The first free gym
German fitness operator McFit is planning to open a gym with an innovative membership model that allows users to train for free.
The operator will offer free membership “through sponsoring and partners from the business world,” Mcfit founder Rainer Schaller said in Germany’s Handelsblatt Global.
Adding: “It’s not just about making money. If it were, we might not be doing it. Of course, the concept has to pay off, but when you’re already the No.1 like we are, you look for new challenges.”
To boost revenues, the club could stage industry conferences and sporting events, as well as showcase fitness equipment and sports brand manufacturers.
The operator, which is the largest in Europe in terms of memberships, is looking to convert an old industrial building in Oberhausen, western Germany, into the largest fitness studio in the world, costing in the region of €50m (US$59.6m, £46.1m).
Named The Mirai, meaning “future” in Japanese, the club will sit on a 592,000sq ft (55,000sq m) plot of land and is expected to open in 2019.
Former FIBO event director Ralph Scholz joined McFit’s management team in June to lead “an innovation project”. He said: “As a trade show man in Cologne, I used to spend the entire year preparing for a four-day event. The Mirai could be a permanent, year-long showcase for our industry.”
McFit has 1.5million members and more than 270 branches in seven countries.

                                                                                            ( Health Club management by Deven Pamben)

How to Create an Exponential Mindset

Digital business models are a bit of a misnomer. It’s not digital technology that defines them; it’s their
ability to create exponential value. The music and video industries, for example, weren’t redefined by
converting analog to digital formats. Just ask Sony about Minidisc players and Netflix about their DVD
business.
To create exponential value, it’s imperative to first create an exponential mindset. The incremental mindset
focuses on making something better, while the exponential mindset is makes something different.
Incremental is satisfied with 10%. Exponential is out for 10X.
In the last century, industrial business models were defined by their use of machines to create increasing
returns to scale. Digital business models use network effects to create what Ray Kurzweil describes as
accelerating returns to scale. The key difference is that industrial models are linear while digital models are exponential, as shown in the chart below.

While others have written about how to design exponential strategies and organizations, I want to focus here on how to create an exponential mindset. My work with clients suggests that the incremental mindset is more deeply embedded than we might think. Unless you are conscious and diligent, you can end up with a strategy that looks digital (i.e. uses digital technology) but doesn’t actually operate digitally (i.e. achieves accelerating returns).
The role of incremental and exponential mindsets vary in each phase of the business journey: launch, grow, and expand.

Launch: Vision and Uncertainty
In the launch phase of a business, the team needs to develop and refine the business model. The Lean Startup approach of test, iterate, and pivot is the right thing to do. But you also need the right way to think.
Are you thinking about your business incrementally or exponentially?
The incremental mindset draws a straight line from the present to the future. A “good” incremental
business plan enables you to see exactly how you will get from here to there. But exponential models are not straight. They are like a bend in the road that prevents you from seeing around the corner, except in this case the curve goes up. Without an exponential mindset, Google would never have created such an ambitious vision as “organizing the world’s information,” Facebook would never have set out to “make the world more open and connected,” and Airbnb to “create a world where all 7 Billion people can Belong Anywhere.” Similarly, a group of innovative organizations in the public sector are out to solve global social issues by achieving “transformative scale.”
In Maine they have an expression that “You can’t get there from here.” In the launch phase, you need to realize that an exponential strategy has inherent uncertainty. You can’t know what things will look like on the other side of the curve. You can’t draw a straight line from where you are to where you are going.
There’s no step-by-step plan. The exponential mindset helps you become comfortable with incertainty and more ambitious with your vision.

