Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - How Building Muscle Can Add Years to Your Life & Ozempic's Long-Term Effects w/ Krystal Zell | EP #110
Episode Date: July 18, 2024In this episode, Krystal and Peter discuss how Tonal came to be, the importance of strength training, and what busy CEOs should do to exercise. 02:29 | Overcoming Barriers to Working Out 09:57 | ...The Future of Home Workouts 34:50 | The Future of the Fitness Industry Krystal Zell (age 45) is the CEO of Tonal - an AI-powered at-home strength training system. She joined Tonal in July 2022, after 20 years with Bain & Company, Starwood Hotels, Simon Property Group, and most recently The Home Depot where she served as the Chief Customer Officer. She holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and received her undergraduate from Rice University. She’s a Mom of two kids and loves how training with Tonal fits perfectly into her everyday life as a working mom. Get Started with Tonal: https://www.tonal.com/ ____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ AI-powered precision diagnosis you NEED for a healthy gut: https://www.viome.com/peter _____________ Get my new Longevity Practices 2024 book: https://bit.ly/48Hv1j6 I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Tech Blog _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What do you think the number one reason that people don't work out is?
That's a great question.
People who are going on a weight loss journey think about cardio because that's kind of
the dominant narrative in America is get on a bike, you know, go to a cardio class and
now tell you to lose weight, go for a run.
Sleep, diet, exercise, mindset, the right, you know, supplements and meds. If you have to do one thing, it's
muscle mass, its strength. The bottom third of the population from a
muscular perspective has a 50% increased mortality rate. The number one thing to do in terms of reducing all-cause mortality is
building muscle.
Welcome to Moonshots.
Today we're gonna talk about one of the most important
aspects of longevity and that's building muscle mass.
It's building strength.
If you could have a single thing to do
that extends your health span, not just your lifespan,
it is building muscle.
My guest today is Crystal Zell.
She's the CEO of Tonal,
an AI powered at home training system.
She previously was at Bain, at Starwood Hotels,
at Simon Property Group, and recently the Home Depot.
And she's running a company that is making your ability
to get in great shape, to build muscle and strength really easy.
If you believe that time is your problem,
or knowledge is your problem, or money is your problem,
listen up.
This is an important episode.
Her moonshot is really to make this accessible to everybody.
All right, let's jump in.
And if you enjoy this podcast, please like this.
Please share it with your friends.
Share it with your aging mom and dad,
because the number one thing you could do if you're Please like this, please share it with your friends. Share it with your aging mom and dad because, you know,
the number one thing you can do if you're over the age of 60
is work out.
It reduces all cause mortality by 50%, reduces cancer,
reduces falls.
It is your number one longevity supplement and therapeutic.
All right, let's jump into the episode.
Welcome to Moonshots. I'm here with Crystal Zell, the CEO of Tonal, a company I have
admired and in full disclosure I've got my Tonal ordered for installation
shortly. Crystal, good to see you. Welcome to Moonshots. Thanks Peter, thanks for
having me. Yeah and I see the tonal in the background over your your left shoulder
If I've got the directions, correct
so
I want to start with an assumption
What do you think the number one reason that people don't work out is? Well, that's a great question
uh, I I think it's
a combination of things. I mean, I think part of it is the habit formation.
I think what we know is people who work out consistently, they form a habit and then it
just becomes built into their lives.
And when you talk to them, they can't imagine not working out.
But formation of a habit is so hard.
You have to have the intent to have the
habit, then you have to have the time, and then you have to have the solution and
the plan of what you're gonna do. And I think for a lot of people they could
have a time problem. And you know we can always create time, but sometimes there
are periods of life where time is really challenging. And then for others, it's the what do I do.
So an example is I was talking with a fellow mom the other day of a friend of my son's
mom who we were talking about the importance of strength training as you get older. And
she says, you know, I know I am supposed to do it, but I don't even know how to start. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, which was a great way of having the
conversation to begin the process of what should you do?
So I think, I think it's a lot of things, but I definitely think time and know-how
are, are two critical ones.
I think you're right.
There are three in my mind.
I think the number one reason people don't work out is they say I don't have time
I'm busy. I'm up and running at the moment I get up and God I can't get to the gym and do this
I think the second reason a lot of people don't work out is they don't realize how critical it is in their lives and
I think you know, I've heard you say this I've said this on stage if you had to do only one thing, right?
