GHF Inspired 1

GainesvilleHealth & Fitness

Journey!Th e

inspiredA LOOK INTO THE VISION BEHIND GAINESVILLE HEALTH & FITNESS

Turning a dream into a reality,“on a wing

and a prayer”

JOE CIRULLITHINK RICH AND NEVER GIVE UP Fin

ding Yo

ur

Purpos

e

pg. 5

2 | inspired | Gainesvil le Health & Fitness | ghfc.com

When it comes to building a company, I don’t know if

Gainesville Health & Fitness went by the standard route. I do

know that most companies started by entrepreneurs begin on a

wing and a prayer, and GHF is no exception.

Who knows when a plan actually starts or when a thought

unfolds and takes on a physical form? I know watching Jack

LaLanne exercise on TV when I was 7 years old affected me.

Maybe it was his enthusiasm that got me following his workouts.

I knew I didn’t want to have a double chin, or that fat he kept

talking about that grows under your arms. I was positive no 7-year

-old wanted that to happen.

Or maybe it was my mother always saying that as long as you

have your health, you have everything. And being a nurse, I guess

she knew. Could it have been watching a group of 16-year-old

high school football players weight lifting when I was 8 and being

mesmerized by how they pushed each other? Or my friend’s older

brother when I saw him lifting weights wearing jeans and no shirt

Maybe it was Mighty Mouse Joe Cirulli discusses the reasons he started GHF

more than 30 years ago.

Why We Do What We Do Take an inside look at our vision, mission,

core purpose, culture and core values at GHF, and the process we went through to define them.

How We Do It Customer service is an important part of the GHF

company culture. Take a look at the steps we take to make sure our members have positive experiences.

Who We Are Find out more about what defines GHF as a company.

Think Rich and Never Give Up In this story, reprinted from Inc. magazine,

writer Bo Burlingham traces the journey Joe Cirulli took to make GHF what it is today.

The GHF Commitment At GHF we have a commitment to the Gainesville

community. Check out the ways we put that commitment into practice every day.

Maybe it was Mighty MouseBy Joe Cirulli

Welcome to inspired

and thinking he looked like Hercules? Then running home and

telling my parents that all I wanted for Christmas was a set of

weights. I still remember my ninth Christmas and seeing my 110

pound set of Mighty Mouse weights under the tree.

Maybe the stage was being set when I started bringing all my

friends down to my cellar to see my gym and teaching them to

lift as I encouraged them to work harder. Nine-year-olds needed

some pushing.

Maybe it was my fi rst trip to a real gym when I was 13 and

the fear I felt walking into it. How would I fi t in a place full of

older guys who trained like Spartans? Could the course have

been set when I was a junior in high school and I brought all

the football players to the gym and taught them how to lift? Or

maybe it was being named captain of the team though I was the

youngest guy in my class. Why did the coach do that? He told me

it was something about leadership.

I believe as I look over the course of my life, many things were

inspired248

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inspired | Gainesvil le Health & Fitness | ghfc.com | 3

inspired is a special edition magazine for Gainesville Health and Fitness.

MAIN CENTER • 4820 Newberry Road, Gainesville, FL 32607 P: 352-377-4955FOR WOMEN • 2441 NW 43rd Street, Gainesville, FL 32606 P: 352-374-4634TIOGA TOWN CENTER • 12830 SW 1st Lane Suite 100, Tioga, FL 32669 P: 352-692-2180www.ghfc.com

GHF ContactsJoe Cirulli, Owner Jan Matkozich, General Manager Shawn Stewart, Operations Manager Ann Raulerson, Operations Manager, Women’s Center Debbie Lee, Director of Marketing Sheila Gardner, Director of Group Exercise Christie Matkozich, Director of Personal Training Brian Russell, Communications Specialist Ryan Beacher, Tioga General Manager Melissa Lynn Forgione, Director of Kids ClubErica Smith, Facilities Director Kyle Miller, Fitness DirectorAdrian Antigua, Front Desk Manager

being put in place for GHF to become a reality. Why Gainesville,

Florida? I’m not sure why I fell in love with Gainesville after a visit

from my home in upstate New York. All I know is, I did.

So, how did things fall into place? I can’t say there was a direct

course. But somehow a plan was being put in place. (Read more

about Joe’s journey in the article from Inc. magazine on page 16.)

I knew the heath club business was where I belonged and I

knew Gainesville was the place where I would do it someday, but

I still had a few more challenges to go through. A bunch actually.

There was only one time I wanted to call it quits, but that only

lasted about 10 minutes before I came to my senses. I was once

seriously depressed for quite a while, three hours to be exact.

Then I realized you can’t get anywhere being depressed so I put a

plan together instead.

GHF offi cially began in 1978 and started with $1,700. People

say we’ve come a long way. As I’ve told them, we had a long way

to go, and we believe we still do.

Over the course of my life, many things were being

put in place for GHF to become a reality.

PUBLISHED BY:Naylor, LLC • 5950 NW First Place, Gainesville, FL 32607 P: 352-332-1252 or Toll-free: 800-369-6220 •F: 352-331-3525 www.naylor.com

Publisher : Tracy Tompkins

Editor : Elsbeth Russell

Layout & Design: Julie Weaver

©2011 NAYLOR, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.The contents of this publication may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the prior consent of the publisher.

Over the years the staff has grown from the original three to

almost 500; from one center to three; and from a tiny orthopedic

rehab center in 1988 to three today.

I’ve always known why I do what I do. I have always had an

internal drive in me to become better, and for some reason I’ve

always had something inside of me making me want to help others

become better too.

When I think of all the things that have impacted me—from

being bullied as a kid (always the youngest in my class), to the

challenging years between 19 and 24, to the building of a passion, to

surviving multiple injuries—I want to help where I can.

In the pages of this magazine, I’ll talk about how a small group of

people took my passion and made it their own. I’ll share with you

how we defi ned who we are and what is behind GHF. My goal is

to give our members an understanding of the company that they’ve

elected to be a part of, and hopefully help some other businesses

understand how to move their own company forward.

From 1978 on, GHF grew at a fairly strong pace. Our original 1,500

square foot facility eventually expanded to three clubs and over

106,000 square feet of facilities.

I believe having a true understanding of why we do what we do

is our biggest competitive advantage and it’s what has allowed us to

continually grow.

In the following pages I’m going to cover many of the things behind the

growth of our company. I’ll not only explain what our vision, mission, core

purpose, culture and core values are, but the process we went through to defi ne

them. Hopefully I’ll make it clear that a business does not become successful if

its purpose is to make money. As a matter of fact, I believe that’s why so many

go out of business. The purpose has to be something much greater.

Building a FoundationAs I’ve told people all over the world, we can’t build a strong company

without a sound foundation.

When I started in business, I didn’t have anyone to go to for advice. I worked

for six health clubs that went bankrupt. I learned a lot by watching what not

to do. The true answers to moving a business and a life forward, I found in

Our vision, mission, core purpose, culture and core values are important to the identity of GHF. Here’s the process we went through to defi ne them.

Why we do what we do



books and tapes, and I built my business from the

knowledge I gained.

In one of those books, I read the quote, “If you

help enough people get what they want out of life,

you’ll get everything you want out of life.”

It was written by Napoleon Hill and because

I believed so much in what he wrote, I accepted

it as truth and decided I would always do my

best to help other people get what they needed.

Whether that is to help people get in better

shape and improve their health, or gain a better

understanding of how to improve a business, if

GHF can help, we’ll help. It’s that simple.

Finding Your PurposeMost people look at a gym as a collection of

rooms full of equipment, but to my staff and me

GHF is much more than that. One easy way to fi nd

out the value of a company is to pose the following

question to the employees: What would the impact

be on our customers and the community if next

week you found out we would no longer exist?

Then look at the reaction from the staff.

Whenever I have posed this question, the

initial reaction has always been sadness. But the

question you may ask is, “Is it because they will no

longer have a job?” Ask them. I have never heard

anyone refer to concerns about him or herself. I

have always heard them refer to people’s lives that

have been changed due their relationship with us.

Their concerns were with those members. It has

always made me feel good when I see this happen.

It tells me it’s more than a job—it’s a passion.

Years ago when I fi rst asked this question

of my management team, I followed it up with

another question, “Why does GHF exist?”

The fi rst answer was fairly straightforward:

“To provide a facility for people to get in shape.”

