The New Generation Of The Fitness Industry - Industry Change Ep 2
In this episode of Industry Change, host Richard Toutounji interviews Phil (Bill) Moore, CEO of Fitness Australia, to explore the transformation of the Australian fitness sector. Moore recounts his entry into fitness in the mid‑1990s, co‑founding Balmain Fitness and helping establish the first state fitness association. He describes the early industry’s “bodybuilder‑gym” image, lack of brand credibility, and the regulatory push that led to the formation of Fitness New South Wales. The conversation then shifts to Moore’s pioneering work moving fitness online through the 12‑Week Body Transformation program, leveraging the Michelle Bridges brand, strategic brand‑partner alignments, and hiring digital‑marketing experts. He stresses the critical role of timing, warning against copy‑cat approaches, and highlights the importance of deep market segmentation (demographics, location‑specific preferences). Moore notes the maturation of gym culture – from gender‑segregated weight rooms to mixed‑use 24/7 clubs – and cites participation rates rising from ~9% in the 1990s to 15‑16% today, while obesity remains a public‑health challenge. He identifies nutrition as the biggest unmet need and points out the fitness industry’s limited presence on the public‑health agenda. The interview also covers professionalisation: Fitness Australia’s role in raising industry standards, the decline in personal‑trainer registrations (≈23,000 now, down from a 2012‑13 peak), and a “correction phase” that is improving quality. Moore advises fitness businesses to treat themselves as digital‑marketing enterprises, conduct regular digital health checks, and seek expertise they lack. He underscores collaboration – engaging with associations, peers, and partners – as essential for longevity, alongside disciplined work habits. The episode concludes with Moore’s top advice: professionalise, network, and stay busy to survive the next two decades.
Chapters
Welcome back to Industry Change. And today I'm in the Fitness Australia head office. I'm speaking to the CEO, Bill Moore. Welcome, Bill.
Thank you, Richard. Lovely to see you. Thank you for having me.
You too. Thank you. So today I wanted to chat all about change. I think that Fitness Australia, if we look at fitness industry in general, we were just talking, it's, it's had a massive adjustment and change. And like any industry, it goes through a growth period and a stabilization period. And you've come aboard in this new role. Is it 12 months, 18 months?
It's 1 year and 2 days, actually.
1 year and 2 days. Perfect timing.
Perfect timing. Counting the days now.
Unbelievable. But the thing that I find very different That you've started your early career in the fitness industry. And so you're probably a great person to have the conversation around where do you think the industry is going, because you kind of started the industry. I'm curious to see, to hear more about that kind of first time that you stepped into the industry. You know, what was that first position you ever had before we're talking about what fitness is today?
I think it was the classic situation of wanting to make your hobby your career, really. I'd always been an exerciser. I've been to— trained in gyms for a long time, been physically active pretty much all of my life. I was in construction the first stage of my life, and that's a tough old game. And I was always looking for an opportunity to get into fitness, and that turned up in the mid-'90s.
Yep.
A friend of mine whose gym I used to train at, he said, let's put a gym together, the pair of us. So I found a site and And then between us, we put together Balmain Fitness, which is still standing today.
Still standing, yeah?
Yeah, still standing. It's a classic. Yeah, I guess it is, yeah.
It's a classic.
And so that was my early venture into the fitness industry. At that stage, the industry wasn't particularly refined.
When you say refined, what do you mean by that?
Well, I think that we, there was still a very, the sort of traditional weights bodybuilder sweaty gym image was still—
Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of style?
Absolutely, that was in that, yeah. So that was what was going around, and I think that we lacked credibility and cut-through with our market. There were no big brands.
Yep.
No opportunity really to build a lot of big brands unless you had a lot of money. So there was a lot of independents that were all out there just trying to get their message out. And that was an interesting time and a fun time, I've got to say. I enjoyed my time at that club. I had a few clubs after that.
Yep.
But in the process, got involved at an industry level because we weren't well organized. Department of Sport and Recreation, Department of Fair Trading came to a pretty loose group of fitness, independent fitness club centre owners and said, guys, you need to fix your act up. So we need you to form an association. That's how I got involved.
