VIEWPOINT by Charles “Chip” Baird
Augustine “Augie” Nieto, who in 1977 founded what would become exercise bike-maker Life Fitness Inc., was given the health club industry’s lifetime achievement award at a 700-person dinner at the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas earlier this month. Nieto sold Life Fitness to Bally Manufacturing Corp. in 1984. Today the business is part of Brunswick Corp., which bought it for $310 million in 1997. Nieto, 47, found out in March he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the nerve disorder better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Nieto turned the Las Vegas event into a fund-raiser for ALS research, taking in more than $1 million. What follows is a speech about Nieto by Charles “Chip” Baird Jr., founder of North Castle Partners LLC, a private equity firm focused on the health industry. Nieto is an operating adviser at North Castle as well as chairman of Minnesota’s Octane Fitness and a director of Aliso Viejo-based Quest Software Inc.
I’m going to try to synthesize the perspectives of the 25-member North Castle family into a patchwork quilt of fond reminiscences of our “man of the hour.”
Augie joined our team about six years ago. At that point, he had made his fame and fortune. Suffice it to say, from our perspective, Augie is “as responsible as anyone for the growth and expansion of the fitness industry and more specifically, for making fitness available to people of all walks of life in all parts of the world.”
As an entrepreneur, he is a legend, one of the few who achieve rock star status and the acknowledged celebrity of being known, like Cher, Madonna and Sting, by only one name. You only have to say “Augie.”
Walking with Augie through a trade show is like walking through an all-boys prep school with Angelina Jolie. They all want a piece,of Augie, I mean.
Most people who have a persona that’s larger than life have a personality that’s louder than life. They believe their own press and become legends in their own minds.
When you strip away the success, the money, the boat, the car, the house and the hair transplants, what you have is an emperor with no clothes. The essential being is an empty vessel.
Not Augie. Definitely not Augie.
The lifetime achievement I salute has nothing to do with a business career,in fact nothing to do with business. It has to do with a very special man who has spent a lifetime of achievement touching people with his wisdom and his warmth, with his passion and with his compassion.
Listen to some voices from North Castle:
From a secretary: “He talks to me like a real person a two-way conversation, not just a smile and the usual pleasantries. He takes the time to really find out how I’m doing.”
An associate remembering his first day on the job: “I only knew him by name and he comes strolling by, sticks his head in the door and says, ‘Hi, I’m Augie. Welcome to North Castle. How’s it going?’ And he jumped into a conversation like we’d known each other for years. I’ve been a fan since day one. He just didn’t have to do that.”
Another associate struggling with a decision to go to business school: “I didn’t know him well. But the interest he showed, the clarity of his thinking, the enthusiasm and support for a path he didn’t take were the key factors in helping me make my decision.”
A prospective CEO considering a job with North Castle: “Augie’s sincerity and genuine commitment to North Castle was ‘infectious.’ He was the major force in my decision to move forward.”
For me personally, I never will forget the passion and vulnerability you showed when you launched Colorado Weigh.
Your description of your personal struggles with weight,it clearly was more than just a business proposition. It takes a big, self-confident man to show vulnerability.
Nor will I ever forget the honesty, integrity and class you showed when you decided that the business could not meet, could not deliver the results you forecasted. So you pulled the plug, losing several million dollars of your own money but insulating your friends and co-investors, including North Castle, from the loss.
You taught us all another lesson: winning not losing, leading with character, inspiring us to higher ground.
Ben James, our partner, could not be here tonight. He asked that I read something he wrote:
“To take a measure of a man, look no further than conditions of adversity to see who he really is.
In 480 BC, 300 men, all Spartans led by a man named Leonidas, stood at the pass of Thermopylae with mountains on one side of the pass and ocean on the other. Each of these men were free men; there of their own volition.
These men, like us, were ordinary men in many ways. They had families they cherished, friends and countrymen they loved, land and society into which they were born and helped build.
All this, everything they valued, lay behind them. In front of them, stretched out across the plains, camped their adversary, and army commanded by the Persian King Xerxes, numbering 1 million men. Their army, at the time,the largest most efficient fighting force ever assembled,already had conquered most of the free world. Xerxes army expected to breech the pass of Thermopylae in a matter of hours, upon its first assault. Should it push through the pass quickly, Sparta, the rest of Greece and the remainder of the free world would fall.
But, Xerxes forces did not push through quickly. His army launched assault after assault and was repelled until the last Spartan fell, seven days later. This battle, ultimately rallying the rest of Greece to defeat a chastened Xerxes, changed the course of the war and of history.”
I have had the remarkable good fortune, to spend time and work with Augie during the past six years. If I were Leonidas standing at the pass of Thermopylae, I would want Augie at my side.
Robert Lewis Stevenson once wrote, “We are all travelers in the desert of life and the best we can find in our journey is an honest friend.”
Augie, thank you for being that friend for all of us. I know you know, we are always here for you.
