To become and remain a successful business professional in the health and fitness industry, club owners and professionals must regularly and diligently review and evaluate the effectiveness of how they are running their ongoing business operations. Such a review, at a minimum, would normally include: revisiting the efficacy of prior key management decisions; studying detailed financial metrics so as to determine how the actual performance for a given period of time matched what was projected; undertaking a review of the response and outcomes data with respect to marketing activities to determine their effectiveness in attracting the targeted client; and of course, one should always include a thorough review of ongoing business operations related to staffing, facility and equipment maintenance, customer service, and program offerings. However, there is another key element in this review and evaluation process that is too often not given enough attention or, worse yet, is totally neglected, and that is the anticipation as to what is next.
Highly successful professionals in our industry spend considerable time analyzing not only trend data from their own operations, but also, and of equal if not more importance, data from within the health and fitness industry as well as society as a whole. By identifying and analyzing valued consumer healthrelated information and trends, club owners and professionals can more accurately prepare and develop a timely and appropriate programmatic response solution to maximize the positive operational return with respect to the recruitment of new members, the retention of existing members, and overall client satisfaction. Moreover, by adopting and including such progressive and forward-looking management practices in ongoing operational review systems, clubs can have a very positive impact on staff morale and retention.
So you ask – what is next? I, perhaps like you, spend considerable time attempting to answer that question. In doing so, I read multiple newspapers, professional journals, government documents, consumer reports, and perhaps most importantly, I talk with professionals from many different industries (in the U.S. and other countries) to not only learn from them, but to also test my perceptions, assumptions, and conclusions with respect to what the future holds for health promotion, physical fitness, and our industry. That process has yielded considerable insight and has been very helpful in my attempts to gain better answers to the “what’s next” question. And, the following three trends are my attempts at postulating “what’s next” and how clubs can develop solutions to capitalize on such trends.
1. The quest for vitality will match or surpass the desire for vanity as to why people join clubs and participate in exercise programs. Clubs that take seriously and apply the latest and proven information with respect to how sound, safe exercise programming can help the total person will be able respond to this market opportunity. However, this response will need to be in both specific lifestyle risk factor related programming and appropriate professional staffing to offer such programming.
2. People will discover, in everincreasing numbers, that beauty is only skin deep. Not totally dissimilar to the first trend, fewer individuals will be seeking and participating in exercise programs just because it is fashionable to do so. But rather they will do so with far more focus on specific health outcomes. Moreover, many of those outcomes will not even be visible to a casual observer – self confidence, self empowerment, less stress, more spirituality, etc.
3. The link between sound, safe, nogimmick exercise, and sound, safe, nogimmick diet and weight management programs will be clearly understood. This linkage, which is already long overdue, will have perhaps one of the most positive outcomes for our industry in the coming years. For there is no other industry that is better positioned to better capitalize on this trend than ours. However, no club owner should expect this as a universal outcome but rather should consider it a unique market opportunity, and as such, do the necessary planning in staff development and obtaining, safe, proven and high quality weight management programs.
So, I would suggest that you, as you conduct your normal management review, add a review process that is designed to help position your business to take full advantage of what is coming next. For, if just one of my postulates comes true, our industry, and more specifically your club, has a very bright future – if positioned and prepared to provide a positive response.
Robert C. Karch, Ed.D is the Chairman of Biometrics Nutrition and Fitness. He can be contacted at 866.246.1922, or by email at bob@biometricshealth.com.
