IHRSA Rising Star Kate Golden Shares Her IHRSA 2017 Thoughts
I personally LOVE IHRSA because I fell in love with the industry and my career here. Everyone comes together for one common goal, to help the world be healthier- move a little more, eat a little healthier, stress a little less.
How can you not be inspired while at this conference?!
The people I have met, the products we have purchased, the leadership skills that I have obtained, the programs that we have been able to implement or improve at our club all tie back to our yearly trip to IHRSA. I am also lucky that this is the team building mecca for our club with 20 sometimes 30 team members attending – we all come back to the club re-energized and ready to conquer the world and our #NACFamily gets stronger because of it.
Here are some key take aways by event held at IHRSA:
1. Attending the Key Note is my favorite way to start my day.
This year they kicked @ss. They inspired me, gave me tangible take aways and totally made me feel like I could conquer the world. I loved Johnny Cupcake and his simple idea to make buying T Shirts an experience & filled with surpises, which was a trend this year at IHRSA. I learned to think differently about the little things our club offers. How can we make all services in our club an experience worth coming back for? As a club I know this a focus for onboarding our members, but what about every personal training session, a smoothie order, run around the track or taking a shower? Pop Up shops are all the rage right now- how can we take advantage of this trend? Pop Up fitness anyone? Seems easy enough! The Key Note speakers start your day off with thinking BIG and then the seminars and trade show help us execute these ideas or learn form other club’s failures and successes.
2. The way of the future is utilizing technology to connect with members and potential members from social media to apps to virtual group classes, but put down your phones and lap tops because a true connection is made when you are fully “present” without the interuption or barrier of technology.
Totally contradictory, yet true. Is the experience we are providing connecting members to other members? I learned that this relationship is the most important when it comes to retention from Karen McNenny in her presentation, “Community is the CURE”. Our suppliers went from manufacturing and selling us medicine balls and last year’s cool new studio-esque storage racks to this year’s virtual fitness coaching your members how to utilize the equipment it stores right into the rack- cool, right? Or how about TRX’s squat analysis kiosk? We do FMS testing in our introductory training and soon we will have members do this themselves? Maybe?
3. The top industry experts share their wealth of knowledge & answer questions session after session and into the night at the receptions, parties, the hotel lobby and even now a week later- they are emailing with me!
At Seth Mattison’s Key Note he offered us key advice to networking- ask “What do you like to do outside of work?” instead of the normal, “What do you do at your club?” which helped me take some of my relationships with vendors and club operators to a new “personal” level. The openness of our industry taught me to be an open book back- share my successes and failures, LISTEN to everyone I meet & introduce myself to everyone I can to grow my network that turns into friendships.
Active Management Note
Thanks Kate for your contribution. Kate is the Director of People & Fitness Operations, Newtown Athletic Club in the US. She has attended the IHRSA Institute and will be an upcoming guest on the Fitness Business Podcast. The amazing owner of the club she works at, Jim Worthington was featured in show 34 – listen here.
Justin is the Managing Director of Active Management, which he began January 2004. He offers coaching to businesses worldwide in everything from start up and design to marketing and sales systems. Justin also facilitates four Australian and New Zealand ‘fitness industry roundtables’ events, which allows him to see a huge cross section of business models.