‘Imagine if I stuffed this up’: Sam Wood had the world, now it’s crashing down around him

Millionaire lifestyle and fitness entrepreneur Sam Wood was living the picture-perfect life.

The personal trainer had a reality TV star wife and he sat atop a self-made business empire, valued at $71 million, that he’d just sold to a Melbourne billionaire.

The 46-year-old entrepreneur shouldn’t have had a care in the world, but Wood was anxious.

“When you’ve gone from nothing … to something like that, there’s a bit of imposter syndrome, there’s a fear that one day something could happen, the bubble could burst and the dream could be over,” he told a NZ podcast in 2024.

“It’s funny, I had more anxious moments with money than I perhaps did with this sort of optimistic, youthful enthusiasm when I had none, you know, because I was like, you have something to lose.

“It’s like, ‘f—, imagine if I lost all of this now or something happened or this wasn’t real or I somehow stuffed this up.’”

Wood’s anxiety would prove prophetic.

A Triple Zero call from his step-daughter to Queensland police on Saturday night, in which she described Wood allegedly strangling wife Snezana, has brought his world crashing down.

Locked up in a watch house cell at Maroochydore, near Noosa, after being refused bail this week, Wood will have plenty of time to reflect on how it all came to this.

A TV romance

Wood was a 34-year-old personal trainer when he went looking for love on The Bachelor Australia in 2015.

Snezana, also 34 at the time, was a single mother from Perth, a scientific sales representative from a tight-knit Macedonian family and the oldest woman in that season’s cast of hopefuls.

“I remember the first time I touched her it was a hug for a photo shoot on the first group date and I could feel something there,” Wood told Jules Sebastian in an episode of podcast Tea With Jules in 2016. “That was the first time when I realised there is really something special about her.”

Wood embraced his new partner’s young daughter Eve and the child was given her stepfather’s surname. He had a ready-made, photogenic family.

For more than a decade the genetically-blessed couple were high-voltage, social media and red carpet mega-stars.

Wood amassed almost 250,000 followers on his personal Instagram account and Snezana gathered 330,000 followers of her own.

They graced the cover of the likes of Who Magazine, Stellar and NW, built out their fairytale to include three more young daughters and struck partnerships with brands including Weetbix, Mercedes Benz, Bupa, 2XU and Under Armour.

The trappings of their wealth included multi-million dollar homes in Melbourne’s affluent Brighton and on the Mornington Peninsula, and expensive European cars.

Even Eve, just nine-years-old when her mother appeared on The Bachelor, grew to become an influencer herself.

The reality of business

Wood leveraged his fame to build an empire, targeting women with his at-home fitness and nutrition business 28 by Sam Wood.

It offered pregnancy and postnatal plans, as well as a 12-week menopause program. Months ago, Wood launched Ollo for Women, a medical and physical weight loss program targeting women in midlife.

When Wood eventually sold his fitness business to Bastas for a reported $71 million, the deal included retention of Wood as the face (and body) of the rapidly-expanding enterprise.

The rise and fall over 10 years of Wood’s online empire was extraordinary.

“I’d had no social media following before (The Bachelor), and it just went bananas, you know, went from 20 followers to 250,000 in a number of weeks, and so did Snez,” he told the Dom Harvey Podcast in April 2024.

After Wood launched the fitness platform in February 2016, 5000 people signed up in the first month at $50-a-month.

“$250,000 a month revenue, and it was me and a few tech guys in an office, and I was filming the videos in my gym,” he said. “By the third month, we had 10,000. [It] just absolutely exploded.”

Wood told Paul Spain on NZ Tech Podcast in February 2024 that the business eventually grew to more than 1 million subscribers globally, at the time of recording with an influx of subscriptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, giving locked down Australians an at-home fitness option.

Bupa, one of Australia’s biggest health insurers, noticed and offered their customers three months’ access to Wood’s online program for free.

The insurer expected an extra 10,000 sign ups, but instead 130,000 joined in three days, Wood said.

“We went from 30,000 to 160,000 almost overnight,” he recalled.

After several offers to buy the platform, Bastas’ DBG Health stepped in, buying the operation’s parent, Australian Life Tech. Wood clarified in the podcast that while he sold the business to Bastas for $71 million, he pocketed $15 million himself.

One former associate said Wood was “ruthlessly ambitious about building his brand”, but was often reluctant to acknowledge or pay those who contributed to his ascent.

The dashing reality star engaged a retinue of publicists, personal trainers, marketers, brand managers and dieticians, who got virtually no recognition and sometimes spent months chasing him for payment.

Some were never paid for their services, while a few were forced to use lawyers to apply pressure. On one occasion, gym equipment was seized from his gym in East Brighton, The Woodshed, to recoup a debt.

His burgeoning profile created an expectation that local businesses would align their products with his brand, and pay for the privilege.

“He used commercial arrangements to build a perception of himself that wasn’t real. It was all an illusion, and I’m not even sure he realised how entitled he’d become,” said a former associate.

