Andrea Baggio of MILANIMAL
Andrea Baggio of MILANIMAL
Starting MILANIMAL from nothing and working for a grande-sized future. Professor Baggio speaks about his community-first micro gym business and doing business in Italy today. Interesting Interview #3.
Visit Andrea’s instagram, the Milanimal instagram and all their links here.
If you are in Milano, go try them out either for Jiu Jitsu classes or CrossFit.
Today I will be talking with Professor Andrea Baggio, Jiu Jitsu Black Belt under Federico Tisi and one of the pioneers of the sport in Italy.
Andrea is building MILANIMAL with a community-first strategy and carries authenticity and vision with him wherever he goes. Let’s move straight to the interview and see what he has to say about his goals with MILANIMAL, being an entrepreneur in Italy and our changing ethics in modernity.
A lot of things are happening in Italy and in politics these days. Could you share your views on the matter?
There are 3 things that I would like to say about politics. The very first one is super easy; in democracy you have a mean to express your preference. And the way you vote here in Italy doesn’t allow you to express a very clear preference.
Second, the things that can really improve our lives are not included in the real program because nobody can avoid sending weapons to Ukraine. And just to clarify my ideas; anything that can really change the status quo is out of any program in politics.
I mentioned Ukraine because my main goal as regards Ukraine is peace. To make peace you need to talk with your enemy, and you have to sit down with them. There is no way in making peace by asking for more money or sending more money.
The third thing I want to say is, I don’t think that politics is the real problem. We always focus on politics and politicians that can find a solution because in a real democracy they can represent us. But I think that they really represent us, they get worse because we get worse and worse.
The problem is more related to the ethical side than the political side. I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday and I was saying:
None of our grandfathers would have accepted a humiliation for money, none. But we do it every day to get more and more money, to move forward in a business career.
I think about Ray Dalio’s Principles. We need principles, we have to work on top of them and as soon as we get the real principles we can fix anything else. The political side, the economical side…
I think it’s incredible what you’re saying and the example that you described that the generations before us, they had principles and ethics, and that money and “success” was not the main objective.
They wanted to live a life of virtue, not achieve success. And today, those that want to control us sell us the dream of success, and we accept it.
What do you think about Meloni as a far-right Italian Prime Minister?
I want to be very clear. First, only 26% of the population voted for Meloni. It is a very small percentage, so I don’t think that Giorgia Meloni represents Italy.
But, in any way, I think that politics right now are more related to advertising campaigns and slogans than to true values. I can’t see any difference from a political speech and a commercial.
They use a very poor language; they use simple quotes and that’s because they speak to a large number of people.
If you are intelligent but you want to be a part of a huge mass, the huge mass can respond only to simple commands. So you have to slow down your pace, I can’t see people talking about politics with a critical mindset. That is what you need to analyse the situation. We can see the same situation from different points of view.
We can use different means to find a solution, but if you don’t have the right spirit to face the problem and you work with only quotes and sentences, then I can’t see the benefit to that.
I’m ready to speak with people that think the opposite of what I think. I would give my reasons, they would give theirs. But if you don’t want to explain the whole story, it’s just a commercial.
Today, I can’t see any difference between the left and the right - they speak in the same way. It seems that they see the status quo from different points of view but when you don’t accept any dialogue and criticism, it’s the same!
Do you see a world, when we are a bit older, that the EU will break apart or be different?
I think people will be different. What I say is related to possessions and money. We grew up in a culture where owning things has a value. You have to own your apartment, house and car. You have to show the people that you have a beautiful car and a beautiful place to say.
This will not be the same for Miguel (Andrea’s son). He is growing up in a system where culture and experience has more value than owning things. If I have to choose between an experience and a toy, I take my son to have a good experience, to travel, to see things.
There is more of this sharing culture than before. I think that as far as ethics and culture is concerned, something will change and I am positive. It will change in a good way.
But I don’t know what will happen with the EU, I usually say that - People stay together for two reasons, when they are nothing or when they have a common goal. I can’t see a common goal for people in the EU. There are countries that are trying to steal from others in the EU.
How do you say solidarity in Italian?
Solidarietà! There is no solidarity. I can’t even see solidarity in my own country. If I send my son to a public school in Milan he will eat for free, but if I send him to a public school in the souther part of Italy, what I pay in taxes is not enough to pay for his food - so he has to bring food from home.
The same family in two different cities gets different things. We are moving back to the middle ages where luck plays a very important role.
Do you see poverty going up in Italy?
Yes. It’s very clear because prices are rising and you can’t see our salaries growing in the last 10-15 years. They are not growing. So the struggle is real when you go to buy food, which is not a luxury thing. But it will be a luxury to eat healthy foods. If you want to eat premium foods you have to spend a lot of money, unless you live in the countryside.
But even with all these difficulties you are an active business man and you don’t stop.
But I am super lucky. I think that luck plays a really important role. I grew up in Milan, I know everybody here - and it’s the only place in Italy where you can really run a business. Outside Milan everything is going down slowly.
