Anyone other IM Certified coaches get this strange email from TriDot today?
I can’t, for one minute, imagine this is a harmonious discussion.
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Tridot has obviously made some big spending promotions with Ironman. I wonder if it’s not working out and they’re pulling out and IM is retaliating by revoking their license of the name.
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What’s Elizabeth going to do now?
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That will be the slow death of TriDot I would imagine if they aren’t piggybacking off Ironman. They will be just another AI system in an increasingly busy market. And they aren’t the best one either when compared to something like Athletica
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Yes, also got same email. Honeymoon period over.
On a personal level who has coached using Trainingpeaks for years, was not that happy with the push for IM coaches to become part of Tridot, as well as pushing athletes to use Tridot and not use a coach. The target market seemed to be at the new athletes to the sport and to use their AI and coaches became an add on.
I never migrated any of my athletes to Tridot once we were required for recertification through Tridot.
Maybe Tridot expected more uptake from coaches as well as expectations on a better return on investment with IM
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I was kind of pissed that having done the certification I was being railroaded away from Training Peaks where I am currently, into a TriDot platform. I stayed with TP. I don’t know if any coaches that jumped to TriDot but maybe they did.
It was always a poor fit for me. I don’t want to feed their AI with my athletes so they can simply attempt to take over. Billing it as ‘we provide the program while you focus on being human’ was 100% not where I wanted to go. TriDot seems to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. What they wanted was the athletes that existing coaches had, moved onto their platform, and paying them. I am pretty sure they don’t care about the coaches at all. At least that’s how it felt, despite the sales pitch.
The other thing that pissed me off was that after getting certified (I think) they the created a Level 2 at additional cost and promoted the L2 coaches above the others. But maybe that was alway there.
I hope IM bail on them to be honest.
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The financial arrangement for any company getting in bed with Ironman will ALWAYS favor IM. They set the terms.
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Agree on all you say. It definitely felt like a railroad. I recall there was a webinar early on and there were numerous question of whether your IM creditation would be at risk if you didn’t move to Tridot from other platforms. It was said not required, but always felt there was an expectation that you would have to in the near future, and you were being pushed to do so. I even have a few emails of why i had not taken up using Tridot and requesting to have/arrange video calls to discuss under the disguise of helping to move to the platform
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Not always… but for the most part yes… Take for example ZOOT this time around…
ZOOT is winning at that agreement because Ironman had NO other options and the leadership at Zoot has been down that road… 100% Tridot got FUCKED with that sponsorship.
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Yes Zoot’s first foray down this road was a difficult year for them. This time Zoot has deeper pockets post acquisition to be in a much stronger position to fulfill Ironman Expo requirements
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How’d they get fucked exactly? Sounds like they failed to create a strong business case for coaches to transition their athletes into a product they feared was a long term competitor. Did they not realize that was a risk, did they underestimate coaches fears, did they even have a plan other than hoping IM would strong arm coaches to switch their athletes?
IM provided them access and they seemingly (based on the coaches’ responses here) failed to capitalize on their opportunity.
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The amount of $$ in which that sponsorship cost.
That’s not getting fucked sorry, that poor negotiation on their part. Somebody on their team did a bad job of forecasting the lift in sales they would be able to achieve. I suspect in a large part, it’s because they overvalued their benefit to coaches without taking into account the risks of being perceived as a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
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Dealing with IM isn’t really a negotiation, it’s take it or leave it.
Ok then poor decision making. They chose to enter into an agreement that they overvalued. So either it didn’t deliver or they didn’t capitalize but either way it’s still not getting fucked it was just a bad business decision. As an athlete I certainly feel that IM has done their job shoving TriDot down my throat, almost as badly as the Maurten Move lol
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That’s simply not true. I’ve negotiated partnership deals before. The key to success, for both sides, is to understand what you want to get out of it. From there you model out whether you think that’s achievable and negotiate from there.
Ironman is just there for the money. It’s possible they are really firm on how much they want, however the blame is on TriDot for 1) not forecasting appropriately and/or 2) making business decisions that go contrary to the format of the deal.
There’s a bunch of different potential reasons why this has gone sideways. However, it could all just be as simple as the platform is not gaining traction with athletes long term and they are cutting bait with an expensive partnership while they figure out what’s next.
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Ironman doesn’t “need” most of their brand partners. The benefit is to the brand partners to be associated with Ironman. Ironman receives incremental benefits but ultimately if IM sees having a coaching business as part of their portfolio, they will create it from whole cloth.
I mean you’re not totally wrong, but there’s always a negotiation. Always. And TriDot shot themselves in the foot.
From a further my point of view, Tridot pitched it badly to IM coaches. For years we have used other platforms to coach. It was pitched as bring your clients over, let Tridot to the heavy lifting with AI and coaches could spend more time on the personal side of things. I even had teams meetings when i was shown spreadsheets calcs of even if my clients wanted a break from coaching, they could still have access to tridot AI and if they were signed up with my specific code, i would get a percentage. Basically telling me to become an influencer for Tridot and get paid for every athlete i could get on their platform whether i gave them perceived benefit of coaching or not. It was a big red flag for me, and why i never migrated or bought into Tridot. I have a feeling many coaches may have had similar feelings
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you should try to poach Elisabeth from them and shoot and ad with her. As you can see she is rather popular here.
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