20 Years of ANT - Part 3

With ANT Fitness building nicely, I was getting more confident at not only being a trainer, but also running a business. However, I was not ready for what was about to test me and my business. Covid? No, that was still 10 years away.

It was early in 2009 that it started to unravel - the relationship with my landlord. I'm obviously not going to go into all the details here but in short, after Evan Toyer passed away, things changed. A dispute over building safety, namely a non existent fire escape; the threats to throw my equipment on the front lawn and the denial of a lease and the laws binding both parties to it, offered a very stressful 4 week period. All I could see was the hard work of building my business over the first 4-5 years about to come crashing down, because i refused to move into an upstairs room until there was a fire escape.

During this time, I held onto a verse from the Bible:

"For I know the plans I have for you, " says the Lord, "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope"

Jeremiah 29.11

My faith was rewarded when Mark, President of the Portland Youth Centre at the time, contacted me, after hearing about my search for a new premises, to offer a solution - half of the Father Granel Centre the Youth Centre was leasing from the Portland RSL.

And so the community of ANT Fitness came together, with trailers and utes, to move the entire gym in a single weekend.

I closed the doors of the Masonic Hall on the Friday evening, and opened the doors at 9 Wolgan Street on the Monday.

A new chapter was beginning and I was excited. Now, I had shop front location in the main street of Portland with a council car park adjacent to it. Suddenly, people who didn't know there had been a gym on top of the hill 300m away for the past 4.5 years, now knew. And business grew.

With the assistance of different casual employees over the next few years, we continued to offer a high standard of fitness services to Portland and surrounds. By this stage, Michael and Adam had left, and my clients got to know Mal, Megan, Louise, Corinne, Richard, my wife, Monique, and two of my children, Winston & Tabitha, all at different times.

With the growth in numbers, I was able to lease more equipment which allowed an upgrade of the ellipticals, and more treadmills and rowing machines being offered for use. The Casual Visits hours were expanded, our variety of classes grew and Personal Training was still popular.

Things were travelling nicely. We celebrated our 10th Birthday in 2015 with a gift from my clients, a cake and a fun Motown Moves class.

I was happy - I was living my dream.

Then 2020 arrived.

To be continued...