The Process of Building Melbourne’s BEST Fitness Studio

I remember coming here for the first time in 2012 and checking this out, and I remember thinking to myself, if not now, when?

When you look at this building the way it is, it's quite bare.

We did so much with so little, and now moving into Victoria Street, I really feel that we're going to be able to do so much because we have so much more, so much more in us, so much more to give. I said to my team, this is not a homecoming, it's day one. Let's go. I'm at actually the new Enterprise Fitness.

Obviously things aren't ready to go right now, but I remember he came into one of the team meetings and he was like, right, it's happening.

The next step was to move into a new building.

He was about to buy a new place, but I still didn't know when was the move going to happen.

It seemed more like mythology and something that I suppose far too distant to experience or to kind of give too much thought.

Beautiful trussels in the back.

We've got 20, uh, 220, 297 square meters of pure joy, of pure unadulterated space here at Victoria Street. Just after some sandblasting, looks pretty good. We're just cleaning up these walls, making some nice exposed brick.

It's all sandy and dirty. These are going to look fantastic when we're done.

Anything that could have been a challenge was a challenge, like even just Flattening this place to the ground was a challenge. Like, you'd think it would be as simple as get a permit, knock it down, but there's so many little things along the way of just being able to reach that point. I think it very quickly became apparent that it wasn't going to be an easy road forward, like dealing with councils and permits and all that type of stuff. It was just slow, endless amounts of hoops that had to be jumped through for every single thing that we wanted to do.

You're subject to the permissibility of things like council and building regulations and all the policy behind that. It's not— it's an arduous task, so it's very befitting that you would be very stressed throughout that process.

Look, I'd say that in building this new enterprise, it's been extremely difficult and time-consuming, and everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. And things that I wouldn't have expected to go wrong went wrong.

So we have, and this is probably to be expected when managing a pretty big project like this in development, um, we've ran into an issue. And the issue is, so the roof is supposed to go on, so all these beams that you see are going to get replaced, then we're going to put the roof sheeting on. Roofer comes in, says, Mark, I can't put any flashings to keep the rain out on that back wall if he drills in the wall's going to crumble. The engineer seems to think that it was hit by something because it kind of goes in and then out. So we're going to have to knock the top of this back wall off and rebuild it, support it, so we have a new back wall, so then we can finish the roof. That's the problem. That's where we're at now. Hopefully we're going to get an emergency permit, is what we're looking at.

I think coming out of COVID— and this is where it gets quite challenging because Personal views determined to some degree the professional choices that were made back then.

Between 2020, between, I mean, the people that fucked him over from a personal level, business level, business level. I mean, I think we, we do forget how much shit really got thrown at him from that perspective, just all at once.

And then again, it was in the midst of COVID as well.

You know, we were inside, outside the car parks, parks, moving around within 5-10 kilometers, work permits, managers leaving, coaches leaving, mandatory jabs and people cracking the shit for that, and masks, no masks. And we had— yeah, we had— have we had health department come in about 5, 6 times, check, make sure on protocol? Yeah, it was, it was a lot.

It ultimately just come down to two different beliefs, right? At the end of the day, Mark had a business to run and he had people to look after in terms of employment, and he wasn't willing to compromise on what the legalities were to stay open and keep the business running and keep the staff who still wanted to be here in a job and obviously protect what he'd created over the previous 7, 8 years. And the previous manager had a, had a different view, and ultimately Mark wasn't willing to take that risk and put people's careers in his business in jeopardy. So that ultimately led to them parting ways.

Like, I've never done anything as tough as fucking getting a place like this up and running, then having a team, everyone relying on you and all that stuff. So I have no idea how that kind of stress would actually feel. The whole weight of everything bearing down on top of them.

Pretty clear that Mark's stress level was a bit higher than usual from when I first met him.

Where it started in November was literally a patch of dirt.

There's, there's nothing here. It's literally dirt. We are standing on dirt. So this is kind of in— see, we've lowered— the slab was actually quite thick and quite high initially. You can see where it was. So we've lowered it quite substantially, which is going to make it nice and street level. So yeah, there's a lot of work, there's a lot of work to be done.

Probably what happened was I boxed myself into a corner where I really didn't have another option. I didn't have another option not to do this. So I had to work through all the headaches, the frustrations, the setbacks, the obstacles, find the right people.

Oh no, I knew it was going to happen. I knew Mark, like, yeah, there was no way it wasn't going to happen. He was going to make it work one way or another. So I knew he would.

You know, I had no doubt though that eventually it would come to fruition simply because if Mark wanted to do it, he would make it happen. So, you know, since then, obviously there's a lot of complications, but We're here.

Look, one thing I can say for sure is if Mark says he's going to make something happen, he very rarely doesn't follow through on it. There was obviously plenty of times throughout the process where it came into doubt, but I think with Mark leading it and Mark putting everything he could into it, I think it was only really going to be a matter of time before it did come to fruition, which I think is exactly what happened. And Like I said, there was lots and lots of challenges along the way, and I can tell you for a fact many times where he wanted to just pull the pin and just forget about it, but that's not in his nature. That's not who he is. And although he faced an awful lot of setbacks, he still kept going and going and going until he got what he wanted to get out of it.

This doesn't feel like a homecoming. This doesn't feel like we made it. This feels to me like day one. I have the same enthusiasm and energy of waking up at 5:30 in the morning ready to get to work as I did when I put the all my chips in the first time opening up Enterprise Fitness 12 years ago when we were at the other location. So for me, it's starting all over again.

Where's Kate?

Hey, it's all upper body.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. It's all chest. No, no, no, it's all upper body. Oh, I'm gonna go to the bathroom.

Yeah, here he goes already. The first small—

okay, there you go, go to the side.

Look at that, it hits the light.

There it is.

Next one.

Enterprise?

That's a good question.

Hmm, it's exciting times. Like, I guess the new guys coming in will never know the story, and like, fully, there's only 3 of us who sort of lived in— well, 4 of us include Mark. So yeah, there's only really 4 of us here who will have known the story behind it all, the experience of it all. So that being the case, I guess the new generation of coaches coming through will just see this as the new enterprise, and then it's more so what's next after this, making sure that, you know, all these markets Buy some new equipment, for God's sake. Can you just put a watermark of Enterprise Fitness?

Yes.

So the journey, I think the saying that rings true for me is that the work works on you more than you work on it. And I think from a character development point of view, for myself, is just the amount of work that's gone into this has transformed me, uh, as a business person, as a person, in so many ways. So yeah, I think for me, when you come in here, uh, the way I feel about it is you're experiencing a piece of me, uh, as funny as that might sound, uh, like where I'm at. And I think when I opened up the first place, it was very much my personality. It was big, it was bold, it is what it is. It was very practical. Where I've evolved, so yeah, that's, that's where I feel. So, you know, when you come in here, I think you'll, you'll feel that. And like the other place Enterprises are soul, and I feel that that soul is very much alive and well when you step through our doors. Welcome to the new Enterprise Fitness. It's pretty cool. The gym behind us, lots of atmosphere. Uh, hope to see you here soon.