Public Policy And The IHRSA 2013 Summit For A Healthier America

Speaking at IHRSA's Summit For A Healthier America this year in Washington DC was a great experience. It was my third time attending the event along with some of the leading thinkers in the fitness industry. IHRSA and the public policy council do a great job educating the membership and informing public policy leaders on the opportunities available to curb the exploding cost of sick care and position the health club industry as a solution to this challenge. Their legislative initiatives and state level efforts at protecting and promoting the health club industry are very intense and effective.

If you have not made a contribution to the industry defense fund please do so and learn more about it here http://www.ihrsa.org/industry-defense-fund . Below is my content from the event. What do you think ? How do you feel about IHRSA's efforts at impacting legislation ? I'd love to hear from you.

IHRSA 2013 Summit For A Healthier America

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Bryan O'Rourke Business Leader In Fitness, Wellness & Technology

The Impact Of The Affordable Health Care Act On Fitness Facilities

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Bryan O'Rourke Business Leader In Fitness, Wellness & Technology

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is a health club industry expert, technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He works for Fitmarc, which delivers Les Mills programs to over 700 facilities in the US. He advises successful global brands, serves as a member of the GGFA Think Tank and serves as CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

An Important Secret About The Competitive Health Club And Fitness Industry

I know , please don't give me a hard time about it. I just keep trying to make sure you're paying attention to what is REALLY going on out there in this great big world of ours. Admittedly its hard, when our heads are down and we are slugging away at obstacles and opportunities everyday. But things have changed, really changed. So please think about this the next time you sit down to evaluate your business, your profession and our industry. You see the way we think has got to change if we are to remain relevant.

I've mentioned Rita Mcgrathbefore . As one of the leading thinkers in global innovation, Rita is now coming out with a new and compelling book titled, The End of Competitve Advantage, How To Keep Your Strategy Moving As Fast As Your Business. in this book lies some secrets for us to use when it comes to our future. Here's and excerpt from the book:

Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business?

Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now. In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea—that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Once the premise on which all strategies were built, this idea is increasingly irrelevant.

As with other industries this is the predominant thinking embraced by leadership in the health club and fitness industry today . Failing to collaborate and the myopic view that competition is primarily derived from others within our space is flawed thinking. As with other industries, increasingly competition is going to come from other industries. We need to change how we think. Otherwise many will likely fail and be left to their demise in a wake of denial. Opening our eyes to Rita's view point is an excellent tonic for us to take as we examine the reality of many of our businesses today. I hope you will find this thinking helpful.

Check out Rita's brief video below as she explains the concepts behind the End of Competitive Advantage and please let me, Bryan O'Rourke, know what you think about her views.

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is a health club industry expert, technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He works for Fitmarc, which delivers Les Mills programs to over 700 facilities in the US. He advises successful global brands, serves as a member of the GGFA Think Tank and serves as CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

Wearable Technologies And Their Impact On Health & Fitness

When Becky Stern, director of wearable electronics at Adafruit Industries says, “Having technology on you, around you, inside you 24/7 is going to be totally commonplace,” she's right (check out the video below). The resulting implications for society and whole industries in general is immense. The melding of the physical and digital worlds continues and what it means for health clubs, fitness, and wellness in general is quite interesting. Apple's upcoming IWatch, Google Glass, and other advancing technologies will all enable increased digital connectivity. Wearable technologies are coming to the mainstream. This next new era of devices will take us places that few might imagine and will likely replace the smartphone at some point.

So what does this mean for fitness and health clubs ? I hope to find out. When Google selected me, along with 8,000 others on the planet including colleague Justin Sanchez at Fitmarc, to receive a pair of Google Glass, I was thrilled because we asked to be considered in order to understand more about the practical application of these things. Hopefully you'll enjoy some content soon from our "Glasses". But what this new era is will be more than just what Google Glass represents. Its a new realm of potential for the fitness, wellness and health club industries.