Then I asked the follow-up question, “Why is that

important?” The second response was, “To help

people lead healthier lives.” I asked them “Why”

fi ve times until we fi nally fi gured it out.

And this is how we developed our reason for existing, or more aptly

put, our Core Purpose: “To create an experience that helps people get the

most out of life, while inspiring them to become their best.”

I believe that to become a great company we have to have a larger

purpose. For us, fi tness is the tool we use to help our members, but we

want to create something much larger than a workout. We want you to

want to be with us, to be part of a great experience; a place that makes

you feel better simply because you’re here. We want you to become the

best you can be as we work to make ourselves the best we can be.

When I fi rst started the process of defi ning who we were, I came

across an article in the Harvard Business Review. It was called “Creating

Your Company’s Vision” and written by the well-known author, Jim Collins.

When I read his article, I realized a lot of things may be clear in my mind,

but may not be clear in everybody else’s minds. I decided we needed to

get together and start discussing things so that everyone would be part of

defi ning our vision, mission, core values, core purpose and culture.

Once I fi nished the article I remember thinking it would take around

eight hours to complete.

How wrong could I be? Working on it diligently, it took us six

months. Eventually we involved the entire company. At that time we had

approximately 200 employees.

In Their Own Words

This place truly is

a leadership factory.

Each day, my colleagues

do something that

impresses the hell out

of me. That’s a fantastic

feeling, knowing that

everyone on your team is giving it everything

they have each day. Plus, seeing that we have

the trust placed in us to do what we think is

right makes it easier to perform our tasks in a

high-functioning way.

- Brian Russell,

GHF Communications Specialist

CORE VALUEWe defi ne INTEGRITY as always doing the right thing even when no one is looking—we do not lie, steal or cheat. As Mark Twain said, “When in doubt, tell the truth.”

CORE VALUEWe actively search for ways to anticipate and accommodate the needs and wants of our fellow employees, customers, and community. WE WANT TO BE EXTRAORDINARY.

The GHF Book ClubCheck out some of the books that have

inspired GHF’s business practices.

• Think & Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

• The Law of Success - Napoleon Hill

• The Strangest Secret - Earl Nightengale

• Start with Why - Simon Sinek

• Good to Great - Jim Collins

• How the Mighty Fall - Jim Collins

• The Great Game of Business - Jack Stack


Cultivating Your CultureWe knew it was easy to defi ne culture: It’s the way we do

things around here. While we believed we knew what our

culture was, we had never spelled it out. We realized that it

would be important to write it out to give us even greater

clarity.

To uncover our culture, we assembled a key group from

our staff. Individually, we wrote down key words that we

believed described our company. We then took turns reading

one idea at a time as we went around the room. We wrote

each word on a board.

We came up with 53 different ideas of what defi ned our

culture. We had to narrow it down to less than 10. That was a

challenge, but eventually we got it down to six:

1. A learning and challenging environment that develops

leaders.

2. An environment of teamwork.

Charting Your CourseWe’re much more powerful as a company if everyone

is pushing in the same direction.

So, how did we do it? The fi rst step was setting up a

meeting with eight company leaders who didn’t all think

alike but respected one another’s opinion. Then we went

through a detailed process:

First, we had to defi ne the terms. This is what we

decided: VISION defi nes who we are at our highest level;

MISSION determines what we need to do to get there;

CORE PURPOSE defi nes why we exist; CULTURE is

how we do things; and CORE VALUES are the guidelines

that forever determine the rules we play by.

All together we wanted to describe the impact we

wanted our company to make on our world. We were

willing to make the emotional commitment it would take

to get us there.

So we asked the questions, “What is the highest

level of performance we can imagine attaining? What is

the value of our work to our community? What will the

story of our company be 10 years from now?”

One way to determine the future is to write it. So

I asked everyone to imagine it’s 10 years from today

and a national magazine is writing a major story about

our company. I asked them to write the lead paragraph

for the article, and that it had to capture the readers’

attention about the special things that have taken place.

We went through our stories and wrote down major

themes. The vision started coming through.

Vision: To become known as one of the best

companies for the world.

Once the vision was in place we moved toward

defi ning everything else.

Mission: To make Gainesville the healthiest

community in America one person at a time, one

business at a time.

Core Purpose: To create an experience that helps

people get the most out of life and inspire them to

become their best.

(If you do this with your company it’s important to

understand that if there’s a small gap between where you

are and where your staff wants to go, it shows very low

energy. If there’s a large gap between the two, it shows

your company really does have some energy.)

CORE VALUEHARDWORKING means we give 100 percent effort to everything we do and we work until the job gets done. The mental fortitude required in the high intensity workout interview sets the tone for this value.

CORE VALUEOur greatest power is the freedom to CREATE OUR OWN FUTURE: we decide what we do, what we think and where we go. No one can take this power away from us—it is ours alone.

In Their Own Words

Culture is defi ned as ‘the way we do

things around here.’ It’s not something

that you create, but rather something that

you discover within your organization. To

fi gure out what your culture is, observe the

behavior and attitude of your staff when

doing business as usual and when handling

the exceptions. Your business will be defi ned by how you

handle the exceptions.

- Debbie Lee, GHF Marketing Director


3. A business that shows appreciation and reward for

exceptional performance.

4. A place of continuous improvement.

5. A business that shares knowledge.

6. An uncommon level of commitment to our physical

environment.

Core values are defi ned as intrinsic values of a business

that won’t change, no matter what. Even if they cost us

money, we still wouldn’t change them. For example, we

would never lower the quality of our company to offer a

cheaper product even if we could make more money by

changing. Why? Because that’s not how we want to impact

the world.

We followed the same process in defi ning our core values

as we did with our culture. We started with 23 and worked

on it until we found our four: integrity, hardworking, creators

of our own future, and an extraordinary commitment to

helping others.

Then we moved to the last step of the process: We

had the courage to describe all the great things that would

happen at GHF over time as we accomplished our goals. It’s a

fun experience determining your own future.

The Envisioned Future included:

• We will be recognized worldwide as a model

company for improving the health of an entire

community by making Gainesville the healthiest city in

America.

• We will be recognized as the industry leader in

customer service.

• We will gain a reputation for developing leaders.

• People from all over the world will visit us to learn

about best practices.

• We will develop a center for professional management

training where businesses from all over the world send

their staff to learn about our systems.

• We will form strategic alliances with local and national

organizations.

• A best-selling book will be written about our business.

• We will win a national business award.

• We will be on the cover of a leading business magazine

as one of the best companies in the world.

Now all we had to do was accomplish the list!

In Their Own Words

A while back, a question

was posed to me, ‘Why

do we do what we do?’ I

immediately thought back

to a time that Christie and I

were having lunch when, as

we were leaving the restaurant, an older woman

tripped and went face fi rst into the pavement.

Instantly, without thinking, Christie and I ran over

to help the woman and to make sure she was

okay, while others just stood there watching. As

I thought about that experience, I realized that

what Christie and I did that day to help this random

stranger is the same thing that every staff member

at GHF would have done in the same situation.

So, the reason we ‘do what we do’ is because

every employee at GHF has an extraordinary

commitment to helping others. That is just one of

the many qualities that make Gainesville Health

& Fitness an incredible place to be a part of. We

genuinely want to help each and every person that

crosses our paths.

-Scott Larkin, GHF Personal Trainer

In Their O wn Words

Culture is the fever everybody catches when they

join our organization. One of my

biggest roles as a manager is to

protect the culture. You have to

quickly attack when something

is not part of the culture and

consistently reward when it is.

The number one aspect of the

GHF culture is ‘A learning and

challenging environment that develops leaders who

are responsible, professional, dedicated, energetic,

passionate, fearless, and knowledgeable.’ We only

promote from within the organization in order to keep

leaders who are ingrained in the GHF way. We are a

leadership factory. Every leader has the responsibility

to develop the future leaders of GHF.

-Shawn Stewart, GHF Operations Manager


How we do itBy Joe Cirulli with intro by Shawn Stewart

Go back to high school. There are certain people who, if you saw them today—and I don’t care if high school was 30 years ago—will make you feel like you don’t really want to spend much time with them.

Every day, adjustments are made to our emotional bank accounts. At GHF we strive to make sure we’re making deposits into those accounts.

