Five minutes with Jamie Hayes
Healthy Inspirations has only been operating in Australia since 2001 but Jamie Hayes, managing director, Healthy Inspirations Franchising, said his obsession with a healthy lifestyle began almost 30 years ago.
“My switch went off in the 70’s when I was introduced to my first aerobic class and realized I was much more attracted to the healthy and active women in the class than the women I met in the pub later,” Hayes said. Although he jokes it was women that originally piqued his interest in the health industry, when Hayes started to notice a difference in his own health as a result of regular exercise, he became hooked.
“I’m an asthmatic, so working out regularly and a healthy lifestyle made a huge difference to my health,” Hayes said. Hayes forged a career out of his passion for health. He got involved in instructor training and was awarded the first national fitness leader of the year award. He spent 20 years working and managing fitness clubs in Sydney.
Hayes would also spend time speaking about fitness and international fitness conventions. In this time, he became increasingly aware of the gap that existed in the Australian fitness market and started to actively seek out ways in which to close the gap.
“Because (my fitness business) had grown and I had opened multiple fitness centres before owning five (fitness) centres in Sydney, I recognized there was an obvious gap in the market between weight loss centres that didn’t do exercise and exercise centres that didn’t do weight loss,” Hayes said.
It was about this time that Hayes became aware of Healthy Inspirations, the American franchise of weight loss centres that was offering women a complete weight loss program based on resistance based exercise coupled with a personal eating program.
Hayes had heard Casey Conrad, the founder of Healthy Inspirations, speak at various fitness conventions in Australia and he became convinced that the successful model could be replicated in Australia to assist Australian women achieve results in their weight loss efforts.
“Australia is a few points behind America in terms of obesity levels and there is no trend in that changing. I want to do what I can to stop child obesity and the first step to doing that is to modify the habits of the mother,” Hayes said.
Hayes approached Conrad about bringing the Healthy Inspirations weight loss model down under and in 2001; the first Australian branch of the franchise was opened in Queensland. “My intention was to franchise the business from day one,” Hayes said.
In six years, that one franchise has expanded to 35 clubs located across Australia and New Zealand. The health and fitness franchise has clubs in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne and by the end of 2007, Hayes anticipates the number of Healthy Inspiration clubs will top 50.
“We will continue to open one to two centres a month across Australia, but we are more interested in having happy profitable franchisees than growing fast,” Hayes said. According to Hayes, the Healthy Inspirations model has been successful in Australia because women, who have never been successful in losing weight before, are starting to see results by following the program.
“Just like a combination lock won’t work unless you have all four numbers right at the same time, you won’t get results from your weight loss regime until you have the right fitness program and correct healthy eating program in place. (Healthy Inspirations) is the convergence of both the best of weight management with the best of exercise”,” Hayes said. When a woman joins Healthy Inspirations, she is put on a personal eating program that has been designed by an Australian dietician and is based on common foods found in supermarkets.
“Our members learn lifelong skills and we teach them how to create their own meals. We coach (our members) through the process (of losing weight) one on one, not once but three times a week,” Hayes said. Hayes also said having the right franchise owners, who are equally passionate about helping women achieve their weight loss goals, has been critical to the brand’s success.
“We look for women who are business oriented and who have a passion about weight management and fitness who are well connected in their communities. Our franchise owners have to be outgoing people and a natural promoter and net worker within her community because much of our marketing is community based,” Hayes said.
Some of Healthy Inspirations most successful franchise owners have gone through their own personal journey to get healthy and as a result are more likely to be able to relate to their customers as well as inspire them to achieve their own results. Hayes admits that even he has been inspired by the stories of some of the franchisees.
“Rebel Whale operates two very successful centres in Tamworth and Dubbo and has broken many of our sales records. She lost over 30kgs and it totally changed her life,” Hayes said. In addition to a mission statement “to inspire women to change their lives”, Healthy Inspirations has a set of values that defines their culture.
The values are; fun (they aim to make losing weight a fun experience), caring (if a women doesn’t come to her first session of the week, she gets a care call), knowledge (constantly giving franchise owners the opportunity to attend courses to increase their knowledge), integrity (recruiting the right staff and franchise owners from the outset) and inspiring (sharing other members’ success stories to inspire women to change habits). Healthy Inspirations centres are predominately located in regional areas of Australia, where Hayes said people are more likely to have weight problems.
“Our target market is women between 35-55 years old. They feel uncomfortable going to gyms but they do have time on their hands (to go to a gym). Rent in these areas is lower and word of mouth is easier because people are more connected to their community,” Hayes said. Healthy Inspirations tends to open in areas where there are enough women in the right socio-economic group that live within a comfortable drive of the centre. Hayes said Healthy Inspirations prefers areas that have at least 15,000 homes.
Localized marketing, focused on sharing the success stories of Healthy Inspiration members, has delivered results so far but Hayes is aware the brand operates in a fiercely competitive market. “We’ve just recruited someone to join our team as marketing director. Retaining members and doing what we can to keep a local integrated approach (to our marketing) is the number one thing I lose sleep over. How you market your product or service is often more important than the product or service itself,” Hayes said. All of the marketing of the Healthy Inspirations brand is local and controlled by the franchise owners.
Even though very few of the franchise owners have formal marketing experience, it isn’t a disadvantage because a large percentage of business is driven by positive word of mouth. “For the women that find us, a huge amount has been referred to us by friends. We have found the conversation a happy member has with a friend has a lot more power than any advertising,” Hayes said.
19.06.2007
FCA Member
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Contact Healthy Inspirations
Tel: 1300 600 880
Fax: 07 3870 5698
