech stubborn, right? We all know, the guy who's like, are the girls, like I'm writing things on a chalkboard don't even use whiteboards. You know, like, I'm not using tech, I don't use apps on my phone. Where do they fit into all this?

Jacob Heppner  18:35
Yeah, so that's the other company that I'm a part of is, in February of this year, I got hooked up with a developer and a marketing guy out of Michigan. And then we pulled in Scott Panchik, along with us ,my doppelganger, because we looked at the trends, we thought to ourselves, all these gym owners are using zoom, you know, because it was easy. It was great. You know, it provided a blessing at the time, but it was a band aid solution, right? It fit but it wasn't great. And so we spent a couple months like March to April, calling cheap affiliate owners and gym owners around the world and saying, hey, if you use zoom, I want to talk to you, or know what you like about it, what you don't like about it? If you had ideas to add, what would it be? I don't care the cost is tell me what you want. And so we actually launched two weeks ago, we launched the web browser version, and the app will go live in February of 2021. And that is Stream Fitness. And the concept of that is let's take zoom and make it specifically for the fitness industry specifically for affiliate owners out there. Because we all know affiliate owners have ran zoom classes and struggled with Oh God, I'd rather work on the board behind me or I've got to have a clock in my screen or you know, I have to be careful because my music is playing behind me or how do I talk to one sports person specifically in the class and not the whole group. And that's all the features we added to it and then hundreds more. I'm giving you the very basic definition of it, but that's essentially what we created was, let's create something that the fitness industry, not just if I only made it for the functional fitness space, I would be pigeonholing myself into not success. But let's make something for the yoga industry. Let's make something for seminar industry to run on seminars, let's make it for the the functional fitness industry in a way that they can do things at home. And I understand that right now, I'm trying to create a community online as close as I can get to in person, it's impossible to do that it's never gonna happen, like you're saying, but I can try and get as close as I possibly can. Knowing full well that I won't get all the way there.

Dan Uyemura  20:36
Yep, it's funny, you brought that up, because there's something I wanted, I wanted to mention, when we're talking about buying back your time with technology I forgot, and that just reminded me is the one thing you have to be okay with, when you're like, when you're paying someone to mow your lawn. It's not gonna be 100%. You, right, like, they're gonna miss a corner, it's not gonna be perfect, but you just have to learn to start being okay with that. So the same thing in this in these technology spaces is you're getting 90% of the lift for 10% of the price. And you have to be okay with the 10% that gets missed sometimes, you know what I mean, for the greater good.

Jacob Heppner  21:08
Yeah I mean, that's the case for like, you know, like, I think in all the companies you and I run, and I'm not sure how you guys, we have a lot of we do a lot of offshore development. And that's usually the case is like, I can save my time by doing offshore nug work if I need to, but I have to understand that when it comes down to when I have to look over the code, again, it's not going to be an exact one to one or what I want, I have to go in there. So before I actually, my previous job before I quit, did functional fitness. And you know, being an influencer full time was I was a project manager for a web development company out of Raleigh, North Carolina. And so I had the experience of okay, let's run a team, let's accomplish a task, you know, whether creating a website or some kind of app or something of that nature. But you're right, like you have to be willing to take that sacrifice of, I'm gonna have to go over this fine tooth comb, and it's gonna take no more time, but it's worth it a long run.

Dan Uyemura  21:58
Right? So let's go back to what we were just talking about. A lot of gym owners feel intimidated by technology, or they feel resistant to technology, let's start with a guy that's resistant to it, or the gal that's resistant to it. What is your advice for them in terms of like, where things are going and what they may or may not need to, to look at things how they might need to look.

Jacob Heppner  22:20
I mean, we could sit here all day and talk about, they're gonna need to look into it and become less resistant to technology. But I think it's going to be a conscious choice on their part. But I think what's going to happen is the choice is going to be made for them. I think the person who resists technology, because they've watched too many Terminator shows, and John Connor is going to get left behind companies that are spending time investing into wearables, companies that are spending time investing in the experience of their clients are going to be the ones that come out on top now, companies that aren't doing that are still going to be around for the next couple years. Don't get me wrong, they're just gonna know 2021, the plug gets pulled out on them. But the companies that are it's what my kind of model

Dan Uyemura  23:04
That's worse, to have a slow death is worse. Right?

