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I just want to give you a short little snippet
of who I am if you don't know me.
I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 16 years of age.
That drove me to getting into the fitness industry.
I fell in love with bodybuilding.
I had a very successful junior bodybuilding career
and built an incredible personal training business
from the information that I acquired as I studied in university.
I then took my love of nutrition
and the ability to manage diabetes and all my experience,
and wrote the world's first encyclopedia on diabetes and muscle building.
I now run the world's largest fitness business, Mastermind,
for coaching fitness professionals.
Over 50% of our clients run six figure businesses,
and it's safe to say we know a thing or two about helping our clients make money.
So, I wasn't brought up to be told that running a business was successful.
I was told that running a business was risky.
I was told that building a team was challenging, stressful,
and that running a business was a very bad idea.
And, uh, essentially, I've done the polar opposite.
Boom!
Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.
So, is he like the Tony Robbins of fitness?
My name is Phil Graham. I work in the fitness industry.
I'm responsible for helping fitness professionals, health and wellness experts
grow their business, helping them attract more clients, close more sales,
and deliver a world-class service.
Phil Graham, in the fitness industry, is known to be the businessman,
and he teaches and helps a lot of personal trainers across the fitness world,
how to build a business to help them give more value to their clients.
Within Northern Ireland, anybody that's been
a personal trainer or a gym owner,
there's a big chance that Phil Graham has been involved in it.
There's a lot of people within the fitness industry
that are really passionate about their sport and passionate about their training,
but don't have the knowledge and understanding from a business standpoint
to turn it into something that would actually make them enough money
to have a great living and achieve everything they want to achieve.
The next step for Phil was realizing that what many would class as a disability,
being diabetic,
is now an ability.
- Does it hurt? - No.
And has created something that is giving people hope.
Phil and I go way back. We both started in the e-book business.
Wild Wild West of the online marketing space
before social media even existed.
He's a very smart business coach.
He's also a very accomplished, uh, bodybuilder.
The kind of discipline, systems and strategies
that you need to excel and get to the top of your game,
as a bodybuilder, he's now applied to business.
He's a very high level thinker, which I think is
really needed and missing in our space.
What I love the most about Phil is the level of standards,
not only for himself, but for his business and also for others.
If you give him a question, he'll give you an answer.
Whether you like that answer or not is a different story.
They trust him because of his own success.
I mean, he knows what he's talking about through and through.
Muscle & fitness, I'm in this somewhere.
There he is.
Personally? Yeah, he's just...
He's on another level when it comes to food, experience.
The dolce vita, even though he's not Italian,
I think he, he exemplifies that, like living the good life.
And it's just, you know, just amazing to be able to
break bread with him and share a glass of wine, is just to see
how much joy he gets out of that, is really, really awesome.
He's a person who loves to create experiences for other people.
He loves to cultivate the experiences
and to see the reactions on people's faces as a result of what he has created.
He gets joy out of making other people happy
and seeing awe in their faces.
Cheers!
I was on a holiday in Mauritius once
and I was a 21-stone bodybuilder.
I was in peak off-season, and we went out on a dolphin trip.
It was a snorkeling thing and you had the, the mask, the flippers.
I didn't put the flippers on,
and I jumped in at 21 stone.
I hadn't swam in a long period of time,
and I inhaled a massive amount of seawater through the snorkel.
My breath has gone out quite far from the boat,
and I was like a flipping dense rock. I was just, like, sinking.
And I couldn't breathe because I'd just, like, tanked my cardiovascular system.
If you study death and look at it,
there's a moment where you just surrender everything.
And I remember going to myself...
..."Fuck it."
And I surrendered.
I had these goggles on, and I remember looking underneath
at these thousands of dolphins,
and I got rescued by...
...one of the, the boat guys.
He, he dragged me in.
I have looked at every chaotic event in my life
that thought was going to sink me.
In those moments of chaos, tears, fear, devastation,
there's no recovering from this.
I, I know what those moments feel like,
and they're crushing.
But if I look back at them now from a higher self,
a more advanced self, I'm still alive. I'm still here.
And without those moments, I wouldn't be who I am today.
I wouldn't have pushed through. I wouldn't have driven through.
I find that there is a predetermined flow with my life.
With everybody that's watching this, if you look at
your most chaotic events from where you're at right now,
you're still alive, you're still here,
and without them, you wouldn't be where you want to be.
You were looking at yourself, where you're at now
and looking at a chaotic event in your previous life,
what would you say if you were able to meet that person in that moment?
You would say something like, "I love you, I trust you.
I know you could have pulled through this."
And if you say it from the other version,
i.e., the younger person to the other person,
you'll end up saying something like, "You're the person
that I always wanted to be."
An old school friend bumped into me, and, you know,
joked around with a bit of sarcasm, and, and said,
you know, "Hey, you've changed." And I said, "Hey, you haven't."
When I was in school, I wasn't super intelligent,
I was, I was a B student, I was bang in the middle.
But I was always entrepreneurial.
Even, you know, when I go way back,
when I was a kid, I remember selling,
you know, sweets of all things.
I was always selling stuff.
And then, a firework business in school.
We call them screamers over here, but they're like little rockets that go...
...poof, right?
And we used to buy packets of them in the local electrical shop
up the road from the school,
and put a mark up on them and sell them
and stash them in bags around the school.
