The Drip Bar CEO Explains Why This Business Model Works | Ben Crosbie

The Drip Bar CEO Explains Why This Business Model Works | Ben Crosbie

The wellness category is moving fast, and most operators are being told to chase the next modality without anyone showing them how to make the math work. Ben Crosbie sees this business the way the people who listen to this show do: as a P&L, not a press release. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity operators who want the honest unit economics behind IV therapy and the longevity wave before they bet on it. Today on The Owner Seat Podcast, host Albert Ramos sits down with Ben Crosbie, CEO of The DRIPBaR and a franchise builder who grew and exited more than 500 Tapout Fitness locations, and goes behind the economics of building a longevity brand: * How to think about a single DRIPBaR location as a P&L, and the levers that decide whether it prints money or just survives * How to protect contribution margin per visit on a high-touch, nurse-delivered service while keeping the price where members come back * The opportunity a fragmented industry creates for a brand with real infrastructure, and how to be the consolidator instead of the consolidated Ben Crosbie is the CEO of The DRIPBaR, one of the most recognized names in IV therapy and wellness, and a franchise builder first. He is the founder of ZOR411, a franchise development company, and before The DRIPBaR he founded Tapout Fitness, where he secured the global rights to the TapouT brand and grew it through more than 500 franchise locations across 11 countries before exiting in 2019. He sits on the Leadership Advisory Board of the American IV Association and came up through franchising, real estate, and fitness, with a degree in kinesiology and nutrition. Under his leadership The DRIPBaR has moved past hydration into NAD+, peptides like Sermorelin, hormone support, and the longevity services shaping the next decade of wellness. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity owners, franchisees, and multi-unit operators who are tired of: * Chasing new services that get commoditized in months, not years * Watching contribution margin erode on every high-touch visit * Pricing pressure as the hot molecules get cheaper and more available * Building something that gets consolidated instead of doing the consolidating Top topics we cover * The franchise builder's lesson: what building and exiting 500+ Tapout locations taught Ben about what actually makes a location profitable, not just sellable * The levers inside a single DRIPBaR P&L, and how to protect margin per visit * Memberships versus walk-ins, and what a healthy recurring-revenue mix looks like for predictable cash flow * Utilization across fixed chairs and fixed nurse hours, and what moving that number does to the economics * Where the real demand and margin are heading in NAD+, peptides, hormone support, and longevity over the next three to five years * Staying on the right side of pricing pressure as the GLP-1 wave resets the metabolic category How this episode helps you win If you're a single-studio owner: you'll learn the levers inside a location P&L and how to keep a member past the first 90 days. If you're a multi-unit operator: you'll get a clear read on utilization, recurring revenue, and how to price new services so you stay ahead of the curve. If you're weighing acquisitions or outside capital: you'll hear what has to be true in a location's economics before planting the flag in a new market, and where the consolidation opportunity sits. If you're a franchisor or emerging brand: you'll learn how to build the infrastructure that lets you consolidate a fragmented industry instead of getting consolidated by it. Work with Albert, Fractional CFO for Fitness and Wellness I'm Albert Ramos, Founder of STRATEGO Intel Consulting and host of The Owner Seat. 16+ years of P&L ownership at Life Time Inc. (NYSE: LTH), Gold's Gym, and 24 Hour Fitness. I help fitness, wellness, and longevity brands ($500K to $30M) build cash visibility, unit economics, pricing and utilization models, and capital planning so every decision is clean and defensible. Book a CFO Strategy Call: https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast [https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast] Subscribe to The Owner Seat newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328 [https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328] Website: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com] Connect with Albert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/] More from The Owner Seat New episodes every Monday and Friday at 8:00am CST. Full library: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast] STRATEGO Intel: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com]

The Wellness Robot Is In The U.S.: Meet RoboSculptor | Elena Kormilina | The Owner Seat

