Geared Up Issue 1 2018 | Page 6

Excel Fitness Holds Unique Monthly Meeting L Excel Fitness team members held their October operations meeting in the Ozark Mountains. ast October, Excel Fitness went above and beyond for a monthly operations meeting by hosting it in the Ozark Mountains. Planet Fitness® team members and club management trekked for an hour before reaching the summit where the meeting was held. In addition to being a great team-building exercise, the meeting helped relieve stress by being outdoors and surrounded the team with positive culture development. “At Excel Fitness, we have been laser focused on creating a core culture where each employee is happy to be a part of our team,” said Brandon Sebald, regional director for Excel Fitness, which is owned by Michael Turner. “It is events like this, where we take them out of the office, which really have an impact as it is so different from their day-to-day. We have also been working hard on team and leadership development, so we figured there is no better way to achieve both than hiking a mountain together as a group where it’s just us and the mountain, bonding as a team. It was a blast, and we intend to do it annually at minimum.” The three-hour meeting was held at Devil’s Den State Park in the Ozark Mountains and followed a previous meeting where team members were able to paddle board to the meeting spot, which also proved to be successful. “I highly suggest everyone do some type of team -building events a few times a year outside of the club,” said Sebald. “At a minimum, it gets the team together where they can match a name with a face from their daily emails, but more than that, they are able to build strong relationships with their fellow managers and upper management, which is important to everyone’s long-term happiness and success!” G ECP-PF Doubles the Give Back I 4 n early November, ECP-PF provided assistance to not one but two local Boys & Girls Clubs by rebuilding and revamping the locations’ workout areas into a Mini Judgement Free Zone®. For a combined total of 14 days, 25 Planet Fitness® staff members cleaned out the old spaces in the Rochester and Albany, New York, Boys & Girls Clubs and made room for the new equip- ment. PF® staff spent the two weeks repainting the walls, adding PF signage and rubber flooring, and stocking the centers with new cardio and strength equipment. “The kids were overjoyed that they now have their own judgement-free space,” said John Hrinda, division president with ECP-PF Holdings Group, which is owned by Joe Pepe. “In the Albany Boys & Girls Club, we repurposed an old storage room to become their PF-brand fitness room, and in th