The best fitness businesses are often built by people who have lived the transformation they are selling. Zach Golden did not set out to build a studio brand — he set out to change his own body and life. What happened next is a story that a lot of fitness entrepreneurs will recognise, even if the specific shape of it is uniquely his.
Matthew Januszek sits down with Zach on Escape Your Limits to trace the arc from personal breakthrough to business launch: how finding sanctuary in training became the foundation for Sanctuary Fitness LA, what the brand stands for, and what it takes to build something in the saturated Los Angeles fitness market that genuinely stands out.
About Zach Golden
Zach Golden is the founder of Sanctuary Fitness in LA, a studio built on a straightforward but powerful idea: that working out can be a genuine refuge — a place people come not just for results, but for something they actually look forward to. The name is not incidental. For Zach, fitness was exactly that before it became a business.
The personal transformation that preceded Sanctuary Fitness shaped everything about how it was built. Zach experienced firsthand what it means to invest in physical progress, feel the results compound, and want more — and he built a studio environment designed to create that same cycle of enthusiasm and effort for his clients. The product is informed by lived experience in a way that purely business-driven concepts rarely are.
Los Angeles is one of the most competitive fitness markets in the world. Building a brand there that earns loyalty requires more than a good class or a well-designed space — it requires a clear identity and a consistent experience. Sanctuary Fitness has developed both, and Zach's journey from personal progress to studio founder is a significant part of what makes the brand feel authentic to the people who train there.
What Zach Golden and Matthew Januszek Talked About
- Personal transformation is one of the most credible foundations a fitness business can have. When the founder has lived the experience, the authenticity is embedded in every decision.
- Naming a brand around a feeling rather than a format is a long-term positioning choice. Sanctuary Fitness does not describe what you do there — it describes how it makes you feel, which is a more durable brand anchor.
- The progress model that works for physical transformation also works for building a business. Enthusiasm compounds when effort is matched with results, and Zach applied that directly to Sanctuary's growth.
- Building in Los Angeles requires a clear identity. The market is too saturated for a vague proposition — Sanctuary Fitness succeeds because it stands for something specific.
- The leap from personal passion to professional business is always harder than it looks from the outside. Zach's story is useful precisely because it does not skip the difficulty of that transition.
- Fitness brands that earn genuine loyalty create an experience that goes beyond the workout. The space, the culture, and the community all matter — and they all have to be designed intentionally.
- Founders who build from lived experience have an intuitive advantage in product design. Knowing what your client feels because you have felt it yourself is information that no market research fully replicates.
Why This Conversation Matters
Matthew Januszek has built Escape Fitness USA and the LIFTS Podcast — co-hosted with Mohammed Iqbal of SweatWorks — around the idea that the fitness industry's most interesting stories are the ones where personal conviction meets business discipline. Zach Golden's journey to founding Sanctuary Fitness is a clean example of that: the conviction came first, and the business was built on top of it.
For the studio owners and independent operators in Matthew's audience, Zach's story raises a question worth sitting with: is your business built on something you genuinely believe in, or on a formula you inherited? The answer shapes everything from how you attract clients to how you make decisions when things get hard. Sanctuary Fitness LA is a reminder of what it looks like when the answer is a clear yes.
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About Matthew Januszek
Matthew Januszek is the co-founder of Escape Fitness, the functional-training equipment brand he built from a UK startup into a global name supplying many of the world’s leading gyms, studios, and hotel fitness spaces. Following the separation of the UK and US businesses, Matthew’s focus today is Escape Fitness USA and the next chapter of the brand in North America. He hosted more than 300 episodes of the Escape Your Limits podcast and now co-hosts the LIFTS Podcast with SweatWorks founder Mohammed Iqbal, covering the business, science, and technology shaping the fitness industry. Explore more interviews and episodes on MatthewJanuszek.com.
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