Will:  00:01

Because if you're an instructor of one thing, I'm just going to say you can teach anything, it doesn't mean you can teach it as well as somebody else. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. But it's my personal belief that if you're an instructor, and you want to make money, and that's who we're trying to serve as we're wanting our instructors to get something back so that they have more flexibility to give their time to their community. Because the reality is, if you're doing it for a hobby, that's fine, but if you're doing it for payment, you do need to see something back as an instructor. You're doing a fantastic job for the fitness of communities. But if you can't make it work for you, then it becomes really difficult. And so we have always firmly believed that we wanted to create content that any instructor could take and do so that if someone from your gym comes and says, "Oh, we've got a we've got a time slot, I really want it to be a recovery class, could you deliver something there?", a SH1FT Instructor knows that they can say yes, absolutely. Because we as SH1FT Fitness have got their back and they know that they can have the confidence to deliver.

Richard  00:58

Welcome to Group Fitness Real Talk. Now, if you're a new listener to the podcast, first of all, welcome. But you should know that not I'm not actually your usual host. In this special takeover style podcast, I'm going to interview with himself, because he's got some very important and exciting news to share this kind of shake up the group fitness industry as we know it. Now the last thing I want to say before we start is, make sure you make it to the very end for a very special promo code for podcast listeners. So let's get into it. Will, nice to see you.

Will:  01:29

Welcome. This is a bit of a turning of the tables from what we're usually doing.

Richard  01:33

Exactly. And I know you've asked me to do this, because sometimes it's easier if you talk to someone about what's happening. Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll ask you the questions and you tell the people they need to know.

Will:  01:44

Perfect. So I often tell my instructors that they need to be better about self promoting themselves, especially their classes, because what they're doing is sort of super important and great for the fitness for their communities. But I have a massive, massive problem with doing it myself, maybe it's a Kiwi thing. I don't know. Which is weird, because when I worked at previous fitness companies like Les Mills and Beachbody, I had no problem talking about how awesome they were even though, you know, there was some big limitations that I could see in the business models. But since I've had my own thing, I've always been a little bit reticent about shouting from the rooftops about how good it is, even though obviously, I've spent five years now working on shift. And I'm more passionate about it and believe in it more than anything I've never done before. So I figured maybe if I asked you to ask me some questions that I would be a little bit more forthcoming with, talking about what we're doing, how we're changing and why we think it's going to be so great for instructors.

Richard  02:36

So you mentioned some limitations. What do you mean by limitations? What are they?