Build: Courage and Patience
These days, many companies are able to get through the launch phase with an exponential mindset. They manage their uncertainty, take the leap, and start the journey despite being unable to see around the bend. Fear of disruption and envy of unicorns can be a powerful motivator. But then something happens. Or more precisely, something doesn’t happen.
Take a look at the chart above. In the first part of the build phase, you don’t see a lot of change. It’s not until the second part when the line starts to bend. It’s simply the nature of exponential change. Things happen very slowly before they happen very quickly. If this was the only world we knew, it wouldn’t be a problem. But we were raised with an incremental mindset. So we can’t help but compare the exponential path to the incremental path. And this creates a problem.
We are accustomed to measuring progress linearly and incrementally. If 30% of the time has gone by, we assume that we should be 30% of the way there. That’s how things work in the physical world when we are traveling to a destination. But exponential models don’t work that way.
What happens is that businesses run into something I call the “expectation gap,” where the exponential strategy is at greatest risk from the incremental mindset. It’s where many companies abandon the exponential model for the incremental.
I see this consistently on a micro scale in my own work. My workshops are designed with an exponential mindset to generate new ways of thinking about marketing, culture and strategy. Somewhere around a third of the way into a workshop, the leader invariably says something like “so when are we going to get something done?” The reason is that they are still operating with an incremental mindset. A third of the time has passed, but it seems like they are only 10% of the way to our destination. In fact, most of the progress happens once the curve starts to bend. Invariably by the end of the day the same people are remarking that they can’t believe how much we got done in such a short period of time. In your exponential journey, pay attention to when people get the most impatient for results. It’s the point in the chart where there is the largest gap between incremental and exponential paths. This expectation gap is a risk to the business strategy because the impatience can be used by opponents or skeptics to convince stakeholders to jump from the exponential to the incremental. You will have the immediate relief of having “line of sight” once again and see steady progress. But you will also have given up the possibility of accelerating returns and the opportunity to keep up with customers and competitors. The exponential mindset helps you have the courage to persevere and the patience to see it through.

Grow: Agility and Control
In the third phase, you have managed the uncertainty of the early days, the impatience of the middle
phase, and now you are firmly “in the curve.” Growth is happening faster than you can handle. At this
point, the incremental mindset is to try to rein things in and get things under control. But that would be a mistake. To sustain the accelerating returns, you need to shift your mindset about how to mobilize and manage resources. The incremental mindset assumes that it takes more inputs to produce more outputs. So as growth starts to accelerate, teams start to look for more resources in proportion to the growth. But the addition of too many people or too many resources can “flood the engine” of growth. You need an exponential mindset to figure out how 1X additional input can create 10X additional output.
You also need to apply an exponential mindset to how you manage the resources you have. The
incremental mindset about management is like creating a line of dominos. Everything needs to be highly coordinated with active oversight to make progress one step at a time. The exponential mindset is like this demonstration with ping pong balls in which things happen in parallel with a focus on the interactions among participants.
As I’ve written about separately, there is a way to let go without losing control. In the exponential mindset, managers replace control of people with control of principles. The use of doctrine to guide decision-making generates alignment, consistency and empowerment. But most leaders are accustomed to making decisions rather than empowering decisions. The anxiety from a loss of control can easily push companies off the exponential path back onto the incremental path. The exponential mindset helps to grow output faster than input, and empower teams to achieve both alignment and autonomy.
To summarize, digital business models require a shift from incremental to exponential. At the start, it takes vision and a leap of faith to commit to the unknown. In the early days, it takes courage and patience to build the foundation for growth even when results aren’t yet apparent. When growth kicks in, agility comes from empowering others and letting go without losing control. In all of the stages, the challenge is to “unlearn” familiar ways of thinking and embrace the unfamiliar. But with a shift from the incremental to exponential mindset comes the opportunity for real innovation.
                                                                                             ( Mark BoncheK, Harvard Business Review)
 

WeWork enters the Fitness Market 

WeWork is a company that provides co-working office spaces, along with HR, community events, and a network that mimic a more traditional work environment.
As proof of both its penetration into the market and its potential, WeWork, valued at over $16 billion, is the only AEC tech startup that qualifies as a unicorn.

WeWork is gradually expanding into the realm of fitness by offering workout classes inside select New York outposts.The company plans to open a permanent gym at 85 Broad Street in New York, where it currently operates a co-working space. The proposed facility will also house yoga studios, a sauna and a meditation room.

WeWork references how its successful co-working model could shape the gym concept, known as WeWork Wellness.
“In other gyms, everyone is working on themselves, and that manifests in an environment that can be intimidating and isolating,” the job description states. “At 85 Broad, we believe that charting your own path to fulfillment and motivating for holistic health go hand-in-hand with ‘affiliation’ (social bonds).”

WeWork members and non-members can sign up for fitness classes such as spinning, yoga and kickboxing, which currently take place in spaces including common areas and rooftop decks. The classes, ranging in price from free to $20, can be booked via Eventbrite and ClassPass, as well as a dedicated iPhone app.