Right. So you formed one of the first associations then?
Fitness New South Wales. I was on the steering committee to form that.
Great.
And sat on the board actually for a couple of years. So that was a fun time because it was all so new.
It was all new. Everything was just developing, right?
And it was all going wrong. You know, there was gyms closing everywhere. I was one of those blokes standing outside handing out leaflets on those cold mornings saying, sorry about that again. Oh, again? Second time? Okay.
And the memberships, I remember the memberships that you sold for like 4-year memberships and things like that, right?
Well, not everybody did. Not you, no. No, no, but yeah, that was a common thing. Health plans were selling 5-year memberships for small change. It was just a recipe for disaster.
Yeah, yeah. And from there, you have innovated a little, you've innovated quite a lot in that space. Now, you've been a pioneer in moving fitness offline online. I'd love to hear a bit more about that story.
Yeah, that was in the Michelle Bridges years. When you had an independent club, you could put a fantastic facility on, but you had no brand to drive it in the marketing. With Michelle Bridges' experience, we had a brand and we knew that off the back of that, What can we do with this brand? This is a different space. Instead of actually trying to establish a brand, we've got a brand. What do we do with it? So delivery was everything. So we no longer had a health club that we could say, here's a great—
Here you walk in the door and here's the equipment, right?
Yeah, that's right. So we very, very carefully attached that brand to a lot of carefully selected categories. So we're in food, we're in apparel. But the online was the big one. We knew that if we cracked that, then we were gonna have a completely different dialogue, a completely different narrative in the fitness industry if we're able to do that. Nobody else was really doing that that well in Australia.
No, when I say innovative, now yes, we have a lot of brands doing online, doing programs, but when I always like to see where the pioneers, what happens, it's always the first few players that we've got an opportunity, for example, the internet, we have a brand, Now, nobody's connected the two up in the way that you guys did that. What were the hurdles that you had to come across to actually say to people, hey, you can actually do fitness online?
Probably the biggest one was that we weren't clever in the space. We didn't— myself and Michelle, we weren't well educated in the space. We didn't have a sound understanding. So what we did was take on 2 business partners that did. And that is actually one of my maxims. In business, you know, you don't know everything. Get, get help, get assistance, however that looks, to get you where you need to go. So we took on 2 business partners that were very smart in the space.
Yes.
So then we had the delivery covered, we had the brand covered, we had an audience that was ready and waiting to hear it. And also we just caught the zeitgeist of what was going on in the community at the time. Yes, timing, timing. The timing was spot on.
Do you think timing is important in every area of business?
Very important. Very, very tough to play the catch-up game. When we had 12 Week Body Transformation already flying, The Biggest Loser, the TV show, put together their own version and they literally stole our IP to put this together. And of course, they had a lot of money behind it and they actually had Shannon Ponton, who was one of the other trainers on The Biggest Loser, who was presenting it and facing it. Did it succeed? No, it didn't. It fell over.
Why do you think so?
When you're trying to play catch-up, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to be better than what— if you're going to do something, you've got to innovate in that market. It's no good bringing, copying somebody else's product and saying, well, I'm doing it better with a different personality. You won't. You're never going to do that.
Right, because it's a timing issue. You've got to be first to the market with an innovative approach. That's a really great piece of advice because I do believe that, and we speak to a lot of business owners here, and as you know, we speak to a lot of health and fitness business owners, and I do believe that everybody has a uniqueness about them, and it's about understanding what uniqueness is and then matching it to the delivering offering and the distribution channel that you can get to.
Yeah, that's a good point, that unique selling proposition.
I love the process you said, you know, you attached your brand to other assets, other brands, and they're the brands that you felt aligned with and built all the brands up together.
Yeah, we were very careful about that as well. Well, now other trainers on the show were doing deals with car seat companies and goodness knows what else and pizza companies.
Pizza companies.
That actually happened. Yeah. But we were very careful about that. We turned away a lot of money in the early days because it just wasn't right for us.
And that's really holding true to values because when you've got to turn away money, when there's money on the table, then you're saying no because you're seeing the bigger vision.
