What's up, Dtcpod? Today we're joined by Julie Cartwright, who's the president at Pvolve. So, Julie, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what Pvolve is all about?

Sure. P Valve is really a new to market modality. We combine functional fitness with resistance based equipment for resistance training. And really what that translates to is that we mimic the way that your body was really intended to move. So we not only get what traditionally women are looking for from fitness, so a lifted butt, toned thighs, a really strong core, but almost like, more importantly to us is that we help your body function optimally so that's everything from better balance to better pelvic floor articulation, which is tied to how your lower back feels. So that was really the mission of the company is to not take for granted how you feel in trying to get your body to the way that you want it to look. And we do that in a variety of ways, which I'm so excited to talk to you about, but that was really the mission that we set out on. I am Julie Cartwright.

I actually am the president of the company. I have had the unbelievable pleasure of running the company for the past five years, but I actually started the company with the co founders back in January 2017, sort of as a side hustle. On the side of I was working in entertainment for about 18 years at a company called Anchor Bay Entertainment. They were a stars company and we got purchased by Lionsgate. So I not only ran the home entertainment division for marketing, product development, retail but I also was the general manager of our fitness division too. So that is really some of my background. But also really what Pvault's about yeah.

And we're really excited to have you on today because I think there's so much to cover in terms of Pvolve, being that you guys are not only approaching functional fitness at the service level, you're also approaching it from the product level and being able to do all these different collaborations and offer all different types of digital and physical services. So I think that's going to be really cool to talk about, as well as your background coming from the entertainment industry. Right. That's a whole different beast. And having overseen and being able to have experience in specifically the fitness side of entertainment and kind of like how that parlays over to what you guys are building at P Valve. I think that'll be a lot of fun to get into as well. So I guess in that vein, why don't you tell us a little bit about what your responsibilities were at Anchor Bay, what it was like building in the brand consumer marketing space in the entertainment industry and how you ultimately moved over to the fitness side of things at that company.

Yeah, I mean, I think that what I would say is that I started in 1998, and really at the time, and I'm not afraid to say this, the consumption of content at home was primarily VHS. And I knew really what customers were looking for and niche markets, to be honest. We had everything from horror movies to roseanne, the TV show to comedies. And then we also had a really successful we were actually a market leader in the fitness, you know, really trying to understand the customer and what it is that they're looking for and the messages that will translate to them. Knowing that this movie, this TV show, this is what they're looking for, has always been something that I've been really interested in. Then I saw it move to DVD and how quickly the adoption was in certain categories over others. As a matter of fact, fitness really held on to VHS a lot longer. And what were the decisions that were being made by our customer base that really drove that? And then digital.

Like all of that happened in the 18 years that I was in that space, but I was bringing product to market. I Was Doing messaging around different niche audiences, and certainly packaging content to make sure that it was resonating with audiences that were going to be satisfied. I will tell you though, that fitness was by far always the thing that got me up in the morning and got me most excited. I loved the fact that this consumer base would hold on to one workout and use it again and again, talk to their friends about it, and it really changed their lives. So I always knew that I didn't want to lose the fitness side of my job, but it certainly was a wild ride in Hollywood for those 18 years.

Yeah. And that's the other crazy thing is just if you think about how fast the evolution happened in the space from going from VHS to DVD to digital streaming app, and then where it's literally all this stuff is on everyone's phones and people are working out with their phone by themselves anywhere, it's so crazy how quickly that transformation happened. But at a fundamental level, all those skills and being able to package content the right way and market it the right way, all of those are transferable, right?

Yeah. I was really lucky to see all of that transformation and I think there's two things that it really taught me. I think number one is you have to be able to change with the market. Like, I wasn't going to be holding on to VHS while the entire industry was moving to DVD and then into digital and talk about a learning curve, but you have to just stay ahead of all of that. But I think the bigger lesson that I've learned, and it's really helped me here at Pvolve too, is that content is king, period. Everyone tried to start a streaming service, everyone, all the major studios were trying to get into it. And at the heart of it, what always wins is content. It's got to be really great, compelling content.

And I tell you, there's a lot of similarities in what we do right now. We're a content company. At the heart of it, nothing else that we do matters as much as the content that people consume from us that actually achieve the results that we promise. And we put so much effort around that. So I think there's just a lot of similarities from me growing up in the home entertainment space and watching that, because content is king, period. You can't fake it.