Will:  02:41

So, I mean, everybody that I've worked for is amazing, great products, great education, I thoroughly enjoyed working for them. But when it came to being an instructor, there was some kind of what would I call them pain points, that the business models of the other companies that I worked for had. And the first one that I saw in 2016, when I was deciding what I wanted to do with shift was technology. Namely, the fact that everybody had kind of moved to using their mobile device as their central points of contact for teaching, holding their music, obviously, communication, social media, all that sort of stuff. But a lot of fitness companies were still sending physical stuff out. And the problem with sending physical stuff, and a lot of instructors don't want the physical stuff I should add. The transition instructors has has not been quick, but I think it's finally happened now. But the problem with physical production is it's expensive, and it's hard. And it costs a lot of money to put things into like thinking not thinking of sustainability, which I think is an important thing in and of itself. Just the fact of putting something onto video putting that into a hardcopy sending it out. It's expensive, a cost for postage, it takes time. And people just expect more. I know that when I worked at Les Mills, the reason that they do a quarterly release program is because back in the day, when they were creating it, they had to put it all onto a video and a notes pack and send it all out and a physical packet. And doing that more than four times per year was just absolutely impossible. It was too burdensome. And Les Mills did a really great thing where they built a business model around that with quarterly releases and made it really great for clubs. And to be honest, it works for them. But when I looked at creating a new brand in 2016 2017, I looked at what people wanted, and people don't want to do four new workouts per year, they want to do things often they're used to Netflix dropping something into their personalized account every week or Spotify, giving them a new playlist every single week. And so I wanted to be able to do something that had that in mind and creating a format that was completely digitally based and delivered to your mobile device. We could do training or the education content just seemed like the way to go. And in 2016 we planned it and 2016, 2017 we launched it. And I think we're a little bit ahead of our time because instructors just didn't read They get it. They kept asking sort of what's the catch, and there was no catch. It's just that most people have been used to getting a workout in the post, and then learning it and delivering it. And we cut all that away. And they there was a, a lack of understanding of what we're doing which up until the pandemic sort of continued. And then during the pandemic, everybody had to get digital savvy really, really quickly. And so instructors really came to realize what we had been giving them for last few years, but they understood it, they were more comfortable with it. And that's when we really started to take off when the speed at which you can learn SH1FT, and the ease with which you can deliver it in person or online just became, became more obvious to instructors. The second one that I saw as a limitation was around business model. So I had worked at Les Mills, which was a licensed model, I worked at Beachbody, which followed the Zumba model. And essentially the two types of model are you licensed in gym or you licensed and instructor. And it's funny, these mills don't really talk about it anymore. But when Zumba were first starting off, Zumba actually flew out to see the senior leadership at Les Mills to talk about the model. And Zumba went with the instructor model. And I think the reason for that was that they just saw the inherent tension between selling into gyms and to instructors, because there's always going to be a slight tension between what instructors want to do, which is learn something and teach it everywhere and make money and be able to teach in as many venues as possible and what gyms would want. So we looked at that. And we decided that the Zumba model was absolutely the way to go. Allowing instructors who are our number one constituency, the people we care most about helping allowing instructors to teach in as many places as they want online or offline pre recorded or live stream. And this was all prior to the pandemic. Our rules have always been there right from the start. But we wanted to do it at a fraction of the cost. So when we launched in the UK, I just went in wanting to do it at less than 10 pounds per month. That was kind of just right from the start. I wanted to create something that was that much value for money.

Richard  07:01

That's quite a history, isn't it?

Will:  07:03

Well, it has been five years or six actually, 6 years almost since we started the planning phase and then five years this month since launch.

Richard  07:12

Well, I remember sat down at your kitchen table in London. And you were saying I've got this idea for a format. It's this and it's got a one in the name. And yes. And we kind of went over that was back when it was just the one workout?

Will:  07:27

Yeah, yeah. Well, we started off with bodyweight because obviously, bodyweight is, again, thinking of instructors first and foremost, giving them a license to teach anywhere, what's going to be the easiest thing for them to do bodyweight. And then our instructors just asked us for more to a point now where earlier this year, we launched our fifth format, which was ride to cycle. So yeah, we've got five formats, five different workout genres, completely unique workouts, for every every single genre that we do. It's, it's been a trip, it's sometimes you stop it, sometimes you fail to stop and think of what you've done to get where you are. But things like five year milestones are a good opportunity to reflect especially because we're about to change our business model in such a massive way.

Richard  08:09

So when you reached five formats, this is when you came up with SH1FT Pro. Yeah, tell us about that.

