Fitness Business University Podcast

Click Here to learn more about how I help gym owners:
https://vincegabriele.com

20 years of owning a gym, and one thing I've learned is that being busy and knowing what you're doing are two very different things.

It's easy to get caught up in the day to day. You have a million things demanding your attention. Your staff needs answers. There are decisions to make. And somehow, with all that going on, you can still feel like you're not getting anywhere.

That's where clarity comes in. Not another complicated business strategy...

Click Here to get free books and resources to grow your gym:
https://www.vincegabriele.com/

15% of one gym owner's customers came from BNI. I went to one BNI meeting years ago and hated it. Thought it was boring, weird, and had no interest in ever going back. So naturally, I just had Mike join one. I'll explain why.

Facebook ads are getting more expensive, the quality of leads is getting worse, and a lot of gym owners are sitting around wondering what happened. The funny thing is, some of the most successful guys...

Click Here to join us in Denver on November 13th and 14th: https://www.vincegabriele.com/events/7-figure-breakthrough/

First solo episode in a while. I recorded this one outside walking around a field, so if you hear birds and a train going by, that is why.

I want to talk about going from six to seven figures, and I want to start by taking the air out of it. Over a decade ago I was one of the only gyms I knew doing seven figures. A buddy was so stunned by it that he talked...

Click Here to join us in Denver on November 13th and 14th: https://www.vincegabriele.com/events/7-figure-breakthrough/

Weird title, I know. Here is where it came from.

Back in 2019 I was coaching a lot of gym owners and almost all of it was built on assumptions. I would ask somebody a specific question about their numbers and nobody had the answer. It is the same thing we all deal with on the training floor. The client who is 40 pounds overweight tells you he eats eggs for breakfast and salad for lunch. Business...

Click Here to get a custom local marketing plan for your gym, completely free: https://www.vincegabriele.com/helpmemarket

Big Tom and I did something different this week. Instead of picking a topic, we took the questions straight from my SPF group. Five of them. All the same problems I hear every week on deep dives and coaching calls.

We start with pricing, because Mike Williams from Florida asked how often you should actually raise your rates. That turned into the bigger conversation about why gym owners refuse to do it. I just...

Most gym owners are grinding on the wrong problem for the stage they are actually in. Take the 5 minute audit and find out what deserves your attention right now: https://fourstagesquiz.com/

Dustin Bogle is a former pro wrestler who trained in a backyard ring built by his buddy's dad. Those buddies turned out to be The Young Bucks. He wrestled for ten years, set himself a hard deadline of age 28, and when the big contract never came he walked away cold turkey and went all in on his gym.

What happened next...

Find out what stage your gym is in and exactly what to focus on right now. Takes 5 minutes: https://www.fourstagesquiz.com/

Some of the advice killing gym owners sounds perfectly reasonable. Never raise your members’ rates. Open another location. Copy the model that’s working for somebody else.

Tom and I break down the advice owners need to stop following, and why even good advice can be wrong for your business right now.

Tom starts with one that a lot of trainers hear: you’re great at this, you should open y...

Find out what stage your gym is in and exactly what to focus on right now. Takes 5 minutes: https://www.fourstagesquiz.com/

Quick one today. The new book is close to done and it has a new title.

It was originally The Four Stages of Fitness Business Success, which sounds terrible once you say it out loud. Then I sat down at a seminar next to the book editor for all of Tim Ferriss' books and he spent an hour with me on titles.

New title: The Four Stages of Gym...

If you need help and you'd like to reach out to Vince personally, send an email to him directly at [email protected]

Last year I hired Dax Moy. I'd just sold a company, my mom was in the thick of being very ill, and I wanted to take my consulting business to the next level. I'd had business coaches for two decades at that point. What I realized was that the thing standing between me and the next level wasn't more knowledge. It was my development as a leader and as a man.

If you need help and you'd like to reach out to Vince personally, send an email to him directly at [email protected]

I'm four hours into a ruck in the Watchung Reservation training for the Grand Canyon, and I'm not talking about business today. I'm talking about your marriage. Or your significant other. Which I'd argue is the most important business relationship you have.