In 2016, Mazda agreed to provide Wood with a BT-50 utility – free of charge. But Wood considered the deal beneath him, and negotiated a separate arrangement with a Melbourne-based Mercedes dealership.

The same year, Wood and Snezana were guests of the Singapore Tourism Board, which fully funded their five-day visit. However, Wood complained bitterly about a quid-pro-quo expectation that he make a series of social media posts to promote the island nation.

Another source from the commercial television industry, who asked not to be identified because of the nature of the allegations against Wood, said he was desperate to become a personal trainer on the relaunch of the Biggest Loser in 2017.

Wood recognised the potential to parlay his appearance on the show into increased memberships for 28. But he was left seething when the network overlooked him for Sydney-based trainer Shannon Ponton.

During negotiations for the sale of 28, Wood admitted to Harvey that he discovered “a new term”.

“It’s called ‘key man risk’ or ‘key person risk’ and that is we pull the value of your business down if it’s too heavily based on you,” he said.

“I don’t think they thought I might do something like that. You know, if you do anything incriminating or you get hit by a car or you know.”

Snezana fears for her life

During an uneventful few days in Noosa with his family, Wood was spotted by locals enjoying ice cream with his kids near the luxury beachfront apartment they had rented in the La Mer complex on Noosa’s glamour Hastings Street.

The night before their planned return to Melbourne a trifling argument over packing blew up into what police allege was a violent domestic disturbance that sent their happy family narrative off script.

The dispute spilled into the hallway, the court heard, with Eve, now 21 and back in Australia after a stint in New York studying business fashion, telling Wood to leave her mother alone.

Police allege Wood approached Eve aggressively and Snezana intervened.

Wood is alleged to have grabbed his wife by the throat with one hand, throwing her against the wall and striking her head.

While keeping a firm hold of Snezana, he is alleged to have thrown her to the ground and while on the ground held her throat, gripping tighter and restricting her airway. She attempted to free herself and scream for help, in fear for her life.

Eve called police and Wood was thrown behind bars, charged with domestic violence offences, including assault occasioning bodily harm and strangulation.

Snezana was treated by paramedics and gave a video statement to police, the court hearing she remains “supportive of the charges”.

Wood was supported in court by father Andrew, with his lawyer saying the fitness guru would defend the charges and may be entitled to a self-defence argument.

Wood remains locked up until his next court appearance in November, however his lawyer, Mathew Cuskelly told this masthead on Friday he had received preliminary instructions to make another bid for freedom on Wood’s behalf in the Supreme Court.

The facade of Wood’s perfect life was further shattered when the court heard Snezana had told police of a previous alleged incident of domestic violence in Victoria.

No charges were laid and the details were not ventilated.

The fallout

The status of the Wood’s TV marriage made good is unclear.

On Monday, the couple issued a joint statement saying they were “working through this as a family” as their children returned to Melbourne and back to school.

In January, the couple settled on a $7.1 million purchase of a Brighton home, which this masthead was told, by a source close to the family, the couple never moved into. They said the home had recently undergone a cosmetic overhaul towards putting the residence back on the market.

Instead, the Woods have been renting a nearby home where his Mercedes Benz G-Wagon sat idle this week in the home’s gated driveway, identifiable via personalised number plates.

It’s not just Wood’s personal life that is in tatters.

On Tuesday, Bastas and his GBH Group stood Wood aside before, the next day, terminating his commercial deal with the company.

The definitive move from Bastas included swiftly removing Wood’s image from the 28 Group websites and Instagram pages. The wider backlash against Wood was also immediate. He lost online followers, while 28 by Sam Wood ambassadors and coaches publicly cut ties.

Even before last Saturday, Wood was under considerable pressure.

The Australian Taxation Office sued him, alleging $7.3 million in unpaid income tax. According to a writ filed in the Victorian County Court, Wood failed to stump up $4 million for the 2022 financial year, about $102,000 for FY2023 and $3.2 million in FY2024.

Wood never filed a defence or counterclaim to the case, despite being granted an extension six times. The matter was dismissed in September. Wood was ordered to pay the ATO’s legal fees worth $1647 and the case was settled.

Meanwhile, the corporate regulator was looking over his shoulder, too.

The Woodshed Group Pty Ltd, of which he was a director and major shareholder, was struck off the companies register at the end of August after it failed to pay fees and meet other renewal requirements for several years running. A company’s annual review includes a declaration of solvency. An ASIC spokesperson declined to comment on the action.

At Wood’s gym in Brighton, The Woodshed, subcontracted personal trainers were last week still running classes.

Wood’s image and story as the gym’s founder remained on its website and a video featuring him posted to its Instagram account last month also remains in place.

Phone calls to the gym go to voicemail, until Thursday featuring a recorded message from Wood himself, “Hi, it’s Sam…”.

By Friday, he’d been replaced by an automated voice.

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