Yeah. And I think also having that lens and the way you approach things, it's really interesting to hear because if you were on the outside looking in and you don't understand the lifeblood and the heartbeat of a company, whereas when you're telling me content is our North Star, that gives us a lot of perspective into how you're thinking about building the business. You're saying, okay, if we're content first, we make great content, we package it the right way, we sell it the right way. All of a sudden, all these other opportunities are going to open up, like products, collaborations, supplements, whatever it is, all of these open up. But your North Star is content, where other people might say, we're a fitness first brand and our North Star is product, or we're a fitness brand and our North Star is fitness equipment or in person classes. There's so many different ways to do it. So just understanding where you guys fit within that spectrum is very helpful to understand where you guys can grow and how you guys think about growth.

Yeah, and for us, I think content. We obviously have in person studios. We have three owned and operated studios and then we have a franchising model that I can kind of talk a little bit about. We had that model prior to COVID and now it is the model that, you know, boutique fitness has to have is this option for her to work out however she can that particular day move her body, whether it's 4ft of snow outside so you just want to fit it in downstairs or if you really need that accountability to go in studio. But content is the same in person as it is what we capture digitally. And we also have live classes and having sort of that consistency over the level at which we deliver that is so critically important in building this brand. So I'm really proud of that hybrid model. And we're lucky because we were digitally native.

And it was like when I went to the founder and the investor and said, you know what, we absolutely have to have in person studios with this. You can't just have a digital community for a brand new modality. You have to be able to have in person studios. Know, obviously, Rachel, who's our co founder, completely believed in that, but it took a while for our investor to really get on board with that because it obviously looks different on paper and now we're so thrilled that we did that. I mean, in COVID and post COVID, all studios are thinking about that and the ones that were digitally brick and mortar are going to have a much more difficult time.

No, totally. And that's something I definitely want to go into, is why don't we go back to a little bit about the founding story? I know you mentioned it was started because it's kind of a side project and now you guys have studios, you have digital, you have in person, you have products, you have all these different things all around the concept of functional fitness. But why don't you take us a little bit further back to more like founding company origins, how you got involved and then what were the first moves because now you have all these different product lines, but what was the first way and your first wedge into the market?

Sure. No, it's such an amazing story to be perfectly honest. First, it starts with our co founder, Rachel Katzman. She was 23 years old. She comes from an incredibly entrepreneurial family, an incredibly successful entrepreneurial family where they literally would sit around the kitchen table when her and her two brothers were teenagers and think about the companies that they were going to start. Their dad was very successful as an entrepreneur, and they wanted to follow in his footsteps. So first and foremost, she had that sort of mindset. But she was 23 in New York City, not feeling good in her body.

She wasn't looking the way that she wanted to look. And she was working her heart out at various gyms and really putting in the time, but not only not getting the results that she was looking for physically, but then she was waking up the next day in pain, feeling depleted. She started to work with a trainer named Stephen Pastorino, and he sort of introduced the idea of functional movement to her. And she started to work out. She got the physical results that she wanted, but more importantly, she felt better in her body than she's ever felt. And she had later got diagnosed with scoliosis. She learned to really understand the functions of her body, and she was like, oh God, this is what I need to do. 23 years old again.

And she's just like, But I want more. I want more than just functional movement. She started to explore how can I involve some maybe proprietary patented designs around resistance equipment that could amplify some of the results that I was getting? And she started to just talk to people in the industry about getting a prototype around what is now called the P Ball, which is an essential resistance patented piece of equipment that we sell that really our members love. But also I can talk a little bit about the clinical nature of it too. And so she found somebody that was going to put together a prototype in her network, and she's like, okay, but now I need someone to run this. I'm 23. I've never run a business before. And she found out about me.

The fitness industry is a small industry, and she found out about me and kind of tried to get in touch with me for about six to eight months. I was super happy where I was. I was like, oh, thank you, but no thank you. And she beat me down. She just would not take no for an answer. I decided to take a meeting with her in January of 2017 coming off of a red eye from La. And I met her. And just her story, that story that I just told you, for me being in the fitness industry, I was 40 at the time.

