Episodes

  • 97: Why I'm betting my business and my career on customer experience

    97: Why I'm betting my business and my career on customer experience
    May 5 2026
    Summary: In this episode I explore why customer experience, not AI, is the real competitive advantage of the future, and how service businesses can escape commoditisation by entering the experience economy. 4 things you'll learn in this episode Why 'predicting the future' is no longer a viable business strategy in the age of AI, and what to focus on instead.How AI is collapsing the margins of service industries, and why doing things that don't scale becomes your real edge.The four economic stages every business sits in (commodity, product, service, experience), and why climbing this ladder is the biggest unlock for premium pricing.The data that justifies investing in customer experience, including how it can grow revenue 25% faster and explain up to 60% of organic growth. Transcription: The world of business is changing in ways that are equal parts mind-bending and terrifying. Needless to say, it's Artificial Intelligence that is acting as the absolute driving force of this transformational shifts in human civilisation. It's not only the change, but the rate of change. We're in the middle of the singularity. In technical terms, this is '…the point where artificial intelligence becomes capable of improving itself so rapidly that technological progress accelerates beyond normal human ability to predict, control, or understand.' (OpenAI, 2026). Again, '…beyond normal human ability to predict, control, or understand.' It's our inability to 'predict' that really interests me. And the interesting part of that word is the idea that until now, the world of business has been built on the idea that by predicting human needs, desires and behaviours, we can build and position our businesses for success. This is often referred to as 'skating to where the puck is going'. The concept is pretty self explanatory. It's an ice hockey term. The puck in ice hockey moves so fast, that by the time you get to it, it's gone. Instead, the best players have learnt to skate not to where the puck is, but to where they predict it will be. They 'skate to where the puck is going'. There's that word again, 'predict'. They skate to where they predict the puck will be. But remember, the pending AI singularity is characterised by changes that are '…beyond normal human ability to predict…'. We no longer know where the puck is going. And so we don't know in which distance we should skate. Business owners and entrepreneurs who have always built their success off the back of prediction are now playing ice hockey with a blindfold on. This is something I've thought a lot about over the last few years. And it's made me wonder if we might be asking the wrong question. The question shouldn't be 'where is the puck going?', but 'is there a puck that's staying still?'. If the puck isn't moving, we avoid the need to make predications all together. There's another convenient ice hockey term that allows us to continue this analogy, 'freezing the puck'. It's when the goalie covers the puck to stop play. The question becomes, 'in a world of unprecedented change, what will stay the same?' What is the frozen puck? The answer, as best as I can see, comes down to a single word. Experience. The human desire to live an experience. Something that they can actively participate in. Something that makes people feel a certain way. Something that gives people stories to tell. These experiences will be the currency of the future. Singing Beatles songs while toasting marshmallows around a campfire with the people you love. Getting clay under your fingernails while crafting a bowl on a pottery wheel with your best friend. Watching the sun set with your feet in the Indian Ocean, then racing your kids up a sand dune in time to watch it set again. People are always searching for the meaning of life. These things are better and more important, because they allow you to find meaning IN life. And so, I'm going all in. I'm betting the farm. I'm betting my business and my career… on experience. On customer experience. I'm transforming how I do things, and I'm launching Gobsmacking Consulting, to help service based businesses design remarkable customer experience. More on Gobsmack Consulting later. For the last year, I've given every spare second I have to the deep exploration and understanding of customer experience. What I've pieced together has been nothing short of enlightening for me. I've found that in an increasingly transactional, impersonal and sterile business landscape, customers are aching for connection and individualisation. They're aching for a story to tell. They want to feel something. And that's the purpose of customer experience, creating remarkable experiences that make people feel a certain way. The essayist, Maya Angelou, famously said, 'People will forget what you do but will never forget how you made them feel.' In his 2022 book, 'Unreasonable Hospitality', author and restauranteur, Will Guidara told us 'Fads fade and cycle, but the human ...
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    26 mins
  • 96: Four simple steps to charging $10,000 for your service