Will:  08:16

So we were selling in at under 10 pounds per format, and really cheap education as well. Not cheap as in not professional, but cheap, as in low cost, high value. And the problem was, is that we've always been focused on creating real value for instructors. And also, we had kept that pricing where it was. And anyone that's been involved with any type of technology would know that changing the way you manage subscriptions is quite difficult. But what we saw as a big problem that we really recognized is that if we had loyal instructors who were paying 10 pounds, or $12.99. For one format, that's USD, if they were teaching three formats, that was that same price times three. And once we got up to five formats, that was like 50 pounds, or almost $70, to teach all five of our shift formats, which just wasn't in keeping with our promise to our instructors. So we do surveys every year, we really listened to what our instructors said. And they told us that they wanted multi format discounts. And they wanted the option of annual subscriptions. So we had those two things in mind. And we went about this process where we were going to create progressive discounting. So you know, this is the price of your first format. This is the price for two formats. This is the price for three. And we had that all set up and we began the development phase. And towards the end of last year, I was having a conversation with my co-founder, my sister Sam, and I was sitting at the same table I'm sitting at now and I just thought we're not doing enough. Instructors are still struggling, pay's low. The industry is you know, have has had a lot of struggles. Why don't we just do something completely radical and different. And so we just decided to flip the table. And instead of doing progressive discounting, just creating a single membership Yep, that will give instructors access to all five formats for one really, really low price. And it really leaned into the things that we have learned the best things about shift across the five years that we've been working with instructors. And that is that every instructor can teach anything, because of the way our app works. There's very little practice or memorize, no memorization is needed. And we just introduced ride, which is a music based cycled format. So we give the music with ride, unlike the other four. And we have instructors who have never taught cycle before that are teaching full cycle classes in their gyms because it is just so plug and play. It's hard to describe how easy the app makes teaching. So I'm not going to try and do it. But people are welcome to sort of look it up on the internet or get in touch with me if they want a demo. The second thing is we have this infinite ability to personalize the workouts when people are teaching multiple formats. The way our app works is that you can build workouts from bolt ons. So think of bolt ons as being sections of a workout. So we're releasing new workout every second month for each format, which works out as being more than every two weeks. So every 14 days maximum, you're getting a new workout dropping in. And then that workout is split up into a whole lot of sections, and instructors can build their own workout. And that can be in one genre or across multiple genres. In the app, it gives you a total time, it all runs seamlessly. So given that we have, I think, almost 100 workouts in the app by the end of the year 100 unique workouts across five formats, that's like 40, something SH1FTS, 20, something L1FTS, 13 M1ND and R1ZE, and then we're gonna be up to about five or six R1DES. We also have hundreds of bolt ons, so sections from those workouts that our instructors can personalize and create workouts around. So they might want to do a low impact workout, which involves some low impact shift workout sections, plus some protections for mind that are based around stability. And given that they can use any music with the app, that means that there is literally unlimited variation that instructors can really make their own. So we wanted to, like lean into those strengths, and then also provide instructors with that same value that we we have always sought to arrive.

Richard  12:10

It almost allows you to develop or not develop, but deliver the workouts that you're not super familiar with. Like there's a lot of disciplines that, that normally you'd have to learn a lot of like Pilates or yoga, right? Yeah. But you've kind of like reached into that area too, haven't you?

Will:  12:26

Yeah, cuz like I, there's certain formats that I felt really comfortable with M1ND is a really good example, I knew that what our instructors needed was some form of mobility, stability, flexibility recovery workout, because their participants needed it. They needed it as instructors, and it would have given them another string to their bow when they were creating the in person or online experiences for their own businesses and other opportunities to teach on a griffin his timetable if they're teaching for a club. But I never saw myself as a yoga person. I've done lots of yoga, but I could never imagine really teaching it. And all the mind body classes that I'd done intended to be either yoga or body balance, or PIO or Pilates, that kind of thing. Now, this is not to say that I don't think those classes are awesome, because I do. But it didn't really bring itself as something that I felt that I could sit in that essence of and teach. And so we created mine to be a stretching class that a teacher of something like shifts or high impact bodyweight workout could do. And it's just opened up so many possibilities. We have so many instructors who are with us because of SH1FT and L1FT. So bodyweight and strength conditioning whitespace workouts, they've added mind, they took a jump because they knew that the app would help them to do it. And now they're delivering, you know, full recovery classes as part of their own Group Fitness timetables.