My husband had just had a shoulder replacement. I had bad knees. We had always taken care of ourselves, so we thought. And then we were living the best years of our lives as new parents and really kind of putting additional stock into sort of how we feel every day. We wanted to be able to golf, we wanted to be able to retire and still move our bodies. And so I looked across the table at her that day and I'm just like, oh shoot, I didn't say that. I said, oh shit. But I can't say no to this.

I'm obviously not going to leave my job for this, but I will absolutely help you and this is needed in the market. So that was really the beginning. We officially launched the company. So we built a streaming service. This was on the side. We built a streaming service very with these great partners that nobody's ever heard of called Platform Purple. We had to do everything down and dirty. We didn't have any know, Rachel was filming all of the videos and editing them herself.

And then we had this one proprietary, like Pivol that we put together an e commerce site through Shopify and got a PR, an independent PR person to get us some PR around launch. And we launched on November eigth of 2017. And that day it was like, ping, ping, ping, ping ping. All of a sudden, we had just generated enough groundswell that there actually was demand. And let's say we sold 100 units, but that was really big at the time. We're just like, wait, we really have something here. And I decided to leave my job in December. And we officially started the company on January 1 of 2018.

I guess where we started was we definitely wanted to deliver content globally. We wanted more access to this unbelievable method and then an ecommerce site and a really smart product that went with the method. And there we go, that was it. And we've evolved so much since then.

Yeah, it's super helpful to just have that understanding of where the company is, when it starts and then how it involves. So basically you guys had a wedge in terms of the product that you had come up with. That was something that the market hadn't seen you combine that with content, which is something that people weren't really doing in the same way at the time. And through those things, you were able to kind of lean into the whole functional fitness movement and create. And now you've obviously since expanded into all these other things, but it's always really interesting to see it's like, okay, where did this start and then how did it evolve and what was the process along that way? The other thing that I think is really important that you mentioned was in terms of how you got involved in finding alignment with your personal interests and the things that you cared about. Right? And I think a lot of times as you're building throughout your career, maybe in the beginning you're just building things because that's what your career was to date. That's where you can make a good salary, but as you kind of get older and you more mature, you want to find projects and be picky with your time to the point that you're working, things that really align with you in terms of your identity, what you actually care about, and things that make you happy. So I think the fact that you found that in a really natural way is really important.

And it wasn't just like, oh, there was this really great opportunity that's totally random, but I took into it. You actually did the diligence and were like, this aligns with where I'm at in my life right now, my career. And it makes it that much easier to take that leap. Right?

Yeah. Blaine, I mean, I'm so glad that you noticed that. It's funny because I often say our greatest strength, we've got about 70 people working for us right now. We've obviously evolved a lot since January 1 of 2018. And the number one thing I would tell you about me, our team, our success in selling 15 franchises, already we have four doctors that sit on our board, like Harvard, Princeton, NYU, having these massive partnerships with really big companies. It's really about this passion. Nobody can deny that we believe in what we're doing. And I think that's underestimated.

I really do. Because I'll tell you, I didn't do this for the paycheck. I left paycheck to do this. That was not what was my motivating factor. My husband might have thought I was crazy, but I knew that this was something that was going to be powerful. I was going to be better by doing something that I just loved, that was going to challenge me, but it was going to change people's lives. And I don't say that lightly. And I tell you, it is like the secret ingredient of why our company has grown to such a successful level.

Because everybody is like me at the company. We all believe in what we're doing. We actually bring on a member every single Wednesday for the entire company to hear from, and it's like we're sometimes in tears. That is the favorite part of our week, just like, really listening to the member, because this is why we're here.

I love that, too, in terms of ways of staying close to that end experience. A lot of times as a company scales, you can start to lose touch with the customer. So the fact that you guys, five years in at the scale you're at, are still treating it with that much respect, I think is important, and it also ties back into the fulfillment that you guys get out of it and why you're here, what your mission is, and what you guys are doing. So I think that's really cool.

One thing that I would say there, Blaine, because you were asking about the evolution, and it really was through talking to the members. So we started with the p ball and the streaming service, great. But I think in that moment, we were a little bit more focused on the physical results that we were able to get our members. And really, that's not what was profound. That was not what was keeping them. Every single member that we talked to has somewhat of a similar story in that something had failed them, some part of traditional fitness had failed them. They had injuries, they weren't feeling great, and that this has really made them feel better in their bodies. And that was really the decision to get into clinical studies.