    96: Four simple steps to charging $10,000 for your service
    Apr 30 2026
    In this episode Dan uncovers the pricing mistake leaving fitness professionals underpaid, and shares the four-step approach he used to help one trainer charge $25,000 per client. Four things you'll learn in this episode: Why the traditional "build first, price later" approach keeps fitness professionals stuck in a scarcity mindset and earning less than they deserveThe exact reverse-engineered pricing method Dan used to help one exercise professional collect $250,000 in pre-payments every JanuaryHow to flip the pricing conversation so $25,000 a year feels like an obvious bargain to the right clientWho you actually need to be selling to, and why trying to be for everyone is quietly costing you a fortune Transcription: There's a really big mistake people are making with how much to charge for the service they're offering. And this big mistake means they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Whether you're selling personal training, semi-private training classes, gym memberships, or anything else fitness related, you're earning less than you should. Here's the problem. This is what people are currently doing: People have an idea for a service they want to offer.They build a business that will provide that service.They look at the business they've built and try to work out how much people will be willing to pay for the service.They release that business out into the world and hope that the right people will find them and pay them money. The big problem with this is it really comes from a scarcity mindset. And it often seriously limits how much people are able to charge. The issue is that they are starting with the service they're going to be offering and then they work out how much it's going to cost their customer. They decide they want to sell personal training. They look at what people charge for personal training and they match their pricing to what everyone else is doing. This is the same mentality as the people who spend their entire life to build their business and hope that at the end of the day there is some time and energy left to give to their life. The people who live to work instead of the people who work to live. So how do we switch this thinking? Let's talk about a more abundance-mindset approach to pricing your fitness service to ensure you're earning what you're worth. It comes down to four simple steps. Step 1. Find a problem that needs solving.Step 2. Look at how much money you want to earn, or how much you want to charge people for solving that problem.Step 3. Find a way to give more value than the cost, or how much you're charging people to solve that problem.Step 4. Find people who can afford that cost. Let's unpack this. Firstly step one: find a problem that needs solving. Too many people start their business with an idea. But an idea is not a good idea – unless it solves a real problem. You need to start by identifying a problem. A real one. Ultimately every single successful business solves a problem. If you can find a big enough problem that has a negative enough impact on people's lives, they will pay you handsomely to solve it. So once you've identified a problem that needs solving, we get to the most important part of pricing your service. Determining how much you want to earn. And this is the big shift from a traditional approach to pricing a service. Normally what people do is they work out what that service involves and then how much they can justify charging for it. But we're gonna flip that. First we're going to decide how much to charge for it and then we'll work out what that service needs to be to justify the price. This is the exact process I used with an exercise professional that I mentored a couple of years ago. He came to me because he had been running his business for many years and had reached a ceiling where he just couldn't work any harder to earn more money. He determined that he wanted to earn a quarter of a million dollars a year in revenue, that he wanted to be a sole trader, and he only wanted to work with 10 clients. So some simple maths showed us that he needed to charge each client $25,000 a year to hit this target. Now $25,000 seems like a lot of money for a fitness professional to charge for personal training. And it is but only if you start with personal training and work out how much to charge for that. Instead what we did was start with that dollar amount and worked out how good that personal training would need to be for $25,000 per year to be a good deal for the client. Fast forward to today and this exercise professional receives ten payments of $25,000 (quarter of a million dollars) in his bank account on the first of January every year for his clients to pre-pay their annual fee. Needless to say the service and experience that these clients are getting is pretty exemplary and it's so good that they all think 25,000 is a great deal. And that's step three: finding a way to give more value than the cost. Once you know what you want to ...
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    11 mins
  • 95: How you can use agentic AI to earn more money and win back time

    95: How you can use agentic AI to earn more money and win back time
    Apr 15 2026
    Summary: In this episode Dan explores agentic AI, how it differs from chat-based AI, and why delegating to it rather than using it can help you earn more and reclaim time. 5 things you'll learn in this episode The key difference between chat-based and agentic AI. Most people are directing AI step by step. Agentic AI works differently: you give it an outcome and it figures out the process, much like delegating to a trusted person rather than micromanaging every move.A practical filter for deciding what to hand over. Any recurring task, anything involving multiple tabs or tools, and anything that doesn't require knowledge only you possess are now prime candidates to delegate. This alone could reshape how you spend your days.What to keep for yourself, and why it matters. Writing your own articles, generating ideas, doing creative work. The benefit comes from the doing, not just the output. Knowing where to draw that line is just as important as knowing what to delegate.13+ real examples of tasks being delegated right now. From content suites and podcast show notes to Canva assets, email campaigns, and data organisation. These are live examples from the past few weeks.Where the real opportunity lies. It's not just about saving time. It's about what you do with the time you get back. When the tasks that don't require you are removed, what remains is the work that genuinely moves things forward. How most people are currently using AI At the moment, most people are using AI in what I'd call a chat-based way. You open up something like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you type in a prompt, and it gives you a response. Then you type another prompt, and it gives you another response. And so on. It's essentially a series of individual tasks. You are directing every step of the process. You are telling it what to do, one instruction at a time, and it is responding to each of those instructions. There's nothing wrong with this. It's incredibly useful, and for a lot of people it's already a big step forward from how they were working previously. But it does have a limitation. You are still doing the thinking around how to get to the outcome. You are still breaking the task down into steps. You are still effectively managing the process. The shift to agentic AI Agentic AI works differently. Instead of giving it a series of steps, you give it an outcome. You don't say, 'do this, then do this, then do this'. You say, 'this is what I want done', and it works out the steps required to get there. The way I've found it easiest to think about is to compare it to working with another person. If you were delegating a task to someone and you had to micromanage every step, telling them exactly what to do at each stage, that would feel very similar to using chat-based AI. But if you were working with someone you trusted, you would simply give them the job and the desired outcome, and allow them to figure out the process themselves. That's much closer to what agentic AI is doing. It's not just responding to prompts. It's completing tasks. What this actually means in practice Once you start thinking about it this way, the question becomes less about 'what can AI help me with?' and more about 'what should I no longer be doing myself?'. For me, a useful filter has been this: Any repetitive or recurring task, any task that involves moving between multiple tabs or pieces of software, any task that doesn't require knowledge that only exists in my brain, and generally anything that would take me somewhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours, those are now candidates to be delegated. What remains is the work that actually requires me. Thinking, decision-making, coming up with ideas, and doing the parts of the job that are inherently human. A quick note on what I'm not outsourcing This is important, because I think there's a temptation to go too far with this. I still write my own articles. I still come up with my own ideas. I still do the creative work. Not because AI couldn't do some of it, but because there's value in the process itself. It's a bit like journaling. You wouldn't ask someone else to do your journaling for you, because the benefit comes from actually doing it. So I'm not trying to remove myself from the work entirely. I'm trying to remove myself from the parts of the work that don't require me. How I'm currently using it To make this a bit more concrete, here are a number of ways I've been using agentic AI over the last few weeks: Turning a single written article into a full content suite, including blog formatting, internal links, images, social media posts, email newsletters, and drafts across all platformsPreparing for mentoring calls by pulling previous Zoom transcripts and summarising key points before each sessionDrafting personalised outreach emails in bulk, each tailored slightly to the recipient but based on the same core messageRunning monthly checks across all websites by submitting test enquiries through every...
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    33 mins
  • 94: The Ultimate Guide to Business KPIs

