Empowering Exercise Professionals through Advocacy w/Mike Goscinski

As always , I'm your host , michael Stack , an exercise physiologist by training and a health educator and health entrepreneur by trade , and I'm fascinated by a phenomena I call the wellness paradox . This paradox , as I view it , is the trust , interaction and communication gap that exists between exercise professionals and our medical community .

This podcast is all about closing off that gap by disseminating the latest , most evidence-based and most engaging information in the health sciences . And to do this , in episode six of our series , we're joined by Mike Gazinski . Mike is from the Health and Fitness Association , formerly IHRSA , and he is their vice president of government affairs .

Essentially , he is their head lobbyist in the organization and he wrote a column for the themed issue entitled Empowering Health and Fitness Advocating for Industry Representation and Policy Influence . So this is a conversation around empowering health and fitness , advocating for industry representation and policy influence .

So this is a conversation around advocacy and , to a great extent , this is a conversation that gets into policy and that bleeds a little bit into politics .

Although we don't introduce any political ideologies in the discussion , advocacy by its very core happens in the political realm and the great thing about the work that Mike has done at the Health Fitness Association with his colleagues and what he speaks to in this article in the Health Fitness Journal it just makes advocacy so much more approachable .

I have my own personal experience with advocacy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and post pandemic and I can tell you when I started it was very intimidating and not approachable at all and I wish I had the resources like the Health Fitness Association and Mike provide now to better guide me on my advocacy journey .

I think Mike has so many great insights to provide in this episode and , most importantly , it is making sure we advocate for the proper policy and system changes to ensure our profession is elevated throughout this professionalization effort .

We can do all the work we want at the grassroots level but if the larger systems and structures and policies don't change , this professionalization effort will fall flat . Any information we'd like to share with you from today's episode can be found on the show notes page . That's by going to wellnessparadoxpodcom . Forward slash episode ACSM6 .

That's forward slash episode ACSM6 . Please enjoy this conversation with Mike Kaczynski Today . I'm delighted to be joined by Mike Kaczynski . Mike , thanks so much for joining us . Thanks for having me . So I'm very excited to have you on the podcast as a part of this ACSM series .

We've known each other for a little while and we've done some work together through the Health Fitness Association and through the Physical Activity Alliance , and I feel like what you're going to do in this podcast is what you've been going around doing in our industry since you started the HFA , which is teaching people how to be effective industry advocates .

But before we dive into that and the article that you wrote for the themed issue , why don't you just give us a little bit of an idea of your background to provide some context ?

We've gone through quite a transition over the last couple of years under the leadership of my boss and the CEO of the organization , liz Clark .

We've had a recent name change to the Health and Fitness Association , and really it's about aligning with just what you said , bringing a new focus on advocacy , both at the federal level , state level , local level and across the policy spectrum , and so I'm happy to be here .

I joined the association roughly a year and 10 months ago , so it's been a quick almost two years , and I'm excited to talk with you today about how the industry can take part in advocacy , take part in the work that we're doing , certainly together on the Physical Activity Alliance , and make sure that we're really building a strong reputation for the industry and

for physical activity as a whole .

When you said that , I thought in my mind it's got to be longer than that , but it's just that there's been so much work that's been done during that time and I think that's a testament to you and Liz and the team at the HFA .

That's really reoriented the organization from one that was I mean , let's be honest more of a trade show organization prior to Liz's tenure to now one that is a legitimate advocacy powerhouse doing work in DC on a day-by-day basis .

It shined a real big spotlight on the fact that we need to have a seat at the table in Washington DC with the policymakers on day one so that when this push comes to shove and we need decisions are being made , we're able to make the phone call , talk to people and make sure that the industry is represented at all levels of government .

Because that's what we're doing here in Washington DC . We're making sure the industry is recognized . We're making sure the industry is recognized .

We're talking to people and we're a part of all discussions around health care to make sure that , finally , physical activity and the mental and physical health benefits of physical activity are recognized in health care discussions , in any policy discussions around the health and wellness well-being of the American people .

