Inside the Brand: How GYMGUYZ Is Operationalizing AI Across Its Business
Inside the Brand goes behind the scenes with franchise leaders to explore how they’re evolving their businesses, from new technology and operational strategies to smarter approaches to growth. Each month, we spotlight one brand and the lesson other franchisors can take from what they’re doing differently.
Plenty of franchise brands are experimenting with AI. GYMGUYZ is taking a different approach: building it directly into the way its corporate team operates every day.
Over the past year, the mobile fitness franchise has expanded its use of AI across a wide range of internal workflows, including franchisee support, royalty reconciliation, marketing content, training materials, legal document review, and podcast production.
For Founder and CEO Josh York, the goal goes beyond adopting new technology. It is about reducing the amount of time his corporate team spends on administrative work so they can spend more time supporting franchisees.
“AI adoption in franchising isn't really a technology decision. It's a service decision,” York said.
From Experimentation to Everyday Operations
That philosophy becomes increasingly important as GYMGUYZ continues to expand its franchise system across the U.S. and internationally. While the customer experience itself is relatively straightforward, supporting the infrastructure behind that experience becomes increasingly complex as the system grows.
By embedding AI into recurring workflows, GYMGUYZ is looking to give time back to its corporate team and ultimately redirect more resources toward the franchisees delivering the service in-market.
The distinction, according to York, is between simply testing AI tools and actually changing how the organization works.
The Bigger Opportunity for Franchisors
For franchisors, that may be the bigger opportunity with AI. The competitive advantage is unlikely to come from having access to a particular tool. As those tools become more widely available, the differentiator will be how effectively brands incorporate them into everyday operations.
The Takeaway
AI adoption becomes much more valuable when it moves beyond isolated experiments and into the workflows that consume your team's time every day. The question for franchisors is becoming less about which AI tools they use and more about what those tools allow their people to spend more time doing.
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