And when you're in an all-boys school,
throwing bangers in a bin is a great idea of fun.
I grew up around about 15 minutes of Belfast
in a place called Lisburn.
This is a school that I went to for many, many years.
And that's where the firework business was.
So, if they're re-watching this, I was the...
the kid behind all the fireworks going off in the bins.
Going to school every single day, 8:45, and I used to walk by this, and...
It's one of Europe's most bombed hotels hotels during The Troubles.
There was always car bombs outside. It's been blown up many times.
The Troubles...
Certainly when I was growing up and where I grew up, it was...
very paramilitary focused.
You'd have been walking down the street and the army was there,
giving you lollipops for information.
Still times where things are kind of up in the air, tensions are high,
especially depending on where in Northern Ireland you are
but definitely in Belfast and around where Phil is,
there would definitely be a lot of dangers around.
So this is the peace wall and it's covered in signatures
and little messages, all different religions.
You can see people from all around the world.
You can see signs from Palestine, Israel.
And this wall was really to divide the Catholics from the Protestants,
because people would come across,
and, you know, put a car bomb outside somebody's house or petrol bomb somebody's house,
and vice versa on both sides.
So there's a lot of, of casualties.
There was a lot of fallout.
People could definitely cross,
but, at the end of the day,
you know, this was the Catholic side, this was the Protestant side.
So, back in those days when it was, you know, turbulent,
you were almost going behind enemy lines,
and there have been people sitting at each side of the, the wall
looking at who was going over and who was going back.
And, you know, it wouldn't have been a wise idea.
And as you can see, people from all around the world
have come to visit this wall. Now, this is iconic.
And they've written messages on it of hope and peace and all sorts of stuff.
But the people that were in the country were the ones
that lived through all the turmoil and all the conflict.
And, you know, there's many people that lost on both sides.
You know, one of the first things that you would find out about somebody
is, like, are they Catholic or are they Protestant?
You know, that was usually one of the first things that you would use against somebody,
or one of the first things that you would use to support somebody.
Growing up in a household where parents went through
a lot of bombings, a lot of kidnappings, a lot of shootings, a lot of deaths,
it's kind of ingrained into your culture and your outlook.
And those beliefs weren't just from parents.
They were, you know, around the majority of people
that I went to school with, that lived in my neighborhood,
that, you know, that I was essentially with on a daily basis.
The Troubles really reached a boiling point whenever my parents were young.
Northern Ireland, we have a situation like the southern states of America,
where you do not have the basic democratic liberty of free procession.
They saw petrol bombings, car bombings, kidnappings.
They saw murders.
Get away!
In the covers! We'll get away!
There's no doubt about it.
My parents, their parents
were all traumatized by The Troubles.
As far as I'm concerned, if they're going to blow you up,
they're just going to blow you up.
It was on the news every single day of the week.
- Tell me what happened last night. - -Well, we don't know.
There was an explosion outside our door
and our shop was wrecked.
Most of these bombs arrive
in boxes and parcels.
11:30 one night, I found a brown paper parcel under a seat,
and I walked around it for quite a long time and finally opened it.
There were two cream cakes in it, but...
uh, that was some months ago, and I think now I don't think I would have opened it.
Down!
Get down! Get down! Get down! Get down!
Those around the graveside
got down on the ground as instructed.
Others strained to see what was happening.
Many of the crowd gave chase in hot pursuit of the man
who stopped, turned, and threw another grenade.
Catholics and Protestants were taught to hate each other.
People had family members that were hurt or killed.
And then there's the hatred
that will go on for generations in that family because of that.
Obviously, over the world, people see Northern Ireland
as being a place where there was a lot of conflict,
a lot of fighting that went on.
Was I in that in my era?
Yeah.
I grew up in Belfast,
so, I probably seen things more than what other people seen.
Uh, don't really want to get too much into it.
There's, uh...
Yeah.
Things are definitely changing.
People my age are not really
caring too much about Catholics and Protestants.
Most people of my generation
just want to move forward and have a better place to live.
The darkest times of my childhood...
I'd say there were moments when I was in school,
and I didn't have a purpose.
I wasn't popular.
No real sense of drive, no real sense of ambition.
And those were kind of empty periods.
When I was 15, 16 years of age,
my diet was horrendous, I did not exercise.
I came from a family that loved food,
and we had incredible dinners every single evening.
And every morning, we would go into school.
We would go to a coffee shop
outside the bus station called The Scallop Shell.
And we used to get an Ulster fry.
And an Ulster fry is a combination of fried eggs,
sausages, soda bread, black pudding,
fried tomato, baked beans, just amazing goodness.
After that, we would then go to the local center
and I used to eat toffee Wham Bars,
and neck it all back with a bottle of Club Orange.
So, we're probably talking at least two-and-a-half thousand calories before 8:45.
I remember going to school one day,
and I was on the bus, and,
I noticed the number plates of the cars
in front of the bus, at the side of the bus were slightly blurry.
I said to myself, "My eyesight is off."
And throughout the day, I got noticeably thirstier and I was going to the toilet a lot.
But this got progressively worse and worse and worse and worse.
And long story short, I went to the GP and got checked,
and within a matter of seconds, I was told that I had Type 1 diabetes.
The memory of that was my mum bursting into tears,
and my mum was a healthcare professional.
She was a speech and language therapist.
