When AFL superstars Taylor Adams and Levi Greenwood aren’t fighting it out on the field, they’re doing it at one of the pair’s 12RND Fitness clubs.

The Collingwood midfielders have amassed a solid resume on the sporting field, but it’s their work in the business arena that is turning heads.

A chance encounter at a 12RND Fitness club on the Gold Coast planted the seed for Levi, but it wasn’t until his business partner Murray suggested buying a franchise that the penny dropped.

“We thought it’d be a great way for Taylor and I to get into business and set ourselves up post-footy,” Levi explains. “At the time, there were only a few open in Victoria so we knew we were onto something.”

The boxing and strength training franchise seemed like a perfect fit for the two athletes. With a focus on team training in a sporting environment, 12RND has captured the imagination of many ex-sport stars and fitness fanatics.

Amateur boxer Taylah Robertson, AFLW player Jessy Keeffe and Brisbane Bandits star Logan Wade are all involved with the brand, however its celebrity status comes straight from the top.

Along with being the face and proverbial colour-scheme for the brand, four-time world boxing champion Danny Green also co-founded the business with entrepreneur Tim West back in 2016.

The franchise drawcard

Taylor and Levi approached the opportunity with reserved excitement. They knew that while the business had potential, it needed to be a long-term investment that fitted with their already packed schedule. Luckily for Taylor, one training session was all it took for the fitness nut to get hooked.

“As soon as we came across 12RND, we just knew we were onto a winner and were confident that we could make a club work,” Taylor explains.

“I immediately loved the concept, loved the training, the professionalism of the fitout, the fact that there’s a coach in every workout, the variety, the boxing, and especially the strength and conditioning.”

Taylor says the real drawcard that inspired him to take the leap was seeing the parallels between his professional sporting career and the 12RND model. 

“I’ve grown up involved in team sports, so I loved the fact that we could do something in health and fitness that offered a team environment where I could help people achieve their goals from one workout through to long-term results as an ongoing member,” he says.

It was an appeal that Levi echoed. 

“At the start, the concept was the biggest drawcard, the no fixed class times and the fact that you got a full body workout in under 45 minutes; I knew it would be perfect for time-poor people in Melbourne,” he says.

The pair got started on their initial Port Melbourne studio, launching in May of 2019, with Levi revealing the venture was anything but a passive investment.

“In the early days we put in a lot more than we expected to, working on the floor quite a bit at the start to get things into operation as we were finding our staff and to make sure we fully understood our product,” he says.

“The more we got involved, the more we could see and feel that team environment with not just our staff but also our members, where we all work together and create a tight-knit environment.”

The most challenging part is taking the leap of faith, says Taylor. “We’re fortunate that we have a lot of great people around us that are willing to help. The opportunity to invest into an already established, successful franchise network has actually been one of the biggest motivators behind going with 12RND; that you weren’t going about business starting from scratch.”

With their athletic background, owning a 12RND club feels like a natural progression for the pair, says Levi.

“It’s a high-performance business and on top of that you have the team environment in club with your members. It makes it an easy decision once you know what you’re getting into.”

Buying another franchise

If playing professional sport has taught the two Collingwood superstars anything, it’s that hard work breeds opportunity, which is an ethos they’re grabbing with both hands.

Less than a year after launching their first 12RND studio, Taylor and Levi backed it up with a second studio at Point Cook, but this time around, they had the franchise fundamentals down pat.

“Our Point Cook club came off the back of a fair bit of research of the suburb,” Taylor says. “There’s a lot of development with young families and young professionals, which matches the 12RND audience perfectly.”

Levi explains “We had a plan all along to have more than one 12RND club, because we have the support of our business partners and are still focusing on our footy, we wanted to build our business to become self-sustaining where we have a network of 12RND clubs that we could all float between, enough to keep us all busy.

“We’re always up for a challenge. We’re very driven people and have been in a competitive environment for a long time, so if it takes 10 clubs to help us continue with that momentum and maintain that stimulation to avoid complacency then that’s what we’ll do. At the end of the day, we trusted the process, product and the system, and just knew to follow the game plan.”