Ep.104 - Wendy Coulson: Les Mills and collective leadership in fitness.

Wendy Coulson is responsible for developing thousands of instructors in the fitness industry. Through a passion for collective leadership in the global giant that is Les Mills, her position as CEO for the UK and Ireland is built on brilliant branding insight, innovation, staff engagement and trust. Through these incredible efforts she’s helping lead the charge towards a fitter planet.

Watch the full episode on YouTube

 

Wendy Coulson left school and started in the management development scheme of the banking sector. During this time, she qualified in group fitness and PT, spending weekends upskilling herself and eventually deciding it was a better option to follow fitness as a career born from passion.

She got a job in Fitness First, opening the chain’s eighth club. Her experience in banking established core skills and competency that she brought to the fitness industry during years on both the supplier and operator sides 

Wendy is passionate about collective leadership and everyone coming together, contributing as part of a team in developing each other and reaping the rewards that arise with continual success.

 

Les Mills is an entrepreneurial, innovative company with the purpose of creating a fitter planet.

It began in 1968 when Les Mills set up a small family gym in Auckland. Three generations on, there are now millions who work out with Les Mills every day, all over the world. These workouts are licensed by 19,500 partners in 100 countries. Les Mills supports each of these partners to build relationships that extend beyond memberships, providing them with research, marketing and new workouts every three months. Their tribe of 135,000 certified instructors bring Les Mills workouts to life.

Every day, programmes, such as BODYPUMP, BODYCOMBAT, BODYBALANCE, RPM, LES MILLS GRIT and more, pack out fitness studios around the globe. The future of fitness is merging physical and digital. Les Mills is leading the way with immersive training and workouts on demand.

 

Episode highlights :

• How some things in fitness change such as budgets and the importance of social media, but many challenges stay the same such as retention, membership growth and industry disruption.
• Ways in which fitness has become more accessible beyond anyone’s expectations with the growth of the home fitness market.
• The importance of purpose, and how fitness can make a difference in everyone’s lives.
• How creating good content in collaboration with others brings better progress in changing anyone’s life and pushing towards a fitter planet.
• Why it’s important to find out how you can align your business with the interests and visions of others in order to find synergy and move forward together, rather than compromising either partner’s approach.
• How feeling fulfilled and challenging yourself will create the drive for you to achieve anything, personally or professionally.
• Why pay is not everything, but feeling valued and getting recognised for the difference you’ve made is important.
• How using research on group exercise is the strongest way to improve retention rates alongside your profit and loss, taking away the fear of losing members for operators even when their member acquisition rates are strong.
• Secrets of group fitness that’s seen occupancy rates go up to 90% for classes across the board.
• How to appeal to the ‘right’ demographics and how you can set goals to achieve exactly where you want to be at every level, whether it’s about percentage of membership attending classes, recruitment, training, positioning, staff rewarding or environment decisions.
• Are you fulfilling the basic human needs of instructors in order for them to create the best possible experience for members?
• How traditional clubs can compete against the boutiques and individual operators.
• Why home fitness may be the key to engaging the majority of the population that doesn’t workout, providing a comfortable experience in a familiar environment, before channeling them into a traditional location.

 

Join Matthew Januszek in conversation with Wendy Coulson…