And, um, when she started crying,
the first thing that I thought to myself was, "Oh,
something's up, something's wrong."
When your health is taken away from you and you can't get it back,
then you begin to look at life through a very different lens.
How am I going to navigate social situations?
How am I going to live a, a peaceful life?
Am, am I going to go blind?
Am I going to have secondary health effects?
Am I going to have kidney failure, organ failure?
You know, am I going to have heart disease, a heart attack?
You know, these are all things that go through your mind.
And, you know, it's almost like this domino effect
where diabetes can lead to other complications.
And those complications can lead to other complications.
So, I was like, "Okay, where do I draw the line in this?"
Every single day, I test my blood sugar to see where I'm at,
and there's a healthy range and then an unhealthy range
or a "at risk" range.
And this is affected by what I eat, stress levels,
sleep levels, exercise, medication...
You name it, everything affects your blood glucose levels.
And your blood glucose levels affect your energy and affect your mood.
So, we're going to test my blood glucose levels.
Now, I'm feeling a little bit higher than normal.
Normal range is kind of like between four and seven.
The reason why I feel a little bit high
is because I had something a little while ago.
I had a little bit of stress,
and I feel that I might need a little bit more insulin.
So this is high.
So I'm above normal range.
So, now that we've tested it, and we're outside our range,
we got to take some fast-acting insulin, NovoRapid.
If you're diabetic you'll know this hits you pretty quick.
I'm going to take around about seven units.
So we'll dial it up to seven,
find a little sample, and bam!
Essentially, what I'm doing here is replicating
what my pancreas would be doing naturally.
After getting out of the chair being tested,
I was sent to this waiting room, and my mom was crying and saying,
"What are we going to do? How are we going to manage this?"
And I didn't really know what was going on.
We didn't really have mobile phones back then
where you could just go and google diabetes.
What I did have was posters on the wall,
and this was about diabetic neuropathy, kidney failure,
uh, amputation, losing your eyesight.
So, I was sitting in this corridor drinking a bottle of Club Orange,
which is the Northern Irish version of Fanta.
And, uh, yeah, I started to realize, "Okay, there's, there's a,
you know, potential problem here."
So I remember being brought down this corridor
and there was a dark green olive door.
And I remember going into the door and it was just this
very sterile clinical office.
And it was a diabetes educator there.
And I remember when she was communicating with me,
the, the language that she used to communicate to me
about the condition was, "you might," "you possibly,"
"you could," "There is a chance."
So the "could" was where I found the hope.
And that was the first piece as a problem solver,
as an entrepreneur that I went,
"All right, well, okay, there's a way out.
There's an exit here."
That night,
there was a... a switch that flipped inside my mind.
And I went from unhealthy, not a care in the world,
with my body, with my health, with my nutrition, with anything,
to becoming engrossed in this information
and these subjects that was going to save me.
There's a handful of key principles when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur.
Number one is knowing exactly who you want to be a hero to.
Welcome toMonthly Hot Seat.
The hot seats are our way of showcasing incredible clients
and how they've behaved their way to incredible success in their business.
- One thing that I share.... - -Food was always a safe place.
So anytime I was triggered or, you know, went through anything difficult,
I always used to go to food.
The biggest shock in my life to this date was losing my sister.
I was 17 at the time. She was 19.
There was only a year-and-a-half between us, so we were very, very close,
and that turned all our families' worlds upside down.
Caused my way from going to, you know, 220 pounds to 330 pounds
at the age of 18, 19 years of age.
And that was the moment to change.
If you told me back then at 330 pounds that I'd be a successful weight loss coach,
I would have looked at you like you had two heads.
In a very, very short space of time,
I lost a massive amount of weight.
Thirty pounds in the space of a month.
My face was really gaunt.
I was constantly thirsty, I had no energy.
I went down to the local GP, got a blood test,
and a couple of days later, he calls me up, he says,
"Eoin, you have Type 1 diabetes."
I was working in a corporate role
and I was also trying to build my personal training business alongside that,
which meant some really long days.
I had this dream of quitting my corporate job
and being my own boss full time,
but I guess, in a way, I was maybe scared at that point.
So when I reached out to Phil and I said,
"Hey, my situation is I'm a single parent, I'm working 16-hour days.
I'm literally at literally at breaking point.
I know that I've got it in me, potentially,
to become my own full-time boss.
Is this something that you can, that you can help with?"
And he said, "Okay, if I can guarantee that you make your money back,
and more within the first six weeks, are you game?"
And I said, "Yeah, of course." And I signed up.
We made the money back and more. And the rest is history.
When I started to coach, the biggest thing for me was
I want to be the coach to help people that were in my position,
because I would love to have a coach like me when I was starting my journey.
That could help them do the right things.
It was really to be that teacher and to be that messenger,
to help people understand
the true impact of living a healthy life.
Essentially, I am a coach for Type 1 diabetics.
The idea of business, a lot of the time, can be a bit foreign,
because if you're a great coach, generally, you just care about people.
But if you don't know how to run a business, operate a business
it's very difficult for you to actually get what you need out of your business.
Tom, what is up?
What is wrong? Tell me everything.
Yeah. So basically, mate, I'm just...
I'm kind of concerned about how AI is going to be
interacting and maybe interfering with my business.
Um, I'm pretty aware that people can go into Chat, ChatGPT now
and just say, you know, "I'm really struggling with my mental performance.
