This past March, I found myself in Coral Gables, Fla., for a Life Time Living event. The party’s theme was Havana Nights, and the energy was electric. The band was on fire, the contagious Cuban beat inspiring salsa dancers as they found their rhythm and twirled across the pool deck.
As I made my way through the crowd, I met a Minnesota couple who are longtime members. Joe and Jone Hafermann had recently bought a Twin Cities–area home that needed a significant remodel; since it was happening over the winter, they decided to head south to spend their displacement in sunny southern Florida, at Life Time Stay (a week-to-week or month-to-month rental option at Life Time Living).
Because their health is a top priority for them, the Hafermanns did what they’d done several times since becoming empty nesters: They mapped their road trip to Florida based on Life Time locations in or near major cities: Minneapolis, Des Moines, Kansas City, Atlanta.
Each night, a different hotel. But each day? A familiar place — their third space — where Jone, who loves group fitness, could attend her favorite class, and Joe could make himself at home on the workout floor.
I love these kinds of stories, and I thought about the Hafermanns a lot in the days after the event: about why they love Life Time, how they use our entire ecosystem, and how they experience it as a network of athletic country clubs.
And that is exactly how our brand has evolved. Since that first custom-built club in Eagan, Minn., Life Time has become an expansive, comprehensive healthy-way-of-life company that provides trusted places and programs — both in-person and digital — served up by amazing people across the United States and Canada.
During your occasional travels, whether for work or pleasure, Life Time is here for you, giving you the freedom and flexibility to be where you want to be while also staying on track with your healthy-living endeavors.
This includes Life Time Village, where Work, Living, and Stay are coupled with one of our athletic country clubs. This “live, work, play” concept is not only convenient and fun, it’s naturally and intuitively good for the environment: With the places where so many of us spend the majority of our time in one location, there’s less need to drive, for instance.
It’s things like this that deliver on our commitment to meet you, our members, where you are — to anticipate your needs and see things from your point of view.
Today, that perspective is expanding. Thanks to technology and innovation, the world has gotten smaller, and we can navigate it more easily.
Some of you have been with us for years and now have kids and friends who live in different cities. Many of you can work from anywhere.
During your occasional travels, whether for work or pleasure, Life Time is here for you, giving you the freedom and flexibility to be where you want to be while also staying on track with your healthy-living endeavors.
With 160-plus athletic country clubs in 41 major markets (and more to come over the next few years), as well as an array of digital offerings, Life Time provides a sense of home wherever life or wanderlust may take you.
This duality — the desire for adventure while simultaneously wanting to feel comfortable and secure — is part of how we, as humans, are wired. As a species, we’ve always been innately curious. We have a love affair with freedom; discovery is part of our evolutionary DNA as we explore new horizons. We love possibility, seek novelty, and wonder what’s next.
The paradox is that we simultaneously long for the familiar. We want that feeling of connection, so we develop attachment and bonds with people and places. One of our strongest desires is to feel that we belong — and all the better if it’s within a community that offers something extraordinary.
Life Time can be part of that seeking while also being that place of belonging. We hope to serve you wherever your life, your work, your family, or your call for adventure takes you. And though the geography and faces may be different, the positive, healthy, happy energy is the same.
As we continue to grow as an organization, our goal is for everyone to experience the expansiveness of Life Time like the Hafermanns have — and to be known for that one-of-a-kind athletic country-club experience, where the spirit of exploration meets the comforts of home.
