In certain instances drastic changes must occur to ensure growth. In the fitness industry, the changes don’t always have to do
with the size of the club, its design or the classes it offers. Sometimes, it takes a leader to take a good look around and remove the dead weight.
Karen Raisch-Siegel, the executive director for LifeWorks of Southwest General in Middleburg Heights, Ohio,
was put in that exact situation in 2004 when she was given the opportunity to take over as interim executive director. She knew the position was one that she desired, but she kept facing new challenges.
As the interim executive director she was restricted to the overall amount of decisions she had within the club. The restrictions were overwhelming, but, after three months, she overcame obstacles and was named the full-time executive director.
“I was faced with a huge challenge right from the start,” Raisch-Siegel said. “My first order of business was the current staff. Within seven months, two positions were changed. The remaining staff either was on the bus ready to go, or got off at the next stop.”
LifeWorks had to restructure and rebrand completely. Right after the club had been opened in 1999, the city opened a recreation center six months later. The center hurt LifeWorks because it was asking members to pay about $400 less a year. “It was the fourth recreation center located within a five-mile radius of our facility,” Raisch-Siegel explained.
The problem with the brand was that LifeWorks had been developed by the local hospital that had decided to take a preventive approach to health. “They wanted to provide the community members with a place for preventative care,” Raish-Siegel said. “They took an integrated approach and built an 84,000 square foot facility that housed out patient physical medicine, cardiac rehabilitation phase III, outpatient MRI and a comprehensive fitness center.”
Once Raisch-Siegel took over as executive director she had to rebrand the facility as a fitness club and not just a rehab facility. “The public viewed LifeWorks as a place where only rehab patients came and you had to be broken,” she said. “The facility was marketed in all types of media with no specific target market, so we had all types of members. We needed to brand LifeWorks as a comprehensive fitness facility providing service, expert fitness, ethical business practices and value.”
Raisch-Siegel looked back at what she knew best – group exercise. While in college she spent some time abroad and really got into fitness. Once she moved back to New York City to pursue an advertising career she continued to be involved in fitness clubs, although she didn’t know a whole lot. “I didn’t know anything about testing people or setting them up on equipment other than what they trained me at the local fitness center,” she said. “And yes, one of my first people that I had perform a bike test had to leave and run to the locker room to get sick. It was from this time on that my passion grew.”
LifeWorks discovered a following with their group fitness classes. “We have over 90 classes on the schedule between land and water,” Raisch-Siegel said. “We have an amazing team of professionals led by one of the best group exercise coordinators that I have ever worked with.”
Raisch-Siegel has been a certified group exercise instructor for the past 20 years and still teaches four classes a week. “Our program is very strong and continues to grow as new classes are developed and proactive monitoring continues,” she explained. “It is extremely rare for an instructor not to show for a class. We all know what is expected of us and we are professional … it is one of the biggest retention tools for the facility.” -CS
