FITNESS TRIBUNE No 1 English

Club Manager

Diary of a club manager

Learn through mountaineering, or, risk will lead you to success

One of the pioneers of the fitness industry Karl J. Neeser , born on 4th August 1947, qualified sports instructor and scientist, during the last ten years set up and has been running two success ful fitness clubs in French-speaking Switzerland. After selling his busi ness he established his own consulta tion company in collaboration with Mike Chaet, CMS, Helena/Montana. Karl J. Neeser lives both in Swit zerland and in California, where at present he is preparing his doctorate in the area of old-age prevention.

Successful people are not only open to all kinds of experience but they are generally also prepared to run risks. My friends and acquaintances told me that “it’s too big a risk” when, years ago, I gave up my interesting and well-paid job as a university lecturer in order to become self-employed. Even though today I can look back at two successful and extremely profitable clubs with satisfaction and pride, I still admire my courage at the time to have run such an elevated risk. At 40 I wanted to look for a new professional challenge, to build a fitness centre for people of the middle and older generations. As a lecturer with a secure job offering lots of spare time, at the beginning I thought the risk did seem a bit too big. But eve rything changed on a memorable day back in September 1987 in California. In the grounds of Stanford University, during my lunch break, I watch how a man trains his climbing technique on the walls of the physics building. It looks dangerous. Some time later, we start a conversation. Jim, a lecturer at Business School, is an enthusiastic mountaineer. He spends plenty of time in the grounds of his school in the midst of the easy hills on the peninsula of San Francisco; however, even though he is far away from natural climbing possibilities, he keeps fit by improving his climbing technique at university. Jim tells me that climbing is one of the most risky and creative things he has ever done. It is an uninterrupted prob lem-solving process, because there’s no map for the various inclinations. You look at the bare rock face and tell your self that there probably is a way. But you must take risks and you’ll only discover them while climbing. Through climbing you’ll learn the meaning of creativity and risk in economy. It doesn’t really matter whether it is a climbing tour or

an economic start-up, both of them look terribly dangerous from the outside. But if you take chances while climbing, if you don’t consider something in detail, if you tackle a difficult bit and then give up your secure hold, then you are already thinking about what would hap pen to you if you fell. But that’s exactly when you develop creativity and mobi lize all of your energies in order to stay on the wall. At Business School Jim teaches his students that they should always keep all possibilities open and that they can take risks if they believe in their poten tiality. If you want to tackle a problem in a way no one has ever done before then you should let go of your driven-in thought patterns. You cannot reach the mountain peak if you keep one foot on the ground. A few days later, after a climbing tour together across half the campus - Jim always took precautions and secured me - I told him about my fitness project. He answered that “you know, you can never be sure whether things are going to work out or not in the business world. But you are going to make it. You show enthu siasm for this task and you are ready to run a big risk. I know out of experience that the possibility of being successful in your business life gets better as soon as people become totally involved in it and run risks”. So I took this risk, I took the chance of an arduous climb, I’ve been climbing for the past ten years and nearly lost my hold a couple of times. But I never gave up and have invested all of my strength and energy to look for new solutions in order to stay on the wall. That’s how I reached the mountain peak. Today I know how instructive moun taineering can be.

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Fitness Tribune International 1