Best Days Ever:
Anytime Fitness
The world's largest fitness franchise was built on one radical idea: the gym should fit your life, not the other way around.
Every Best Day Ever requires a body that is ready for it. The wave you have been waiting for does not care whether you slept in. The powder run does not pause while you catch your breath. The trail does not flatten because your legs are tired. Fitness is not the point of the best day — but without it, the best day is shorter, harder, and less of everything it could be.
In 2002, Chuck Runyon and Dave Mortensen had a simple observation: the gym industry was designed for the gym's convenience, not the member's. You could only go when they were open. You paid for equipment you rarely used. The staff were often indifferent. The experience was transactional at best and alienating at worst. Runyon and Mortensen decided to do something about it. They opened the first Anytime Fitness in Hastings, Minnesota, with a key card system that let members come and go at any hour. The idea was so obvious it seemed almost too simple. Within a year, the first franchise was sold. Within five years, there were hundreds of locations. Today, Anytime Fitness operates more than 5,000 clubs across 30 countries and all seven continents — including, since January 2020, Antarctica.
The number is staggering, but the story is not really about the number. It is about what happens inside each of those 5,000 clubs — and about the people who own and run them. Because Anytime Fitness is, at its core, a franchise business, and a franchise business is only as good as its franchisees. What Runyon and Mortensen built was not just a gym chain. They built a system for turning passionate people into business owners, and those business owners into pillars of their communities.
The philosophy behind the brand is captured in a concept Runyon calls ROEI — Return on Emotional Investment. The idea is that the most durable businesses are built not on transactions but on genuine human connection. Members stay not because the equipment is newer or the parking is better, but because someone at the front desk knows their name and asks how the knee is feeling. That sounds soft. It turns out to be the most commercially durable thing in the fitness industry.
"The gym should fit your life."
Chuck Runyon and Dave Mortensen were not fitness industry outsiders. They had spent years inside the traditional gym model and understood exactly what was broken about it. The hours were wrong. The culture was wrong. The relationship between the club and the member was fundamentally transactional. They wanted to build something different.
The 24/7 key card access was the first disruption. The second was the franchise model itself — deliberately designed to attract owners who were motivated by purpose, not just profit. Runyon's concept of ROEI, the Return on Emotional Investment, became the operating philosophy. The International Franchise Association named them both Entrepreneurs of the Year in 2020. Entrepreneur magazine has ranked Anytime Fitness the #1 global franchise multiple times.
Today, Self Esteem Brands — the parent company — also owns Waxing the City, The Bar Method, Basecamp Fitness, and Stronger U Nutrition. But Anytime Fitness remains the flagship: 5 million members, 5,000 clubs, and a brand that has won a Cannes Bronze LION for its Super Bowl campaign. Not bad for a gym in Hastings, Minnesota.
"ROEI — Return on Emotional Investment. The most durable businesses are built on genuine human connection."
— Chuck Runyon, Co-Founder
Three Owners. Three Extraordinary Stories.
The franchise model is only as strong as the people who choose it. Anytime Fitness has attracted an unusually diverse and motivated group of owners — former athletes, career changers, people who found fitness at a moment of personal crisis and decided to make it their life's work. Three of them stand out.
Daniell Jenkins: The Club That Gave Her Life Back
Daniell Jenkins lost her husband, Brandon, to a sudden illness. Grief is not a linear thing, and for a while it took her somewhere she did not want to be. A friend who owned a local Anytime Fitness suggested she come in. She did. She met a trainer — also named Brandon, which she now describes as the universe being either cruel or kind, she has not decided — and over the next year she lost 85 pounds, won the Anytime Fitness National Member Success Story award, and formed a bond with her trainer that she describes as sibling-like.
When Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana in 2021 and temporarily closed the Destrehan club, Daniell saw an opportunity. She and Brandon took ownership. Today she runs the club as both Franchise Owner and Coach. She greets every member by name. She checks in on each of them. She has created an environment where members find accountability partners and, more often than you might expect, genuine friends. Member retention at her club is exceptional. The community she has built is the reason.
"She shows how much she genuinely cares for everyone who walks through the doors. With a warm smile and genuine interest, she greets every person by name."
Tracy Savasta: From $11 an Hour to 13 Locations
Tracy Savasta spent the first half of her career cycling through sales and management roles that felt, in her own words, like little more than paychecks. Then one day she stretched on the gym floor after a workout, looked around, and thought: what if I made this my career? Her husband told her she was crazy. Fate intervened — he had a connection with an Anytime Fitness franchisee, and Tracy accepted an $11-an-hour sales job. That was fifteen years ago.
