Inc. Magazine: How Crossfit Became the New Power Lunch

Two-hour leisurely lunches are over. Today, sweat networking reigns as the power move for hard-charging entrepreneurs.

When Paul L. Gunn met Dave Chatterjee, his future business partner, in 2022, they weren’t rubbing elbows at a conference or standing in line for drinks at a tech meet-up. The former neighbors reconnected at their local gym.

As the two started working out together at Life Time Fitness in the Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek, they talked of their families and pastimes. Work came up, too. Gunn, 45, is the founder and CEO of Kuog Corporation, a logistics company that contracts with the defense industry, while Chatterjee, 60, is a cybersecurity expert, as well as a professor, podcaster, and author. Eventually, as the conversations continued and other chance encounters were turned into deliberate meetings, work ceased being only a peripheral topic–so much so that when Gunn recently landed a nine-year, $975 million contract from the Air Force’s Rapid Sustainment Office, he says, he began planning to bring in his gym buddy as a subcontractor to the deal.

Chatterjee’s sweat networking skills paid off in other ways, too. But that’s not the only business deal Chatterjee is juggling from contacts he made while working out. The professor ran into a former student at the gym who asked him to share his cybersecurity expertise with his insurance company, where he is a senior executive. Separately, a fellow player at Ultimate Tennis is talking to Chatterjee about joining a company board to share his cybersecurity expertise. And he credits a fitness instructor’s regular check ins about his book writing to help him finish and publish Cybersecurity Readiness: A Holistic and High Performance Approach in 2021. Finding business leads through exercise has been so productive that it’s become the primary way Chatterjee has been connecting with executives.

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