Being a business man in a country full of bureaucracy is super hard. You don’t have a list of things to do - if you want to open a cafeteria in Athens or Milan it will be hard. Why? Because you discover along the process that you have different things to do.
That is the struggle for a business man - I think that despite this aspect that is real in Italy and in Milan too, in Milan you have a lot of enthusiasm related to business and making money and trading etc.
“MILANIMAL is not only a brand but it’s something really concrete “
So I was super lucky, despite the pandemic I could open the second gym and I am planning to open a small network in Milan. I will start raising money from investors in a few months.
What’s the vision you have for the brand and the network?
First of all, the MILANIMAL business model is a community-based business model. I am not selling a service, I am packing people. It’s something different. If you put together people that are similar, you can sell services and products.
To give you an example, if I compare the numbers of MILANIMAL and the numbers of the first 5 groups in Europe - the churn rate of MILANIMAL is very very low.
The service is super good. By the way, we make 15% of our revenue from merchandise1. If you go to a Virgin Active gym you will never ever buy a t-shirt.
And the people that come here, they like the same thing.
So, my business model is to create a brand that is going to be strong in the hard fitness system, and sell the people anything they need. Services, products, anything.
So you are a community-first, Jiu Jitsu gym?
I usually say hard fitness. Hard fitness is something related to sport; sport-oriented, micro-gyms and hard fitness. These are the words I use. We want to open sport-oriented micro gyms.
What about the size of the gyms you are looking to create?
It comes from anthropology, real communities are from 100 to 200 people, no more than that. You have to create a space where no more than 250 members live in a good condition. So no more than that, that is the proper size of a microgym.
And you have 600 now in 2 locations?
Yes, and opening a third. But I am growing super fast, we are going back to the old numbers (pre-Covid) super fast. I see that people wanted to go back to their sports habits as soon as possible.
Have you thought about the structure you will use to raise money from investors?
I am still super skeptical in having clients and investors at the same time, because it can make a fracture inside the mast that I am moving. I don’t want to create the “Champions League” of clients that become investors and are differentiated from the other clients.
And my main goal is not to make the company grow, it’s to learn. I want to be surrounded by challenging and smart people, I don’t care about my pay check.
This is my main investment, I want to learn.
Do you know how much money you need to raise?
I don’t need a lot of money. To tell you truth, if I would discover 1,000,000 euros in my bank account, it would be too much for the next stage. I believe in the step-by-step philosophy.
I don’t believe in the huge leap, I think that to open 2 more gyms and give more structure to the company like hiring more skilled profile professionals; anything from 350,000 to 500,000 euros is enough.
I see that you spend a lot of time on content creation, consistently, what is your philosophy and strategy with that?
First of all, 10% of what I have is for working on top of the brand - Antonia is in charge of working of top of the brand.
But I want to say that I am in love with people. I always say that:
I am good in numbers, and blind in love.
So I always work with people, I don’t care if MILANIMAL will be successful or not. I work with people and with some principles and anything else is just a consequence. If we are doing good we can get more money, and if not we will survive in any way.
But why Antonia and not a company that is in charge of our social media?
MILANIMAL is for everyone but not for anyone, second it is a place where you can see a lot of diversity, a lot of contrasts, a lot of different people and mindsets.
So from the outside, me and Antonia are completely different. I could be her father, I am a male, and I can see in Antonia the proper solution to see things from a different point of view.
The social media and the content creation is related to just one thing - telling the truth. We can’t create good content without telling the truth.
When we post a photo of Thomas, a child with down syndrome, wearing the MILANIMAL new Jiu Jitsu Gi we are not making a commercial, Thomas trains at MILANIMAL 3 times a week with all the other guys.
So why not? Anything that you see on social media you can come to the place and see.
I think that working together is a process, like living together. I’ve been together with my wife for 20 years and I picked up something from her and she picked up something from me.
It’s the same with Antonia, we work almost every day together and there are things that we completely share our thoughts. I want the people around me to be free to share their thoughts, I don’t want to be in a position that is intimidating.
I want to give my ideas, I want them to understand my point of view. I try to give a reason to everything I say - but at one point it’s like raising a child, you don’t want him to stay at home with you until 40 years old.
I want my son to grow strong and free, as soon as he wants to leave the family he can leave. It’s the same with the people that work with me.
I see that you are using a community-first expansion strategy to grow your business.
Just to give you a small example, we lift heavy weights, we fight every day from 7AM to 10PM but we do care about women. More than 39% of our clients are women so why not take care of mothers?
A lot of women will become mothers, so how can we help them go back to the gym. You give birth and then you want to go back to the gym.
My next stage is to find a small place here in Milan for mobility, yoga and birth-related fitness for mothers to go and train with their babies in the womb, or even after giving birth.
You studied engineering in the Polytechnic of Milano, but you were also a Judo and Jiu Jitsu athlete, how did the switch happen?