Every operator in fitness and wellness is being told the same thing right now: add recovery, add longevity, add the next modality. Almost nobody tells them how to make the math work. Elena Kormilina lives at exactly that intersection, where a brand-new technology has to turn into a real business an operator can actually run. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity operators weighing a capital-heavy modality and wanting the honest unit economics before they sign. Today on The Owner Seat Podcast, host Albert Ramos sits down with Elena Kormilina, Head of Product Strategy and Commercialization at roboSculptor, the Dubai-based company building AI-powered robotic body therapy for wellness businesses, and goes behind the economics of recovery on demand: * How robotics changes the math on a treatment that used to need an hour of skilled labor, and where it still doesn't pencil * What utilization and pricing actually have to hold at for the published per-unit revenue numbers to be real and not a best-case headline * What has to be true in the numbers before a hardware company can raise real capital and scale the rollout Elena Kormilina is the Head of Product Strategy and Commercialization at roboSculptor, where her craft is translation: taking complex health-tech and turning it into something operators, investors, and customers actually understand and adopt. Before roboSculptor she spent a decade at Profile Products, growing a region from $50,000 to $1.7 million and building distributor networks across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, opening new markets like Turkey and Mongolia. She holds an MBA in finance and thinks about a product the way a CFO thinks about a P&L. At roboSculptor she helped reposition the product from a niche aesthetics tool to a recovery and wellness platform built for gyms, hotels, spas, recovery centers, and longevity clinics, evolving the vibrocompression method behind Beautylizer into a full-body, AI-driven system that scans the body and selects the protocol. She helped take the install base from around 15 units to roughly 100, grew revenue about six times, and carried the company to a first investor soft commitment. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity owners, franchisees, and multi-unit operators who are tired of: * Being pushed to add the next modality with no P&L to back the decision * Headline per-unit revenue numbers that fall apart the moment you check the utilization assumption * Treatments that need an hour of skilled labor and never pencil out * Buying a trend they regret instead of a durable shift in demand Top topics we cover * The commercializer's lesson: the gap between a product that's technically great and one that actually sells and scales * How robotics extends capacity without adding headcount, and how to read that on the P&L * The real per-unit economics behind the published $200,000-a-year-at-60%-usage figure * Why retention and repeat visits, not the first wow, tell you a location truly works * The shift from a big upfront hardware sale to a rental model, and what it does to operator economics and cash flow * What changes in pricing, model, and partnerships when crossing from the UAE into the US How this episode helps you win If you're a single-studio owner: you'll get an honest framework for whether a capital-heavy modality actually pencils at your traffic and pricing. If you're a multi-unit operator: you'll learn how to extend capacity without adding labor and how to read utilization before you replicate. If you're weighing acquisitions or outside capital: you'll hear what a hardware company has to prove in the numbers before raising, and how a rental model reshapes the risk. If you're a franchisor or emerging brand: you'll learn how to tell a durable demand shift from a trend, and where to focus a product that could go everywhere. Work with Albert, Fractional CFO for Fitness and Wellness I'm Albert Ramos, Founder of STRATEGO Intel Consulting and host of The Owner Seat. 16+ years of P&L ownership at Life Time Inc. (NYSE: LTH), Gold's Gym, and 24 Hour Fitness. I help fitness, wellness, and longevity brands ($500K to $30M) build cash visibility, unit economics, pricing and utilization models, and capital planning so every decision is clean and defensible. Book a CFO Strategy Call: https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast [https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast] Free STRATEGO CFO Playbook: https://bit.ly/owner-seat-cfo-playbook [https://bit.ly/owner-seat-cfo-playbook] Subscribe to The Owner Seat newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328 [https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328] Website: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com] Connect with Albert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/] More from The Owner Seat New episodes every Monday and Friday at 8:00am CST. Full library: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast] STRATEGO Intel: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com]

He Built Brands for L'Oréal and Honda, Then Bet on His Own | Jonathan Singer | The Owner Seat

