Worldwide Access to FTNSS

[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: Running a small business can be messy, but it doesn’t have to be. QuickBooks is a great way to track all of your expenses in one easy to use place. I’ve been using QuickBooks since 2019, when I launched my first business. My favorite part is the app because I can quickly and easily take a snapshot of my receipts if I’m on the go and QuickBooks stores it in my account so that I don’t lose track of them. Never lose sight of your business expenses again. From tracking everyday expenses to being ready for tax time, QuickBooks helps you understand where your money goes. Head on over to calanbreckon.com/QuickBooks to grab yourself a special promotion. Or just click the link in the show notes. Now let’s get into today’s episode welcome to the Business Gay podcast, where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Calan Breckon, and on today’s episode, I have CEO of FTNSS app Jordan Robinson. Jordan is a two-time startup founder originally from Detroit, who now calls Toronto home. His previous roles include positions at Apple, Warner Brothers Music and Automobile magazine. But now Jordan is focused on growing FTNSS. FTNSS is an app that makes it easy to buy short term gym membership anywhere in the world. I’m looking forward to talking about FTNSS and innovation with Jordan. So let’s jump in to hey Jordan, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

[00:01:27] Jordan Robinson: Hey, I’m doing well. How are you doing?

[00:01:29] Calan Breckon: I am so good. I’m very excited to jump into your new FTNSS stuff that we’re going to be talking about. So how about like, let’s just jump right in with what did you learn in your first startup that is helping you with FTNSS?

[00:01:44] Jordan Robinson: Yeah. So the biggest thing that I helped me at this point was having a bigger picture.

I had my first startup, which was a chronic pain clinic in Vaughan, Toronto, where we had car accident patients and botched surgeries and slip and falls and all of that.

We were really operating from a place of we’re brand new, so we just need to do whatever we can. And our efforts were not necessarily building up to a bigger picture. It was mostly just to survive day to day. And we did really, really well at the clinic. The clinic is still surviving and thriving.

But one of the biggest challenges that I ran into was that nobody at the clinic seemed to be thinking, we’re going to do this thing and that’s going to get us to this and to this and to this. There was no vertical plan. It was just getting through the day and with FTNSS, my new startup, everything is intentional. And I think that that also has been very helpful for the team to be able to say, this is where we are now, but also, this is where we’re going. So, yeah, that’s definitely the biggest lesson is how having a.

[00:02:56] Calan Breckon: Having a big future plan, definitely, that’s a must have for. That’s very startup, that startup life. Um, can you dive in and tell us a little bit more about what FTNSS is?

[00:03:07] Jordan Robinson: Sure. So, FTNSS is a marketplace that makes it easy for anybody to buy a short term gym membership anywhere in the world. And it was inspired by my own FTNSS journey. Um, I lost, you can’t really tell, um, but I lost about a hundred pounds about six years ago or so. And when I was in Toronto, it was super easy for me to keep up my workout routine and make my meals and do my normal thing.

But I’m originally from Detroit. I’ve got family around the world. I’m also a world traveler. And what happened was as soon as I would go back home, I couldn’t find a gym to go to. I attended world pride in 2017 in Madrid, and I had lost all the weight. I was feeling great. And then I got to Madrid and saw everybody else around me and thought, oh, God, okay, I would love to go to the gym just once. Just twice while I’m here, just to kind of feel like I’m in the shape that I want to be in. And it was impossible.

So I was like, there has to be another way. There has to be a way that you can just book a gym. Like, you can book a hotel room. And that’s how FTNSS got started.

[00:04:13] Calan Breckon: Okay. So that’s very fair to say about going to other places, because I used to be flight attendant and going to other places, usually it was kind of baked into the hotel. Like, you would stay at the hotel, and they usually had a gym, but a lot of these european locations didn’t necessarily have that because it was kind of like hotels built within sight of older buildings that maybe didn’t necessarily have those options. So being able to book, like, you’re going to a hotel to go to the gym, there’s definitely a lot of FTNSS people in the world. It’s definitely, like, exploded. I would say over the last 15 to 20 years, it’s gotten, like, more and more predominantly in people’s, like, forefront of thinking and thought. And I actually just listened to a podcast all about, like, skeletal muscle and how important that is and. And how. How being sedentary is not good. And I’m very sedentary, so I’m trying to get myself out a little bit more. Uh, can you talk a little bit more about what some of those unique challenges are that you’re addressing with FTNSS outside of just booking, you know, that spot at that one gym? At that one place, yeah.

