How this creator pivoted and scaled his business after overcoming personal loss

When I meet Dan Go on Zoom, I almost expect to see workout equipment behind him. Instead, all I see are rows of books. “I think it’s critical for a creator,” Dan explains, “to have a habit of reading. You can’t really create from nothing. You have to create from some form of intake.”

Behind him, the books range from The Alchemist to Glute Lab and show a mix of publications to feed his heart and insatiable appetite for health content. 

Dan didn’t imagine he’d ever be a creator in the fitness space, but he did dream of being a gym teacher when he was a kid, inspired by his teacher. 

He made it fun and made me feel like that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

But then Dan grew up. 

You get older, and you forget about that stuff. 

His career focus became, as he puts it, “to get a stable job and get lots of security.” 

After leaving college (he never really liked school), he got a job in banking. Stable. Secure. Check, check. 

But he worked in collections and started to feel bad about his work. 

It was one of the worst feelings of my life. I was making good money, but I was feeling absolute crap about what I did.

He started to “let himself go” again—something he’d done in high school and college when things got hard, a process by which, physically and emotionally, he would slowly give up.

I started to smoke; I started to binge drink. It was a phase where I was trying to numb.

I didn’t have the gym at the time, so the only way that I knew how to cope was to forget about it through drugs, alcohol, and partying. 

But soon, he would find the gym, which would change his life and turn him into a creator.

“It became the precursor to significant positive changes in my life.” 

One night after partying, Dan came home at 6am, “wasted,” as he puts it, and his dad was in the kitchen getting ready to go to the gym. When he saw Dan walk in, he didn’t say a word. But Dan says he could feel his dad’s disappointment. 

His dad got in the car and went to the gym, something he’d been doing every day lately. 

Dan had never before seen his dad focus on his health like this. 

His dad went so often that he earned a free month-long guest pass. He gave it to Dan’s older brother, who didn’t want it, so he passed it down to Dan, “like all of his clothes,” Dan laughs. 

Dan felt lost and directionless and figured he had nothing to lose. In the worst-case scenario, he’d get out of the house. In the best-case scenario, he might get healthier and feel more confident. 

He started going to the gym every day. 

Two weeks later, in the gym’s locker room, he changed out of his workout clothes to put his regular clothes back on, and he was surprised: his belt went in two notches further than before. 

It was a small change, but a change nonetheless. The kind of change that feels like the opposite of numbing. The kind that feels like growing. 

That’s when, for Dan, the gym became about something more than just getting fit. 

Instead of trying to look good and use the place to make myself look better, it became a sanctuary for me. It became a place where I could be alone in my thoughts. 

He’d been numbing to avoid being alone with his mind, but he realized getting quiet long enough to hear those thoughts wasn’t as scary as he thought. Instead, listening reminded him who he was and what he wanted. 

I know now that exercising creates new brain cells, makes you more energetic, and manages your mood. I didn’t realize then that the gym was changing my brain. It became the precursor to making significant positive changes in my life.

“I don’t like the feeling of being out of control.”

The first change he made was to stop going to clubs and drinking so much. Because once he got quiet and honest with himself, he realized he didn’t even like those things.  

I don’t like being drunk. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control. 

He remembered being in a club once, surrounded by people who were heavily drinking when he was still a little bit sober and thought:

 Man, everyone around me is just so lonely. And I’m lonely too. 

He doesn’t look back on those partying days with shame, knowing he was just trying to protect himself, coping in the only way he knew how.

He doesn’t berate or judge his past self (or anyone else) but instead feels grateful he went through that phase because it led him to something that matters so much to him now. 

For Dan, the gym was the first time something fascinated him enough to want to learn and keep learning about it. He never liked school, but when it came to fitness, he wanted to learn everything, his curiosity insatiable. He’d never experienced that before. 

Whenever he used to have trouble in school, his mom would sit him down at a long wooden table, look him in the eyes, and give him what he calls the “You’re Better Than This Talk.” She would tell him he was capable of more. 

She would never give up on me, even though I wasn’t showing an iota of potential. 

Remembering her belief in him, he kept exploring this new interest, going to the gym, wondering if he could do more, but unsure where to start.

Then he got a call that changed everything. 

“Depressed, crying, self-pitying stage.”

