Jay Jiggins With Finesse Corporate Wellness

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Diaz Trade Law, your customs expert. Today on South Florida Business Radio, we have Jay Jiggins with Finesse Corporate Wellness. Welcome, Jay.

Jay Jiggins: [00:00:33] Hi, Lee. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] I am so excited to learn what you have going on. Please share a little bit about finesse, corporate wellness. How are you serving folks?

Jay Jiggins: [00:00:42] Sure. What we serve is three or four types of clients. Really. We work with corporations and businesses doing employee fitness programs, and that can be anything from small businesses, like a five person law group, for example, that only has a conference room where we push everything back and do fitness classes right there to thousands of people in a business that has a wellness suite. So we do fitness for them and we also do team builders and wellness productivity workshops, etc. that clinics, that kind of thing. We also work with hotels, which is a huge demographic for us. We’re providing guest experiences for them. So the hotels contract us much like a cruise ship would. When you have all those fun things going on at cruise ships, we’re doing those fun things at hotels. Everything from fitness to fun games like blackjack in the pool or golf on the side of the pool, obstacle courses, etc. And then we do one on one personal training and fitness classes for individuals and luxury residences. We run their gyms and their community programing by the pool.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:45] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did this come about?

Jay Jiggins: [00:01:49] Well, I’ll give you a quick synopsis on my background, but when I was very young, I was in entertainment. I was a singer and dancer working on cruise ships. So there’s that component that brings all the fun stuff to the party. I then went on to open my own gyms, so I have ten years of owning gyms and 20 years in the fitness industry. And during my I’m from London. If you didn’t notice an accent and I came over here because of the cruise ships, but once I got to Miami, I intended once I actually landed here with with work in mind, I intended to open my own fitness business at the time, but I got recruited without kind of knowing, but by a company that runs pool and beach management for major hotels. And so I worked with them very much so in the hospitality industry and loved it. And what I really saw with the hospitality industry is it’s not the big chandelier that pulls someone in, but it’s the experience they have at the place. So the some of the smaller, more boutique hotels were doing better than some of the grand hotels, really, because they were giving a better experience. So I kind of combined all of my work life experience, the fun activities, the hospitality industry and the fitness and came up with something that worked for both corporations, creating an employee wellness program that really benefits people, people and makes them more productive. And also something for the hotels that creates this wonderful guest experience that keeps people coming back.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:11] So now as you expand, let’s talk a little bit about the corporate side. There’s a lot of research that says, you know, kind of corporate wellness programs are really beneficial in terms of employee retention, employee productivity. It sounds like you have kind of your own unique spin on how to really maximize that experience for the corporations. Is that a difficult sell for you or is that something that they’re already their mind is already open to the benefits of corporate wellness? So to hear, you know, you add your jazz hands element to the corporate wellness, is it something that’s an easy kind of thing for them to embrace?

Jay Jiggins: [00:03:51] It’s a good question. It’s definitely got easier in the last few years. Ten years ago, this was a much harder sell, so people weren’t investing in their teams and really it was all about bottom line and they didn’t see the benefits. But there is a huge financial benefit to the company to offer these type of things. When you take into account the sick days, the productivity. But more important than that, if your team are not, if your team members are not happy at work, they’re going to leave. And the cost, we all know, especially in this labor shortage, that we currently have the cost to hire people and to keep people is so expensive. We put all this money into hiring, then we train and then we lose them and then we start back in the beginning. Well, this kind of helps in two ways. First of all, they see this as a value, the employee sees us as a value and that their company is giving back, which retains them in a way that they feel committed to a company that’s giving back to them. But even more important than that, the fact that we have teams doing these things together, whether they’re fitness classes or employee wellness workshops that we do, which we have a ton of, it actually brings the teams together. And once you build friends in a place and people you actually enjoy working with and bond with them, you are much more likely to stay at a company.

