"We want to be at the forefront of the fitness community in Cyprus through events, initiatives and collaborations, while supporting the wider fitness community on the island. We also see an opportunity to provide better customised formulas and access to high-quality nutrition, supplements and health products. Ultimately, we are not trying to build an island where everyone belongs to Charisma. We want to help build an island where taking care of your health becomes part of the culture," suggests Jordan Demetriou, CEO of Charisma Group.
Following the opening of the first Charisma Private Members Wellness Club in Cyprus, Demetriou, in an interview with CBN, discusses the first months of the club's operations and the impact he hopes to have on the island's growing wellness scene.
Charisma is being positioned as a private members' wellness and performance ecosystem rather than simply a premium gym. What culture are you trying to create, and why is the community around a person so important to their health and performance?
We don't want Charisma to be simply a beautiful gym with good equipment. The facilities are important, but the philosophy is about bringing assessment, training, performance, rehabilitation, recovery, nutrition and lifestyle together under one environment. A significant amount of expertise and work goes on behind the scenes to make that happen. We don't believe in giving everyone the same programme and expecting the same result. Every member has different goals, needs, strengths, limitations and lifestyles, so the approach has to be individual. Our team works holistically across every area of the club. What happens in the strength gym is aligned with the member's mobility work, conditioning, HIIT classes, Pilates, recovery and overall programme. Our coaches and practitioners communicate and work together so that every element has a purpose and contributes towards the same outcome. That level of individualisation is very important to us. It is not simply about giving someone access to facilities. It is about applying expertise, understanding the individual and tailoring the programme so that everything they do inside the club is helping them move towards their goals.
But equally important is the culture. High-achieving people are surrounded by demands every day: business, family, responsibilities and constant communication. We wanted to create somewhere that feels completely different from that chaos. Exercise should be re-energising. It should be an escape from the chaos of everyday life. It should never feel like another burden on your schedule. There is naturally an element of exclusivity to the club through the price point and standard of facilities, but that isn't exclusivity for its own sake. We have deliberately limited the scale to maintain the quality of care, ambience and atmosphere. We want members to feel that they have entered a place where standards are high, the environment is calm and everyone around them values their health.
But our ambitions go beyond the club. We want to be at the forefront of the fitness community in Cyprus through events, initiatives and collaborations, while supporting the wider fitness community on the island. We also see an opportunity to provide better customised formulas and access to high-quality nutrition, supplements and health products. Ultimately, we are not trying to build an island where everyone belongs to Charisma. We want to help build an island where taking care of your health becomes part of the culture.
The Charisma Group is based in Mykonos. Why did the Group choose Cyprus as the destination for expanding its strategic operations, and what led you to select Nicosia over Limassol, which has traditionally attracted a greater concentration of wellness centres?
Cyprus felt like a very natural next step for us. We didn't want to simply open another location; we wanted to become part of the community and contribute to the development of the fitness and wellness culture on the island. Nicosia felt right because we wanted to be at the heart of the Cypriot community. We felt it was important to establish ourselves, build the culture and prove the concept in the capital before expanding into other territories. Limassol is certainly a very interesting market for us. It is extremely international and probably has a larger existing culture of private clubs, with people already familiar with that type of membership model. We see significant potential there in the future. But our objective isn't simply to follow where the market already exists. We believe we have created something that is best of its kind in the Mediterranean, and we are not trying to create a trend. We are trying to create a culture. Our ambition is to improve the daily pursuit of a healthier lifestyle, not for a few weeks because something is fashionable, but as part of how people live.
You have spent years working with elite athletes through Mykonos Performance. What have you learned from elite sport that made you want to create Charisma Private Members Wellness Club for high-achieving individuals in Cyprus?
