Why Cale Owen Left "Gym Launch"

Cale Owen was eight weeks from shutting his gym down, making $30K combined with his wife, and had just gotten a job to keep the lights on.

Then he found Gym Launch, went all in, and eventually became CEO of the company. Then he walked away. This is what happened in between. In this episode, Cale sits down for one of the most honest conversations about building a business, losing yourself in it, and figuring out what actually matters. You'll hear about the home birth that almost took his daughter, going from 33 gym members to selling out a six-week challenge in one night, what it felt like to hit $1 million in his bank account and immediately want ten more, the moment his wife told him he was a shell of who he used to be, and why he resigned from one of the fastest growing companies in the fitness industry. This is a conversation about money, identity, faith, and what it means to run a good race.

Chapters: 0:00 There's More to Life Than Scaling Your Business 1:15 Were You Always This Driven 1:36 The Gym That Lost $3K a Month 3:32 Eight Weeks From Shutting the Doors 3:58 Getting a Job to Keep the Gym Alive 4:18 Combined Tax Return Under $30K 4:40 Failing as a Husband and a Father 6:32 Finding Gym Launch and Calling Alex 6:57 The First Time He Heard Alex Hormozi 8:06 Opting In and Testing the Nurture Sequence 9:20 First Lead 30 Minutes After Launching Ads 11:16 17 People Show Up the First Night 11:56 We Made More Today Than the Last Two Months 13:07 Going to the First Mastermind 13:26 Home Birth Gone Wrong 14:08 Why He Went Back to Work on Monday 16:43 The C-Section Story and Not Sleeping 18:25 She Trusted Me 20:07 High Performers Never Think They Could Have Done More 21:46 The Interview Process That Changed His Career 23:33 Advice for Young Men: Learn Inside Someone Else's Company 25:03 Getting Into Strategy Meetings as a Sales Manager 26:34 We Could Just Do This Ourselves 28:13 Becoming CEO of Gym Launch 29:57 Long Way From Not Being Able to Feed Your Kids 31:29 Setting a $5K Monthly Personal Income Goal 33:17 Breaking Down Goals Into Quarterly Targets 35:05 Building a Free Gym Management System 36:45 The World's First Free Gym Management System 38:21 Getting Friction From Private Equity 40:02 We Did Not See Eye to Eye 41:51 There's Got to Be More Than This 43:23 His Wife Left the Company First 44:52 Working 60 Hours a Week and Always On 45:09 The 5 to 7 Rule They Never Broke 46:19 The Birthday Trip Golf Game and Hard Questions 47:21 Three People in His Family Were Professional Athletes 48:36 My Proudest Moment Was Being Prepared for a Presentation 48:53 You Are a Shell of Who You Were a Year Ago 49:47 His Kids Were Starting to Feel It 50:22 Physically Present Mentally Somewhere Else 51:16 He Put In His Resignation 51:42 The Call With Layla 52:32 She Said She Didn't Think He'd Last More Than a Year 53:35 What He Did After He Left 54:29 Buying Into Wolf Gyms Franchise 55:37 Solving for Lifestyle Not Scale 56:35 What Would Alex Do in Your Situation 57:28 He Only Works With People Who Take Action 58:22 I Don't Know What the End Play Is 59:04 5 to 10 Clients One on One That's It 1:00:03 I Don't Know What God Is Calling Me to Do 1:01:53 What Grace Actually Means 1:03:37 When You Invite Jesus In It Changes Everything 1:04:19 The Day He Saw $1 Million in His Bank Account 1:05:13 God Said You're Never Going to Be Satisfied 1:06:09 95% of Those Calls Could Have Been an Email 1:06:51 I Was Always Chasing the Next Number 1:08:41 What Would You Say to a 20 Year Old Chasing Money 1:10:13 Optionality Is Not the End Game 1:11:46 Money Promises Security But It's Lying to You 1:13:24 What Game Do You Actually Want to Play 1:14:10 What Would You Say to Yourself Before Your Second Kid 1:14:17 Just Take the Next Step 1:15:50 What Do You Want Your Kids to Say About You 1:15:54 That I Ran a Good Race 1:16:48 You Can Do Whatever You Want to Do 1:18:38 Maybe Pastoral Ministry Isn't the Craziest Idea