Richard  13:49

Cool. So you mentioned before that you were scratching your head trying to come up with a pricing strategy that would work across all your five formats. And you were considering, you know, a discounted for however many number of formats you added to it. Yeah. How did you eventually settled on the price of SH1FT Pro? And you mentioned it was radical was

Will:  14:07

that so I mean, we obviously so we're using as a base where we're going like, okay, 10 for 1, 17.50 for 2,  25.50 for 3, that kind of thing. And we were kind of staggering it up. And no matter which way you cut it, by the time you got to sort of three to five formats, it was still coming in at a higher price than I felt was the right amount. So then we're trying to figure out what's the right price here. And it felt like doing a price in a month that gave you access to everything that we give you. So all of our ongoing education, new workouts every second week for around about the price of a or the payment for a class. And obviously payments vary. I think there's links of classes vary, you know, it could be 30 minutes could be 60 minutes, but we felt that if we went in at a price that was roughly the amount that you could expect to get paid on average for a class that would be just value that couldn't be beaten and was really obvious to instructors. So we are now launching SH1FT Pro, our multi genre membership. And it is 22.90 per month in great British pounds. So if you're a UK instructor, or 229 per year, because we also have annual annual plans now, which means you get 10 months for the price of 12. Which means that for 19 pounds 15, if you pay the annual subscription, you get access to everything that we give. And so you know, 100 workouts, multiple bolt ons and new workouts dropping all the time. And in US dollars, that works out of being 29.95. If you're paying monthly, or 299 annually, which is 24.99 per month, if you break it down to what that works out of being over 12 months, which is less than 20 pounds on an annual subscription per month and less than $25 for an annual scription per month, which we felt was just the right thing to do. If I'm being honest, instructors don't get paid enough. We want more instructors to learn the value that we're giving with shift. And this felt like the way to do it. And I feel really good about.

Richard  16:08

Now if you just heard those prices, and you're trying to interpret what that means in terms of cups of coffee, five and a half cups of

Will:  16:15

Depends on where you buy coffee. If you're having coconut milk like me.

Richard  16:21

Okay, that's cool. So remind us again, the five formats that make up the Pro membership just so everyone's clear on what they are.

Will:  16:27

Sure. So there's SH1FT bodyweight, which is an original format we're up to, I think it's released 44. Now, there's L1FT, which is strength conditioning created around the group fitness scenario mine. So using weights or dumbbells, weight plates, or dumbbells with bar options often included, we're up to about 22 workouts there. R1ZE, which is step but not as you know it, it's functional step. It does have some old school elements sometimes, but it's using the step as a fitness tool. So we do some strength, we do some agility, we do speed, we do some classic kind of old school choreography step, it's all thrown in there. We're up to 13 workouts dropping soon there, then M1ND which is our flexibility, mobility and stability format. Really, really good teaching standalone or using the bolt ons to add to any other format that you're teaching. Inside SH1FT Fitness or elsewhere. We have a lot of people using M1ND as a bolt on to other types of classes that they're teaching. And then R1DE which is our newest format. It has music attached to it. And it is Studio cycling, mixing boutique and performance with an app that revolutionizes revolutionizes the way you teach cycle because there's a timer in front of you all the music is attached to the timer. You don't have to have any ability to learn choreography to teach a choreographed spin class.

Richard  17:45

One of the things I've noticed, because I'm on the SH1FT Forum as well sometimes is that the instructor community is really good at, like, sharing their ideas for mashups, and combinations. And what have you found? I mean, obviously, M1ND complements SH1FT, they've you met, as you mentioned before, but what are what are the popular sort of combinations that people often put together?

Will:  18:07

Do you know what I would I'm not being like trying to avoid the question. But I always get surprised by what people throw up. So our instructors, the ones that are teaching multiple formats, they're often creating mash ups across you know, like a shift or rise in a mind that I would never have thought of. But because we've got so many workouts so the other thing about having a and I didn't talk about this in the business model side, but it was really important is that we give access to our full back catalogue. So we like Netflix or Spotify when you sign up to a monthly subscription or an annual subscription. But we've got now you get access to everything that we've ever created in that format for if you signed up to SH1FT Pro, everything we've ever created period, meaning that you get access to hold the whole back catalogue, so five years with workouts and SH1FT and then slightly less for other formats, which have launched more recently. But that means that you've got this deep catalogue to delve into. And we have so much content that every instructor has access to, that you can create sort of like so many mashups, so you can go through and just take low impact versions and make a low impact SH1FT. And you'd have enough content to probably create 10 low impact classes out of 40. Or you might do a leg focus or an upper body focus, and you can split that across multiple formats, I, I wouldn't be able to tell you what is the most popular mash up because everybody, every instructor is unique. And every instructor has unique classes in front of them. But the good thing is, is that you can have a class of beginners or you know, older populations that need a certain type of workout. And you can have like an after afterward crew that are there for a hard workout. And you can piece together something that fits two entirely different demographics, including a completely different playlists for each one so that you can give them the music they like as well, using the content that we've given you give you in the app.

