With the recent update for Apple's iOS 11, today on the podcast we're learning about what this means to the fitness industry from the Chief Information Officer & Vice President of Good Life Fitness, Steve Groves. If you're like most of us in the fitness space, you've been hearing rumors for months about how Apple has been gearing up to change the landscape of how we do business, take payments, collect activity data and engage our members using GymKit and opening up the bidirectional NFC reading capabilities, along with so much more.
On episode 047, we're exploring this pivotal subject in depth to uncover the real truth behind how club staff, front desk, trainers, and everyone that compliments a member's journey will now shortly be able to serve at a higher level, and save the member valuable time by using this bidirectional NFC for the creation of a truly "seamless experience" that so many in our industry have been asking for.
This iOS update points the needle of progress in the right direction and opens up a future where using the iPhone to gain access to a club and all of its amenities with a simple fingerprint touch through the mobile device, is a reality.
Apple's NFC functions coming to the Apple Watch with watchOS 4, and iOS 11 might also be handling much more than just Apple Pay transactions and Passbook check-ins.
With over 2700 fitness technology companies listed on Angel List, and with the pivotal new updates for iOS 11, how do we get closer to clarity in a fast-expanding space?
The answer to that question and much more takeaways for club owners, operators, and fitness pros in this episode with Steve Groves.
Steve Groves is the CIO & VP at Goodlife Fitness with over 20 years of success in bridging the logistical and communication gaps between business leaders and their technical teams in order to achieve results. Steve is a industry pro who specializes in collaborating with senior management and company boards to drive the strategic use of technology, both to support employees and to delight customers. Steve is an expert in uncovering "the art of the possible" in terms of using digital technology to personalize the customer experience. He is a creative thinker with an eye towards the technology trends on the horizon and has extensive experience in ICT service management, Internet strategy, digital media strategy, mobile application design, productivity consulting and management of high performance teams.
"I think for many of us, the holy grail of monitoring our health will be automatic tracking of what we ingest." - Steve Groves on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
"If I could take everything that I’ve learned over the past 5 years and apply it to one roll in our company, it would be personal training." - Steve Groves on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
What many of us in the technology space are trying to do is eliminate friction from various transactions that happen within our clubs." - Steve Groves on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
Experimentation comes with failure. For whatever reason, I don’t think the culture of our industry is able to tolerate that very well. I’m hoping we start to see more companies that are willing to experiment with different technologies. Even when they fully know certain tech won’t work properly or be adopted by their members." - Steve Groves on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
"We have to recognize when something isn’t working, and be willing to kill a failed project within 30-60 days at the most." - Steve Groves on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
Members look to us as fitness and wellness experts. We can’t only focus on the 2-3 hours a week they are using the facility. Organizations need to to think about the time their members spend outside of the gym." - Steve Groves on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
Today we're learning from Leon Rudge, the Director of Digital Experience at Life Fitness on the 10 steps to implementing a digital fitness strategy. We've had double digits of expert guests provide so much value over the past 40+ shows in this category of digital strategy and tools, but on today's show we're going laser and concise to extract the 10 powerful steps that club owners, operators, and trainers can build from the ground up when they look at the actual technologies in our space that will support growing both the bottom line and the customer journey and experience for members.
Be sure to explore all the different resources and white paper links from Leon in the podcast today and if you've been enjoying the series, leave us a five star review for the podcast; it helps the show reach more intelligent and proactive fitness leaders like you. You can also ask myself, Bryan O'Rourke, Leon, or any of the previous guests who've been on the show a question by simply typing in your question in the review box.
In an industry that seems to be fairly static, and at times even paralyzed by the over information about fitness technology, what are the practical and on-the-ground steps that fitness leadership can take to successfully implement a digital fitness strategy?
The answer to that question and much more takeaways for club owners, operators, and fitness pros in this episode with Leon Rudge.
Leon Rudge is the Director of Digital Experience at Life Fitness. He is part of a global team of digital technology experts who work hard every day to understand how they can bring more clarity, insight and experience to the fitness industry, their customers and their exercisers. Leon Brings over seven years of deep experience in the fitness industry.
"We've got some great minds in this business, dedicated people that have worked in the industry for decades, but the members are changing, societies changing, everything's changing and some of the things that we put in place aren't necessarily always going to be right." - Leon Rudge on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
"In terms of digital health and fitness, I see a confused industry but even worse, I see a number of companies capitalizing on the confusion. The compounded confusion is slowing the adoption of digital tech our space and leaving us vulnerable to disruptive new market entrants." - Leon Rudge on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
With the fitness industry poised to further expand its impact and transformation within the wellness industry space, we're growing smarter today from one of the world's most influential minds in the active healthy lifestyle sector, Lee Embley, to discuss the best-of-the-best takeaways from his 40+ years around technology innovation and digital trends.
With his impressive body of work, he is now leading a mission to connect the role of fitness to an even larger ecosystem of wellness, driven by artificial intelligence and big data sets through his up and coming platform Optimal AI Coach.
We know now more than ever that fitness has been and will always be a powerful and integral piece in what is at the core of all club member's goals, which is to be healthy and well in their body, mind, and spirit, so on this podcast we're excited to unpack the nuances of what Lee believes is the "biggest miss" right now in the fitness industry, how human longevity plugs into our standard fitness models, why the ultimate value proposition for wearable technology is wellness and not just fitness, and how Lee's own health journey has inspired him to radically shift his focus in the coming years.