Jay Jiggins: [00:05:07] So there’s all of those benefits, plus the fact that insurance companies. It reduces the. The company’s insurance costs. So they’re actually quids in and not actually losing any money. And now companies are starting to see that. So it definitely is helping is becoming much easier. So we have people coming to us much more frequently. I used to be cold calling these things and telling them of the benefits and insisting that this was a good thing. Now that’s not the case. Now we have people coming to us constantly saying, you know, not only do we see the benefit of having less sick staff or more productive staff, but the commitment level to the company is huge. And then we’re not just doing fitness, you know, we’re doing a lot of fun stuff that we’re doing, these team builders that really get them out twice a year or quarterly if they want them to, where they’re doing fun stuff that is physical and strategic and bonding and that. So we do a mixture of these companies. We do the employee fitness and these team builders and wellness retreats that really kind of bond the team to them. And I think I have to say, in my opinion, that’s really the magic of what we do for the company. It’s it’s keeping the team, you know, keeping them invested and not just coming in, clocking in and clocking out.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:18] Now, is is this attractive to a certain niche of industry? Like, you know, you hear about the startup community that loves this kind of stuff, maybe more of the creative folks at agencies, marketing firms. But is it also available? You know, our are like manufacturers and more kind of maybe less traditional places more open to this nowadays.

Jay Jiggins: [00:06:43] Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think it’s across the industries that it’s important because as I said, like, it’s not just about the physicality but about the bonding, but where we really lawyers companies is huge for us at lawyers attorneys offices because they’re very stressed, incredibly stressed. They’re stuck at desks, they’re leaning over computers, they’re working insane hours. And some of the companies we work with are doing something that I think is really wonderful. They’re mandating it into the day. So if their day is 8 to 5, ten or 11, you have to choose from three types of fitness class, but you have to go do one. And I think that’s amazing because, you know, some people are left a choice. They’ll just stay at the desk and they need it and they want it, but they want to get their work done. But when it comes from the company that we’re mandating this, you have to leave your desk at ten or 11 a.m. and go do something. You’ve got a choice of three different. So we’re doing six classes in those 2 hours and they can choose and they just go into these classes and then they feel better and they’re not worried about getting their fitness in after hours of work or cutting into their family time. And so we’re seeing a lot more of that. So people are really getting on board with it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:50] And then when you have kind of that buy in from leadership and you and you see the leaders participating, it’s a lot easier to get kind of the rank and file employees to kind of go along exactly 100%.

Jay Jiggins: [00:08:02] It really does all of these things. They come from the top. It can’t be an initiative from a subcommittee that put it together and it’s got no backing, you know?

Lee Kantor: [00:08:10] Now when you’re working with the hotels, is this something that the hotels are doing to differentiate themselves from the other hotels, or is this something that is the same thing that’s happening in corporate wellness, that it’s just kind of these kind of experiences are just built into hotel experiences nowadays?

Jay Jiggins: [00:08:28] The answer to question is yes to both, actually. I mean, I just saw studies this past week at the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association that 98% Hilton did a survey and 90%, 98% of travelers mentioned that they needed a wellness component to their vacation in order to decide on where to stay. So I think with people becoming much more health and wellness conscious. Hotels are saying that they have to provide something, number one. But number two, yes, it definitely differentiates a hotel from another. I mean, our market certainly here in Florida, but everywhere now that has hotels, you know, it’s flooded. There’s wherever there’s a hotel, there’s one next to you. And how do you make a decision on where you’re going to stay? The other thing that we do that’s pretty unique is we have a signature method of making sure we get a TripAdvisor review from the guest right after whatever activity is that we’re doing, which of course, people are reading reviews all the time now. And if you’re reading a review and it says a place is great and they’re doing all these fun stuff, of course you choose that place over the next. So it’s a great guest experience that is a memory in their brain that makes them come back to that property. It’s a great sales tactic because when someone sees the review, they choose that one over the other. So it builds occupancy. It also enables them to charge a higher room rates and resort fees. But it’s really a giveback that the guests become more loyal to. And if they’re looking for wellness anyway, it also serves that need.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:59] Does it also help the hotel kind of differentiate themselves from the Airbnbs and those kind of homes that are being rented for kind of a you know, if somebody wants just a bed, that’s different than the person that wants an experience.

Jay Jiggins: [00:10:15] 100%. And I think it’s also that thing that when people are price conscious and they’re looking at the Airbnb, for example, it really is why stay at a hotel? I could stay at an Airbnb for this amount of money. Well, this is why you stay at the hotel. This is what you get. You get all of this is not just about a hotel. Whereas if you’re not doing these kind of things and then it’s it’s a pool and a bed, so you can get that in an Airbnb. So absolutely. I think it’s what what helps to secure the hotel as a hotel and not a competition to the Airbnb.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:48] Now, do you have any advice for other folks that are kind of leading an organization like yours when they’re dealing with something that is the ROI of it is is there but it’s not maybe as obvious. So you have to kind of communicate the value, maybe using different language and then in a different way than a person would that has a more straightforward ROI. Can you explain how you’ve been able to communicate that value effectively?