So it's sleep diet exercise mindset the right, you know supplements and meds if you have to do one thing. It's
Muscle mass its strength. It is especially if you're over 60. So I'm 63 next month and
It is the number one thing I'm focused on doing over everything else
So number one people think I don't have time. Number two,
they don't know how important it is in their life.
And the number three is probably, like you said, knowing how,
or what's the right way to work out or how should,
what should I be doing in a workout? And if,
if you're listening and that's you, if you're just like, you know, I'm going to
sleep when I'm dead, I'm going to work out when I'm dead, you know, if that's your mindset or,
you know, you don't, you just haven't clicked in with how important it is because for me,
you know, Crystal, I, this was not always me. I was in reasonably good shape, but I never had a focus on
always me. I was in reasonably good shape, but I never had a focus on physical strength training, on weightlifting, on those practices because I didn't realize how important it
is until I really went on this longevity journey and longevity moonshot for myself over the
last 10 years. I was like, oh my God, I have a lot of catching up to do. And the numbers,
we'll talk about the science there in a little bit are are extraordinary
And then what to do right? You can you can hire a coach a workout coach, which I do I belong to
Three gyms and I have two workout coaches. I have zero excuses other than oh shit. I woke up too late
Uh, I've got 20 minutes or 30 minutes
and I'm gonna get you some pushups,
I'm gonna do some pull ups and stuff like that
in the bedroom.
But Total solves a lot of that, doesn't it?
That's right, yeah.
And let's dive into,
I wanna dive first into the science.
I want people, I want you to understand if you have not committed to your workout,
right? And then we've had lots of different podcasts on sleep, on diet,
on meds and supplements and so forth, but let's get people,
uh, hot and bothered about the need to work out. So, uh,
share what's your number one convincing data here?
Well, I think the first one I would share is that as we age, starting at 45 or so, we lose one to
two percent of our muscle mass a year. I mean, we really start to lose muscle. And then if you start
with that starting point, what you see in the data is that those individuals with stronger
starting points from a strength perspective, they do better from a mortality perspective.
So I think for me, there's a very staggering statistic, which is that the bottom third
of the population from a muscular perspective, when you sort of test muscle strength has a 50% increased
mortality rate. So when you think about longevity it's incredible. And then the
other the other thing there's a ton of science around how strength as you age
prevents falls and falls are incredibly detrimental as all of us know who've had
parents or grandparents
go through these experiences.
There's nothing like a fall to really ruin your quality of life as well as potentially
your lifespan.
And I think even just getting injured, we know this like as we go through our lives.
One little knee injury, one little elbow injury, it can be minor, can have a massive impact
on your life.
And so the best way of preventing
any of those things from happening is to have strength and have a strong focus on balance as
you go through your life. So the statistics are so clear, the data and the science is so clear
about how absolutely crucial strength is for aging. Yeah, let me echo that.
There is a direct correlation between the amount of muscle mass you carry on your body and your longevity.
And that comes from a multiple areas. Like you said, if you fall and break a hip or pelvis
over the age of, I think, 65, your one- year survival rate is relatively low, which is crazy because
you end up in the hospital with a pneumonia and that's how my dad passed, right?
He was in his 80s, but it was a fall, broke his pelvis and ended up in the hospital and
it was a downward spiral.
I know so many folks who've done that and muscle mass and strength allows you to catch
yourself and prevent that and also by the way the stress that
weightlifting strength
Building puts on your bones helps maintain your stronger bones
The other thing is and the data is very clear
That if you're over the age of 60 the number one thing to do in terms of reducing all-cause mortality is
building muscle and it doesn't take that much each week, right? It's like it's an hour twice a week or half an hour twice a week.
Let's talk about the simplicity of Tonal and I want to get into how does system work? How is it installed?
How do you use it? I want I want to paint a picture for folks around this
But what I love is the ability to get rid of excuses when you only have a small amount of time
Yes. Yeah, that's right. So absolutely and then the only thing I wanted to add one last comment to you before
Sort of transitioning to how tunnel solves that is
As a female sort of sort of in this space,
which is very, mostly men, I think really very much focused strongly in the fitness
and the strength space.