We're in four. That was really the decision to bring on doctors, to really transform our content, to not only deliver that strength and sculpt what you want when you come in, but also all of this other content that can have a profound effect on how you feel. I think that was really the real start of the company at the end of 2018, listening to our members.

Wow. And that's something that I definitely want to get into because I think so many people in the commerce fitness, they'll kind of dress something up with a bunch of nice, pretty marketing and maybe not. Maybe they'll have a scientist come on and give you a nice quote or something, but aren't really diving into it. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about what that process was like with the doctors you brought on board, how you guys started, what you were looking to achieve, and how you even got these trials set up and what you're looking to prove. Know, running the trials.

Yeah. So the first two, I'll tell you, it was just a dreamlike. First of all, our first clinical board member, her name is Dr. Amy Hoover. She was a doctor of physical therapy that is a specialist in pelvic floor health. And pelvic floor health has so much connection to your body mechanics, everything from how your lower back feels to also how your body actually functions. And so she had heard about her through some of her patients. She was former Cleveland clinic, and then she was out on her own.

And I knew her. I knew her for decades. And she's like, Julie, what are you like, what are you doing? Because my patients actually need this. So that was very organic. And I'm like, okay, come and start to work with our trainers. First of all, you have a physical therapy background, so I want to make sure that our trainers are always having a ton of efficacy around the way in which we're moving our body. But further to that, there's so much that we can learn about pelvic floor and our ability to articulate our pelvic floor to make us, our bodies function more optimally. So she was the first person to really join our board, and we have a lot of really progressive content on our platform just around the different functions of pelvic floor that our members absolutely love.

I think that in addition to that, we then signed on a Doctor of Physiology, which totally makes sense in a functional fitness method. He's also a lead researcher too, so he was eventually going to lead our clinical trials. We brought on an OBGYN, and then we just brought on a doctor, Dr. DeVore, who is a fertility specialist from NYU. And again, all under the belief that through functional movement, through educating someone about the way to properly move your body, you could have profound impact on the way that you feel and the way that you function. So this was doctors that really wanted to get involved. The doctors are so involved. I mean, Dr.

Amy is involved in basically all of our content with our trainers. I'll tell you, she's like their most important person. They're running concepts by her new programming. Even when we do a large scale partnership with Electra Health or Fertility, like a fertility clinic, we are always checking in with her about the efficacy of our movement. So that's the doctor board, which is so proud of. But the clinical studies, we actually won a grant at the University of Minnesota. They had heard a little bit about some of the things that we were doing, the functional movement. And a lead researcher there reached out to us, said that they were going to start a lower back pain clinical study that was going to be 24 months and that we had won a grant that we were able to be a part of it.

These patients were getting MRIs on a weekly basis, and they were training with Pvolve, and that one just ended last year. And that was clinically proven that Pvolve helps to significantly reduce lower back pain, which just sort of started us on this path of we've got to build this with a ton of efficacy. We're saying stuff that women have not heard before, that their fitness routine can get them, so let's put some proof behind it. And so we're in a healthy aging study over at the University of Exeter, which is like one of the top sports and exercise research universities in the world. And we just got the initial preliminary results on that about how we're really building strength in women that are starting to age through perimenopause menopause, post menopause, and it's actually, like, shocking the researchers. And that will all be published next year, so there's a couple of other ones too, but I could go on and on, but this is what we're built on. This is like the foundation. It would have been easier just to say it, but we wanted to be able to prove it.

Oh, 100%. And I think that part is so important in terms of being able to really prove it and thinking about different exciting and innovative ways to get to those points of proof. I haven't heard many brands that are actually partnering up with a leading university and researcher and running the clinical trials to prove this. I think some of those concepts that you're tapping into, not only on the functional side, I can personally relate to the back stuff. Like I've blown a disc in my back and I've had to do the whole rehab stuff. And I know that there's all sorts of random research out there, but nothing's really conclusive. Everyone has a different idea about things. So the fact that you're really looking at proving out the method in the clinical trials I think is amazing.

