GCUC Podcast: James O’Reilly of Life Time Work

Health and wellness is no longer just a perk, but a necessary cultural currency that nourishes employees, and members, alike. James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work, talks about the military like strategy behind creating connection through the geographical spread of a big box premium health club, functional design, creating mindful connection using nuance over novelty and more in this episode of the GCUC Podcast.

Discover how you can strategize with care with these juicy sound bites:

Life Time, before the pandemic, we were just truckin. 140 locations and we are on average opening 10 – 12 locations a year. -James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work

Life Time is a sort of a Big Box premium health club. Within the four walls of our clubs and our clubs are typically kind of 120 to 150k square feet. Indoor outdoor pools, tennis, pickleball, basketball, kids club, swimming programs, café, the largest spa in America is inside our four walls so it’s a large kind of complex, many of them we developed from the ground up. -James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work

Life Time Work, as a smaller subsidiary within a larger entity we were part of the ongoing efforts around opening and closing and we had access to best practices for the health club environment. So whether it’s filtration, whether it’s enhanced cleaning protocols. -James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work

In times of real challenge, some people say it builds character. Other people will say it sort of reveals, and I was very pleased with how Life Time performed and treated both members and team members through that part of the pandemic, particularly the first 18 months or so. Where it was really, you’re on again, you’re off again, and that can create a lot of institutional burn out. So Life Time was quite sensitive to that and I was impressed that a large company can still manage to execute something like that with care. -James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work

The public markets has been brutal over the last six months to a year or so. Given inflation and other levers that the Fed is pulling, but I think lifetime as a public entity, is it from you know inside inside the beast. I feel good about it. And these, you know, short term snaps around inflation and other challenges that we’re still coming out of from a health club perspective with the pandemic, I really feel really good about the next sort of five years, a lifetime and all the fun things we can do with lifetime work. Now that we’re public. -James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work

Life Time started in Minnesota and historically has grown in suburban areas. We’re now 30 years old as a company, and as we’ve expanded, increasing the opportunities in the last 5 to 10 years. In urban settings, they generally tend to be in mixed-use, large scale developments and where Life Time is seen as a key amenity in this amenity arms race that large mixed-use developments have. So suburban areas are still where we would do ground up type development. Life Time has an integrated construction development firm as part of it, and so we can identify areas that we know demographically are growing massively over the next 5-10 years. -James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work

Now with delayed family formation, people leaving later, they’re looking for bigger homes and better schools, and so they are moving to suburbs. And the suburbs that are growing fastest or those with urban like amenities, which obviously includes a great health club, a great coworking space, etc. -James O’Reilly, President at Life Time Work

I am nothing but bullish on you guys. I love that you were talking about connection and that you get how important the people are and I think you guys are going to be just a huge national player that everybody is going to be talking about. -Liz Elam, Founder at GCUC

Click HERE to listen to the full podcast with Liz Elam and James O’Reilly. It’s juicy!