And I want to use that as a platform, the fact that I am a female for the women out
there, because for men, I think it's even a bit more part of our culture around driving to doing strength
training or for women it isn't. And it's almost more important for women because as we go
through like from a menopause perspective and the shifting in your body that you have
to do the strength work because you're not naturally getting it any other way and you're
losing muscle even more so. So I say this because I just think it's important that I
use this platform to
help also educate women about the importance of strength training because we do see it's a harder
adoption cycle for women to decide to do it. So and that's why my tonal is great because
from a practicality perspective, there's a bunch of benefits about it. So I'll just kind of describe
the product. The product itself is a digital weight system. So it essentially replicates a gym of weights and free weights
and it puts it in a very small space, seven by seven, because it goes on your wall. And
on your wall you basically see if you can see behind me the device, you know, you see
a screen. Behind the screen is basically sort of some motors and cables and computers.
And what the device does is it allows you to have a very personalized and tailored weight
training experience. So it will respond to your body will understand what you're able
to do, it will set weight appropriate for you. Then on top of that you pair great content. So you'll choose
a program, a class, and you'll have an instructor come on the device and walk
you through everything you're supposed to do and then the weight will
automatically adjust for you. And so it's just completely personalized and tailored
to you in your home. It's definitely a home device. You won't find it in a gym.
This is a home device and the intent of it it in a gym. This is a home device. And the intent of it
is to be super convenient. So you can go from rolling out of bed to getting your strength
routine in very quickly. You don't have to worry about going to a gym. You don't have sort of that.
So take back to the kind of concept of time is my problem, takes away the time issue you can do.
Honestly, 10 minutes goes a long way. I mean, you can do a lot in 10 minutes. You could do a full lower body set of squats and lunges
in five minutes or in 10 minutes.
And it has a huge impact.
So you can do that 10 minutes at the beginning of the day,
10 minutes at the end of the day,
which is not a whole lot out of your life
and you can get your strength training in.
So it's incredibly convenient, super personalized to,
and also to your whole household.
So you can have, my husband has an account, he does a totally different set of things
than what I do and how I focus.
And so it serves the entire household, super convenient, super personalized.
And that's really the power of digital weight.
Yeah, I know.
I love that.
How long does it take to install and how is it installed?
You order a tonal and
what happens? And so we do the first thing you have to do is a little bit of
a survey so we know what kind of wall we're going to install and we can pretty
much install on any wall. There's a few exceptions but pretty much any wall so
we have to understand like your home and make sure you have the right space for
pretty much everything. It's pretty straightforward and easy on that regard. Then within two weeks you're
going to have an appointment to have your tonal installed and you'll have
professionals show up. They'll fully install it so the customers have to do
any installation. It goes on the wall and it's a large device but it's
really not that different than a TV mount. So there's sort of a bracket that
goes on behind it,
the device gets installed, you hook it up to the Wi-Fi,
and then from there you set up your account,
and then you can start it.
And that's really all there is to it.
Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode
to talk about a company that's very important to me
and could actually save your life
or the life of someone that you love.
The company is called Fountain Life.
It's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians.
Most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body.
We're all optimists.
Until that day when you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency
room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on.
And you know, it didn't start that morning.
It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time, but because we never look,
we don't find out.
So what we built at Fountain Life was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers.
We have four across the US today and we're building 20 around the world.
These centers give you a full body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI enabled coronary
CT looking for soft plaque, dexa scan, a grail blood cancer test, a full executive blood
workup.
It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease
at the very beginning when it's solvable.
You're going to find out eventually.
Might as well find out when you can take action.
Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics.
We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics that can add 10, 20 healthy years
to your life and we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you,
please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. When Tony and I wrote our New
York Times bestseller Life Force, we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships.
If you go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter, we'll put you to the top of the list.
Really it's something that is for me one of the most important things I offer my entire
family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends.
It's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans.
Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter.
It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners.
All right, let's go back to our episode.
One of the things that has been a recent increase for you is incorporating AI into the system
and really becoming a data-driven
workout system, right and I think about the notion that
when I join a gym and
I'm a member of like I said three gyms and two coaches and and the coach is the part that is the expert that
Helps me and motivates me
But you do that with video and with AI in the system
Can you speak to that and how much data have you collected over people and how you using that data?
Because data is the oil of AI systems. Yeah, it's it's and we have incredible amount of oil so to speak
So I'll start with the data collection.
So from a privacy perspective, I want to reassure the audience,
we don't do anything with the data
other than make the experience better for you.
There's no selling, sharing, anything
like that around the data.
The data is just to create better workouts
and to provide personalization.
So we collect data on everything that the user does. So
the weights that were set, if they were adjusted, how many reps you did, how many
sets you did, and then as you get stronger and we add weight we see all of
it. So we also note any time that's taken at its rest time. So every
piece of data about the experience around the individual is tracked.
