We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Gundert. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.
Daniel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
People often look at North County Gymnastics & The Gyminny Kids today and assume it was an overnight success. In reality, my “overnight success” took more than twenty years. I started as a part-time coach, making barely enough to survive, flipping garage-sale items on Craigslist just to put food on the table. During expansion years, I worked 80–100 hours a week, coached full-time, built teams, drove Uber, and reinvested every extra dollar back into the business. Nothing about scaling was glamorous; it was hard, gritty, and unfiltered work.
The turning point came when I realized that if I wanted to grow, I couldn’t keep doing everything myself. I had to stop working in the business and start working on it. That meant systemizing everything, building a leadership team, and trusting people to rise through our pipeline. I replaced chaos with processes: Trainual for SOPs, EOS for structure, and a culture of accountability and emotional discipline. Once we had systems, we could duplicate excellence. We went from one location to five locations from 2022 to 2025, and we are still growing.
Another big part of scaling was learning to take calculated risks even when my back was against the wall. During our Carlsbad and La Costa expansions, we opened two new locations faster than our brand recognition grew. We struggled hard. I took out a second mortgage on my home to keep cash flow alive. But we didn’t retreat. We doubled down on community marketing, coaching quality, and leadership development. Within a year, both locations were profitable and are now some of our highest-performing gyms.
Scaling wasn’t a straight line. It was built on mistakes, humility, second chances, and sheer persistence. But the strategy never changed: hire slowly, develop leaders, stay disciplined, ignore the scoreboard, and do the work at the highest level. That’s how we went from a single location to becoming the largest and highest-rated gymnastics program in San Diego, serving over 6000 students weekly, and we are a two-time Inc5000 honoree.
Daniel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Daniel Gundert, and I’m the owner and CEO of North County Gymnastics & The Gyminny Kids, San Diego’s premier gymnastics program for more than 37 years. My journey into this industry didn’t start in a boardroom. It started as a 14-year-old coach who fell in love with teaching kids, long before I ever imagined owning a business. Gymnastics was the first place in my life where I felt confident, and over time, it became the place where I learned to lead, teach, and eventually build a purpose-driven organization that does great things for kids and the community.
I bought Gyminny Kids in 2021 after spending decades in the trenches: coaching full-time, running birthday parties, opening the gym at dawn, closing late at night, flipping garage-sale items to make ends meet, and slowly learning every position in the building. When the founders offered me the chance to buy the company, I was a recovering addict rebuilding my life one day at a time. They believed in me before I believed in myself, and that gift of opportunity shaped everything that Gyminny Kids is today.
Today, our family-owned business operates multiple locations across San Diego, including 4S Ranch, Poway, La Costa, Carlsbad, and La Jolla (UTC), serves thousands of families each week, and employs over 100 people. We specialize in recreational gymnastics, preschool programs, competitive boys’ and girls’ teams, camps, open gyms, tumbling, ninja, and birthday parties. But what truly sets us apart is our culture. We teach more than gymnastics; we teach character, confidence, resilience, discipline, and the life skills kids need outside the gym. Our curriculum includes themes, leadership lessons, emotional development, and an environment where kids feel seen and celebrated.
Our mission is simple: Fun & Fitness and building character through sport. I’m proud that Gyminny Kids is known for having the most qualified coaches, the cleanest facilities, and the best safety reputation in San Diego. I’m even more proud that we’ve built a company where many of our coaches have worked for 10, 20, even 30+ years. In fact, we have three employees who have been with the company for 30 years or more.
What I’m most proud of, personally, is that my life and my business are now aligned around service. I donate half my real estate commissions (I am also a San Diego real estate agent) to children’s nonprofits. We hosted the annual Coaches Cup fundraiser (raising over $150,000 for Rady Children’s Hospital), and we’re doubling down on community outreach as we expand, as we are very involved in giving back and supporting the local schools.