I told the story I've never told publicly. Vanessa and I separated six months after we got married. She moved back to California. I mailed the divorce papers...

Register for the Email Marketing Workshop on September 11th:
 https://www.vincegabriele.com/emailbuy

This is my full talk from the Perform Better Summit. Six profit levers you can pull to make more money in your gym starting Monday.

Here's the number that bothers me. The average gym does $300,000 in gross revenue at about a 20% margin. That's $60,000 to the owner. For what you people do, that's not good enough. My goal for everyone I work with is $200,000 a year in personal income, and I don't think that's unreasonable.

I opened by telling t...

Last week to grab your seat. 85% of your future customers are already on your list, and I'm teaching how I turn one hour of writing into $865. https://www.vincegabriele.com/emailbuy

I fly to St. Louis to see my cardiologist. I live 20 miles from five of the best hospitals in the world and I get on a plane to Missouri. Tom asked me why, and the answer turned into this whole episode.

Back in 2017 I got a CAC score that put me in the 95th percentile of calcified plaque for my age. A local cardiologist...

85% of your future customers are already on your list. I'm teaching how I turn one hour of writing into $865.
 https://www.vincegabriele.com/emailbuy

I visited three gyms in one day and every single one was at a different stage of business. One was doing $10K a month. One was doing $25K. One was building an organization. And every one of them was asking me about the wrong thing.

The guy at $10K wanted to talk about where to move his equipment. He has 20 members. He should be making phone calls, not rearranging dumbbells. I...

How to make $865.38 per hour writing emails. Full workshop September 11th: https://www.vincegabriele.com/emailworkshop2026

Here's a study that will change how you think about your leads. When someone opts in with a company, roughly 50% of them will eventually buy. But only 15% of those buyers purchase in the first 100 days. The other 85% buy over the next 100 weeks.

Read that again. Most gym owners have a system for the 15% and nothing for the 85%. They hammer a lead for 21 days, get no response, and write them off as dead. Those aren't dead leads. They just haven't...

Losing clients faster than you can replace them? Book a free Gym Clarity Call and we'll help you stop the bleeding:
 https://gymclaritycall.com/

Your best marketing asset isn't marketing. It's your retention rate.

Here's the math that should change how you think about this. A gym with 100 clients at a 3% attrition rate needs six new clients a month to add 36 members this year. That same gym at 6% attrition needs twelve. Same growth, double the work. Most gyms can get six clients in their sleep. 

Twelve means spending money, spending time, and pr...

Register for the Email Marketing Workshop on September 11th: https://www.vincegabriele.com/emailworkshop2026

This is the full recap of the SPF Mastermind weekend. Over 100 gym owners in the room, another 50 on Zoom, two full days of talks, and a barbecue at my house. Tom and I break down every major theme so you get the highlights whether you were there or not.

The overarching concept was the Anti-Fragile Gym. Not just surviving uncertainty but getting stronger from it. I walked through the Kintsugi model, which is Japanese pottery where the cracks are...

Join us at the Gym of the Future Live Event on July 17th and 18th in Berkeley Heights, NJ. In person and virtual tickets available:
 https://www.vincegabriele.com/events/gym-of-the-future/

Quick episode while I'm waiting outside jiu jitsu. The SPF Mastermind meeting is a week away and I wanted to break down exactly what we're covering and why this one matters.

The theme is the Gym of the Future. And before you think this is all AI and robots, it's not. My opening talk is about the things you need to stop ignoring a...

Join us at the Gym of the Future Live Event on July 17th and 18th in Berkeley Heights, NJ. Charlie Weingroff, Devin Gage, Joe Hashey, and Vince on stage.  https://www.vincegabriele.com/events/gym-of-the-future/

Your most valuable list isn't on Facebook. It's every person who ever paid you and left. And if you've been in business for more than a few years, that list is in the thousands.

We did the math on Gabriele Fitness. 19 years, an average of 175 members, roughly 4% monthly churn. That's thousands of people who have walked through our d...

