The Biggest Challenge HUMN Will Face Before Opening

People often assume the hardest part of building a company like HUMN will be raising capital, finding the right location, managing construction, or building a team. Those are all real challenges and they’re complex, time consuming, and expensive. They demand planning, execution, and constant problem solving and none of them are trivial. But there’s another challenge that’s been creeping up in my mind that I can’t seem to figure out at the moment…

The biggest challenge HUMN will face before opening has nothing to do with equipment, design, or programming. It has everything to do with how the market decides to understand us before we ever have the chance to define ourselves. Once people place you in a category, it becomes very hard to move them out of it, and categories shape far more than most founders realize.

The Risk of Being Labeled Too Early

If someone hears about HUMN and immediately thinks “gym,” a very specific framework shows up in their mind. They think about price, amenities, equipment, crowded floors, promotions, contracts, and location. That framing becomes the lens through which every future decision is evaluated, whether they realize it or not.

They’ll compare us to what already exists and anchor on the most familiar reference points. They’ll ask how busy it gets at five thirty in the evening and how we compare to other facilities nearby. They won’t ask whether they belong here, whether this place supports the life they’re trying to build, or whether this environment helps them become who they’re trying to be. Once the market decides you’re “just a gym,” the conversation becomes transactional and transactional businesses are hard to differentiate, hard to defend, and hard to scale with real pricing power.

I always look back on my tech days when the hardware world became so commoditized and it was just a race to the bottom. Who can be the cheapest?

Features Don’t Build Brands

I don’t want HUMN to be understood through features. I don’t want to lead with equipment lists, recovery modalities, square footage, or class schedules, even though those things matter. Features create comparisons, and comparisons create price sensitivity.

I’ve learned over time that things don’t move people, meaning does. There’s a quote by Simon Sinek I come back to often, that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. I think about that constantly as we design HUMN, not just what services we’ll offer, but why they exist and how they tie back to our beliefs, values, and purpose.

Because that’s where connection actually happens. If HUMN becomes a list of services, we’ll compete on price and amenities. If HUMN becomes a place people associate with identity, growth, and community, we’ll compete on something much harder to replicate, and much more valuable to protect.

The Difference Between a Company and a Brand

I still think about something we learned in business school often, the idea of people, process, and technology. Process and technology are replicable, but people are not. Anyone can buy similar equipment, copy a layout, license software, or replicate programming.

What cannot be replicated is leadership, culture, judgment, and the way people are curated inside a system. That’s where brands are actually built, not through logos or taglines, but through lived experience. Your brand is not your color palette or your typography, it’s what you make people feel when they walk into your space and when they leave it.

Those feelings come from how clean the space is, how people are greeted (remembering names), how problems are handled, how consistent the experience is, and how leaders show up. I’ve always said I will create a safe and welcoming space for everyone. That’s operational work, not marketing work. A company is something you transact with, but a brand is something you believe in, and belief is what creates loyalty, retention, and long term value.

The Naming and Category Problem

So what do I actually call this thing? A gym, a club, a wellness center, a performance space, a third space. Does everyone even know what a third space is?

Do I create a word and teach people what it means, or do I choose a word people already understand and slowly redefine it through experience. Right now, “club” is the word that stands out the most, not because it’s perfect, but because it suggests belonging, continuity, and identity. It implies something you’re part of, not something you visit occasionally.

But even that feels incomplete because what we’re really trying to build isn’t a place to work out, it’s a place where people come to become who they’re trying to be. That’s not a gym category, and it’s not coworking or recovery either. It feels closer to life infrastructure, but I’m careful with language like that because when you try to sound visionary too early, you lose credibility.

Why This Matters More Than Almost Anything Else

This isn’t a branding problem, it’s an economic one. If HUMN is framed as a gym, we compete on price, equipment, promotions, location, and amenities, which leads to low pricing power, high churn, short lifetime value, and fragile differentiation. If HUMN is framed as a club or identity space, we compete on belonging, outcomes, community, status, and long term transformation, which leads to retention, pricing power, organic growth, and defensible positioning.

That difference shows up directly in unit economics, valuation, investor confidence, and long term enterprise value. This is why I’m thinking about this now, before the market labels us for me. Once a label sticks, it’s very hard to change, and early labels tend to shape a company for years longer than founders expect.

If I get this wrong, HUMN will still open and people will still join. The business might even do well but it will become another premium facility in a crowded market, competing on features instead of meaning. If I get this right, something very different happens and people won’t describe HUMN by what it has, they’ll describe it by what it changed.

Where I’d Love Input

This is the part I’m still working through and it’s the part I’m most curious about hearing perspectives on. When you imagine a place that combines training, recovery, workspace, and community, what category does that actually belong in.

Is this a gym, a club, a wellness center, a third space, or something that doesn’t quite exist yet? Do you think it’s better to use language people already understand and redefine it over time, or create something new and let behavior teach the market what it means.

Because the category we choose will shape who shows up, how long they stay, and what HUMN ultimately becomes and I’m convinced this decision will matter more than almost any piece of equipment we buy or any wall we build.