Titled Empowering Health and Fitness Advocating for Industry Representation and Policy Influence and I kind of looked at it as almost like a one-on-one for , or one-on-one I should say , for , fitness industry advocacy . And , mike , I think that advocacy is a very intimidating term for a lot of people I know .

Even when I first started doing it , I thought , oh man , I'm going to go talk to these powerful politicians . So let's talk about the important things that you mentioned in that article that really make advocacy more approachable than this intimidating thing that people think of it as .

And that's where the trade association world steps in . That's where us , who are advocates by trade , are able to help to make sure that we're connecting the dots not only with policymakers , but with the men and women operating businesses throughout the country to understand how policy impacts their businesses .

So what I like to do is frame up the different ways that advocacy works as a benefit to an industry . And , first and foremost , it's insurance . It's an insurance policy . You wouldn't open the doors on a fitness facility or you wouldn't open your practice if you did not have insurance coverage to protect you against harm .

And as we look at policy development in the United States , nobody in Washington DC is , when they're drafting legislation , thinking about what the common gym owner , yoga studio , how that bill is going to impact them . My role and the role of an advocate is to make sure that they do and they connect the dots .

And the simplest way to do that is to introduce the industry to the policymaker , introduce the men and women operating the businesses in their constituencies to those elected officials , so they are connecting the dots the men and women operating the businesses in their constituencies to those elected officials so they are connecting the dots and they're thinking , when they

are looking at legislation , looking to vote on bills , or looking at regulations that are coming out of the administration , about how these are actually going to impact the men and women who are running businesses and employing constituents in their districts . So I look at it from an insurance policy perspective .

But that doesn't work if we don't have the engagement of our members of the people in the industry , coming to town , helping us tell their story , giving us the information we need to explain their story , but , at the end of the day , engaging in the advocacy process , and so what I like to do is try and remove the veil that makes it scary to understand

advocacy . At the end of the day , the people in power , the decision makers , the policymakers , are elected officials and reporting to the voters in their constituency . So what they care about is not seeing me a lobbyist . They care about the story that I was mentioning earlier , that is happening on Main Street in their districts , in their hometowns .

They care about the story that I was mentioning earlier . That is happening on Main Street in their districts , in their hometowns . They know you , they work out your facilities . But it's about painting that picture and connecting the dots so that they are thinking about the industry front of mind when making decisions .

And what I've been always not necessarily surprised by I've actually been , and what I've been always not necessarily surprised by I've actually been , I guess , pleasantly surprised is how often they are open to hearing your perspective Because , to your point , in a lot of cases they just don't know how a given policy decision is going to affect a given industry .

You kind of get this perception that politicians are all-knowing , because I think that's the perception that they would like you to have of them . But when you get in there and you start to realize that politicians are really good at one thing at least , if they're there for a while , it's getting reelected and raising money .

But they don't know to your point the nuances of what my business in Ann Arbor , michigan , needs or a boutique gym in Washington DC needs .

So what they do and how they develop policy is with the feedback from the constituencies that they represent and , at the end , of the people . So what they do and how they develop policy is with the feedback from the constituencies that they represent and , at the end of the day , you are their voters .

So if you're talking to them about policies , explaining to them about the amount of financial commitment it took during COVID-19 just to reopen the doors , the investments that took to in PPP or PPE , excuse me and the cleaning supplies and everything just to make sure that they were complying with the new regulations coming out of the pandemic that were required before

they can ever unlock the door and allow customers back in members back into the facilities , that resonates because that makes them understand not what the bill looks like on paper but what the actual real life implications are to the businesses that they represent .

I think before I started to really engage , policy was just kind of this abstract term , so maybe you can give some examples of some policy work that you've been involved in as of late . I know there's been some big wins that the HFA had . You just recently had one in California .

So let's try to be a little bit more specific on policy so people can actually understand the implications of this .

The HFA monitors roughly a thousand pieces of legislation that are introduced along different lines that could impact your business Anything from sales tax to advertising regulations to requirements for easy cancellation through online methods like click to cancel .