We have over 150,000 members who've completed millions and millions of workouts.
We've tracked billions and billions of pounds lifted.
And so we're able to take all of that data.
And then we also, the benefit too is we longitudinally see what happens to everybody. So one great stat is a new member in their first year, their strength score.
So the strength score is this kind of calculation.
It's a bit of an algorithm that kind of assesses your strength.
And the great thing about it is you can watch it grow and you can watch it improve as you
get stronger and stronger.
And our average member, their strength score goes up 80% in the first year of using Tonal.
And it's just incredible.
They grow and actually a lot of the growth happens in the first several months, which
is fantastic to see.
We also see that they're using, you know, there's a lot of usage.
So we track all of our usage data and we see, you know, as people, we see the cohorts and
the patterns, we see the spikes in January, we speak, we see a
little bit of the dips in March, we see people start to get ready for summer bikini weather,
we see sort of all of it. So the great news is we have this amazing foundation of data,
and then we're leveraging the data in two ways. So the first way, I talked about that already,
was the original use of AI in the device was to
create the weight pattern needed for the member at their point in time. Right, so we're setting the weights that they need. Then what we're working on now, which is really exciting,
and it's in beta mode, so we have a certain number of subscribers who have access to it will be
rolling this out as we go along this year, but it's truly getting
to taking the language models that everybody's so excited about right now, working them with
our data so that the member can get direct advice.
It's easy to process and they and it also gives the member a way to tell us what's going
on with their lives.
So you could say something like, like for me, for example, right now, I've had it as a goal for myself that I never learned to play tennis
when I was a kid. I have two kids that love tennis. I have a husband who loves tennis. So I was like,
I need to learn to play tennis. I have to just, I have to do this. I have to get decent enough at
tennis that when the kids are grown, we can all go out on the tennis court and have a fun little family tennis match. So you could say to Tony, which is what we're calling our AI,
you could say, Tony, I'm training for tennis. I'd like the best set of programs for me to get
better at tennis. And then literally, the AI will sort of feedback to the customer based
upon all the data that we have and there'll be a logic process to it. So it's like understanding,
okay, if you're going to be good at tennis, you need to be good at serving. Shoulder work
would probably be really useful because as I've learned a lot of serving is in the shoulders
and the legs. And so we would say, okay, here's the exercises that you should do for this
purpose. And it's super cool.
We're really, really, really excited about it
because it enables us to understand.
Yeah, Tony, I mean, it's, yeah, it's a full language AI.
Conversational, so it's, we've never before getting,
I mean, I've been doing consumer work my whole career
and the Holy Grail is understanding the customer.
Like every good consumer executive wants to understand
what their customer needs and deliver it to them.
And it's always been so hard to understand what a customer
really wants and what do they need.
So this is so exciting because we can have a conversation
and we can say, what do you want to accomplish?
What's important to you?
And then we can go back into our data sets
and we can help, you know, help give that member guidance and advice.
And of course, it's gonna get better and better over time.
So we're truly getting to like
incredibly personalized recommendations.
I wanna, you know, again,
there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening here
who are working on their massive transformative purpose,
their moon shots, they're starring their companies.
I am curious about the origin story for Tonal.
You've been the CEO now for how long?
Last year or two?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
And so what is the origin story?
And just give us a little bit of background
on how this device, what it looked like in the beginning
and how far has it come in terms of iterating
your market, product market fit?
Yeah, so Ali Aradi is our founder
and I'll do my best to channel him.
He does such a better job than I do
talking about his story, because this is really his story.
And Ali's story is that he was an, he's an engineer, incredibly talented, both
hardware and software engineer with a, a lot of phenomenal experience.
And earlier in his career, he worked and worked and worked and worked and worked
and worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and his health fell by the wayside. So he got to be overweight. His you know, he went
in for a physical the lab results were not good. He started to think I have got to do
something about this. I've got to get healthier. He quit his job and decided to go on a health
journey. And he did a ton of research and he realized how important strength is not only we've been talking about strength from a long term and a longevity journey. And he did a ton of research and he realized how important strength is.
