I Built a $100M Fitness Business... Sold It in One Day | Anne Mahlum

Anne built Solidcore from a single studio into more than 100 locations and ultimately sold the business in a nine-figure transaction. The hosts framed the outcome as her making about $90 million in one day; Anne said the result felt “earned” because building a large company, rather than operating one boutique studio, had been her intention from the beginning.

Anne said her entrepreneurial drive was shaped partly by a difficult childhood involving her father’s addictions. He went through drug and alcohol recovery when she was young, later developed a gambling problem that he concealed for years, and was eventually thrown out of the family home by Anne’s mother after the gambling came to light.

As a teenager, Anne initially blamed her mother for the family breakup and spent years trying to “fix” her father. She eventually concluded that her mother simply could not continue living through another addiction and that her father would only change when he personally chose to do so.

Running became Anne’s way of handling her own emotions and discovering a sense of personal strength. She said running made her feel capable and “invincible,” an experience that later became central to both her nonprofit work and her approach to building communities.

Roughly a decade after her family’s addiction problems began, Anne connected with men outside a homeless shelter and decided to start a running club for them. Even the shelter director initially thought the idea made little sense, but Anne said she saw aspects of her father in the men and believed running could change how they saw themselves.

Nine men joined the first running group, and within six weeks Anne became convinced that the work was her calling. The men consistently arrived on time, and she believed increased self-respect could become a pathway toward employment, housing and broader life changes.

Anne required the homeless runners to sign a commitment agreement rather than treating them as passive recipients of help. They were expected to attend Monday, Wednesday and Friday, arrive on time, maintain a positive attitude and respect their teammates.

She concluded that expecting excellence from people can itself be empowering. Anne recalled the men visibly responding when she imposed standards on them, interpreting it as evidence that someone finally expected something meaningful from them rather than simply defining them by homelessness.

Anne said one of her most important lessons from her father was that people cannot be forced to change. Her approach was therefore to provide expectations, structure and belief while requiring participants to do the actual work themselves.

She also rejected using difficult circumstances as a permanent excuse for her own behavior. Anne said that continuing to define herself primarily as the child of an addicted father and divorced parents would ultimately damage her more than anyone else.

Anne’s broad lesson about human behavior is that people want to feel seen, respected, cared for, encouraged and celebrated. She saw the same dynamic in homeless runners arriving at 6 a.m. and later in paying Solidcore customers repeatedly returning to classes.

That insight became a central part of Anne’s business philosophy: create an environment in which customers feel better about themselves. She regarded emotional recognition and community, rather than simply the underlying workout, as a major source of customer loyalty.

One of the hosts connected personally with Anne’s description of running, saying he had undergone two minor heart surgeries. He said returning to running afterward made him again feel powerful and capable of pushing his limits.

Anne scaled the nonprofit Back on My Feet into 12 markets in about four and a half years. Once she believed the operating formula and infrastructure were established and no longer depended heavily on her, she began thinking about what she could build next.

Leaving her first successful organization created significant self-doubt about whether she could repeat the achievement. Anne described worrying about becoming a “one-hit wonder” and questioning whether her earlier success had involved luck.

The idea for Solidcore came after Anne tried a difficult Pilates-style workout while visiting Los Angeles. Despite having completed 11 marathons and many other workouts, she was surprised by its difficulty and believed nobody had yet built the brand and community around that type of exercise that she thought was possible.

Anne moved extremely quickly once she saw the opportunity, opening her first studio roughly three months after stepping down from Back on My Feet.

She invested her entire roughly $175,000 in savings into the first Solidcore location. The studio actually required more money than she had, so she negotiated with contractors to extend payment terms from about 30 days to 60 days, hoping operating cash flow would arrive before the bills became due.

Before the first studio even opened, a former Back on My Feet board member offered Anne $75,000 for 30% of Solidcore. He believed her success persuading homeless people to run regularly and raising millions of dollars for the nonprofit demonstrated that she could build the fitness company.

Anne seriously considered the $75,000 investment but ultimately rejected it and kept 100% ownership at that stage. She concluded that accepting it primarily because she was afraid would reinforce her own doubts and make future adversity harder to withstand.

Having all of her own savings at risk created what Anne described as a “no plan B” mentality. She personally distributed flyers at marathons and triathlons and said she was willing to do essentially whatever legitimate grassroots marketing was required to make the studio work.

Anne hired Solidcore’s first five coaches primarily for personality rather than technical fitness credentials. Her questions were whether people would like them, whether they could be funny and whether they could make customers feel good.