Most founders fall in love with their product. The best ones fall in love with the experience their customer actually has, then build the business around it. Jonathan Singer spent 25 years doing exactly that for some of the biggest brands in the world, and now he's doing it for himself with The Red Light Wellness Company. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity operators who have to make the experience sing and make the math work at the same time. Today on The Owner Seat Podcast, host Albert Ramos sits down with Jonathan Singer, a 25-year brand experience veteran and Founder and CEO of The Red Light Wellness Company in Miami Beach, and goes behind the build of Redwell: * How to deliver professional-grade red light therapy at prices regular people can afford without crushing the margin * What the unit economics of a single flagship have to prove before you replicate it across cities * Why community, not equipment, is the part of the model a competitor can't just buy Jonathan Singer has been engineering brand experiences since 1999. He started at McCann, launched GMR Marketing's Canadian business and had it profitable in its first year working with brands like Royal Bank, L'Oréal, Unilever, Nokia, and Honda, then founded JSEM, Jonathan Singer Experience Marketing, where he helped pioneer the experiential agency landscape in North America. He went on to run brand experience at Subnation across gaming, fashion, and entertainment, and led the global brand experience practice at Winston Francois. He has served on the board of the LASD Foundation and is a McGill graduate. Today he is Founder and CEO of The Red Light Wellness Company, built to take professional-grade red light therapy out from behind premium price tags and make it accessible to regular people who want to take control of their healthspan, guided by his operating philosophy of Cultural Currency and the five C's: Culture, Connection, Community, Conversion, and Commerce. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity owners, franchisees, and multi-unit operators who are tired of: * Building a brand that generates buzz but never turns attention into real revenue * Watching mission and margin pull against each other inside the same business * Concepts that get copied the day after they start working * Funding a physical, early-stage build without knowing what investors actually need to see Top topics we cover * The agency P&L lesson: what running a profitable business that early teaches you about the gap between a brand that looks good and one that actually makes money * Premium quality at accessible prices, and how to solve that tension without gutting contribution margin * Membership versus per-visit pricing, and what healthy utilization and recurring revenue look like for a red light studio * Where AI actually lowers cost to serve or lifts margin, versus just sounding good in a pitch * Cultural Currency and the five C's, and how community moves retention, lifetime value, and customer acquisition cost * What has to be true in the systems and the numbers before you hand the model to an operator in another city How this episode helps you win If you're a single-studio owner: you'll learn what your first location has to prove before you spend a dollar replicating it. If you're a multi-unit operator: you'll get a clear read on what makes a model survivable across cities and where the leadership depth has to sit. If you're weighing acquisitions or outside capital: you'll hear what investors actually need to see before they'll back a single-location proof of concept. If you're a franchisor or emerging brand: you'll learn how to protect the experience and the margin as you add locations, and what makes the business valuable instead of just busy. Work with Albert, Fractional CFO for Fitness and Wellness I'm Albert Ramos, Founder of STRATEGO Intel Consulting and host of The Owner Seat. 16+ years of P&L ownership at Life Time Inc. (NYSE: LTH), Gold's Gym, and 24 Hour Fitness. I help fitness, wellness, and longevity brands ($500K to $30M) build cash visibility, unit economics, pricing and utilization models, and capital planning so every decision is clean and defensible. Book a CFO Strategy Call: https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast [https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast] Subscribe to The Owner Seat newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328 [https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328] Website: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com] Connect with Albert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/] More from The Owner Seat New episodes every Monday and Friday at 8:00am CST. Full library: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast] STRATEGO Intel: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com]

How InLife Wellness Makes Sure Your Margin Doesn't Disappear | Scott Caplelin | The Owner Seat

Most people who buy a business end up buying themselves a job. The studio works when they are in the room and stalls the minute they step out. Scott Capelin spent 20 years learning why that happens and how to build the opposite. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity owners who want a studio that holds its margin and keeps running without them standing in the doorway. Today on The Owner Seat Podcast, host Albert Ramos sits down with Scott Capelin, Founder and CEO of inLIFE Wellness and a former multi-unit operator who sold all 5 of his Vision Personal Training locations in 2011, and goes behind the inLIFE Wellness model: * Why two owners run the exact same systems and the exact same pricing and land in completely different places * What it actually takes for a studio to keep its revenue when a key instructor walks out the door * The few numbers Scott tells every owner to read on Monday morning Scott Capelin is the Founder and CEO of inLIFE Wellness, where he helps everyday people open and operate Pilates-inspired studios with full support from day one. Before inLIFE, Scott spent over a decade as a multi-unit franchise owner running 5 Vision Personal Training locations across Australia and New Zealand, then sold every one of them in 2011. He has logged more than 30,000 hours training clients face to face, built Tribe Social Fitness after studying the top fitness models in the world, and learned brand-building from Anne McKevitt. He is an international Number 1 best-selling author of Fit to Flourish and inShape, inLove, inSPIRED!, runs the inLIFE Wellness School of Pilates and Group Exercise Certification, and was recently named one of Entrepreneur Mirror's Top 10 Visionary Leaders Driving Global Change. This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity owners, franchisees, and multi-unit operators who are tired of: * Owning a studio that only works when they are physically in it * Watching margin disappear into line items they never priced for * Revenue that depends on a constant churn of new members instead of retention * Building something for years that they could never actually sell Top topics we cover * The multi-unit P&L lesson: what running 5 locations at once teaches you about unit economics that you only see when the whole P&L is on your desk * Where the margin actually lives in a low-impact studio model, and the one line item new owners underestimate every single time * Instructor quality versus the system: which one really drives retention and contribution margin * The four questions Scott uses to separate a real business from a job that just looks like one * The Monday-morning numbers every owner should read every week * Building for the exit: what most owners fail to put in place that quietly caps their valuation How this episode helps you win If you're a single-studio owner: you'll know which numbers to read every Monday and where to find the margin you're leaving on the table. If you're a multi-unit operator: you'll get a clear test for whether your locations run on systems or on your adrenaline, and how to take yourself out of the room. If you're weighing acquisitions or outside capital: you'll hear how Scott thinks about the capital you put in and the realistic return and timeline before you sign. If you're a franchisor or emerging brand: you'll learn what has to be true in your financials and systems before you sell a single license, so you're scaling a proven model and not hope. Work with Albert, Fractional CFO for Fitness and Wellness I'm Albert Ramos, Founder of STRATEGO Intel Consulting and host of The Owner Seat. 16+ years of P&L ownership at Life Time Inc. (NYSE: LTH), Gold's Gym, and 24 Hour Fitness. I help fitness, wellness, and longevity brands ($500K to $30M) build cash visibility, unit economics, pricing and utilization models, and capital planning so every decision is clean and defensible. Book a CFO Strategy Call: https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast [https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcast] Free STRATEGO CFO Playbook: https://bit.ly/owner-seat-cfo-playbook [https://bit.ly/owner-seat-cfo-playbook] Subscribe to The Owner Seat newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328 [https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328] Website: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com] Connect with Albert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/] More from The Owner Seat New episodes every Monday and Friday at 8:00am CST. Full library: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcast] STRATEGO Intel: https://www.StrategoIntel.com [https://www.StrategoIntel.com]

