About

This web site is designed to accelerate your health club in becoming a green business while simultaneously reducing your operating costs.

This site will also give you the ideas and tools for becoming a green leader in your community.

An Example Of Green Economics
Over the last two years all members of REX Roundtables have been encouraged to regularly look for and report ways of reducing costs without reducing member value.

Some of the most dramatic savings have been done in ways that make greener clubs. Relamping especially if you have indoor courts has reduced energy bills several thousands of dollars per month; managing energy peak loads with automated start up that sequences lamps and reduces peak power cuts utility rates; and co-generation savings of up to $13,000 a month for a club with lots of courts and water to heat and cool.

Inside this web site are dozens of more specific examples of Green Cost Savings for your club.

The Growing Power Of Green
In every community across America, there is a rising tide of concern over global warming, water and air pollution, decreasing water supplies and other Green Factors influencing our ability to live a healthy life in a healthy economy. This trend appears to have long term staying power. I sense it will only increase.

The challenge is how to respond to the GREEN Challenge. Many long standing green groups have taken such extreme positions and used extreme tactics that that have lost some main stream credibility. Who will be the source of GREEN LEADERSHIP and GREEN EXPERTISE in your community? What organization can truly lead with out a hidden agenda? Who has a neutral history of believability?

Health Clubs Can Lead The Way
I contend that a health club can be the GREEN LEADER in its community. Health clubs already have ‘Health’ in their name! Not sickness like the medical world but wellness and health. Other community organizations all have another primary focus besides GREEN. Religious organizations focus on their religious beliefs and their congregations, Chambers and Economic Development Commissions focus on growing businesses, political parties focus on their platforms and favorite issues and so forth.

GREEN LEADERSHIP and ACTION in America as a whole and your community in particular must not be tied to business or religion or politics if it is to succeed. SO who can be the GREEN LEADER in your community. Your Club could be! In the same way that Gainesville Health and Fitness Club committed to making Gainesville the healthiest city in America (Healthiest Community in America” by Wellness Councils of America, 2003).

Pursuing this focus has double benefits. The community becomes healthier and the community develops a special relationship with your club for its commitment to serving the community. To learn of the extraordinary bottom line results when businesses focus on serving their community see Firms of Endearment (link to my book review on REX site) where such businesses out perform the Good to Great businesses by 300% for growth and profit.

Getting Started
Health clubs can begin addressing competition from low cost, low staffed exercise facilities, by differentiating your club by focusing on healthy living NOT just exercise. This means you begin serving your community as a while in becoming healthier. And that very quickly leads you to being the GREEN LEADER in your community. What does this mean? That is what this whole web site will tell you about.

The Time Is Now
2007 may well be a significant marker in our world’s relationship to its environment. Although many individuals and non profits have been pushing for greater environmental awareness sine Rachel Carson published her wake up call in 1957 SILENT SPRING where she reported that the Spring was growing silent in the Midwest due to the transfer of DDT that was sprayed as a pesticide on crops, then rain washed into streams, then into fish which were eaten by eagles and ospreys.

The DDT created birth defects in the birds young and their species were threatened with extinction. The Environmental Protection Agency was soon created.. It was not until the year 2007 when I noticed that every major business magazine, newspaper and journal had an ongoing string of articles reporting on businesses going green—seriously green..

Thus the GREEN TREND like the BOOMER TREND are here to stay. They may be two of the most significant external, trends affecting the health club industry. The major trend inside our industry is the growth of the low cost, low price franchised health club at the low end of the market and the consolidation of the larger chains at the middle of the industry. Peter Drucker said that strategic planning is built on identifying trends that are not yet fully capitalized and getting on them to power your business forward like a surfer on a wave. These three trends are providing huge power sources that clubs can ride.

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