The problems with the fitness and wellness industry

Everyone in this industry is selling a body. Almost nobody is selling the life that body was supposed to earn back.

I've sat in enough of these rooms (paid to sit in some of them, honestly) to know the pitch by heart before the deck even opens. Transformation. Journey. Before-after. Bhai, before-after of WHAT exactly? A six-pack doesn't call your mother back. A six-pack doesn't sit with your father on a Sunday and actually listen.

The Products

Everyone is trying to sell subscriptions, plans, a better body. Almost nobody is trying to sell what the person actually walked in wanting.

They wanted their ambitions back, the ones they quietly shelved somewhere between EMIs and a corner-office chair that gives them a bad back instead of a good life.

They wanted a longer connection with their family, not just a longer life. Nobody's dying to add three years to the end if the twenty in the middle were spent too tired to show up.

They wanted quality time. Not "me time" as an Instagram caption, actual unclenched, undistracted, phone-face-down time with people they love.

Improved mental health. Improved productivity. Improved sexual wellness (say it out loud, industry, you're all so scared of this word in the sales deck and so comfortable using "confidence" as the polite substitute). A better social life, one that doesn't dissolve the moment the WhatsApp group goes quiet for a week.

Nobody's selling THAT. Because you can't put THAT on a landing page with a countdown timer and a 20% off badge.

The Costing

Everyone wants a monthly or annual subscription. Fixed, growing MRR, ARR, some poor growth marketer's dashboard turning green because 40,000 people paid ₹499 this month and 38,000 of them will quietly churn by March. Almost nobody is trying to build stickiness that isn't just a renewal reminder email.

Almost nobody is trying to sustain an actual relationship. Or help people through their actual struggles, the ones that don't show up on a BMI scale. Or empower people with support on the specific Tuesday that's actually a bad day, not just send a generic "You've got this! 💪" push notification that lands at 6 AM like a slap.

Almost nobody is supporting ageing parents in learning a reality nobody prepared them for. Or breaking the myth of good food versus bad food, a myth this very industry helped build so it could sell you the "good" version at a markup.

Almost nobody is building a system that makes people feel comfortable around other people, in their own skin, in a room, at a beach, at a wedding where somebody's aunty will definitely comment on their weight anyway.

Almost nobody is building a community where people actually stand by each other. Almost nobody is arranging a real gathering that helps someone see straight through the next ad that's about to guilt them into a purchase. Almost nobody is helping people set a goal that's actually realistic for their actual life, not the life of the fitness model who gets paid to have no job except being photographed at 6% body fat.

The Thing Nobody Puts In The Funnel

Here's the part that should keep every founder in this industry up at night, and it doesn't, because the CAC is looking healthy this quarter.

You cannot subscription your way into someone's trust. You cannot ARR your way into being the reason a person didn't give up in October when the scale didn't move and their knees hurt and their kid had a fever and the WhatsApp group felt like one more thing demanding their attention instead of one thing holding them up.

Trust doesn't renew automatically. It gets earned again every single bad week. And this industry, God bless its performance-marketing heart, has built an entire economy on selling people the FIRST week and quietly hoping they don't need anyone around for the forty that follow.

Sell the subscription. Fine. Business hai, chalta hai.

But build the relationship.

One pays this month's bill. The other is the only reason there's a next year to bill for.

mishrawrites.com