    94: The Ultimate Guide to Business KPIs
    Mar 24 2026

    Summary: Dan explains why most business owners glance at numbers without using them well, and shares a complete KPI system to track what matters, focus your effort, and build a better life.

    This one works really well as a video, as Dan does a walk through of a KPI spreadsheet. You can watch that here, or read the article (including visuals) here.

    5 things you'll learn in this episode

    • Why glancing at revenue or checking the bank balance is not the same as having a proper KPI process, and what changes when you build one.
    • How to design the life you want before you set a single target, because your numbers should serve your life, not just your business.
    • The exact spreadsheet structure I use, including how to set medium and long-term targets and keep things clean across months and years.
    • A complete list of KPIs across marketing, sales, customers, revenue, finance, time, and even life quality, with equations for every single one.
    • How to use the traffic light system so your priorities are immediately obvious every time you open the sheet.

    Your action steps:

    1. Write down what you want your life to look like before you build or update any KPI spreadsheet.
    2. Set up a simple spreadsheet with a column for KPIs, a medium-term target, and a long-term target.
    3. Manually pull your numbers from Xero, your CRM, and other sources at the end of each month.
    4. Review your KPI sheet every week and identify the one or two numbers that most need your attention.
    5. Apply the traffic light system so your biggest constraint is always easy to spot.
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    27 mins
  • 93: How would Mr. Beast Market a Fitness Business?

