Joe Strada has racked up millions of views, a couple of genuinely viral hits and, more importantly, real gym leads and members from social media.
He’s the owner of Unleash’d Strength in Manassas Park, Virginia and winner of the 2026 Two-Brain Business Gym of the Year award. He also happens to be one of the best founder-led content creators in the industry.
We sat down with Joe to break down eight pieces of his best-performing content. Here’s what worked, why it worked and how you can adapt each idea for your own gym.
1. Trend-Hop, But Make It Yours
Joe’s first viral hit was a gym-injury bit built on a TikTok trend: a weird sound effect, a weird filter, a guy bumping his knee on a squat rack. It took five minutes to make and pulled in his first million-view video.
The lesson: You don’t need an original idea. Just spot a trend that’s already working and adapt it to your gym in minutes.
2. If It Works, Run It Again
Joe filmed a video of himself “failing” a heavy squat rep, then re-racking it as everyone in the background reacted in disappointment. It hit 5.2 million views. So he did the same bit with a bench press (1 million views) and a front squat-to-clean (800,000 views).
“If you’ve got something that works, do it again, again, again, again,” Joe said.
Most people watching your content the first time barely register it. Nobody is keeping score. A format that worked once will almost always work again with a different lift, a different member or a different angle.
3. Teach Something
Not every post needs to be a joke. Joe also posts quick value content: mythbusting things like whether a lifting belt is mandatory or whether protein timing actually matters. These clips are fast to film and immediately position him as a coach worth trusting, not just a guy who’s funny on the internet.
4. Get Your Members Involved in the Silly Stuff
Joe’s “trash bag” bit—and plenty of his other skits—work because his members show up to be part of them. Some are regulars in his videos and genuinely ask to be included.
“There’s almost a bit of an expectation now that we’re going to make silly videos,” Joe said. Members send him ideas. They ask when the next one is coming. That’s brand-building you can’t buy.
5. Turn Interviews Into a Game
After a powerlifting meet at his gym, Joe interviewed members on camera, then swapped in absurd questions over their straight-faced answers—things like “What’s the hardest part about sports betting?” paired with serious, on-topic responses. He checked with everyone beforehand, and they were thrilled to play along.
It’s a simple format: Collect interview clips, then have fun with the questions in the edit. The members who appear will share it, and their friends (who are prospects) will see it too.
6. Use AI to Make a Silly Idea Land
Joe used the free version of ChatGPT to generate an image of himself surrounded by enough gerbils to match the weight of a personal record, riffing on a viral “follower count visualized” trend. It didn’t drive followers directly, but it’s a great example of how a free AI tool can take a simple idea and make it visually shareable with almost no editing skill required.
One caution from Joe: He once asked AI to brighten a photo of his family after a Murph workout, and the tool distorted his daughter’s face into something unrecognizable, prompting concerned messages before he caught it. Always double-check any AI edit involving real people before you post it.
7. Show Off What Makes You Different
This is the post Joe calls one of his best: a carousel walking through quirky, specific details of his gym—including 10+ squat racks, mystery items in the chalk bowl, his mom deadlifting, a 6-foot-5 powerlifter who’ll stop mid-set to help a nervous new member.
It wasn’t his most-viewed post, but it was his most-followed: roughly 200 new followers, dozens of saves and comments. Unlike his purely viral content, this one was built to convert, painting a specific picture of the gym so the right person sees it and thinks, “That’s exactly what I want.”
8. Tell Your Story in a Template
Joe’s pinned post is a founder story narrated by his wife: how he left an engineering career, how they collected equipment piece by piece for three years before opening, how community carried them through COVID and the hard years since.
He built it by finding a video he loved from another small business, pulling the transcript and feeding it into an AI tool with a simple prompt: “Ask me questions so I can fill in the blanks and write a version of this for my gym.” He then had his wife record the script and stitched it together with years of old gym photos and clips.
The takeaway: You don’t have to invent a format from scratch. Find a story structure that already works, then fill it in with your own facts, your own footage and your own voice.
The Bigger Lesson
Joe’s biggest piece of advice for content: Decide what you’re actually trying to do before you hit record.
“Are you trying to get a gazillion followers, or are you just trying to grow your gym?”
Some of Joe’s highest-view content, like the squat-fail series, brought almost no new followers. Meanwhile, his gym-features carousel brought modest views but real follower growth and genuine interest from local prospects.
Pick a lane for each piece of content: top-of-funnel attention, mid-funnel trust-building or bottom-of-funnel conversion.
Then build a backlog of ideas (Joe keeps a running folder), curate your own feed so the algorithm feeds you useful inspiration and start posting.
If you want help turning your content into actual leads and members, book a call with a Two-Brain mentor today.
