Today on The Owner Seat Podcast, host Albert Ramos goes straight at the real reason most fitness and wellness businesses stall out: execution drift — not a “marketing problem,” not a “more leads” problem.

Ben Ludwig is a fitness industry leadership, sales, and strategy operator who’s trained teams across 60+ countries, helped support nearly 2,000 F45 studios globally, and served in executive leadership scaling an F45 franchise group from 4 to 12 locations with 200+ staff and real operational infrastructure. He’s now the President of Colossians 3:23-24 Fitness Holdings and the host of Revenue Machines Podcast (DXFactor) — focused on the systems, onboarding, and accountability that actually move retention and revenue. pasted

This episode is for operators who are tired of:

1. “busy” teams that still miss goals
2. onboarding that feels like “handbook + hope”
3. dashboards nobody uses
4. seasonality whiplash (Black Friday → holidays → January)
5. and owners who can’t explain their true unit economics

Execution & operator-grade systems

1. What “efficiency” and “simplicity” really mean on the floor (not in a slide deck)
2. Where operators confuse activity with productivity
3. The biggest lie the industry tells itself about growth

Data in the hands of the front line

1. Why dashboards fail (even when the data is “right”)
2. What data matters daily for GMs and department heads
3. How real-time visibility changes retention behavior immediately

Onboarding as apprenticeship (or culture leak)

1. “Unmet expectations should never be a surprise” — what great onboarding looks like
2. The 3 things every new hire must SEE and FEEL in week one
3. How to scale onboarding across locations without losing culture

Member onboarding & seasonality

1. Why Black Friday onboarding determines end-of-year success (or stress)
2. How to prevent holiday freezes/cancels from becoming churn
3. The minimum accountability stack members can actually follow

Pricing, margins, retention

1. Why copying competitor pricing quietly kills profitability
2. The weekly KPI Ben would force every operator to review