And then also looking at aging, right, longevity and being able to age in a healthy way. Anecdotally my dad, he's older, he was a doctor, but he's lived a very healthy lifestyle and now in his 80s, he is like the fittest guy ever because he swims and he's active and he's always eaten healthy. But if you looked at the literature 20 years ago, there weren't clinical trials, none of this stuff was really proved out. Now I think we're starting to see with the work that you guys are doing and other companies and other researchers starting to be able to confirm this stuff. But there's so many different really interesting areas that are being researched and I think by being able to prove it out, it really helps the masses be able to adopt it. And that's where it becomes really impactful because now you're not just impacting one wacky biohacker or something, you're impacting a large swath of people who are all going through that aging and that health journey together.

Yeah, but it's our greatest strength and it's also our greatest challenge. I will tell you that it's not easy just to get somebody that's hearing one little snippet about who we are through paid channels to come in and convert and to understand. I mean, we're really building a brand new modality and so we're so proud of it. We're doing it all the right ways, but it takes a combination of storytelling and a really multichannel approach and it takes longer, it really does. It's not something that people have heard of time and time again. We're just putting a different spin on what it is that they know. It's like we're trying to educate on a new way of moving your body and that is challenging. I will tell you there's a much probably quicker way to do it, but we're wanting to do it right for long term sustainability and to really build trust in our member base.

So I just will tell you that.

Oh, absolutely, these are the next topics that I wanted to get into because I think it ties back to that, right? If you're creating a new product or something that really hasn't existed before in your case, like a whole fitness sort of regimen and philosophy, et cetera, about the functional fitness, it's not like you were saying, it's not the. Same as just taking something that everyone knows, putting a twist on it, and branding it that way. Right. So as you're taking that sort of product to market, clearly some of the ways that you guys have probably been able to do it is through great content and great being able to educate through content. And that happens physically as well as digitally. Right. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about once you started getting the research into this, once you started to know that this was the type of content that you wanted to build routines and education and material around, what were the next steps? Right. When did you decide you wanted to open your first studio? What was that like? What were the impacts of that on the physical community, where now it's not just someone saying, oh, I saw this great workout content.

You should totally check it out to, oh, I went with three friends to this class, and we all had a great time. And being able to amplify growth, at least in a localized sense that way. So how did that go in the early days?

Yeah, so it was fairly early on. We decided to have a couple of owned and operated studios in our top markets, new York, La, and then Chicago too. So we have three owned and operated studios. We actually started to open them in 2019, and two of them opened, like, during the heart of 2020, during the Pandemic. We wanted to do that because we always knew we wanted to franchise. The reason we wanted to franchise was because we wanted to scale the business, but more importantly, we wanted owner and operators. We believed that the passion that we possessed was going to be so critically important to have at each of these brick and mortars, instead of just hiring a studio manager that you hope that your passion is going to translate to them. And building a franchise model is not easy.

It took like, at least 18 to 24 months. You've got to go through a lot to get a franchising model down. We were hiring. We were doing a lot of the legal paperwork. We were getting the rights to franchise. We were putting together all of the operations. But we were also learning in our own owned and operated studios, which was critically important. New York sort of, like, took off.

New York's, where we started, it's a beautiful location that thrives. It's so great. But we opened West Hollywood and Chicago in the West Loop during the Pandemic. And so, again, we just had to be incredibly adaptable. We had to really learn, cater to our member base in a massive way. But I'll tell you that not only do we have a number of hybrid members, members that are working out with us on a, like, digitally once or twice a week, but then also coming into the studio three to four times a week, too, which is great, because it just deepens the frequency in which she's moving with us. But we've also sold 15 franchises too, and primarily to members. Because, again, this is so transformative in a member's life that even though we started to sell this during COVID and that was a scary time for brick and mortar owners, there was a great deal of trust in us that we were going to stand behind our product, that we were going to be partners.

That because of our hybrid model, they were going to have sort of a safety net of this digital aspect for their member base. So that's sort of how we started. I can't remember the other part of.

Your no, that's really interesting.

It was from the very, very beginning.

So Julie. That's awesome. I really want to keep talking about the franchising stuff. I don't think that's something we cover all the time on D to C pod, but I think it's an amazing way to think about not only scaling your brand up, but also being able to tap into your existing community and the people who are really liking what you're already building. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what it takes to actually launch a franchise? Do you start by saying, we've built out our own studios? We've had two or three, and now we're ready to franchise it, and here's what we give to people who want to open up a shop with us? Yeah, just provide a little bit more color on what it actually takes to if you're deciding to leverage franchising as a way to scale, how does that whole process work?