We monitor all of that , look through , see how they impact the businesses that are throughout the state and then we engage when necessary . This year we monitored , like I mentioned , about 1,000 bills .

We engaged on just over 60 that were potentially impactful to the industry , whether good or bad , and we worked to get them either amended , stopped or across the finish line .

The biggest themes this year that we saw out of state legislatures were click-to-cancel requirements and auto renewal policy regulations , because there's a big focus of late around consumer protection laws and how individuals interact with purchasing .

Many of it comes it stems from Ticketmaster , the large concert venues , the ways and then online app services that you get into . They're called negative options .

When you sign up for Candy Crush and it automatically triggers a $100 charge on your phone for 365-day subscription and then , you don't even realize it , you get charged again a year later and that's called a negative option . So lawmakers and policymakers are working to combat that and push back against those practices because they say they're not consumer-friendly .

Unfortunately , being lumped into that are month-to-month gym memberships and auto-renewal contracts that so many in the industry use . So they'll write these broad scope pieces of legislation that include things that are not business tenable for the fitness industry and that don't actually work within the operations of a day-to-day facilities operations right ?

They don't take into account third-party billing .

They don't take into account rolling memberships , where every day of the week is somebody's membership term is up for renewal , and so what we do is we read the legislation , acknowledge how it will actually impact the industry and then go meet face-to-face with the lawmakers , talk about it and ask for the bill to be amended in specific ways that allows the industry

to comply . I want to make a point of saying that we are not out there just simply going to lawmakers and saying excuse my language , this bill sucks and we're not going to allow it to get passed .

We're out there working with lawmakers saying the industry wants to be good actors , the industry wants to move forward and the industry wants to be seen by your constituents as places where they can go and be trusted with their customer service , and so we help craft the narrative , help craft the language in a way that is business tenable .

We had some great wins this year . We actually , at the end of the day , between that click to cancel bills and others , ended up the year roughly about 50 wins across the country where we were able to amend bills so that they're business tenable .

They don't negatively impact the businesses but allow the standard operation of the bill's intent to go through , because so many people in the industry are already up to speed there .

They're already providing great customer service and we're just there to make sure that lawmakers know that and recognize that and don't do undue harm on the businesses by drafting legislation that necessarily isn't broad stroke applicable .

This is a membership that's crafted specifically for health and fitness professionals , and getting this membership will give you access to all the articles in the themed issue on professionalization and advocacy that we're talking about in this podcast series , as well as a whole host of other member benefits .

To take advantage of this discount , go to acsmorg forward , slash , join . That's acsmorg forward , slash , join and enter in the discount code AllianceSave30 . Again , this is valid only through October , the 21st 2024 . So go to acsmorg forward , slash , join and enter in the discount code AllianceSave30 . Now back to today's episode . Yeah , well , and that's just it .

What you said there is that when they start drafting these pieces of legislation , they paint it with such a broad brush that my membership , or the membership of Planet Fitness , gets lumped in with your Netflix subscription and your Candy Crush subscription , and while those are similar , those are clearly not the same at all , and it does require that education .

We had similar challenges here in Michigan , as you know . We actually met with the representative that was sponsoring that bill , and it was an interesting conversation because he basically said well , wow , I didn't realize that every day is the start of somebody's new membership term , or I didn't realize that this is how your structure works .

So in a lot of cases , it's education .

Right , what they're doing is they're responding to someone like me going in and saying there's a bad action going on out in the marketplace that needs a legislative fix . Will you be the sponsor of this ? So education is so important .

That's why it's so important having somebody paying attention and educating these lawmakers , because take for account , not staying on the California one that you mentioned In California there was an auto renewal and cancellation policy bill that was going through the state legislature and one of the provisions of the bill would have required a fitness facility to have a

phone staffed for 12 hours a day during all general operations . So if you think the fitness industry that's basically closed for maybe what ?

Five days a year at max , right For holidays and other things , so that they can do downtime and the staff can maybe spend Christmas with their families , you're looking at somebody manning a phone to take cancellation requests for 12 hours a day .