[00:05:21] Jordan Robinson: So the biggest thing for me is, um, I’m a kind of big guy, and if I were, even if I were to find a gym, um, if the gym only has 20 pound dumbbells, that doesn’t really do anything for me personally. So one of the big things that we want to do is make the equipment that’s available in each location available to all of our users. So that way they know instantly, okay, they’ve got all the equipment that I need.

I need to bring my lock from home because the lock is not built into the locker. I’m going to bring my water bottle because they’ve got a bottle filling station. So all these, like, granular details about the gym experience is one of the things that we’re working on and then also finding a way to crowdsource that information to make sure that it’s, it’s accurate.

And the thing with FTNSS is it’s really a partnerships and relationships game just on a very massive scale. And I guess that’s kind of how all businesses are. But for us, we need to find gym partners around the world. We’ve got to find FTNSS people, users around the world. And there’s also some unique opportunities with hotels, for instance, because like you mentioned, some hotels usually don’t have a gym built in, or sometimes they’re not great. But some hotels have really great FTNSS equipment. But the problem for hotels is that they don’t have a way to monetize those spaces. So if you’re staying at an Airbnb or another hotel right next door, you may not be able to access that hotel’s gym, but with FTNSS, that’s one of the things you can do. So we’re thinking big and we’re just trying to go after all avenues because at this point it feels like throwing spaghetti at a wall and just seeing what sticks.

But, you know, it’s exciting, too. And you never know what the possibilities are.

[00:07:07] Calan Breckon: Yeah, it’s the work of what a lot of people don’t know or necessarily understand about startup world is that when you start a startup, you have an idea, you have a concept. Most of the time, that is not what the final product ends up being because you need to find what’s called the product market fit. And so there might be a aspect of what you’re doing that is actually where the gold is and that you go down that rabbit hole more and that’s what ends up becoming the actual big business. It’s not what the initial idea was per se. There’s that evolution piece and some people don’t really understand that and. But a good entrepreneur knows you need to evolve and grow with that. A bad entrepreneur will be like, no, but this is my idea. And you’re like, no, no, no. You gotta open things up, throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

[00:08:00] Jordan Robinson: Yeah, yeah, completely. Yeah, that’s totally true.

[00:08:02] Calan Breckon: A hundred percent. So one of my curiosities is, is that the gym world is notorious for their membership contracts. How are you navigating working with so many different gyms around the world where this is kind of, from my experience, built into the psyche of gyms?

[00:08:22] Jordan Robinson: Yeah. Well, the best member for a gym is somebody that signs up for a monthly membership and never shows up. Those people are perfect because they don’t have any costs, they’re just straight revenue.

What the challenge is a little bit is just shifting people’s thinking. What I know in the FTNSS industry is a lot of people that work in FTNSS are really, really good at working with their hands and partnerships and relationships and community building. They’re not necessarily visionary financial analysts. They’re not economists that are thinking about different ways to grow and scale by making simple tweaks. So, yeah, I guess that’s the challenge is just not that people think that it’s a bad idea, but just educating and kind of showing people other opportunities that are there. Hopefully. That answered your question.

[00:09:14] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. Being able to navigate those ins and out, it kind of comes down to the individual gym and the owner and whether it’s part of a big chain or not and how all those things kind of run and operate. But I can’t imagine that they would say no to more revenue at the end of the day.

How do these short term gym memberships work for people? Like say they have the FTNSS app. How does it work on a logistical level? Walk me through an everyday user experience.

[00:09:43] Jordan Robinson: Yeah. So the easiest way is you load up the FTNSS app and there is a list of gyms and a map. And what you do is you just pick the gym that you want to go to and you pick how many times you want to go to the gym. You can book it by the day, you can book it by the week, you can book by the month at a time, and you can also book by the region.

So one thing I didn’t tell you on the call is I was in Germany this past summer. I went to, like, eight different cities. And what would have helped me isn’t just a gym membership for one location. I needed the Germany pass. That would have allowed me to go to all these gyms in different areas. And there are some other competitors in the space, but we’re the only one that’s global from the start.

