Solving Our Biggest Problems Begins With You And Me

I was watching Wired magazine's Chris Baker the "Angry Nerd" rant about how TV Networks Are Running Out Of Original Ideas (see clip below). His rant confirmed what I think and write about often, resulting in this post (thanks Angry Nerd). You see solutions to our biggest problems lie not in repeating what we've done but in doing new things. Without embracing this idea, many things (even television content) will probably get worse before they get better.

As the Nerd points out, more and more television represents remakes of existing story lines, often based on public domain plots which networks can use royalty free. I particularly liked Baker's comments on Disney's content strategy. It reminded me of Lessig's view that big media dinosaurs are trying to control the Internet.

What you see in television is what you are seeing in every industry every day: a battle between the status quo, which seeks to wrench ever nickel out of existing assets, models, and ways of doing things; and a group of new leadership that believes the status quo is the problem so it must be undone. 

Put this in context: only 14% of US parents believe their children will have a better life than they do. Personally I think much of our world today suffers from an overdose of Band-Aids when what we need are cures.

For hundreds of thousands of years humans lived in a local, linear world focused on survival. The degree of change was minimal, until now. Survival based on a slowly changing world is in our DNA and it leads to us not giving the level of thought we need to about important things; from the food we eat to where we work. From governments to educational systems and from health care to fitness there is often more effort in participating in and defending the status quo even while many of our biggest problems continue to get worse. The problem with a status quo philosophy, as Seth Godin has shared, is its resulting in a Race To The Bottom . Solutions do not lie in a race to the bottom.

I'm an optimist and believe there are answers, one of the most important being for all of us to question more. Yes that means YOU (and me of course). Don't accept the status quo. Don't participate in institutions that offer the same answers, even when they are cleverly wrapped in and disguised as a new message. This takes diligence and effort but its needed to change things. A recent example that got me worked up is the First Ladies work on healthier food for children, which is steeped in special interest defending the food industry status quo. There are many other examples. Reward brands and people that are REALLY doing things differently because they represent a new way. Don't fall for Coca Cola embracing clean water for the world, when its a principal driver behind global obesity.

The good news is that in the age of the Internet and of the individual there are many groups and people who are impacting the world in a new way. Take a different approach. Be a non-conformist. Be a leader. Really make a difference. Solving our biggest problems begins with you and me. If you are one of the 86% of parents that really believe your kids will have it worse than you, get off your ass and do something about it. Believe me you can make a difference.

What do you think ? I'd love to hear your views and thanks for taking time to read the post.

Bryan O’Rourke is considered by many to be a thought leaders on technology, health club and wellness trends. He has been quoted in periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, and has been published in journals around the world on his views of how technology will create the dawn of a new era of opportunity for the health club and fitness industries. In addition to being an industry expert, Bryan is a technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He has spoken on a range of business and trend topics on four continents. As a contract executive and advisor, Bryan wears many hats, including working 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, on ACE's Industry Advisory Panel and is CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

Club Industry 2013 - Back In The Windy City Again

I love @ClubIndustry . Now that it has returned to its midwest roots, I love it even more. Simply put, Chicago is a great town, unless my Saints are playing them on a given NFL weekend of course. It is wonderful that @Clubindustry has returned there in 2013.

Here are the details of the show and if you are planning to be there let me know because I'd love to see you. Check out the mobile app for @Clubindustry and my comments from last years show in Vegas here. Really looking forward to the @BridgetBrennan keynote.

Thanks go to the guys and gals from Club Industry for putting on what will be a great event.

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is considered by many as one of the most prolific thought leaders on technology, health club and wellness trends. He has been quoted in periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, and has been published in journals around the world on his views of how technology will create the dawn of a new era of opportunity for the health club and fitness industries. In addition to being an industry expert, Bryan is a technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He has spoken on a range of business and trend topics on four continents. As a contract executive and advisor, Bryan wears many hats, including working 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, on ACE's Industry Advisory Panel and is CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

Relevance In Health And Fitness Requires Creating A #MOVEMENT

 

It was a long and exciting few weeks. From keynoting at #SIBEC2013 , attending the #GGFA owners conference, speaking at #ANTPLUS2013 , conducting a great webinar with Todd Levine on the New Era of Personal Training and finally working with Gold's Gym International management team, I'm finally at home relaxing in the backyard (here's what that's like if your interested).

There was a common theme that developed with the wide group of leading health and fitness experts and professionals I spent time with. That theme was that technology is transforming business. But really its more than just that. The transformation that informed customers, a interconnected world and technology enablers has created requires us to all rethink our organizations and businesses with a bigger view if we are to remain relevant and have a meaningful impact on people's lives. While technology is a big part of this transformation in the end its really an enabler for achieving greater purpose and connections with customers and transforming how we do things. What does that mean ? I propose that the future is here now and the current transformation underway requires we become part of a movement that reflects a different way of thinking.

Check out this recent video from @BrianSolis with @simonmainwaring, author of We First, How Brands And Consumers Use Social Media To Build A Better World, shown below as they discuss the True Meaning of a Social Business. As I explained at ANT+ Symposium and at SIBEC2013 , our industry needs to be more about a MOVEMENT and less about business. We need to rethink our views. Technology can enable that but its more about changing the stuff between our ears that is required to make it happen. What do you think ? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is considered by many as one of the most prolific thought leaders on technology, health club and wellness trends. He has been quoted in periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, and has been published in journals around the world on his views of how technology will create the dawn of a new era of opportunity for the health club and fitness industries. In addition to being an industry expert, Bryan is a technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He has spoken on a range of business and trend topics on four continents. As a contract executive and advisor, Bryan wears many hats, including working 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, on ACE's Industry Advisory Panel and is CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

The ANT+ Symposium 2013: The Importance Of Technology In Health & Fitness

Getting an invitation to speak at the 2013 ANT+ Symposium is an honor, to say the least. I am grateful to my friend Paul Lockington and the team at Dynastream, particularly  for their dedication and involvement in the Fitness Industry Technology Council . Dynastream continues to push innovation and develop new technologies, moving the industry forward. If you haven't registered for the ANT+ event yet please do here as soon as possible, since rooms are going to run out. Believe me, you do NOT want to miss it this year.