Making connectivity easier, more intuitive, less intrusive and less expensive can mean the ability to support positive behaviors like exercise and proper eating more effectively. It can also serve to diagnose health problems more easily. For clubs it means the ability to offer digital services and greater connectivity to members with out much hastle. Even more interesting to me is how the costs of these new technologies will continue to fall so that enterprising organizations can create solutions for those who've been unable to benefit from them before. Monitoring young children for activity, creating games to encourage their participation in fitness, and other technology platforms will be created to serve populations who before were not able to benefit from programs and solutions due to economics.

To learn more read this article and watch the cool video below. If you are interested in being a bigger part of the revolution of technology in fitness please join the Fitness Industry Technology Council and please tell me, Bryan O'Rourke, what do you think about wearable technology trends ? How do you think they will impact the health and fitness industries ? I'd love to hear from you.

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is a health club industry expert, technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He works for Fitmarc, which delivers Les Mills programs to over 700 facilities in the US. He advises successful global brands, serves as a member of the GGFA Think Tank and serves as CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

Collaboration: What Do Transmissions Have To Do With Health Clubs, and Fitness and Wellness ?

 

I’ve deep respect for so many of the leaders and innovators in the fitness, wellness and health club business. I don’t want to appear as though I’m kissing up by naming names (you know what i mean). But, and this is a BIG BUT, some of those on that list might be suffering from a little short sightedness. You see I think scarcity thinking is holding us back from big opportunities by working together with an abundance view in our industry. What does that mean ?

Ford and General Motors recently announced they are teaming up to design new nine-speed and 10-speed transmissions for use in a variety of vehicles, a move aimed at improving fuel efficiency for the rivals' vehicles. Now you might ask why would rivals work together to design technologies that can provide a strategic advantage ? Because they understand the big picture that’s why. In this case the big picture is dramatic impacts on fuel efficiency. This opportunity pressed against the cost of attempting to develop it alone leads rational business people to conclude working together is truly the best decision.

Enter the fitness and health club space where the largest and smallest of exercise equipment manufacturers seem focused on developing independent solutions for every opportunity. An example are technology platforms and interoperability among equipment brands. Outside of C-Safe , a technology standard created by FitLinxx and generously provided to the industry years ago, there has been little if ANY collaboration around this. The same could be said about many other aspects of the club business, and the fitness and wellness industries in general (not wanting to pick on you equipment folks alone) where fear of competitive advantage prohibits many from working together on universal standards as they could. From caloric burn rates to communication protocols, there is a lot of opportunity for us to agree and move things forward.

Now there have been collaborations. The NSF facility standards, for example, were recently agreed to after many many years of effort. IHRSA has been driving initiatives like the Public Policy Council which relies on contributions to promote public policy and legislative agendas that benefit the industry. FIT-C has started with a group of forward thinking people to create technology standareds. There has been some collaboration among various service providers as well. But its not been enough and that collaboration has taken to long in my view.

Looking at other industries provides many examples of the benefits of industry collaboration. Without a protocol like Wi-Fi there would not have been wide spread adoption of mobile computing. In the instance of WiFi, industry leaders created standards with a vision to what would be possible, like GM and Ford are today. They realized that the benefits of collaboration outweighed the cost because the work would grow the market considerably for everyone and at a faster pace. 

What if competitors in our arena did more of the same: thought about opportunities for collaboration instead of identifying the uncommon ground? I just don’t think there is enough of that type of thinking in our industry today. Often people are too busy protecting their turf as opposed to seeing the bigger picture: the delivery of primary prevention as a larger commercial aspect of people’s health management in the future. If we are going to grow the market beyond the 16% of US adults using bricks and mortar fitness facilities in the US and in the rest of the world we will need to change our orientation. We will have to grow up and meet the promise of the future by seeing what that future will be and by working together to achieve it.

If we don’t spend more effort on this undertaking the risk will continue to rise. If we don’t collaborate more, organizations from outside our sphere are going to enter the space and meet the demand for services with technologies and business models that we weren’t contemplating. While free market economics allow for survival of the smartest and that is good, 

What do you think ? Is there enough collaboration in the health club, fitness and wellness industry today ? Why do you think so ? Thanks for reading and feel free to contact me to discuss your views. 