- Can you provide me with a plan?" And it's kind of... - Yeah.
It's there and it's not, it's not bespoke to them.
It's not what they need, but it's, uh...
- Yeah. - It's available to them.
-And how that interferes with my business, really. -Right.
And have you had any clients do this, or... What--
Yeah. I've had, I've had a few clients playing around with it.
It's not quite there yet, but it's almost there.
And you can kind of feel people that are tempted to, tempted to leave.
Right. And, well, has anybody left over the head of it?
-They're talking about it and-- -People are talking about it, yeah.
Right. So, they're talking about it inside your community
and you're worried about other people seeing that and going,
"Well, we can get value from this. We don't need to pay you anymore."
-They're going to cut you. -Exactly right.
All right.
Well, look, here's how I would look at this.
And I really encourage you to think differently about this.
A business using AI is going to give you trouble.
AI itself is not going to give you trouble,
because you just provide so much more value beyond that.
I have been at your events. I have seen the people shaking hands.
I have seen them hugging each other. I have seen them challenge each other.
That is not going to happen on ChatGPT, for now anyway.
We coach a lot of businesses, gyms, fitness professionals,
health and wellness experts, mindset, performance coaches,
psychologists, you name it.
And this is a threat to everyone.
So we're going to have a team meeting about this
and looking at a solution to this later on today.
So, we're on it.
Business is just one thing after another.
You think you've solved one thing, and then it's another problem.
And then, you get a little period of rest, little period of peace,
and then, boom, next thing blows up in your face.
Marketplace is always changing.
And, uh, look, I suppose the way to look at it is if
you're not evolving, you're not adapting, you're not working with changing customer needs,
changes in technology, changes in marketing,
changes in all that stuff, then you're going you're going to get outpaced.
Do you think AI will really hurt your coaching business?
I mean, why would anyone hire an online coach
when a ChatGPT can create a fitness program for you?
It's a hot topic nowadays. You're seeing AI, AI, AI, AI
taking these jobs, taking whatever it is. Um...
It will absolutely have an impact on online coaching and coaching in general.
The extent of that impact is obviously not really known just yet.
It's part of the world at the moment.
So, is it going to take jobs? Of course it is.
AI, uh, it... It can be an uncomfortable subject.
It's a side that I don't really see when it comes to pressure.
Yes, I have seen him slightly under pressure.
I think pressure drives him to deal with the situation,
make it better and move on.
When I first started, one of the biggest challenges
was letting go of control to, quite frankly, build a team.
One of the arts of business is delegation, recruit A-star people,
pay A-star wages, but by God, expect A-star results.
You've got to trust your people, because we don't know everything.
So you bring on individuals to make your life easier through what they're good at.
There's not just Phil. He's got a team of experts.
They are people who have got real lived experience from within the fitness industry.
At the very start of this, when I started working for Phil,
Claire, Phil's partner would have told you, like,
Phil spoke to me more than he spoke to her.
I would get messages from Phil at 2:00 in the morning.
Constant, like, between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning, messages with ideas
and then again at 7:00 in the morning.
I would say that Phil is someone who's always
slightly ahead of the curve.
Um, most people can't see the curve.
He's nearly always ahead of the curve.
Our stuff changes very, very, very rapidly,
sort of based on the, the current state of things in the world.
We would change on the drop of a hat just to make things better.
That's probably one of the best things about the team, is,
how quick we can flip on a coin just to make things work for clients.
All right, lads. Bit of an issue on our side.
I've been hearing about all this AI stuff for quite a while.
I've been paying a little bit of attention to it, but not a lot.
Long story short, one of our client's clients
sent him a DM and said, "Hey, I've been able to get
exactly the same answers from ChatGPT that you've been giving me."
ChatGPT isn't going to take you to the gym.
Very valid point. Very valid point.
It's not going to take you to the gym.
It's not going to allow you to rest eight hours a night.
It's not going to control the food you put in your mouth.
Look, we've got to keep this in mind here
that clients are going to start quizzing and questioning this.
I think the big concern is they had a client
that started using it and posted it in their community
and said, "Hey, look what I got from ChatGPT."
And, obviously, the coach is now worried that,
well, is that similar to the stuff that I'm doing?
And if it's pulling from that wide, you know,
- internet base of insight... - Mm.
there's likely going to be commonalities.
But the quality of output from ChatGPT
purely depends on the quality of question.
And most people don't know how to ask good questions.
So, that's a saving grace for now.
But we've got to build something.
We've got to incorporate AI in our business.
We've looked at it, we've talked about it.
What do you guys think?
How do we ride this curve take advantage of it
and build it in to help our clients win faster? Simple as that.
The opportunity that I see is, essentially,
we take all the information we have over the last seven years
all the videos, all the podcasts, all the documents,
and we can actually train our own AI model.
ChatGPT is trained on general information,
so it's going to give general advice.
But if we can train our own model to be based on our information, our IP,
um, it's going to give much better responses.
So that's how I believe w think.
Yeah, and people are always wanting personal connection to you.
I can't see a lot of people embracing AI,
but then, I can eventually see it coming full circle
where people are going to go, this is AI-free,
you know, 100% written by a human
or 100% governed by a human, whatever it may be.
So look, it's definitely a trending topic that we've got to be on top of.