Yes, exactly. You can see that far forward as to where this is going to end up. And being really, really confident with that. Being prepared to walk away from the short term knowing that there's a longer term opportunity. The other thing that's important with that is to know your market.
Yep.
Yeah. We knew every detail about the people that we were selling to. We knew where she shopped. We knew how old she was. We knew if she had kids or not. All those things we had. We knew we went better in Penrith than what we did In North Sydney, we knew exactly how that socioeconomic demographic worked and it was much easier for us then to tailor not only the products but also our language, our tone of voice, our messaging.
And you adjusted depending where it was. Absolutely. Very smart, very smart. Talk, just to wrap that up, tell me about the numbers that you guys are doing, if you can share kind of what that looks like today.
You're talking about 12 Week Body Transformation?
12 Week Body Transformation.
I'm not sure, I actually had dinner last night with one of my co-founders of 12 Week Body Transformation. It's nothing like it was in the heyday. And that itself is interesting because I think it talks a lot about business life.
Yes.
And what you do with that. But having said that, it's still very successful. It still goes well. We've got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people
who
have done that program. And not only just done it, but we were doing something very good. We've got so many what we used to call Trail WBT babies out there, people that couldn't conceive because they weren't healthy enough.
Is that right?
We put them through that program and it ended up we got 1, 2, next thing we know there's dozens, there's probably hundreds now. Unbelievable. So the benefits that come out of that, this is solid stuff. This is great, great piece of work that's being done with a program that's being delivered online, barely a connection.
No, that's amazing. But it's micro-communities. And you said something really interesting in regards to Everything has a life cycle to it, and we go through ups and downs, and I think that's kind of where businesses— and we have a lot of businesses that watch this program— and it's kind of where businesses go. There's an up and down cycle in everything. Mm-hmm. However, I actually think that that's where my interest is, the innovation part, is the adjustment change, and how do you predict the future? How do you know that you're gonna hit a down point if you're a new personal trainer or a new fitness operator or a new health and fitness business, any business, And you're saying, hey, things are good now, things are going well, that's going to be good forever pretty much. How do you actually see where the problems may lie in the future?
It's a good point actually, and it is very common. It's a bit of a subject of mine, I've got to say, because the time to innovate in your business is not when you see the downturn. The time to innovate is when you're still on the up. So most businesses, Let them get to this point and things start to drop off and they're going, well, we need to do something. That's the wrong time.
Right. Too late.
The time to do that— yeah, too late— is here on the way up. Start looking for where the issues are, where the growth is, where the innovation lies, what's the technology around you that can support you with it, who are the new markets that you can address. That's the time to be doing that. And time and time again, businesses drop off and then you're digging yourself out of a hole.
Big hole. Yeah, we've all been through there.
Yep.
Talk about So let's talk about it a little bit more specifically in the fitness industry. We obviously see things like Fitbits, we see things like, you know, all these online programs that are coming out there everywhere, right? So obviously people are understanding, hey, there's a gold mine there, let's get on it. Maybe too late, we don't know. But there is now information out there, this information technology, we can go do fitness anywhere, anyplace. We just need a phone, an iPhone, a computer, we can do it at home. How is that gonna shift in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years? To the gyms, to the personal training studios. Do you think they're going to be around? Do you think it's all going to change? What do you think about that?
I think they'll certainly be around. I think what we'll see is a shift, certainly with the bigger clubs, with the bigger box clubs, we're going to see a shift into health and wellness. They've got the capacity there to bring allied health into those spaces and expand into that. I think that's going to be a major trend that we'll see. And they'll need to do something to compete with the 24/7s. 24/7 clubs couldn't have existed 10 years ago. No one would know what to do when you walked in there.
Walked in the box.
And you go in a 24/7 club now, and most of the time I don't see— I go to a 24/7 club, I don't see too much actually going wrong in there. Everyone pretty much knows what they're doing. So one of the great achievements of the fitness industry since the early years of the '90s is that we built this incredible cohort of gym-savvy people. That can walk into a club and make that happen. Yes. That couldn't have happened before.
