Bahram Akradi, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Life Time, joins Cheddar News' Shannon LaNier on a Walk and Talk through the newest luxury athletic club, Life Time One Wall Street, and to discuss why an omnichannel fitness experience is here to stay.

Opening Bell

The Walk and Talk: Life Time CEO

we're here at Lifetime, one Wall Street and this is one of three new clubs opening here in new york city, which is amazing. Talk to us about this new athletic club experiences and what people can expect. Yeah, So our vision has always been to deliver whole healthy way of life, every aspects of healthy living, healthy aging, nutrition, exercise and a complete atmosphere that you really want to be in. That that takes a lot. It takes a team group of team members who really are focused on your overall experience. It's a social place you want to meet people you want to feel comfortable being in, you want to be able to get everything you want to get done in terms of your exercise, get healthy food, athletic events, things like that. So lifetime is a complete answer to healthy living. So one of the impressive things about lifetime is while so many other gyms are closing or have already closed, you guys are opening new gyms at record numbers. So what's the secret to your success? Um The same thing as we've done since day one is the maniacal focus on the customer experience. We treated the customers extremely well during the pandemic. We treated our employees well. We also focused on our landlords made sure they all get paid all the vendors and our brand has completely ascended through the period while there was some financial difficulties because the size of our company and we didn't get any financial assistance from the government, we still worked hard on making sure The brand will be elevated and our relationship with the landlords are amazing and we literally have at least 100 additional locations in the pipeline that will open over the next 10 years and all your amenities don't hurt either. Exactly. Well the focus is to make sure you get everything you want in one place. This place is like a spa. Don't have to leave, you don't have to, you know, with the cold plunge, with the hot plunge, you have that total spa experience, full, full service spa, full service cafe with healthy foods. Amazing program for kids. I mean it's really a place that the whole family can feel like this is my athletic country club. I want to be here and it's just, it's just a feeling that I go after, not just work out now, a lot of companies are trying to figure out how to navigate post covid. So post covid for you guys, what has changed the most and what do you think has been some of the biggest demands that customers have now had. Yeah. So really what we always knew is that the customer who happens to be human, humans are herd animals and they love to be social. We knew the customer is going to come back. We had never any question or doubt, but a lot of gems they didn't go back to. Yeah, but the focus has been a lot of what people have done is being such a defense mode, but they haven't really l a What would have been naturally elevated over the next three years, 73 years. And if you think about normally what you would have improved and elevated and design and create. If you haven't done anything, you're already obsolete. And so at lifetime we stayed focused on invention creation, making sure that the energy that we would have postcode would be as if nothing had been interrupted. So you know you actually have to go faster in creation innovation. And what about some of the demands that people are now saying that the most important thing that I think comes out of Covid is that you a lot of people were talking about. Everything is going to go digital. No, not really. However everything is has to be omni. So the customer has to have the ability to access you when they want to physically, which is most of the time. But then intermittently they want to be able to get their workouts, get the same instructor online and so they don't get disconnected. And our digital transformation has been virtually 10 years of transformation in the last 23 years. Lifetime digital provides you every aspects of healthy living and healthy aging you want in one app. One place streaming online meditation information, content. Everything you want is in one place just like lifetime physical assets provide you. Lifetime digital does that. And our customers You can have all of it in one shot. We have to talk about your longevity because you found it lifetime, I can't believe it 30 years ago now let's get a workout in while we're walking. So you found that lifetime 30 years ago, what would you say? It has been the biggest challenge of you know, running this company, staying focused, staying focused on your original mission. Um when we, when we started the company, we thought we want to create an environment that would be inviting, it would be educational, it would be functional friendly and it would satisfy the health and needs of everyone from 90 days old to 90 years old. That's a big that's a big mission. Our commitment was to do everything from member point of view. You know, in fact we had little pins called, you know, em PV not M. V. P. Because for member point of view, I can proudly say that our entire organization, all the team members. I have never lost those commitments and everything we do is experiential in nature. We want to create an experience that brings you back now. You've been a member in the past and you know exactly what I'm talking about. And so and that is the reason to our success. We haven't deviated from the basic principles which isn't gonna change our thanks