Kids slipped in at 5:59 pm to beat peak pricing. Felipe Apablaza, CEO of Grupo Wellness, turned that into a gym with no membership.

Felipe Apablaza runs DMOOV, a membership club chain in Chile, and Neo, a gym with no membership at all: you pay per visit and the price moves with demand. His co-founder came from airline revenue management. He says 40% of Neo's users were not going to any gym before, which raises the question of who the monthly contract leaves out.

In this conversation:

• Why kids walking in at 5:59 pushed DMOOV towards peak-hour pric
• How a 90-person cap and a twelve-visit ceiling shape what members pay
• Who comes to a gym that has no membership, and what it costs to bring them in
• Why a free app, not the gym, is Neo's acquisition channel
• How he plans to take pay-per-visit into other operators' clubs

Season 2 of Tomorrow Health is sponsored by Zing Coach - every gym member, personally coached.

Chapters:

00:00 Why the monthly contract is wearing out

00:10 Grupo Wellness, Neo and three things to listen for

01:12 Six companies and a sports city

02:25 DMOOV: one price, every training space

03:43 Ten million in revenue, seven from DMOOV

03:57 Why build a second gym brand

04:42 Kids at 5:59 and an airline revenue manager

05:58 What Gen Z does on a gym floor

06:19 Three things Gen Z wants

06:38 Strength, mirrors and DJ nights

07:36 Pay per visit, 90 people at a time

08:41 From 12 to 55 dollars a month

09:03 A 3.50 average check-in, benchmarked on Smart Fit

09:28 13,000 visitors and 40% new to gyms

10:36 Who the 40% are, and what they cost to acquire

11:25 The free app as acquisition channel

12:28 Nine gyms in Chile, then Peru, Colombia and Argentina

12:59 Why the gym itself is a commodity

13:40 How dynamic pricing flattened the peaks

14:53 What changes in Europe and the US

16:05 Building a technology company out of a gym

17:28 Plugging into the CRMs gyms already use

18:17 Why Latin America is a year behind

19:06 Price points decide Latin America

19:57 What the industry gets wrong about technology

20:26 One decision: four visits a month, not twelve

Links:

* Felipe Apablaza on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipeapablaza/

* Neo Plex: https://www.neoplex.cl

* Zing Coach, season sponsor: https://zing.coach/

* Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/

* Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.com

* Get episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribe

* Apply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/

192 clubs, 500,000 members, 19.90 euros a month. FitActive founder Eduardo Montefusco on why the next margin comes from software, not square metres.

A FitActive club costs around a million euros to build today, roughly double what it cost ten years ago, and the membership price has not moved. Montefusco runs 192 clubs across seven countries and owns all or most of every one of them, having stopped signing franchise partners altogether on 1 January 2025.

In this conversation:

• Why the word franchise was never the right one for what he built
• What 51 per cent lets him do in eight days that a franchise agreement does not
• Why his banks wanted him to stop taking partners
• Why 19.90 stays fixed while everything around it gets more expensive
• What he expects AI to do to a retention rate that has already moved from 32 to 38

Season 2 of Tomorrow Health is sponsored by Zing Coach - every gym member, personally coached.

Chapters:

00:00 Why he does not need franchisees

01:09 192 clubs, seven countries, 500,000 members

01:53 Why this is not a franchise, and the eight-day clause

03:59 Why partners open a second club

05:27 What a single club costs to build

06:31 Stopping franchising, and what the banks wanted

07:24 Breakeven at 2.1 members per square metre

08:44 Retention at 38 per cent and the AI bet

10:53 Costs doubled, revenue did not

11:53 Selling more to the same member

12:33 What travels to Spain and Brazil

13:50 Where the company goes in five years

14:26 Two tax regimes and a distorted market

15:56 The one decision he would make this quarter

Links:

• Eduardo Montefusco on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eduardo-montefusco-53155521/
• FitActive: https://www.fitactive.it/
• Zing Coach, season sponsor: https://zing.coach/
• Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/
• Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.com
• Get episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribe
• Apply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/

A gym is a database. Elaine Jobson, CEO of BeWell Brands and Jetts Fitness, on why Gen Z is rewriting the budget-gym model.

Elaine Jobson led the management buyout of Jetts Fitness in 2022, then built BeWell Brands on top of it: a franchise house that runs the same franchise engine across gym, recovery and group-exercise brands.

On her count, Jetts runs 130 gyms in Australia and about 200 overall, with clubs in the UK, the Netherlands and now India. She puts the group at well over 100 million dollars in revenue, and says it is not even halfway.

Her argument is that Gen Z, now the majority of new members on her numbers, wants a gym worth filming from every angle and will pay a bit more for it. The big budget chains, she says, can only change at the pace of their refurbishment cycles.

She also explains why Jetts runs no contracts at all, why she will not put water into a gym nobody staffs overnight, and which market she is looking at for the first time.

🧠 What you will hear:

• Why the membership system holds almost all the IP of a gym
• How Jetts changes around 30% of its concept from Delhi to London
• What never changes, and how she takes the word love to a boardroom
• Why she says contracts only help the business, and what she does instead
• What makes the US interesting for the first time
• Why the budget chains will struggle to keep up with Gen Z
• What the industry gets wrong about unit numbers

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00 A gym is effectively a database

00:11 Jetts, BeWell and three things to listen for

01:09 More products on the same shelf

02:16 Jetts, O-Studio and Fitesque by the numbers

03:22 Why franchise

03:33 Over 100 million and not halfway

03:49 Where the franchisee's dollar goes

04:26 The tech stack behind a 24-hour gym

05:09 Why every CEO loses sleep over security

06:01 HYROX: a trend more than an innovation

06:32 Why Jetts is not bleeding edge

07:11 No water in a gym nobody staffs

08:26 What changes between Delhi, London and Australia

10:04 The 70% that never changes

10:22 How to measure love in a boardroom

11:15 A Net Promoter Score that never dips

11:59 Contracts only help the business

13:19 Members who leave and come back

14:21 The Middle East, and the US for the first time

14:48 Gen Z is the majority of new members

15:48 Accessible premium versus the budget chains

16:50 Filmability in a design brief

17:45 Why HVLP is not going anywhere

18:25 Social strength

19:23 Why budget chains can't move fast enough

20:00 The obsession with unit numbers

20:51 One decision: how much to invest in AI

🌐 Links:

• Elaine Jobson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaine-jobson-72a8a33
• BeWell Brands: https://www.bewellbrands.com.au/
• Jetts Fitness: https://www.jetts.com.au/
• Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karbasova/
• Tomorrow Health: https://tomorrow-health.com
• Get episode alerts: https://tomorrow-health.com/#subscribe
• Apply to join FitTech Club: https://fittechclub.com/

This episode is sponsored by Zing.Coach: Every member, personally coached. Learn more: https://zing.coach/