The FIA Welcomes Mark Talley & ‘Making a Difference with Better Variety!’

The FIA is please to introduce Mark Talley, Fitness Director at LA Fitness as one of its key speakers, and special guest bloggers in the lead up to the 'FIA Health & Fitness Conference at LIW 2010' (21st - 23rd September, NEC Birmingham). Welcome!

Everyone tells us we don’t do it well enough, so just how can we start interacting with and engaging our members more effectively? My session on ‘Member Interaction & Engagement - Making a difference with better variety’ will draw upon established research and my practical experience gained over the last 20 years.

As an operator, not an academic, I will provide you with some practical tools and advice to help you create and manage a more engaging experience for your members. In particular I will reveal the new LA Experience, designed to enhance the experience of existing members through increased meaningful interaction, increase engagement of its people and improve sales and membership yield.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Mark Talley

Mark’s session will be taking place on September 22, 11.30am at Leisure Industry Week 2010. For further information about LA Fitness please visit www.lafitness.co.uk.

Introducing TV Life-Coach Pete Cohen & ‘What It Takes to Be Exceptional!’

The FIA is please to introduce TV life-coach Pete Cohen as one of its key speakers, and special guest bloggers in the lead up to the 'FIA Health & Fitness Conference at LIW 2010' (21st - 23rd September, NEC Birmingham). Welcome!

During my session at the ‘FIA Health & Fitness Conference at LIW 2010’ I will be looking at ‘What It Takes to Be Exceptional!’.

Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. So what are the secrets of exceptional people?

Talent has little or nothing to do with being exceptional. You can make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great or even exceptional.

The first major conclusion I will look to draw during my session is that nobody is great without work. It is nice to believe that if you find the field where you're naturally gifted, you will be great from day one, but this just doesn't happen. There's no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.

The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call "deliberate practice." It is activity that is explicitly intended to improve performance that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.

But how do we translate this into business? Many elements of business, in fact, are directly practicable. Presenting, selling, negotiating, delivering - you can practice them all!

Maybe we can't expect all people to achieve greatness, it’s just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that being exceptional isn't reserved for the few. It is available to you and to everyone, and this is what I will be exploring with you at the ‘FIA Health & Fitness Conference at LIW 2010’.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Pete Cohen

Pete’s session will be taking place on September 22, 11.30am at Leisure Industry Week 2010. For further information about Pete Cohen please visit www.petecohen.com.

The FIA talks to Georgina Jupp from CK Academy ahead of LIW 2010

As the FIA continue to count down the days until Leisure Industry Week 2010 (21st - 23rd September, NEC Birmingham), it has invited some of its key speakers at this years 'FIA Health & Fitness Conference at LIW 2010' to provide an quick taster of what to expect from their seminars.

The FIA is pleased to be joined this week by Georgina Jupp, Managing Director at CK Academy. Georgina is here to provide an insight into her background and forthcoming customer care session at the 'FIA Health & Fitness Conference at LIW 2010'. 



Georgina's session will be taking place on September 22, 10.30am at Leisure Industry Week 2010. For further information about Georgina and CK Academy please visit www.ckacademy.co.uk.

The LIW Countdown….

Guest blogger Hayley Bevan, The FIA's Events and Sponsorships Manager, counts down the days until Leisure Industry Week 2010 (21st - 23rd September, NEC Birmingham)

The biggest gathering of the health and fitness sector is just around the corner and we at the FIA can’t wait to get back to the NEC!

After over a year of research, debate, consultation and industry-wide feedback, Dave Stalker and the TwentyTen Commission Panel will be announcing the industry’s five year strategy on Tuesday morning in the opening keynote. Something we at the FIA feel very strongly about, it will provide vision and recommendation around the 5 key cornerstones: Community Hubs, Work Place Activity, Data and Consumer Insights, Exercise as Medicine and Up-skilling the Workforce. Devised to generate positive outcomes and direction for the industry, we hope you will join us at the start of the industry’s new journey. How exciting!

Expertly delivered education will of course be on the agenda this year, with something for every single one of us.

The largest gathering of Independent Operators ever has dictated the provision of a specially tailored day of seminars, looking at various topics, all in response to the challenges that independent operators have voiced they face.  Following the age-old “work hard, play harder” life motto – the FIA/IOU members will be found sipping cocktails and chilling out at a rather exclusive bar in the evening - let it not be said that those CFM boys don’t know how to party!

Following fantastic feedback on speakers at the Flame Conference earlier this year, we’re bringing some of them back for follow-on education at LIW!  Personally I can’t wait to hear what else Pete Cohen has to share – his wisdom on happiness was well received in Cheltenham and this time he’ll be looking at how to become ‘exceptional’ – I wonder what that entails!  Joining Pete are Sue Anstiss, Keith Burnet, Georgina Jupp, Michael Crowe and Mark Talley who will each provide insight and debate from their field of expertise.