Not only we've been talking about strength from a long term and a longevity perspective,
and I think a lot of the research he was doing at the time also painted the picture that
strength is incredibly important for weight loss. Like, you know, people who are going
on a weight loss journey think about cardio because that's kind of the dominant, you know,
narrative in America is get on a bike, you know, go to a cardio class because that's kind of the dominant, you know, narrative in
America is get on a bike, you know, go to a cardio class, and that's how you lose
weight, go for a run. And certainly there's so many benefits to cardio, not
to disparage that at all, but there's incredible benefits to strength training
as it relates to weight loss. You know, the more obviously the more muscle mass
you have, the more calories you're gonna burn, et cetera, et cetera.
Amazing, yeah, and very, very true.
I mean, it's literally when you see weightlifters, right,
who have built a significant amount of muscle mass,
they're pulling in multiple thousands of calories,
five, six, 7,000 calories,
because they're burning so much in their muscles.
That's right. So he said, okay, I'm going to focus on strength. He was in the gym every day.
And he sort of looked around and he's like, I'm an engineer. Everything in my world is digital now.
Everything I do is digital, right? We've digitized everything and everything has an intelligence kind of layer built behind
it.
And here he is like in a gym and he's like, okay, so my options are to hire a personal
trainer, kind of do what they say, kind of do some research online.
But then there's all these gaps in the experience.
So the muscles I train, I have no record of the reps I do.
I can't see cause and effect because it's
only going to be as good as like how my bookkeeping is and do I go then take all
the reps and I put it in Excel and then I try to see you know did I see growth? I
mean like and it's so funny because it reminds me of when I was I remember
being in my 20s I was before I got married and had kids was in the gym all
the time every day and I remember, was in the gym all the time every day.
And I remember keeping an Excel spreadsheet
of all the things I did in the gym.
Every weight, or every move, the number of,
the amount of weight, the reps, the whole thing.
Because I was trying to see correlations in outcomes
with the work that I was doing.
And so here we were, even many years after that experience
and he's like, there's no, why is there no better way?
Right, like why is there no better way?
And he said, I'm gonna create a better way.
And so he got to work on this notion of digital weight,
which is I'm gonna create the sensation of weight. I'm going to create this experience of weight
And then because it's driven done digitally every element of these periods will be tracked
We'll have better understanding knowledge of how
Cause drives effect truly when it comes to weight training and then can build a platform for personalizing
when it comes to weight training, and then can build a platform for personalizing
anybody's weight loss experience,
their muscle building experience, their aging experience,
all of these different kind of experiences,
which can be completely changed really
by having this platform.
As humans, especially if you're an entrepreneur,
there's a competitive element in your life.
You set objectives and you try and hit them, I especially if you're an entrepreneur, there's a competitive element in your life.
You set objectives and you try and hit them and being able to measure your progress is
really important.
I mean, so I have a in body scale that I use that measures my lean body mass and my muscle
and my total weight and I'm like That's you know last year. I set a goal of adding 10 pounds of muscle, which is
Wasn't easy but I remember the reason how I met tonal was I was speaking at an event and I mentioned this
And your chairman was in the room and he said you should do it with tonal and I said, okay
I did it by uh, you know increasing it with Tonal. And I said, okay. I did it by increasing my protein intake
to a gram per pound, adding creatine,
and going from a couple workouts a week
to literally obsessing on trying
to get five workouts per week.
And really in that regard, it consumed a lot of time.
And now the challenge for me is maintaining muscle mass. really in that regard, it consumed a lot of time.
And now the challenge for me is maintaining muscle mass, right?
Because as you said, I mean, the term is sarcopenia,
and it's the loss of muscle and the difficulty of adding
muscle as you grow older.
And there are lots of different approaches to it,
but the one approach is actually doing the work and so
I'm excited about getting my my total installed for the specific reason of
Getting to you from you know from four days a week to five or six days a week so that I can always squeeze in those
those
You know probably have ten minute sessions, but probably 20-minute sessions, 30 minutes.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, that's, we see, so an average member session
is 35 minutes, and that's because we have members
doing a full session, 45 minutes to an hour,
and we have every variety, as you can imagine,
from a time perspective, and then you see, you know,
people squeezing in 20- sessions, um, in
between, and you know, we're still, a lot of us are still in these remote worlds
where we're, you know, maybe a couple of days a week at home and you can squeeze
it in, in between a couple of meetings, um, and get it done, which is, is really
an incredible, an incredible value.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember reading a science fiction story years ago where it was I forget the name of it
It was basically individuals that were put into these mech suits
like a you know an Iron Man suit and
The mech suit could be programmed to become your workout buddy
So every time you moved it was it was adding
your workout buddy. So every time you moved, it was,
it was adding resistance in every direction that we were going.
