The Parallels Between Business and Fitness: A Strategic Approach to Your Fitness Success

Mar 26

written by Dave Chen

For the past 15+ years, I’ve worked at and held leadership positions in various companies—from massive 100,000-person international conglomerates to 300-person tech startups. During those same years, I’ve also worked diligently to maintain a successful fitness routine, even after becoming a parent of two.

Looking at these aspects of my experience, I’ve come to realize that the principles of success in business and fitness are strikingly similar. Whether you're working to grow a business or looking to transform your physique, I firmly believe the path to success follows the same five steps:

Set a clear and specific goal
Map out a concrete plan
Take action and execute
Track and analyze progress
Iterate and adjust

By consistently applying this approach to your fitness journey, you’ll be able to crush your goals — just like successful businesses crush their revenue targets.

The Framework Explained

1. Set a Clear and Specific Goal

In the business world, every company has key objectives they need to hit—whether it’s meeting a revenue target of $500 million a year, increasing a product’s market share to 16%, or growing Monthly Active Users (MAUs) to 75,000. These goals, often termed OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) in the business world, are defined to ensure progress is measurable and actionable.

Fitness operates on the same principle. If you don’t define what success looks like for you—whether that’s losing 15 pounds, squatting twice your body weight, or completing a half marathon—you won’t have a clear target to strive toward. Saying, “I want to get in shape” is as vague as a company saying, “We want to grow.” You need a specific, measurable target to aim for.

I’ll quickly mention here that all good goals need to be time-bound—you must define when you want to achieve them. Goals without a timeline are just hopes and dreams. So, using one of the examples above, “Completing a half marathon by the end of June” is a much better articulation of that same goal. I’ll dive deeper in a later post on how to apply the SMART goal-setting framework to your fitness goals.

2. Map Out a Concrete Plan

Once goals are set, businesses do more than just try to wing it—they create coherent strategies, concrete roadmaps, and tangible execution plans to pursue those goals. Companies, both large and small, go to incredible lengths during this planning process in hopes of achieving their OKRs. I’ve worked at companies where the planning process would start a full year in advance of actual execution. Key people at all levels of the organization come together to lay out product roadmaps, research and development schedules, marketing and sales campaigns, and more—all of which ladder up to a goal-oriented plan.

When it comes to achieving your fitness goals, you need a similar level of planning. I’m not saying you need to map out a full year of what you’re going to do, but you do need to think through and put pen to paper on how you’ll achieve your goals. For instance, if your goal is fat loss, will you use a combination of strength training and cardio? How many sessions of each will you do per week? Will you track your macros and maintain a caloric deficit? If muscle gain is the target, how will your progressive overload and nutrition strategy support that?

This might feel overwhelming, but mapping out a plan allows you to get all your thoughts down and identify questions you should seek answers to. It helps you take a thoughtful approach rather than a scattered one. Just like in business, success in fitness isn’t about doing random things and seeing what sticks—it’s about executing a targeted plan.

3. Take Action and Execute

Speaking of execution, goals and plans are useless without tangible action. Imagine you work at a startup, and your leadership team comes up with the perfect product roadmap. Now imagine that roadmap just sits on a shelf, with no one doing anything about it. Without designers creating design specs, engineers writing code, and product managers collaborating with cross-functional teams to ship the actual product, it’s nothing more than a document filled with words and charts.

The same applies to fitness goals—you can have the most comprehensive training program and the most detailed meal plan, but if you’re skipping workouts and ignoring your diet, progress won’t happen.

I’ve seen this firsthand—both in companies that stagnate because they fail to act (or fail to act in a timely manner) and in gym-goers who show up sporadically yet expect results. Hopes and dreams won’t help you achieve your goals. Execution is the difference-maker. You have to put in the work—consistently.

4. Track and Analyze Progress

Great — now you’ve set things in motion, and the rubber is hitting the road. But how do you know if it’s working? If you’ve worked at companies obsessed with reporting, you already know the answer to this question. Many successful companies don’t just blindly execute tasks and hope their actions grow the bottom line. Instead, they implement rigorous systems to monitor, track, and analyze the goals they set in Step 1 of this framework.

Tracking and analyzing your progress is just as crucial in your fitness journey. If your goal is to lose 15 lbs in three months, you’ll want to track your calorie intake and monitor your weight trends. If your goal is to squat 225 lbs by the end of May, you’ll need to log your workouts and regularly test your squat to ensure you’re on track. If your goal is to transform your physique, taking progress photos regularly will help you see changes over time.

Without data, you’re just guessing. Tracking and analyzing progress ensures you’re monitoring your results and staying aligned with your goal. Remember—data drives decision-making.

5. Iterate and Adjust

No company creates the perfect plan or executes a strategy flawlessly from the start. Even with rigorous planning, most plans are developed with at most 70–80% confidence. The key is to start as soon as there’s a solid plan in place, then adjust and pivot as needed based on the performance data tracked and analyzed in Step 4.

The same concept applies to your fitness journey. If your fat loss stalls, maybe you need to lower your calorie intake or increase your caloric deficit by adding more cardio. If you hit a plateau in strength training, maybe you need to adjust your programming or recovery strategy. Your plan is never static—it evolves based on results. There’s a saying in the business world: iterate until great.

Applying the Framework

Let me show you an example of how I’m applying the framework to my 2025 physique-oriented goal.

GOAL:

Reach 8 to 12% body fat by summer while maintaining lean muscle mass.

PLAN:

For my workouts, I’m strength training four times per week (Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri) to maintain and build muscle. Twice a week (Weds/Sat), I’m doing a short 30-minute cardio session to create a slight caloric deficit and improve cardiovascular health. Sunday is my rest day.

For my diet, I’m starting with a daily intake of 2,220 calories, tracking against 195P | 60F | 225C.

I’ll be taking progress photos weekly and weighing myself 4–5 times per week.

EXECUTION:

I’m running a variation of Jeff Nippard’s Upper Lower Size and Strength program. Strength training four times a week for 60–90 minutes per session fits seamlessly into my busy schedule while giving me the right amount of challenge and plenty of time to progressively overload my lifts.

For diet, I’m using the MacroFactor app to log and track my food intake, ensuring I hit my macro goals.

(I swear this isn’t a sponsored blog for all things Jeff Nippard—as if he even needs my sponsorship. I’m just a huge fan of his content and the app.😂)

TRACKING:

I use several apps to track my diet, workouts, and body fat. Screenshots and links below (again, none of this is sponsored).

ADJUSTMENT:

I’ll be closely monitoring my progress in the gym and on the scale, and make the necessary adjustments.

Final Thoughts

The key to success — whether in business or fitness — isn’t luck or motivation; it’s a structured approach that involves clear goal-setting, strategic planning, disciplined execution, data-driven tracking, and continuous refinement. Having spent years in both the business world and the gym, I can confidently say that the mindset required to grow a business is the same mindset required to achieve fitness success. Apply this simple yet effective framework consistently to your fitness goals, and you will see real results.

#LFG.

Dave Chen