Like anything else, business is all about relevancy,
and we've got to build it,
we got to showcase it to the to the marketplace.
And we got to get clients winning on it. So, Dave, what do you think
on that turnaround time, how long do you think it will take to build it?
So I'll definitely have to go away, do a bit of research
and just get clear on the first initial steps with everything that's needed.
Because, ultimately, right now, I've been doing a lot of research
behind the scenes in terms of how it all works,
how we can input our own, our own information, how we can fine tune it.
But there is going to naturally be challenges
that we don't foresee.
Whenever you're hit with stuff like this, it's so important
that you've got slack to deal with it.
And we're very fortunate that in our calendars every single week,
we build in, like, white space to handle shit like this.
So, we'll have another team meeting about this in the next 48 hours,
and see where we're at with decisions and what we need to build.
I'll check in with Dave separately and see where his head's at,
and, um, see what he's come up with.
I've lived in the city before, and I've lived in the countryside,
and the countryside beats it all day long.
Dig into my fishing. Fishing is a huge thing for me.
An opportunity for me to stop what I'm doing with business.
Recharge. Retune.
Yeah, I've been doing that since I've been a little boy.
No matter what goes on in my week, no matter how busy I am with business,
no matter what challenges I've had,
a bit of water, trees, fresh air,
it's amazing for the mind.
If you look at the head of the rod, you'll see it'll start tugging in a bit.
So we're literally-- Right, you see that?
Ah! This is a bream from Loch Earn.
Beautiful fish, incredible fight. Absolutely stunning.
And, uh, I'm going to make sure we put it back.
Coming to my end in school. You know, school was difficult.
Trying to concentrate and the blood sugar fluctuations,
and starting to take insulin and trying to manually manage my blood glucose.
I, uh, decided to go and study nutrition at university.
I was interested in it and I was engrossed in it.
I began to get control of my condition very quickly.
And as I was going to university, I fell in love with exercise.
At the time, fitness in Northern Ireland,
we hadn't had the explosion that we've now had even in the whole of the UK,
and it was still very much an underground scene.
The gym wasn't something that every individual done or every household done.
It was a particular demographic or a particular type of person.
I went straight into the deep end.
I went to the most hardcore bodybuilding gym
that you could ever imagine.
And I remember walking into the gym that day
and hearing these big grunts and these huge, muscular guys, like, slamming dumbbells.
And there was clearly testosterone floating around. You could just smell it.
It would be referred to in circles as a "meathead gym," if you will.
I got on the recumbent bike.
Yeah, I just cycled and watched.
I couldn't fathom how these guys were able to build such insane strength and power.
And seeing them train was just very different.
If you remember the first time that you went into a bodybuilding gym
and you heard somebody grunt...
It's kind of different. Like, you don't know whether to laugh
or whether to like... "What are they going to do?"
You know, are they going to, you know, are they going to wreck the place?
My confidence then grew after every single time that I went back to the gym,
to the point where I then ventured into the weight room.
Started lifting weights and was hooked.
And that was the entry into the bodybuilding world.
First thing in the morning. Uh, we're about to do a training session
before I get started for the day.
I do this every day of the week.
I make sure that I move for a good 20 to 25 minutes
every single morning.
My workouts are very short.
They are no longer two hours a day
like they were back in my bodybuilding days.
My values, my priorities have changed.
But I train primarily to stay healthy,
stay strong, stay mobile,
and I just get my circulatory system going for the day.
As a young guy that was overweight,
that had just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes,
my whole life was on the line, my confidence was on the line,
and I was at rock bottom.
So, having grown up around Arnold, Terminator,
there was a part of me that was drawn to that
because I didn't have that when I was weak and unhealthy and out of shape.
But at the same time, too, bodybuilding was regimen.
It was discipline. And it revolved around eating properly.
It revolved around training properly.
It revolved around a quality lifestyle.
And these were all key factors in managing diabetes.
So there was a blend that literally just locked in together.
Here we go. You're gonna go mash, mash, mash.
You do it.
Mash, mash, mash. Good girl.
I've just had a little girl. She's a year, year and a half now.
And the biggest, most important thing for me is that
she loves herself and does not need to depend upon the opinions
or the validation of other people to love and accept herself.
And if she knows that she loves herself and she can trust herself
to make decisions in life and not be afraid of failing,
to not be afraid of being different or unique or distinctive,
to not be afraid of being authentic,
and being authentic is about being rebellious.
What are you doing?
No!
So I'm Claire Graham, and I'm Phil's wife.
We met back in 2007.
Phil was actually working on the door in a nightclub
that I was out with my friends and my cousins.
She was a wild one back then. She was always the drunk one.
And Phil would have a Diet Coke because he was always training
and he was always into his physique.
Well, someone got very drunk and got pulled out, and--
No, it wasn't me. No, no, no, it wasn't me.
And that's when I'd seen Phil.
We were both 19, so I liked how he looked.
You know, I just, I just liked how he looked. And I was like, "Mm. He looks nice."
And my sister's husband actually worked there as well.
So I just done a wee bit of background work to find out who he was.
And we kind of went on a blind date.
I actually met him before Claire. So I've known him a long time.
What was he like back then?
Um, broke.
I remember Claire had to pay for him to go to the cinema.
I can't remember what we went to see.
You know, we went to the cinema and we got some sweets,
some, I think it was Maltesers.
