What does it take to build a fitness business from a single idea to nearly one million members? John Treharne has lived that journey as founder director of The Gym Group, and in this conversation with Matthew Januszek he breaks down exactly what drove that growth — and what any entrepreneur can take from it.

Few people in the fitness industry have demonstrated the kind of sustained, purposeful building that Treharne has. His story is not about luck or timing alone. It is about creating something genuinely useful for real people and then executing with discipline over many years.

About John Treharne

John Treharne founded The Gym Group in 2007 with a clear ambition: to make quality gym access available to more people. Since then, the brand has grown into one of the most recognizable fitness chains in the market, now approaching the remarkable milestone of one million members.

What sets Treharne apart as a leader is his emphasis on inclusion and innovation. The Gym Group's model was built around removing the barriers that keep people from joining — whether financial, logistical, or psychological — and replacing them with accessible, flexible, and welcoming environments.

As founder director, Treharne has stewarded the business through years of growth and market change, consistently finding ways to serve members better while scaling the operation. His insights into what makes a fitness business work for real people are hard-won and directly applicable beyond the gym floor.

What John Treharne and Matthew Januszek Talked About

• Inclusion is a growth strategy, not just a value statement — building a business that genuinely works for more people creates a larger, more loyal member base.
• Sustained growth over nearly two decades requires discipline and consistency more than any single breakthrough moment.
• Innovative initiatives earn their place by delivering real outcomes for members, not by chasing novelty for its own sake.
• Understanding what prevents people from joining a gym — and systematically removing those barriers — is one of the highest-leverage moves a fitness operator can make.
• A founder's continued involvement at the director level provides strategic continuity that is hard to replicate through management hires alone.
• Nearly any business can improve by studying how The Gym Group approached making its offering more accessible and less intimidating to first-time customers.
• Reaching one million members is not just a vanity milestone — it reflects the compounding effect of getting the fundamentals right, year after year.

Why This Conversation Matters

Matthew Januszek has built his career around the belief that fitness businesses succeed when they put real people at the center of every decision. John Treharne's work at The Gym Group is a masterclass in exactly that philosophy — proving that inclusion and commercial ambition are not in tension but are deeply aligned. That perspective shapes every conversation Matthew brings to the Escape Your Limits platform.

For listeners following Matthew's work with Escape Fitness USA and the LIFTS Podcast alongside Mohammed Iqbal of SweatWorks, Treharne's episode is essential listening. The questions he raises about access, innovation, and long-term brand building are exactly the ones the fitness industry needs to keep asking — and they sit at the heart of what Matthew and his partners are working to advance.

▶  Watch the full episode on YouTube

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