And I was like, that sounds pretty, pretty cool. You know, if you want to be,
you know, squeezing micro workouts throughout the day. Um,
and I do think this is probably the closest thing to it. I think there's going to be eventually an ext,
an extension of tonal that will be your,
your AI that's traveling with you that incentivizes you to take the stairs instead of the elevator or
tells you to break out into a jog for the next 30 seconds to get your heart rate up or
whatever it might be and it's incorporating, you know, it's
we need incentivization. Some people are incentivized by
you know intrinsic, some other by extrinsic, and some
just like someone there to kick their butt. So, yeah.
That's right. We have, you know, badges and all the kinds of things that people that help people
as they go on that journey, because sometimes you just want that like immediate reward, that feedback.
So that's right. Did you see the movie Oppenheimer? If you did, did
you know that besides building the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Labs
that they spent billions on bio-defense weapons, the ability to accurately detect
viruses and microbes by reading their RNA? Well a company called Viome
exclusively licensed the technology from Los Alamos Labs
to build a platform that can measure your microbiome and the RNA in your blood.
Now, Viome has a product that I've personally used for years called Full Body Intelligence,
which collects a few drops of your blood, spit, and stool,
and can tell you so much about your health.
They've tested over 700,000 individuals and used their AI models to deliver members critical health guidance
like what foods you should eat, what foods you shouldn't eat, as well as your
supplements and probiotics, your biological age, and other deep health
insights. And the results of the recommendations are nothing short of
stellar. As reported in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, after
just six months of following
Viome's recommendations, members reported the following.
A 36% reduction in depression, a 40% reduction in anxiety, a 30% reduction in diabetes, and
a 48% reduction in IBS.
Listen, I've been using Viome for three years.
I know that my oral and gut health is one of my highest priorities.
Best of all, Viome is affordable, which is part of my mission to democratize health.
If you want to join me on this journey, go to Viome.com slash Peter.
I've asked Naveen Jain, a friend of mine who's the founder and CEO of Viome, to give my listeners
a special discount.
You'll find it at Viome.com slash Peter. Let's talk about the cost of the system. Is it a initial purchase and
subscription? Talk about about that if you would. Yeah that's right. So it is an
initial purchase and a subscription. So I would think about it as the initial
purchase is all the hardware that's $39.95 plus some accessories,
which includes a bench and some different handles.
And then the subscription, which is $59.95 a month, really gets the content, the trainers,
the AI, that whole experience.
And so, you know, we think of it as you're sort of buying the equipment like you would
home gym equipment, and then you're paying for all that great training.
And so we really try to think of the training
as being in replacement of personal training.
Obviously it's not a person in your home
yelling at you to go further, go one more rep.
It's not that experience, but we have great coaches
and they're super personable.
And the way the device is, it's different than certain other kind of connected fitness
where because it's strength training, the way you do the class is you do take your,
you kind of move at your own pace and you can kind of do that with the class, if that
makes sense.
So it has a lot of flexibility to it.
But yeah, so that's the cost. Now we do offer a firm financing.
And so you can get it to a monthly rate
that's significantly less than a normal gym membership.
And a monthly rate that is much less
than a single personal training session.
So we kind of like look at it
that from a value perspective to the member,
you can get it to a price
that's well within the realm of what a typical gym
or train over thing.
And people forget, I mean, a good personal trainer
is gonna run you three digits per session.
It's gonna be 100 bucks or more,
and that's on top of your gym membership.
And this is, I like to say, everybody in the planet bucks or more and that's on top of your gym membership and
And this is you know, I like to say everybody in the planet is got one thing in common We all have 24 hours in a day seven days a week
You know 365 in a year and it's how you use your time that makes you
The most efficient and so it's always
Time optimization. So do you want to trade the drive time to the gym?
And you want to trade the convenience here. So I mean for me that's why it's a great and exciting solution.
The other thing I really like about it compared to some other options I've seen is
The other thing I really like about it compared to some other options I've seen is you can literally go from writing an email to hopping on it and being working out in what,
a minute, two minutes, turn it on, push a button.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's really easy.
Yeah.
Very little setup.
Yeah.
Yeah, very, very little setup.
You move the arms down and that's pretty much it.