Mykonos Performance has given us the opportunity to work with some of the highest-performing athletes in the world, and one of the biggest lessons from elite sport is that performance is never accidental. It is deliberately built, monitored and protected. Elite athletes don't wait until something goes wrong. They train, recover, manage their nutrition, work on mobility, assess their bodies and address small problems before they become big ones. I believe exactly the same principles apply to high-achieving people in business and life. We can spend years building a successful company, career or family, but if we neglect the physical asset that allows us to do all of that, we compromise our ability to enjoy what we have built. That is where Charisma came from. We wanted to take the philosophy of elite performance and make it relevant to ambitious people outside professional sport. Wellness isn't simply about feeling good for an hour. It's about becoming more capable, resilient and energised so you can perform better in every area of your life. When you sleep better, move better, become stronger, improve your cardiovascular fitness and manage stress, you don't just become healthier, you become a better version of yourself professionally and personally. That is the culture we want to create. And from Cyprus, we see significant potential to take that philosophy further across the island and eventually into other markets.
You describe longevity as “the new luxury”. What does that mean to you, and why do you believe successful people need to start viewing their health as an investment rather than an expense?
I genuinely believe that longevity is the new luxury. We are very comfortable investing in property, cars, watches, clothes, travel, entertainment and experiences. But when it comes to the one asset that allows us to experience all of those things, our health, we can sometimes be surprisingly reluctant to make the same consistent investment. We are often very happy to invest when something goes wrong. We will see a doctor, have a scan or see a specialist to fix a problem, and I have enormous respect for medicine. Many of my closest friends are doctors.
But why are we sometimes reluctant to consistently invest in the things that help keep the body strong, resilient and capable in the first place? I'm not suggesting exercise replaces medicine. It doesn't. But there is a huge opportunity to move from reactive health to proactive health. Longevity isn't simply about adding years to your life. It is about adding quality, capability and independence to those years. We want people to reach 50, 60, 70 and beyond with strength, energy, mobility and confidence in their bodies. So I don't see this as an expense. I see it as an investment in the person who has to enjoy everything else you've worked so hard to achieve. That, to me, is the real meaning of luxury.
In an increasingly comfortable world, you often speak about the importance of doing hard things consistently. Why is physical challenge so important to health, resilience and longevity, particularly for people who already lead demanding lives?
One of the contradictions of modern life is that we have made our lives incredibly comfortable, while the human body was designed to be challenged. We don't need to walk everywhere, carry things or move as much as previous generations. We sit more, have food delivered and increasingly rely on technology and then wonder why our bodies become less resilient. The body needs an appropriate level of stress. Strength training, cardiovascular exercise and challenging movement tell the body that it needs to remain capable.
I often say that we are willing to pay for almost everything except the thing that consistently makes one of the biggest differences to our health: doing hard things on a regular basis. There are incredible technologies, supplements, recovery tools and biohacking solutions, and we use many of them ourselves. But they should complement the fundamentals, not replace them. You need to train, maintain muscle, challenge the cardiovascular system, move, recover, eat properly and sleep. The body doesn't become resilient by being protected from every challenge. It becomes resilient by being exposed to the right challenges consistently. And particularly for high achievers, your health shouldn't be what you sacrifice in order to succeed. It should be part of what allows you to succeed.
If your ultimate objective is to change the way successful people think about health, what would you like Charisma to change about the culture of high achievers in Cyprus - and what does success look like for you personally?
I would like to change the perception that health is something we deal with when we have a problem. I want people to see their health in the same way they see their business, career or investments, something requiring attention, discipline, consistency and long-term thinking. We want health to become part of high performance. For me, success isn't simply about building the biggest club or having the most members. It would be seeing people change their behaviour, someone who previously prioritised everything except themselves beginning to understand that investing in their health is fundamental.
It would mean seeing people become stronger, fitter, more energetic and resilient, and maintain those qualities for decades rather than years. And it would mean seeing that philosophy spread beyond our four walls through events, education, partnerships and initiatives that raise the standard of fitness and wellness across Cyprus. Ultimately, we don't simply want to help people live longer. We want to help people live better for longer. Because what is the point of building a successful life if you don't have the health, energy and physical capability to enjoy it? The real luxury isn't owning more things. It's having the health and capability to enjoy the things you've worked so hard to create.