    93: How would Mr. Beast Market a Fitness Business?
    Mar 10 2026
    Summary: In this episode Dan explores how MrBeast would market a fitness business, and what fitness professionals can learn from his approach to attention, storytelling, referrals, content, and growth. 5 things you'll learn in this episode How to make your fitness business website more clickable, clearer, and easier to act onWhy storytelling and client journeys are powerful fitness marketing toolsHow MrBeast's approach to content marketing can improve your reach and engagementWhat fitness businesses can learn from Feastables and MrBeast Burger about referrals and shareabilityHow to build a stronger fitness marketing system across email, paid ads, offline marketing, and promotions How would the most viral content creator of our generation market a fitness business? Success leaves clues, and I was interested in the clues that MrBeast's digital empire would leave for health and fitness business owners. I wanted to unpack his approach to business and see what we can borrow for our industry. I did a similar deep dive to how Elon Musk would disrupt the gym industry, which you can read here or listen to here. If you've ever turned on the internet, you know MrBeast, or Jimmy Donaldson. He's one of the most successful creators on YouTube, building an audience of more than 100 million subscribers by creating videos that are impossible to ignore. His content usually involves huge challenges, massive giveaways, and large-scale acts of generosity. But MrBeast is not just a YouTuber. He is also a very switched-on entrepreneur. He has built several businesses off the back of his audience, including MrBeast Burger, Feastables chocolate, and the viral mobile game 'Finger on the App'. He has also donated millions of dollars to causes such as food banks, environmental projects, and people in need. What makes MrBeast interesting is not just the scale of what he does. It is the way he thinks about his businesses. Everything he does is designed to capture attention, hold attention, and be shared. He constantly experiments, studies what works, and reinvests almost everything he earns back into making even better content. So what can he teach us? I've studied his approach and broken it down into what I see as the eleven most important marketing strategies. I covered each of these in more detail in my article and podcast 'The One Page Fitness Marketing Checklist', which you can check out on episode 79 of the podcast. You can also download the one page marketing checklist here. The eleven areas we'll be examining through the lens of MrBeast are: WebsiteDocumentation and StorytellingContent MarketingMicro-Influencer MarketingReferral ProcessEmail MarketingCustomer/Member ReactivationPaid Social Media AdvertisingPaid Search Engine AdvertisingOffline MarketingPromotions and Tactics Website Your business needs a simple, professional website that clearly explains who you help and how you help them, builds trust with social proof, and makes it extremely easy for the right people to take the next step. So how would MrBeast create a website for a fitness business? One of his biggest obsessions is making people feel like they have to click. He spends an enormous amount of time on the thumbnails for his YouTube videos because he knows that in an impatient, short-attention-span economy, first impressions really matter. MrBeast talks a lot about the idea of a 'purple cow', which is borrowed from Seth Godin's book of the same name. The idea is that if you're driving past a field full of cows, the only one you'll notice is the purple cow. In the Diary of a CEO podcast MrBeast said the best ideas should make people say, 'What the fuck, I've never seen that'. If he were building a website, he would be looking for a clear and unusual homepage that looks different from everyone else. If we look at the Feastables website, we can see that it's built around really low-friction next steps. It's very easy for people to purchase the product, find stores where they can buy it, or get support. He would build a website for a fitness business that acts as a central hub with clear calls to action and very obvious next steps. Ultimately, the business needs a website that not only looks good, but actually converts, captures leads, retargets visitors, and feeds the rest of the marketing machine we're building. Documentation and Storytelling You need to consistently document the life of your business and share client journeys so potential clients can see people like them overcoming problems with your help. Storytelling is at the heart of MrBeast's digital empire. It's worth looking at Beast Philanthropy to see how he uses real-world documentation to shape behaviour and tell powerful stories. The official positioning of Beast Philanthropy is to use social media to 'educate and inspire' an entire generation. Jimmy Donaldson has often talked about his desire to inspire a movement. This is exactly the way he would approach documenting the inner workings ...
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    26 mins
  • 92: 14 Psychological Triggers to Get More Website Leads

    92: 14 Psychological Triggers to Get More Website Leads
    Mar 2 2026

    These are the 14 things I include on every website I build to turn the site into a lead generating machine.

    Here are five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast:

    1. Why a good-looking website is not enough to get more gym leads
    2. How simple psychology can help turn website visitors into enquiries
    3. Why speaking to one clear type of client improves conversions
    4. How small wording changes can increase trust and action
    5. How to structure your fitness website so people feel understood and ready to join

    Need a website? I can do that for you.
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    11 mins
  • 91: How Jade bought and saved a struggling gym

    91: How Jade bought and saved a struggling gym
    Feb 16 2026

    Dan chats with Jade Webb. Jade was already a successful business owner prior to purchasing a gym. She shares the process of buying a business, from initial negotiations, through to a complete business overhaul.

    5 things you'll learn:

    • How Jade went from mechanical business owner to gym owner.
    • Why she bought a gym, not built one from scratch.
    • What due diligence she did and what she missed.
    • How she completely rebuilt culture and customer experience after a chaotic first 30 days.
    • The KPI changes and why experience has driven her growth and retention.
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    34 mins
  • 90: Do sales and offers make you feel dirty? There's a better way to grow.

    90: Do sales and offers make you feel dirty? There's a better way to grow.
    Jan 27 2026

    In this episode, Dan Williams explores why traditional sales and discount-driven marketing make fitness business owners feel uncomfortable, and how shifting to an experience-focused approach can create trust, authenticity, and lasting client relationships.

    5 things you'll learn:

    • Why the 'sales and offers' model feels inauthentic and unsustainable for fitness professionals.
    • How the most trusted brands win by creating experiences, not chasing sales.
    • What an 'experience-focused approach' looks like in a fitness business, from first enquiry to ongoing service.
    • How to design remarkable client touch points that make people feel valued, not sold to.
    • Why genuine connection, care, and hospitality outperform every script or discount.

    If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of Dan's most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one:

    • Episode 79: 'The one page fitness marketing checklist. Just do these things.' Podcast | Article. You can also download a PDF of the checklist here.
    • Episode 69: 'Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of Being Different'. Podcast | Article.
    • Episode 74: 9 unique ways to make your business stand out (to get more clients)'. Podcast | Article.
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    24 mins