And Phil was just starting to diet
for a bodybuilding competition at the time,
so he didn't eat anything like that.
So I found out, years later, that as I was offering him the Maltesers,
he was throwing them over his shoulder...
pretending to eat them, just being the nice guy that he is.
I know Phil from training.
I trained in the same gym, would've passed each other,
passed a couple of words.
You know, you go to the gym to train.
You didn't really have time to stand about and talk.
Phil, at the time, was a powerlifter.
You would have noticed Phil when he came in.
He would have been dressed different than everyone else.
Pair of boots on and baggy trousers.
And he approached me one time,
and, uh, just asked me a general question.
How could he become a bodybuilder?
And my response to that was, "You can become anything
if you work hard and commit yourself to it."
And he went for his first show.
And that was a part of life
that maybe didn't work out for him.
This was my first show, and it was the first show that I, I got second in.
I got beaten by a guy called Peter Bremner, who's now a very, very close friend.
Was Phil serious about bodybuilding at that time.
Yeah. Phil loved bodybuilding. Yeah.
-Did you beat him at bodybuilding? -Yes.
Phil kind of knew lots of stuff.
And that was obviously due to his diabetes.
The way I had to look at nutrition, the way I had to look at training
was very, very different to how everybody else did it.
I had to manually use insulin to transport all the nutrients into cells,
and if I didn't, then I would go catabolic, my blood sugar would climb and climb
and if I didn't eat enough, I would go hypoglycemic.
And then I had to eat food to bring it back up, which defeated the whole fat loss purpose.
And then I, you know, if I, uh, took a low blood sugar
and had to eat a packet of fruit parcels or wine gums,
I then had to go and burn that off.
I peaked too early. I went on stage
underweight, deflated, just...
didn't look anywhere near what I looked like six weeks out.
Diabetes is probably the most catabolic thing you can have when it comes to bodybuilding,
and it will waste away
every ounce and gram of muscle tissue if you do not control it.
It will also go the flip side and increase your body fat
if you don't look after it rapidly.
This is the most important trophy because this was, uh,
you know, this one created the hunger and the drive to actually go after it.
And it was then when Phil approached me and asked me,
would I take the time out for a year and actually help him out,
train with him to help him get ready for the next show?
This is my only gym where I trained out for well over 15 years.
It used to be called Rock Pit Fitness.
As you can see, it's been replaced by a bakery.
Unfortunately, the gym closed down.
It's open.
I think all this stuff is still the same.
And then come on round the back.
Phil's never in time.
So, with this shutter here in the background,
you would have had a bench for bench pressing,
and they would have had the bench set up, ready to go.
Because I knew, one, what he was lifting,
and I knew, two, he was going to be late.
So I used to be here in time, get everything set up.
And then when he came in, he had to wrestle around his bag,
sort his whole thing out. put his music on...
...and by that stage, I'd had enough time to go home.
You'd have had your favorite music on.
But when Phil came into the gym,
it had to be Phil's music.
I've seen many a CD get thrown out.
Wouldn't matter whose CD it was, who was playing it,
out, his in, and that would've been it.
Yeah. There was always a bit of character.
Training is different. Six days a week. Hard training.
Some days of his legs, twice a day.
Intensity, heavy.
The gym would have knew that there was two guys in the corner training hard.
And we wouldn't really have talked much, but we always knew what we had to do.
And it was every day. And that whole year, it was hard.
I was presented with a life-threatening disease that was, quite frankly, telling me,
you're not going to be a bodybuilder, you can't do it. The GPs, the doctors,
they all said to me, "You're never going to be able to, you know,
cut your carbohydrates out or you're never going to be able to eat that much protein.
You're never going to be able to get on stage and get that lean."
Well...
Coming up to the show, we had to be very careful
and make sure that things came into place.
because we had worked so hard all year.
We didn't want to happen this time, what happened last time
I'll never forget that day.
I picked Phil up and I drove him down to the show.
And Phil wouldn't be a nervous person.
He was nervous.
So without any further ado,
let's give a very special welcome to our first class.
Ladies and gentlemen, the NABBA Northern Ireland Junior Class.
To see him get on the stage and do his routine,
and to watch how much he had grown within the year,
it was incredible.
I could hear people in the background talking his previous year to this year.
His physique, and exactly how much he had put on, his bulk.
You just knew by listening around exactly what was coming.
Phil had a moment where he surely asked me a question. "Do you think I've done it?"
And I knew he had done it. I just knew he had done it.
I always remember when he was bodybuilding at the time,
he was obviously, like, 20 stone, jacked, shredded.
But I always remember, like, looking in the mirror
and then looking at him and being like, "This is not real."
The biggest thing about bodybuilding for me was it was character building,
in the sense that, when I got behind a 300 plus kilo deadlift
and was doing it for reps. Huge weights.
Can you push yourself to this limit to be able to lift this?
Was Phil strong, in his, in his prime?
Yeah, yeah. Phil was strong. I can remember.
He used to play with deadlifting 300 kilos or something.
That sounds light to me now, to be fair, but it's... it's not.
While training in the gym, my shape, my strength was transforming,
and people saw that.
And it got to a point where I, I pissed
people that had been training for years,
in terms of appearance, in terms of strength,
and they began to get inquisitive.
They started to ask questions.
