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Creating happier, healthier workplaces through a multilateral focus on fitness

Tony Frick is the president and CEO of GlobalFit, a health and wellness technology company based in Philadelphia, PA. Since 1992, GlobalFit has worked with fitness companies and insurers to promote healthy, happy, and productive workforces. Today, in addition to its network of over 9000 gyms and studios, the company offers numerous, tech-powered fitness solutions, including GlobalFit Rewards, which uses rewards to incentivize employees to participate in healthy activities, and WalkMyMind, a holistic program centered on the connection between physical, mental, and emotional health. GlobalFit’s mobile app, GlobalFit Anywhere, is scheduled to launch later this year.

EDWIN WARFIELD: What kinds of customers do you work with?

TONY FRICK: We do work with a number of insurers throughout the nation and a number of the Fortune 500. They often come to us with a problem, or a need, or a demand for their employees, and we have a number of core solutions that we can take off the shelf and deliver it to them. Often times we build custom solutions for large employers. They might have a specific need in their Medicare space, and we’ll build a custom gym network in certain geographies for Medicare population of an insurer. What we’re seeing today is that most employers, and all of the insurers, have truly bought in to really the need for wellness solutions to bend this cost curve in healthcare—meaning: get people to invest in their own health, get them to invest in their own wellness, and over the longer term, you’re really going to build this healthier population, which will reduce healthcare costs. If you look at Philadelphia, for example, with Independence Blue Cross and the significant market share they have here, there’s a very good chance that if they’re insuring me, Tony Frick here in Philadelphia at 35, they’re going to insure me at 65. So they better hope that I’m a very healthy 65-year-old, so we’re both invested in this together.

In this market, most employers and insurers have bought into the value proposition of platforms that GlobalFit offers. Some of the challenges are bandwidth distribution channels and not muddying the water in corporate communications to employees. The budgets tend to be there, and the budgets range from millions and millions of dollars to just tens of thousands of dollars. And what GlobalFit has done is built products that can appeal to both segments of the marketplace.

Q. How do you sell on organization on GlobalFit?

A. We’re a very consultative organization. We don’t walk into an organization and say, “this is what we’re selling today—you should want to buy it.” We ask them about their challenges with employees and the challenges with their members, the problems that they are trying to solve. Often, one of our core solutions can be taken off this shelf to address one of those challenges, but we’re willing to build our custom platforms for our insurer clients and our large employer clients, and we’ve done that. Last year, we built a specific gym network for a specific Medicare population in certain geographies that were underserved because an insurance client of ours had a specific need there—they had an undermet population. And we will continue to do that.

Q. What do you enjoy most about your job?

A. I think the biggest challenge for a lot of insurers and employers is they think that some of these systemic problems cannot be solved. We spend every day at our organization thinking big, trying to address some of these challenges and problems that exist in the healthcare marketplace and I think that’s what makes this job so fun.

Naturally we have great employee wellness benefits, gym memberships and reimbursements and things of that nature, but it is truly the ability to work in an organization with big ideas and to bring those ideas forward. The vast majority of our employees are involved in the conceptualization, the design, and the development of our platforms. That’s what I think gets people out of bed in the morning and it leads to high engagement and satisfaction in our organization. Sure, everyone loves the kegerators, and the ping-pong tables, and the foosball tables, and the rewards, but it’s really the ability to be involved in initiatives where you see your impact in the community on a daily basis. And GlobalFit sees that all the time, whether it’s from an individual saying they never thought they could afford a gym, and then they go to the gym and they’re sending us emails: “I’ve lost 40 pounds, and, you know, I’m fitting in these jeans that I haven't been able to fit in for 30 years.” And then you’re hearing, “I’m taking less insulin.” And then you’re hearing the same sort of case studies from our insurers, both on the long-term trend and the short-term engagement of their members.

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ABOUT NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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