The call was from his dad. He and Dan’s mom were vacationing in Niagara Falls and Dan’s mom experienced a sudden complication from a decades-old lower back surgery and had to be rushed to the hospital. His dad called to let him know she was being prepped for surgery, and they weren’t sure if she was going to make it. 

After the surgery, she was taken to another hospital closer to home, but more complications ensued, including an infection from the previous surgery, and the prognosis wasn’t good. She was in the ICU for six months.

But then, she started to get better. 

After one visit to the ICU, Dan was told that his mom was doing great and was going to finally be moved out of the ICU tomorrow. He said goodbye to his mom and that he’d see her in her new room next time. 

But she got pneumonia the next day and died. 

Dan was devastated. 

She was the most important person in my life. 

Dan grieved deeply for a long time. 

But after a while, in what he calls his “depressed, crying, self-pitying stage,” there was “a little voice” that said, “If you keep going down the path you’re currently on, you know exactly where that’s headed. Or you have a choice. You can use this emotion as energy and fire to fuel you forward.”

Dan would never get over the deep loss of his mother, but he also didn’t want to stop living his life. Instead, he realized the best way to honor her would be to act on the feedback she’d always given him, to try to be what she’d always seen. 

With that in mind, he decided to quit his job in banking and do something he loved: become a personal trainer. 

“Security is in and of itself a risk.”

Everyone thought he was making a huge mistake. 

Why would he leave a secure job in banking to be a personal trainer? 

Dan had quit college and other jobs, so they thought he was just quitting something else once again, not seeing it through.

From the outside, Dan understands what they saw, and he doesn’t blame them. 

But he also knew this was different. 

This time, he wasn’t running away from something; for the first time in his life, he was running towards something. 

He also wasn’t afraid of failure, especially after watching a documentary on Michael Jordan, a DVD he’d stumbled on randomly at a mall shortly after his mom passed away.

From the documentary, he noticed how much Jordan loved practice and how he understood that “losing is part of the game; you can’t win unless you lose.” 

Dan had clung to security and stability out of fear, but after something much worse happened–losing the most important person in his life–he realized those other fears weren’t as scary. 

Now, I know security is in and of itself a risk. I would rather risk doing something I loved rather than being secure doing something I hated.

He knew there were no guarantees he could make a living doing what he loved, but he already knew what hating what he did looked and felt like. He was curious. Curiosity was driving him more than fear now. 

For the first time in his life, he was buying books, and he couldn’t get enough of them. He loved learning about fitness. 

My heart wanted to pursue this, and I knew that if I didn’t do this, I would look back when I was 50 years old and be like, I should have done that.

“It’s rarely about the tactics.”

Dan quit his job in banking and became a personal trainer at a gym, quickly becoming the best personal trainer there. He then started his own personal training business and then opened his own gym. 

He loved what he was doing, but after 11 years of owning what became known as the best gym in Ontario, Dan was ready for a change again. He’s since learned he’s very growth-oriented, but not all growth is satisfying.

To keep growing in what he was doing, the next step on the growth path was franchising. That kind of growth wasn’t interesting to him, but just stopping where he was and not growing wasn’t an option either. Those crossroads are when he knows it’s time to move on. 

Dan sold the gym and leaned further into something he’d been dabbling in (and loving) up to that point: running group fitness coaching sessions for entrepreneurs.

As an entrepreneur, Dan was in a few mastermind groups, and he noticed most of the people in those groups weren’t taking care of their health because they were so busy taking care of their businesses. 

But he knew how being healthy could fuel the other aspects of your life, and he loved these entrepreneurs and wanted to help. 

After some encouragement from a friend, Dan started a group coaching program specifically for entrepreneurs, and the people who signed up started seeing real change. 

Dan’s coaching wasn’t just about fitness routines, rules, or tactics, though. Anyone can find the tactics online, he says. Instead, he infused what he’d learned from the Jordan documentary into his coaching; fitness was mental as much as physical, and he focused on those aspects of training in his new group coaching sessions. 

It’s rarely about the tactics. It’s usually about the stories we tell ourselves behind the behaviors we’re doing.

His coaching worked. 

Clients were getting results, and more clients kept coming. He started a new business.

He wasn’t making the same amount of money when he first owned the gym, but that didn’t matter. Because he felt really good about the work he was doing again. And the creator growth path in front of him was one he wanted to go on. 

Things were going well, and clients kept coming.