If you should go back to a high school reunion—no matter how long it’s been—you’ll fi nd those friends who made deposits into those accounts. They’ll still be your friends. Not the same with those who drained your account.

At GHF, we strive to be like those best friends. Following the theory of Dr. Michael LeBoeuf, who says that every individual stores the effects of each “moment of truth,” we feel that having a staff that can turn every interaction into a positive experience is critical.

According to LeBoeuf’s theory, a deposit is made when we help an individual feel good about themselves. A withdrawal is made when we fail to fulfi ll the needs or desires of that same individual. Emotional bank accounts require continual “deposits” to keep a positive balance.

After every interaction a member has with any aspect of our organization, whether in person, by telephone, through literature, or even contact with the physical facility, the individual will either feel better, the same or worse.

Our goal is to make every effort to make each “moment of truth” a “deposit” in the account of each customer. Are we perfect? No! But our goal is to be perfect.

The People FactorWe work to make our employees aware that when certain situations arise,

they have an opportunity to make something really good out of something that may not be so good. It gives them a great opportunity during those moments of truth—those challenging times when someone has a problem—to fi nd a way to solve the problem.

To make sure we’re hiring staff members who recognize these moments, we’ve incorporated questions into our hiring process. We have applicants review “moments of truth” and ask them to tell us how they would respond in each situation.

One example of a situation we might present is to ask the applicant to imagine they are working in a busy pizzeria and the oven suddenly breaks down. A customer who has ordered six pizzas for a party arrives and is ready for her six pizzas. We then have the applicant role play the conversation as the employee at the pizza place.

In many cases, there may not be a policy or procedure for certain issues that arise. We need people who think quickly and react quickly when responding to problems. These are the people we search for to be part of our staff.

The major thing we have learned over the years is that the purest form of customer service does not start with how an employee treats a customer; it begins with how the company treats its employees.


The Company TreatmentThere’s only one of me, and there are hundreds and hundreds

of people on our staff who come in contact with the members

every day. I’ve always thought it was important to try and create

an atmosphere where everyone knew they were on equal standing.

There are no greater or lesser employees inside our organization.

I’ve always felt that if we take proper care of our employees

and if they know we care about them, they will show that same

type of care for the members. If we don’t take care of them, why

would they think it’s worthwhile to take care of our members?

We know there are other factors involved in someone wanting

to become part of our organization. One thing is making it as easy

as possible for a person to become a member. Another is creating

the programs and facilities that make an individual want to remain

a member.

We know that if our facilities are not centrally located, our

members won’t make it in. We know that the distance of travel

to our locations needs to be a relatively short drive from home

or work for the majority of our members to get the most out of

their experience here. That’s why we have three centers, and one

membership gives men access to two facilities and women three.

We also know that people prefer different types of

environments, with our three centers we can give them a choice

as to what makes them feel most comfortable, and we can

offer different experiences. We know many women do not feel

comfortable in a coed environment, which is why we developed a

women only facility at Thornebrook Village.

In addition, our main center is open 24 hours a day, allowing for

members with different schedules to utilize the facilities when it’s

best for them.

In Their Own Words

I had been working as a fl oor

instructor at GHF, and because I worked

all the hours that were available to me I

knew basically everyone.

A few minutes before closing, Hiro, a

very dedicated member who I had pushed

hard for the last year, asked to speak with

me. He had fi nished his degree at UF and wanted to say good-bye

and introduce his father to me, as he was heading back home to

Japan.

He reminded me that when he fi rst started with us, his goal was

to get as muscular as he could, to transform his body. After wishing

each other well he said, ‘I really want to thank you for this,’ and he

proceeded to roll up his sleeve and fl ex his arm, showing me a bicep

with just the slightest rise.

He said, ‘My family and friends back home will hardly recognize

me.’ Arnold Schwarzenegger at the peak of his career could not

have been more proud. At that moment, I knew I was working in the

right business for me.

As Hiro said good-bye to others, his father told me, ‘I want to

leave you with my thanks for befriending my son and leave you with

this quote, “If there is more of the world we will fi nd it.”’

-Jan Matkozich, GHF General Manager


Creating the Right ProgramsOur programming is also part of creating the experience. We

developed the programs to help provide solutions for both our

current and future members. Here are a few of the programs

we’ve started at GHF over the years.

Supervised Circuit Training - A long time ago we had to

make a decision as to how our equipment would be placed on the

exercise fl oor.

I asked myself this question, “What would my parents do if they

came into a gym?” The answer: They’d be lost.

So we decided to align them in a way that

would make it possible for people who’ve

never strength trained before to learn quickly,

correctly and safely.

The solution was to set up the equipment

in a logical order to most effectively work the

muscular system. We would need instructors

available to motivate the members to get the

best results, and teach them how to do it safely.

For 30 years we’ve successfully implemented

the circuits in all our clubs. It’s possible for a

complete novice to join our centers and start

receiving the benefi ts immediately. They never have to worry

about not knowing how to exercise.

Core Spinal Fitness Program - Most people will suffer back

pain at some point in their lives. Our goal was to come up with

a solution that would help people reduce or eliminate back pain

forever. We know it’s hard to live your life fully when back pain

keeps you down.

Cancer Recovery - We have programs designed to help a

person keep their endurance up, because we know that’s a huge

challenge when you’re fi ghting or recovering from cancer. We have

programs through the health club and medically referred programs

through our rehab centers. The health club programs are free for

members of your family for weeks if you need us.

Arthritis Aquatic Classes - Though our pool can be used

for swimming, the entire area was designed for our members

suffering from arthritis. Many years ago we saw an issue of Time

magazine talking about the coming epidemic of arthritis and made

the decision to fi nd a solution. We remodeled the entire area

adding in a warm therapy pool as well as a 50-degree cold plunge

to go along with our steam, sauna and whirlpool. We put these

elements together, along with the therapy classes, and found we

can help a lot of people live their lives on their own terms.

Group Exercise Classes - We’ve learned over the years

what kind of classes keeps our members motivated and we review

them every quarter. Our Group Exercise Director has been with

us over 20 years and keeps all the classes up to

date.

They’re fun, challenging and rewarding.

It’s one experience that keeps our members

coming back regularly. They include: Cycling

Classes, Zumba, Aqua Classes, Pre and Post

Natal Classes, Yoga, Body Pump, Body Flow

and on and on. Why so many? We know that

we have to give you the variety and challenges

necessary to help you become your best.

Custom Fit - We know that some people

like the one-on-one experience of personal

training while others like the idea of training in small groups.

Custom Fit allows our members to choose from a variety of

classes including Boot Camp, Wedding Ready, Body Ultimate

metabolic training, Pilates and others. A member can choose their

own time while mixing and matching all the classes.

ReQuest Physical Therapy - After I suffered a serious knee

injury requiring surgery, I was sent to rehab. It didn’t take me too

long to realize what was missing. I felt a truly effective rehab had to

be modernized, both in the environment and equipment. Within

a short period of time GHF became involved in a major medical

research study with the University of Florida’s College of Medicine.

The purpose was to analyze the newest equipment. The results

were astonishing, and plans for our center were put into place.

Staffed with an inspired team of therapists, the purpose of ReQuest

is to move people beyond therapy and into total wellness.

In Their Own Words

One Sunday morning a lady came looking to

get set up on the line. She used to be a person who

would work out every day. She said she had been a

cycling competitor, but was unable to walk due to a

car accident. After going through intensive therapy

and almost learning to walk again, she decided to

work out again. She told me she couldn’t believe

that she was doing this again. I then asked her why she didn’t try a cycling

class. She said there was no way for her to be able to keep up. I got her off

the line, took her into the aerobics room and set her up on one of the old

spin bikes there. I checked back 5 minutes later, and she was crying with

happiness.

– Oscar Koeneke

To take away one of the biggest challenges for growing

families, GHF offers free babysitting with a great staff and

availability all day long.

We offer an array of amenities because we know

people like variety.

But we work on being much more.

We work to be the place where our members actually

enjoy spending their time; a place where people feel they

belong. To help us achieve this, we designed areas where

people can meet with friends, eat lunch inside or outside,

and have access to free Wi-Fi. We even have computers

available if you don’t have your own.

Our

programming

is also part of

creating the

experience.


Who We AreIt’s important to defi ne who we are as a company if we want to make the biggest impact.

Afew years ago I received an e-mail from

a friend apologizing for an incident that

happened 10 years earlier.

