How a Climbing Gym CEO Uses Gemini to Reach New Heights with Their Rapidly Growing Business

It's kind of wild to think about where Momentum Indoor Climbing started compared to where we are now. We were founded in 2006 by a group of friends, true original American rock climbers who discovered and put up many routes here in Utah. They were out climbing one day and thought, "how cool would it be to bring an indoor climbing gym to Utah?" So they got together, raised some money, and opened our first location.

For eight years, it was just that one gym. But then, in 2017, we branched out into Houston, and we’ve been rolling ever since. Now we're on track to have 11 locations by the end of next year. We're a growing company. And when you're growing like this, you quickly learn you can’t afford to waste time. You have to use every tool at your disposal to maximize productivity and efficiency.

One of the biggest tools we’ve leaned into is Gemini. It's really important for our whole team to stay connected, making sure that our customer experience, our products, our process, and our policies—which are evolving as we grow—are all consistent. That's a lot of meetings.

As we expand, training becomes even more critical, too. We’re undergoing a pretty big effort to streamline all our training processes, and Gemini has been incredibly useful in building these training documents. Everything has always lived within Google Workspace for us, so we can input what we have, and Gemini in Workspace helps us create more robust and structured training policies to ensure we have a consistent learning experience across all our locations.

For instance, climbing is exploding now, particularly in the US, and when we’re looking at new markets, assessing potential sites, Gemini gives us really useful information, including demographics, that helps us understand the community we’re looking to join.

We did explore other AI options, but the integration with Google Workspace is what makes Gemini so effective for us.

Google Workspace is core to our operations, and Gemini just fits seamlessly into that ecosystem. It's not an add-on; it's integrated into the tools we use every day.

We rolled it out systematically, first with folks at our headquarters and then with our managers. Our coaches love it, too. We have a very robust youth program for ages three to 18, and Gemini has been great for them to not only edit and format lesson plans but to find suggestions for games and activities. It brings another level of professionalism to their lesson plans and streamlines their process, which is important because a lot of our coaches have multiple jobs. This allows them to focus on what they love, which is teaching climbing.

We’re a small team, and we all wear multiple hats. Because of that, we rely heavily on our tools and resources. A lot of us are learning as we go and taking on new projects and challenges and Gemini has helped us succeed as we navigate this growth period. Now we’re ready for whatever comes next.