12 minute read
In Conversation with Ross Beattie, owner of Thirty Nine. Lifestyle
Ross Beatti e is the founder of Thirty Nine Monte Carlo. His exclusive Private Members Sports Club solely was launched October 2016 and has proved to be a success aft er one short year. Ross Beatti e is a former Internati onal Rugby player, who played for the Scotti sh Nati onal team. Ross grew up with the hard “rules” of Rugby. He learned early that Rugby is not only a sport but a philosophy of life which builds up the man in term of “muscles” as well as properly educati ng the “human being”. Ross always had the moti vati on to conti nuously improve and bett er himself and this is one of the main reasons he launched Thirty Nine Monte Carlo in Monaco. At the end of a successful sports career the challenge was to create something which fi t his philosophy of life and be special, uplift ing and unique. The challenge came in fi nding an environment that was tailored to his specifi c needs, and, as the story goes, since he could not fi nd this place, he built it! Thirty Nine Monte Carlo has been a new concept for Monaco. Interviewing a former pro athlete is always a special experience. Someti mes you speak with somebody who lives in the past and likes to reminisce about his former glory….this is not the case with Ross. Ross Beatti e is someone who took the best part of his past and used it to create a longlasti ng project for the future. It is this feeling that you get when entering Thirty Nine.
Andrea Dini sat with Ross to talk about the path that led him to opening Thirty Nine Monte Carlo.
Advertisement
Andrea Dini: What is the philosophy behind Thirty Nine?
Ross Beatti e: I originally had the idea that I wanted to create a place to try and help people avoid the problems and issues I had when I was playing professional sport.
I was a professional rugby player for 14 years, and I spent just over half that ti me injured. I’ve had 22 operati ons. Initi ally I was looking at ways how I could have avoided those situati ons. I was also trying to fi nd ways to avoid one of the side eff ects which is spending a lot of ti me not knowing what was wrong with me. This was really about the mental problems that occurred because I had nobody to talk to about what was happening to me. This isn’t the case now in sport as there’s a lot more sport psychology available.
I wanted to create a place where normal people could get the right advice and help so that they could fulfi l their potenti al. If they were a professional athlete, or whether there was a normal person who is spinning like you are, they all could get the advice they needed. Aft er that, it expanded into a much bigger concept.
I suppose that my real philosophy is that I just want people to enjoy their life more.
AD: Why did you decide to set up a private members club?
RB: There are no private members clubs in Monaco, other than the yacht club, which has a completely diff erent philosophy. There are some clubs, but for me the ideal for a private members club is a place where people could feel like they were at home. The yacht club is in one of the most beauti ful buildings that was ever created, anywhere. Inside, it’s amazing, but it has a certain philosophy, which it sti cks to when you go there. You get dressed up, there’s a certain ambiance, and it feels like it’s a privilege to be there.
Whereas in here, I want people to completely relax. They can be themselves and totally switch off . They don’t have to show off . They don’t have to feel they have to act a certain way. It’s a place where they can do business in an environment where they can be themselves. As soon as people are relaxed, they can talk about anything. If you want to do some business and you’re in a relaxed environment, you might get the deal done quicker. So my goal was to create a social environment where people can do everything under one roof, but also they can meet friends and create a community.
This is a very diff erent concept to anything else in Monaco, and I felt that something like this was missing in Monaco.
AD: Does the fact that the entry fee is quite high bring some degree of internal selecti on?
RB: Two things. First of all, strangely enough, Thirty Nine Monte Carlo is cheap compared to other clubs in the world. Secondly, a lot of people don’t fully understand what the club is yet. What you actually get with your full membership is quite a lot. Currently, there’s 60 free classes a week on the gym side that you get, and that will grow over ti me. You don’t get that anywhere else. On top of that, it’s the environment, and the service that we off er. We don’t necessarily want every single person to be a member. We want the right people to be members.
AD: How do you actually set up a private members club?
RB: I have no clue. [Laughs] No, I’m joking. It’s funny. Eight years ago when I fi nished
playing rugby, I saw an opportunity in Monaco to do something slightly diff erent in my
old business, which is a bespoke health and wellness center. I just knew that
Monaco was diff erent and that there was an opportunity here. I also knew there are some amazing
people down here. So I packed
my car up and literally just drove down here from Newcastle and I’ve been here ever since. I never knew that this is what I’d be doing. I didn’t plan it. It’s just something organically that kind of evolved. And even when we fi rst started the project here, it was never initi ally meant to be what Thirty Nine is now. It just kept growing and growing and growing. So it’d be very easy for me to say -- yes, it was a big plan --
RB: All I and the rest of the team think about now is to ensure that whatever we do we concentrate on where we want to go, rather than comparing ourselves or worrying about what somebody else is doing. What sets Thirty Nine apart as a club are the people who use it and the staff who service it, as they combine to create a unique atmosphere. I can give you other reasons too: I believe we have the best chef in town, the best marketing people, and the best trainers.
