Surviving Change as a Gym Owner

How Jared Byczko grew Myriad Health + Fitness after rebranding and losing his business partner.

-Hilary Achauer

Jared Byczko met his best friend, Peter Brasovan, on the soccer field when they were both five years old.

From that point forward — through elementary school, middle school, and into high school – Jared and Peter were inseparable. They played on all the same soccer teams, and in high school their soccer team qualified for the state championship finals two years in a row. Then the two childhood friends became college roommates for four years, playing Division 1 soccer at Indiana Purdue University. 

A few years out of college Jared moved to Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands. He began training for triathlons and felt confident about his fitness after leaving behind competitive soccer.

Then Peter came to visit. 

“He showed me a couple of CrossFit workouts and absolutely destroyed me,” Jared said. 

This sparked Jared’s competitive spirit — he didn’t like that his best friend and former teammate was fitter and stronger than he was. So Jared began doing CrossFit himself and in 2011 the two friends decided to open their own CrossFit gym: CrossFit Naptown in downtown Indianapolis.

Building the Business Together

After struggling to find a space within their budget that was willing to lease to a CrossFit affiliate, Jared and Peter eventually discovered a 5,000-square-foot warehouse formerly used by undercover FBI agents.

The owner said they could have the space for $500 a month for six months – an amazing deal – as long as they didn’t change anything other than installing a pull-up rig.

Out of options, the two friends decided to move into a location that was much larger than they had planned, knowing they had six months to prove themselves before the rent increased. 

“And then six months later, we had about 150 people as members,” Jared said, “and the landlord said, ‘This is a real business.’ So we took that into a five year lease.” 

The gym continued to grow, relocating three times to bigger spaces as their membership increased. They sent a team to the CrossFit Games in 2014 and by 2018 were generating $1 million in revenue. 

By 2021 they’d expanded and were operating a yoga program, boot camp classes, nutrition coaching, and longevity classes for older members. With so many choices, they realized people didn’t often realize all the programs were part of the same business, so to create more brand synergy they rebranded as Myriad Health + Fitness in 2021.

They quickly encountered a problem. 

“This was still very much the pandemic and the only place people were getting their content information was via online, and the website was getting lost quickly,” Jared said. 

When they migrated to a new website their search engine optimization (SEO) was destroyed, so people couldn’t find them when searching online. To make matters worse, the Google reviews of CrossFit NapTown and the yoga studio were transposed, which took months to resolve. In the midst of that stress and confusion, Peter and his family moved to Alabama, selling his half of the business to Jared. 

“It was eight to 12 months of living in purgatory essentially from a marketing SEO perspective,” Jared said. 

“There was a giant reset button and we had to kind of just put our heads down. It's like we gotta produce content, we gotta get our name out there, we gotta tell people who we are,” he said. 

Fixing the Problems and Finding Success

Although it was stressful, the experience of building up the gym’s online presence ended up being a blessing in disguise for Jared and his team.

He hired a new website provider to redesign the Myriad Health + Fitness website and used a customer relationship management software to nurture leads. The investment paid off. 

Now, in 2024, Jared said they have more leads than ever before. After the rebrand, they were getting about 10 to 20 leads a month, and now they are up to about 80 to 100 new leads a month.

“I do attribute that to some of the SEO work we've been doing and just putting our name out there,” Jared said.

Once they sorted out their website and began bringing in more leads, Jared and his team truly began to see the value of offering a variety of fitness options under the Myriad Health + Fitness name. 

Members can choose a membership level that includes CrossFit, boot camp, and yoga, or choose to just pay for yoga, or only boot camp. Offering these options is part of Jared’s goal to be part of the customer’s lifecycle — meaning that if a person decides they’d like to take a break from CrossFit, they can still remain a member of Myriad Health + Fitness and choose a different membership option. 

While painful in the short term, the rebrand allowed Jared to position his gym as a destination for all things health and fitness in his community. 

Regular Content is Key

Another way Jared built back his online presence — and positioned himself as an expert in his community — is through his blog and YouTube videos. Every week, Jared releases a 10-minute video segment called “For Time With Myriad.” 

The main goal is to connect with their community and their members, Jared said. 

“But also hopefully getting some of that out to Indianapolis as a whole,” he said. “That has helped us from an SEO perspective, it's helped greatly for marketing our website.”

As anyone who has started a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel knows, however, the biggest challenge is staying consistent. It’s easy to let the day-to-day responsibilities take over and push this type of content creation to the side. 

For Jared, the secret is building out standard operating procedures (SOPs), even when he’s the one doing the work. 

“The one thing I didn't realize is even though we're just doing a quick 10-minute segment on YouTube, there's so many small things that have to be done in order to optimize it,” he said.

This 10-minute segment takes him about 40 minutes to publish, because he pushes it to their website and also creates segments for social media. To make it as easy as possible for himself, Jared created a checklist for this content. Every time he does an episode of “For Time With Myriad,” he pulls up his checklist. 

“That way I work myself through the details. Otherwise I will miss something each week that I don't want to miss,” he said. 

For anyone looking to start creating content, or who has a defunct blog or podcast they’d like to revive, Jared recommends creating systems and processes, even if you’re the one doing all the work. 

Plans for the Future

In the 13 years he’s owned his gym, Jared has weathered his share of storms, including owning a gym during the pandemic and losing his business partner.

Along the way he put a leadership team in place so all the responsibility doesn’t fall on him, and so his employees and team members feel a sense of pride and are committed to the gym’s success.

As he looks to the future, Jared hopes that one day he can step aside from the day-to-day operations and even ownership, becoming a member of his own gym.

“I’d love to create this as a legacy business where it's always available for my children, our family,” Jared said.

About Author, Hilary Achauer

Hilary is a renowned fitness business writer, marketing content writer, and journalist. She’s written content for start-ups, entrepreneurs, executive coaches, wellness providers, gyms, and CrossFit. Her focus is always on telling the best story with a clear, compelling style and being able to engage readers, bring in new customers, or build an audience.