But then 2020 happened, and clients started dropping off: they were entrepreneurs, and with so much uncertainty, they cut as many expenses as they could because they were afraid of what would happen to their own businesses. 

Around this time, Dan was also about to have his first child. 

He felt fear, but he wasn’t fearful. 

If there’s anything I know about myself, it’s that even when things happen that are seemingly scary, I thrive in the chaos of uncertainty. 

He knew he couldn’t control what was happening in the world, so instead, he thought about what he could control–and learn. 

He reached out to someone he admired online, Ed Latimore, and hired him to coach him on how to take his marketing online (up to that point, all of Dan’s clients were mostly from in-person and word-of-mouth referrals). Dan needed to broaden his potential client base if his business was going to survive. 

Ed agreed to coach him, and Dan started sharing his content on social media for the first time. He remembers writing his first tweets in April 2020.

People resonated with what he was saying, and he started to get traction right away. He set a goal to get 10,000 followers. He got 5,000 followers in 2 months.

Then I got to 10k, and I was like, okay, cool: keep showing up, keep doing the work. 

There’s this Tony Robbins quote that says when people think they’re successful, they party, and when people think they’re unsuccessful, they ponder. I didn’t want any of those things. 

For me, my mantra when I got to 20k, 50k, all the way up to 100k and beyond was just show up, do the work. That’s the only thing that mattered.

I think if anyone shows up, does the work, and looks for ways to improve along the way, they can pretty much write their ticket to anything.

Dan not only built his client base back up, but his business kept growing beyond that, exceeding even his wildest expectations.

“Every single email that we send out brings in a good amount of income.”

As Dan grew on social media, he also grew his email list. 

He moved to Kit in 2022 after his deliverability with his last provider dipped to 20%.  

After switching, his deliverability grew to 52%, which meant a lot to him because he was reaching the people who wanted to hear from him. Those are the people who become paying clients and keep his business sustainable. 

He also joined the Kit Creator Network, which grew his list by over 41,000 subscribers.

But most of all, he uses Kit to help him turn those subscribers into clients and coaching students, and he does that by focusing on providing high-value content in his weekly emails. 

His mentality is, “This email is free because we’re sponsoring ourselves.” And by that, he means in every single email, they offer free value and then point people toward how they can get even more value by buying one of their coaching programs. 

Because we can sponsor ourselves, we can promote the offers we’re selling on Kit and do so in a very tasteful way. We’re not being spammy or anything like that. Every single email that we send out brings in a good amount of income.

He’s grateful for the sustainability he’s found in his business model today, and he enjoys the growth path and what he calls the “new problems” that come with any new level.

But for him, the numbers are not where he derives his sense of success. Today, he defines success as:

When I like who I am and what I’m doing, and believe in what I’m doing and am doing it in a way that facilitates what matters most to me, which is being with my family. And creating a household full of love: that, to me, is success.

When Dan began his career, all that mattered to him was security. Now, all that matters to him is that what he’s doing has heart. 

This may be a detriment to me, but anything I do has to have heart in it. 

I can monetize and go full force, and we can maybe make a lot more money than we’re making right now, but there has to be a reason why we are monetizing. It’s not just for the monetary gain; it’s for the amount of fulfillment I’m going to get from actually doing this. 

There has to be a heart-centered purpose as to why we are releasing whatever we’re releasing.

Dan feels he can do almost anything now, just like his mom always told him he could.

By being very thoughtful about what he chooses to do with that capability, he honors her by living up to his full potential and making sure he has the time to be there for his kids, just like she was. 

She was the only person in my life who told me I was valuable. She’s the only person who told me if I could put my mind to anything, then I could achieve it. When she passed away, I was completely depressed; I lost the only person that really believed in me.

But if my mom had not brainwashed me into thinking that I could create my own reality by thinking about it and taking action toward it, I don’t think I’d be doing this today.

She instilled this in him with constant repetition, encouraging him, telling him what she saw in him. She would end every long talk of theirs by saying, “You can accomplish anything you set your mind to; you’ve got so much more you can show the world, and I know you have this capability.”

He didn’t always believe her when he was younger. But after he lost her and stepped out and became a creator, he says, “I started to actually believe what she’d been telling me all those years.”

You can connect with Dan on X/Twitter, subscribe to his email list, or learn more at dango.co.