Andrew Holder on playing professional cricket and building a national fitness empire at the same time

“He’s already here,” the waiter at Café Melograno informs me, before I notice Andrew Holder at a table outside staring at the innocuous, 1980s office building across the street.

It seems the bustling Heytesbury Road venue is a regular haunt for the 33-year-old, who once ran his WA fitness start-up Revo Fitness from the modest office space in Subicao just metres from where we are seated.

Revo founder Andrew Holder talking business and living out his childhood dream of playing professional cricket.Credit: Colin Murty.

When Holder and his two colleagues occupied all 80 square metres of the Rokeby Road office in 2019, the business he founded seven years prior comprised of five Perth-based gyms.

The burgeoning fitness empire has since grown ten-fold, and the two recruits who backed Holder when the company was in its infancy now serve as chief operating officer and national fitness manager.

“It’s pretty crazy to think that we were working there in 2019,” he says, as he gazes back at the building behind me.

“I’m very nostalgic; I just love coming back and reflecting on where we’ve been and what we’ve been able to create.”

The company Holder founded while studying Commerce at the University of Western Australia was borne out of the death of another dream — or so he thought.

From the age of 10, Holder says he had been obsessed with the prospect of playing sport professionally, namely first-grade cricket.

I think that sport gave me this grit and determination to kind of just get back up after a failure, to kind of take a big breath, and not make it about myself, and then we were able to drive the business forward.

Holder believed his dream of playing cricket for Western Australia was all but over in 2012, when he took up 200 square metres inside the Shenton Park sports centre his family had sold their home to run a decade earlier.

His entrepreneurial spirit was something he says he gained from his parents, who he recalls pouring their heart and soul into the family business.

“It was ingrained in me to run your own business and to be the owner of your own destiny, rather than being kind of subject to the environment you’ve been put in,” he says.

The Revo Fitness founder continued playing first-grade cricket while growing his business, making his Sheffield Shield debut at the age of 26.

“At the time, I was opening my fifth [Revo Fitness] location in Victoria Park, and I was going there in between training at the WACA,” he says, as we place our order —quinoa salad for me, smashed avocado for Holder.

WAtoday journalist Jesinta Burton talking to Revo founder Andrew Holder.Credit: Colin Murty.

“I’d rock up to training, and they’d be saying ‘Oh, what’s with all the black paint all over you?’ and I’m like ‘I was just doing some renovation at home’ but I was actually painting the walls [of the gym].

“It was good to get ahead from a business perspective, but at the same point in time live out my childhood dream.”

The doors to Revo’s 50 gyms offering ultra-cheap memberships at $9.69 per week are now traversed by more than 14 million people every year and Holder leads a team of 250 employees nationally.

The business’s success earned Holder Business News’ 40 under 40 People’s Choice award in 2022 and EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2024.

“It’s happened really quickly, but it has also taken 12 years to get here. I think that people forget that we had six gyms in nine years,” he says.

“I think sometimes businesses know they’ve got a fantastic idea, but then they go too quickly, too early, and they might want to go to franchise.

“They get investment too early. But for me, my whole prerogative was making sure that I had a sustainable model that was wanting to be here for a long time.”

But the journey has been far from smooth sailing.

The fitness industry was among those to bear the brunt of the COVID pandemic when it reached Australian shores in February 2020.

Revo took the extraordinary step of turning off its debiting in a bid to gain the trust of its membership base and pivoted its product by taking its offering digital.

“It was extraordinarily difficult to turn your revenue off overnight and then be the first to close, last to open,” Holder says.

“But I think that sport gave me this grit and determination to kind of just get back up after a failure, to kind of take a big breath, and not make it about myself, and then we were able to drive the business forward.”

The state’s hard border was credited with helping Western Australia escape the worst of the virus, but it also prevented Revo’s large format retail competitors from entering the market.

Within a few short months, the marquee locations Revo had fought tooth and nail for a decade to land were being offered up on a platter.

Presented with the choice of taking advantage of the opportunity to grow the business or staying the course, Holder says the former was the obvious choice — and it has paid off in dividends.

He’s confident, ambitious, and has unwavering faith in the company’s capacity to execute Revo’s bold plan to establish 100 locations by 2027.

“I believe it’s achievable. It’s not a pipedream — it’s something that our team can execute,” he tells me.

“When I first started the business as a 21-year-old, one of the key challenges was trying to make people believe in our vision, and in what I was trying to achieve in terms of growing this brand,” he explains.

“Now that we’ve got people on board being able to execute at such a high level, it’s vindication for one thing, but it also helps you set the bar.”

The smashed avocado at Café Melograno in Subiaco.Credit: Colin Murty.

In the weeks since our lunch, the company’s savvy media strategists have announced Revo will open 25 new gyms across WA, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria this year alone — meaning he’ll be right on target.

But Holder poured cold water on any speculation about a foray into overseas markets, saying he believed Revo would be doing itself a disservice because it still had “unfinished business” in Australia.

As I suspected, Holder is up before sunrise and his day begins in the gym. No two days are the same, he tells me, and living a short distance from the office allows him to maximise his time.

But the father-of-three says the one non-negotiable is the time set aside for his children, who he shares his first and last meal with before putting them to bed and returning to the laptop.

Though he strives to retain work-life balance, he says it’s almost impossible to fully switch off as a founder — often finding himself mulling new gym locations and ways to refine the business.

“I’m trying not to be a slave to my diary, but I’d rather be busy than bored,” he tells me.

“I think when you have an opportunity like I believe we have, it’s my responsibility to drive that forward and if you’ve got momentum and great people driving the business, I don’t believe you should let the opportunity go to waste.”

Family, he tells me, is a key motivator, and he reserves special praise for his partner Elise — the woman he found himself sitting alongside at university one day.

As we gather our things, I ask Andrew about the legacy he hopes to leave.

“I just want to help people,” he says.

“I think acts of service are why we’re here on this earth, and so making sure that I’m there to help other people, to be able to make people achieve what they want to drives me every single day and my legacy.”

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