We were walking across a street in

New York City when a homeless woman

fell and hit her head. I had some people

get some wet towels from a restaurant close by. I cleaned

the blood from her head and helped her up. That was it. No

problem. I never thought of it again until I got his e-mail.

He told me he was always sorry that he just stood there

and didn’t help. When I mentioned this to another friend of

mine, he posed this question: Why does one person help

another person? My response was fairly simple, “Because you

care about people.” He took it a little deeper. “No,” he said,

“people help people because they see themselves in others.”

He made me realize the importance of having people on

our staff that looked at others this way. We need individuals

who have an inherent desire to help other people become

better. People who have an intense desire to become better

themselves.

It’s important for us to know who we are if we want to

make the biggest impact, and I think everyone who is part

of an organization has to buy into it. Better yet, if we are

crystal clear about it, we can attract people who already

believe what we believe.

As I heard marketing consultant, Simon Sinek, say, “If a

person comes to work for you for what you do, they will

work for your money. If a person comes to work for you

because they believe in why you do what you do, they will

work for you with their blood, sweat and tears.”


I’ve been fortunate to fi nd the “why” people, which is one

of the reasons that many of GHF employees have been with

company for 15, 20, 25, 30 years and more.

Meet Your StarsIn every organization, there are different types of

employees. There are those “workhorse” employees who

just work and work. There are people who are trainees and

learning to become the best they can be. Then there are the

“stars,” the leaders of your company.

One of the things I learned a long time ago is that the

most dangerous people in an organization are the stars. What

makes them dangerous? Inside an organization, a star can lead

a department in the opposite direction from where everyone

else is going. In a different direction from where the owner

wants it to go. Why? Simply because, stars are leaders.

The most important thing is to keep a company aligned

and everyone focused. We do this by having regular meetings

where goals are discussed.

We have what we call Monday Morning Focus and Energy

Meetings. These meetings are designed for everyone to

be aware of and to discuss the department projects we’re

working on. But the larger reason is to make sure we’re all

moving in the same direction.

Over the years the goal of these meetings has stayed

the same, but the issues have grown bigger as the staff and

projects have grown larger. These meetings last two hours and

we can fi ll that entire time with no problem. We always have

plenty to talk about.

In addition to the Focus and Energy Meetings we also hold

two other types of regularly scheduled meetings; the fi rst

meeting is our Get Better Team Meeting, where we discuss the

future of GHF. We put together a strategic agenda designed

around how we can make our company better. They usually

last two days and are held offsite. Why? Because it’s impossible

to talk about the future or strategic issues of a company at a

meeting where you’re dealing with day-to-day issues. Short-

term thinking will always eat up long-term thinking. That’s why

it’s so important to have an entirely different agenda and style

of meeting.

In Their Own Words

I am most passionate about

the hiring of our employees!

I took over as the hiring

coordinator about fi ve years ago.

I think we have (I’ve been told

this) the most precise way of fi nding people

who really fi t our culture.

– Ann Raulerson, GHF Operations Manager, Women’s Center

Meetings Matter

Monday Morning Focus and Energy Meetings are operational, short-term meetings

held to:

• Follow up on all projects

• Review all numbers to goals

• Discuss variations

• Regularly gain the power of the team

• See who needs help from whom

• Review the competition (monthly)

• Hold staff accountable for Get Better Team

(GBT) action items

• Move issues to the GBT

• Keep the Stars Aligned

GBT Meetings are scheduled with a dedicated

team that is formed to think strategically

and create better teamwork throughout the

organization. The GBT meets to:

• Develop new programs

• Plan out marketing strategies

• Corporate/medical markets

• Discuss new services/expansions/equipment

• Read and review books

• Analyze the sales process

• Think innovation

• Review new competition entering the market

and plan the response


The third meeting, our Strategic Objectives Meeting, is where

we set up our plans and goals for the coming year. It’s designed

to help us determine our most important strategic objectives.

These are the plans to help us become successful in the coming

year. Once the goals are in place, we can then create our budget.

I believe it’s more important to have a powerful team than to

have powerful individuals. I’m not downplaying the importance

of a strong leader running an organization or department, but

if you have a powerful team, you have combined wisdom and

knowledge. It’s vital to a company that when someone is having

an issue in their department, everybody can work together to

help solve the problem.

A powerful team doesn’t just talk about ideas, they

implement them.

Honor Your Eagles; Rock StarsAt the same time, a team is made up of individuals who

—according to author Ken Blanchard who wrote the book,

“One Minute Manager”—can fall into two categories: eagles and

ducks.

Blanchard said eagles are the people in your company who

look for ways to solve problems. Ducks are the people who just

quack all the time, saying things like “That’s not my problem” or

“That’s not my job.”

In 1996, when the fi rst main center opened, there were many

problems: The air conditioner kept breaking down, the parking

was limited, and every day was just one complaint after the next.

It was so bad I would go to bed at midnight, and wake up

at 2:30 a.m. to come back to work. I just couldn’t sleep—I

was trying to fi gure out how to solve the problems. I would

come into the club, it was hot as could be, and members just

complaining left and right. I knew I was slowly starting to lose

my patience.

One day, a lady said to me, “Do you know how hot it is

in here?”

I said, “Yes ma’am, I do. You’re in here for about an hour and

I’m here for 20 of them; I know exactly how hot it is.”

That’s when I knew I was starting to lose my patience.

The breaking point was when a member came to the front

door complaining about something and I actually pictured myself

strangling him. I knew that wasn’t something I wanted to teach

about customer service, so I decided to leave and go to the

beach. I actually slept all night long. I stayed there for three days.

On the third day I came up with an idea. I knew we had to

come up with a way that our members could fi nd us doing things

right, not just everything that was going wrong.

Remembering Ken Blanchard’s analogy, I knew we had a

bunch of eagles within the company. The plan was to ask our

members to help us fi nd the eagles and tell us about moments

when our staff went above and beyond.

I was asking the members to be the management’s eyes and

ears. The members would control the Eagle Program and it

would allow us to reward our employees for doing exceptional

things based on our member’s feedback.

Studies have shown that “Employee of the Month” programs

don’t create better employees or enhance overall employee

morale. Most companies have dozens of employees, but there

can be only one “Employee of the Month.” Usually the same

employees continually receive the recognition. This is because the

supervisor/management team does the voting.

The “Eagle of the Month” program solved these problems.

First, every employee that receives an eagle comment from a

member will be rewarded. This eliminates the notion that only

one employee deserves recognition. Second, our members

will do the voting—not our supervisors. This assures that all

employees will have the opportunity to be noticed. It allows us

to recognize exceptional employees. Altogether, I believe the

program keeps everyone engaged and hopefully the net effect is

Eagle Examples

Here are some of the comments members have made about employees through our Eagle Program. We average 600-700 Eagles per month.

“At the front desk, Lindsay is tops! When the issue of Inc. magazine came out with the article on Joe Cirulli, I couldn’t fi nd one to buy. I asked Lindsay if GHF had extra copies — no, she said, but she’d try to fi nd one for me. No luck. She asked her mom in South Florida to look — no luck. But she kept on looking. Then, one week, she gave me one that her mom had fi nally located. What thoughtfulness! What perseverance! What helpfulness!”

– Ann Bryan

There was a mix-up between a child’s parents as to who was picking him up, and due to that, the child was in the Kid’s Club for three hours while the attendants were trying to reach his parents. Rather than have the child be hungry and stressed while waiting for his parents, Shannon took him into the lobby and bought him lunch with her own money. She took initiative to make the child feel safe and comforted in a potentially stressful situation.

– Melissa Lynn


that every members’ visit will be a more

positive experience.

Every month I have the opportunity to

take these employees to dinner (usually

15 to 30 at a time) and hear what our

members have said about the staff. How

responsive have the members been? On

average we receive 600 to 700 comments

per month.

Another story that allows GHF to

personify our employees who go above

and beyond, is “The Rock.”

Here’s the story: Someone is climbing

a hill one Sunday afternoon, and after

climbing for a while fi nds himself in a

mountainous area, and eventually, on a

path. As the day goes on, more people

start hiking and get to the mountainous

area and onto that same path.

Five or six people are walking this

path, and they reach a point where they

can’t go any farther because there is a huge boulder in the way.

They can’t go on because there’s a great drop off to one side, and a

mountain on the other.