Richard  19:54

So how quick is it for people to use the app to to build these mashups? Is it something you can do on the fly? Do you have to sit down at a desk and plan it out? Or is it something that you can string together quite quickly?

Will:  20:05

I mean, we recommend that our instructors try every workout that we release, mainly because if you're going to teach something, you need to understand how that how that workout feels on your own body so that you can talk to intensity and coaching cues and all that sort of stuff. But in terms of how quickly you can put together a mash up, as quickly as you could put together a playlist on Spotify or Apple Music, you literally if you if you know what you're looking for, you just drag and drop it into the up next portion of our app, and then all of that workout will just seamlessly stitch together, It'll even give you a total time. So you can just go, Oh, that one, that one, that one, that one, that one, it'll say 43 minutes. And you know, you've got a 45 minute class, you're good to go press Play done.

Richard  20:48

One thing I noticed this morning, when I was scrolling through the old Facebooks was, I often see it common to people on the forum. And one of them grabbed my attention, because they spoke about M1ND. And they spoke about R1ZE. And they're like to have your most recent formats, I guess you could say. And, and they were saying that they were given a class. And now that class is the only class in that club is full for the both of those sessions.

Will:  21:15

I'm not gonna take any credit for that. But I'm gonna give it to the instructor.

Richard  21:18

Because obviously, the quality of delivery of instructor can't go without being appreciated, can it but it was pretty impressive to see that sort of stuff come back from from people on the forum. Right? It must feel good.

Will:  21:28

Actually I just realized, I know that I know the post you're talking about. Now, the great thing about that is that this person didn't teach step or stretch before. And that's kind of the icing on the cake, right is that not only are they now teaching one of the most popular classes on the club's timetable, but it's two genres that they hadn't previously trained in because they didn't think that that was sort of where they were sitting as an instructor. But they took the leap of faith because they trusted in us as a as an education provider and a content provider. And now they're teaching something that they thought was outside their comfort zone, but never was because if you're an instructor of one thing, I'm just going to say you can teach anything, it doesn't mean you can teach it as well as somebody else. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. But it's my personal belief that if you're an instructor, and you want to make money, and that's who we're trying to service, we're wanting our instructors to get something back so that they have more flexibility to give their time to their community. Because the reality is, if you're doing it for a hobby, that's fine. If you're doing it for payment, you do need to see something back as an instructor, you're doing a fantastic job for the fitness of communities. But if you can't make it work for you, then it becomes really difficult. And so we have always firmly believed that we wanted to create content that any instructor could take and do so that if someone from your gym comes and says, Oh, we've got a we've got a time slot, I really want it to be a recovery class, could you deliver something there? A shift instructor knows that they can say yes, absolutely. Because we as shift fitness have got their back and they know that they can have the confidence to deliver it.

Richard  22:58

So what other things have you heard instructors say the only things that you remember significant of like, praise that they've given you for the work that you've done, or the way that they like the technology.

