Tim Gurner has subjected himself to procedures that would make most people reconsider the wisdom of getting out of bed. There have been stem-cell treatments in Mexico and the United States, an intensive blood-filtration procedure and enough experimental therapies to fill the program of a medical conference. He has tried peptides, experimented with testosterone replacement, and put his body through any number of interventions promising improved performance, faster recovery or a longer life.

And he is not remotely finished.

“There is nothing in the world I haven’t tried,” Gurner says, with the enthusiasm of a man discussing his latest acquisition rather than another encounter with a hypodermic needle.

Gurner, 44, has a rule for the treatments offered at Saint Haven, his fast-growing network of private wellness clubs with six locations across Melbourne and Sydney: he won’t introduce anything he hasn’t personally tested. In other words, he is his own most demanding customer.

Gurner tracks approximately 150 health and performance markers daily, feeding the information into spreadsheets and using artificial intelligence to identify relationships between his sleep, diet, movement, supplements and recovery. Particularly important is heart-rate variability, or HRV, the variation in time between heartbeats that offers clues about the body’s response to stress. An Oura Ring and Whoop wearable provide additional intelligence.

He marvels at AI’s ability to find patterns in thousands of data points that might otherwise escape medical specialists. The aim is to make longevity interventions more measurable and useful.

Not every procedure attracting attention in longevity circles has the clinical evidence to support its more extravagant claims. Gurner believes that personal testing, medical expertise and better data can help separate the worthwhile from the fashionable.

For the members of Saint Haven, the proposition is considerably simpler. They needn’t spend their evenings deciphering peer reviews. Gurner wants someone else to do the homework.

“The most important thing we do is the fact that we do everything,” he explains. “You can go to a place and get cryotherapy or a cold bath or a sauna.”

At Saint Haven, those treatments sit alongside preventative medicine, training, nutrition and socialising, with the anticipatory service of a first-rate hotel.

His eponymous property group, which values its development portfolio at about $14 billion, has spent the past two decades producing high-end residential projects with architectural ambition and resort-style amenities. Yet his interest in wellness predates real estate.

At 18, Gurner established a business called My Wellbeing, at a time when the term itself still required some explanation. “People literally said to me, ‘I don’t know what wellbeing means,’” he recalls. He believed exercise, nutrition and recovery were interdependent, an idea that was hardly in vogue in the fitness industry of the time.

Then came the experience that would fundamentally alter his relationship with health. Gurner was working in Deer Valley, Utah, when his mother called to say his father was unwell. He returned to Australia to find him undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. Despite a bone-marrow transplant, his condition deteriorated. Before his death, he asked his 21-year-old son to look after his mother and sister.

“My dad’s my hero, and always has been, always will be,” Gurner tells me, his voice noticeably less assured. What still troubles him is the sense that, at that age, he received so much from his father without having had the chance to reciprocate. “I’d taken everything and hadn’t given back yet.”

Three grandparents died within months of his father. Later, a close school friend who worked for him died suddenly, leaving a pregnant wife and young daughter. “We’ve had a lot of death, and a lot of hardship,” Gurner reflects. “All these things make you want to be able to make a difference.” Today, he supports Snowdome Foundation research into blood-cancer treatments.

He sold his original wellness business and turned to property, where success arrived spectacularly, although not without some close calls. In 2016, construction-cost blowouts on his FV development in Brisbane threatened the business, reinforcing his belief that physical resilience and mental discipline were essential to professional performance.

His plans to return to wellness met resistance from fellow entrepreneurs at the Young Presidents’ Organization. “They pretty much smashed my idea for 10 years,” he remembers.

Undeterred, he pressed ahead during the pandemic. Following a Forbes Australia profile, Gurner recalls some 25,000 prospective members registering their interest within a month. The first Saint Haven opened in Collingwood in 2023, followed by South Yarra and Toorak. This year brought the brand’s first Sydney outpost.

The North Sydney club occupies more than 3,000 square metres across six levels. Its reported $25 million fit-out includes training studios, a bathhouse, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, cryotherapy, red-light beds, restaurants, business lounges and preventative-medicine facilities. The interiors are deliberately insulated from the outside world, encouraging members to leave their daily preoccupations at the door.

Yet during our conversations, what animates him most is not the machinery. It is the people. “Community is everything,” he insists. “There is no business and no brand without it.”

Gurner has become fascinated by how difficult it is for many successful men to maintain meaningful friendships. He finds the conventional Australian solution, meeting at the pub for a beer, distinctly unappealing. Indeed, he struggles to imagine anything worse.

His alternative is to arrive at Saint Haven before six in the morning, train, recover, have coffee with friends, and perhaps run a meeting or two. On one recent morning, he estimates he encountered 25 acquaintances in a couple of hours without arranging a single social engagement.