Solidcore deliberately trained coaches to use customers’ names repeatedly in positive contexts during workouts. Anne believed hearing your own name attached to encouragement created a subtle but powerful emotional connection with the studio.

Anne continued maintaining relationships with the original group of coaches years later. She viewed those early hires as critical stewards of the culture rather than merely employees delivering workouts.

At peak expansion speed, Solidcore opened about 32 locations in a single year. Anne described scale as a flywheel: once the company had repeatable operating systems and enough momentum, adding additional studios became progressively easier.

Solidcore built specialized operating functions around operations, real estate, marketing, coach training and HR. The company would start with an annual opening target—such as 15 studios—and work backward to determine how many leases, letters of intent and other pipeline opportunities were required.

The company intentionally pursued many possible real-estate deals simultaneously because individual deals regularly collapsed. Anne regarded depending on a single prospective lease as an unacceptable risk when the business had fixed opening targets.

Solidcore learned to settle major economic issues during the letter-of-intent stage rather than postponing them until the full lease. Rent, guarantees and other potential deal breakers were pushed forward so the company would not spend roughly 45 days negotiating a lease only to discover an irreconcilable issue.

Solidcore also began architectural drawings and permitting as soon as an LOI was signed rather than waiting for the final lease. By overlapping the processes and accepting the risk that some deals might fail, studios could sometimes open only eight to ten weeks after lease signing.

Anne saw operating speed itself as a competitive advantage. By the time competing concepts opened one or two locations, Solidcore could already have established a much larger footprint in the market.

Solidcore developed a cluster strategy in which it generally would not enter a new market unless it believed it could eventually support roughly five studios within a 15–20-mile radius. Anne argued that the effort required to create awareness in a new market was difficult to justify for only one location.

Manhattan became Anne’s example of the power of concentrated brand awareness. She said Solidcore had roughly 20 Manhattan studios and that another location could open with a waiting list and operate at what she described as a $2–3 million studio because the surrounding market already knew the brand.

Solidcore therefore continued adding density in established markets and nearby suburbs rather than constantly chasing entirely new cities. Existing customers, referrals and brand recognition reduced the work required to fill subsequent studios.

Anne said this clustering strategy was not originally copied from a particular mentor or franchise system. She was aware of companies such as Starbucks having dense footprints, but much of Solidcore’s approach emerged through experimentation.

Solidcore eventually offered classes across an unusually wide schedule, from roughly 4:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. Anne believed traditional fitness operators were leaving customers unserved by concentrating too heavily on conventional morning and evening workout periods.

Anne estimated that a studio needed only about 300 recurring customers to become profitable. Framing expansion as the task of finding 300 suitable customers made entering markets feel less intimidating.

She challenged conventional assumptions about low-demand workout periods. If someone claimed nobody would attend a 2 p.m. class, her response was essentially that a large city almost certainly contained ten people who wanted to exercise then.

Solidcore adapted schedules to the actual working patterns of individual neighborhoods. Anne cited New York’s financial district, where investment bankers and lawyers might need a 10 p.m. class that competing fitness businesses did not provide.

Solidcore’s first market expansions were less data-driven than its later process became. Atlanta was chosen partly because Anne’s boyfriend’s family lived there, while Philadelphia and other early markets benefited from cities and neighborhoods Anne already knew from Back on My Feet.

Anne considers excessive dependence on one supposedly perfect second market a possible warning sign for a supposedly scalable business. Her view is that a truly broad concept should have viable customers across many potential cities rather than functioning only in one narrowly defined place.

As its location strategy matured, Solidcore learned to identify neighboring businesses that attracted a similar customer. The conversation cited combinations such as Drybar, Sweetgreen and Solidcore as indicators of overlapping demographics.

Maintaining quality while expanding depended heavily on centralized coach training. Anne worked closely with training leadership, including longtime training director Joe Gomez, and corporate trainers traveled into new markets to teach new coaches.

Solidcore’s cultural test was whether a coach genuinely embodied its message of creating “the strongest version of yourself.” Technical competence alone was insufficient; Anne also wanted authenticity, energy and an engaging personality.

During rapid expansion in Washington, D.C., Solidcore discovered that some of its best coaches could be recruited directly from its customer base. The company approached regular customers who naturally attracted other people and offered to train them even if they had never worked as fitness instructors.

Anne said roughly 99% of Solidcore coaches had separate full-time jobs and coached as a side role. A typical coach might teach about six classes a week rather than working as a conventional full-time fitness instructor.

She believed customers would forgive occasional technical coaching mistakes more readily than an unpleasant personality. Being friendly, funny, encouraging and able to make customers feel special was therefore treated as a core job requirement.