Having written extensively on the subject of wearable technologies and the looming explosion of opportunities for health and wellness that technologies will create, an event like the ANT+ Symposium is my kind of event. Speaking at this forum is even more important because the players in health care, health clubs and wellness are about to watch the emergence of a New Era of Wellness unfold at a rapid pace (the recent ANT+ integration into the Samsung Note 3 is an example of what is to come). This will be a time wrought with risks, changes and HUGE opportunities for forward thinking leaders and companies.

What I'll be sharing during my talk at the ANT+ Symposium is how industries like Banking, Computing, Publishing and others at one time and presently all faced huge disruptions. I'll share how these industries either embraced or ignored technologies and the implications of those choices. If leaders fail to embrace what technologies like ANT+ and others will enable for the health club business, for example, they will likely be punished severly. This is not just a risk for individual players its a risk for whole industries as the new dynamic of competitive "ARENAS" emerges. As I've written before, industries will increasingly see competition from other industries. How an industry like fitness applies vision and embraces collaborations that create new standards around these emerging technologies will enable us to take advantage of them. Failing to do so will likely mean missing one of the greatest opportunities that ever existed for making a real impact on the quality of people's health through primary prevention. Its up to us to collectively do what it takes to take advantage of this opportunity or miss it. This is exciting to me because I see this new Era happening and attending the ANT+ Symposium is like being at one of the "ground zero's" where that future is happening now.

The opportunity of bringing health care, fitness and wellness together around consumer needs is going to be created by technologies and smart leaders who see what will be possible. Are we ready to embrace this new era ? Spend some time at the ANT+ convention and I'll tell you what I think and how. I hope to see you there.

So what do you think about ANT+, the symposium and how technologies will revolutionize, health and fitness ? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

About the author:

Bryan O’Rourke is considered by many as one of the most prolific thought leaders on technology, health club and wellness trends. He has been quoted in periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, and has been published in journals around the world on his views of how technology will create the dawn of a new era of opportunity for the health club and fitness industries. In addition to being an industry expert, Bryan is a technologist, financier, shareholder and executive in several fitness companies. He has spoken on a range of business and trend topics on four continents. As a contract executive and advisor, Bryan wears many hats, including working 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, on ACE's Industry Advisory Panel and is CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council. To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org . To learn more contact Bryan here today .

Marketing Your Fitness Business - Do You Care Enough ?

Thanks to my colleague Eleanor Hisey at Fitsomo who shared a post that I just had to use from Gary Vaynerchuk, and to my partner Robert Dyer who spent so much time with me last week. These two along with my conversation with some of Gold's Gyms leading franchisees at the GGFA roundtable on social media last week led to this post.

By the way it meant a great deal to me to be invited by Ginger Collins and the great bunch of GGFA professionals, who I love, to discuss social media marketing at the Gold's convention. Thanks Ladies :). I was particularly excited that Gordon Johnson, along with several other leading Gold's franchisees, were there and asked so many relevant questions. They wanted to know about using social media, yet the conversation was less about technology and more about being human. I'll explain.

In a world where brands are accustomed to only broadcasting or as Gary Vaynerchuk puts it, presenting their message, now consumers want engagement (see his video below and thanks again Eleanor :)). They want to interact. Consumers want to be relevant. Everything we used to think about marketing has ended because now marketing is the consumer's experience. Its not our message and what we want to tell them; its all about what is important to THEM and our recognizing that fact. The "Connected Consumer" trend has really accelerated this because of technology.

This is a very hard thing for many brands to grasp and execute. In a world where many old school CEO's still worry that having a twitter account opens them up to having to answer to consumers, well what can I say ? Anyone who would have to ask if they should have a twitter account demonstrates they do not understand. You see people who don't understand this, at least 90% of the time, must not really care because if they did they'd want to have customers be able to let them know when they are happy and when they are not. Right ?

This leads to my partner Robert and I having many conversations with customers and industry leaders last week both during the Gold's convention and following it. For those of you who know him, Robert is one of the most sincere and caring people you'd ever meet; he's very human and it shows. It was instructive to hear the comments from a highly respected industry leader who following our meeting asked, "Is this how you conduct all of your meetings?" Well Robert was unclear as to what the person met. They went on, "You see I am so used to getting pressured and sold and you did not even have a presentation." (So I might have paraphrased a bit :)). Get it now ? Its not about us its about them.

The bottom line is this, if health club and fitness brands keep broadcasting content around what they do, what they have, and who they are consumers aren't going to connect. We can't use social media effectively if its not centered around the customer and we must reengineer our businesses accordingly. If the DNA of your organization can't "GET IT" then you've got a real problem on your hands.

Watch the video above from Gary Vaynerchuck and tell me Bryan O'Rourke, what is your marketing strategy with social media ? Do you agree with Gary that you've got to change from presenting to working the room ? Thanks for your thoughts and for reading the post.

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 and heads up the firms Integerus and Fitsomo. He advises successful global brands, serves as a member of the GGFA Think Tank and is CEO of the Fitness Industry Technology Council (To join FIT-C visit www.fit-c.org ). Recently Bryan was named to the ACE industry advisory panel.  To learn more contact Bryan here today.