Yes, I remember years ago, even in my gym that I was at, in the weight section, there was a cardio and weight section, and you'd never see a female in the weight section at all. I went overseas for a couple years and I came back and I went to the same gym with a fresh mind. I go, oh my gosh, it's all mixed now. There's no, there's no 50% here, 50% there. It's all kind of mixed in.
Yeah.
And even just that innovation, I was saying education around how to do fitness, and you go walking 24/7, it's like everybody's Everybody's having a fine time. Nobody's wearing thongs and doing crazy things. They're responsible, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that really demonstrates the maturation of the industry. We are a mature industry now at every level. We've improved our participation rate. We're around about 15% to 16% now. I think back in the '90s we were about 9% or thereabouts. We've almost doubled it in that time. But that's big news. We've only got to increase the participation rate by around about 1% to see a significant change to the revenue that the industry produces. So always trying to increase that cohort, always trying to get more people into exercise, that's the issue.
Let's talk about that then, because you look at the consumer side and we're still seeing obesity rates rise, right? But then we're also seeing that the fitness industry stabilised, it's in a growth pattern. More people are educated around fitness and around health. Are we seeing in the future that that is going to shift and change? What do you think that barrier is?
Probably nutrition is the thing that's held us back, but there's a very good argument to say that the fitness industry has done a terrific job of getting fit people fitter.
Yeah, fit people fitter.
Yeah.
Interesting.
You could certainly argue that because it's a very valid point, Richard, that you make. You know, what impression have we made in natural fact. We've got more clubs, more access, more people exercising,
and
yet we've got a bigger health issue that's going on out there. We're actually not— the fitness industry isn't reaching its consumer when it comes to nutrition.
Interesting.
So, and that's going to take time for that to happen. But also, we're not in the health agenda, in the public health agenda. We don't have our feet under the table of the public health agenda.
Sure, and I see this, what we're talking about here, is possibly the innovation for the future. There's a market there. How do we attract the nutrition? How do we attract the fitness? How do we attract the— not going to the fitness people, but going to the unhealthy people that actually need that support?
Yeah,
and it's funny because, you know, now, yeah, we can walk in 24/7 Gym and everybody's behaving themselves, but possibly do we need to get them not behaving themselves so we can get the unhealthy people into the gym?
Yeah, it's probably— that's a good point. Probably not a good measure of the fact that we're reaching the unhealthy population. Everyone in there is looking fit, knowing what they're doing. So we really need some people that aren't. So, I mean, from our point of view, we're always trying to expand the market. We're always trying to get more personal trainers out there. The more PTs we've got out there that are scrambling for space and relevance in that space, the more people we're reaching.
How many PTs are in Australia now? How many are registered with Fitness Australia?
We've got about 23,000 registered with us at the moment.
And is that continuing to grow every year?
No, that continues to decline. And it has done now for a couple of years. 2012-13 were probably the halcyon years where everyone wanted to be a personal trainer. And then suddenly they realised that, yes, you get up at half past 4 in the morning, your client doesn't turn up, and you did finish at 10 o'clock the night before.
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, all that. So there was a flurry of activity. There was support from the government with VET, the VET-V Help thing happened. And then at the end of the day, we are now in a correction phase.
Okay.
So we're pretty much hitting cruising altitude now.
And a correction phase is a normal phase in kind of any life cycle. And I've noticed personally in the industry that it's around quality as well. And we're not getting, I think the fitness industry is more professional, you could say. And it might not be the fly-by-nighters that were here for a quick buck and they're kind of gone. Would you agree to some of those statements?
Yeah, I would actually. I think that the function of Fitness Australia is to professionalise the industry at every level. We professionalise, literally make a profession out of it. So, you know, you're a professional trainer, as well as professionalise it from the perspective of business and industry and its representation to government and the amount of cut-through it has. when it comes to policymaking decisions and suchlike. So that's that stage. That's effectively what, I guess, the central tenet of what Fitness Australia does, the association does, and indeed the industry as a whole.