Yeah, so part of the reason that we really firmly believe in franchising is all the things that I said, but also we believe that digital and brick and mortar together is going to amplify this brand new to market modality. Right. The markets that we're in with our studios are by far, without a doubt, like our top top D to C markets, too. It helps that they're like some of the top DMAs, but they are every single day. Those are our top. And so we knew that they would work together really well, even though it was going to take some time to get them in market. We plan to have 200 open by the end of 2025. And again, you sort of have to start like this.

You have to start sort of slow in franchising because once you're able to make those first seven to ten locations successful, they become sort of this credibility in order to then scale. Like, these guys got it down. So we took the same approach as it related to our owned and operated. Some franchising concepts don't have their own concepts first. They just start off with franchising. We firmly believe that we needed to show our franchise partners that we knew what we were doing. We also wanted an incubation lab to try things right. This is an evolving marketplace.

And so we wanted to be able to say, you know what, we tried that really not so smart idea in our owned and operated and here's how we optimized it. So this is what you should do. So that was exactly the plan and it's the right one. And it really builds trust with future franchisee partners. It takes a lot to launch franchising if you're going to do it right. And we really firmly believe, I mean, this is our brand. This is our brand that we've been building, investing a ton in, have efficacy behind. All of a sudden a franchisee opens up and you have not supported them.

And somehow that's not only damaging to our integrity, but it's also damaging to our brand. And we're unwilling to have that happen. So putting together really strong processes, testing them out in our owned and operated, and then really doing a very thorough vetting process of people that we award franchises to. I mean, there's a lot of people that want to own a franchise that probably have the money but don't necessarily have the business credibility, the time, the passion to really be some of our initial franchisee partners. It takes a lot. So getting to that Discovery Day, which is what we call really the day of awarding, sometimes takes six, eight months of kind of going back and forth and making sure that they're the right partner for us and that we're the right partner for them. I will tell you, it's like one of the most exciting parts of my job, hands down, because again, this passion just really translates. I talk to our franchisee partners, some of them I talk to weekly, but I certainly am on speed dial for all of them because they took a risk on us and I'm going to show them that we're committed to them.

Actually, our first franchise opens in December, so we've sold about 15, but the first one opens in December and all of it blaine it's a very controlled if you do it right, it is a very controlled plan. We're going to make sure that we're helping you find your real estate, that we are hooking you up with everything that you need to build a successful Pvolve business. We're there with you every step of the way. Training and development of your trainers, training and development of your studio staff, like marketing, presales, like all of it. Yeah, it's really exciting.

It's really cool as a way to find scale. But obviously before that, you need that process in place. You need that trust in place. You can't just have any random person say, oh, I'd like one of these franchises, because they're really representing your brand. Not only that, they're really hitching their wagon to yours. Right? So you need real alignment in terms of does this make sense as a partnership? And then what you're able to provide to them is a great brand with all these different product lines that they can be able to tap into their own community as well as the digital nature of the platform. You already have that infrastructure built out. You have the coursing, they're able to carry that brand through the community.

And then what they're able to get is with all that, they can go and sell into a whole new pocket of new customers that you wouldn't be able to have the time to build out your own operations for. So it really becomes a win win when you find the right partners to run the franchises. Question I would have just for listeners and just for setting context is what is the general agreement for these franchises look like? If someone wants to open a franchise with P Evolve, what is the process? What is the upfront costs? Does it vary by region? How does the whole process work if someone were to open a franchise with you guys?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, if anybody is interested, they can go to our website and it's all mapped out there if you click on the franchise tab. But really to open up a Pvall franchise, it's going to take about $400,000 at minimum to get it up and running. That's not something that you're paying us. That's something that you're investing in your own business. It can also go all the way up to $650,000 depending on where you're opening. Our first location is actually opening in San Diego. And so, as you can imagine, the real estate is different there than it is in Ohio. But I think what's really helpful is that we are a multifaceted omnichannel.

