446: AI Systems This Gym Owner Uses to Retain 856 Members

All right, I am here with Mr. Dave Refuse over from Canada and a record holder at GSD Gyms with his wife, Kim, who is not on today, but she's been on the podcast with Dave. I think this is your third time being on the show?

It is, yeah.

Actually, I think it's my

fourth.

Is it four? I think it's four. Did we do a virtual one before as well? We did a

virtual one and then two in-person ones. Okay. All right. So

record holder, these guys, no one's even come close by the way. I think second close grace, I think maybe, and still quite a ways away, but you guys had 200 or 321,000 in one month, which is just wild. Now, there's so many things that I could talk to Dave about on this podcast and people that are gym owners would be listening and going, dude, this was one of the best episodes I could have heard. This is great. Dave has incredible retention down to like, I don't know, 2% to 3% most months. They're great at sales and marketing, community building. He built his own app. But one of the things that's really impressed me about Dave over the last like five months or so has been his integration with AI, like actually using AI in the gym. And the people that he's hired, the systems that he's built, the tools that he's built, the way that he's using it. And it's like, just when you think a gym can't get any better, let's put some artificial intelligence into the pot. And let's just stir that around and see if we can make it even more. So Dave, welcome back to the show. And I mean, we talk all the time, but welcome back, man.

Thank you. I always love being on your show.

I love having you on. You're an easy guest. All right, great. So let's first dive in. Obviously, a guy like you, because you have somewhat of a tech background as well, you used to own an agency years back, right?

Yeah, we had a digital marketing agency. I'm far from a techie, though. I would say I'm more efficient at hiring people that are techies.

Fair enough. And you are. You are. And so you've been messing around with AI the way a lot of people have been for years. When did you start taking AI up a notch, like taking it more seriously?

Yeah, I mean, we were probably as early of an adopter of AI as you could think. I mean, we were using a platform called Jasper when we had Rally Marketing, which was really just an AI writing tool. And so I got hooked on it so early. And as soon as like any evolution of it's come out, I've been really quick to kind of like dive in and kind of get at least an understanding of what's happening. It's funny, like you asked me 10, 15 years ago, you know, in my mid 20s. And I thought I was like, I thought I knew everything. I feel like the older I get, Mike, the less I know.

Yeah.

I'm just like, there's so much more to learn and to understand. And when I was young, I was just dumb. And I thought I knew everything. And now I feel like I just don't know anything. It's happening so quickly.

Well, that's the whole idea, right? The awareness of knowledge opens up the door to the awareness of non-knowledge. And, you know, like you could walk through a field just fine and all of a sudden you like hear or see a crazy animal and you're like, oh, shit, there's animals around