From One Studio to an Eight-Figure Exit: What I Learned Building, Scaling, & Selling a Business

Most operators think they're building a business. The best ones are building an asset. This episode is the difference between the two, told by someone who scaled to 40 locations and sold to private equity twice before she had fully separated which one she'd built. If you run a fitness, wellness, or longevity brand and you've never stopped to ask whether your company could survive without you, this is the conversation that forces the question.Today on The Owner Seat Podcast, host Albert Ramos sits down with Kristie Shifflette, the founder who built the Orangetheory Fitness Area Developer platform OT Growth Partners from a single studio into a 40-location enterprise, and goes behind the climb:How she funded location one with a $700K SBA loan and a personal guarantee, then funded the rest from cash flow instead of outside capitalWhy she turned down the highest offer on the table in 2018, and what a retrade setup actually looks like from the insideThe Founder Absorption Effect she lived through, where the business you build to create freedom quietly becomes the thing that owns youKristie Shifflette is the Founder and CEO of OT Growth Partners, the Orangetheory Fitness Area Developer platform she launched from a single studio in North Carolina in 2013. She grew it to 40 locations across North Carolina, Indiana, and Iowa with more than 500 employees. By the time she was running ten studios, her locations averaged $1.5M in annual revenue at a 40 percent net margin. In 2018 she went to market with 13 owned locations, sold 70 percent to Kian Capital, rolled 30 percent into the new entity, and went straight back to work running acquisitions toward a full exit. Today she's a Restore Hyper Wellness franchise owner in the Raleigh-Durham market and Founding CEO of PrismLife, a health innovation company built around Food as Medicine and functional nutrition for kids, young athletes, and families.This episode is for fitness, wellness, and longevity owners, franchisees, and multi-unit operators who are tired of:Running hard with no idea whether they're building equity or just buying themselves a jobHearing the highlight reel from people who sold, and never the real cost of the climbGuessing at what a PE process looks like until they're already across the table mid-dealAdding location count while unit economics quietly erode underneath themTop topics we coverThe single-studio start: a $700K SBA loan, a personal guarantee, and profitability inside 90 days using the Orangetheory 12-week presaleThe path from location three to location ten that produced $1.5M average revenue and 40 percent net marginsThe 2018 Kian Capital recapitalization: 15 to 20 buyer meetings, the offer she walked away from, and the $1M she negotiated back into the dealLife inside a PE-backed company: reporting cadence, financial discipline, and the autonomy you trade away when you stay on as operatorThe Founder Absorption Effect, and the moment that snapped her out of itBuilding again with PrismLife, this time with the operator awareness she didn't have the first timeHow this episode helps you winIf you're a single-studio owner: you'll hear how the terms of your first deal are set years early, inside the unit economics you build or ignore today.If you're a multi-unit operator: you'll see what breaks between 13 and 40 locations so you can build ahead of it instead of paying to fix it after the fact.If you're weighing acquisitions or outside capital: you'll learn how to spot a retrade, hold your number, and separate the emotional weight of a sale from the financial logic.If you're a franchisor or emerging brand: you'll get the franchisee's real view of the relationship from someone who built and exited a 40-unit platform before sitting on the other side of it.Work with Albert, Fractional CFO for Fitness and WellnessI'm Albert Ramos, Founder of STRATEGO Intel Consulting and host of The Owner Seat. 16+ years of P&L ownership at Life Time Inc. (NYSE: LTH), Gold's Gym, and 24 Hour Fitness. I help fitness, wellness, and longevity brands ($500K to $30M) build cash visibility, unit economics, pricing and utilization models, and capital planning so every decision is clean and defensible.Book a CFO Strategy Call: https://calendly.com/albertramosjr-strategointel/youtube-podcastSubscribe to The Owner Seat newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7288029005239267328Website: https://www.StrategoIntel.comConnect with Albert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertramosjr/More from The Owner SeatNew episodes every Monday and Friday at 8:00am CST.Full library: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOwnerSeatPodcastSTRATEGO Intel: https://www.StrategoIntel.com