How Building Muscle Can Add Years to Your Life & Ozempic's Long-Term Effects w/ Krystal Zell | EP #110

In 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 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. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Peter Diamandis?

  What do you think the number one reason that people don't work out is?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  That's a great question.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  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 that's how you lose weight, go for a run.

• 0:21Peter Diamandis?

  Sleep, diet, exercise, mindset, the right, you know, supplements and meds. If you had to do one thing, it's muscle mass, it's strength.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  The bottom third of the population from a muscular perspective has a 50% increased mortality rate.

• 0:36Peter Diamandis?

  The number one thing to do in terms of reducing all-cause mortality is building muscle.

• 0:44Peter Diamandis?

  Welcome to Moonshots. Today, we're going to 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.

• 1:29Peter Diamandis?

  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, you know, the number one thing you could 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.

• 2:11Peter Diamandis?

  And in full disclosure, I've got my Tonal ordered for installation shortly. Crystal, good to see you. Welcome to Moonshots.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Nice to see you. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me.

• 2:21Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, and I see the Tonal in the background over your, your left shoulder, if I've got the directions correct.

• 2:30Peter Diamandis?

  I want to start with an assumption. What do you think the number one reason that people don't work out is?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Well, that's a great question. I think it's a combination of things. I mean, I think part of it is, 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, 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 going to 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.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 3:59Peter Diamandis?

  I, 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 had to do one thing, it's muscle mass, it's strength. It is, especially if you're over 60, so I'm 63 next month. And it is the number

• 4:39Peter Diamandis?

  Number one thing I'm focused on doing over everything else. So number one, people think they don't have time. Number two, they don't know how important it is in their life. And then number three is probably, like you said, knowing how. Uh, 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, uh, you know, you don't, you just haven't clicked in with how important it is. Cause for me, you know, Crystal, I, this was not always me.

• 5:20Peter Diamandis?

  I was in reasonably good shape, but I never had a focus on, uh, 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. Um, 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.

• 6:02Peter Diamandis?

  Uh, I've got 20 minutes or 30 minutes and I'm going to get you some pushups and do some pullups and stuff like that in, in the bedroom. But total solves a lot of that, doesn't it? That's right. Yeah. And, and let's, let's dive into, um, I, I want to, I want to dive first into the science. I want people, I want you to, 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 hot and bothered about the need to work out. So Cher, what's your number one convincing data here?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think the first one I would share is that as we age, starting at forty five 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 fifty percent increased mortality rate. So when you think about longevity, it's incredible.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  And then 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. And 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.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  So the statistics are so clear, the data and the science is so clear about how absolutely crucial strength is for aging.

• 8:23Peter Diamandis?

  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, sixty five, your one-year survival rate is relatively low.

• 8:46Peter Diamandis?

  Uh, 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 eighties, 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 uh 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 um uh building puts on your bones helps maintain uh your stronger bones. Uh, the other thing is, and the data is very clear, um, 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

• 9:30Peter Diamandis?

  week, right? It's like it's an hour twice a week or half an hour twice a week. Um, let's talk about the simplicity of Tonal and I want to get into how does this 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.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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 Tonal solves that is um, 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, you know, a bit more part of our culture around driving to doing strength training, and 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

• 10:38Speaker 01

  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 um also educate women about the importance of strength training because we do see it's, it's a harder adoption cycle for women to, to decide to do it. So, and that's why, why 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.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  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 the... 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, you know, and also to your whole household. So you can have... My husband has an account.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:58Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, no, I love that. How long does it take to install and how is it installed? You order a tonal and what happens?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  And so we, 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 on. We can pretty much install on any wall. There's a few exceptions, um, but pretty much any wall. So we have to understand like your home and make sure you have the right space, um, for, but pretty much everything is pretty straightforward and, and easy in that regard. Then within two weeks, you're going to have an appointment to have your tonal installed. Um, and you'll have professionals show up, they'll fully install it. So the customers don't have to do any installation. It's, it's, um, 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, that the device gets installed. You hook it up to the wifi and then from there you set

• 13:50Speaker 01

  up your account and then you get started. And that's really all there is to it.

• 13:54Peter Diamandis?

  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. Company's called Fountain Life. And it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day where 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

• 14:39Peter Diamandis?

  was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the U S 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 gonna 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

• 15:24Peter Diamandis?

  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/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/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 on to our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com/peter.

• 16:09Peter Diamandis?

  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. You, one of the things that 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 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?

