The fitness industry must become less insular and more willing to embrace outside talent if it is to benefit from the fresh thinking that sparks innovation.

That’s the view of Jatomi Fitness CEO Tracey Gehlan, who, having arrived at the gym chain in April 2015 from fast food giant Burger King, believes health clubs have much to learn from other industries. In an interview for the January edition of Health Club Management, Gehlan said despite their vast differences in purpose, there is much that the fitness industry could learn from fast food in terms of customer retention, consistency and gathering guest feedback.

“There seems to be a view in the fitness sector that, if you haven’t been in the industry before, you can’t just come in and work in it. There’s a reluctance to bring in anyone from outside – the same people just move around within the industry, and they’ve been sharing similar ideas for the last 10 years,” said Gehlan.

“I believe you have to look at what’s going on in the outside world – from a technology standpoint, an innovations standpoint... So one of the things I’m trying to do at Jatomi Fitness is change the culture by balancing fitness people with external experts. I don’t mind where our marketing people come from, for example, as long as they’re amazing at marketing. The same goes for finance, IT, social media, apps, retail… They just need to be experts in their respective fields.”

Having inherited a disjointed gym chain with 18 different logos across the company's European and Asian markets, Gehlan is now working to implement the standards and processes she says are common in other industries. Her goal is to create a gym blueprint from which the chain can build on its ambitions of expanding from its current 64 sites to 250 in the next five years.

The Jatomi chief also believes that fitness has much to learn from fast food in terms of engaging children from an early age.

“This is where fast food gets it right, because you can guarantee every three-year-old in the world knows what McDonalds is. They’ve already been programmed as its customers by the age of two or three, whereas we wait until they’re 18 or 19 before we start giving gym memberships,” she added.

“There has to be some hook. I don’t know what that is yet – all kids know how to use an iPad, so maybe fitness and technology need to combine to reach them – but we need to start earlier as an industry.”

To read the full interview with Tracey Gehlan, from the January edition of Health Club Management, click here.