You don’t remember the tech.⁣⁣ You remember 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣

These lines ring true for any business. I’ve heard really good directors like Tarantino and Nolan speak to this too.

I’ve heard the same from great chefs. You can weave a terrific story about ingredients and agonising over slow cooking etc etc but the food has to taste good. 

Overwrought, undercooked, over seasoned, over-written, characters not-fleshed out. There are many many things charisma, technology, story telling, marketing, hype and publicity cannot make up for. 

There has to be substance. This is true in every industry. 

I will never forget a gym that was coming up at the start of my career in 2012. It had terrific flooring. A very good layout. An Ivanko barbell. Agassi-Reyes gym equipment that was well put together by someone from Taiwan. They hosted a variety of classes. They tried hiring coaches that coached actors and socialites (i refuse to use the disgusting term : celebrity trainer).

It was slick. Madras had not seen anything like it ever. And it went broke in 2 years. 

I can only speculate why they went broke. But I am willing to bet that none of that flash and bang made any difference to a client trying to train. The service had no substance. And it was no different from any gym floor that came before. Which is to say it was not fun.

And this remains the case. Very few people describe going to the gym as fun, enjoyable and fuilfiling. They can’t tell why their quality of life is better or how they feel stronger. And that’s a failure of intelligence and imagination for my industry.