I think since the beginning; my mantra is I can’t do things that I don’t like. I can do things that I don’t like to survive but not as a choice - that is quite different!
I was lucky and I had a choice to start my own path, it was hard - as everyone else that ventured on his own path.
If you want to work differently be ready to face any obstacle and never ever give up.
You want to create a newsletter? I don’t give a fuck if it’s only 3 people reading my newsletter - I don’t care. I am there to do a good job not to sell the newsletter to a billion people. Focus on your job, focus on your idea and that is what happened with me.
I started training Judo when I was a kid and I discovered Jiu Jitsu in 1998. I started training Jiu Jitsu and then it was a step by step - I started giving classes for free for two years, then I gave Jiu Jitsu classes in a very small and ugly place, then I started training people in a slightly better gym and so it was…
I saw the very first place to rent in 2006 and I had no money in my pocket, but I had the idea to go there. In 2006 I was looking for a place and in 2015 I opened my place.
I had to wait ~10 years working hard with no contract, with the risk of not getting money if you can’t work when you become sick. It was not as easy as it seems.
I was teaching in any place, I was giving private classes for 10 euros, I was doing anything to keep working with what I wanted. And then I could open my own place.
Bad things happen at the right time for the right people - always.
You realise at one point that anyone that is successful had to get through these obstacles and suffer. And you get tougher and tougher, but toughness in a quiet way.
By the way, I am super in love with Kazantzakis, Askitiki is my bible.
I bet that if Virgin or other chains wanted to do the content strategy you do, they could not do it.
I know, there is no spirit. They are in the real estate business, they are not educating people. It’s a completely different business.
And always my main goal is to grow. The skills of the people that are working at MILANIMAL must grow at the same pace that MILANIMAL grows.
How did you deal with Covid?
It was super-tough… I had to shut down the gym for 10 months, and I had to endure 10 months with no work plus 6 months with no Jiu Jitsu.
So it was 16 months without Jiu Jitsu and 10 months without CrossFit. It was super super hard. And I paid 100% of salaries, expenses, rent, anything.
When is the next MILANO CHALLENGE? (Andrea started a Jiu Jitsu competition many years ago)
It is every November - I own the property of the name, I own anything related to MILANO CHALLENGE but I decided to partner with the Italian Federation to split 50% the revenues for the next 5 years.
I only support them in building the teams and as a local supervisor.
To increase your focus and time?
Yes..I decided to share anything else and focus more on my own company. And I have a couple of ideas for the future, different ideas that are not related to MILANIMAL.
And our business model is a community-based business model but we also do a lot of work for free. We give Jiu Jitsu classes in jail for under age and we have been hosting more than 200 kids and teenagers that live in difficult conditions.
The real mood of MILANIMAL is made up of those things together, so if you see MILANIMAL as a true company, if you see MILANIMAL as something true, it is because of that.
Because the super rich kids train on the same mat as the kids from an impoverished area. That’s the truth and I have never received any negative feedback from any of my clients.
That’s the beauty and the value of the company. That’s why I don’t have any investors that are not very close to me. And another thing, MILANIMAL is as we say in Italy, PMI (Piccole e Medie Imprese) Innovative, which is like a tech company.
So for example, if you invest 10,000 euros, the government will give you in the same year 5,000 euros back. It is something made to help companies that invest a lot in tech and innovation.
Do you believe the Italian economy can recover soon? Do you think it will adapt to the new trends?
If I must tell you the truth, doing business in Italy is very hard if you are not from here. It’s like in Greece, you must enter the matrix to understand the rules that are not written. I usually say if I was born in the US I would open 10 gyms by now.
I say the same, but I think it will change with the structural reforms that Italy is forced to do from the EU - the same way Greece was forced to change many things in the past decade. How many hours per day do you work?
I work non-stop, I work every day. Even if I am not working I am picking up inspirations - even I am scrolling down instagram, and I see something inspirational I take a picture and send it to the team.
I usually work from Monday to Friday 12-14 hours a day and then Saturday another 6 hours and then Sunday afternoon. But in a good way, I am not stressed.
I take my time to stay with Miguel, I spend a lot of time with him, it’s not the kind of work that you close yourself in a room and stay there for 14 hours. I do what I love to do.
I come here I have a breakfast with Antonia, we start talking about the project, we move forward, it’s a very relaxed way of working.
My dream would be to have a small studio in a quiet area where I can go and work on top of my ideas. I mean just two desks, me and Antonia working on these things. The creative side is super necessary.
Yes and you have to be away from the phones and the social media. How do you achieve life work balance?
I usually eat good food, I train Jiu Jitsu - it’s my therapy. It’s like my dynamic meditation,
And it is not anymore performance-related so I can relax when I train, I don’t care if I am training with a blue belt that is making me tap or not, the training is super pleasurable.
Did Miguel start training?
Yes, but I never pushed him. Yesterday we went to the new place and he put his Gi on and said daddy I want to do Jiu Jitsu. Monday was the same, so it’s a natural habit now.