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is a health club industry expert, technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He works for Fitmarc, which delivers Les Mills programs to over 700 facilities in the US. He advises successful global brands, serves as a member of the GGFA Think Tank and serves as CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

The Failure Of J.C. Penney's Ron Johnson - Lessons For The Health Club Industry

This week the former Apple and Target darling, Ronald B. Johnson, was shown the door by J.C. Penney’s board of directors. After 17 months of attempting to remake the Penney’s brand, Johnson failed, at least in the near term, as sales and cash flow plummeted amid his reinvention of the business model.

Johnson’s story and Penney’s plight provide great lessons on the challenges facing businesses and industries in today’s atmosphere of uncertainty. Consumer habits are evolving so much and the buying experience is undergoing a revolution that cuts across retail, health clubs and everything else. Don’t believe me ? Check out accenture’s recent retail research and this Forbes article as evidence . You see the bricks and mortar fitness industry is changing just as dramatically as retail and other industries are and established players are all going to have to wrangle with the issue of how they will remain relevant or die.

Some felt Ron’s arrogance would result in his demise; but what should one expect from a guy who was a Steve Job’s protage and engineer behind Apple’s retail rise with a stellar track record at Target to boot ? In fact that is why he was chosen. An article by Stephanie Clifford, Chief’s Silicon Valley Stardom Quickly Clashed at J.C. Penney, depicts Johnson’s attempt to transform the retailer. However, Clifford’s story fails to put some important parts in context.  J.C. Penney, though profitable, was seen as a poor performer that was losing ground to competitors like Macy’s on the high end and Kohl’s on the value end. (Yes Chuck Runyon its the bifurcation dynamic again :)). Its a similar situation several major health club chains face, as they are being picked apart by low price competitors and high end Equinox along with other niche micro gyms and studio concepts. Its easy for anyone to play Monday morning quarterback with Johnson’s strategies; but he was hand selected by the board exactly for being a change agent and innovator because the board saw an emerging problem. Did Penney's bold efforts fail more because of the way they were executed or how they were timed? I'm not sure, but consider that the tablet revolution started with the failed Newton, 10 years ahead of the iPad.

All retail competitors are facing the same challenges as Penney’s and while Ron failed, it sure is interesting how many people were curious about his strategies. An excerpt from Clifford’s article shares this: “Ken Murphy, senior vice president at Standard Life Investments, said that “many retailers, while openly cautious and dismissive of the JCP experiment, were actually nervously watching JCP’s plans unfold with some concern that if their strategy worked, the industry would be required to adapt faster than expected to a new trend in retailing.” You see because Macy’s, Kohl’s and others may be winning a battle with Penney’s, they might still lose the war to digital competition and a chameleon consumer whom they are desperately trying to figure out. This is the tight rope that the revolutionary Johnson walked and its the same one faced by many leaders in the health club industry today.

The same pressures that face Penney’s business model are impacting a number of significant health club brands today. Fitness First, formerly the world's largest club chain, failed last year. 24 Hour Fitness saw the majority of its senior leadership let go recently. These events and many others only evidence the high stakes game that is being played out across the health club industry, as it is with most consumer industries. Leaders know things have got to change but its hard to know just how. Sometimes they succeed and often they fail.

I’d theorize that leadership changes won’t be exclusive to 24 Hour or Fitness First . In the coming months more changes, consolidations and new entrants will emerge because in this day and age no industry or leader is immune from digital darwinism. Just ask Ron Johnson and J.C. Penney’s shareholders.

So what do you think ? How do you see the health club industry going through change like retail and other industries? Do you see changes in leadership in some health club brands ? Please let me know. I want to hear from you !! Thanks for reading.

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is a health club industry expert, technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He works for Fitmarc, which delivers Les Mills programs to over 700 facilities in the US. He advises successful global brands, serves as a member of the GGFA Think Tank and serves as CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To learn more contact Bryan here today .