Our gym is the best gym in Europe, by a long way, which is why we’ve got ATP people, and F1 drivers and professional cyclists. I know it sounds quite arrogant to say this, because I would rather have someone else say it than me, but its fact – our gym is amazing. Our water supply is something a lot of people don’t know about. It is Pure Ionic Water. We take Monaco’s water, clean and filter it and then we change the pH level, so that depending on where you are in the club, you can water specifically filtered for you. It’s a hell of lot better for your longevity and health to drink our water than normal tap water.
AD: How does one become a member?
RB: One way is just to contact the club and have a meeting with our Head of Membership and we go from there. There are a lot of rumours you have to put things forward and that you have to be nominated by people. Generally if you were to
RB: We’ve got different memberships. With a full membership you get access to everything. All the floors, all the facilities, the 60 free classes we have, plus discounts in the spa, and access to all our brand partnerships. We also have a social membership which just gives you access to the restaurant and dining space, so you can use it for socialising. It depends on how you want to use it. Some people will just use the gym, some people will just use the bar, and others will use both. But the main benefit is they can hang around likeminded people, and our brand partners, and talk to them.
One thing which is generally not known is that we never talk about our clients. We’ve got lots of sporting people who come in, but we will only ever talk about them if they give us permission. For us privacy is really important, so we never disclose who is and isn’t a client. They can turn up and sit down, either dressed up or wearing shorts and a tee-shirt and just be themselves.
AD: What do you offer for businesses?
RB: We have a corporate rate for businesses, but, again, we are quite selective in terms of who we do a corporate rate with, to ensure they’re using our club for the right reason, not to just get access to people to do further business.
We organise events for businesses as well. Our head of events, Margaux, is fantastic. But the space we’ve got here is quite unique for Monaco. It’s quite intimate, but it’s also enough space to be able to hold some pretty nice sized events. We’ve done quite a few things with outside companies that have come in. The good thing about that is that for any event we do, generally, our members are allowed to come to that event as well.
AD: In a place like the Principality where there is a large number of UHNWI’s what do you offer to these individuals so they feel comfortable and want to join your members club?
RB: We have a general rule that every single person who comes through the door gets treated the same way. We don’t have a platinum, gold, silver, bronze membership. We have different memberships in terms of the services you get, but every single client gets treated the same as every
Top left: Thirty Nine’s Pure Ionic Water has been proven to be the best water for sports performance due to its higher mineral content which aids muscle growth and repair.
RB: I think that’s the fun of it. For me if you’re able to take away the stress of it being a business -- which happens in every business -- and just look at it as a social experiment, then it’s fascinating watching all those human interactions.
We’ve been open a year and the club already is very different. I think of how the club was when we first opened. All the ideas we thought we knew or would be wanting in the beginning changed because, in reality, you find out how people want to use and then change things to give them what they want.
One of our philosophies is to try and say “yes” to everybody as much as we can. And there are some strange requests and sometimes it’s not possible to do it, but we genuinely want to make people as happy as possible. After all, it’s the member’s club -- by that I mean, it’s your club, you’re the member. It’s not my club. I happen to be the owner of it, but all the people who use it, it’s their club. exactly what I wanted to happen.
If somebody feels at home, they can relax and forget who they are. Normally if a top tennis pro or Formula 1 driver goes someplace they can’t relax because they’re on show. They know people are looking, whereas the atmosphere I think we’ve created here is that everyone can just chill out and be themselves. That’s when human interaction happens.
AD: What are your goals for the future of Thirty Nine? Are there any developments pending?
RB: Yes, because for me the club’s not finished. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. There are a lot of areas in the club that I want to improve. There are different services that we will be bringing in and we may possibly change the upstairs area to offer a different service.
The most important thing is that we keep improving this club and grow the membership, and make sure everybody’s happy before we look at doing something else. But obviously it’d be great to produce another club somewhere else, maybe London or New York. There has been talk about it, but at the moment until this is perfect here, there’s no point in looking somewhere else.
AD: Your members come from different backgrounds. You have Formula 1 drivers, top athletes, training alongside businessmen and normal people. How do you manage all them?
RB: It all comes down to the personality of the club. I used to be a sportsman and I know when I was training in a commercial gym there would be two reactions. One reaction would be that some people really liked it and wanted to be around us and talk to us and tell their friends that they’re training with professional athletes. The other reaction was it would intimidate people and these people would not like it and wouldn’t want to be around us because they didn’t like the atmosphere we were creating.
So when we built the club, we split the gym floor into sections for different types of personalities. If you like Pilates and yoga, then that is on one side of the sports floor. Whereas on the other side it’s a much harder training set-up, it’s a more athletic set up for the athletes.
The other thing I find fascinating is that there are certain boxes I wanted ticked when we built the club. One of them was the showers. If somebody came in and said, “I want to shower in the club. I don’t shower at home because the shower’s so good here. I only shower here now.” Someone said that one day and I thought, great, that’s one box ticked. The other thing that I wanted was to have a top tennis player be able to come in to use the facilities, and then relax and be able to start interacting with
Former International Rugby Player Ross Beattie took the best of his past and used it to create a long-lasting project for the future.
