Debra Siena, president of Proactive Partners, led the company to growth even during the recession. In 2010, her division brought in 17 percent of parent company TCA Holdings’ $93 million revenues. Photo courtesy of Proactive Partners.

Persistence pays off. That is true when it comes to an individual fitness plan and when it comes to business, or so Debra Siena, president of Chicago-based Proactive Partners, has found.

As some fitness management companies struggled during the recession and gave up on pursuing new business, Proactive Partners, the fitness facility management division of TCA Holdings, which also owns 10 Midtown Athletic Clubs, found new opportunities due to Siena’s relentless pursuit.

“It’s stunning the growth we’ve had during this recession,” Siena says. Although she admits the recession did cause business to come to a screeching halt for a bit, it did not stop her from reaching out to prospects.

“We were doing prospecting and some networking and looking at the opportunities for Proactive Partners as I was putting together the strategic plans, laying a lot of seeds and reaching out to past prospects and past inquiries and local communities and appropriate trade associations within human resources,” she says.

The result? Proactive Partners has added eight new clubs and/or clients since October 2009. That brings the company’s total number of clients to 19. TCA Holdings’ 2010 revenue was $93 million, and Proactive Partners brought in 17 percent of that revenue.

“If you believe in something and are passionate about it, that’s terrific, and it’s great to be creative and have ideas, but you have to be relentless,” she says. “You have to be able to take rejection and have people say no and no and no, and continue to root and root and root, and explore and network and go at it from different angles until you find a way to make it happen. I think persistence is invaluable in accomplishing success.”

Siena obviously took her charge to grow Proactive Partners seriously when she was named president of the division two years ago after 23 years with TCA Holdings. Her first step was to develop a business plan to strategically determine the company’s growth rather than growing opportunistically as the company often had done in the past. With that plan in place, Siena and her team developed a plan to package and market Proactive Partners, rebranding everything from its website to collateral material.

Siena also began diversifying the company’s offerings beyond fitness center management to include health and well-being initiatives for companies without fitness centers. Those health enhancement solutions include a menu of services, such as health risk assessments (online, on the phone and on site), follow-ups on risk stratification and phone coaching that offers individual counseling for employees on where their health level is. The company also offers a series of wellness programs about eating better, stress management and physical activity—all of which can be delivered via the web, over the phone or in person.

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