More revealing is what happens when accomplished people abandon their professional armour. The bathhouse, free of phones and other distractions, has become an unlikely setting for emotional candour.

“My number one focus was vulnerability,” he tells me. “I wanted people to come in and be completely open and be themselves, even cry if they want to cry. Drop all the bullshit, drop the ego, drop the facade.”

The emphasis on connection recalls the Blue Zones, communities associated with exceptional longevity where strong social bonds are considered an important ingredient in healthy ageing. For Gurner, the aim is not merely more years, but better ones.

For a man whose public image has not always suggested a natural affinity for tenderness, it is an intriguing admission. Gurner became a national talking point in 2017 after suggesting that younger Australians might improve their chances of buying property by spending less on smashed avocado and coffee. Six years later, he attracted international condemnation for comments about unemployment and the balance of power between employers and workers. He subsequently apologised for the latter remarks, acknowledging the damage they had caused.

However, when I raise the question of his reputation, he remains unapologetic about his underlying convictions. “None of those comments I’ve ever made, the intent of them, I have ever regretted,” he maintains, attributing his forthright manner partly to his Dutch mother’s influence. He accepts that his views can be divisive, but resents the idea that strong opinions should be objectionable.

“It’s all about mental clarity, and the capacity to perform.”

There is another misconception he finds more amusing: that he is some kind of tireless party boy. For years, his long-serving colleague Kate Cookes heard tales of Gurner’s supposedly extravagant nightlife. In reality, he was more likely to be at home in tracksuit pants and Ugg boots with his wife, Aimee, and their three daughters.

“I’ve got zero interest in eating out,” he admits, partly because he dislikes relinquishing control over what goes into his food. Restaurants are his wife’s enthusiasm, not his. He once collected watches and cars, but those interests have largely fallen away. Golf remains a passion, combining fresh air, friendship and the delicious frustration of a game that resists mastery.

There is something almost monastic about his routine, albeit a monastery with exceptionally good tailoring. He rises at 5.30 am, practises breathwork and meditation, writes in a gratitude journal and makes family time non-negotiable. By 9.30 pm, he is generally asleep. His uniform of black T-shirts, tailored jackets and sneakers is complemented by wearables more concerned with measuring performance than telling time.

Indeed, Gurner believes the ultimate status symbol is changing. “I don’t find a Ferrari impressive,” he says. “But if I meet someone and they look fresh and their eyes are clear and their skin’s clear and they’re vibrant and they’ve got energy and they’re calm, I’m so much more impressed by that.”

For men of a certain age, he also sees hormone health as an overlooked part of the equation. Gurner has become an enthusiastic advocate of testosterone replacement, which he administers through twice-weekly intramuscular injections. His objective, he insists, is not to achieve the elevated levels sought by bodybuilders, but to restore his own readings to what he considers a healthier range.

The results, in his experience, have been “genuinely life-changing”. Not mainly in terms of muscle mass or appearance, but in mental clarity, recovery, and his ability to stay engaged with family life after a demanding day. “It’s not about muscle growth or fat,” he explains. “It’s all about the capacity to perform.”

He undergoes monthly blood tests to monitor potential complications and cautions younger men about the treatment’s effects on fertility. Testosterone therapy is not a general anti-ageing treatment, however, and is ordinarily recommended only for men with confirmed deficiency and compatible symptoms.

Gurner’s next ambitions extend well beyond the club floor. Central to his plans is Limitless, a personalised longevity program that combines advanced imaging, blood testing, physiological assessments, and medical oversight. With Dr Chris Beer recruited as chief medical officer, the aim is to identify potential health problems before they become serious.

Then there is The Portal, an immersive sound chamber introduced at Collingwood and North Sydney, where an 80-inch German-made symphonic gong and 45-speaker audio system allow participants to experience sound moving around them. More installations are planned.

Expansion is also gathering pace geographically. Bondi Beach and Mosman are slated to follow North Sydney, while Double Bay is another prospective location. In Melbourne, the Toorak club is adding more than 1,000 square metres of dining, business and recovery facilities, including a private terrace, speakeasy and pickleball court. The wider group also has plans for branded residences, hotels and retreats.

Gurner envisages an organisation handling everything from medical assessments and nutrition to recovery treatments and even weekly groceries. An ambitious exercise in vertical integration, although he prefers to call it convenience.

The more experimental elements of longevity medicine may take years to prove their worth. But Saint Haven’s strongest argument is more immediate: good health depends as much on movement, rest and relationships as it does on diagnostics.

For all his enthusiasm for artificial intelligence and the next generation of medical interventions, Gurner’s most revealing observation concerns an executive who initially doubted that Saint Haven was for him. The man now spends several hours a day there, not because he’s obsessed with improving his biomarkers, but because it is the only place in his life where he can truly relax.

For Gurner, who has devoted so much of his life to measuring performance, that may be the most meaningful result of all.