So those are the kind of things that we’re trying to make it easy for everybody in the world to be able to go to the gym whenever they want.

[00:10:33] Calan Breckon: Okay, so it’s easy. You just, you have your app, you go in, you’re like, okay, I’m in this place for one day, or I’m going to be here for a week, or maybe I’ll be here for a while, traveling around within this country, and it’s going to give you those options depending on what you’re looking for. Are there any plans or ideas to work with gyms in terms of, like, having personal trainers also available in some way, shape or form to or through the app?

[00:10:59] Jordan Robinson: I think it’s a stretch goal. It’s definitely a secondary benefit to Jim signing up with the platform because it allows us to add additional services like massage.

There are some cryotherapy and massage gun stuff that you can do, and also physio.

Those are definitely secondary benefits, and it’s something we’re open to. That’s the fun part about this stage in the business, is that anything’s possible. And so even if it’s not on our launch addition of the app, it’s always something that can be added in the future.

[00:11:35] Calan Breckon: Definitely. So before this adventure, you were here just outside of Toronto, working in a physical location, doing that kind of in person. What’s it like managing a remote team? That’s like remote now, and everybody’s kind of online. In this online era.

[00:11:53] Jordan Robinson: I think the first thing is that you have to really trust the people that you’re working with, and you have to.

With my team, everybody just works at their own pace. And what I’ve learned in my first startup, where my boss was on top of me every single day, she felt that if I wasn’t physically in the building, then I couldn’t possibly be doing all the work that I’m doing. And I was like, well, no, that’s actually not true. And actually, I can make myself a lunch when I’m at home and actually take care of myself better and do more work when I’m at home.

So that notion that you have to be in front somebody to do your job is antiquated, but then at the same time, you just have to kind of be patient because not only are we a remote team, I’m calling you from London. I’ve got somebody in DC, I’ve got somebody in Denver, I’ve got somebody in San Francisco, I’ve got somebody in Toronto.

So if I send a message that I might think is urgent at 05:00 p.m. my time, they may still be asleep.

So you just have to kind of temper your expectations a little bit and just really trust in people doing the work.

For me, with my team and just the environment that I want to create, I don’t want to ever treat people the way that I was treated by my boss, honestly. She just didn’t believe in me. And with the people that I’m working with now, it’s just really important that they know that I know what they bring to the table. I know what all of their talents are, whether it’s coding or design or marketing. And so I just trust in their talent. And when the time comes for them to deliver, found that they delivered every time. But, yeah, it is, it is.

It’s a bit of a challenge because it’s also a little bit lonely.

I rarely get to see all the people that I work with in person, and so sometimes it does seem nice, like, it would be nice if we could get together for lunch or coffee or something in person more regularly.

But I’m very satisfied with the work that they’re doing, and they’re all really passionate about what we’re building and this wellness space. So, yeah, I guess that’s just the world that we’re living in now, right? Like, I can’t imagine anybody’s building new office spaces right now.

[00:14:13] Calan Breckon: Like, no, definitely those things are on the. It’s a. We could die. That’s a whole different podcast, right? I very much buy into the same mentality of the world has shifted. The energy is people can have a better, well rounded quality of life. Working from home, you don’t need to be in person to do work. And when you allow people that autonomy, that freedom, they also tend to do a better, higher quality of that work. And I much more prefer work on the basis of, like, per project, per deadline. And just like, whenever you work, that works for you, this is the deadline. And have, like, hard non negotiables in that way, because then I’m paying you for the project that gets completed, not for you being a robot for 8 hours a day, five days a week, whether or not you’re being productive or not. And I just think that it’s such a better way to work. And when you allow your people that freedom, they show that in their work. And then that also returns to you into the business as well, because you’re showing them that kind of, you know, grace to just be an adult. And then the same. I think Spotify actually just puts it well, to be fair, this podcast is coming out much later than when we’re recording it. But Spotify, not too long ago, recently released kind of a stage about the work from home because a lot of people are doing like mandatory work from home. I think prime just did it. And Spotify is like, we’re paying adults to do adult work. We’re not like, employing children, and we know adults can do their work, so there’s no point. Like, this is not a verbatim, this is like me kind of saying what was said, but in my head, just where the economy is right now, a mandatory work from office order, in my mind, is basically like a soft layoff. Like you’re trying to lay people off and you’re looking for a way to do it that makes it easier for you. And it’s kind of, it’s. It’s where we are right now. There was a huge boom in hiring during the pandemic, and now we’re kind of following that up. I want to dive a little bit into that vibe just because I know, I think. I think you’re fundraising or like in kind of the sphere of fundraising stuff. How have you been navigating that world in fundraising and whether it’s venture capital or angels, especially in this kind of climate that we’re in right now?

