Kevin Baker of Fitness Together® Talks About Fitness ROI

My name is Kevin Baker, and I’m the owner of two Fitness Together® personal training franchise locations in the Milwaukee area. I have owned my locations since March 2018 after a career in corporate information technology.

I have a business background and spend plenty of time in the trenches with our small business financials. I am pretty intimate with most of our spend and can identify with how well we are performing on several different metrics. With my previous career experiences being in business intelligence, I am well-versed in the measurements for success for the sales, finance, consulting, and even HR organizations at major corporations. What I didn’t anticipate was that along the way, I would utilize some of these same skills to evaluate my personal fitness investment as a means to determine ROI.

The typical individual makes many expenditures on a fairly short timeline, sometimes without giving any thought to the actual overall amount of the purchases – until we are considering a big-ticket item. That was me just a few years ago. My wife and I were both professionals in the IT world with plenty of disposable income. She is more financially conscious than I have ever been, but when we were operating with a healthy surplus, the details were not as important until we had to decide on some large purchases. Along the way, we bought cars, a couple of houses (not at the same time) and paid for our wedding.

With every one of these large purchases, we considered the cost/benefit analysis of the product, financing vs. full payment, and vendor choice, among other criteria, as part of our fiscally responsible approach. Then came the day that I need to convince her that we needed something more for our health.

Over the years preceding my Fitness Together membership, I had allowed my health to decline steadily. A sedentary lifestyle in a job that was fairly desk-bound, along with slowing metabolism and poor family health history all added up to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and the ever-daunting obesity classification. In a previous post, I mentioned that I had tried the fads. I honestly thought that it was something that wasn’t as bad as it seemed or “a phase” that I could overcome with some minor gym work. That was until I had two major health events line up in a very short period.

First, I had visited my primary care physician, who had cautioned me for a few years about my numbers and who then told me that I was on my last shot to avoid a lifetime of medications, potential heart attack, or surgeries, and needed to make some major changes immediately. Second, my wife and I found out that she was pregnant. I decided soon after these two events that it was time for a change if I wanted to be active, or even alive, for my daughter.

A few weeks later, I was driving down Mayfair Road and saw the Fitness Together tagline on the front of a building at the Wauwatosa location – One Client. One Trainer. One Goal™. I pulled into the parking lot and became a “walk-in” lead that got the attention of the manager. He took the time to show me the facility and to sit down and talk prices with me. I knew personal training is a high-end service, but I honestly didn’t know what to expect.

Essentially, it came down to considering the lowest price per session option, which came with the largest upfront expenditure. As if coming to terms with the health issues wasn’t enough, now I had to convince my wife to agree to a larger expenditure amid the term of her pregnancy. Thankfully, fitness ROI proved to be a valuable method for us to use for consideration and, ultimately, make the decision to invest in our health.

My ROI calculation was simple; what would it cost me in both tangible health costs (meds, out-of-pocket medical expenses, medical devices), lost job time, and intangible costs (missed life opportunities, stress, impact on our child’s lifestyle and behaviors) weighed against the cost of personal training at a given frequency for a fixed period. The result was a very positive yield. In fact, it is the same strong cost/benefit payoff that has led to many clients showing long-term loyalty, even up to 15 years!

We used the formula many times over as we reconsidered the investment every time we renewed our package to continue training at Fitness Together®. Ultimately, it allowed for us to consider the business opportunity as well, not in such simple terms but the value that the service offers to individuals that have health concerns or issues that they cannot overcome on their own.

As the owner of our Fitness Together® studios, I am very proud of what my wife and I have been able to accomplish as clients of the businesses that we own. It means a great deal to me to personally attest to the outcomes that many of our clients achieve. I am grateful that I decided to handle the decision to start training as an investment initially and to have the benefits that continually proved positive ROI yield. What’s your ROI on your health?

As always, I appreciate you taking a few moments to walk with me on our fitness journey.

Fitness Together has two locations in the Milwaukee area: 18000 W Bluemound Road, Brookfield, Wis. and 2525 N Mayfair Road, Wauwatosa, Wis.

For more information, contact Kevin Baker, owner, Fitness Together, at 262-444-3657, email at kevinbaker@fitnesstogether.com. www.fitnesstogether.com.