The cost of instituting that in this industry could cost a single operator upwards of $60,000 a year and that's minimum wage in the state of California just to have someone manning the phones at all time . We have people in the industry that don't have people manning the gyms at all time .

Right , there's operators that have gone to the 24-hour model of unattended locations where somebody like me can go when it's safe for me and good in my schedule maybe 4 am to go work out and get my workout in on my schedule . There's nothing wrong with that practice . That's a great practice .

It's providing access to everybody to be able to work out when it works for them in their busy lives and their busy schedules . That's a really bad bill at the end of the day , and without us making that argument , that provision likely would have went through and we were able to get that stripped out in California .

And I think that's why it's so important for everyone listening to be plugged in on the work of a group like the Health Fitness Association or the Physical Activity Alliance , because sometimes it's not about oh , we got a $30 million grant , it's hey , we did something that saved an individual operator in California $60,000 a year over multiple years .

So I think it's important to understand that preventing bad things from happening actually may be more important than causing good things to happen on some level . So I mean kudos to you and your team on that win . Here's the other question and kind of point I wanted to bring up Earlier .

You said acting in a way from a lobbying and advocacy perspective that shows us , shows the lawmakers in the communities , that we're good actors . I think that we have to acknowledge and own as an industry that we haven't always been viewed as good actors . So I think that's so critical to the professionalization process .

Just touch on that really briefly in terms of how you craft the narrative .

One of the biggest things that the industry as a whole can do to help ensure itself and to make sure that lawmakers are looking at us as professional , sophisticated , well is connecting with lawmakers and making sure that they understand that we're not the image that everybody has of the health and fitness industry .

So many people look at this industry as stringer tanks and people trying to get big and trying to get small . You know muscle beach , the whole thing . That image is still ingrained in people's eyes .

There's so many lawmakers that the first thing they mention when I sit down with them in a meeting on Capitol Hill is why is it so difficult for me to get out of my membership ? Because they got burned one time 30 years ago .

So that's the work we're doing to repair the reputation and how we're doing that is A talking about the sophistication of the industry , the sophistication of your businesses , the size and scope of your businesses .

We just released this year our economic impact data , which shows how big and how strong this industry is and the economic impacts that it makes , not only in the amount of Americans that it hires and 434,000 people , the wages it pays , the number of locations and how much it contributes to the GDP of this economy .

And when you show that scope and scale it helps paint a much bigger picture .

And then we're able to talk about the changes , the sophistication , the technology , everything that goes into it that really changes that optics , that it's not just a bunch of you know for lack of a better term meatheads picking up and putting down iron anymore , and there's so , you know , as the work that we're doing on the Physical Activity Alliance .

There's also the sophistication in changing the way that we talk and the narrative that we communicate to policymakers on a whole .

And that's why we're talking about the mental and physical health benefits of physical activity , the societal and communicable health benefits of physical activity in the fitness community , because so much of that became so evident post-pandemic , when so many people now are struggling with mental health issues because of the isolation that they have .

So many people are on the verge of chronic disease , obesity and diabetes because they were inactive and they became sedentary .

So we have the power now to reshape the reputation in the image of the industry as a necessary part of everybody's preventive health journey , and that's the work we're doing across the board in the background , while we fight back against the negative stuff at the lower level and even at the high level and even at the high level .

Certainly , there has to be things done by the frontline professional just in terms of upping and elevating their game and a lot of this themed issue talks about that but none of that really works all that well if the policy and the systems environment isn't favorable and conducive to elevating the profession .

So , mike , where I want to leave this conversation with is some action items . People that are listening to this . I kind of envision them as me in March of 2020 , having no idea what advocacy was all about and even where do I start . So what are some good action items and takeaways you can give the people listening ?

I can go in and talk to a lawmaker every day of the week until I'm blue in the face about the impacts on your business , but nobody can tell that story better than you , the HFA . We have simple tools that allow you to do so .