Turn it on. So let's talk about where this industry goes next. You've got an incredible
background, you know, at Bain and Starwood, at Home Depot.
at Home Depot. What is your vision? Where do you think this industry, what's the moonshot here for five or ten years from now? Yeah, I think big
picture. So there's one thing I love about this industry which is that it is
very friendly and collaborative.
So, you know, we're all together building
a completely new industry and a new industry segment,
I think, specifically in connected fitness,
but I would say also, you know, fitness in general.
What's incredible is despite like being big,
we're still so much smaller,
obviously than pharmaceuticals,
than all the things that deal with the problems
that being out of shape creates.
And so there's this really incredible feeling
of among leaders in this industry
that we are trying to make the world better by
helping make people healthier. And there's true, there's a true mission in
it. And so each of us has our own approach to how we do that. And the
consumer, you know, needs to figure out what works best for them. But there's
different approaches in nutrition, wellness, fitness. But what I love about this industry is that
there's just like, we are here to make the world better by making people healthier. And
what a great mission. And what I love about that is just sort of separately, it helps
us recruit great employees. We have wonderful, wonderfully talented people that work at Tonal, wonderfully talented people
that work in the fitness industry because they're drawn to the mission and the purpose
of making the world better by making people healthier.
I do think that it's a really young and immature industry.
And so there's going to be a lot of evolution and change.
There's going to be a ton of incremental innovation.
They're still figuring out what works best for consumers.
There's, I think, processing the post-COVID period.
You know, COVID in lots of cases fundamentally changed
people's behaviors.
And I think around health and fitness fundamentally changed
people's behaviors. And I think around health and fitness fundamentally changed people's behaviors.
People are more focused on their health than they were before. They really are. And yet people's
sort of norms are still landing around work and home. There's this sort of, you know, people have
been focused on experiences for the last couple of years as a reaction
to COVID and travel and things like that.
And as I think over the next couple of years, what happens is consumer preferences begin
to sort of settle into a new normal.
I think long term, there's tremendous massive growth in this industry for, and it'll benefit
everybody, not just, you know, individual
companies.
But I do think that there's a strong trend line around flexibility around how you work
out and achieving your goals.
So you know, being able and I think a lot of people like putting a lot of things together,
a boutique fitness class, at home solution, a hike, right?
Like there's no one size fits all. People want to put a lot of things together. We play
a specific role in enabling that convenience in the home. But I think that the industry
is going to evolve. I think it's going to grow. I think consumer preferences are going
to sort of evolve. But I also think the other thing I would say is the role of intelligence
is going to grow because I think people have also think the other thing I would say is the role of intelligence is going to grow.
Because I think people have not,
we talked at this at the beginning of the conversation,
like what do I do?
I want to be stronger.
I don't know where to start.
I don't know how to do it.
Or maybe I'm advanced in my learning,
but I'm hitting a plateau
and I don't know how to push through the plateau.
Or I just, I can't figure out how to lose
this last five pounds, or whatever it is,
that the intelligence that AI is going to provide
for consumers is going to be massive, I think,
in terms of helping people figure out.
Tony's gonna help out.
Tony's gonna help you out.
That's right, that's right.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
And you know, it's not just ours, right?
Like lots of AI that people are working on.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's, there's an old adage that said, like,
if you could put exercise into a pill, it would be, you know,
the largest single trillion dollar pharmaceutical ever.
Exercise is really the process of telling your body,
I still care, I still alive, I'm not ready to roll
over and die yet.
You know, the stimulate, you know, the the stimulations that it has throughout every
every molecular process, it is the number one thing you can do, period.
And I can't stress that enough.
It is my, you know, I think about my three top priorities are exercise sleep and
minimizing, you know sugar
and
Out of those the top one is exercise
You know I
Think about you know, I do a lot of work in the AI space I have a venture fund there I start companies I support entrepreneurs and
I you know, we're gonna have human level AI and then digital superintelligence that will follow thereafter and
You're going to have an AI which is your physician, right?
It's an AI that is you you say to it listen
I'm interested in maximizing my muscle
Minimizing my weight whatever whatever it is. I need more energy
I want to live longer and that AI is going to then guide you
And try and incent you throughout the day if you turn on, you know bug me mode
Take the stairs don't eat that, you know drink more water, you know and and being able to have a
Tonal system that is like you've got 15 minutes free in your in your in your calendar right now. You're doing legs
Go and go and jump on the tonal right go go see Tony
but I do think that is where we're heading towards
and excited to have that kind of capability
in hand for sure.
I think that's right.