The FIA has also teamed up with Sport England to host a day of seminars which will look at our industry’s crucial contribution to the Olympic legacy – less than 2 years and counting, the partnership couldn’t have come at a better time…..  Our expert panel will advise on how we can position ourselves as a KEY Olympic partner and what this means for the industry.

Those of you who attended the Ball of Fire in July will understand the sheer competition and motivation that fuels the prestigious annual Flame Awards – and the tension and anticipation that finalists feel as Dave utters those promising words “and the winner is…”.  I am delighted to announce that Flame 2011 will launch at LIW this year and that gruelling (yet enlightening) process of excellence can build again for all who enter! 

As always we assume that everyone else takes as much pleasure in social opportunities as we do, which is why we will be buying everyone a drink after the first day of the show!  Matrix and Active IQ have graciously sponsored the FIA Drinks Reception this year, giving members the chance to debrief with colleagues, peers and a special celebrity guest….

As you can see, it’s an action-packed LIW this year, so whilst you get to work planning your itinerary, so shall we! 

For more info on the FIA’s schedule of events visit our website, otherwise I look forward to seeing you there!

Hayley Bevan

Leisure Industry Week Announcements

LIW looms like the Kilimanjaro peak on my horizon. To all my fellow exhibitors, I hope you have a great LIW – may all your enquiries be great leads. To all visitors, I hope you have a great time and, having spoken to quite a few exhibitors, I know you will walk away with at least three good ideas. This year’s LIW is a big one for us for three major reasons:



1. We will announce the results of the 2009 MoreActive4Life campaign
2. We will unveil our new CMO
3. We will launch the next generation of MoreActive4Life: a proposition developed with the obesity specialists MEND, which will give every FIA member an exciting new consumer proposition and a new tactic to leverage the Change4Life connection.


John Searle, our new CMO, must be unique in our industry having an illustrious medical career behind him, a Level 3 qualification and he was a former arthritis sufferer who cured himself through exercise (and a few drugs). John is critical in the FIA’s/ industry’s medical community ‘engagement plan’. If we can overcome their lack of knowledge of the benefits of “exercise medicine” and perhaps even whatever prejudices they have, then we really will have a 360 Degree solution to the nation’s public health time bomb – a solution comprising the DH, the FIA, programme developers (such as MEND), FIA members and ‘referers’ ie the healthcare community. That would be brilliant for consumers and very lucrative for FIA members (if we get it right).

I am now off, in a packed car, to head up the M40 with mission critical collateral in my keep. God help me if I break, lose, misplace or damage anything..... I will have to suffer the wrath of Hayley, our Events manager .......... for three full days! Day and evening!!


David Stalker, FIA Chief Operating Officer

Post Holiday Blues and Pre LIW Madness...

With LIW just around the corner the FIA office is buzzing accordingly with anticipation and preparation. Next week is a little different to the norm - with a sports beach, hosted buyer programme, fitness zone… Congrats to the LIW boys!



This last week has been a busy one for me; having just returned from a glorious holiday in the Algarve in a relaxed a smiley mood, I drove straight into the events planning turmoil and have duly forgotten that I’ve been away at all… The fading remnants of a hard-fought-for tan are all that remains!

From Monday morning my feet have barely touched the ground and as always, the scales of work/home life never balance themselves out – Instead of returning home to a cosy sofa, Eastenders, glass of wine and a stir-fry (my preferred school-night activity), I’ve been plunging a ceaselessly blocking toilet (not our own doing I assure you!), screaming at a dying laptop (which melodramatically keeps showing me the “blue screen of DEATH!”), wondering how on earth people got by before the internet existed, and desperately trying to learn the language of the “Computer Geeks” in order to communicate with those funny salesmen on Tottenham Court Road who are trying to sell me a new laptop! As a high point to the week I had some great meetings with Keiser and Cybex, who are set to support the FIA through 2010.

Despite the frantic nature of the week I am confident that our various events at LIW next week will be a success – our Drinks Reception on Tuesday night has been highly subscribed to (in fact it is totally full to bursting point). This will be a great chance for Health & Fitness to gather, chat, drink & nibble – all thanks to our lovely, generous sponsors; Fitness TV and Matrix!

I am pleased to say that I think this week’s storm is finally calming and I hope that the FIA staff BBQ this evening will vanquish any remaining knots of stress and bring me back to holiday mode!

Hayley Bevan - FIA Events and Sponsorship Manager