Anyone seeking to coach was expected to actually take and like the Solidcore workout. Anne felt customers could detect someone promoting a product that the person did not personally believe in.

Solidcore paid successful part-time coaches meaningful amounts of money. Anne cited a New York friend earning roughly $40,000 a year for coaching six classes a week, while also gaining public-speaking experience and a large professional and social network.

Anne said succession planning was essential to making Solidcore sellable without damaging the company. Private-equity buyers evaluated not only her but the wider management team to determine whether the business could continue operating successfully after her departure.

She deliberately transferred larger responsibilities to strong executives so the company would become less dependent on her. Anne argued that talented employees need room to speak, make decisions and demonstrate that they can operate the business independently.

Anne said she raised several private-equity rounds, with an early major round totaling $18 million. About $12 million went into Solidcore while she personally took roughly $6 million off the table.

She disagrees with the idea that founders should necessarily keep every dollar invested until the final exit. Coming from a family without substantial wealth, she wanted experience handling meaningful amounts of money before being faced with a transaction worth tens of millions.

Anne continued taking some personal liquidity in later financing rounds and said she had already realized about $15 million before the final major exit. That financial security reduced pressure to accept whatever offer buyers presented.

Her negotiation position at the final exit was that she wanted a nine-figure personal outcome rather than accepting a roughly $90 million equity valuation. She told the buyer that if it could not reach her terms, she was willing to wait about six months, run a more competitive process and potentially make the buyer pay more later.

The conversation therefore presents a distinction between the hosts’ description of Anne making about $90 million from the transaction and Anne’s own description of insisting on a $100 million threshold during negotiations. The transcript does not fully reconcile those two figures.

Anne never surrendered ultimate control of the company during earlier fundraising, even though her economic ownership eventually fell to roughly 30%. She said she remained the controlling party on the board: she could decide whether to sell the company, while investors could not force a sale without her.

Anne originally expected that Solidcore would need only one major outside financing round, but COVID-19 disrupted that plan. The company hired bankers in February 2020 after having opened roughly 50 studios during the preceding 26 months, only for shutdowns to eliminate revenue and force major staff reductions.

During the shutdown, Anne identified landlords as the company’s immediate existential financial threat. Solidcore negotiated rent relief, often offering landlords longer lease commitments or other future value in exchange for temporary abatement.

The relatively small studio footprint—around 2,500 square feet—helped make landlord concessions manageable. Anne said successful negotiations allowed Solidcore to avoid burning through roughly $2.5 million it had in the bank.

Rather than selling the company during the downturn at what she considered a distressed valuation, Anne raised approximately another $50 million in 2021. She described the strategy as shifting from defense to offense while many competitors remained cautious.

Anne said the company viewed Republican-led states as more permissive toward business reopening during that period and consequently opened 11 new studios in those markets in 2021. She saw aggressive deployment of fresh capital during the downturn as a way to emerge ahead of slower competitors.

Solidcore subsequently changed ownership again in 2024, after Anne’s own exit.

After selling, Anne shifted from concentrating almost entirely on creating wealth to protecting and compounding it. She estimated her household net worth at roughly $108–110 million at the time of the interview.

She described approximately half of her wealth as invested in public equities. Those holdings included both ETFs and individual stocks.

About 15% of her wealth was in real estate, including her primary residence and some cash-flow-producing properties.

She said roughly 5% was invested in private-equity deals. Having dealt extensively with private equity as an entrepreneur, she wanted exposure to that side of investing as well.

Another roughly 5–10% was allocated to direct startup investments. Anne focuses those investments on areas she understands, particularly fitness and wellness, and on founders in whom she has confidence.

She estimated about 2% of her portfolio was in cryptocurrency and another roughly 5–10% in hedge funds. The percentages were given as approximations and ranges rather than a complete accounting that necessarily totals exactly 100%.

Anne’s preferred wealth strategy is generally to hold appreciating assets rather than repeatedly sell them. She described borrowing against wealth as preferable in some circumstances because selling assets can trigger taxes.

She said she personally negotiated borrowing terms, including a margin rate, with UBS. Her broader point was that larger customers have greater leverage to negotiate with financial institutions.

Anne strongly criticized leaving large amounts of money in ordinary savings accounts. She argued that banks can earn substantially more by deploying customer deposits while paying depositors relatively little, and noted that customers often have to specifically request higher-yield products.

She cited high-yield money-market rates of roughly 4% at the time of the conversation, versus much lower returns on conventional accounts. Her characterization of the traditional savings arrangement as “the biggest scam in the world” was explicitly her opinion.

