COVER STORY

Body Fit Training is all about function.

Here Cameron talks about discovering a big gap in the fitness marketplace and why being fair is the foundation of the franchise.

INSIDE FRANCHISE BUSINESS: First up Cameron, congratulations on winning the Fit Summit APAC franchise of the year award for 2021!

Cameron: Thanks, everyone is excited. It reflects the growth of the business, franchise sales and membership growth, financial performance.

When I founded the business and set up four test pilot studios, I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons. The traction and feedback across four sites in 18 months validated my thinking and research.

Then I met Richard Burnet and Hamish McLachlan – Hamish is a silent investor, Richard has a sales and marketing background.

Business owners can wear a lot of hats but we can do ourselves an injustice if we stretch too thin. I had the opportunity to get complementary skill sets to partner and grow something with people who share my vision.

I’ve spent most of my life working in soccer and AFL, in high-performance management. I stepped away and moved back to Melbourne and started to think how I could utilise my skill set without getting into sport. It’s very physically demanding and time consuming, and job security is not the best.

I started to explore ways to put what I have learned in almost 30 years into business.

Group fitness was trending so I researched it and felt there was a big gap for a more well-rounded approach – genuine strength training in addition to cardio and alternative preventative programs. Also a progressive method of training.

For elite athletes all programs progress over a period of time. I didn’t see that happening anywhere in fitness.

If the best athletes train this way why not use this methodology in the commercial space for weekend warriors? It leads to better, long-lasting results and fewer injuries.

We learned some lessons around the space of the studio – making sure we had the right space, commercial viability, how many members we needed and some tweaks to programming. Learning that this is how you would do it in an elite environment but it won’t resonate in a commercial space.

IFB: What’s the specific appeal for gym users?

Cameron: The target market is early 20s to mid 40s. A lot of people go to group training for high intensity aerobic exercise and a high percentage have secondary memberships, they utilise a 24-hour gym for weights. We do all of that. We have Olympic lifting equipment, cardio, lower intensity days for rehab exercises; it’s got a broader appeal. We have 4.7 weekly visits across our member database, that’s double the industry average.

IFB: It’s hard to grow the fitness market and bring in new customers to the sector, most users will rotate between brands. How does this compare to your experience with Body Fit?

Cameron: We have three buckets – training, community and cyclical gym users.

Our base is training and conditioning. The industry is driven by fads, but strength training is always a staple, it never leaves the annual reports trends. Our model is built off strength training and that underpins most human pursuits, it’s beneficial to lifestyle.

Our franchises are good on communities. The sense of community, attachment to staff and feeling part of something is really big in our model.

In addition to community and the progressive strength element, we have the cyclical gym users. If we can capture them and make them feel part of the community and help them get results, that’s great.

IFB: Why does the business model attract potential franchisees?

Cameron: It is low cost, high yield and 153 members is the average member opening number for 2021. Depending on the site rent (different for each site) studios most likely will be profitable from day one with that number.

We’ve just won the APAC award, against some strong international competition.

More than anything franchisees can attest we invest in our people. We have three pillars: members, franchisees, franchisor. If we don’t invest in franchisees and staff to deliver, members don’t have a great experience. If we do our job looking after franchisees, they look after customers.

IFB: What have been the challenges to growing the business so quickly and how have you overcome them?

Cameron: The business started in mid

2016 under another brand, then we began franchising in April 2018. Now we have 250 units sold and 107 open.

It’s been a validation of the model, taking time to learn the lessons and not rush it. There’s so much to franchising, what really set us up was the test sites. We spent seven months working hard to get the back end of the business in order. We researched models and talked to other franchisees to understand their pain points. We asked ourselves, what do we want to stand for? We decided that if anyone said anything about us as franchisors, we would want it to be that we are fair.

There are decisions we will make that won’t appeal to everyone, but as long as we can articulate what we are doing and why, and it’s fair, franchisees are more likely to be wedded to the brand.

We are evolving the look/feel of our branding – after three years in the market we believe it’s time to transition from Body Fit Training to just “BFT”, so you will see this shift across digital and in-studio. We’ve made some great decisions about equipment, picking partners who are aligned from a values perspective.

Those decisions took time. Before we sold one franchise, we did a stress-test, took a considered approach, and that allowed us the platform to launch from. We worked with law firm MinterEllison, which was enormously beneficial. Ultimately the feedback from the many franchisees’ lawyers we’ve dealt with, is that this is a pretty fair contract, so we

start off on the right note.

We actually got shut down on March 23, we stood staff down for seven days then put them back on, did a pulse check of the business. We decided we would make it out the other side, and to use the opportunity to work on everything we usually didn’t have time to. We’ve got 16 head office staff now, and some full-time outsourced contractors. We’re about to expand again with five key positions.

We’re looking for a head of sales in the US, and a New Zealand appointment. In New Zealand we have six outlets open, strong sales, and it’s been managed from here.

The US is a huge opportunity. Our Santa Monica studio has been open about 18 months, it’s partly company owned and partly owned by the studio manager.The studio itself was closed during Covid but we operated outside and doubled the membership. People understand the model better there, in the US sports conditioning is ingrained through schools and colleges.

We’ve also got a Fort Lauderdale studio, open seven months, and this is fully franchised.

There are three studios sold in Canada, and we’re talking to a group in the UK about individual franchises. We haven’t felt the need to master franchise – there is a lot of risk in setting it up right now.

What we do that resonates with franchisees is our technology. Having worked with athletes we have worked with some of the best technology. So much is available for consumers but do they have the ability to understand and interpret and use it to help their training? I’ve been able to bring in tech and make it meaningful so trainers can personalise and improve member outcomes.

We don’t introduce loads of tech, we introduce what will have a positive outcome. We want the information to be valid and reliable.

I’ve also tried to bring in an elite mindset, challenging the belief that every day’s training should be different because that challenges your body. It’s not true, otherwise elite athletes would do it. They learn, they refine the skills. At a basic level, it’s hard to be motivated and see a difference if the training keeps changing.

One of the other gaps in the market is in training. We invest heavily in franchisees and their trainers, educate on what they are teaching and why, and how to deliver at a very high standard.

There are a lot of really great trainers out there but on average they last under 10 months. We have an opportunity to help provide a solution to that.

We have a mix of owner-operators and investors (55/45), and owner-operators need to be trainers with a minimum Cert IV to be on the gym floor and be head trainer.

Four to five trainers are employed in a gym. We have a thorough onboarding process, and every 13 weeks we visit sites and deliver ongoing education and training. We’ve also partnered with best-in-class organisations like StrongFirst: School of Strength and Functional Training.