There are companies that score high marks for employee satisfaction, and then there’s Anytime Fitness, which built a tattoo parlor at its Woodbury headquarters because so many employees wanted the company’s “Running Man” logo permanently inked on their flesh. The parlor has delivered more than 4,000 tattoos to date.

Among those sporting the Anytime Fitness logo on their biceps or glutes are co-founders Chuck Runyon and Dave Mortensen, who created this company culture of going all in on everything they do—treating work like sport and becoming the consummate coaches along the way.

Launched 22 years ago, Anytime Fitness became the foundation of a $2 billion company called Self Esteem Brands with a portfolio of fitness and lifestyle franchise brands Runyon and Mortensen acquired along the way, including  Basecamp Fitness, Waxing the City, and The Bar Method. In April, Self Esteem merged with another national boutique fitness franchise brand, Orangetheory, effectively creating the largest fitness company footprint in the world with $4 billion in sales and nearly 7,000 locations on all seven continents. Yes, seven. Because Runyon and Mortensen couldn’t stop at six. When their first franchise opened in Africa five years ago, they set their sights on bringing Anytime Fitness to Antarctica, and did so, in 2019, on an expedition ship that docks there more than half the year.

“We had our best quarter ever in 2019,” Mortensen says. “We were feeling unstoppable.” But three months later, they were navigating a global pandemic and shutting down gyms around the world. “It was pretty astonishing, but it also made us stronger, healthier, smarter, and more pliable.”

Gym visits were up 6% in 2023. Self Esteem Brands and Orangetheory, now with dual headquarters in Woodbury and Boca Raton, Florida, announced a new parent company called Purpose Brands. Runyon says, together, the combined company is better positioned to support consumer wellness anywhere, anytime. That includes a recent Anytime Fitness digital partnership with Apple Fitness Plus.

On the precipice of a leadership transition, Runyon and Mortensen find themselves reflecting on legacy and succession. They are currently searching for a new CEO of Purpose Brands.

“Nobody could have predicted where they’d be today,” says Chuck Modell, a franchise attorney with Larkin Hoffman, who has represented the company since there were 50 Anytime Fitness gyms. Now there are more than 5,000. “But at the same time, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen two people with as much charisma, in an industry that’s truly about improving lives. Their franchisees look at them like rock stars.”

Friendly competition

In their early 20s, Runyon and Mortensen lived parallel lives. Runyon ran sales for a gym on the east side of St. Paul; Mortensen was doing the same on the west side. The owners of these clubs decided to offer reciprocity, and Runyon and Mortensen got to know each other the best way they know how, through friendly competition. They played racquetball. They played tennis. They compared sales results and quickly realized no one else could keep up.

“We are both intensely competitive individuals,” Runyon says. “And we met someone who matches that level of intensity. But I think we’ve both found we can take the work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.”

Mortensen adds on. “It’s never about him. It’s never about me. It’s about what we’re doing together and what we’re doing as an organization.”

They started their first business together in 1990, offering membership marketing to fitness groups around the world. They had a knack for growing a few hundred members into many thousand. Along the way, they took over a few distressed health clubs with plans to turn them around. But as operators, they noticed declining usage of many of the amenities and started thinking smaller.

“We kept talking for a few years about this express club concept, and then I visited a small club in Tennessee that did a promotion where they gave a member a key. I called Dave and said, ‘This is the differentiator,’” Runyon recalls. “We can have a club that’s open 24/7 for members but is not always staffed.”

They didn’t have deep pockets, nor connections to attract investors, so Runyon and Mortensen decided to build Anytime as a franchise business.

At the time, Eric Keller was working at one of Runyon and Mortensen’s clubs. “I just fell in love with these guys. They were like brothers.” So when he heard their idea to create a low- cost, low-overhead gym that would be open around the clock, he jumped. In 2002, Keller opened the first Anytime Fitness franchise in Cambridge, Minnesota. Within four months, he was ready to open a second.

“We did what we would never recommend today,” says Mortensen, who now advises other franchisors to work out the business kinks as owner-operators before franchising. “It was very abnormal, opening 30 franchise clubs out of the gate, but we knew we could motivate people to drive their business.”

Keller opened eight units in all but eventually sold them to become Anytime’s vice president of international franchising, a role that has taken him to Japan, Morocco, and, yes, Antarctica. “Every day, they push me out of my comfort zone. People stay with businesses that care about them.”

The four P’s

Located just out of earshot from Interstates 94 and 494 and down the road from a Costco, Self Esteem Brand’s headquarters campus feels like a sanctuary, with glass walls and decks overlooking 26 acres of wetlands. There are wooded walking paths, where Runyon stretches his legs several times a day with constant companion Milo, a labradoodle. There are fire pits, where franchisees from all over the world commune after a day of training.

Intersecting street signs at the front entrance convey the four P’s of Runyon and Mortensen’s self-taught business philosophy: People, purpose, profits, and play.

“We believe in the power of collective wealth and collective health,” Runyon says. Fitness drew them into this business. Franchising gave them a purpose bigger than their own ambitions.

“Dave and I have been entrepreneurs for 35 years,” Runyon says. “But for the first 20, we were small-business owners and so that’s been seared into our souls. When we’re making decisions now, we’re always thinking about the individual who owns a club somewhere.

“At the core of this,” Runyon continues, “we are here to help inspire the best of people, whether you’re a gym member, a franchisee, or an employee.”

While the two are currently architecting their transition out of day-to-day operations, they have no intention of going far. “Very active board members” is how they envision their roles evolving. “Chuck and I are never going to retire,” Mortensen says. “We get bored really, really quick.”

But they’re also proud of having built something larger than themselves.

“Showing that the businesses can run incredibly well without us running the day to day is really important for the value of this enterprise,” Mortensen says. “We’re always playing the long game.”

See the other 2024 Minnesota Business Hall of Fame inductees.