Entrepreneur Tony De Leede
launched a stamp trading
business at the age of 12,
opened a surfboard shop at 16
and ran a fashion business with
his mum before moving into the
fitness industry in 1982.
He talks to Kath Hudson
My biggest life lesson was way back in the beginning, in the early 1980s, when I first got into the fitness industry. It taught me the importance of marketing, promotion, selling and doing things a little differently: putting the sizzle on the steak.
I invested a lot of money in a women-only aerobics club in Atlanta, Georgia. It was 10,000 sq ft with the biggest aerobics room in the city, accommodating more than 100 people.
It had magnificent locker rooms, two whirlpools, the best aerobics teachers brought in from Australia and all our classes were pre-choreographed to give consistency. It was also in a great location. I thought ‘build it and they will come’. Guess what. They didn’t.
We gave free classes for the first 10 days and were packed and then after that we were empty.
Even though it was self-funded, fortunately money wasn’t a problem. I’d already made a lot of money from a family-run fashion business and property investments, so I decided to double down by opening a second club. It was a risk, but I knew the product was good.
I found a site that was a quarter of the size, in a better location and built it for a 10th of the price. We kept the fitout simple and ran consistently good classes. That club had far lower expenses and took off a lot more quickly, but I still needed to do something to promote the first club. So I decided to make a statement.
I was good friends with a nightclub owner who was opening a new club in Atlanta and I approached him to run an aerobics competition, which at that point had never been done in the world. Olivia Newton John had just released the hit song Let’s Get Physical so we held a competition to find Atlanta’s most physical woman. The idea took off.
Brilliance and bullshit I say that if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit, and I’m not sure which one I used, but I managed to convince a car dealership to give me a car as the prize for the winner.
The place was packed, we had to run the competition over two nights and it got a lot of publicity in the press and on TV. It really put us on the map. I subsequently gave away five more cars in other competitions.
The lesson I learned is the importance of promotion and needing to do something different. Just building a great facility isn’t enough. Those two clubs developed into a successful 23-site chain, Australian Body Works, with a membership of 50,000, before I sold it to LA Fitness in 2000.
Thirty years later, having launched multiple fitness businesses, I’m putting the same lessons into practice. The co-working and wellness business I’m running with my daughter – Wello Works – is having a slow start because the concept is new. Wellness and co-working are growing trends, but we’re the first to put them together. Now, as then, we’re having to promote and sell.
Know when to quit Sometimes businesses don’t work out and it’s a gut call about whether or not to keep backing them. My advice is if you’re going to fail, fail fast. Take the hit, lick your wounds and move on. If something doesn’t go right, pivot and head in another direction, or restructure, or let it go and look around to see what else is out there.
My view is that if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space. I’ve lived on the edge all my life, but not quite as close now as I did 20 years ago. I’ve always risked things and I’ve had some failures, but I’m resilient and thankfully I’ve had a hell of a lot more winners than losers, including the Australian Bodyworks business.
I grew Fitness First Australia from 11 clubs to 88. My Gwinganna retreat [which has actor Hugh Jackman as an investor] continues to do incredibly well, as does my surf resort in Bali – Komune – and I’m launching another destination retreat venue on the Gold Coast.
At the ripe old age of 72, I’m not slowing down and still teach the occasional Bodycombat class, but I don’t play golf, don’t enjoy watching the cricket too much and don’t go fishing.
