The accident that changed the course for the founder of GoodLife Fitness

The life of David Patchell-Evans could have been a tragedy. Thanks to his relentlessly positive outlook, it’s one of the country’s greatest success stories.
The man everyone — even his own mother — calls “Patch” was born into poverty, lost his father at age eight, suffered a debilitating motorcycle accident in university, had his professional rowing career cut short by rheumatoid arthritis and had a daughter with severe autism at a time when there were few resources available for her. Just six months ago, the 70-year-old broke his femur and hip in 20 places in a skiing accident. So why can’t he stop smiling?
“I’ve had these different challenges in my life that keep proving to be a gift,” explained the founder and CEO of GoodLife Fitness. “I have an expression called CROP — crisis equals opportunity — and you just take whatever happens to you and think about the silver lining. How can I make this a positive thing?”
Throughout his life, Patchell-Evans has done just that. Losing his father made him an ambitious entrepreneur. The motorcycle crash inspired him to study kinesiology and join the gym that he later purchased. The arthritis gave him a different perspective on the value of physical fitness. Raising a daughter with special needs served as the blueprint for his management style.
Four months after a skiing accident that would have forced most people his age to slow down, Patchell-Evans joined the mosh pit at a Pink concert, albeit on crutches. “It’s not about how hard you go, it’s just about showing up,” he said of his outlook on both fitness and life.
Patchell-Evans founded GoodLife Fitness in London, Ont., in 1979. Since then, he’s grown the GoodLife Group portfolio — which includes GoodLife, Fit4Less, and Éconofitness — as well as his other Canadian fitness ventures, GYMVMT and Oxygen Yoga & Fitness, to nearly 500 clubs, 1.4 million members and 10,000 employees coast-to-coast. That makes GoodLife the largest fitness brand in Canada, and fourth largest in the world.
That’s in addition to Patchell-Evans’ other ventures, which include CityFitness in New Zealand, Revo Fitness in Australia, AyrFit in Alberta, and Craft Boxing, which he co-owns with George Foreman III.
Patchell-Evans recently spoke with the Star remotely from southern New Zealand about his approach to business, fitness and overcoming adversity.
What was your first foray into entrepreneurship?
It’s textbook; I had a paper route. Only I had five. I recognized, at 10 years old, that most kids didn’t want to collect money or ask for new business, so I did the door-knocking and paid my buddies to deliver the paper. It turns out a lot of entrepreneurship is knocking on doors, doing the work that other people don’t want to do, and getting used to hearing “no.”
Then I worked at a sporting goods chain, and it was the same; most of the staff waited for people to come to them, I would walk up and say, “How can I help you?” Then toward the second half of high school I was really into rock ‘n’ roll, and I’d book a little hall, get some local rock bands, and sell tickets to high school kids.
What made you want to do the work nobody else wanted to at such a young age?
My father died when I was a little kid, so we didn’t have any money, and I just had to work.
You faced another major obstacle after a motorcycle accident left you with multiple broken bones. What did that experience teach you about overcoming adversity?
It changed everything for me.
At one stage my right shoulder was about four or five inches lower than my left, and my right arm still doesn’t go straight. This was during my first year at Western University, and I was set to go into the business school second year, but because of my physiotherapy I switched some of my courses to take physical education to see what that was like and ended up switching majors.
I went into third year knowing I wanted to run something that helps people with their fitness. Back in the ‘70s, that was a whole different concept; most of the population smoked, and the only people going to the gyms were athletes.
How were you able to afford that first gym?
I traded my motorcycle at the end of first year for a 20-year-old Jeep with an old snowplow, and I got 20 contracts that year. The next, I got 100. Then I bought another Jeep. By the next year, I had five trucks, and I was making about $60,000, $70,000 a year, while going to school, which allowed me to row all summer.
So, you were rowing competitively, running a snowplow business and managing a gym while attending university?
Yeah, and you know what happened? In 1977 or ‘78 they had the biggest snow year in history, and I got paid per snowfall, so I was making good money; that’s how I was able to buy the gym. My snowplowing company guaranteed your lot would be done by seven in the morning. Not everyone would do that. So that winter I didn’t sleep for four or five days straight, and right after I had to do an oral physiology exam, and I fell asleep in the exam. Fell right off the chair.
My professor said, “Your priorities aren’t straight,” and told me to take a year off. In that year I opened my first fitness club, and I never came back. In all fairness, they did give me an honorary PhD years later.
By the time you opened your first gym, you had already scaled a newspaper delivery business and a snowplow business. How did that inform your approach to managing a fitness club?
What I learned was that you look after other people first. I also learned from the sporting goods business. It’s easy to tell people what you think they need, but you have to get down to basics and just listen.
So, you never ended up studying business formally?
I studied exercise physiology and anatomy, but I knew almost nothing about motivation and sales. I knew instinctively, but I didn’t know how to turn it into a system. So, if we had a rowing competition in, let’s say Philadelphia, I would find out who’s doing sales or motivational speaking events in Philadelphia that weekend. I attended events like that all over the country. That was my business education.
How has your approach to running a fitness brand changed over the years?
After winning a bunch of medals at the World Master’s Rowing Championships I woke up the next day and had instant onset arthritis. Just like that, I was totally crippled. For years I couldn’t make a first; I had three pairs of shoes, three different sizes, depending on how swollen my feet were. I’ve had major foot surgery, I’ve had artificial hips, but that really taught me that I was way too focused on performance, because that was my background.
I was saying I could take the average person and make them a great athlete, but when your greatest challenge is just opening a door, your whole perspective changes. The company started to revolve around the idea that just showing up is good enough. Ironically, that opened the door to millions more people, because we weren’t saying you had to become an athlete. “Just show up.” That became our mantra.
And then the next twist; my daughter was diagnosed with autism, and in those days, people would say just put her in an institution and move on. I wasn’t willing to do that. I learned the best way to work with her was to tell her what she did right, to reward the positive rather than punish the negative. That eventually became part of the company’s culture as well.
During the pandemic a lot of folks moved their workouts into their home. Has membership returned to pre-pandemic levels?
It’s ahead of where it was in 2019. I feel like COVID robbed people of a couple years of health, and now they’re anxious to get it back. Our average member used to come twice a week, now it’s three times.
The number one reason people are joining our fitness clubs right now, according to our surveys, is mental health. People have identified the club not as a place they need to go to, but a place they want to go to get away from everything else in their life. We’ve become the neighbourhood; people get that sense of community from it. They get fitness, but they also get to see something different than their computer screen. That’s the biggest change.
You founded GoodLife in 1979. It’s now one of the largest fitness brands in the world. What is your role at this point?
My role now is founder-in-chief. I’ve got a huge collection of incredibly talented people that have been with me for 30 years, that are only 50 years old. They’re leading the company, they’re doing a fantastic job, and they believe the same things I do.
Most of my life I have been a “human doing things.” Now, I get to just be a “human being.”