Ep 157 - President of Precor Rob Barker: The experience upgrade.

This is why fitness needs an experience upgrade at every level.

On this episode of the Escape Your Limits podcast we meet Rob Barker, president of Precor. As well as heading up of one of the world's largest fitness equipment companies, Rob is also an exec board member of Amer Sports, the £3b global leader in sporting goods.

Rob's sharing real-time advice and information about driving the development of personalised health and fitness experiences that help people live the lives they desire.

For more information visit https://escapefitness.com/podcast

Video Version – https://youtu.be/hW6g8zcDKhw

Venturing into fitness as a career, Rob began in operations, running the equipment of YMCAs in the UK. He fell in love with the industry, wanting to make people healthier and happier.

He progressed and started in the supply sector in 1995, as a London sales rep for Precor. In his own words, he's been trying to be the best version of himself ever since, rising through the ranks of the business until he became president.

The Precor mission is to develop personalised health and fitness experiences that help people live the lives they desire. For over three decades, Precor has driven fitness forward with a passionate focus on ergonomic motion, proven science, and superior engineering.

The business constantly studies and anticipates the needs of the people and organisations it serves, and continually redefines the levels of innovation, quality, and service necessary to deliver the very best fitness experiences – all with the goal of improving the ways people improve themselves. Precor equipment is chosen by health clubs, hotels and spas, universities, and individuals all over the world.

 

Episode highlights - 

• What power is in owning your own development, staying humble, and working every day to be the best in whatever it is you're doing at the time.
• Why happiness has to come before success, and why it's a choice that you can make regardless of your situation. Reference: Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work (TED Talk on positive psychology) https://bit.ly/2GE3fvU
• How you can energise yourself as a leader in the tough times even more than the enthusiasm you show during the good times.
• Why a lot of operators will pivot from facility-centric to consumer-centric, with an omni-channel approach that better suits how the world has changed.
• What results come from live tracking of over 120,000 connected pieces of cardio from all around the world in gyms, hotels and hospitality, with each machine getting an average of 23 minutes' workout time on it. How do these results compare to last year pre-COVID? Reference link: https://www.precor.com/en-us/preva-stats
• Why the fitness industry needs to be working together even more closely to get the message across about being a safe space, and what other countries have done to change the mind of policymakers.
• What positives have come from COVID and how the pandemic has given the fitness industry a real tail wind to ride on for future progress with a growth mindset.
• How habits pre-coronavirus have been broken and why we need to help reestablish new fitness habits for members of the future.
• What power digital has to create local familiarity across digital platforms, in addition to the digital advances that have already come into effect.
• What are going to be some of the key trends that we'll see, both from a manufacturer and operator's side, in the coming months.

 

Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Rob Barker…