Business is what I enjoy – talking to people and meeting people. I’ve promised my wife I won’t invest in too many more businesses – other than our own stuff, of course… but maybe occasionally…
Tony de Leede cv
1982: Launched Australian Body Works, which was sold to LA Fitness in 2000
1989: Started Cardio Theatre Holdings which was sold to Precor in 2002
1996: Designed, built and staffed the first ever Olympic Village Health Club for the Atlanta Olympic Games
2000: Acted as Olympic Village manager at the Sydney Olympics
2000: Worked with Fitness First CEO, Mike Balfour, to negotiate the purchase of Healthland Australia Group. Became partner and MD of Fitness First Australia. On his watch the group had 37 per cent EBITDA and 42 per cent on mature clubs
2000: Launched Gwinganna eco retreat on the Gold Coast with Hugh Jackman as an investor
2010: Left Fitness First and launched Fit ‘n’ Fast gyms
2011: Opened Komune surf retreat, yoga and wellness resort in Bali and Coolangatta
2015: Launched HIIT concept Qmax
2016: Launched two digital content brands Move123 and Mind123 as well as YogaBar
2021: Launched wellness centre, Club W
2023: Launched Wello Works in Sydney, followed by a site in Atlanta
Other investments include Somadome meditation pods, the O2 Breathing and Meditation Chair, media businesses, restaurants, a nightclub in Mexico, a micro brewery and small airline.
Surf and wellness retreat Komune first launched in 2011 / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
De Leede has been launching wellness businesses since 1982 / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
Komune has retreats in Bali and on Australia’s Gold Coast / photo: NELBALI PHOTOGRAPHY
Retreat guests can enjoy wellness in the outdoors / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
Instructors can run their own retreats at Komune / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPH
/ photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
Komune in Bali has a focus on healthy food and fun / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
CoverMe, the global leader in fitness workforce management, today launches CoverMe PT, an
on-demand personal training platform that connects the right personal trainer to the right
client in under 10 seconds. [more...]
Active Blackpool is deploying Cornerstone Connect, a new digital interface allowing
disparate information from multiple systems to be aggregated into one dataset, to support
its focus on reducing health inequalities and improving healthy life expectancy. [more...]
Entrepreneur Tony De Leede
launched a stamp trading
business at the age of 12,
opened a surfboard shop at 16
and ran a fashion business with
his mum before moving into the
fitness industry in 1982.
He talks to Kath Hudson
My biggest life lesson was way back in the beginning, in the early 1980s, when I first got into the fitness industry. It taught me the importance of marketing, promotion, selling and doing things a little differently: putting the sizzle on the steak.
I invested a lot of money in a women-only aerobics club in Atlanta, Georgia. It was 10,000 sq ft with the biggest aerobics room in the city, accommodating more than 100 people.
It had magnificent locker rooms, two whirlpools, the best aerobics teachers brought in from Australia and all our classes were pre-choreographed to give consistency. It was also in a great location. I thought ‘build it and they will come’. Guess what. They didn’t.
We gave free classes for the first 10 days and were packed and then after that we were empty.
Even though it was self-funded, fortunately money wasn’t a problem. I’d already made a lot of money from a family-run fashion business and property investments, so I decided to double down by opening a second club. It was a risk, but I knew the product was good.
I found a site that was a quarter of the size, in a better location and built it for a 10th of the price. We kept the fitout simple and ran consistently good classes. That club had far lower expenses and took off a lot more quickly, but I still needed to do something to promote the first club. So I decided to make a statement.
I was good friends with a nightclub owner who was opening a new club in Atlanta and I approached him to run an aerobics competition, which at that point had never been done in the world. Olivia Newton John had just released the hit song Let’s Get Physical so we held a competition to find Atlanta’s most physical woman. The idea took off.
Brilliance and bullshit I say that if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit, and I’m not sure which one I used, but I managed to convince a car dealership to give me a car as the prize for the winner.
The place was packed, we had to run the competition over two nights and it got a lot of publicity in the press and on TV. It really put us on the map. I subsequently gave away five more cars in other competitions.
The lesson I learned is the importance of promotion and needing to do something different. Just building a great facility isn’t enough. Those two clubs developed into a successful 23-site chain, Australian Body Works, with a membership of 50,000, before I sold it to LA Fitness in 2000.
