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Prophet of New Profits |
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"Prophet of New Profits - Paul Zane Pilzer heads up The New Wellness Revolution", by Jon Feld, Club Business International, May 2008. More on
How to make a fortune in the next trillion dollar industry-- preventative medicine and wellness.
Video Clip of an interview between Pat Robertson of the 700 Club and Paul Zane Pilzer about The Wellness Revolution.
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By Jon Feld CBI: You've had a very varied career; you've enjoyed a great deal of success as, among other things, a speaker, author, economist, and business owner. What drives you? Paul Zane Pilzer Over the past 35 years, there's been a consistent pattern. Every endeavor that I've entered into has had the same point of departure: each business I've started was based on the simple fact that, in one way or another, I was an unhappy consumer. CBI: You recently updated your 2002 best-seller, The Wellness Revolution, which predicted and helped set the stage for the current groundswell of interest in healthy lifestyle behaviors. What's "new" in your newest book, The New Wellness Revolution? PZP I left out a great deal of material that I didn't know back in 2002. I didn't know, for instance, that IHRSA or the IDEA Health and Fitness Assocation even existed. So my knowledge base about wellness grew by about 500% in the year after the first book was published. I also began to notice the emergence of promising new international trends: like McDonald's becoming the largest buyer of apples for its salads and Wal-Mart becoming the largest distributor of wellness products—although that's more about putting things that people want on shelves than actually driving them to wellness—and Whole Foods evolving as a business entity predicated entirely on healthy foods. In the past, I'd written negatively about larger companies, but, in reality, they were just following the basic laws of economics in supplying what their customers wanted. The new book contains updated numbers and is more enthusiastic about finding a solution to our healthcare dilemma. CBI: How do you see health clubs fitting into an overall "fix" for the country's current healthcare system and, in turn, its health-insurance system? PZP:The No. 1 medical problem in the U.S. today is "voluntary poor health"—that is, a lack of wellness. It leads to conditions such as obesity, which contributes to chronic medical problems such as type 2 diabetes. Each year, we spend more money on Type 2 diabetes—including time lost from work—than we do on education. And the cure is: a sound diet and regular exercise. Health clubs have done a good job of building out distribution—they're reasonably priced and proficient at teaching people how to exercise safely—but they've done a terrible job of turning those who need their services the most into customers. They're preaching to the choir—sitting back and waiting for prospects to walk through the door. Operators need to reach out to individuals who never in their life have stepped foot inside a club and make them feel welcome. Just look at the outreach that some of the megachurches are doing—offering prime parking and seating to first-time visitors; they make them feel very welcome. Clubs need to create new demand—particularly given the current obesity crisis. |
CBI: What about the financial half of the equation? PZP: At the moment, there's a real, and a persistent, financial disconnect between health clubs and employer-sponsored health plans. For the past 23 years, I've been lobbying to make it legally possible for employer health insurance to pay for exercise and other fitness services, and I've been unsuccessful; but, each year, we raise the public's, employers', and the government's awareness about the fact that wellness programs can save us money. However, I haven't seen a leader emerge who can hammer this home to Congress; President Bush exercises religiously and is in great shape, but he hasn't taken up the battle. The club industry, overall, hasn't succeeded either in getting Congress on board. IHRSA has been remarkably focused and professional in its efforts, but, thus far, none of us has been successful in making fitness an integral part of employer-sponsored health plans. CBI: You talk a great deal about the impact that the private sector has on wellness. What about the federal government? PZP: It has a huge role to play. Unfortunately, the National Institutes of Health and virtually all of the other federal health agencies—from the Veteran's Administration to Medicare—are locked into a sickness model. They only deal with people when they're sick. In the same way that we have a Secretary of Health and Human Services (SHHS), we need a Secretary of Wellness who will work to help keep people from becoming HHS clients . . . All you have to do is check out the waistlines of many senior politicians to figure how much they know about wellness. CBI: Which of the current presidential candidates' healthcare proposals do you feel is the most viable? PZP: None of them! It's one thing to say we need to reform health insurance in a speech, but what, exactly, is the health insurance we need to reform? Medicare covers 47 million Americans; Medicaid covers 44 million Americans; the government also offers coverage for 10 million veterans; and employers provide group healthcare for 150 million people. So where, which areas, do you really want to reform? I suspect that none of the candidates even know that these subgroups exist, or understand that each needs to be considered separately, or recognize that they need to be adjusted for in an evolutionary fashion. My personal opinion: I don't believe any of them really knows the current system, let alone what would work in terms of reform. | ||||||
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