Why I might never be number one (and why I’m fine with that)

There’s a good chance Stepz never becomes the biggest network in the country. Never the most clubs on the map. Never the top of the franchising rankings. And the longer I sit with that, the more at peace I am with it.

Here’s why.

We’ve planned for around 100 territories in Australia. That isn’t a number we backed into because we ran out of ambition. It’s a number we chose. The gym and fitness market doesn’t have unlimited room, and pretending it does is how operators get hurt. Every territory we add has to make sense for the franchisee who runs it, not just for the logo count in a pitch deck.

When you put franchisee profitability first, you stop chasing growth for its own sake. You say no to sites that would cannibalise an operator down the track. That discipline costs you rankings. It’s worth it.

But the clearest call we ever made on this is one most people never saw.

Some years ago, when F45 and the boutique studios were taking off, I built Stepz Interactive. It was going to be a standalone group fitness model that ran alongside our 24/7 gyms. On paper it was a great move for us as a franchisor. Two models meant more franchises to sell, more territories, more short-term revenue coming into head office. The easy decision was to push both hard and grow the logo count.

But I kept looking further out, and the long-term model didn’t stack up the way I wanted it to.

Running 24/7 gyms as an operator had shown me the catch. We were all very similar. Strip it back and most clubs compete on equipment, and these days the equipment is largely the same brands across the board. When everyone’s offering looks the same, price becomes the only lever you have left. That’s a hard way to build a business that lasts, and a brutal one for a franchisee.

There was a second problem that mattered to me even more. Member results are hard to deliver just by handing someone access to a gym. Open the door, swipe the card, and most people still don’t know what to do once they are inside. Fitness changed my life. I wanted Stepz to change other people’s lives the same way, and at scale. Access alone was never going to do that. Coaching and group fitness was.

So instead of running two separate franchise models, I made the long-term decision to bring them together. Group fitness inside the 24/7 club. One membership, one community, one place where you get the convenience of round-the-clock access and the results that only come from actually being coached.

It cost us the easier short-term growth path. It is paying real dividends now, for our franchisees and for our members. Our operators have something the gym down the road cannot copy with a price cut. Our members get results, and members who get results stay.

I think about all of this as a franchisee, because that is where I started. And if I am honest, there is an anxiety I have never quite forgotten. The quiet worry every operator carries about what the brand above them might do if it ever decided its own profits mattered more than theirs. A cheaper version opening nearby. A second brand chasing the same member. A map carved a little thinner each year. You sign up backing a name, and then you spend years hoping that name keeps backing you.

I built Stepz so our operators never have to sit with that worry.

The fitness industry is consolidating. Multi-brand corporate groups are getting bigger, and the value end is getting louder. I am not going to pretend you can compete with that on nothing. Scale matters. You need enough of a network to have buying power, brand strength, and systems that actually work. But scale should never be paid for by the operators already inside the tent. The day growth comes at the expense of the people who built the brand, you have lost the plot.

So this is an open note to a few people.

If you once ran a club under another brand and walked away, but the passion never quite left you, I would like to talk.

If you are an independent operator watching the big groups close in, and you know as well as I do that going it alone is getting harder, but you do not want to hand your livelihood to a franchisor who will compete with you the moment it suits them, I would like to talk.

We are not the biggest. We are built to keep the people who back us profitable, protected, and proud of the name on the door. We made the hard call to be a brand that wins on results, not just on price. If that is the kind of brand you want behind you, there is a seat at this table.

Number one was never the goal. Building something our operators and our members are glad they joined always was.

Sam Waller

Founder, Stepz Fitness