Team 435 is our grassroots army that makes sure that we have representation in all 435 US congressional districts to make sure that they can contact their lawmakers through an easy one-click voter voice campaign that we send out to make sure that I go in and I talk to Congressman X and say this is going to impact this and he says , yeah , I received 200 emails

about that . That's the way it works , that's the way we get stuff done , and your voice will only amplify the messaging that I'm saying . Second , as I mentioned , is be engaged with the trade association . Membership is so important . Many people also don't understand that trade associations are nonprofits . We do not operate for profit .

We operate to make sure that we have an operation budget to do the work that we're doing at the federal and state level .

With that membership comes other benefits , but what you're really doing is making sure that you are investing in an insurance policy so that we are paying attention to all the good , the bad and the ugly that's happening in the policy world , and we're there to deploy and make sure that we can stop it , halt it , amend it or get it across the finish line , albeit

whenever it needs to be . The last thing that I would say is think about other ways to engage with policymakers within your community . You have the Chamber of Commerce in every town across the country . That's where local politicians go to get their start .

They wanna come in and tour your facility , they wanna see the ribbon cuttings , they want to learn about your businesses .

So , getting involved at the lowest levels of government , your town council , making sure that you have the contact information for your mayor that's going to be the ones that are thinking about your business when push comes to shove , if something should ultimately happen that is detrimental to your business .

And so , at the end of the day , it's all about engagement , engagement , engagement and then , last but not least , is staying up to date . I'll send you some information to include in the show notes of ways people can engage with the HFA , ways that they can understand and track our policy developments . I have an advocacy newsletter that goes out once a month .

That is a nice digest and wrap up of everything that we're focused on at the state and federal level , and it also gives some feedback to things that folks should be looking at in their own business in terms of how advocacy and policies are impacting their day-to-day operations .

I mean , yeah , drills down on , I believe it's each congressional district , if I'm not mistaken right , I mean yeah , you can dive into down to the congressional district level .

It's a great way to get your foot in the door and explain to them that you're not there advocating as some DC lobby shop .

I like to get into the details of things , so I think that you know , for me I always dive a little bit deeper . But for people that are like man , I don't want to read any policies , like I don't , I don't care how this connects with the bigger thing , I just want to know how this affects our industry .

That policy newsletter is great because I mean you even break it down in workout terms . You know the warmup , the workout , the cool down . It's just very approachable in terms of understanding what's going on .

So what I try and do is break it down into a conversational sense , add some fun in there as well , so that it's easy to read , and I even try and tell you at the beginning how long it's going to take you to read it .

It's a great opportunity for you to see everything that we're doing in real time and stay informed . I would say also on the website .

If you are a member , there are resources that are available to your businesses outside of advocacy , but also in the advocacy space compliance with how you need to think about state and local laws , what the new overtime rule means for your business and how you can comply and make sure that you're compliant before you get in trouble .

So there's a lot of resources there , val , and of course , last but certainly not least , my contact information is readily available . Feel free to reach out to me . I'm always approachable , happy to answer any questions on behalf of you or your business anything you need , just to stay informed .

So it's just been very different from the and I'm sure I'm not the first person or I'll be the last person to tell you this very different from the pre-pandemic Bursa organization that was there before and in a much better way . So I think this has been a really informative conversation .

As I've said to everyone who's listening to this podcast series , go read the article . Mike has so many great insights in the article . Engage with the resources . You said it . You got to be informed .

Last question that I'm asking all of our guests in this series to kind of leave us some insight on is if you could give one piece of advice to the people listening to advance and elevate our industry . What would that piece of advice be ?

And as long as we can work together on building that trust in both directions , this , the sky's the limit for the growth of the industry , the potential of the industry , but also the ability for us to be able to get that seat at the table without dragging a folding chair in and making sure that we're a part of the conversations in the beginning rather than

halfway through or at the end . So trust it . Trust is the most important thing that we could always do in our day-to-day operations , both mine and yours , to make sure that we're doing it , and trust in us to make sure that we're doing the work to protect your business and promote it as much as possible .

Any information we'd like to share with you from today's episode can be found on the showSM6 . That's forward slash episode ACSM6 . Please be on the lookout for our next episode in this series when it drops next Monday , and don't forget to subscribe through your favorite podcast platforms Until we chat again next week . Please be well