Will:  23:08

Our instructors are awesome. And they are consistently giving us robust feedback. So they tell us when they like something when they don't like something. But the one thing that they they always tell us that they really love is the fact that they know that we are for instructors by instructors. And that's always our our Northern Lights, like the thing that we don't vary from whenever we make any decisions. The thing that has been the most surprising maybe so we launched ride because we have some third party virtual partners. So we create our workouts. Richard, you help us create our workouts to go out to instructors. And since we started, we have had some relationships with virtual partners in gym so that we could sort of push that content out far and wide and different gyms whether or not they have a live instructing space. And our virtual partners said to us that they really wanted some cycle content because they were crying out for cycle content. Peloton was doing really well. But they didn't have a lot of cycle content on their platforms. So we created a R1DE, it quickly became our most popular workout worldwide for our digital content. And so we thought, well, clearly we're doing something right because this is popular. Let's bring it to instructors. But the issue was is that our other four formats don't have music. So let's be we spent a long time making our app work. Well, you know this because you've been helping us with the music production. So it's been a long time. It's really easy to select music and choreographic getting it into an app where it's completely stitched together with the timing flawlessly is really tough. But we released ride and we have some some of our back most invested engaged hardcore instructors that we're teaching for shift formats. And we're like, I trust you guys. I've never taught cycle before. I'm gonna give this a go. Bit of a leap of faith. And I've had honestly like 30 or 40 messages from instructors that had never taught a cycle format before, who are now delivering rides either within their gyms or they've started doing it themselves, never saw themselves as a cycle instructor, but they've picked it up and they're running with it. And they can teach it anywhere online offline, because all of our music has rights free with our partnership with pure energy. And that, I think, is exactly what I wanted to create. But I am almost surprised that it worked. Because you know, when you create something, you don't always know how it's gonna land. But, but I'm, I'm super stoked about that. Because honestly, the creation of that with the music and the app made me tear my hair out at times, the development process was long and hard, but I think we got there in the end.

Richard  25:43

That's I think that's a significant thing to say, because we all know how hot indoor cycling market has become right over the last couple of years. And to be able to empower instructors to be able to deliver something will give them a confidence to jump into a new arena that all eyes are on, yet they can still deliver something which you know, clearly satisfies members and brings them back for more. That's kind of a big payoff.

Will:  26:09

Yeah, well, cuz I, again, it's hard to describe, it's almost impossible to describe how good the app is at taking away or the burdensome elements of teaching, you really do have to experience it. But it's essentially the difference between you know, having to speak in front of an audience and memorize a speech versus using an autocue. It doesn't mean that you don't need to have the skills to be able to do it in a really good way. But it just takes away all the added stress. And if you can be at the front of a class teaching any other type of workout, then provided you understand and we have, you know, education on how to ride the bike in a safe and effective way. But once you've got that, there's no reason that you can't teach a cycle class as well. And instructors often have these, we found that instructors, sometimes before they came to us had these sort of internally imposed walls of I teach this, but I don't teach that. And I really respect that. I understand where it comes from being sort of in the essence of your program. But I also think that there's something really great about understanding that as an instructor, you have a transferable set of skills that you can use where they're needed, they might be needed, because your participants need like a stretch in class. So you can give that to them. Or they might be needed because your studio or your gym has a slot on the timetable that needs to be filled, and you're the right person for it.

Richard  27:25

Have you ever thought that because you're making it so easy for people to deliver classes, that you're you're freeing up all of that chatter in their head, right, or that worry or that stress you mentioned before, and it almost creates the room then for their own personalities to shine through and really deliver the experiences that they're recognized for as individual instructors.

Will:  27:47

Yeah, that's the goal. I mean, it's because we have, again, if you use the app, you'll know there's if you haven't used the app, you won't, we have a voice on our voice off that voice is actually your origin. So if you're listening to this podcast, and you recognize the voice, that's where it comes from. But we created voice on voice off voice on was for new instructors that couldn't memorize things so that they could still deliver a class and not have to stress about what move came next. And then voice offers for people like me that have been teaching for ages that didn't necessarily want a voice overtop of the music telling telling participants what to do, because I wanted to own that. And the weird thing is, is that these days, I just teach with the voice on because it just allows me to be so much more present in the room. And that's one of the great things about the app that might not have been the intention, the intention of the app was making it easy to learn, take away the time practicing. Meaning that you could just you know, get in teach class, like get to work, we dropped the workout on the first of the month, you do it in the morning, and then you teach it that evening, there's no preparation required. That was the idea. And then a nice side effect of that that wasn't entirely intended is that by taking away that stress, people just need to focus on the people in front of them more.