• 16:54Peter Diamandis?

  And how are you using that data? Because data is the oil of AI systems.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, and we have incredible amount of oil, so to speak. So I'll start with the data collection. So it's, you know, from a privacy perspective, I want to reassure the audience, like, 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 every, 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.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  So we also know to note any time that's taken and it's 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.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  And our average member, their strength score goes up 80% in the first year of using Total. 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. 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, for summer bikini weather. You know, 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

• 19:06Speaker 01

  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. We'll 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, I never learned to play tennis when I was a kid.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  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. Like, 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 feed back 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 I've learned a lot of serving is in the shoulders and the legs.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  And so we would say, okay, here's, you know, the exercises that you should do for this purpose. And it's, it's, it's, it's super cool. We're really, really, really excited about it because

• 20:48Peter Diamandis?

  Does Tony talk to you?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  to understand. Yeah, Tony, I mean, it's, yeah, it's a full

• 20:52Peter Diamandis?

  It's conversational. Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Conversational. So it's, we're, but 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? Like, 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 going to get better and better over time. So we're truly getting to like incredibly personalized recommendations.

• 21:35Peter Diamandis?

  I want to, you know, again, there's a lot of entrepreneurs listening here who are working on their massive transformative purpose, their moon shots, they're starting their, their companies. I am curious about the origin story for Tonal. You've been the CEO now for how long? Last year or two?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Yep.

• 21:58Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. And so what is the origin story? And just give us a little bit of background on how this device, how, what it looked like in the beginning and how far has it come in terms of iterating your market, you know, product market fit?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Aliy Aredi is our founder. 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, he's an engineer, incredibly talented, both hardware and software engineer, with 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 his health fell, by the way, said. 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

• 22:57Speaker 01

  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 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, 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

• 23:40Speaker 01

  weight loss. You know, the more, obviously, the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you're going to burn, et cetera, et cetera.

• 23:47Peter Diamandis?

  Amazing. Yeah, and very, very true. I mean, it's literally when you, when you see weightlifters, right, who are, have built a significant amount of muscle mass, they're pulling in, you know, multiple thousands of calories, you know, five, six, seven thousand calories, because they're burning so much in their, in their muscles.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  That's right. So he, 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.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  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 twenties. I was before I got married and had kids was in the gym all the time, every day. And I remember keeping an Excel spreadsheet of all the, all the, 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. Um, cause 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?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Right? Like, why, why is there no, no better way? And he said, I'm going to create a better way. Um, and so he got to work on this notion of digital weight, which is I'm going to create the sensation of weight. I'm going to create this experience of weight. Um, and then because it's done digitally, every element of the experience 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. 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

• 26:17Speaker 01

  by having this platform.

• 26:19Peter Diamandis?

  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. 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."

• 27:01Peter Diamandis?

  And I said, "Okay." I did it by, you know, 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, right? Because as you said, I mean, the term is sarcopenia, and it's the loss of muscle and the ability and the difficulty of adding muscle as you grow older. And there are lots of different

• 27:41Peter Diamandis?

  approaches to it, but the one approach is actually doing the work. And so I'm excited about getting my Tonal installed for the specific reason of getting to 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 a ten minute sessions, but probably twenty minute sessions.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's, we see, so an average member session is thirty five minutes. And that's because we have members doing a full session, forty five minutes to an hour, um, or a lot. And we have, we have every variety, as you can imagine, from a time perspective. And then you see, you know, people squeezing in twenty minute 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.

• 28:41Peter Diamandis?

  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 resistance in every direction that you 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 ex, an extension of Tonal that will be your, your AI that's traveling with you,

• 29:26Peter Diamandis?

  that incentivizes you to take the stairs instead of the elevator, or tells you to break out onto a jog for the next thirty 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 of them are by extrinsic, and some just like someone there to kick their butt. So.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 29:49Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  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, you just want that, like. Immediate reward, that feedback. So that's right.

• 30:04Peter Diamandis?

  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 biodefense 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,

• 30:48Peter Diamandis?

  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.

• 31:33Peter Diamandis?

  If you want to join me on this journey, go to viome.com/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/peter. Let's talk about the cost of the system. Is it an initial purchase and subscription? Talk about that if you would.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  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. You know, obviously, it's not a person in your home, you know, yelling at you to go go further, go, you know, one more rep. It's not that experience.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  But we have great coaches and they're super personable. And the way the device is, is it's different than certain other kind of connective fitness where because it's strength training, the way you do the classes, you 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 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, you know, a monthly rate that is less, much less than a single personal training session. So we kind of like look at it that from a value perspective to the member, we, you

• 33:22Speaker 01

  know, from you, you can get it to a price that's that's well within the realm of what a typical gym or trainer would be.