We do have a very strong corporate support system. We're not just a brick and mortar company. We have so much support there. And we also have built in audiences that are waiting for a physical studio to come to their market. As a matter of fact, our first founding members in San Diego, I think almost 90% of them are digital members. So those members are already invested in the method and so they've just been sort of like waiting for their area location to open up. But you have to have a certain amount of investment capabilities and there's a couple of other things that you've got to check the box on. But usually it just starts with putting your name in through our online form and then having our head of sales reach out to you and start the process.

It's very nurturing and incredibly supportive.

No, that's amazing. And then one of the other things that I want to talk about is as you guys continue to grow the business, right, we already said you started with the studios and the content, then you started to bring in the franchises and then you started to open up more product lines, right. So what were some more of the product lines that you started to introduce how were they received? And then you moved beyond just like, fitness products. I know you guys have some a recovery supplement and in the nutrition side of things. So where did these products come along in terms of the business journey? How did they go, how did you develop them, how were they introduced? That sort of thing.

Yeah, so we're incredibly ambitious, that is for sure. And sometimes that is viewed from the company as like, could we focus please? Because it's like we just know we can do all these things. So we certainly have had to learn some lessons. I think the thing that we really gravitated to the most very early on was additional resistance based equipment. And we wanted to really develop proprietary patented equipment because to a certain degree, we are running a business. We were trying to have this mode of distinction. We wanted to make sure that we weren't just this replicatable method that just like anyone could do. We were building this, and we were building this for the long term.

So the next couple of products were really resistance based equipment. We got really clever with the name. So it was the P Ball, then it was the P Band, then it was the P Three. Those are our three patented pieces of equipment. And then we came out with a couple of other products that aren't patented but certainly accelerate the results of this method. Everything from the slant board to foam rollers to massage balls, to this amazing precision mat which helps you to kind of learn our very distinct movements at home. So that, again, was just like listening to the members. But also, I will tell you, it was about us being the customer too.

We all are very active with this method. We're doing it two, three, seven times a week. And so we knew that, okay, the P Ball was really like an all over total body. But as women, we're starting to really like this is a very tough area. Sorry, I'm pointing to my underarm. Like a really tough area. And there's really nothing out there that is targeting was, you know, how we really developed the P band. We have a head of product development that works very closely with our trainers and Rachel.

Her name is Stephanie Weineman and she's a pro in the space and a super fan. So she just is always coming up with the next concept of let's think about that. And then we work know engineers, product developers, all sorts of things just to make sure that there is a ton of function and efficacy behind the product. We actually have a pipeline of product that we could come out with that we sort of slowed ourselves down because we have such great product that we want to make sure that we're not just releasing too premature. I'll tell you though, nutrition has always been something that we knew that you really can't get all of the physical results that you want on movement alone, that it does take a certain discipline around what it is that you're putting into your body. And one of our Cab members, our clinical advisory board members, Dr. Nima, he is a leading researcher, former Harvard, and he helped us, over the course of 18 or 24 months, develop a recovery supplement. So again, it's very specific to our method and it really helps you to recover quicker from daily movement so that you can move without pain each day.

It also is in a clinical study. It also is in the middle of being patented. It is a first to market ingredient mix. It's all like nine amino acids that really help to build lean muscle, but also help your body to truly recover. So that was our first product that we launched earlier this year and not a lot of people have heard us talk about it a lot because, again, it's so awesome. But we also want to really focus on the method and the initial pieces of equipment that you need to sort of believe and then that's when you really want to start to take our recovery drink and so forth and so on. So we were just trying to have additional focus.

Yeah, I think what makes a ton of sense there is that you start with the method and then you start introducing a couple of products and then as you introduce more movement, as you introduce different exercises and it makes sense to develop these products for every part of that customer journey. You can do it with intention and it's not like you're just creating random fitness products willy nilly. They all have intention. They all tie back to the same purpose, which I think is really important as you develop. And then from what gets exciting as you look to the growth of the brand is you have all these different opportunities where you have customer data about what products they're purchasing, what they haven't purchased yet, what routines they're on, what workouts they've done. And you can kind of start matching those together in a lifecycle sense to be able to start crafting different buyer journeys, different customer personas. Is this someone who visits us in the studio? Is this someone who shops with us online? They do our streaming courses. Here's what they have.