Richard  28:57

So over the last, like 1218 months, how long has it been since right R1ZE and M1ND you created?

Will:  29:03

We shot them in mid 2020 At the height of the pandemic, so actually just didn't shoot and not going to get into any virus problems. And then we released it in November 2020. So it's a it's 18 months yet. So a year and a half since we started. We're up to release number. I think we're about to release, release 13 in both because we obviously launched with a few extra in there.

Richard  29:28

So those are the two most recent of those four months and then ride came in as well. Yeah. But in contrary to inventing and bringing new stuff. You also removed something from the the SH1FT archive which is the on demand.

Will:  29:45

Yeah. So we we had SH1FT on-demand for a while and I've talked about this a little bit with our instructors. We in 2018. So well before the pandemic we created SH1FT on demand because we wanted to get the brand sort of up and out and it was a bit of an experiment for us and everybody else was doing it and we had all this content. And we already had, we're already partnering with virtual. And so we did it for a while. And, you know, it worked well. But it was never our primary focus. And when the pandemic hits, we, you know, everyone else was sort of moving to everyone who doesn't know much about the business that I meet asked me what I do. And I say, you know, I have a fitness business and we focus on digital, they're like, the pandemic must have been great for you. And I have to explain that well, no, because our primary thing we care about and always have cared about us instructors, and instructors at the start of the pandemic, we're kind of screwed. And so all of our resources went into helping our instructors create digital experiences that they could share with their members. And so shift on demand kind of sat there and sat there. And as the pandemic wore on, and lockdowns wore on. And I was delivering sort of training sessions to instructors on how to create their own digital, their own digital timetable, how they could get online, how they could reach their members, it started to feel a bit weird that I was telling instructors that we're there for them, we'll help them here's the content to allow them to teach online, you know, SH1FT has no restrictions, so they could do it live stream or On-Demand, create their own library. And I just started to feel a bit weird about kind of competing with them. And it just wasn't something I wanted to do. And also, you know, we're a grown, we're a growing business, but we're a small business. And so we just weren't really focused on it. And as gyms came back, and as instructors went back, I just decided and then kind of discussed it with the team, that it just didn't feel kind of ethically right to have an on-demand anymore. This has no judgment, anyone that does on demand. It's just that we feel more comfortable being a b2b business that is supplying instructors with great content, and helping gyms to put stuff on their timetables that makes instructors and people in the gyms happy. So we shut it down. So we closed it down, I have no regrets. If anything is just it's nice to know that we can focus all of our energy on our instructors and our growing list of gym partners.

Richard  32:00

So what does the roadmap look like going for the next 12 months? What's the future looking like?

Will:  32:06

No more technology development. We have we did the R1DE app. And then now we've obviously changed all of our subscriptions to bring pro in, I do not want to be looking at any more back end developer, back end development stuff. I don't want to have any any tech calls. So we're going to just focus in on pushing pro out because the more instructors that, that hear about us, the bigger we can grow our community, the more stuff we can do. So that's first thing. And then secondly, we've spent so much time on bringing ride in and then changing to Pro that the one here I feel we've neglected is an ongoing education for instructors. So we obviously release a whole lot of stuff. But I'm looking forward to delving back into what got me into the this part of the industry in the first place, which is creating some great teaching resource forums resources for instructors, and building out on SH1FT School, which is the thing that we started in the pandemic, which is essentially learning series for our instructors, where we talk about all the different things that instructors might want to know from physical execution, to how to teach great class to digital teaching to ongoing education in every sense.

Richard  33:16

Sounds good. So before we wrap up this episode, is there anything you want to add that we haven't covered? 