She climbed through five roles over seven years, eventually becoming VP of Operations. In 2017 she became a franchisee. Today she owns 13 Anytime Fitness locations across the Twin Cities and western Wisconsin, making her the largest female-led franchise group in the entire Anytime Fitness system. Her husband is CFO. Her older daughter manages HR. Her younger daughter leads marketing. They doubled their clubs from three to six during the uncertainty of 2021, then added two more in 2022. She runs marathons. She works out six days a week. She offers her staff guaranteed compensation, 401(k) plans, PTO, and medical benefits — because she remembers what it felt like to wonder how she would pay the bills working in fitness.
"Find something you love to do, and you'll never work a day in your life." — Tracy Savasta
Andrew Breton: The Technology Evangelist
Andrew Breton started at 24 Hour Fitness, rose to manager, and began looking for a franchise concept that matched his values. He met Chuck Runyon, relocated to the East Coast, and built a portfolio of 13 clubs in Connecticut. He is now one of the most celebrated franchise operators in the system — not because of the number of clubs, but because of what he has done with technology inside them.
Anytime Fitness's SmartCoaching platform, integrated into the AF App and partnered with Apple Fitness+, has transformed how his coaches work. What used to take 35 minutes to build a client's workout now takes five. Coaches who previously managed 40 clients can now handle 60 without compromising the personal experience. SmartCoaching accounts for approximately 50% of revenue across his 13 clubs. Personal training revenue is up 21% since the app was introduced. He was celebrated at the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference as an industry thought leader.
"What used to take 35 minutes to build a client's workout now takes only 5 minutes, thanks to technological tools." — Andrew Breton
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Staying Ready for the Wave
Surfing is the sport that most clearly illustrates the relationship between fitness and experience. You can be in the water every day and still be unprepared for the set that arrives. The paddle-out demands shoulder endurance. The pop-up demands explosive leg strength. The hold-down demands breath control and calm. None of these things come from surfing alone. They come from the work you do when you are not in the water.
The same is true of mountain biking, skiing, hiking, and every other adventure that defines a Best Day Ever. The gym is not a substitute for the sport. It is the engine that makes the sport better, longer, and safer. And when you are travelling — which is the whole point of this magazine — the Anytime Fitness key fob works at any of the 5,000+ locations worldwide. Tofino has one. Whistler has one. There are locations near the Icefields Parkway, near the Amalfi Coast, near the Highlands of Scotland. You do not have to choose between being somewhere extraordinary and staying in the shape that extraordinary places demand.
This is the part of the Best Days Ever philosophy that does not get written about enough. The best days are not accidents. They are the product of preparation, consistency, and a body that has been looked after. Anytime Fitness is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.
The Gym as Social Anchor
There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes with moving to a new city. You have a place to sleep and a place to work, but you do not yet have a place to belong. The gym, it turns out, is one of the fastest ways to solve this problem. Not because gyms are inherently social — most of them are not — but because the right gym, run by the right owner, becomes a community in the truest sense of the word.
Daniell Jenkins greets every member by name. Tracy Savasta's clubs have a family feel that she deliberately cultivates across all 13 locations. Andrew Breton's technology investments mean that coaches have more time for the human moments, not less. These are not accidents of personality. They are the direct result of a franchise system that selects for owners who understand that the product is not the equipment — the product is the feeling you get when you walk through the door.
The Anytime Fitness key fob is one of the most underrated objects in travel. It is a pass to 5,000 communities around the world. You show up in a new city, you find the nearest location, and within a week you know the regulars, the coach, the person who always takes the treadmill by the window. This is not nothing. In a world that has become increasingly atomised, a gym that actually functions as a community is a remarkable thing.
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Anytime Fitness
5,000+ locations · 30+ countries · All 7 continents
I have been in a lot of gyms. The ones that stay with you are never the ones with the best equipment. They are the ones where somebody knew your name. Where the coach remembered that you had a bad week and adjusted the session accordingly. Where you walked in a stranger and left with a reason to come back. Anytime Fitness, at its best, is that kind of gym. And the people who build that — Daniell, Tracy, Andrew, and thousands of owners like them — are doing something genuinely important. They are building the infrastructure for better days. That is worth celebrating.
Best Day Ever. — Gerald
Just Gerald Magazine is interested in partnering with Anytime Fitness franchise owners for editorial photoshoots at locations worldwide. If you are a franchisee or a member of the Anytime Fitness brand team and would like to discuss a feature, editorial collaboration, or advertising opportunity, we would love to hear from you.
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