The group starts working together to fi gure out how to move

the boulder, and as they start working, more people come

onto the path.

Now there aren’t just fi ve or six, but 20, 40, 60, 120 and 240

people on the path, but no one’s moving. Further back in the line,

people brought supplies and start sharing their food and drinks.

Finally, one of the people at the front of the line goes to the

back of the line and asks the people eating and drinking, “Do you

know why we’re here?”

They say, “Yes, we’re having a picnic.” They’re now brought to

the front of the line to understand why they’re really there.

That’s what can happen in any company as the company gets

bigger. We need to bring people up to the front of the line, show

them the boulder and say, “No, that’s why we’re here. That’s the

rock. We have to move that rock.”

But what does the rock represent to your company? At GHF

we knew that to be successful we had to gain members and keep

members. We had to do all the things that would make people

become a member, and then do all the things that would make them

want to stay.

Each department has developed a strategic statement and

identifi ed the specifi c objectives they have to meet in order

to help the entire company work toward its goals and move

our “Rock.”

Then we take it a step further and reward people who according

to their supervisors were true Rock All-Stars. Honoring around

75 employees each time, department supervisors give employees

the recognition they deserve at a large company dinner. (The word,

company, comes from the Italian phrase “to break bread together.”

We defi nitely do a lot of that.)

Interviews DecodedThese sample questions help us determine if applicants share GHF’s core values.

Creating Your Own Future• What have you changed about yourself as a result of

criticism?

• What have you been criticized for that you have heard

from more than one source? What have you done to

improve that area?

• How will this job help you to reach your long-term goals?

• What accomplishments have you made that you are most

proud of?

• What was the last goal you set for yourself? What was

your action plan to achieve it?

• Where do you see yourself fi ve years from now?

Time Management• How do you plan a typical day? Week?

• When was the last time you had to rearrange your

schedule for something unexpected?

Dealing with Challenges• Explain a recent challenge or obstacle that you faced.

How did you deal with it?

• Have you ever worked toward a goal and not achieved it?

How did this affect you?

Extraordinary Commitment to Helping People• What skills do you think are necessary to work with

people?

• What is the most important? Why?

• What is the customer looking for in a business?

• All in all, when you come to work each day, what is the

one ingredient of your job that gives you the greatest

satisfaction?

• What most inspires you to do a good job?

• Describe your ideal job.

Handling of Angry Customers• Tell me about a time you had an interaction with an angry

customer? Looking back on it now, would you have done

anything differently?

• If you were going to train me on handling angry

customers, what three things would you want me to

remember?

Eagle Potential• Give an example of a time you went above and beyond to

meet the needs of a customer?

• Tell me a time when someone you know went above and

beyond his or her call of duty?

• Do you believe it is necessary to go above and beyond for

your job?


Hire for ValuesSo how do you develop a team of Eagles and Rock All-Stars? It

all starts with hiring the right people. The question is, how do you

know who the right people are?

Determining the company’s vision, mission and core values will

show you who you need. Now the goal is to go fi nd those people.

Why is this so important? A long time ago I realized you cannot

teach someone your company’s core values. The goal is to fi nd

people who have them already.

At GHF we have developed a fi ve-step interview based on our

core values, which includes:

• Application

• Group Interview

• One-on-One interview

• Workout Interview

• Selection

The fi rst step, the application, starts out with the fi rst

impression our front desk staff gets. Did they have an engaging

personality? Were they smiling? Did they introduce themselves?

Were they professional? What was their attitude?

The next step, a group interview, allows us to put applicants in an

unrehearsed situation where you can watch how they interact with

other people. We ask applicants to tell us about themselves as we

watch to see how attentive the other applicants are. Then we may

ask a question like “Where did Sally say she was from?” Simple things

like this can give you a good idea of that applicant’s listening skills.

The one-on-one interview can help us determine whether or

not the applicant shares our company’s core values. (The sidebar

“Interviews Decoded” provides some sample questions we ask to

fi nd out if applicants would be a good fi t for GHF.)

The workout interview is not about the applicant’s fi tness level, it’s

about their ability to endure a challenging time. During the workout

interview, other staff members are watching and evaluating, and give

us their impressions on the applicant’s perseverance.

Selecting applicants who share our values means fi nding people

who believe in the same things we do. The process of incorporating

these new staff members into the company and teaching them the

things we do is a lot simpler when we share these intrinsic attitudes

and beliefs.

In Their Own Words

Each Monday morning at GHF the work week begins with a

two-hour meeting where the department heads and leaders of

the organization sit around a table and review, revise and alter,

if necessary, the strategic objectives of the company. Where are

we today? What trends do we see? What opportunities exist in

the marketplace? Where do we fi t in? If we are falling short in our

goals, why? What changes do we make to accomplish that which

we feel is important?

It’s here where a group that totals more than 150 years of

experience can offer input, hear all sides of an issue. What

better work environment could you ask for?

– Marty Huegel, ReQuest Physical Therapist / Director

In Their Own Words

The Eagle Program is a big job, but it’s

probably the most rewarding because I get

to read all 500+ nice things that are written

about our staff every month. Talk about

positive reinforcement!

Some of the eagles what you’d expect,

but others have literally moved me to tears, like the eagle a

member wrote about how he can now run a mile after doctors told

him he’d never walk again.

At our bimonthly Eagle Dinners, it fi lls me with pride to be able

to stand up and read all of the wonderful things we have helped

members accomplish that month. This, more than anything else,

shows me how different we are as a company—we care deeply

about each of our members, as if they were family.

- Allison Burke, GHF Marketing Coordinator

GHF’s Envisioned FutureA large part of reaching our goals at GHF involved describing our “Envisioned Future.” I’d like to give you an update on what has happened over the years.

• We will be recognized worldwide as a model company for improving the

health of an entire community by making Gainesville the healthiest city in

America. In 2003 Gainesville became the healthiest community in America reaching the Gold standard. This task took three years to accomplish. The rating has never been met or exceeded by any other city in America.

• We will be recognized as the industry leader in customer service. We’ve been voted the best health club in the world by the European Conference and in the top four in the world from a major consulting organization out of England.

• We will gain a reputation for developing leaders. Employees from our company have gone on to become business owners and integral parts of Fortune 500 companies, and can be found in important positions around the world.

• People from all over the world will visit us to learn about best practices.

We’ve been visited by people from all over the world and presented at conferences all over America as well as Canada, England, Italy, Germany, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, China and Brazil.

• We will develop a center for professional management training where

businesses from all over the world send their staff to learn about our

systems. We’ve had people from all over the world do internships with us and continue to develop the training programs.

• We will form strategic alliances with local and national organizations. We’ve built a strong local alliance with many businesses and continue to work toward the national organizations.

• A best-selling book will be written about our business. Someday.

• We will win a national business award. 2001, GHF named World Fitness Center of the Year by the European Conference; 2003, Platinum Workplace Award from the Wellness Council of America; 2004, John McCarthy Industry Visionary of the Year Award, IHRSA; and many more!

• We will be on the cover of a leading business magazine as one of the best

companies in the world. I could tell you more about this one but we’ll let Bo Burlingham from Inc. magazine tell you the story from his perspective in the next few pages.

16 | inspired | Gainesvil le Health & Fitness | ghfc.com16 | inspired | Gainesville Health & Fitness | ghfc.com


Editor’s note: This article is reprinted from the August 2008 issue of Inc. magazine.

By Bo Burlingham

It’s a warm Thursday evening in Gainesville, Florida, and the Gainesville

Health & Fitness Center on Newberry Road is ablaze with activity. Downstairs,

about 70 members stare at television screens as they run, walk, climb, and

pedal furiously in the cardio area. Over at the indoor basketball court, a group

of sweat-drenched players is leaving, and another group is taking its place. In

the pool area, an instructor is counseling half a dozen arthritis sufferers who

have shown up for aquatics exercise therapy, while a guy with a military haircut

endures the 50-degree water of the cold plunge pool and some of the older

members hang out around the whirlpool and sauna.