Will:  33:22

Yes! This is the special offer part of the podcast. So I guess the the only last thing to note is that if you're listening to this, you already know, if you're listening to this, and you you aren't part of SH1FT, and you're thinking well, five formats and one price that sounds really, really great. But five formats is a lot and I don't currently do step or stretch. And this would be a bit weird. The thing to note is that we offer bundles on training. So you can train in all five formats one price. And the thing is, because all of our training is digital, it's on demand, it's at your own pace, and then you submit a short assessment video, but you don't have to do it all at once. So a lot of our instructors that even if they choose to buy the bundle, so they've got access to all five of our formats, they might try them one and then training the other one and then leave it for a couple of months while it builds them they start to get used to using the app and then they might come back and train in more. So you don't need to get five knowing that you're going to do five immediately because that's a big task. But in order to make sure that we are celebrating Pro, we do have a very special limited time offer. So if you're listening to this podcast a little bit after its launch, then sorry. But if you're listening to this and you're a SH1FT instructor already, then check your emails because you have all the details. If you're listening to this new anti SH1FT Fitness instructor then we have a special offer for all listeners to this podcast. So Group Fitness Real Talk, which is 25% off any shift fitness format training. So the key thing to note is that we don't do regular sales or discounts. I love Zumba. I talk a lot of good things about Zumba, but Zumba constantly offered me training for 60% off and I'm sorry If you're hitting me every week with a 60% of training code, then your training is just too expensive to start with. And we don't do that, because our prices are already set really, really low. But launching this pro membership, this pro subscription, there's five genres in one membership is a massive deal for us. So I'm making an exception, because we're having a bit of a celebration that we've done it finally. So the discount is valid for any or all of our formats. And that includes the pro training bundle, which is training and all five. So this is the most popular one, this is the one I recommend, because you don't have to do it all at once. And if you use the 25% off code, you can train in all five formats. So SH1FT, bodyweight L1FT, strength, R1ZE, functional step, M1ND stretch, and mobility and R1DE cycle for the incredibly low price of. And I need to read this, so don't get it wrong, either $337 us, or if you're in the UK, 262 pounds. So that's five training, five formats never expires, do it at your own pace. So even if you only intend to teach one or two totally worth worth the value. So we will put a sign up link in the show notes to claim your discount. So you can click on that link and then enter the discount code, all caps, REALTALK one word on the payment page, and they'll give you 25% off. The one thing to note, it's valid for seven days. So you've got seven days to claim that discount. If you're listening to this, and it's more than seven days have gone then join the SH1FT forum. And we will maybe the offering sort of stuff in the future. But as I said, we don't do a lot of discounts. So if you're listening to this, and it's within the seven days, now's the time to do it, because we don't regularly discount.

Richard  36:39

Well, I'd like to thank Will, for allowing me to be a guest podcast host. We'll talk and maybe if I've done a good enough job he'll invite me back to talk more about tech.

Will:  36:52

Exactly. Well, we will put a link to your Facebook group, which is remind me the name of it.

Richard  37:00

Fitness video production help for fitness professionals. It's a long one.

Will:  37:04

Couldn't be more explicit about what you're trying to do that. That's it.

Richard  37:07

Yeah, come and join that. There's plenty to know if you want to up your game and develop your presentation skills or learn how to use tech and equipment better to produce your own on demand and on demand recordings, then that's the place to do it.

Will:  37:21

Cool. Well, thank you, Richard, for anyone that's listened this far. If you're still listening, Richard has been involved with SH1FT right from the start, as he mentioned sitting at my kitchen table in London before we filmed our very first workout and has been integral to our growth and helped us to really bring something that we really believed in to our instructors gradually improving it along the way. So thank you, Richard for for being part of it. You'll get a slice of the fifth birthday cake at our next shoot. Cheers. Thanks, Richard. Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe for all the latest episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please drop us a review. You can also get in touch with me at will@sh1ftfitness.com. I'm Will Brereton and you've been listening to Group Fitness Real Talk.