Dietary and nutritional content reviewed by Jasmin Gorostiza, DT, DM, DSS, CFPP.️
Nutrisystem is a weight management company that has been in existence for the past forty years. Initially, the company was providing weight loss advice and products by means of telemarketing. On the onset, Nutrisystem was actually a diet center known as Shape Up.
Nutrisystem has undergone a lot of changes since American entrepreneur, Harold Katz, founded it in 1971. Having seen how his own mother struggled with obesity, he was keen on creating a module that could easily help folks lose weight. The name Nutrisystem came about in 1977 when he joined forces with a microbiologist named Jay Satz.
At that time, Dr. Jay Satz was with the state department of health in Pennsylvania. He then created a pre-portioned food line that would then be known as the “Nutrisystem Foods of the Future 2000.”
Fast forward to today, Nutrisystem has undergone many more changes. It has now expanded to the retail channel and can be found online and on the shelves of you favorite grocery store. From one CEO to another, the driving force of Nutrisystem these days is Dawn Zier. Related Read: Nutrisystem Frozen Foods Help People Get Their Health Back
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The Lady Behind Nutrisystem
Dawn Zier’s extensive background covers an in depth understanding of all the facets of consumer behavior, trends, and ecommerce. She has an MBA from MIT. She took up electrical engineering and computer science. Interestingly, she has a master’s degree in both.
Over the years, she has worked in various industries such as banking and communication. Formerly with the Reader’s Digest Association, she joined Nutrisystem in the late 2012.
At present, she is the President, CEO of Nutrisystem. Under her leadership, she has turned the company around, making it a leading weight loss and management brand.
Dawn’s innovative driving force has enhanced and enforced the eCommerce marketing capacity of the company. With a wider market reach, Nutrisystem has helped a huge number of clients lose weight with their various food selections that are healthy and tasty.
With Dawn in the driver’s seat, she ensures that the company focuses more on a culture that is based on facts and results. Given the change of culture, Nutrisystem stock’s value has since tripled since she took over. Related Read: Here’s how to save money on Nutrisystem
In 2013, her performance put her in the top ranking NASDAQ CEOs To be exact, she was included in the exclusive 15% of top ranking NASDAQ CEOs. You can learn more about Dawn from this video:
Dawn’s leadership was recently recognized by Philadelphia Smart CEO of the 2014 Bravo award. Additionally she’s being honored as Target Marketing 2014 Direct Marketer of the year and is a 2014 winner of the Direct Marketing Club of New York Silver Apple award.
Do You See Yourself Losing … The Turbulent Years
Just like any other company, Nutrisystem had also gone through a couple of turbulent phases. Dawn shares the story of her early days with Nutrisystem:
When I came in and November of 2012 things weren’t quite so rosy. When I was tapped to head Nutrisystem, the company had suffered five years of revenue declines, five years of profit declines, the stock had gone from a high in 2007 of 75 down to 7 and things weren’t great. The company announced in April of 2012 that their CEO was leaving and they didn’t bring in a new CEO until November. So that led to a lot of time when the company was actually in a state of angst and it was also a time when you would think other leaders within the company who had the ability to do so would step up but the whole culture was so beaten up that people were taking more of a wait-and-see attitude; let’s see what the new person’s going to do.
Dawn had her reservations in joining the company. She goes on to share:
I’m not sure I want to be here and really the whole culture was a mess. We had a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. We didn’t look at it from a customer perspective. We set one product. Now, take it. Not the best way to the market or to engage customers …
She goes on to describe what she had seen in the early days of her leadership.
We had a great resource. So our building, we have three floors in the Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. Our second floor is our contact center. So we have our customer service reps, our sales reps. We have our counselors. We have our nutritionists, our dietitians. Everybody’s on that floor and marketing is on the third floor and you think it was the Berlin Wall between the two floors. Nobody got together and talked and that really is your front line of defense and we weren’t really activating it.
The Turnaround
Thanks to Dawn’s leadership, Nutrisystem is now more engaged with its growing number of customers.
Fast forward to today, we have a highly engaged leadership team. Morale is dramatically improved.
Slowly, Dawn was able to turn the company around. Her background in engineering has helped her establish the cutting edge process of the company.
I wanted her numbers. I want data. I wanted facts.
She credits her mentors who gave her valuable advice.
The first thing you need to do in your 90 days is make sure you get your right team in place and be bold. Don’t be sorry, Make the tough moves and do it fast and just remember that you can’t do everything yourself and your success or your failure is going to be tied to who you bring in, who you exit, who you build as your team over the next 90 days.
Dawn adds:
I spent a lot of time at Reader’s Digest. I was there for 20 years and the last five years at Readers, we went through 4 different CEOs. Now, the good thing about that is if you can survive that you’re really adapted to change and actually, it was a great it was a great experience for me.
How Dawn was able to navigate the success of Nutrisystem is, indeed, an inspiring story. It’s very similar to a weight loss story that has finally seen the light of hope and success.
The Strategy Behind Nutrisystem
Getting a good product in the market is not an easy thing yo do. Making it stay in the market is another story.
Thanks to the leadership of Dawn, Nutrisystem remains in the market as the leading brand in weight loss and management. In this next video, Dawn explains the simple strategy behind Nutrisystem:
The diet that works is the one that you can stick with and it can’t be about deprivation. It has to be about having variety. Having a lot of healthy food options. Nutrisystem is a structured program. Where we find people fall off … is when they try to do it on their own. It’s really hard, in …today’s busy lifestyle to do without a little help.
So pretty much, Nutrisystem is all laid out for you to just enjoy. Since it’s a home delivery service, you can get hold of healthy meals anytime. Thanks to innovative leadership of Dawn, Nutrisystem is within everybody’s reach.
Do You See Yourself Losing … Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate
I did a lot of research on diet delivery services. There’s a lot of them out there but as I dug deeper, I can say that there’s only about 5 that are worth trusting. Based on my research, Nutrisystem is one of the top five. Apparently, it’s flexible and very doable. I’m trying it out now.
The lady behind Nutrisystem has a very impressive background. After a long stint with Reader’s Digest, she goes on to head Nutrisystem, a diet delivery service that’s web-based. With her MBA from MIT, she pretty much knows the value of the internet to promote a product. She did just that with Nutrisystem, making it more and more accessible to everybody out there. Her driving force puts Nutrisystem on the top list of all diet delivery services online. She’s way too cool.
I had no idea that Nutrisystem had been around for years. I thought it was just like one of those weight loss plans that came and went. Obviously, it isn’t. Forty years is a very long time to be in the business of weight loss and I think that’s what makes it very credible. Thanks for enlightening me.
There are other weight loss plans that have been around for some time as well but Nutrisystem seems to be the one that’s most recommended by doctors. Probably because of the fact that it doesn’t tie you down with a specific diet. It just pretty much guides you how to eat to lose weight.