At 66,000 square feet, this is the largest of the three health clubs and four

rehabilitation centers that compose Joe Cirulli’s local fi tness empire. An intense,

compact, clean-cut fellow, Cirulli has been lifting weights ever since he got

his fi rst set at the age of 9. For 46 years, he has worked out fi ve or six days

a week, every week, usually at 5 in the morning. Nevertheless, you probably

wouldn’t mistake him for Charles Atlas, dressed as he is in the uniform of GHF

managers—a cobalt-blue shirt, tie, dress pants, and spit-polished shoes. “We all

dress up,” he says. “When I started working in health clubs, the girls were all in

leotards, and the guys in tank tops, and I could see that some of the customers

were intimidated by that. So we dress up and take them off guard.”

Just then, he happens to catch the eye of a man who could, in fact, be

mistaken for Charles Atlas. He’s blond, middle-aged, and muscular, wearing

a tank top over his ripped torso. He gives Cirulli a big hug. They chat for a

minute, and then Cirulli moves on.

“That’s Michael,” Cirulli says. “He died here.” He died here?

“Yeah, I was at Starbucks one evening and decided to come back to the

& Never Give Up

Flat broke at the age of 21, Joe Cirulli made a list of 10 things he wanted to accomplish in life. One by one, he pulled them off – and built a health and fi tness empire. (Maybe there’s something to the power of positive thinking, after all)

Think Rich


club. When I walked in, he was lying there with two doctors,

club members, standing over him. He was blue, and he didn’t

have a pulse. The doctors were trying to do mouth-to-mouth

resuscitation. They didn’t know I’d bought an AED [automated

external defi brillator] for each of the clubs. I went and got it, and

they put it on his chest and gave him a jolt. Nothing happened.

They increased the voltage and tried again. Nothing happened.

They increased it again. Nothing happened. They tried one more

time, and he sucked in air. I mean, you literally could see him

come back to life. He started burping. One of the doctors asked

him, ‘Do you know where we are?’ He said, ‘Yes. At church.’ The

doctor said, ‘No, you were working out. You weren’t breathing.’

I’m standing there thinking, Oh, man, what a great investment

that was!

“Turned out he’d done a big workout after not working out

for a while. When he stood up too quickly, he got dizzy, passed

out, hit his head, and swallowed his tongue. He suffocated. Four

years ago. He was 46. He has a wife and two girls. So he always

gives me a big hug when he sees me.”

Cirulli may have one of the four best fi tness businesses in the

world (according to a British industry expert) and the best in the

United States (according to an American one), but his company has

as much to do with saving lives as with pumping iron and going to

spin class. Indeed, he and his colleagues at GHF decided in 1999

that their mission should be to make Gainesville the healthiest

community in America. Four years later, it became the fi rst and

only city ever to receive the Gold Well City award from the

Wellness Councils of America. Previously, the best that any city

had done was bronze. The accomplishment led GHF to modify its

mission. Now the goal is to keep Gainesville the healthiest city in

America—“one person, one business, one child at a time.”

Those aren’t just words. The company offers programs aimed

not just at promoting fi tness but also at alleviating a variety of

chronic ailments and helping to solve long-term medical problems.

It has pioneered the use of specially designed exercise machines

to relieve neck and lower back pain. It has been a leader in using

hydrotherapy to treat arthritis. It has tackled childhood obesity,

and thus the prospect of a diabetes epidemic, by holding events at

schools, developing weight-loss programs for overweight teens, and

offering high school students free use of its facilities in the summer

from 6 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, as long as their

parents approve. Twice a year, it holds a Family Fun Fitness Day to

encourage everyone in the community to be more active.

Granted, some people might say that all that is simply effective

marketing. Cirulli, for his part, makes no bones about his desire to

attract and retain as many members as possible. Indeed, GHF signs

up around 10,000 new members a year and has a retention rate of

77 percent, well above the industry average of about 60 percent.

That ability to attract and retain members translates into sales of

$16.7 million a year, with one of the healthiest pretax margins in

the industry. Perhaps even more remarkable than GHF’s fi nancial

performance is its commitment to serving people who have never

been—and probably never will be—club members. The campaign to

win the Gold Well City award grew out of that commitment. “We

believe we can have an impact on our community, and in our minds

we have an obligation to do it,” says Debbie Lee, GHF’s marketing

director and the point person in the campaign.

The impact has been huge. The Well City campaign alone

brought together people from throughout the community, including

people from hospitals, businesses, government organizations, The Gainesville Sun, the University of Florida, and the local community

college. Obviously, many factors are driving the burgeoning trend


and loathing. Real estate owners felt pretty much the same way.

Cirulli thus had the worst of both worlds, since his club occupied

1,500 square feet above his landlord’s business, which just happened

to be a bank. On top of that, he had no money, no friends or family

with money, and no experience running his own business.

Yet Cirulli believed he could pull it off. If you ask him why, he

might tell you about an experience he had had four years earlier,

at the age of 20, when he was working as an instructor at his

second health club in Gainesville and was given an opportunity to

try his hand at sales. He signed up eight members on his fi rst day.

“Normally it takes months to do that,” the vice president of the

fi tness company told him over dinner that evening. “You don’t seem

too excited.”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Cirulli replied.

Or he might tell you about reading a book shortly thereafter and

fi nding it a “life-changing experience.” It was one of the classics of

the self-help canon, The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent

Peale. The book persuaded him to set a goal: to become the top

salesperson of the fi tness company’s 10 clubs. He achieved it in

three months.

Then again, he might tell you about coming back to Gainesville

from his hometown of Elmira, New York, after Christmas to

discover that the fi tness company had folded, his last paycheck had

bounced, and he could make the payment due on his new maroon

MGB only by getting back the $95 deposit on his apartment,

which left him homeless and broke. He spent the next few months

sleeping in health clubs and his MGB. At one point, he went to buy

a Diet Coke at McDonald’s and discovered he had just 12 cents

to his name. Finally, he landed a job at a new Gainesville health

club—and read another book, “Think and Grow Rich,” by

Napoleon Hill.

From Hill, Cirulli learned that the secret of success lies in

knowing what you want. He proceeded to take out a legal pad and

write down 10 goals, which he was supposed to read aloud every

night before going to bed and every morning when he awoke. He

did so for the next few years. The goals were: 1. Own a health

club in Gainesville; 2. Make it respected in the community; 3. Earn

$100,000 by the age of 25; 4. Own a Mercedes-Benz like the

one driven by the Six Million Dollar Man; 5. Own a home in the

mountains and one by the ocean and build another for his parents;

6. Become a black belt; 7. Become a pilot and own a plane; 8. Travel

all over the United States; 9. Travel all over the world; and 10. Save

$1 million.

So he believed it was destiny, not calamity, that beckoned

when the owner of the Executive Health Spa confessed that he

was an alcoholic, in the middle of a divorce, and about to declare

bankruptcy. The following day, the bank announced that the club

would be evicted in 30 days. To achieve his fi rst goal, Cirulli would

have to raise money, fi nd a new place, persuade the landlord to

lease it to him, get the necessary permits, build the space out, move

the equipment, and somehow keep the club running— and the

members happy—the entire time. How he did it reads like “The

Perils of Pauline.”

First, he persuades the banker to give him 60 days rather than

30. It’s not enough. He fi nds a location, but banks won’t lend to a

health club. He fi nally wangles a personal loan, only to learn that the

toward workplace wellness, not least the explosion of health care

costs and the demonstrable effectiveness of wellness programs

in holding them down. And yet what has happened in Gainesville

is also part of another story—a story about how one man’s

obsession with self-improvement can imbue a company and then

spread from that company to an entire community, and from that

community to other communities far and wide.

The employee handbook of Gainesville Health & Fitness is a

53-page document, prosaically entitled Customer Service Manual that spells out in minute detail things such as the rules for

interacting with customers and a description of what Cirulli and

his team want to see happen in the next 10 years. A particularly

revealing passage can be found on page seven, under Core Values,

one of which is Creating Our Own Future. It reads, in part,

“Our greatest power is the freedom to choose; we decide what

we do, what we think, and where we go....We can do what we

want to do; we can be who we want to be. We develop our

own future by applying persistence to the possibilities. Our future

is all around us. If we seek, we will fi nd it. If the door is closed,

we must knock and keep knocking until it opens. We never

give up....”