Register for the 3 Hour Marketing Masterclass on June 30th at 12pm Eastern ($1 to reserve, only 50 spots):
https://www.vincegabriele.com/june2026masterclass/

Most gym owners get referrals by accident. A client mentions your gym to a friend, the stars align, and someone signs up. That's great. But you can't run a business on things that happen by accident.

Tom and I break down the difference between accidental and orchestrated referrals and give you every strategy that's actually producing referrals right now at Gabriele Fitness and across the SPF Mastermind. This isn't theory. One gym...

Register for the 3 Hour Marketing Masterclass on June 30th at 12pm Eastern ($1 to reserve your seat, only 50 spots): https://www.vincegabriele.com/june2026masterclass/

I just got back from hiking the highest mountain in Colorado at 14,440 feet. We summited, ran low on water, lost the trail, and spent three hours walking across the top of a mountain range with no path. And I didn't panic. That's not because I'm some tough guy. It's because I've spent years training my mind for uncertainty through meditation and experience.

That's what being a business owner is. It's signing...

LAST CHANCE TO APPLY: Vince's $25,750 Huge Giveaway closes June 19th at 10pm. Takes 7 minutes: https://vinceshugegiveaway.com/

GR Hoff has been doing this longer than almost anyone in the gym marketing space. He ran the very first paid ad campaign for Gabriele Fitness over a decade ago, wrote the copy on the back of the Cathy Balsamo book that's still our most successful marketing piece to this day, and now runs Gym Member Machine with 350+ gym clients worldwide and a 2 to 3% churn rate that is basically unheard of in the agency world.

In...

LAST CHANCE: Apply for Vince's $25,750 Huge Giveaway before June 19th at 10pm. Takes 7 minutes:
 https://vinceshugegiveaway.com/

This is my birthday episode. The Knicks just won the NBA championship after 53 years and Tom and I couldn't help ourselves. We broke down every business lesson we could pull from the entire run.

Jalen Brunson turned down $100 million so the Knicks could build a better team around him. Think about that. He bet on winning over getting paid, and now his lifetime value is exponentially higher than if he'd taken the money. That's the same math w...

Apply for my $25,750 Giveaway: https://vinceshugegiveaway.com/

I'm walking outside the gym today with the birds going wild in the background, and I wanted to give you an update on the $25,750 Giveaway. The applications are pouring in and some of them are unreal. Some of them are also three words long. I'm telling you right now, if you are filling this out like it's a sweepstakes you are wasting your shot. This is not a random draw. I am reading every single application myself.

The real reason I decided to do this all...

Enter my $26,750 Giveaway and win a 2 hour private in service with Charlie Weingroff for your team: https://vinceshugegiveaway.com/

Charlie Weingroff is one of the most respected physical therapists and strength coaches on the planet. He has trained pro athletes, military operators, and some of the best coaches in the world for the last 25 years. I have known Charlie for 15 years and he is one of my closest friends in this industry, which is why he agreed to be one of the headline contributions to the $26,750 Giveaway I am running right now.

On this...

CLICK HERE TO APPLY FOR VINCE'S $25,750 HUGE GIVEAWAY (takes 7 minutes): https://vinceshugegiveaway.com/

I'm giving away $25,750 worth of coaching, consulting, software, equipment, certifications, and financial auditing to one gym owner. We've done this twice before. Both winners are still with us as clients. One just opened a brand new facility. The other nearly tripled their revenue.

Tom and I break down every single piece of the prize package and why I handpicked each partner. We also get into the full story of the Cocodona 250 where I paced Joe Hashey for 73 miles through the Arizona...

There's money hiding in your gym right now. Book a free Find the Money Call and we'll show you exactly where it is: https://findthemoneycall.com/

This is the full recording of my live masterclass: How to Fix the Profits at Your Gym. This is the third in the series after Fix the Marketing and Fix the Sales. And this is the one that matters most because you can't deposit revenue into your bank account. You can only deposit profit.

I taught over 60 gym owners the six levers you can pull to start seeing more...