And then when they heard that I was studying nutrition
and they saw that I was practicing what I was preaching,
they wanted to learn from me.
I came home from training legs one night,
and I got a text message from a guy called Stevie,
"What do you charge for a diet and training program?"
And I didn't really know how to sell.
I didn't know how to market myself.
I genuinely didn't know how to talk about money,
and I replied with, like, a 2,000-word lengthy text message
what we were going to focus on, how we were going to build out the program.
It's 50 quid.
And he messaged me back and said, "Congratulations,
you've just landed yourself a new client."
And it was at that point I realized that I was
possibly about to start a business.
I remember speaking to the head of my university degree,
and I said, my dream is really to be a dietician
and to work with people with diabetes because I really enjoy food,
I really enjoy nutrition, I really enjoy talking about the human body.
But I've realized that I love lifting weights
and I love helping people build muscle.
And I'm actually thinking about becoming a, a personal trainer.
And she kind of looked at me and went, "A what?"
And I said, "A personal trainer."
And she said to me, "Well,
that's the kind of career that you end up in
if you fail at university and you want to go and work in a leisure center counting reps."
People looked at it as a drop-out career, but I kept doing this in and out.
And I remember one week, I turned over more money
than I would have as a professional dietician in the health service.
And I started to realize that this has potential to be a business.
And I remember going home that night and saying to my mum,
"I don't want to be a dietitian anymore.
I don't want to continue this degree.
I know I can make money at this. I'm good at it, I love it."
And we agreed to finish off my university degree
because it essentially gave me a qualification,
an academic understanding and a level of credibility.
So I finished that, but I didn't pursue the career in dietetics.
I created my own business and it was called Clear Cut Health & Fitness.
It was all in a local bodybuilding gym in Northern Ireland,
and there was points where you walked into the gym,
and literally, like, 80% of the gym all had these massive digital print outs
with my logo stamped at the bottom,
Clear Cut Health & Fitness.
And I put as much into those programs as possible.
In fact, it was overkill.
It was like a mini book. It was like a mini course.
And back then, I just really developed this attitude
of giving people what they need,
telling them what they need to hear, getting straight to the point.
I knew I fell in terms of being a competitive bodybuilder,
and he was a household name in Ireland, extremely well known, driven.
He was one of the first people that brought online coaching to the UK and to Ireland.
Back then, there was no real online coaching. Nobody was really doing it.
And I then started to get emails
and people would message me and go, "Can you do me a diet and training program?"
And these were people that were living in England, people that were living in America,
people that were just stumbling across me in some way, shape or form, or even a referral.
And I started my online coaching business
selling the nutrition and training programs
that were done on Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel,
and sending them to people over the Internet.
I developed those skills and I started selling to more people and more people and more people,
and my inbox started to get fuller and fuller and fuller.
You've got mail.
And it got to the point where I couldn't take on any more people.
I couldn't create any more diet programs,
and I started reading about supply and demand.
And at that point I realized, "Okay, there's more people
wanting my service than I can actually provide.
It's time for me to put my price up."
And I went through multiple iterations of that
until I ended up charging 1,000 quid
for a diet and training transformation program.
And people were willing to pay it, and people kept coming back
and referring their friends.
I remember using the money
to hire my first graphic designer, my first web designer,
used it to build a new website.
We started getting inquiries from all around the world.
People would book Skype calls, they would buy programs online.
Now, there came a point where I got fed up of sitting at the computer,
and the gym that I was in, there was no personal trainers.
And I remember I trained with the owner,
and it somehow came up about me coaching and personal training people,
and he let me personal train in the gym.
I went to Phil as a very strong-willed individual,
had it very set in my head what I wanted,
and as you can probably guess, didn't like to be told what to do or how to do something.
I have to have an understanding of why I'm doing something a particular way.
So, in being coached by Phil, then came an education for me.
Between the sets, whenever I was supposed to be resting,
I had a professional bodybuilder at the time standing over, over me,
talking to me about grams of protein, carbohydrates,
how your body metabolizes different foods.
Phil was very good at judging kind of my mood, my energy levels,
even just my temperament, and what I,
what I now know was at the time, he used to use the warm up
to gauge what caliber of workout that I was going to get.
There's days that I was getting into mentally thinking that I wasn't
going to be able to lift heavy or wasn't gonna be able to do whatever.
And some of those were my best sessions, because
he had seen something in me in the warm up
might have been that I had a bad day, and I had anger or aggression
that, you know, I, I wanted to get out.
Or maybe I'd slept really well
and had loads of energy and was ready to go.
It was an outlet for me to experiment, to test,
to create content, build relationships.
And also, I was exposed to the gym floor constantly, so I had people coming up to me.
It was a great way for me to generate leads for all the diet and training programs.
And it just grew to a level that I never even thought possible.
It was amazing. It was hard work,
but I was getting paid to do the very thing
that I went all in on to save myself.
Warming up. Warming up.
He's healthy.
People always used to say that, "I'd been out of the gym for a while.
How do you get back into it? It's really, really hard."
And I could never register how that felt because I was always in it.
And now that I've taken a sabbatical for the last five or so years,
I know what they mean.
Getting back into it, it's tough.
While I was bodybuilding, my business did very, very well.
But at the same time, too, I couldn't play all in on it,
because bodybuilding took up that much time, that much energy.
And I needed to divide the time between the bodybuilding and the business.
