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Get a 10-minute AI morning brief from 12 industry sources, and run a weekly team meeting to share AI wins
Dave Rafuse, owner of Blended Athletics (856 members, 18 full-time staff), on the Behind Gym Doors podcast (run by GSD, a gym-coaching group he belongs to)
A morning brief arrives in his email as "Dave's morning brief". It goes through 12 newsletters and websites, pulls out new information relevant to him, groups repeat stories into a separate section, suggests the piece of content to make for the gym that day and gives three action items. The episode doesn't name the tool. Separately, his team blocks 45 minutes every Friday to share how each person is using AI, and he hired an AI architect who turns day-to-day workflows into automations with AI behind them.
ChatGPT Plus $20/mo or Claude $17/mo billed annually ($20 monthly)
Medium · or we do it from $149/mo
Varies
The problem
He wants to spend less time behind a computer, and keeping up with industry news and deciding what to post each day took time. He also saw owners holding AI back from their teams.
What happened
He says the brief takes him 10 minutes to go through over coffee. He credits the systems the gym has built, not AI alone, for growth from 150 to 856 members and 23%, 25% and 28% growth in the last three years (self-reported). The member health scores he mentions live in Train With Us, an app he is building, and aren't part of this case.
Quoted in the source: Dave Rafuse, owner, Blended Athletics. Source: Behind Gym Doors #446: AI Systems This Gym Owner Uses to Retain 856 Members (Dave Rafuse, Blended Athletics) (2026-07-09) · Added 2026-10-17.
How to set it up yourself
- What Blended Athletics has: an emailed morning brief built from 12 newsletters and websites, with repeats grouped separately, a suggested post for the day and three action items, plus a weekly 45-minute Friday meeting where the team shares how they're using AI. The tool behind the brief isn't named.
- DIY path: list the 8 to 12 sources you actually read (industry newsletters, competitor pages, local news). Subscribe to the newsletters with a separate Gmail label so they collect in one place.
- Set up a daily 6 AM scheduled task in ChatGPT (Tasks) or in Claude Cowork with the prompt below, pasting your source list. Read the first week's briefs against the sources to check nothing is invented.
- Put a recurring 45-minute Friday slot on the team calendar. Each person brings one thing they tried with AI that week; skip it when nobody has anything new, as Blended does.
Copy-paste prompt
Every morning, write my brief for {GYM NAME}, a {GYM TYPE} in {CITY}. Check these sources for anything new since yesterday: {SOURCE LIST}. Give me: 1) the 3 to 5 newest items relevant to {MY FOCUS, e.g. member retention, local events, fitness trends}, each with its link; 2) older stories that are just follow-ups, in one short section; 3) one post idea for our gym today tied to an item above; 4) three action items for me. Keep it under 300 words and don't include anything you can't link to.One short email a day: 3 new AI use cases from real small businesses, each with its source and setup steps, plus a Tool of the Day. Free, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Rather not do it yourself?
We'll set this up in your tools, in your voice, tested. $149/mo with setup included (6-month minimum), or $497 pay-once. Satisfaction guarantee: we'll fix it until it works. Pay-once setups: or we refund your setup fee. $149/mo plan: cancel in the first 30 days and we refund your first month. Terms. We reply within 1 business day.
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