I also think, you know, we didn't talk about the GLP-1s
and all the data, like just looking forward to the industry, all the data on the GLP-1s and all the data, like just looking forward to the industry,
all the data on the GLP-1s is that people lose muscle mass when they go through that.
And there's going to be even stronger awareness, I think, generated as a result of that, that
you've got to work on building muscle mass and protecting the muscle mass you have. And so I also think that's going to be a huge, you know, huge trend for the industry.
Yeah, 100%.
And let me just use that.
If you're on Ozempic or any of the GLP-1s, please, it is a miracle drug in some ways,
but the downside is loss of muscle.
And again, I've said this, my number one objective is maintaining and building muscle mass.
And you don't get it by hoping.
You don't get it by just thinking about it.
You actually have to do the work. So if that is you,
figure out what your plan is, right? And it's either getting to the gym on
a regular basis, installing a tonal in your home or office, wherever it might be,
it's changing your diet, it's changing your supplements, but it's mostly committing to yourself
that this is important for you.
And if longevity is your objective,
especially if you're in step two of your life
in your 50s or 60s or 70s,
and I say step two out of maybe 10,
I'm hoping for long long how long do you
want to live by the way Crystal? Do you have a longevity objective? Yeah, you know that's a great
question. I would say like 95 but I'd really like to have a really like strong
set of healthy years after 65. Like I saw that headline in the New York Times, not
that I read the article, maybe a couple weeks ago and it said the average American gets one
Healthy year after their 65th birthday
Yeah, you know, it's really it really is health span not necessarily lifespan, you know, we just
I just announced a hundred and one million dollar
incentive competition called the health span XPRIZE and
It is teams around the world focusing on
reversing the ravages of aging in
cognition immune and muscle
And so it's really how do you how do you?
roll back
sarcopenia by at least 10 years or 20 years and
sarcopenia by at least 10 years or 20 years and
Honestly, the best way is go in with great habits and with a good amount of muscle in place and maintain that
Yeah
You know, there's a concept that's a great question I used to have a ridiculous number
People on this podcast probably heard me say it a few times,
but when I was in medical school years ago, I remember learning that
bowhead whales could live 200 years and Greenland sharks could live 500 years and
they could have babies at a 200 year age. Imagine having more kids at 200.
And I said, if they can live that long, why can't we?'t we why can't I and I said it's either a hardware problem
Or a software problem and this is the decade we're gonna
Understand that but there's a concept called longevity escape velocity. Have you heard about that concept?
Yeah, so right now for every year that you're alive today
Science is extending your life by about a third of a year, right?
then you breakthroughs in early cancer detection or in new meds or
supplements and so forth.
But we have, we're in the steepest part of the acceleration on medical
breakthroughs coming from AI in particular, gene therapies and so
forth, cellular medicines.
And there's going to be a point in time where for every
year that you're alive science is extending your life for more than a year and all of
a sudden you know that's longevity escape velocity and so I changed my answer from some
ridiculous hundreds of years because if you can live that long you can live forever I
said my goal is to reach longevity escape velocity. So when is that likely to happen? Ray Kurzweil's prediction is 2030, right? That's six years out. Your job is to stay
healthy and not die from something stupid in the interim. George Church, David
Sinclair, and a few others put it at 2035 to 2040. But again, that's still just 15 16 years out. That's
that should be
you know
if you are
Care about it if you're excited about life that you should be able to motivate yourself to get there and intercept these breakthroughs
You don't want to be the last person dying so to speak
So, uh just to wrap up here
Tonal is your answer if time is short
Even if you want to do it the most cost-efficient in terms of gin memberships and and training
and the other thing that I love is you're unlikely to have your trainer or your gym continue to improve
on an exponential growth curve, but Tony is going to continue to improve on an exponential growth
curve. So join the club there. Where do folks go to learn more about Tonal? Tonal.com. Tonal.com.
And if you have any questions, we are happy to answer them. So yeah, yeah. But it's also great.
I mean, you know, it's convenient and it's a good value,
but the product is, it's just better than working out
in a gym too, that's the other thing.
It's once you start using it and you feel the difference
in the weight, the smoothness of the weight,
the like, it's just a better workout.
It's hard to describe, but it really is.
So I think a lot of your listeners may find that and maybe some of them already have a tonal and they'll comment on that.
Love that and I can't wait to get mine installed.
Crystal Zell, thank you so much for joining us on Moonshots. A pleasure. Thank you Peter. It was such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.