With fitness industry experiencing the most radical transformation in decades, what are the most powerfully distilled concepts that club owners, operators, and fitness professionals must understand when it comes to fitness and wellness technology?
The answer to that question and much more takeaways for club owners, operators, and fitness pros in this episode with Lee Embley.
Over the past three decades Lee Embley has been innovating and influencing the bleeding edge in the Active Healthy Lifestyle Sector, building brands in retail, connected-tech, digital-media, and financial-services, including the following:
ProWoman Sports USA first all women sporting goods retail brand, merchandising functional design, fashion and leisure wear, early footwear product development with ProWoman Strider the first women lasted track and field running shoe, equipment to the fit-active female market. PWS became the first national sales organization to secure a exclusive distribution with hundreds of colleges and universities with female specific sports programs. Acquired, Tennis Lady Group UK.
Lee also developed the First e-Commerce business model "Network Credit Service,"providing credit reports to small business via, major information hubs i.e. CompuServ, Dow Jones Newsnet. NCS provided 500,000 businesses via trade associations and national franchises system achieving a $53MM in second year revenue. (Acquired by TRW New Credit Service)
Mr. Embley founded the NCSB, the first sports, performance, data and evaluation platform. An athletic scouting and evaluation system to enable high school athletes who are not recruited a system to evaluate their athletic skills by professional scouts. Acquired, Pro-Serve, as well as "Radiance Rewards," the first AHL credit cards for health fitness conscious women.
His work continued with Leap4Life the first "Wearable Marketplace" designed for the health and fitness consumers to fully experience the motivation of active lifestyle. L4L hacked and mitigated the sustained engagement factor with a unique combination of attributes. The methodology and technology applied data science and social to achieve success.
His latest body of work is the "Optimal AI Coach: O.AI.C" an application to enhance fitness and performance through deep learning and integration of lifestyle data via technology. All the data collections are in place, wearable, mobile, retail to create the next generation highly personalized coaching system.
"When it comes to connecting the dots of success for technology, it's distilled down to one term and that is relevance. If there's not relevance, then at the end of the day then there's no sustainability. The real issue is properly determining where each generational segment is focused on the spectrum of the active healthy lifestyle" - Lee Embley on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
"Anything standing still is valueless. It doesn't matter whether it's people standing still, money standing still, information standing still. The only way it gets value is when you put it in motion. The reason there are thousands of brands in the graveyard is because they could not accept the fact that the change was upon them." - Lee Embley on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
"You have to start with the question 'where am I and my capital at risk?' and then get into some significant valuation. Forecasting the economy does not necessarily mean that your segment of the economy is going to be disrupted." - Lee Embley on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
For episode 044 we're excited to bring you one of the most sought after leaders in our space for an important discussion around data collection accuracy and its relationship to the growing demand for AI and machine learning in the fitness industry.
We're talking with our returning guest, Dave Wright, the CEO of MYZONE for his second appearance on the show to explore the impact of collecting fitness data for practical use, the difference between incidental versus concerted activity when we look at fitness consumer activity, where the gaps are in adoption and how our industry can rise to the demand for true omnipresence.
We're also uncovering how MYZONE is proactively educating fitness professionals and leaders on how to take in the right data set, understand it, and use technology to support executing a sustainable health and fitness experience for the new era of our consumers.
With more data sets being delivered than ever before, what are the most important ones and what do fitness leaders, trainers, and operators really get to pay attention to not only for ROI, but to deliver an enhanced customer experience?
The answer to that question and many more takeaways for club operators, owners, and fitness professionals in this episode with Dave Wright.
Dave Wright is the CEO & owner of Creative Fitness Marketing, a global company with offices in the UK, Australia and North America that has served the international fitness community since 1990, specifically helping people be more and stay more physically active.
He is also the CEO and creator of MYZONE® - a cloud based and wearable technology "Physical Activity Heart Rate Monitor & Fitness Tracker," used to monitor and increase exercise adherence. As a health club operator with 10 health clubs, and a board director of the UK’s Fitness Industry Association, an international presenter, Dave is featured regularly in international trade magazines.
"Meeting the customer where they are is the most important thing in the age of technology. As an industry, currently one defendable position we have is not our bricks and mortar, it's our knowledge and our motivational skills including the ability for the trainer to spot, help, and support their customers personally." - Dave Wright on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
"If the data is not accurate then it's very hard to apply any form of machine learning. As operators and owners you might have various records on your database, but if that database is not cleaned and checked to make sure you can run credible data off the backend (with the same applying for any data from biometrics) then you can't yet start looking at behavior trends. Yet, that's the most exciting part of it, where we can start to spark really powerful change with the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning." - Dave Wright on the Fitness + Technology Podcast
"What are the limitations and why is it, as an industry, that for the best part of 50 years that 50% of all the people that join clubs now in January actually leave by November, or even stop exercising for April and May? It fascinates me as a business that it costs seven times more money to get a new member to your club then to keep an existing one, yet so much of the membership campaigns in health clubs around the world are just focused on filling the top end of the bucket, rather than asking how can we stop the flow of members out the back door." - Dave Wright on the Fitness + Technology Podcast #015