Fitness Founder Sold Company For $400 Million — Now She Warns Founders Not To Repeat Her Mistake

Kayla Itsines sold her fitness platform Sweat for a reported £316 million ($400 million) in 2021. Four years on, she owns every share of the company again.

The Adelaide-born entrepreneur, 35, became Sweat's sole proprietor in March 2026. It was the final step in a process that began in late 2023, when Itsines and co-founder Tobi Pearce first bought the app back from US fitness equipment company iFIT Health & Fitness for an undisclosed sum. She has since acquired Pearce's remaining stake.

Speaking to Grace Beverley in a podcast interview released in April, Itsines described the original sale negotiation as a process that stripped away any sense of personal value.

'What you are doing is you're sitting in front of people who are trying to get the lowest bid possible for you,' she said. 'So they are berating you, putting you down. It feels like the worst interview of your life.'

She said the experience was compounded by a gendered power imbalance. 'They bring forward men to have conversations with you,' Itsines said. 'And that's really hard as well because they don't understand anything about you. Do they understand your community? They're just looking at numbers and data and what you can do for them.'

From AU$30 Training Sessions to a £316 Million Exit

Itsines built Sweat from a one-on-one personal training business in Adelaide where she charged AU$30 (£15) per half-hour session. She created the Bikini Body Guide, an ebook workout programme, after fielding requests from women in cities she could not physically reach. When the guide went live, sales arrived within seconds.

'As a person who just earned what a teacher earns in a year in 12 hours, you start to be like, hold on,' she told Beverley.

She paid off her parents' house within the first week.

The app that followed, rebranded as Sweat in 2015, became one of the world's most downloaded fitness platforms. By the time iFIT acquired it in July 2021, Sweat was generating roughly £79 million ($100 million) in annual revenue from 450,000 paid subscribers. Athletech News noted the deal structure included $37.5 million (£30 million) in cash, $40 million (£32 million) in stock, and up to $70 million (£55 million) in deferred consideration tied to revenue targets.

The pandemic-era demand did not last. Revenue dropped to £56 million ($71 million) in the 11 months after the acquisition, and iFIT wrote off £64 million ($81 million) in goodwill. The company shelved its IPO and eventually sold Sweat back to its founders for an undisclosed amount.

Why Founders With Personal Brands Should Think Twice

Itsines said she had never met a founder with a personal brand attached to their business who considered the exit a success. Some companies are built from the start to be flipped. Others carry the founder's name, face, and reputation in every piece of content they produce. The economics of selling those two types, she argued, are completely different.

'If I want to sell, I'm selling me,' she said. 'So you just don't get that feeling.'

Throughout iFIT's ownership, Itsines remained the face and lead trainer. She filmed workouts, ran the community, and kept travelling for events. The workload never changed. Only the ownership did.

'It was still all on me,' she said. 'So that's why it really didn't make sense.'

She pointed to a chance encounter with Gymshark founder Ben Francis in New York. Francis told her he would never sell. 'He's like, I just want to be as big as possible and I'm not looking at selling it,' Itsines recalled. 'I love that so much.'

In a separate interview with The School of Hard Knocks, Itsines discussed diversifying beyond the app, including an investment in a petrol station she described as her first asset generating passive income outside fitness.

Sweat now serves more than one million active monthly users across 145 countries and offers over 13,000 workouts in eight languages. Itsines called reclaiming full ownership 'the final piece of a puzzle.'

'It almost feels like starting again,' she said. 'It's all mine with my vision and my team, and I'm so excited.'