The Action Catalyst
Leading With Purpose, with Dave Mortensen (Fitness, Leadership, Franchising, Partnerships)
20 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the significance of execution in great ideas?
80 to 90% of any great idea, it has nothing to do with the idea in itself. It has to do with the way you execute it. I don't know if there's a day we've ever looked at an idea that's failed and looked at each other and said, told you so. There is no told you so. There is, man, we screwed that up. What do we learn and how do we improve it for the next time?
top leaders meaningful conversation actionable advice bulldoze complacency ignite inspiration create impact produced by southwestern family of companies this is the action catalyst
This episode is sponsored by Southwestern Coaching. Southwestern Coaching has helped over 12,000 people increase their incomes by over 25% on average. As a successful salesperson, you know the importance of increasing your sales, but sometimes you might just need a little extra push and accountability to meet your goals and grow your business.
Southwestern Coaching will help you increase your income through one-on-one sales and leadership coaching tailored specifically to your needs. Together we will elevate sales. Today's guest is Dave Mortensen, the president and co-founder of self-esteem brands, now Purpose Brands, which includes wellness and fitness brands like Anytime Fitness, Orange Theory, The Bar Method, and more.
Co-founded alongside Chuck Runyon, another Action Catalyst guest, in episode 220. You know, it's great getting both sides in partnership, like the one you guys had and how you've grown, what you've built over. How many years has it been now? Like how many years ago was it?
Well, May of 2002 is when we started Anytime. But Chuck and I have been business partners for 35 plus years. 35 plus years. Yeah. If you met Chuck and now you'll meet me, you'll go, wow, can these guys be any different? So we are it's it's funny. We've been 35 plus years, but yet in any business scenario, we'll probably land in the same spot. But we come at it at a completely different direction.
You guys met through just working at gyms?
It's kind of a funny story. So I literally came out of college, dropped out of college, knew I wanted to be in the fitness industry. That was my passion. Chuck was doing it because he got free basketball. Okay, so... Let's be clear on the difference between the two of us. I was a little bit more intentional in coming into this industry. I wanted to be in it.
Chuck was in it because he liked to play basketball and he got a free, he could play anytime for free, right? During that period of time, I actually got recruited by this chain of clubs he was already working at to go manage one of their clubs. And Chuck and I met and shortly thereafter, about a year later, we started our consulting firm and the kind of story was written after that.
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Chapter 2: How did Dave Mortensen and Chuck Runyon meet?
He does. Chuck is a person, you put him in a flourishing market, he's going to make it even better. That's what he's really good at. I am the guy to look at something that is not working and dive in deep and figure it out and fix it and bring it to that good to get it to great. Chuck is typically going to stay above the fray.
I'm going to be in the deep of the fray and where we balance each other. There's days I got to look at Chuck and say, hey, buddy, get out of the clouds a little bit and let's get to work here. We got to dive into some of the work we're doing versus create new stuff to do.
And there's times where he'll be the guy to look at me and say, Dave, get out of the way of the team and allow them to continue to do what they're doing because you're scaring the hell out of them.
When I read your bio and background and I was looking at it, it did almost make me feel like you're this business integrator where you're in it. You dive in. You have maybe a little bit more capability of staying in the details for longer periods of time when it comes to the team.
Chuck is the first three innings. I'm the second three innings. And then we hire really smart people to finish the last three innings.
I love that. So Anytime was the first baby that you guys had. And then when did you guys acquire your next franchise?
You know, there are a lot of different things we did. So look at 2008. 2008 and 2009 is when we made one of our first major pivotal decisions. When you think about pivoting, we had a third partner. And at that time, Anytime Fitness probably had about We were probably at about 600 clubs open at that time, and we knew we were onto something special.
But Chuck and I, we both looked at each other and wanted to reinvest back into that business because we knew we were a part of something that was bigger than ourselves. And our third partner... albeit was in it for one reason. He wanted to make money, get out and go enjoy life. So we've found a way to make that happen.
Now to make that happen, believe it or not, Chuck and I took a, if you know anything about 08 or 09, that was the financial crisis at the time. So Chuck, to buy him out, had to take on a loan for $26 million, right, at 16% interest. So imagine taking a 16% interest loan on anything. It's like credit card loans, right? But we did. We didn't have to be in it that long.
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Chapter 3: What are the secrets to a successful partnership?
