10 questions with Joe Cirulli, the founder and owner of Gainesville Health and Fitness.
1. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome in life? Not giving up no matter how difficult things became.
2. How did you overcome it? Knowing what I wanted to accomplish and not giving myself another choice or another out.
3. What’s been a major key to your success? First, success is a course — not a place you arrive at. My course was set when I had the vision of what I wanted my business to become and the type of people I wanted to be part of it.
4. What accomplishment in life are you most proud of? Watching the staff grow and realizing they can become as successful as they desire and getting to know the thousands of people in our community whose lives we have impacted.
5. GHF has a great reputation in the industry. What factors do you think contribute to that reputation? Thank you. I believe it starts with us always keeping our word whether it is with our staff, members or the industry. We always work to do the right thing no matter what the circumstances and share as much as possible to help other centers.
6. GHF has an extensive hiring process. Why is this important? It’s extensive because we spent a long time assessing who we are. Once we really defined that we knew the type of people we’d want on our staff. Once we knew that we had to set up all the systems to accomplish it. We know finding the right people gives us the ultimate advantage.
7. What do you hope to see from GHF in the next five years? We have worked on the design of the facilities for a long time and we’re entering our third [year] of expanding and remodeling our centers. Our goal is to create the ultimate design of a retail operation inside our club by defining every offering as a unique experience. It’s been great working with Rudy Fabiano on it.
8. On a typical day, what do you enjoy doing outside of work? On a typical day I work and workout. I do spend time each day thinking and trying to learn new information. Fortunately I love what I do. I also spend some time most days at my parent’s house. Weekends I love flying my airplane.
9. What book are you currently reading? I usually read business books, but I just finished Killing Patton and am most of the way through Killing Jesus. I love history too.
10. When did you start to see yourself as successful? When I was living in my car. I knew I didn’t look it, but I knew where I was headed. Remember, it’s a course.