And you can really help them fill out the product suite so they're really getting what they want. So I think when it just goes to show that when you're thinking about building a business thoughtfully, that way all of those pieces kind of fall into place as opposed to just forcing and being like, oh, let's randomly create this product and that product and whatever we want. Right?

Yeah, no, definitely. We've always been a data first company. We were actually pretty lucky because we had some enterprise tools very early on. Looker, from a bi tool perspective, a really sophisticated data warehouse. Then we moved to Braze as our CRM tool because we did want really sophisticated segmentation. We are running an app and a desktop streaming service, so we really needed to really understand engagement metrics. And again, exactly to your point, it's not a one size fits all. It isn't.

There's a lot of different ways that you come into our method and there's a lot of different things that she's looking for. I might be looking to tone where somebody else might be looking to lose weight. And it's really about sophisticated onboarding and getting you to the content that's going to make you believe and then build trust from there. Data has always been I'll tell you, it's data and intuition. It really is. Decisions can't just be made on data alone. You have to be critically thinking about the overall business and the state of the world, to be honest. But yeah, we've always been super progressive in terms of our data and the segmentation and the customer journey mapping that we do to make sure that we are satisfying our member.

Yeah, and exactly. Data is not going to tell you how to build out your method and then which products to build on top of that. And then, oh, we want to supplement. Like data is not going to be able to tell you that. But once you've set it up and once you have the vision and everything makes sense under the umbrella, it can really guide you in terms of the next iterations and where to go anyway, as we come up on time here. Julie, first, just wanted to thank you for coming on. Second, wanted to check what are the big initiatives that you guys are going after the rest of this year. I know we're almost up at the end of the year for 2022, but 2023, what are the core initiatives that you guys are looking forward to in the new year?

Yeah, so Franchising is a massive we're going to look to scale that year on year at all compounds. We're focusing a lot on the openings. We'll have about five opening before the end of April, which is huge. That's huge. And really making sure that those initial locations are incredibly successful. We're continuing to do a lot of clinical study work. And then one thing I did not mention when we talk about product development, I talked a little bit about equipment and R Nine. But the thing is that it's about content, too.

And our content is not made overnight. We're coming out with some first to market content we just released. And it's so ironic because Rachel is also she's currently going through egg freezing right now. And I went through IVF for both of my children and we sort of identified that there is no movement solution for women that are going through this. And there's a lot going on in a woman when she's going through infertility or all the things that go along with egg freezing. And so we developed content with our top doctor, that's a fertility doctor that took like eight months. It takes eight months to come out with that, to develop it with doctors to make sure that it is safe. And we just released that.

We released menopause prior to that with our partners over at Electra Health Gosh. We have faith and Function, which is all about the menstrual cycle and the four phases of menstruation pelvic floor and everything you've got to do there. So that is a massive part of who we are. It may not be the reason, Blaine, that you originally come in, and it certainly isn't something that we're trying to inundate everybody with knowing. But it is like, again, when you talk about the mode of distinction and the way that people need to think about fitness differently in their life, that's a massive part of our product development. So we continue to really want to break taboos there and have conversations that women need to hear. So that's another big thing. But we have a lot that we're trying to do and I'm proud of the movement that we're making.

No, it's amazing. And I think there's so many, like we said about the whole functional space of all the things that you're tapping into. For women, it's so cool to be able to develop and make all these different breakthroughs as well as run a crazy business at the same time and open up all these different franchises and scale products and do all the other things that are required in scaling a massive consumer business like this. So anyway, just wanted to thank you for coming on and sharing all these insights. I think we learned a ton today. And for any of our listeners, how can they connect with you? Are you on Twitter, LinkedIn? Is there any email? Is there any easy way to get in touch?

Yeah, I mean, certainly I would love for anybody to get in touch at Julie@pvault.com, but we also rachel is I believe she's like, I can't believe I don't know this. I'm underscore on instagram. I'm underscore Julie Cartwright and Rachel Katzman is? Is, I believe Rachel Katzman. I can't believe I don't know that. I'm so mean. I just know her by Rachel Katzman and I just go straight to her. Can we love to hear and then we obviously are at Pvolve on Instagram too, and please DM us, we respond to every single person that outreaches to us.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Julie. It was great having you on the show and we look forward to see P Valve continue to grow.

Thank you so much for your support.