Jacob Heppner  23:08
Exactly. I think I think ,you're good. I think what we're seeing in this space, especially especially in what I deem as the competitive space, you're in a program delivery service, I know PushPress does mostly back end, and it does it extremely well. But the companies you're competing with, I think what you're seeing in your space, specifically, and especially in CrossFit space, in general, is a lot of complacency. I think you're seeing a lot of tech companies and CrossFit affiliate owners that are like, Oh, I can use this whiteboard, a regular whiteboard, oh, I don't need to track this. Oh, you know, I don't care about tracking my athletes heart rate, or tracking or helping them out with nutrition. I don't care about adding that feature set because my clients care about it. Those companies that aren't caring about their nor complacent will get left behind by companies like orange theory and people that are doing and providing a great experience and caring about what the clients want.

Dan Uyemura  24:03
I had a call today literally with another entrepreneur who was an ed tech system, or ad tech world. And it just really opened my eyes, what he's basically done is he's created this iPad system where the teachers, they did it for a classroom, but it's actually working really well for COVID, where the teacher has an iPad, and it's all wired through a server, and they can push like prompts to the kids. And the kids on their iPads respond to the prompts. And they did it because kids were afraid to raise their hands and the ones that didn't raise your hand statistically became worse and more and more left behind in class. And this way every kid through the through their own iPad could interact with the teacher. And the thing collects data. So based on the responses, the time to respond, the way they respond like all these different things. The teacher after class gets a report saying Johnny has probably has a little bit of insecurity about this, or Mary is is sufficiently worse in math than her peers. Right? When I heard that I'm like, holy shit, like, art teachers back in the day had to just kind of like mentally make assessments, right? And then I was like, Oh, that's what every coach is doing on the gym floor. They're just mentally like, Oh, this person's squat deficient. This person, you know, can't hit that yoga pose, whatever, right? This person can't get this choke correctly, right? Correct angle, but the technology is telling them with data behind it, right? Like, these kids are falling behind in this way, this kid is excelling in this direction, you should pair these two kids together, because they will help each other. Like, you could never do that before. So when I heard that, I'm like, holy shit, like, that's just going to blow up education, in terms of like how teachers can teach. And imagine if we had, like, when these types of technologies come on the gym floor, like what type of improvements you can make the people like, understanding their Heart Rate Variance while they're working out, compared to how they slept the night before, like all of these factors, insane.

Jacob Heppner  25:57
Yeah. So before I was a project manager, my bachelor's degree was in math. And I went and worked for the army as a DOD civilian for a couple years. And I worked for a Department of the Army called Trade Off. And what trade off does for the army is they take the field of operations research and systems analysis, and we help the army make informed decisions informed is the key word, informed decisions backed by data and statistics. And, you know, looking back at my whole life I've had now I realized that the army made a really good decision early on to do something like that. And that's where the rest of the world is trying to get. And I'm not saying the army didn't first, but the rest of the world is trying to catch up and make the same thing because if you can help coaches make informed decisions on, hey, maybe I should drop the rep scheme for married because I know XYZ based upon data and helps that coach make an informed decision that makes that gym more successful, that coach more successful, and makes that client more successful. And so I think that's where the rest of the world is going is we're using data mathematics, statistics, wearables, programs, like PushPress programs, like Ignite, and helping them connect up and help coaches make the best decisions for themselves.

Dan Uyemura  27:11
Yeah, it's honestly pretty insane. Because I don't think you're the average gym owner understands like the level of technology that can be applied to these things. And once I'm in other industries have gotten, you know, like, construction, even like restaurants, right? Like they have very granular data systems that give them super, super finite amounts of data that allow them make good decisions. the fitness industry hasn't gotten as fast. But But as it starts to come, like the value of technology is so exponentially outweighing the cost of technology. Like this is where as like a human civilization, we keep exponentially growing. Because these are the advancements that are made, it blows my mind every time I think about it.

Jacob Heppner  27:51
Yeah. But I think it's a great spot to be in, like, if I if I had the opportunity to be in a saturated demographic that had a lot of very saturated in tech. I mean, like, think about it, like look at like the NFL, they use tech all over the place. And so trying to make a wave in the NFL in the tech space is probably very difficult, but the fitness industry, you're right, it's super right. And if you take it even further and delve into our sport, and like we talked about before we started recording is the idea of I, when they announce who is the CEO of CrossFit and I did, I didn't know who Eric was off the bat. Number one, I figured out he had competed. So I liked that concept. I liked someone who's competed at my level to be in charge, because he knows he understands he's walked a mile in my shoes or ran in that case. But I also like the concept of he comes from a tech background. And I thought to myself that is going to help companies like you companies like me in this space, because he's only going to push the narrative to the coaches of Hey, let us help you make informed decisions going forward.

