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Small, dark, wiry and intense, with a remarkably unlined face belying his
53 years, Michael Sinclair, founder of Sunstone gym, watches my every scribbling like a
hawk. He is a man by his own admittance who likes to be in control. ‘it is over eight
years since we opened the gym’, he says, ‘but I was a solicitor for some
seventeen years before, and therefore face to face with the public. I tended to be
impatient and do not suffer fools gladly. Over the years I have taken a calmer approach
and leave the headaches and confrontations to my business partner at Sunstone, Marsha
Selwyn.’
Michael, who lives with his wife and three children in Highgate, saw a niche in the
burgeoning fitness market, a perfect location and potential clientele, found the premises
in Northwold Road and characteristically rolled his sleeves up with relish.’To me
Sunstone was all about challenge,’ he says acknowledging his favourite word.
‘The building was a complete wreck, I’d done my research carefully but there
were numerous unexpected pitfalls along the way. I love things being like that. I work
best in a crisis. I am very proud of the place now.'
Sunstone, recently extensively refurbished, is a local health spa exclusively for women, a
concept Michael believes is vital to its success. ‘We have white, black, orthodox
Jewish, Muslim, Christians, non-believers - women of every ethnic background, shape, size
and appearance. A mini United Nations. Everyone has space to be totally relaxed.
‘As we are promoting the absence of men, I never wander around the club. My presence
is always announced, it’s taken me time to get used to having this invisibility and
all that it entails’, he says thoughtfully, ‘to straddle the line between
friendly and polite and being non-intrusive.’ The result has been that the people
-orientated Sinclair has had to confine himself to a back office, the firm hand on the
tiller, and he’s now looking for a new, as yet undefined, business venture which will
put him more in the limelight again. ‘Once something works, and works well, I do
become very restless.’
 His appears to be a life split between
conformity, typical successful North London family, good schools, high achieving siblings
et al and an itchy desire to risk and test himself. In January this year Michael, who was
never particularly interested in sport or fitness activities until he set up Sunstone, was
easily persuaded by friends to climb the highest peak in Africa (19,340 feet), Mount
Kilimanjaro in Tanzania; a trek not for the faint-hearted.
He becomes animated when talking of his nine days enduring rib-bursting high altitudes and
freezing nights under canvas. ‘It was wonderful. No picnic mind you, one Briton a
month dies on that mountain, a fact I discovered after I’d come down!’, he
laughs,’but testing yourself in that way teaches you a great deal about how you and
your fellow humans actually tick. Everyone who goes on a journey like that comes down
changed in some way. Me? Less of a worrier perhaps but certainly it showed me that I want
to do more of it. I had to stop just 200 metres short of the summit because of an old knee
injury, so I need to do it again, this time to the top.’ An almost schoolboy mixture
of annoyance and disappointment crosses his face at this apparent ‘failure’ to
complete a project. ‘My injury separated me from the rest of my group. I’m sure
that if they’d still been with me, encouraging me on, I would have made it’, he
says gazing into the middle distance, unusually distracted for a while. Michael chose to
climb in aid of a charity close to the mountain which takes in local street children. He
raised £4,5O0 and is maintaining contact with the scheme.
‘Most of the people on my climb were doing it for UK national charities but I wanted
to give something back to the local area, not just take away my own personal
experience’, he says quietly, eyeing me carefully to gauge if he sounded trite or
mawkish. He didn’t. Sinclair is acutely aware of what you may be thinking of him and
this produces an urge for his words, and therefore the man, to be properly understood.
As we talked, the phone on his ultra tidy desk rang constantly. Sinclair crisply dealt
with business and returned to our chat without breaking stride. He obviously enjoys
juggling several balls in the air at once and it must be frustrating for him to sit in
that office for most of the day excluded from the camaraderie of the club. ‘Yes it
is’, he admits, ‘but I suppose I get frustrated rather easily. I’m having
to learn that you can’t bulldoze your way through life though. Sometimes the calmer,
more reflective, way of dealing with change can be more effective.’
Change is much on Michael Sinclair’s mind. He has no obvious hobbies. His children
are growing up, Sunstone is now a well-oiled machine and he confesses to a form of
mid-life crisis. ‘I have ordered a convertible’, he grins, ‘also I am
seeking a way to fulfil myself. Obviously I need to make money but I’m also thinking
of doing something maybe a bit more vocational.’
Solicitor, entrepreneur, intrinsically a businessman but also a man fizzing with energy
and a wish to explore himself more closely before time runs out, Sinclair is undoubtedly
proud of his past and present achievements. ‘We’ve got a great team here at
Sunstone’, he says, but his personal philosophy is etched with the word Onwards.
He’s certainly not a man to rest on his laurels. Michael Sinclair is a man carrying a
label reading ‘Watch This Space’.
Michael Sinclair was talking to Sue Heal.
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