A lot of times we get caught up in going, okay, this is what I need. And that's important. You got to know your capability. But when you see talent, there's talent there. don't hesitate to bring that talent into the organization. The other thing is watch what the word talent means. Talent with people is, I'll say this, when you look at like the high, you look at the grid, right?
You look at the four grid and you want everyone in the upper right, right? You want everyone in the upper right. In your upper right or upper left, however you want to look at it, one of the things that we look are high talent, high culture people, right? The biggest mistake most organizations do is they bring in high talent that don't match your culture.
That is the biggest mistake you can make because you know what high talent, low culture is in an organization? Cancer. Because they're so highly talented, you know that talent, you see that talent, but they don't fit within your ethos of who you are. And the one thing that Chuck and I have always known, and we literally have documented through
is what we look for in people things like for us we need people who are competitive right we want people who are highly competitive we want people who are highly passionate passionate about what they do i know if i'm not passionate about it no matter how great of an idea it is i'm probably not going to execute it that well people who are um Self-aware, especially in leadership, self-awareness.
You've heard this many times, but there are so many people that are. So I can tell you every gap I have and probably even more. And when and I'm interested to learn more about those gaps. So having people understand their gaps.
in life are very very important if they're constantly trying to mask them they're not improving if you're spending more time trying to hide your weaknesses or hide anything well guess what then you're gonna have a lot of gaps um selfless We need people who are selfless. If you are going to build a large organization, you can't have I people in the room. And Chuck and I have zero tolerance.
We don't like titles, right? I'm not a big title guy, and I don't like I people in the room. But what is important is leaders in a room that are intrigued to hear the voice of everybody. I will say having a voice is very, very important. Last but not least, believe it or not, for Chuck and I, we need people with a sense of humor.
We need people that are fun to be around because I don't need a bunch of dry nuts in our organization to be very candid with you because they just don't last that long for us. We want a sense of humor. And if you take yourself too serious, we always say take the business as serious as can be, but don't take yourself too seriously.
And those are the elements that we look for when we bring people on. I think the weakness when I say this a lot of times in podcasts is to say, you need to know who you are as a leader and surround yourself with people who have similar cultural beliefs. Because if you have a broken culture, the talent's not going to go anywhere.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did they face during the financial crisis?
We just apply it to their world. And what that looks like is teaching them the study skills, the communication skills that they can use every day in the classroom and outside the classroom, coaching them on the mindset and the motivation of someone who's a top performer. And what does that mean? It means helping a young teenager create and craft a vision for themselves
Because without a vision, we perish. But with a vision, we can be equipped with the motivation to dig into our study habits. We can see the connection between our future and the excellence that we have to form in our habits now to be successful in the long run. And we also work on the emotional intelligence.
It's how we balance our emotions and manage those emotions when they come up in a way that allows us to communicate effectively with others and to communicate with ourselves. It's about equipping young people with self-talk. That means equipping them with the language that they can use to better direct their thoughts and their mind to accomplish their goals and their aims.
And lastly, we equip them with the systems. That means for us, the tools, the time management, and the organization strategies to not just work hard in life, but to work smart. And when we combine all these different areas that we work with our teens on, what we find is that they form the habits early in life that allows them to achieve their goals later in life and even right now.
And so our passion is to equip as many young people across this world as we can And we're doing pretty good so far. We've got teens in seven different countries who have been through our coaching program to date. We've worked with over 400 teens, and we would love to be able to serve you as well. Here's how it works. If you want to investigate coaching, we start with a parent consultation.
That's a free call to discuss your students' particular needs and our program details. We work with Olympic athletes all the way down to teens that are just struggling to motivate themselves to do the daily work necessary in their class. So wherever your teen is, we'll meet them where they are and get them to the next level. And that starts with a parent consultation with you.
A student planning session. That's the next step. If we agree that the value that coaching can bring matches your teen... then we will move to a student planning session. It's basically a free one-on-one coaching session with your team. And that is designed to support them, but it's also designed to ask a lot of questions to help explore whether or not they want to be coached.
Because at the end of the day, they ultimately have to be the one that pulls the trigger. And then after your student planning session, We get them paired with the right coach for them. We have an amazing staff of coaches from ex-Division One athletes, people who've come from the Ivy League system.
We have coaches who have come from entrepreneurial backgrounds and acting backgrounds, so we can pair them with the right fit for them. And then once they partner with their coach, they'll benefit from two coaching sessions a month to really zone in on their personal growth and their skill development.
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