Circles of Change: Conversations with Dr. Zara Larsen
on Change Leadership and Career Fulfillment
April 29, 2009
“Don’t Go Through Life, GROW Through Life”
Guest: Dan Wirth
Anchoring Points:
- Sierra Fitness Health Club is full service for individual and small group experiences, not a volume club but tailored to members who are discerning enthusiasts, average age of 54, from youth to age 90. We have a 7 to 4 to 1 vs. instructor ratio.
- Personal training with one of 14 trainers; over 1,000 sessions a month
- Massage therapy – therapeutic massage, desert hot stone, paraffin
- Pilates and Yoga
- Fourteen class offerings from body conditioning to zumba
- My career started as a Big 10 football player studying fitness and wellness, then exercise physiology in a masters program while coaching and working with athletes at the same time.
- As Director of Strengthening and Conditioning at U of A following working at two smaller institutions was a challenge – 600 athletes in 19 different sports, without the benefit of technology as we know it today.
- My knack for computers led me to develop a way out of this problem -- a computer-based system eventually launched as “Fittreks” in 1998, taking me to San Francisco on a part time basis. A true career fork in the road.
- Returning to Tucson full time, my partners and I expanded Select Fitness personal training gyms, and hosted “Fitness Forum” on local talk radio.
- With the help of one of my personal training clients, we launched Sierra Fitness with a different model in 2003 with my wife, Beth, now managing the highly systematized back room.
- “Fittreks” is back in my business portfolio, repurchasing it, redesigning and launching as Strengthengine.com, a business-to-business software helping companies mine critical marketing data on prospective customers.
- Sierra Fitness and my computer business allow me the opportunity to be hands-on with clients, typically 10 training sessions a day, plus with my wife and two children, continue to not go through life, GROW through life.
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