Jay Jiggins: [00:11:23] Sure. I mean, I think that. The different types of clients we we work with, mostly with business to business, right? So business to business, the businesses have some kind of budget. It’s finding out what their pain point is, what is their headache, what can you serve them with? And really trying to do some homework before just trying to sell to them. And so often when we are talking to clients, we try to find out before we even try to sell our stuff. It’s, you know, what are you doing? What are the problems you’re running into? What would you want your business to do better, your hotel to do better, your whatever it is we’re speaking to? And you’d be surprised on what we can help you with. And once we find out what their pain point is, of course it’s selling straight to that. So the hotels is often, you know, we’re losing our business to our competitors or my front desk staff are insane because they have to keep giving back resort fees because people are not happy. They’re saying, What benefit am I getting for this resort fee? I don’t even drink the coffee in the morning or take the bottle of water for the corporations. Again, it’s we’re losing too many staff. Everybody’s sick, you know, no one’s bonding anymore because we have so many remote workers.

Jay Jiggins: [00:12:34] So it’s just really a case of listening to the problems of your customer and then seeing how you can serve them more than the return on investment for them. I think once you feed into their pain point, the budget kind of goes out of the window. And then of course, you can you can mention how we save your money. Definitely with the corporations, it’s easy to see. And with the hotels, it’s, you know, if they want to do this kind of guest experience, which more and more do, if they had an onsite recreation manager, not only would they be paying them a salary and dealing in a business, that’s not something they do. I mean, they’re in the business of running hotels, not running guest experiences, but they have to hire fire, pay the taxes on that person, worker’s comp, all of these kind of things, insurance, liability, none of that they have to worry about with us. We curate it. We take care of all of those things. Our company comes onsite, we do what we do, we leave and you don’t have to worry about it. So I think the lack of headache is is the big point.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:31] Now, can you share a story maybe from the corporate side of a company that came to you? And you don’t have to obviously name the name of the company, but explain what their challenge was, what they were frustrated with, and how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Jay Jiggins: [00:13:45] Yes, we had a company that had a new management team take over and they were a big company. They had lots of departments. None of the departments really were particularly knitted well before. But once the new management company came in, they had some new leaders, some new important people inside of the company along mixing with the old company. And there was just a general feeling of distrust and disharmony, I guess. So they rolled out. They started with these team builders that we did quarterly for them. And after we’d done two, two team builders, they brought us in to do an employee wellness and fitness program. So they had at least one fitness activity every day, Monday through Wednesday, and then they had two on Thursdays and Fridays, and we did very different ranges of activities. They started with just rolling it out where it was optional for anyone to to just jump in to these classes whenever they wanted to. And then they again, we’re not seeing so much buy in. So they mandated that everybody had to do three per week. And you know, often when you mandate anything, staff are like, oh my God, I have to do this. This is something new. We’re already kind of miserable with the new management, but what they found is once people started going into the classes that people started bonding and the management, the new management team and the old team started to have something that they were relating with and things just started to get easier. And so they were still working with that company. We’ve been with them for three years now and yeah, they say that we’re an integral part of keeping those teams as new people come in or people go out bonded and it’s quicker a quicker turnaround for new people to onboard, basically.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:28] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what is the coordinates to get a hold of you.

Jay Jiggins: [00:15:36] Well, our website is WW dot finesse corporate wellness dot com. On our website you can fill in the contact form you can Instagram us again it’s finance, corporate wellness, any of the social media finance, corporate wellness. But yeah, you can reach us. You can call us seven, eight, 64125380. But any of those mediums and we’re happy to talk to anyone. And the first thing we basically do is, as I said before, really find out what it is that your issue is and how we think we might be able to serve it. And if we think we’re a great fit for you, then, of course, we’ll give you an estimate for services.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:15] Well, Gerri, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work. We appreciate you.

Jay Jiggins: [00:16:20] Thank you, Lee. I appreciate you having us on.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on South Florida Business Radio.

Jay Jiggins: [00:16:27] Take me.