[00:16:35] Jordan Robinson: Well, I think any startup knows, and there’s a number of different reasons right now, but fundraising is just tough in general right now, in part that I think it is due to the US election. It’s also just the economy, the global economy. So getting traction with angels or with VC is difficult.

But one of the best pieces of advice that I got was right from the beginning, when I started this journey, which is that you should only expect 2.5% of people, any person, to believe in a new company’s idea right at the beginning, like right immediately, which means that if you need, you probably need to talk to 100 angels. If you want to talk to 100 angels and you know that only 2.5% out of 100, they’re going to respond to you, then you really need to send thousands of LinkedIn messages, you need to send out tons of emails, you have to get a lot, you have to get into the mindset that you’re playing a numbers game. And so the way that you win is with the volume that you put out. But it is exhausting and it is not fun. And it is probably the worst part of my job, because what I really am excited about is I had an idea in the FTNSS app, let’s make it happen, not convincing somebody else that this is a good idea, which I know it’s a good idea idea, and then also convincing them to give me their money.

So yeah, fundraising is interesting.

You just have to stay positive with it. But with us, fortunately, we don’t need to raise any funds to launch. The FTNSS app will be out by the time that this comes out. And so for us, we don’t need additional funds to do anything. It would just help us with some marketing and everything like that. But I think the upside to not getting overwhelmed with VC money or angel money is that we retain control of the company. And I think at the end of the day, as founders, that’s really what we want to do.

It would be a completely different story if we accepted all this money, but we have no control and this company has changed, and now we’re beholden to all of these investors. So I’m kind of seeing it as an opportunity about, I’m seeing it as an opportunity that we don’t need the funds. So then that way, when the time comes, we’ll be further ahead to accept.

[00:18:55] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely bootstrapping. It has its downs, but it definitely also has its positives. And with kind of the way the world is right now, the economy is everything happening, everything’s up and to the right, and we all know that that’s not what happens. We all know that recessions is a natural part of the capitalistic system. It’s kind of baked in as a feature, not a bug that needs to happen in order to recalibrate things. And what happens during those times is that I think the really gritty, really great entrepreneurs are the ones that tend to succeed really well because they learn how to bootstrap through that. They dont have all this money floating around, they dont have all this excess capital. So it forces them to get creative and really innovative, and then it pushes them to grow further and it creates a stronger company in the long run, I think. And then also the whole non dilutive capital and all that kind of stuff, you get creative there. So then at the end of the day, you do maintain more of your, of your company and your business. So, so awesome. All right. Is there anything else you’d like to dive into or touch on before we wrap things up here? Jordan?

[00:20:06] Jordan Robinson: No, this has just been a really fun experience. You know, I’m new to the podcast world and we have a podcast of our own called FTNSS Focus where we talk to different FTNSS influencers. We talk to CEO’s of other companies just to talk about best practices and how our projects are going.

So that’s going to be out by the time that this is here. And yeah, it’s just been fun doing this with you, Calan.

[00:20:30] Calan Breckon: Nice. Phenomenal. All right. Where can folks and listeners go to learn more about FTNSS? Download the app, etcetera.

[00:20:37] Jordan Robinson: Well, so it’s spelt FTNSS. Just like Grindr is Grindr. And you can find us in the app store. You just type in FTNSS.fit. Our website and most of our socials is FTNSS. And that’s where you can see where we’re at. So we’re starting in five countries or we’re starting in five markets with new markets coming online every day. Malta a gym and malta just added themselves to the platform.

And so we’re looking to expand around the world. So stay tuned and maybe subscribe to our newsletter also so you can find out when new gems are added in your area.

[00:21:21] Calan Breckon: Amazing. And I’ll make sure that I have all those links and such in the show. Notes for folks. Jordan, I want to thank you so much for being guest on the podcast today. This has been magical.

[00:21:31] Jordan Robinson: Oh, anytime. I’ll be glad to come back.

[00:21:33] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.