Scaling Smarter: The ClubReady AI Solution Behind One Studio’s Explosive Growth
Partnership
Sponsored By Clubready
Inside Elevate Fitness Coaching’s data-driven strategy for smarter, scalable success
What happens when you combine the fitness industry’s most powerful, intelligent CRM platform with a lightning-fast AI assistant named Bella?
Exponential growth, sharper insights, seamless performance and a whole new level of operational power.
This is the story of how the right technology, in the hands of the right operator, changes everything.
Obvious Platform Advantages
Justin Fouse has been in the fitness industry for more than two decades, and if there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to identify game-changing tools. As the founder of Elevate Fitness Coaching, a premier outsourced personal training company and a former owner of six health clubs nationwide, Fouse has worked with just about every gym management software and CRM system in the business.
“ClubReady was different from the start,” says Fouse. “It’s built around the operator and service provider, not just around member payments or check-ins. That fundamental focus sets it apart.”
That’s why, since 2005, he’s stuck with it. And now, he’s using it to power an even more intelligent future.
From the outset, Fouse saw the advantage of the platform for boutique studios and boutique-style services that operate within gyms. ClubReady offered a scheduler that helped codify and quantify every step of the client experience. The platform facilitated multi-channel communication through ClubReady Connect — text, email and phone — all aimed at one critical goal: booking an appointment to demonstrate value.
“Most gym membership software isn’t built to guide someone to an experience,” Fouse explains. “It’s built to process payments. ClubReady is driven by appointments. That’s how we show value, and that’s how we connect and convert.”
Once a prospect becomes a customer, the journey doesn’t stop. With a sleek app offering single sign-on, Apple Health integration, schedule syncing and direct communication with instructors, the client relationship continues seamlessly.
“From a corporate perspective, ClubReady’s dashboard gives us visibility across locations,” Fouse adds. “We can drill into participation rates, see which classes and trainers and instructors are driving results and adjust operations accordingly.”
And then came the next level.
Custom AI Interaction
In late 2024, Fouse partnered with Fitness Connection, a 47-location gym chain, to roll out Elevate Fitness Coaching across the entire network in just five months. The backbone of this aggressive expansion? ClubReady — now supercharged with AI.
Enter Bella.
Bella is a custom AI bot driven and built by ClubReady partner Ai Front Desk that integrates directly with ClubReady. Ai Front Desk develops customized Ai bots based on the exact needs of the ClubReady customer. For Elevate, she currently handles all initial prospect contact, bridging the gap between inquiry and experience in seconds. In a world where speed-to-lead is everything, Bella changed the game.
“There is just no way our fitness managers could get to every lead fast enough,” says Fouse. “Bella does. Within 11 minutes of a lead entering the ClubReady funnel, she sends a custom text based on demographic, age, sex, location and more. She books the appointment with the right Fitness Manager, and it’s done.”
The numbers speak for themselves. Over the last four months, Bella has booked 960 fitness assessments, sent over 150,000 texts and completed 135,000 staff tasks. The result? A time savings of more than 6,500 hours.
But the wins don’t stop there. Bella has been providing deep insights into Elevate’s communication strategy.
“We learned that different demographics respond differently to our messaging,” said Fouse. “In some regions, we needed to modulate terminology based on affluence or gender,” Fouse says. “We are also finding that post-COVID and post-election, text response rates dropped. People are inundated, so we are looking at more phone-based outreach where needed.”
Scale With Confidence
These insights have informed new training protocols for staff, improved speed-to-lead strategies and enabled scalable solutions across dozens of locations.
“Bella doesn’t just save us time — she helps us run the business smarter,” Fouse explains. “She has shown us where to emphasize, what processes we need to build and how to communicate more effectively.”
All of this rests on a platform designed to evolve.
As Fouse explains, ClubReady isn’t just a software provider — they’re a true partner.
“As Elevate Fitness Coaching continues to grow, ClubReady has met us every step of the way – literally,” he explains. “Recently their team flew out to meet with our board in Houston, dove into our tech requirements, and committed to building exactly what we need.”
Further, when Elevate wanted to deploy in-club banners with QR codes that served different audiences – current members vs. new prospects – ClubReady built custom solutions to support it.
In these ways, ClubReady has proven to be more than a CRM. It’s an intelligent platform with a team behind it that empowers gym operators and personal training businesses to deliver exceptional service, generate powerful insights, and grow with confidence.
“That’s why I’ve stuck with them for 18 years,” Fouse says. “No one else does what they do