Anyone familiar with the company’s origins can understand

where such convictions come from. By all rights, Gainesville

Health & Fitness should not exist today. In January 1978, when

Cirulli assumed the debts of the Gainesville Executive Health Spa

and changed its name, neither he nor anyone else had any reason

to believe the club would survive. He was barely 24 years old,

and the fi ve fi tness businesses he had previously worked for had

all gone bankrupt, leaving their creditors—including their paid-up

members—in the lurch. Bankers had been burned so often that

the mere mention of the words health club fi lled them with fear


location has fallen through. The banker who is the landlord of

the old club demands he return the keys. Cirulli begs. The banker

relents but demands a signed lease and a rent check by 9 a.m.

Monday. Cirulli miraculously fi nds space in a brand-new mall. He

has $1,700 and three weeks to get the place ready—plumbing,

electricity, new walls, showers, lockers, the whole bit. The club is

still under construction when he moves in the equipment in June,

whereupon a building inspector threatens to shut Cirulli down

if he sees anyone using it. The club opens anyway. The building

inspector never returns. Gainesville Health & Fitness gets its

certifi cate of occupancy six months later, and Joe Cirulli achieves

goal No. 1.

The other nine goals took a little more time, but he achieved

all of them within 12 years—before his 33rd birthday. He drew

two lessons from the experience. First, you can accomplish

just about anything if you put your mind to it, are willing to

work hard, and refuse to give up no matter what adversity you

encounter. Second, books can change your life. There is no limit

to what you can learn or how much better you can become, as

long as you keep reading, listening, and searching for wisdom.

By then, moreover, he was well on his way to building a

company molded around those beliefs and fi lled with people who

shared them.

If owning a business was, in fact, Cirulli’s destiny, it had kept

itself well hidden prior to his arrival in Gainesville. As a child,

he seemed destined only for a rough time. Linda Cirulli-Burton

remembers her younger brother getting beaten up by the older

boys at school. That spurred Joe to start lifting weights—fi rst in

his cellar, then at the local YMCA. Soon, he was so strong that

no one dared pick on him.

The Cirulli family lived on the hard-knocks side of Elmira. Joe

was the third of seven children and the oldest boy. His father,

Armand, was a 22-year Navy man who became a postman after

his discharge. His mother, Frances, was a nurse. Making ends

meet was a struggle. Cirulli remembers his parents bringing him a

fancy chicken sandwich from Moretti’s restaurant once when he

was in the hospital after breaking his leg. “Enjoy it,” his mother

said, “because you’ll never have one again.”

In 1971, Cirulli graduated from high school and entered

Corning Community College. After two years there, he still

wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. He decided to

take a year off from school and travel around the country with

a friend. When the friend backed out, he changed his itinerary

and went to Gainesville, where his girlfriend was attending a

community college. “I arrived at 3 a.m. on October 27, 1973,”

he recalls. Later that morning, he worked out at a local health

club. Before leaving, he asked the manager if he could work as an

instructor without pay for the next month in exchange for use

of the facilities. The manager agreed. Cirulli extended his stay for

another 30 days and began earning $1.90 an hour.

By the time Cirulli fi nally headed home for Christmas,

Gainesville was in his blood. After the holiday, he intended

to work with masons he knew in Elmira and save money for

college, but the frozen ground gave him a good reason to revise

his plans. He returned to Gainesville, thinking he would stay

for three months and then go back to his job with the masons

in the spring. He didn’t make it. His success selling health club

memberships obviated any need to earn money through masonry.

Maybe that was when destiny took over. In any case, he had his

own fi tness center within four years.

Cirulli immediately went to work expanding it. He began with

2,500 square feet in a wing of the mall that had 11,000 square feet

of space altogether. The rest was occupied by retailers of one sort

or another. One by one, they moved out, and Gainesville Health &

Fitness moved in, eventually taking over the whole wing. At the same

time, he was proving that a health club could actually be profi table if

you behaved as if you really cared about your members, as opposed

to treating them like a necessary inconvenience. He invited members

of the failed clubs he had worked for to join Gainesville Health &

Fitness and agreed to honor whatever terms were in their original

contracts. Beyond that, he promised that he wouldn’t raise fees as

long as they remained members. Still, Cirulli faced an uphill battle

persuading the citizens of Gainesville to join, given the industry’s

reputation in town. So he turned his attention to the students of the

University of Florida, which at the time did not have a fi tness center.

The majority of them, he realized, could not afford the initial

payments that new members were traditionally required to make

when they signed up. But Cirulli fi gured that most students were

honest and would pay monthly even if there was no up-front fee.

He set up a fee structure for students and began marketing to

them. Within a few years, students made up 98 percent of

GHF’s membership.

By then, Cirulli was beginning to develop a reputation in the

industry. “Joe was already a legend in Florida when I started my

business in 1982,” says Geoffrey Dyer, founder of Lifestyle Family

Fitness, a 57-club chain based in St. Petersburg, Florida. “I didn’t

sleep for two nights when I heard he might be coming to Lakeland,

where I was located. I called him up, and he said, ‘Don’t worry.

We’re not coming. We’re just talking.”

Cirulli was indeed staying in Gainesville, but he had by no means

stopped expanding. He opened a club for women in 1984. Two

years later, after learning that a Wisconsin health club chain was

coming to town and taking aim at his membership, he moved the

original center to a new location and doubled its size. A couple

of years later, after the University of Florida announced plans to

build its own fi tness center, he got into physical therapy and began

marketing aggressively to the Gainesville public. In 1996, after the

university built a second, even larger fi tness center, he opened his

giant fl agship center. This time, he bought the building, because he

realized he could control the market only if he owned, rather

than leased, his facility.

As the business grew, so did Cirulli’s renown. Articles

about Gainesville Health & Fitness started appearing in industry

publications, and people from other clubs began making the trek

to Gainesville to see what Cirulli was up to. He welcomed them

all. “He was willing to let anyone come down,” recalls Frank

Napolitano, formerly an executive with industry giant Town Sports

International and now the CEO of GlobalFit, a provider of health

club benefi ts to employees of large corporations. “He’d give you his

training manual, share his best practices.” Even if he wasn’t there,

visitors couldn’t help being impressed by how cheery and helpful the

staff was and by the cleanliness of the club.


What impressed people most, however, were Cirulli’s results.

“Year in, year out, he’d turn in these incredible sales numbers,”

says Napolitano. “And here you were, spending tens of millions of

dollars on marketing and getting nowhere near those results.”

Naturally, people wondered how Cirulli did it, and he was

happy to tell them. As speaking invitations rolled in, he began

traveling all over the country and around the world, often taking

members of his staff with him. Wherever they went, they talked

about the company’s distinctive culture and way of operating,

shaped largely by the ideas that Cirulli picked up on his never-

ending quest for self-improvement.

Wherever you turn at GHF, you fi nd examples of Cirulli’s

application of something he has heard about or read. Every

month, for example, he meets for two days with what he calls

his Get Better Team to think of ways to improve the business.

On Monday mornings, there’s a Focus and Energy meeting of

managers from 8 a.m. until 10 a.m. New employees receive One

Minute Praising or One Minute Reprimands, lifted straight out of

“The One Minute Manager,” by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer

Johnson. Blanchard’s characterization of employees as either

ducks or eagles helped inspire a GHF program called Eagles of

the Moment, wherein club members nominate employees who

have gone above and beyond the call of duty. It’s all about self-

improvement. “We’re a factory for producing future leaders,” says

Shawn Stewart, the company’s 32-year-old operations manager.

Production begins with the hiring process, which is the

foundation for everything else GHF does. The company, which

now has 375 employees, typically gets about 1,000 applications

a year for 70 to 100 jobs, almost all of which start at minimum

wage. “We compete on work environment,” says Stewart, who

oversees the selection of more than 75 percent of the company’s

new employees.

There are fi ve steps to getting hired at GHF, beginning with a

four-page application form consisting mainly of puzzles and games.

“We eliminate most of the lazy people with that,” Stewart says.

Next, references are checked by phone, which further reduces

the pool. The third step is a group interview, with at least eight

candidates and a hiring team including supervisors and department

heads, followed by a one-on-one with the department head. Stewart

challenges his people to come up with creative ways to determine

whether candidates really share the company’s four core values:

integrity, willingness to work hard, extraordinary commitment to

helping people, and desire to create the future.

One technique, for example, is the chair test, wherein extra

chairs are left in the interview room. Stewart used it once with a

candidate who had come through the group interview with rave

notices. The candidate was sitting in the room when Stewart

entered. “They need some chairs next door,” Stewart said and

began picking up the extra ones and carrying them out of the

room. He kept doing this until only two were left. The candidate

didn’t move, except to take his feet off a chair when Stewart asked

him to. “Well,” said Stewart, “thanks for coming, but this place is

really not for you.”