My brand, including my best-selling memoir “Baby Gorilla, Addiction, Redemption, and the Road From Rock Bottom To An Eight-figure Legacy,” is built on one core belief: that there’s great strength in pain, and your hardest moments can become the foundation for the greatest impact in life. Gyminny Kids exists because of second chances, belief, grit, and the idea that serving others is the only real path to fulfillment.
The book can be found here: danielgundert.com
Gyminny Kids can be found here: gyminnykids.com
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
The most defining moment of resilience in my life is the story behind the title of my book, Baby Gorilla. In 2020, during COVID, everything in my life felt like it was collapsing at once. Gyminny Kids, the business I had spent decades building, was forced to shut down for months. Overnight, our revenue went to close to zero. We didn’t know if we’d survive. And when we finally reopened, we had to rebuild the entire company from the ground up: rehire, retrain, regain trust, re-earn every single client, and restart a business that had once been thriving. It was like opening from scratch, except this time with overwhelming fear, and the weight of hundreds of families depending on us.
At the same time, I was fighting one of the darkest battles of my personal life.The stress and fear of losing everything pushed me into a severe relapse. I disappeared for several days. When I finally came home, I was physically sick, emotionally empty, and ashamed. I left my clothes at the front door because the smell of alcohol and sweat was overwhelming. I collapsed face-down on the carpet, completely broken.
My young daughter, Finley, dressed in her pink princess jammies, walked in and found me like that. Instead of yelling or crying, she asked softly, “Why didn’t my baby gorilla put me to bed as you promised?” Baby gorilla was our nickname for each other. Hearing that shattered me. I couldn’t say “I’m sorry” because the words had lost their meaning. I couldn’t say “I love you” because I didn’t want her to connect love with disappointment. So I just stayed there, and we cried together on the carpet.
That moment became the turning point of my life. It forced me to rebuild everything, myself, my family’s trust, and the business that had been my life’s work. I went back to my recovery group, recommitted fully to sobriety, and rebuilt Gyminny Kids with the same discipline I used to rebuild myself: one day at a time.
Any advice for managing a team?
The most important advice I can give about managing a team and maintaining high morale is to build a culture that is lived, not laminated. At Gyminny Kids, our core values are deeply woven into every layer of our organization. They drive our hiring decisions, staff training, mentorship, performance reviews, and day-to-day operations. Because every system is digitized in Trainual, we ensure all locations run with the same clarity and standards, and everyone knows what success in their role looks like.
Our core values are the heart of our culture:
• Fun and fitness
• Teach character through sport
• Raise well-rounded children
• Be creative and a little weird
• Serve and give back
• Embrace change
• Diversity and inclusion
When your team is aligned with values like these, morale becomes part of the company’s DNA.
Another foundational piece of our leadership philosophy is “freedom within framework.” We give our staff a clear structure, the right tools, and strong systems, but we do not micromanage. This approach creates trust, encourages creativity, and allows coaches and leaders to take ownership of their roles. People thrive when they feel empowered, not policed.
We also take care of our team in tangible ways. Gyminny Kids offers higher-than-average pay, 100% employer-paid medical benefits, paid vacation time, bonuses, birthday gifts, holiday parties, and two scheduled raises in the first year. Every new hire is paired with a mentor to help them feel supported and confident. And we provide free staff food, snacks, drinks, and fuel throughout the day in the staff room, because well-fed people are happier, more energized, and feel valued.
Most importantly, we operate under a “got your back” culture rather than a “watch your back” one. Too many workplaces are built on fear, gossip, and passive-aggressive communication. We build ours on support, transparency, emotional discipline, and kindness. When your team feels safe and genuinely cared for, morale doesn’t need to be forced; it becomes the natural byproduct of the environment.
High morale results from intentional leadership, clear values, empowerment, and genuine care. When you invest in your people, they rise with you, and they help pull the entire mission forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: gyminnykids.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gyminnykids/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gyminnykids/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/north-county-gymnastics-&-the-gyminny-kids/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/gyminnykids
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/gyminny-kids-la-costa-carlsbad
- Other: My personal author website is danielgundert.com
