Unifying the Health & Physical Activity Sector Worldwide [Podcast Series]

Amy Boone Thompson is the owner and CEO of IDEA Health & Fitness Association.
Amy is also an advisory board member for the California Fitness Alliance, and the Vice Chair for World Active.

“One year ago, I bought IDEA Health & Fitness. I was running the company. I saw an opportunity to bring it out of private equity and carve it back out and run the association. And so I one day jumped out of my chair and said it's me, it's always been me this was my path all along, although I never knew it. And today, I'm the owner of the association.

“I knew that I had a gift that if I showed up authentically, I could continue to help the user create impact and advocate for these fitness professionals. And that's really what led me to that burning desire to jump out of my chair and say, It's me, it's always been me, let me buy this company. Because it was all perfectly aligned with my mission.”

“I truly care for the person in front of me, whether they're my employee or whether they're my boss, or whether it's, it's a member of the club or the business. And when you lead from that place and that space and that intention, then things fall into place. And you do need to lean into soft skills to, to be human and, and have that empathy...”

“And that's really where we're going to be best as an industry. If we can come together and stop segmenting the business into so many categories and so many roles and so many shows. My vision is to reconnect our ecosystem so that we can truly unite.”

“But a lot of professionals have found that fitness exists outside of four walls. And fitness can exist anywhere. And as a professional I have more choices than ever to meet clients where they are and I can have my career where I want it. So I think that's really exciting. Now to address the need of club operators, they're gonna have to be, give a more compelling offering of what's in it for the professional because the—if you want to call it power—it's kind of shifted again.”

“So I think we have an obligation first as an industry to reset what our entry level requirements are. And I don't mean that they necessarily need to change. I mean, we all need to be on the same page about what it means to work in our industry and to carry the title of personal trainer or group instructor. Stop making up new titles. Stop trying to reinvent this. Let's go back to just agree what is the minimum competency that someone needs to have to work in our sector?”

“Movement for all is one of my core values. And so that applies to our professionals as well as it applies to the end user.”

“So I think one of the primary objectives of World Active—which is a newly formed collaboration of associations and registries—is we've got to agree, in order to unify our sector, we have to agree on some terminology that we identify with globally.”

“But the whole goal is to create an organization that can represent our sector when it comes to having these conversations about our place in prevention and in the healthcare ecosystem. So we have goals such as standards and credentials, and we have goals around equity and inclusion.”

“We will be talking and collaborating and you know, research and data is going to be a big piece of this initiative as well. And that's where we need to look to all the great work that's been being done on every continent and collaborating those efforts.”

”What's the data that you need in order to be better operators? What are we missing that can help to make us more collaborative? How can you lean into all the information that we can share to create more equity in our services that we provide?”

“I keep using the word unify. But it really hasn't been a collaborative, unified industry ever since I've been in this space, and I've been in for over 30 years. Something is happening. And there's a shift right now where we're coming together.”

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