The founder of Life Fitness is applying his skills and time to finding a cure for ALS
by Stephen Wallenfels
A thin, mid-morning fog clings tenaciously to Balboa Island. Silhouetted shoppers cruise the tidy sidewalks of this quaint coastal town nestled between the massive urban sprawls of Los Angeles and San Diego. This is where Augie Nieto, the founder and retired chief executive of Life Fitness, lives these days, in a two-story rental on the Grand Canal. His own five-story home, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, is being remodeled. "Five stories," he says, smiling at the irony. "Not the right place for someone like me."
"Someone like me" refers to his diagnosis, in February 2005, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease. In preparation for the inevitable advance of this disease, which weakens and eventually destroys motor neurons, his family home is being outfitted with a five-story elevator. It's not the sort of feature one would expect to find in the house of a man who has dedicated his life to practicing and preaching the gospel of regular exercise - but it's a symbol of where his life is headed, a change of course that he faces with characteristic energy, determination, and grace.
Augie's energy is legendary in the fitness industry, and it's evident as we walk toward breakfast. Lean, muscular, and deeply tanned, he moves with the loose, easy strides of an athlete. There is an aura about him, a feeling of peace and purpose, like he's traveling somewhere at the speed of light but taking his time along the way. He talks about his four children, three of whom are in college, and one who is a junior in high school. They are clearly a source of deep pride and inspiration in his life. "It's all about passion," he says of their varied interests, which range from social justice, to pre-med, to elementary school education, to crew and football. "Passion is the engine that drives success."
And those two words - passion and success - epitomize the journey of Augie Nieto.
Born in Anaheim, California, in 1958, Augie, one of five children, spent much of his childhood in the "overweight" category. "I was 5'7" and 250 pounds," he remembers. As he sought a weight-loss solution, he discovered the transformative power of exercise, which ignited his passion and fired his commitment to fitness.
"I was a contrarian," he recalls. "When everyone else was going right, I went left." His willingness to do the unexpected and to take risks, along with his extraordinary vision, energy, and drive, propelled him on a career trajectory that helped transform an industry. He is generally credited with starting the cardio-equipment revolution in health clubs. Norm Cates, a long-time club owner and publisher of the Club Insider, a trade newspaper, describes Augie as "the Henry Ford of the fitness industry."
"Just as Henry Ford revolutionized the world with his Model-T," says Cates, "Augie forever changed our industry by moving clubs from being a nearly exclusively a weight-lifting environment to the impressive cardio-fitness facilities that they are today."
In a remarkable story that spans two decades, starting in 1977, Augie went from traveling the country in a motor home selling Lifecycles (he purchased the marketing rights at age 19), to cofounding Lifecycle, Inc., in 1980, with partner Ray Wilson. From there, he went on to develop what eventually became the largest manufacturer of commercial fitness equipment in the world, Life Fitness-which he sold to the Brunswick Corporation (NYSE: BC), for $310 million, in 1997.
But all of his accomplishments, including receiving the National Fitness Industry's Lifetime Achievement Award, were, it turns out, mere stages that have prepared him for his latest, most formidable challenge - and, in a profound sense, his greatest opportunity.
He converses easily about his years with Life Fitness and his current roles on the boards of Octane Fitness, which manufactures high-end commercial elliptical machines, and North Castle Partners, a private equity investment firm. His devotion to, and confidence in, an industry that has given him so much is unequivocal, absolute. "I can't imagine a better time to be in this industry," he says.
But his eyes burn brightest when the conversation turns to two topics that are inexorably linked: his family and Augie's Quest.
He prefaces his discourse on Augie's Quest, a campaign he started to raise funds for ALS research, by stating some cold, hard facts. "There is no known cause, cure, or treatment for ALS," he says. "We can't stop it. We can't even slow it down. Five thousand people in the U.S. are diagnosed annually. The life expectancy is 2-5 years, but nearly half will die within two years of diagnosis." He pauses for a moment to let those somber words sink in, then describes how he finally moved past his initial emotions of "Why me?" and "What did I do to deserve this?"
"Time was my friend," he says. "Probably the first and only time with this disease." But rather then dwell on memories of those gray days, he brightens and says, "It's all about the future now." And the future, in large part, is consumed and, in fact, enriched by Augie's Quest.
"When I heard that I was going to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award in September," recalls Augie, "my wife, Lynne, who has been my partner through all of this, suggested we start Augie's Quest and use the award as an opportunity to raise funds for ALS research." Although the awards ceremony hadn't been used as a fund-raiser in the past, that didn't stop Augie from making the suggestion. The program's organizers gladly picked up and ran with the idea. "We raised more than $1 million in a single night, and set an MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association) record for a first-time event."
But that impressive result is just a preview of what lies ahead. "Mark Mastrov (the founder, CEO, and chairman of 24 Hour Fitness) invited me to lunch the following day," says Augie, smiling at the memory. "He told me, 'Nice start. Now let's go out and raise some money!'"
