Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi and Alexis Christoforous speak with Life Time CEO Bahram Akradi about how the health club is faring amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOPHOROUS: We know that this pandemic is touching, really, every corner of our economy, including physical fitness. And to talk more about that we are joined by the CEO of Life Time, Bahram Akradi. Thanks so much, Bahram, for being with us. To make a distinction, these are not gyms. These are fitness clubs and spas that you have. You have nearly 2 million members, 38,000 full and part time members. What are you doing right now? I'd imagine you're closed across the board, but how are you continuing your business, if at all?

BAHRAM AKRADI: Well, at this point, based on the government request, we have shut down all the clubs. These are very large clubs-- 150,000 square feet. On average, we have about 300-- 250, 300 employees in each club. And so this is a big change. Obviously, we have anticipated that this might be coming, so we shut the clubs down, yes. But 38,000 to 40,000 employees right now are not working. We have few of our-- you know, a few employees in each club you maintaining the facilities. But we are just waiting to figure out the path forward and when we resume to keep our people, our employees all intact.

BRIAN SOZZI: Bahram, Brian Sozzi here. It's killing me not to lift my 80 pound free weights on the weekend. Absolutely killing me here. When do you think the gyms will reopen-- not just you, a lot of in the industry as well?

BAHRAM AKRADI: Yeah, you know, I believe that-- you know, I've sent out a video that I worked hard to get out to people for our politicians, for our business leaders, for everyone to look at. Strategically, dealing with this virus is one of those things that I think has some-- like everything else in life, you can find the benefit in any crises. You can learn something from it. So this virus is going to be the one that kills us, but it's incredibly contagious. There will be a virus that will be contagious and will be much more lethal.

So if we take two or three weeks as suggested, and play this social distancing, social isolation as hard as we can play it. But during that time, the government, the medical community must be ready. We have to declare it a day we all go back to work. President's instinct to call out Easter is a great instinct. It's the right approach. Every boardroom, every executive, every CEO is completely paralyzed and crippled. We cannot make any decision on how to formulate thoughts, processes, how to handle situations. And this sort of a wait and see mode-- it's absolutely a non-starter. We must be given a date.

And listen you know there are people who are going to criticize this-- what do you know about the virus? If you had a war break out, what are we going to do? Stay home? No. We put our uniforms on, we grab our guns, we enlist ourselves, and we will defend our country. We can not give to fear.

Now again, I am all on board with a extreme and fully executed social distancing for a period of time, but then with a definitive deadline. If we do that, we will pull every boardroom, again, every executive, every CEO out of complete paralysis. And then we will recover. I have faith in our government. They will-- they will come together. They will unite. They will do what's right for us in this crises. It may take a bit of adjusting, but they will get there.

And they will give us what we need. And that's a date-- a firm date. And this stimulus plan can be what they're talking about potentially from business interruption to suspend them payments for people so that people don't have a lot of burden. If we have to just have enough money for our employees for food, and we can provide them their health full health care, I think the goal is to keep our employees intact.

BRIAN SOZZI: Bahram, Let me jump in there real quickly. Now you guys have a very strong backing. I remember the deal you guys deal with Leonard Green in 2015. But some chains out there don't have the same type of financial backing. What are you hearing? I know a lot of these companies are in a lot of stress, they have a lot of debt. Do you think some major gym chain-- and are you a buyer?

BAHRAM AKRADI: Well, listen, first of all, I hope that none of the gym operators will lose their business from small to midsize. This is not a way that I would ever want to win. This is not a good outcome. We do not want to come out of this and have 10% or 15% of the businesses having been, you know, losing their business. This is not good for our economy overall.

The number that I would want you guys to do the homework and, you know, the facts, about what each percentage of unemployment will contribute to incremental crime, deaths from depression-- I think each 1% increase in unemployment will have catastrophic effect on death toll on all aspects of life. So there is a balancing act. And we cannot have that ideology if, you know, coronavirus-- you know, you say something wrong about coronavirus, somebody gets upset that you're not being sensitive-- we have to have a whole thought here. And the whole thought is hard to fight defensively and offensively coronavirus, how to fight the offensively and offensively on our economy.

ALEXIS CHRISTOPHOROUS: Bahram, I'm going to jump in here. It's Alexis. I think some people might actually take you to task on trying to put an actual date on when business comes back up and running, simply because we're talking about our health, public health, and people's lives. But I want to touch on the fact that it's really hard right now to get your hand on a lot of different things-- toilet paper being one of them-- but also, workout equipment. A lot of that stuff is just being sold out online. Can't get it. What's your advice to people who want to stay fit and just can't get their hands on the equipment and obviously, can't get into a gym?

BAHRAM AKRADI: You know, honestly, I think that people can get fit anywhere. Let's be clear. You can work work out at home, you can run outside, you can do physical activities. The clubs are a social place. These are place people want to come in, be with their friends, be with their personal trainer. That it's not just workout. But as far as advice I have right now-- particularly right now-- is to work at these 20, 30 minutes of moderate exercise-- that helps your immune system-- doing whatever you can do.

Eat healthy. Stay away from packaged foods. Stay away from anything that causes inflammation as much as you can. Inflammation is the enemy. And I think if you look at just the actual facts about how this particular virus is more potent for older people and people with pre-existing conditions, and the anomaly cases where younger people are having a really hard fight with this-- it's very, very possible that they just have been doing things that increase that inflammation for them.

So inflammation is bad. Do everything you can to reduce inflammation. Stay away from inflammatory foods. Stay away from activities that are inflammatory. But then you can do everything you can to increase and improve your immune system. And then if you get a virus, you know, your body can take care of itself.

ALEXIS CHRISTOPHOROUS: All right, great advice. Bahram Akradi, CEO of Life Time. Our thanks to you. And be well.