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Build Your Brand, Build Your Business
Want a growth partner to help build your brand and business?
Only click the button below if you fit the criteria, thanks ;)
You enjoy creating content
You have an established online presence (20k+ followers)
You are making £8k per month minimum
You want to earn £20k+ per month
You ACTUALLY want to grow your personal brand
You work hard and are open to listening to me
3 ways I can help you
Option 1
FREE Shit (good type)
Click the button below
Option 2
The Best Software To Scale Your Online Fitness Business
Option 3
Work one to one with me to grow your brand and business
About me!
(so egotistical)
First of all, do not call me a mentor! the shi*e fitness 'mentors' have ruined the traditional meaning of that word.
I'm just a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy.
In all seriousness, people call me the OG of Online Fitness (and I like it secretly).
I will let you decide if I am deserving of that title or not, keep reading.
Let's go back to 2012 when I received a Whatsapp message from my girlfriend.
There were no words, just a photo.
Easy now, it wasn't one of those pictures ;) it was the by product of one of those pictures.
A photo of a pregnancy stick!
That day changed my life and what a 12 years it's been.
Get your popcorn ready, a guy from South East London, not very academic but was the most competitive kid you probably would ever meet.
2012
The start of online coaching:
Oh shit! I'm going to be a Dad.
I will quit my lecturing job and start a business instead.
But before I did that, I had to do two things:
1, get in shape before Big Len came
2, make more money to move out of Mummy and Daddy's house.
A 10-week bro diet, I'm talking boiled eggs, paprika and walnuts.
A waxed chest, 300 push ups later, too much Johnson's baby lotion (thanks great great grandfather) and my before and after picture, was complete.
A post on my personal Facebook profile and an influx of 'friends' wanted me to train them.
This was when I started online coaching.
8 weeks body transformation package for £100.
10 sign ups and 8 old school friends (they're not friends).
2013-2015
My business baby and an event organiser
I found out about this guy called Joseph Agu and he was calling out all the fitness influencers (before they had a label) I paid him for a call, to ask him questions.
After 60 minutes of having myths dispelled, I said fuck having boiled eggs and paprika for breakfast anymore and I subscribed to AARR (Alan Aragon's Research Review)
You see I have very obsessive and lazy tendencies. This I obsessed over and was reading the back catalog from years before.
One day I emailed Alan and asked him if he would be up for coming to the UK to do a conference. I would cover his travel, accommodation and pay him a fee.
But he ignored me! 😞
So that was the end of that.
Of course it wasn't!
I emailed him again a week later and he replied at 3am, I squealed like a little girl when he said yes!
I had no idea how to run events or sell tickets to a conference. I know what I will do I will get another two experts to agree to their own seminars all before getting the first one complete.
TI emailed Dr Brad Schoenfeld and Dr Eric Helms and asked them, they messaged Alan. He said I was a good guy and they were in.
It was at that moment that I realised I couldn't fuck up.
I didn't, they were a great success and I made my year salary in the first 2 day event.
It was at this point I quit my lecturing job and went all in on being a entrepreneur.
I created Shredded By Science my online coaching company.
I grew that company to 12 coaches in a 18 month period, we had hundreds of 1-2-1 clients, we launched a group coaching programme, a low monthly membership called Shreducation with over 1000 members and we even teamed up with an influencer to sell a coaching guide.
Oh yeah, (takes a deep breath)
I also launched Elite Fitness Mentoring and would replicate in-person conferences/seminars in the form of an online community of Personal Trainers and hosting webinars.
2015-2018
From gym gainz to brain gainz
At the end of 2015 we pivoted to education.
A few reasons why:
1, Online coaching left me with small margins, after coaches were paid and the tax man
2, People will pay more for a financial ROI than they would for abs
3, I was still annoyed that I never succeeded as an in-person Personal Trainer and the education out there was terrible
We launched Shredded By Science Academy, the personal trainer qualification you wished you had but you never had the opportunity.
From 2015-2018 we would have two intakes per year and the very first intake we hit 109 students, paying on average £1000 and I had 90% margins now.