The guy was taken aback. “But you haven’t interviewed me yet,”

he said.

“Yes, I just did,” Stewart said and ushered him out of the room.

Finally, candidates are taken through a high-intensity workout

on the MedX machines developed by the late Arthur Jones, the

founder of Nautilus. The idea is to work a particular muscle or

group of muscles to exhaustion. “We want to see how people react

to adversity,” says Stewart. “That’s when the true self comes out.

We tell them up front we’re not looking to see what kind of shape

they’re in. We just want to know two things: Are they hard working,

and can they listen and follow directions?” Despite all the screening

to that point, 25 percent of the candidates fail the test.

The ones who pass become the raw material of the leadership

factory. Most recruits seem only too happy to get with the program.

That includes being “shadowed” by a veteran employee who serves as

an on-the-job trainer and administers weekly quizzes in preparation

for quarterly tests, on which they must score at least 90 percent.

They are further expected to take advantage of the opportunities for

continuing education offered by the company’s large library of self-

help books and tapes. And they have to follow the rules.

Recruits receive points for things like tardiness, no tie or nametag,

improper shoes, complaining, and cursing. Seven points in a quarter

results in probation.

It’s not for everybody, which is intentional. “The whole selection

process is designed to weed out the wrong people,” notes Will

Phillips, a management consultant who runs roundtables, including

one Cirulli belongs to, for fi tness-industry CEOs. “Joe takes very

seriously the idea that you should hire for attitude and train for skill.

When you hire people and try to convert them to your way of doing

things, you create a horrible tension that training is supposed to

‘fi x’ employees. That may be more insidious than having a selective,

somewhat authoritarian goal-driven business like Joe’s.”

Of all the goals that Cirulli and his colleagues set for themselves,

none seemed more daunting than making Gainesville the healthiest

city in America, though the choice of that mission was hardly a

surprise in itself. For years, Cirulli had been saying that the ultimate

measure of a fi tness business should be the health of the community

in which it is located.

But it was one thing to have such a mission and quite another to

measure your success in achieving it. Debbie Lee was the one who

came up with the mechanism. She remembered a project she had

overseen when she was a coordinator of undergraduate programs

at the University of Florida. One student had interned at

Johnson & Johnson in Jacksonville, where she worked on the

company’s application for certifi cation as a Well Workplace

by the Wellness Councils of America. It turned out that

WELCOA also had a program for certifying cities, based on

the percentage of the work force in Well Workplaces, which

the group defi nes as companies, organizations, and institutions

with comprehensive wellness programs. Cities with 20 percent

of their work force in such a program won the bronze, 30

percent took silver, and 50 percent earned the gold. One could

argue whether a WELCOA certifi cation actually constitutes the

best measure of a community’s health. But the program did lay

out a plan of action that could be used to rally the community,

and other cities had already participated, making it possible to

compare results. And because no city had ever done better

than a bronze, why not go for the gold?

But GHF could do only so much by itself. If Gainesville was

going to become the fi rst Gold Well City, the community’s

movers and shakers had to get behind the effort. With that in

mind, Cirulli and Lee approached Marilyn Tubb, who was then

vice president for community affairs at Shands HealthCare, a

University of Florida affi liate and operator of several hospitals

around the state, and had just become president of the

Gainesville Chamber of Commerce. In short order, Tubb and

Lee put together a steering committee of 16 people, including

representatives of media outlets, health care programs, and

local government. The committee immediately went to work

building support for the campaign.

To win the award, at least 20 organizations had to

participate in the effort and obtain their Well Workplace

certifi cations within three years leading up to the submission

of the Well City application. That called for a lot of work in

a relatively short period of time. The organizations had to

select coordinators, organize health fairs, get people screened

for health risks, hold meetings, launch exercise programs, and

so on. Shands HealthCare donated the health screenings. The Gainesville Sun contributed advertising. GHF provided consulting,

speakers, meeting space, exercise programs, whatever. And

government offi cials from across the political spectrum put aside

their differences to get behind the campaign. When word fi nally

came in the spring of 2003 that Gainesville had won the award,

hundreds of residents turned out to celebrate.

The rest of the fi tness industry took note of the achievement

and GHF’s role in it. Many clubs contacted Debbie Lee to learn

more. Only a relative handful, however, launched Well City

campaigns of their own. “People admire Joe for the way he’s

integrated himself into the community, but I don’t think many of

them try to emulate him,” Napolitano says. “They feel as though

they have a lot more pressing issues to take care of.”

And maybe they do, or maybe they have overlooked what

Gainesville Health & Fitness got out of the campaign from a

business standpoint. Beyond signing up a lot of new members, the

company fi rmly established itself as the wellness resource of the

community. “I know that if I need help with anything, I can call

GHF, and they will always either provide it themselves or point

me in the right direction,” says Tracy Tompkins, who served as

campaign coordinator at Naylor LLC, a custom-publishing and

event-management company. “We wanted to become better

organized around wellness, but we lacked direction and know-

how,” says Tompkins. Naylor now uses the program in recruiting.

By positioning itself as the city’s wellness resource, GHF has

gained an enormous competitive advantage that its salespeople

have been able to make good use of in selling to the corporate

market. That advantage is certain to grow as health care costs

continue to rise and more companies discover that a serious

wellness program is one of the only responses they can offer. By

the time the rest of the fi tness industry catches on, however, Joe

Cirulli will no doubt be on to the next big thing.

Whatever that next thing turns out to be, it will happen

in Gainesville. Cirulli insists he has no desire to have a fi tness

center anywhere else. He loves his city, and the feeling is mutual.

Three times GHF has been named Business of the Year by the

Gainesville Chamber of Commerce. Cirulli has received the

Distinguished Entrepreneur for Lifetime Achievement Award

from the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business

Administration, in addition to being named Industry Visionary of

the Year by the International Health, Racquet, and Sportsclub

Association in 2005.

Along the way, Cirulli has become a walking advertisement for

the power of positive thinking. He still owns the little Mercedes,

but he mostly drives a Lexus these days. His parents live in a

house he built for them in Gainesville. Cirulli has his own home

there, as well as a beachfront place on Anna Marie Island. Once

a week, he fl ies his A36 Bonanza, often to Sarasota, where he

has a condo. Although he never made another list of goals for

himself, he did get together in 1999 with his managers to draft

one for GHF. “We will be recognized worldwide as a model

company for improving the health of an entire community,” the

document began. It then listed 10 goals for the next 10 years.

The fourth was, “We will be on the cover of a leading

business magazine.”

Guess they can check that one off.

Bo Burlingham is an Inc. editor-at-large.



The GHF Commitment

Why inspire?

“I know that with this kind of support I can only succeed at my fitness goals.”- John M., Gainesville, FL

“I love that gym so much. I’ve traveled all over the world and that is the best gym I have ever been to.”- Brittany Daniel, Hollywood, CA

“You have provided us with so many wonderful ideas which are spreading now from Gainesville into the whole world. Everybody admires you in the industry. I wish you and your people everlasting success, luck, happiness and of course the most important thing — HEALTH.” - Jasmin K., München, Germany

“Thanks for all the things you do to make us a better community to live and work. You are a true leader! Thanks for your friendship. Good health and many more successes.” - Perry McGriff, Gainesville, FL

“Just wanted to thank you for providing Gainesville with the greatest gym I’ve ever been to (I’ve been to a few).“- Stephen T., Gainesville, FL

“Your gym is amazing and it is incredible to see what you were able to accomplish! I truly admire your ability to create great relationships with your clients. You can see their excitement when they are in the gym.” - Ray C., Lexington Park, MD

“No wonder you guys have a winning business.” - Giang B., Fontana, CA

“I’m writing this to thank you for the inspiring interview on Mixergy.com. It’s one of the best interviews so far in my opinion. Because of that I printed out a copy of Napoleon Hill’s book and I’m literally devouring it. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t seen your interview. Thank you very much for your time!!!” - Constantin G., Romania

“Wow, what an inspiration you are.” - Sarah P., Tucson, AZ

“I just read the article about you in Inc. magazine and was compelled to email you. You are an inspiration to all.” - Donna D., Atlanta, GA

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