I’ve written this more for me than for anyone else. I like journalling to gain a different perspective on things, and reflecting on my life so far helps to see where I’ve progressed, but also where I’m stuck or there’s room for improvement.
There’s no purpose to this page, but if you’re here, I hope you find it interesting regardless.
1989 - Born in the UK
2008 - Left school, took a year out working in the engineering industry
2009 - Started at University of Bath, started going to the gym
2011 - Placement year at McLaren Automotive
2012 - Summer placement at Morgan Stanley Investment Bank
2014 - Graduated, started working at McLaren full-time but quit after 6 weeks
2015 - Qualified as a Personal Trainer, moved to Croatia and sold first online programs under Train Eat Gain (TEG) brand
2016 - Moved to Bath, started CrossFit (wasn’t very good despite strength training background)
2017 - Rebranded TEG to Trinity Transformation, worked exclusively with women and it started growing fast
2018 - All went wrong, let entire team go and moved back home with parents - learned a lot about business (lessons further down this page)
2019 - Launched Fit Over 40 program working exclusively with women over 40, ran first overseas retreat
2020 - Hired first new team members and grew to 200 clients
2021 - Covid hit, business did ok and took opportunity to write the Fit Over 40 book
2022 - Company doubles in size as we perfect everything, Fit Over 40 book becomes Amazon bestseller
2023 - Trinity now has a team of 12 working with over 500 amazing 1-1 clients
I was raised in a pretty typical British middle-class family. We had a nice house, I went to a nice school and we went on some nice holidays, but there was nothing extravagant. We had pretty much everything we every needed.
However, there was one exception to this middle class normality - my father was self-employed. Whilst my friend’s parents were teachers, accountants or sales reps, I saw the freedom my Dad had and that must have subconsciously had an impact.
When I started my first office job after University, I felt trapped. I saw my Dad's lifestyle - the ability to dictate his own schedule, and ultimately his destiny (the good and the bad - some years my parents were STRESSED!) - and compared it to the people around me at my job.
They looked like lemmings, trudging into the office every day, waiting for break time to get their bland coffee, dragging themselves between meetings stuck inside all day, and then waiting for 5 o'clock to be allowed to go home again. Maybe they liked it, but I knew within a couple of weeks it wasn’t for me.
I wanted something challenging. To do something that made a real difference. And, most importantly, something that was exciting, where there was far greater upside potential without the upper ceiling of a pay band, being stuck earning the same as people who worked half as hard or having to brown-nose your way to the top.
I knew I was capable of more, and thankfully Ben, my business parter at Trinity, made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: “Would you be up for splitting my salary for a year to give the fitness business a real shot?”
"Fuck it, let's do it!", I said.
Being so naive was a blessing at the beginning.
I had seen these online fitness guys like Greg Plitt and Christian Guzman on YouTube driving around in Range Rovers or Lamborghinis, and assumed that would be me after a year or two of hard work.
I thought my office-worker colleagues would be looking at my meteoric rise, jealous of what I’d achieved. Yes, 25-year-old me was a dick!
The reality was different. Very different.
With no formal training or mentorship, and only a moderate Twitter following, trying to make a living from an online fitness business back in 2014 was a struggle.
It took a year to get to the point where we could afford to pay ourselves even a moderate salary (we were paying ourselves practically everything the company was making), and even then, after thinking we had it cracked by 2016, it would all come tumbling down.
I was living in a penthouse flat in Bath with a swanky office in town, driving a new BMW and had hired a big team to support the 300+ clients we had taken on. However, it was about to all go wrong!
I hadn’t kept the finances under control. I also hadn't realised how VAT worked (I thought it was based on profit, not revenue). A £30k corporation tax bill, and a similar VAT bill came at once, and there wasn’t enough in the company accounts - we’d spent everything either "investing in the business" (most of these "investments" did not pay off) and we'd paid ourselves the rest.
This was one of the lowest points in my life.
We had to end the office contract, let the entire team go and worst of all, I had to move back in with Mum & Dad at age 29.
That’s the price you pay for naivety in business.
We managed to avoid going bankrupt by the skin of our teeth. Ben and I were supporting all the clients between us without getting paid a penny for nine months, whilst we paid HMRC what we owed and rebuilt the business from the ashes.
It was a crushing blow, one that took me years to get over and stop blaming the government for.
But from that rock bottom experience came a lot of valuable lessons, which have now enabled us to build a stable business, Trinity Transformation, with a mission to empower 10,000 women to take control of their lives around menopause.
We are currently working with over 500 clients globally as a team of 12 talented coaches, membership advisors and creatives, and we’re on track to have our first 7-figure year this year.
Here’s 5 key lessons I learned along the way: