The fitness industry's greatest unsolved problem is not attracting members — it is keeping them. In this episode of Escape Your Limits, Matthew Januszek speaks with Ian Mullane, the Founder and CEO of Keepme, a business built entirely around answering the question: why do members leave, and what can operators do about it before they walk out the door?

Ian has spent six years working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and fitness operations, and he brings a data-driven perspective to some of the industry's most pressing challenges. His message is direct: adapt or die — and the path to adaptation runs through personalization and AI.

About Ian Mullane

Ian Mullane is the Founder and CEO of Keepme, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to help health and fitness operators increase their revenue by reducing member churn. His work is built on a foundational question — why do members leave the gym — and six years of applying AI to find reliable, actionable answers.

Ian is one of the more analytically rigorous voices in the fitness industry. Rather than advocating for broad trends, he grounds his recommendations in data and has published a white paper specifically designed to spark honest conversations about the disruption reshaping fitness operations.

His core argument is that hyper-personalization — using member data to deliver individualized experiences and interventions — is the defining capability that will separate surviving fitness businesses from those that do not make it through the current period of disruption. He has developed six key rules for operators navigating this shift.

What Ian Mullane and Matthew Januszek Talked About

• Member churn is a data problem before it is a relationship problem — Ian's work at Keepme shows that AI can identify at-risk members weeks before they cancel, giving operators a window to intervene effectively.
• Hyper-personalization is not a marketing concept — it is an operational strategy that requires building member data infrastructure into the core of how a fitness business runs.
• The fitness industry will not return to its pre-COVID state — Ian's white paper lays out the structural reasons why the disruption is permanent, and why operators who plan for a return to normal are planning for a reality that no longer exists.
• Brick-and-mortar gyms and clubs face an adapt-or-die moment driven by digital competition, changing member expectations, and the growing sophistication of at-home fitness alternatives.
• Data without action is overhead — Ian's six rules for survival focus on turning member data into specific, timely interventions rather than accumulating analytics that no one acts on.
• AI in fitness is most valuable when applied to retention and revenue, not just marketing — the ROI on preventing a cancellation is consistently higher than the cost of acquiring a new member.
• The operators who will define the next decade of fitness are those who treat member experience as an engineering challenge — continuously testing, measuring, and improving based on what the data says members actually want.

Why This Conversation Matters

For Matthew Januszek and the team at Escape Fitness USA, the question of how fitness operators build sustainable, technology-forward businesses is not abstract — it is central to every partnership and product decision. Ian's work at Keepme represents exactly the kind of innovation that helps operators extract more value from the communities they have already built.

The LIFTS Podcast with Mohammed Iqbal of SweatWorks is a platform for precisely this type of conversation — bringing data-driven thinkers and operators together to move the fitness industry forward. Ian Mullane's AI-first approach to member retention is a model for how fitness businesses can compete and grow in an environment that rewards personalization over standardization.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

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