The brightly colored signage for Orangetheory Fitness is popping up all over South Florida, but few people may realize the scope of the company’s success.
Learning that the company expects to have 675 locations by the end of the year is like rewinding to the era when Blockbuster was in its rapid growth phase in South Florida. Like H. Wayne Huizenga, David Long and his team are showing how to repeat success more than once. He offered some great insights into team-building and what it takes to achieve hyper growth.
From a fitness standpoint, I like how Orangetheory’s business model is about people really showing up to work out rather than just expecting members to pay a monthly fee and not really caring if they show up. Its members’ success is part of its bottom line.
I learned about Orangetheory from Sanford “Sandy” Lechner, who is publisher of Tribal Business Journal, a tribally owned publication being produced by Lifestyle Media Group, parent of SFBW.
Sandy proudly showed me a picture of what he looked like before he lost a lot of weight. How can I put this kindly? He appears to be posed in front of the Grand Canyon, but you can’t see much of the canyon. Sandy found Orangetheory early in his quest to lose weight and has turned into quite the ironman. He has an impressive collection of ribbons in his office. He’s actually a success story that’s been touted by Orangetheory.
Tribal Business Journal has a cool story itself. It is being distributed to economic development officials and tribal leaders throughout the United States. There’s a huge push by tribal leaders to help improve their economic standing and foster entrepreneurial and career opportunities. I wish Sandy great success in launching our first national publication.
SFBW has a new feature in this issue, a column on gaming by Nick Sortal. I worked with Nick at the Sun-Sentinel and we ended up racing each other in some 5Ks. I bumped into him at a seminar at Florida International University and he filled me in on his website, southfloridagambling.com. I asked him about whether he could write something for SFBW’s affluent readership and the result is in this issue.
We also have a visually spectacular feature this issue on how the cruise industry has upped its game on expedition and immersive experience cruises. It was sparked by some of the panel discussions at the Seatrade Global conference. One of my takeaways was that we could all benefit from unplugging and relieving some of the stress from our busy lives. Anyone up for a trip to Antarctica?
