The Believer

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 fitness center, he got into physical therapy and began marketing aggressively to the Gainesville public. In 1996, after the university built a second, even larger fitness center, he opened his giant flagship 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 benefits 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 GHFC, you find 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 GHFC 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 GHFC 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.

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