Dynamic duo of fitness

Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy: “If someone said ‘give control of your business to someone else or shoot me’, I’d rather get shot . . . it was never our goal”

COMPANY

Max Fitness

FOUNDERS

Kerry McEvoy

Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy

TRACK RECORD

Fast 100:

2005 (ranked 31); 2006 (53)

Young Rich:

Ranked in 2005, 2006 and 2007

From running away from home at the age of 14, to establishing a multimillion- dollar Queensland fitness business, losing it and re-building it all over again – Rowena Szeszeran-McEvoy says she would not change a thing. Except perhaps, giving away her two Ferraris.

Szeszeran-McEvoy and her husband Kerry McEvoy came to prominence in 2005 when their business, the Queensland arm of the Australian Institute of Fitness, was ranked 31 on BRW’s Fast 100 list. The following year the business was ranked number 53 with turnover of $10.1 million. The couple were also fixtures on the Young Rich from 2005 until 2007.

McEvoy had built his personal training education business, Sports Elite, from scratch in the late 1980s, establishing a name for himself in the Queensland fitness industry.

Almost a decade later when West Australian fitness club owner Russell Creagh approached the pair with the plan of developing a national body, the Australian Institute of Fitness, they jumped at the idea.

The concept was intended to give members from each state marketing, bargaining and purchasing power with suppliers.

“We all gathered in the Qantas Club lounge at Sydney airport in about 2000 and decided to come together as a group,” Szeszeran-McEvoy says.

“We were a very unusual group. It wasn’t franchising or licensing – it was five individual businesses under one logo.”

Part of Szeszeran-McEvoy’s strategy to keep staff motivated has been to give away designer clothes and luxury holidays and eventually the couple’s matching his and her Ferraris – complete with the number plates “Be Funny” and “Be Happy”.

However, today she believes in rewarding with pats rather than expensive gifts.

“If there’s one thing in business I would do differently it would be the cars. I am not sorry I did but we gave those cars to people who might not have deserved them,” she says.

“Unless you go into a prestige dealership and spend the money yourself, you have no understanding of what it takes to earn it. I gave my blue Ferrari away and every time I saw it driving around after that I was dirty.

“We got back the numberplates though!”

The unravelling of the couple’s relationship with the AIF came in 2008. A lack of structure within the group led its directors to appoint a chief executive.

However, things got difficult when the group decided on an initial public offering, which was never a priority for the McEvoys.

“When you have five separate businesses, to get everyone to do the same thing is very complicated,” she says. “There’s no franchise agreement. There were no rules and regulations – just [the understanding to] be the best we could be.

“If someone said ‘give control of your business to someone else or shoot me’, I’d rather get shot . . . it was never our goal.”

Rather than comply with the new rules, the McEvoys carried on their own business how they wanted to and eventually were given the ultimatum: comply or leave the group. They chose the latter.

The end came in the form of a hostile takeover and the McEvoys claim they received no financial remuneration for their business.

They did, however, retain some clients through a lifetime education contract they had brokered while under the AIF banner.

Immediately after parting ways with the AIF, the couple – who live in New Zealand for part of the year – began building their new business, Max Fitness. The college teaches students how to run their own fitness businesses in addition to becoming personal trainers.

Max, which already has turnover in the double-digit millions, has colleges in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Christchurch and Auckland and focuses on the franchise industry.

“If you want to become a personal trainer and teach a few classes, that’s a completely different mind-set to someone who is spending $500,000 on a franchise,” she says. “It’s a completely different proposition.”

While the company is doing well, Szeszeran-McEvoy admits the past two years have been more difficult. The couple lost more than $1 million in the collapse of plantation company Great Southern and other personal investments during the global financial crisis.

“We have been through some tough stuff. Really horrible, ugly stuff and we have laughed every day. A couple of times we have shrugged our shoulders and said, ‘wow, that was interesting’ – but what can you do?

“Starting a business a second time around, you can really test your success,” Szeszeran-McEvoy says of Max. “You think, ‘I’ve done this once before’, but was it luck? I guess we will find out.”

BRW

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