What is Dojo?
Dojo Mission
A community of people and organizations helping each other on their health journey.
Note
When referring to health, I refer to movement, regeneration (sleep, mental), and nutrition.
Problem
Movement problem
Moving your body is essential to healthy living so you have a high or acceptable quality of life. In most conversations though, it is framed about losing weight, but it is much healthier and helps build longer lasting habits if we focus more on the benefits of moving, and not about weight loss.
World Health Organization recommends to have 30-50 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity (fast walk, run, carry things) or 75-100 minutes of weekly vigorous-intensity physical activity (sports, hard workouts), with a minimum of 30 minutes of basic walking per day (7,000 steps), according to the Mayo Clinic and World Health Organization. If you are looking to lose weight, or improve strength, then much more activity must be added to your daily habits.
But, more than 80% of world's adolescent population is insufficiently physically active. The digital lifestyle exacerbates this problem and creates a wide array of health issues. Humans face the following problems without physical activities, sleep, or healthy nutrition
negatively affects heart, bodies and minds
increases in diseases, depression, anxiety, poor moods
lower thinking, learning and judgement skills
poor growth and development in young people
decrease in life expectancy and quality of life towards end of life
Many fitness and wellness companies such as Peloton and Noom have had some success addressing these issues but for relatively small percentage of the affected population. But, 50-90% of people will start and quit a health routine after 3 months.
Every person has unique needs for their health which is based on on their genetics and lifestyle. Thus, many solutions exist in the market place to meet the different types of needs out there. For movement, the most common are video fitness content to solve the 40+ minute workout. Other solutions include group fitness classes, general fitness clubs, at home workout machines like Peloton, boutique fitness clubs, self prescribed training programs you can get from YouTube, VR games, sports, and the list goes on.
With so many solutions, it seems the space is saturated, but in fact, it's not. It's estimated today the health and wellness space is a $1.5 trillion market, but projected to meet $6.75 trillion market by 2030.
There are no 'one solution fits all' product because people have wide range varying and different needs that are ever evolving with their health goals and lifestyle. This adds to the number of available solutions to fit these different needs.
A quick note on sleep problem
1 in 3 adults do not get enough sleep
2 of 3 adults do not have optimal sleep (REM and deep sleep requirements).
Lack of sleep causes memory issues, mood changes, risk of diabetes, weight gain, poor balance, increase risk of heart disease, lower sex drive, high blood pressure, and weakened immunity, and many more.
A quick note on the nutrition problem
Even with an increase of movement and nutrition solutions, worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975, with about 13% of adults being obese and about 39% of adults being overweight. In America, 41.9% are obese, and 1 in 3 adults are overweight.
46% of US adults have poor quality diet with little fish, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and too much sugar
42% of all calories consumed are from carbohydrates from lower nutritional quality foods such as refined grains and cereals, added sugars and potatoes.
46% of Americans want to eat healthier than they currently are
Nearly $173 billion a year is spent on health care for obesity
Poor nutrition affects people in many ways such as: obesity, tooth decay, high blood pressure and cholesterol, increase in heart disease and stroke, type-2 diabetes, osteoporosis, some cancers, loss in energy and cognitive abilities and many more.
Common problems to live a healthy life style
After speaking with over 100 people, and working in the health and wellness industry for over 10 years, here are the common user pains to start a health and wellness habit.
It's difficult to start and maintain the habit
I don't know what is healthy for me
I don't think about my health
I have no one that holds me accountable
I don't have enough time
I'm healthy enough so I don't need to do anything (when they actually aren't meeting appropriate standard health goals)
Working out is boring or miserable. It's not fun.
I didn't see any change so I quit
I plan to start being healthy soon.
Insight
Community
You are the average of the people and environment you subject yourself to.
Between the wife and I, we each have a healthy routine which re-enforces our healthy habits through our daily interactions with one another. My wife performs 45 minute HIIT and weighted workouts, and I join in because something is already planned out and it's a way to spend time with her. And in return, she enjoys my presence because it motivates her to start the workout, and it's just a lot more fun to work out with someone else. For our meals, I cook and base our diet on meeting required nutrients for the week. It's easier for her to eat what I'm cooking than to cook her own meals, so overall, it reduces cooking time, reduces friction, and solves the problem of what to eat. For sleep, I aim to be in bed by 10:30pm, so we can create a consistent sleep schedule which will give us better quality sleep that in turns gives us higher cognitive ability the next day, reduces long term medical issues from arising, and increases life longevity and vitality. Anytime we aren't in sync with our health journey, it throws one of us off our habits and routines.
I have also worked in health and wellness organizations for over 10 years. Every (most) employees had their healthy habits, which would also motivate each of us to live a healthy life, and witnessing it daily gave everyone new perspectives on how one conducts their health journey and maintain it. On a weekly basis, I would see different pockets of people attend group fitness classes together. I would see pairs of colleagues motivate each other to wake up early to visit new unique fitness classes, or rally people to go after work as an alternative to boozy happy hours. I started a basketball club and organized indoor games every Thursday with a group of 10+ players. Everyone who had an interest in health, had friends to join them, and those who didn't know what to do, could easily jump in and out for what was right for them.
At a larger scale, 50-90% of people who begin a health journey will quit. A typical fitness club has attrition rates of 50%+ annually, with 90% of January joining members quitting within 3 months. But it is shown that people who are engaged in a community atmosphere are likely to stay longer such as in group fitness classes (and my background at Equinox fitness club shows group fitness members attrite less), unique fitness experiences like Spartan races, or boutique fitness concepts like CrossFit, a cross functional fitness community.
When you attend a CrossFit class, you learn and refine skills, workout and compete against faces that become familiar over time, and they often organize friendly event competitions and food and drink events. This highly personal and community driven approach gives people purpose and motivation and knowledge sharing from their peers.
The people and community will begin to shape you, and vice versa. You pick up habits, routines, share knowledge, and multiple perspectives. The community will begin to motivate each other with similar activities and goal types.
The challenge
In the digital age, how might we work together to live healthy so that we can share knowledge, motivate each other, and build healthy habits with engaging experiences?
How to approach this problem
Everyone has unique needs for their health so one size cannot fit all. We also have to assume that people will start and stop healthy activities, and start new ones with different communities.
Thus, Dojo is a collection of connected products, services, and experiences that target different user cohorts to enable them to live healthy, share knowledge and stories, motivate each other on their health journey, and affect their daily lives in tangible ways to re-enforce healthy habits.
These services and experiences will be interconnected so they can leverage each other's momentum, capabilities, and network effects.
Approaches:
The first step is to create one product for a specific cohort of people, and find product market fit through iteration.
Use web3 principles to build the network. See Why Web3 and Dojo
The web3 network will work towards incentivizing users with desired behaviors to maintain and grow this network's values.
Users must become rooted in the community so each member becomes the average of the healthy people they surround themselves with.
The products and services must explore novel ways to create communities beyond message boards and chatrooms, or social media influencer to large non networked audience models.
The community should have members who help one another, and interact socially through games and events to create longstanding bonds.
The products and services do not need to be limited to Dojo products. Dojo should use any means necessary to push the vision that if people surround themselves with others on a health journey, then they too will become more knowledgeable and start or continue their own health journey.
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