The Believer

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 fitness empire. (Maybe there's something to the power of positive thinking, after all)

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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 fitness empire. An intense, compact, clean-cut fellow, Cirulli has been lifting weights ever since he got his first set at the age of 9. For 46 years, he has worked out five 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 GHFC 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 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 defibrillator] 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 fitness 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 GHFC decided in 1999 that their mission should be to make Gainesville the healthiest community in America. Four years later, it became the first 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 GHFC 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 fitness 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, GHFC 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 GHFC's financial 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, GHFC's marketing director and the point person in the campaign.

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