20 Sep Episode #289: Dan Uyemura, Founder, PushPress–The Gym Operating System
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Pete Moore: This is Pete Moore at halo talks to NYC on location Manhattan beach. Bringing in Dan, we mirror right down the road, El Segundo. We are going to push and press. We’re going to find out how to run your club better than you did before. So Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan Uyemura: Thank you so much. And let me tell you, I actually run a podcast myself and like switching on that welcome intro. Voices is no easy feat for anyone who has press dude, you went from jail to like, we are in the podcast. Let’s go.
Pete Moore: Thank you. Well, the last podcast I did with the guy he’s played the NHL, we sang, oh, Canada, the start. So, you know, I got to switch on that every once in a while. So we’re going to keep by singing. Yeah, we didn’t have no karaoke on here, but why don’t you talk about your entrepreneurial background that brought you to this industry? And you know, we’ll talk about what you guys are doing to help people out
Dan Uyemura: Right on. I’ll try and keep it brief. So, I mean, I’m the type of person who knew I was an entrepreneur from the get-go. I used to have a paper out and I had put brownie, brownie stands up on the corner and stuff like that. As a kid I went to college right through the internet, kind of come to becoming commercially available 1993 through 1999. It was my college years and jumped right into the internet. So I launched a startup. It was basically my space, a little bit too early. It was a community, blah, blah, blah. We got funded and it went under what the.com bubble. And so I kind of put my tail between my legs and I worked for a bunch of startups because I didn’t like losing other people’s money. And that’s what happened in that, in that instance worked for a bunch of startups here in LA, basically gained like 40 pounds because during the time they would just give you Italian dinners every night and give you cans of Coke on your desk.
Dan Uyemura: Cause they wanted you to code, code, code and had a midlife crisis at 35 plus 40 pounds and decided like, man, I need to get back in shape. So I as an entrepreneur, we do everything to the extreme. So I basically found my way right into a CrossFit gym after having done nothing for 10 years lost 50 pounds. So I lost all 40 pounds. Plus some was in the best shape of my life at 35 couldn’t believe what was happening. And the entrepreneur in me realized like, I think this is the future of fitness. Actually, this was in like 2006, 2007. You know, went right down, right down the route of opening a gym, open a gym. And once I got into the gym space realized all the software was subpar based on what I knew we could build in the software industry. So got immediately to work on building software for gems. And here I am today, 10, 10, 12 years later.
Pete Moore: So, you know, as you took a look at the, at the space, you know, there there’s, there’s tech stacks galore when it comes to, Hey, I got this plugin for CRM, I got this plugin for, you know, data analytics. So w what does push press deal? And how have you kind of decided, Hey, this is what our core feature set is. And here’s where, you know, you should plug in or API with others.
Dan Uyemura: Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the key learning for us, the two big things where we, one, we knew what software can do when we started building the software and a two, we knew how to run a gym because we had actually been running a gym while building the software. And the biggest problem I had with all the competitors or things when I was evaluating the software that was available at the market at the time was they were all really confusing. And I think it was because they were built during a time when API was weren’t available integrations. Weren’t a thing, you know, it was less modern at the time that they were built and therefore they just like Frankensteined together. This huge, like horizontal piece of software, we took the approach where push press needed was to be designed more like an iPhone.
Dan Uyemura: Because again, at the time when we built this iPhones were already out. So we had that as a frame of reference. When you buy an iPhone, it comes with like 10 apps, like notes and calendar and whatever clock, but then everything that you want to do to make it yours, you’re a financial guy or a fitness guy. You extend it with financial fitness hats. You’re, you know, you like playing games, you install a bunch of games. That was the approach we took with push pressure and day one. We, we built it on the concept of integrations and extensibility through the concept of an app store. And I think that’s one of the big things that we kind of nailed early.
Pete Moore: Gotcha. And when you take a look at some of the clients you have you know, I’d say mind, body kind of started as a, you know, running one type of studio, you know, probably wasn’t as flexible when it came to looking at, you know, your entire company owned locations or franchise location. So how did you guys architect it, or what’s the ideal type of platform or number of studios, a number of clubs, or does that not matter