Dana, we did it!
Phone up the wife and tell her it's red panty night (yes I like Conor McGregor)
The last 4 intakes we were hitting 185 people every intake, that's 370 students per year at an average of £1300.
But then I had the worst business year of my life.
2018-2019
Biting more off than I could chew and I nearly lost it all
With the success of the SBS Academy and extra money in the bank I invested in a supplement company in the US.
De Novo Nutrition it was called (yeah it didn't end well)
Ben Esgro was the founder and is the best when it comes to formulation.
I invested money, my time and stupidly decided to invest my team to work on two different businesses.
The plan was take no money out of the business and get paid when we sold.
Oh yeah, I decided to rebrand Shredded By Science to Personal Trainer Collective, stop offering the SBS Academy and start offering the level 2 and 3 qualifications.
Note to 2018-2019 self: you are a fucking idiot Luke, what was you thinking
Let me skim over this quickly, I still feel the pain.
.. you need a lot of cash to grow a supplement company
.. one team working on two businesses doesn't work
.. rebranding and changing business models while trying to run two companies is terrible for both businesses
We went from £50k nights to a £3k night on the launch of PTC.
My lack of financial literacy nearly made me lose my own business.
The last SBS intake (August 2018) had a stupidly high number of monthly sign ups.
Fast forward to September 2019 and no more monthly revenue was coming in, I was losing 30k per month.
I had to make a decision, it was supplement company I'm off, I need to focus on my own business and get it out of the hole quickly.
2020-2022
400+ Personal Trainers
After the big shock it was time to get things back up and running.
We started offering more specialist courses, the level 2 and 3 qualifications and in a 2 year period we enrolled over 400 people that were looking to become Personal Trainers.
But with that came a lot of changes.
A new open all year format, many different target markets and a organisation restructuring.
We now have the very best Personal Trainers out in the industry because we qualified them from day 1.
With SBS we were upskilling Personal Trainers, the Personal Trainers that survive the dreaded first year.
But I will be honest with you, I didn't like offering the crap qualifications, even though we gave them access to our flagship course PT Core.
Our content marketing strategy was a lot harder now and ineffective due to the new diversed target market.
I also didn't enjoy working with people earlier on in their careers.
I didn't enjoy having to answer to an awarding body and paying them money for registering students and doing sweet F all.
So in July 2022, 10 years after I started. I decided to take a year off, a sabbatical and that meant reducing the team and stop taking on new students.
You still here? very impressed you made it this far. Nearly done now.
2022-2023
The year of me and my two regrets!
My plan was simple, play Call of Duty and do nothing for 3 months.
Learn things for the next 3 months.
On month 6 I would begin to start thinking about my next steps.
Taking time to review the last 10 years, my likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses and how I want to live life.
There was only 1 rule, though:
I had to make sure I didn't start anything new within the year and I didn't.
Those two regrets I mentioned are:
1, Not building my personal brand
2, Not building my personal assets
I didn't want my business success to be predicated on me being front and centre.
I didn't want to take money out of the business because I was always looking to reinvest it and to be honest, I didn't want to pay the Tax man even more money than I was.
I made my mind up on my next venture, the next 10 years.
2024-2034
The future
There has been a theme with most of the things that I have launched.
What help would a younger version of myself need?
My next step can be summed up with this one sentence.
Do all the things I like and i'm good at. Not do the stuff I dislike and i'm not good at.
What does that mean...
** note, there will be things that I'm good at that I'm neutral/dislike doing because I know that I should be delegating, automating or eliminating from my day to day.
Like/I'm good at
Presenting and educating
Creating video content
Geeky stuff - automations, systems
Product creation
Launching new stuff
Learning
Helping ambitious and hard working individuals
Dislike/I'm NOT good at
Admin tasks
Video editing (I enjoy this a little)
Managing staff
Customer service
Being around negative people
Coaching beginners or non ambitious individuals
Having a calendar full of meetings
3 ways I can help you
Option 1
FREE Shit (good type)
Click the button below