Dan Uyemura  29:00
Yeah, it's insane because you mentioned NFL and I hadn't really thought of that analogy, but I grew up watching the NFL in the 80s. And I don't know what kind of tech they had back then. But it was like that little yellow first down line that appeared at one point was like crazy amazing, like so right now fit the fitness industry in general. And we can exclude mirrors and peloton and these people that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars that are pushing this stuff. That general small business, local fitness, boutique studio, their NFL 1975, right. I mean, shit, they might be NFL 1955 or their leather helmets or something, you know what I mean? Like, it is so far back. But where we're going is current day NFL, you know, like, yeah, a ton of them are already up in those levels. So like, there's pressure on me, there's pressure on you, there's pressure on the companies that are providing tech for our space to accelerate all of us to that point. And that's what we're gonna get there really fast now at this point, and I'm super excited about that, and I really want you to know get on board with that.

Jacob Heppner  30:01
Yeah, I mean, I think the analogy is is perfect. I mean, our goal you and I's goal is we both want to be that yellow line, we want to be that company that broke and said, Wow, that's cool. Like, now what else can we do? You want to be that creative outlet that took that step. And now everyone else says, holy crap, you see what PushPress did with wearables? How else can we what else can we do with this and that's you want to be that yellow line going forward.

Dan Uyemura  30:26
And it's right about to happen. Like we've seen a lot of wearables come out in our space, we've seen a lot of like bar tracking devices and heart rate things. And they're all right about there. But just not they haven't nailed it. nothing's really nailed it. But I think like we are a couple years away from a lot of transformation in our space. So if you're listening to this, and you're a little bit tech, scared, tech resistant, don't be you better embrace it, because it's coming. And it's coming fast. And like, trust me that the thing is, you won't get left behind tomorrow, like Jacob said, you will probably die a slow death because all your customers will start to expect it. And if you're resistant to it, they will slowly leave. And I'm, I don't have a crystal ball. But I'm pretty damn sure of that.

Jacob Heppner  31:07
I remember like first starting CrossFit. When I started, I haven't been around that long. And I remember, I only got the workout when I showed up in class. And they wrote on the whiteboard. And at the time, I was like, this is awesome. I just walk into class.

Dan Uyemura  31:19
Because it was new technology to you at the time.

Jacob Heppner  31:21
Right, and now, but now think about how many people are like, Oh, you don't have an app for delivering.

Dan Uyemura  31:30
And also think how that's changed things right? Like, you get the workout the night before. And again, this is a CrossFit specific podcast, but in the CrossFit world, like you might get the workout the night before is generally pretty intense. So people like it might change your sleep decision, it might change your breakfast decision, or what lunch you eat, or if you go to morning class or nyclass. Like it allows you to make so many decisions on how you affect you know, you attack, whatever it is you're going to do. Like it's the same thing for your business. Right? data. I mean, it was what, almost 10 years ago, an article came out in I don't know one of those Wall Street Journal saying data was worth more than oil. That was 10 years ago. And here we are. So anyway, I think we better wrap it up there. We I feel like I can talk about this forever. Like this is like we could do two or three podcasts on tech and fit space. Because this is my world this is my jam.

Jacob Heppner  32:17
Yeah, you just wrap it up, and I think just your feedback, and I'm more than willing to come on and chat some more about as much as you want.

Dan Uyemura  32:24
Yeah, for sure, man, let's do that. Let's do that sometime.

Jacob Heppner  32:27
Just cool seeing guys like you in the space that are at the forefront. I mean, look, I love affiliate owners, and I love people that are changing our sport. And I love people who are creating companies and affiliates. Like you know, Jason Khalipa is doing a great job of creating affiliates together and doing things like that. But I think the people that in the sport they're going to change the most lives is the people who are in tech in the sport doing things like this. Yeah. Because they have the most general ability to affect most people in their umbrella.

Dan Uyemura  32:54
Yeah, I mean, well, to end it, we'll go back to Naval, tech creates leverage leverage at scale that you cannot create in any other way. You know, like, literally the amount of money that and energy that we pour into the tech PushPress that you pour into the tech at Ignite. The scale that it creates for your clients is so tremendous. It cannot be recreated by human beings. It cannot be recreated by money. It's something insane. So that's why tech does change the world like decade after decade. It does. Cool man. Well, thank you so much for coming on this episode. This was a fun one for me. And I hope if you're listening this you got something good out of this. I'm sure you did. If anything, you know that Jacobs got a three acre lawn that needs mowing, make 80 bucks at Kansas City area. You know where to go.

Jacob Heppner  33:41
Yeah.

Dan Uyemura  33:43
Cool, man. Thanks a lot. We'll talk to you later.

Jacob Heppner  33:45
Thanks so much, Dan.