And we'll talk about that because our company, Comm, we do business marketing education. We've come aboard to give business marketing education advice to personal trainers and gym owners. And we believe through education we can really have an impact. in their business. I'd love to hear your opinion on how do you think businesses, and you've been in business your entire life, how do you think businesses need to move ahead now with their marketing, with their business, with their education to be better business people, to be better organisations, to be better gyms, to be better personal trainers? What are the key tricks that you have or tools that you have?
Well, I'd start by saying that anyone in the fitness industry, whatever business it is that they're running, they're actually running a digital marketing business. So fundamentally, if you start there and work backwards, you're going to be okay. So understanding that digital marketing is fundamental to the way that you're— to the success of your business, its longevity and profitability is the first stage. Understanding too that, as I think I indicated early on, one of the— if you don't know about it, find someone that does.
Yeah.
And not everyone will understand digital marketing. And indeed, unless you're really focused on that space, the pace of change is going to dictate the fact that you're always going to be a bit left behind. Sure. So I think there are fundamentals with it. The days of an A-frame outside of a gym are long gone. Damn. Yeah, that's all over. It was cheap, but, you know, but those days are long gone. But I think that's the fundamental premise. Certainly something like the digital marketing health check. Yeah. That's something that in Fitness Australia, we like to make it as easy as we possibly can for businesses to grow. We have a Grow Your Fitness Business product. And there's every element in there. I know that when I was in business, and particularly in small business, there is so much that you have to get your head around.
There is.
And in the end, you have to be something of an accountant. You've got to understand about your marketing. You've got to know about what the Fair Work Act says about your employees and all these things. It's a very, very complex space. We shouldn't have to think that we are, or believe that there's any onus upon us to be experts in all of this space. There's not. And getting help when and where you can and getting support when and where you can, that was a big message. I mean, probably for me in 12 Week Body Transformation. We didn't know about digital. We brought 2 people on that did.
That's really transformative because it's, it's, you're literally saying, hey, if you want to be in business, if you want to be in the fitness business, you need to understand that you're in the digital space, get that right, then you can do what you're really passionate about.
Yeah.
That's ultimately what you're saying here. It's very powerful because I believe that as an industry, we're going to impact the people that need the help. You need to impact them through marketing. You need to make sure you get your message out there because unfortunately you do not get paid how good your— how clean your equipment is, or, you know, have you done your books for the weekend. Like, yeah, that's That's needed, but ultimately you get paid, are you getting the clients in your door ultimately? So it's really good advice there. I want to finish up just in regards to where you think, and I think you've already shared a whole array of some major lessons that you learned. I did like the biggest one is getting proximity around you that if you don't know it, go find people that do in any way, shape, or form. And you literally formed a company with the people that you didn't have that skill set in. So I think that's a— Probably the huge lesson here we're talking about. But if you can give one piece of advice now to a business owner that's just started up and they've got to understand everything, where do you think, what's the biggest piece of advice that you could give a business owner to stay in business over the next 20 years? What's, if you look back in your past history, where do you think the number one thing that really made an impact in your business?
I think there's a couple of things. Richard, certainly the biggest one is the professional side of that. Okay. There's absolutely no doubt that the success that I've been fortunate enough to enjoy, I could never ever have done that on my own. That leads into the second piece, which is engagement and engaging with others, engaging with other businesses, engaging with your association, engaging with other—
Yep.
So you've got to be in out there amongst it. The people that don't do so well are the go-it-alones.
Right.
And they're just tucked away in a little corner here. And yeah, well, it's mainly word of mouth, so I'll get— no, no, no. You know, you've got to be out there. You've got to be getting amongst it. And off the back of that, probably the third piece is you've got to be busy. You know, you can't be staggering around checking Facebook in between clients. You've got to be busy. You've got to be in on it. Disciplined and busy. Yeah, absolutely. The old hard work adage, it's still relevant.
Love it. This is amazing advice and amazing tips. Thank you so much, Phil. Appreciate your time. I know you're a busy man. You've got Fitness Expo coming up.
Richard, thank you so much. Lovely to chat with you.
That's this week's episode on Industry Change. I'll see you next time.