Anne said a sharp market decline temporarily reduced one of her investment accounts to about $49 million. She described the portfolio falling roughly 20–30% over around two weeks during market turbulence associated with new tariffs.

Rather than selling during the decline, she invested additional money because she expected the market eventually to recover. She later said the account had rebounded to approximately $64 million when she checked it shortly before the interview.

Anne said she had earned more than $20 million from public-market investing since selling Solidcore in April 2023. She emphasized that the sale proceeds were invested gradually rather than all being deposited into the market immediately.

Her long-range spreadsheets suggest she could become a billionaire by roughly age 68 if her investments compound around 10% annually. She presented that as a mathematical projection rather than a guaranteed outcome.

The experience of seeing capital compound without active labor has changed Anne’s relationship with money. She described it as almost feeling like “cheating” that she could spend the day playing volleyball while invested capital continued producing additional wealth.

Anne is highly critical of traditional education for emphasizing subjects she sees as less useful than practical life skills. She said colleges should give much greater attention to communication, human psychology and marketing and predicted that institutions failing to become more practically useful could lose relevance over the next decade.

Despite building Solidcore aggressively, Anne said she consistently slept about eight hours a night. She rejected the idea that entrepreneurship required her to work 20 hours a day and viewed extreme overwork as incompatible with building a scalable organization.

She nevertheless said she thought about and worked on Solidcore constantly because she enjoyed it. The distinction for her was between intense engagement and personally doing every task.

Anne repeatedly asked which activities actually required her involvement and which someone else could perform better. She focused her own time on responsibilities with the highest expected return to the business and tried to delegate everything else quickly.

She believes founders damage scalability when every important decision eventually returns to them. Employees need opportunities to make decisions—including some wrong ones—so that they develop judgment and confidence rather than waiting for the CEO to solve every problem.

Anne recommended the management book Multipliers for thinking about how leaders either expand or suppress the capabilities of people around them. Her takeaway was that the highest-paid person in a meeting should not automatically provide every answer.

Anne transitioned gradually out of Solidcore rather than abruptly losing her role after the sale. After promoting another CEO, she served as executive chair for about two years, giving herself time to reduce operational involvement and build a life outside the company.

The company’s leadership team, rather than Anne, had to demonstrate its value to the next owner because she was not planning to remain. Anne said her own involvement late in the process was concentrated on the transaction itself rather than day-to-day management presentations.

The transition period gave Anne time to confront the identity problem that many founders experience after selling their companies. She began asking what would still make her feel productive, competitive and proud once Solidcore no longer defined her daily life.

Competitive volleyball became one of Anne’s primary post-exit pursuits. She values it because it combines physical movement, skill development, competition and social interaction, and she said the group of women she trains with had remained remarkably consistent for months.

Anne said she may eventually start another company, possibly much later in life, but currently does not feel compelled to immediately replace Solidcore with another startup.

Her current professional activities include advising entrepreneurs, investing in startups and serving on some company boards. She finds advising fulfilling because she can help founders recognize problems or opportunities they may not see themselves.

Anne is consciously trying not to turn accumulating more money into the main purpose of her life. She described a tension between enjoying investing as a game and recognizing that she already has far more money than she requires.

One major lifestyle expense she willingly accepts is private aviation, which she said can cost roughly $100,000 a month. At the same time, she noted that an activity giving her enormous day-to-day happiness—playing volleyball—is comparatively inexpensive.

Anne is drafting a book titled How to Outsmart the Odds. Its core idea is using the talents and resources you already possess to get what you want rather than trying to become equally good at everything.

Her central career advice is to identify the abilities where you are already an “eight or nine” and keep sharpening them. She argues that spending enormous effort turning a “one, two or three” weakness into only a moderate skill is often less valuable because someone else will still perform that function much better.

Anne’s broader principle is “Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” She believes continued voluntary challenge remains important even after financial success removes many external pressures.

At the time of the interview Anne said she was pregnant but still training, exercising and playing volleyball, intending to reduce activity when her body required it rather than simply because life had become more comfortable. She contrasted that mentality with the temptation to interpret financial success as permission to stop challenging herself.

Anne said her husband shares the same preference for effort and self-improvement, which she sees as an important part of why their marriage works.

Anne ultimately wants to be remembered for creating things that made people happier and healthier. She said any future business she builds would need to contribute to that kind of outcome.

Community remains the common thread connecting Anne’s nonprofit work, Solidcore and her current personal life. She believes increasing isolation and time spent on phones make in-person relationships more important, not less.

Her home is deliberately used as a gathering place rather than only a private luxury asset. Anne said she and her husband regularly host friends, family and retreats because creating opportunities for people to be together is part of the life she wants to build.