by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

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Successful entrepreneurs, they say, need a scar, some emotional wound that feeds their hunger to succeed. In the tough times, it's their dark reminder of why they take the knocks.

For Fred Turok, that moment came in 1968. His parents were both jailed as political prisoners under the apartheid regime in South Africa. The ten-year-old Turok became a political refugee, blown around Africa and Europe, cared for by loyal family friends. In all, he attended 11 schools.

Twenty years on, and with the booming chain of LA Fitness clubs to his name, Turok ponders on those years. "It made me tough," he says. "And it helped me to get on with people. I don't suffer fools gladly, but I try hard not to be sharp and slick in business."

That toughness shines through. "I expect people to deliver," says the enormous six-and-a-half-foot, leather-clad figure. "I get very annoyed if people don't deliver promises." He often overhears his sales team saying that they won't mention a potential bulk booking until they have the cheque in their hand. Sensible people.

But he needs that edge. Health and fitness is an unromantic business. How many club members can you recruit per square foot? Fit-out costs per square foot? How do you build a balanced business when your peak times only last three or four hours a day? Can't we get rid of that squash court and replace it with an aerobics room? It's called "effective space management" and it's cold-blooded stuff. Turok has secured £3m-worth of investment from 3i (and £1.5m from the Midland) and he knows that payback time will come. He's got rapid expansion plans and somewhere along the line flotation must beckon. "We're not first and foremost a fitness club," says Turok. "It's a business."

Business success has been a bumpy ride. After his multi-schooling (it ended with expulsion from Hampstead Comprehensive - something to do with a stage, a drunken rendition of The Engineers Song and a group of governors), he became a physical education teacher at a school in Battersea. He rose quickly to head of department.

But Turok is the competitive sort. When David Lloyd opened his David Lloyd racket club in Heston, he walked straight in and asked for a job. The two men hit it off. Turok was appointed swimming pool manager. It was the trigger to his entrepreneurialism. By holding swimming lessons, Turok transformed the boring old pool into a money-spinner. Lloyd was impressed; Turok became head of Lloyd's Wallington Club near Croydon, building it into the David Lloyd Sports Club.

The two men reached crunch time when Lloyd sold the Wallington Club. Turok decided not to leave with him. It soured their relationship. Instead Turok stayed to convert the club into the Surrey Tennis & Country Club. "It was a very important period for me as a businessman," says Turok. "I saw the model I wanted to develop." Instead of 120,000 sq ft of tennis courts, Turok saw the potential for fitness clubs that would use the space more efficiently.

In 1990 he set out on his own. He borrowed money from friends and family, "mortgaged, remortgaged and remortgaged" himself, and eventually found the £160,000 to buy the Westminster Health Club. Today he has clubs all over the south-east. A property agency is in place, feeding through potential new sites. Rivals are startled by the sales aggression and the pace of the roll-out. Brand development, too, is on the cards, through health products and by providing personal trainer services.

Turok reckons the health and fitness sector is grossly underexploited. Nine per cent of the population take regular exercise, yet only 2.4 per cent are members of a fitness club. On a like-for-like basis, he believes, we're miles behind the US.

So what about Fred Turok? Does he have time to keep himself in shape? Or has he succumbed to the executive lifestyle? Not a bit of it. Twice a week he leaves home in Dorking at 5am to take a 6am aerobics class in Westminster. It's wearing stuff. I found it slightly reassuring when he said he's two-and-a-half stone overweight.

In the family way
It's strange to think that a bright young entrepreneur with a business worth £20m could be the black sheep of the family. But then I hadn't reckoned on Fred Turok's family.

Parents Ben and Mary Turok were two of South Africa's most inveterate fighters against the apartheid regime. Today they are both MPs in the ANC government.

And the parade of honour doesn't stop there. Ivan Turok is professor of town planning and economics at Glasgow University; Neil Turok is professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge. "And then there's me," says Fred. "A PE teacher."

Contacts
Matthew Rock editors@realbusiness.co.uk

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