Register now for the free How to Fix the Profits at Your Gym Masterclass on Thursday, May 21st at 12pm Eastern: https://live.vincegabriele.com/profitmasterclass

So I just sideswiped a guy's car in the Jiu Jitsu parking lot. Totally my fault. I was dropping my daughter off, some guy got heated that I stopped in the middle of the lot, I pulled up to his window to say something, and my car started grinding into the side of his car. I didn't even realize it was happening until he's screaming at me and his...

Register now for the free How to Fix the Profits at Your Gym Masterclass on Thursday, May 21st at 12pm Eastern: https://live.vincegabriele.com/profitmasterclass

This is the third masterclass in the series. We did Fix the Marketing. We did Fix the Sales. Now we're doing the one that actually matters most: Fix the Profits.

Because here's the thing. You cannot take revenue to the bank. You can only take profit. And in my experience, most gym owners are either treading water with the same bank balance that never grows, or they're watching it...

Register now for the free How to Fix the Profits at Your Gym Masterclass on Wednesday, May 21st at 12pm Eastern: https://live.vincegabriele.com/profitmasterclass

If you keep losing members after month three and can't figure out why, this episode is for you. And the answer probably has nothing to do with your marketing.

Tom and I dig into the real reasons gyms have high churn rates and what to actually do about each one. We walk through the numbers: what a good attrition rate looks like, what a bad one looks...

If your show rate is broken, book a free 30 minute Gym Clarity Call and we'll find the fix: https://gymclaritycall.com/

If leads are opting in but never picking up the phone, or booking consults and ghosting you, this episode is for you. And the answer might not be what you think.

Most gym owners assume it's a sales problem. Get better at follow up. Get better on the phone. And yeah, that stuff matters. But after sitting in mastermind rooms for the last several weeks hearing the same complaint over and over, I started...

If your gym has been stuck at the same revenue for more than six months, book a free 30 minute Gym Clarity Call and we'll find the one lever holding you back: https://gymclaritycall.com/

If your gym has been stuck at the same revenue number for over six months, this episode is for you. And I promise the reason isn't what you think.

Most gym owners blame their market, their competition, or their marketing. But after coaching 139 gym owners and running my own gym since 2008, I can tell you it...

Want us to audit your sales process and show you exactly where leads are falling through the cracks? Book a free Sales Audit and we'll review your automations from lead to consult or trial: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/masterclassbonuscall

This is the full recording of my live masterclass: How to Fix the Sales at Your Gym. Over 100 gym owners showed up and I coached for two and a half hours straight. No slides. No pitch. Just the real stuff that moves the needle.

Here's the reality that most...

Register now for the free How to Fix the Sales at Your Gym Masterclass on Thursday, April 23rd at 12pm Eastern: https://live.vincegabriele.com/april

More people signed up for this masterclass than the marketing one I did last month. That tells me a lot of you are in the same spot: you're getting leads, you just can't turn them into paying members.

This Thursday I'm hosting a free masterclass where I break down exactly how to fix that. We're covering how to get more leads to actually show up...

If you want to learn the strategies and tactics that gym owners like Melissa are using to grow, check out my most recent webinar on YouTube where I break down the full marketing system: https://youtu.be/LC6cODkphtc

Don't forget to book your free call with my team and get the Testimonial Email Builder as a bonus: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/masterclassbonuscall

Melissa Chase opened Chase Fitness in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania in September 2024 with 10 members. She joined SPF two months before she...

If you want to learn the strategies and tactics that gym owners like Anthony are using to grow, check out my most recent webinar on YouTube where I break down the full marketing system: https://youtu.be/LC6cODkphtc

Don't forget to book your free call with my team and get the Testimonial Email Builder as a bonus: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/masterclassbonuscall

Podcast Summary:

Anthony D'Astice flew into New Jersey for a consulting day in 2022 with a...

If you’re going to consume this, do yourself a favor—watch it on YouTube.

You’ll see the actual newspaper ad, the full Testimonial Email Builder walkthrough, and the entire Q&A. That’s where the real value is.

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/LC6cODkphtc

And when you’re done, book a call with my team. We’ll walk through your situation and I’ll give you the Testimonial Email Builder as a bonus:

https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/maste...