• 33:30Peter Diamandis?

  And people forget, I mean, you know, a good personal trainer is is going to run you, you know, three digits per session, you know, it's going to be a hundred bucks or more. And that's on top of your gym membership. And and this is, you know, I like to say, everybody on the planet has 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, you know, trade the convenience here?

• 34:14Peter Diamandis?

  So, I mean, for me, that's why it's a it's a great and exciting solution. And it's 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.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Thirty seconds.

• 34:38Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really easy.

• 34:39Peter Diamandis?

  Very little setup. Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, very, very little setup. You move the arms down and that's pretty much it. Turn it on, so.

• 34:49Peter Diamandis?

  Let's talk about where this industry goes next. You've got an incredible background, you know, at Bain and Starwood, at Home Depot. What is your vision? Where do you think this industry? What's the moonshot here for five or 10 years from now?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  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. Especially 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.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  And what I love about that is this sort of separately, it helps us recruit great employees. We have wonderful, wonderfully talented people that work at Total, wonderfully talented people that work in the, 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 the, there's gonna be a lot of evolution and change. There's gonna 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.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  You know, COVID in lots of cases 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 they're, and, and, and yet people's sort of norms are still landing around work and home. There's the 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, into a new normal.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  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,

• 38:24Speaker 01

  at-home solution, a hike, right? Like, there's, 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, I think the industry's gonna evolve. I think it's gonna grow. I think consumer preferences are gonna sort of evolve. But I also think the other thing I would say is the role of intelligence is gonna grow. Because, you know, I think people have not, we talked about 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. Uh, 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'm just, I can't figure out how to lose this last

• 39:05Speaker 01

  five pounds or whatever it is, that the intelligence and that AI is going to provide for consumers is, is, is going to be massive, I think, in terms of helping people figure

• 39:18Peter Diamandis?

  out. Tony's gonna help out. Tony's gonna help you out.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 39:22Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting. It's hours, right? Like lots, lots of AI that people are working on. Yeah.

• 39:27Peter Diamandis?

  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. Um, 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.

• 40:10Peter Diamandis?

  Uh, and out of those, the top one is exercise. Um, you know, I, I, I, 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.

• 40:55Peter Diamandis?

  And that AI is going to then guide you, um, and try and incent you throughout the day if you turn on, you know, bug me mode, um, 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, uh, in your calendar right now, you're doing legs. Go and go and jump on the tonal, right? Go see Tony. But I do think that is that is where we're heading towards. And excited to have that kind of capability in hand for sure.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  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 is that, you know, 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.

• 42:10Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, 100%. And let me just use that. If you're on Ozempic or any of the GLP-1s, please, it is, it's 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 you're, if that is you, figure out what your plan is, right?

• 42:51Peter Diamandis?

  And it's, 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 I, you know, if longevity is your objective, especially if you're, you know, 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 a long, how long do you want to live, by the way, Crystal? Do you have a longevity objective?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  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, I read the article, maybe a couple weeks ago, and it said, "The average American gets one healthy year after their 65th birthday."

• 43:49Peter Diamandis?

  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 Healthspan X Prize, 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 honestly, the best way is go in with great habits and with a good amount of muscle in place and maintain that.

• 44:34Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Peter Diamandis?

  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 going, having more kids at 200. And I said, if they can live that long, why can't, why can'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?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  I have.

• 45:16Peter Diamandis?

  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? There are new 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.

• 45:59Peter Diamandis?

  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 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.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:41Peter Diamandis?

  So, 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 gym memberships 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's going to continue to improve on an exponential growth curve. So join the club there. Where do folks go to learn more about Tonal?

• 47:17Speaker 01

  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 gym too. That's the other thing is once you start using it and you feel the difference in the weight, the smoothness of the weight, the like, it's just, it's just a better workout. It's hard to describe, but it really is. So I think a lot of your, your listeners may find that and maybe some of them already have a Tonal and they'll, they'll comment on that, but.

• 47:50Peter Diamandis?

  Love that, and I can't wait to get mine installed. Crystal Zell, thank you so much for joining us on Moonshots. A pleasure.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Thank you, Peter. It was such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.