Thirty years later, having launched multiple fitness businesses, I’m putting the same lessons into practice. The co-working and wellness business I’m running with my daughter – Wello Works – is having a slow start because the concept is new. Wellness and co-working are growing trends, but we’re the first to put them together. Now, as then, we’re having to promote and sell.
Know when to quit Sometimes businesses don’t work out and it’s a gut call about whether or not to keep backing them. My advice is if you’re going to fail, fail fast. Take the hit, lick your wounds and move on. If something doesn’t go right, pivot and head in another direction, or restructure, or let it go and look around to see what else is out there.
My view is that if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space. I’ve lived on the edge all my life, but not quite as close now as I did 20 years ago. I’ve always risked things and I’ve had some failures, but I’m resilient and thankfully I’ve had a hell of a lot more winners than losers, including the Australian Bodyworks business.
I grew Fitness First Australia from 11 clubs to 88. My Gwinganna retreat [which has actor Hugh Jackman as an investor] continues to do incredibly well, as does my surf resort in Bali – Komune – and I’m launching another destination retreat venue on the Gold Coast.
At the ripe old age of 72, I’m not slowing down and still teach the occasional Bodycombat class, but I don’t play golf, don’t enjoy watching the cricket too much and don’t go fishing.
Business is what I enjoy – talking to people and meeting people. I’ve promised my wife I won’t invest in too many more businesses – other than our own stuff, of course… but maybe occasionally…
Tony de Leede cv
1982: Launched Australian Body Works, which was sold to LA Fitness in 2000
1989: Started Cardio Theatre Holdings which was sold to Precor in 2002
1996: Designed, built and staffed the first ever Olympic Village Health Club for the Atlanta Olympic Games
2000: Acted as Olympic Village manager at the Sydney Olympics
2000: Worked with Fitness First CEO, Mike Balfour, to negotiate the purchase of Healthland Australia Group. Became partner and MD of Fitness First Australia. On his watch the group had 37 per cent EBITDA and 42 per cent on mature clubs
2000: Launched Gwinganna eco retreat on the Gold Coast with Hugh Jackman as an investor
2010: Left Fitness First and launched Fit ‘n’ Fast gyms
2011: Opened Komune surf retreat, yoga and wellness resort in Bali and Coolangatta
2015: Launched HIIT concept Qmax
2016: Launched two digital content brands Move123 and Mind123 as well as YogaBar
2021: Launched wellness centre, Club W
2023: Launched Wello Works in Sydney, followed by a site in Atlanta
Other investments include Somadome meditation pods, the O2 Breathing and Meditation Chair, media businesses, restaurants, a nightclub in Mexico, a micro brewery and small airline.
Surf and wellness retreat Komune first launched in 2011 / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
De Leede has been launching wellness businesses since 1982 / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
Komune has retreats in Bali and on Australia’s Gold Coast / photo: NELBALI PHOTOGRAPHY
Retreat guests can enjoy wellness in the outdoors / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
Instructors can run their own retreats at Komune / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPH
/ photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
Komune in Bali has a focus on healthy food and fun / photo: Daniel Tjongari PHOTOGRAPHY
An ambitious women’s-only strength and lifting studio concept is set to launch in Dallas this
September, with a wider US rollout already in active development.
Finnish outdoor fitness equipment specialist, Omnigym, has partnered with charity, Emmaüs
Solidarité, to launch an outdoor gym installation at a homeless shelter in Paris.
People taking GLP-1 weight loss medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound
may be losing weight, but they’re also becoming less physically active, according to new
research presented at the ENDO 2026 annual meeting of the Endocrine Society
CoverMe, the global leader in fitness workforce management, today launches CoverMe PT, an
on-demand personal training platform that connects the right personal trainer to the right
client in under 10 seconds. [more...]
Active Blackpool is deploying Cornerstone Connect, a new digital interface allowing
disparate information from multiple systems to be aggregated into one dataset, to support
its focus on reducing health inequalities and improving healthy life expectancy. [more...]