Business took over and he was spending so much time in the business,
he just didn't have as much time to train.
Training just got kind of slower and slower
while he built the business.
The thing with bodybuilding is it was very, very hard
to actually be present and look at your physique and admire it.
It was a "never good enough" attitude.
You know, that was an earlier part of my life
where I didn't know how to tame that thing.
I came off stage one year after going from the juniors
into the seniors... and I realized,
am I going to commit the rest of my life to going after a trophy,
to get barked at in a hotel by people
that don't actually compete or don't really care
beyond the day of the competition,
because as soon as you won that competition,
the next day, it's "Who's going to win it next year?"
And there was so much risk, so much time involved in getting ready for a competition
that did not bring an ROI for me that was sustainable.
I could not imagine myself doing it for another ten, 15 years.
And I had loads of friends that are still doing it,
in the same financial position, and they're still chasing the same thing.
And I am not in a position to judge, but I did not want to do that.
I wanted to enjoy my life,
and you can still have an incredible life and enjoy bodybuilding.
But bodybuilding is fucking tough. There's no question about it.
It is one of the hardest sports in the world because it's 24/7.
You're constantly operating from vision
and the ability to put your head down and rest
and breathe and savor and enjoy life
can sometimes be parked for a very long time.
Values shift, priorities shift,
and the greatest personal growth after bodybuilding
was actually growing out of it and closing the door on it and saying goodbye.
I probably didn't get a real taste of the real world
and what was going on outside of the family home,
until I actually stepped away from the home, and I began to begin my own journey.
You know, I didn't want to be a lawyer. I didn't want to be a doctor.
I didn't want to be a working professional.
And that's what the vision for--
I, I think every parent, every kind of ideal is to,
you know, go to school, go to university and become a doctor, become a professional.
And that is what, you know, was considered successful in, in their world at their time.
I didn't want that. So, I went and built my own business.
Northern Ireland is a very small place
and growing up in Northern Ireland was
amazing in some parts, challenging in others.
And there are a handful of beliefs in people of Northern Ireland
that, quite frankly, can hold a business owner back.
One of those beliefs is around money,
and that if you're making money, you're doing something wrong.
And the way that people look at you whenever you make money
or you're doing something valuable for the world,
is that they try to tear you down.
A few people wanted to see us succeed, but more people
wanted to look at...
you fail.
The way that Northern Ireland typically works is most people are employed.
So it's, it's a, it's a bigger risk
to go out on our own and build your own business.
Not the same way that it would be in, like, the US.
If you take America, it seems to be
start the business, give it a go.
Where over here, it's more of a, you know, "Well, we'll not take that risk."
There's no real focus on starting your own business
through education in this country.
So I think it's a complete mindset. Not everybody.
There's a-- probably a small proportion of somebody's done really well.
Whether it be jealousy or their own shortcomings.
You know, it filters through to people not looking to see other people do well.
I think Northern Ireland is just different in that way.
You do get a lot of people that would hate on you for your success,
especially with The Troubles and stuff, like, people were programed to hate.
I think that's changing now, but people have programed that way.
Not that Northern Irish people are smaller minded. That's not the case.
But, certainly, it wasn't my ambition when I was coming through university
to think that I was going to be an entrepreneur
and that I was going to have my own business.
Regardless of what level you're at, you have to be
very comfortable with people disliking you.
And, and Phil has had his fair share along the way.
"Have you ever sensed jealousy?" Very good question. The answer is yes.
I can tell you if there's somebody that's jealous,
that is making a remark about you or a comment about you,
what is their agenda?
It's an incredible question to ask somebody
if you're ever met with criticism.
When you can ask that question and you're left with a blank face or no reply,
then you're left with the substance.
Ask that to somebody who has got a purpose, a mission, a vision,
that prioritizes their time, that is running a successful business,
a running a successful, uh, team or anything like that.
Ask them. They don't have the time for that stuff.
It's down to you in terms of how you interpret that.
Ah! Fucking hell!
Ah!
Everybody has an ego, and your ego can serve you and it can also disserve you,
but it really depends on how you play it.
And you do need some ego
because it forms part of your confidence.
Whether you're a client with a fitness coach like myself,
or whether you are a business mentee,
you do have to put some of your ego aside
and ultimately be ready and prepared
to learn from someone who is where you want to be.
And I'll be really honest with you, if you have got an ego,
I don't think that business mentoring will work,
because if you don't have an ability to shut the fuck up...
and be told what to do, then how are you ever going to learn?
Phil's ability to humble you
in a way that is encouraging
is something that is very unique.
If you are telling people that they can't get to their goals without a coach,
what makes you think that you'll be able to get to your goals without a coach?
You don't just wake up one day knowing how to run a business.
If you were to line ten of our clients up,
there's around about seven out of ten of them that will become very successful.
There's around three of them that won't do anything, or they won't implement.
In our experience, it's mostly implementation, and it's not taking the action
that they need to take to move their business forward.
Sometimes, people are too comfortable, sometimes they don't want it,
and sometimes they don't want to do the work,
because it's not really aligned with what they want to do.
Certainly, if someone isn't a great coach in the first place,
they're going to find it very difficult to actually build an incredible business,
because if you're not a great coach in the first place,
it doesn't matter how much marketing or sales advice you have,
um, people aren't going to see the social proof that they need
to want to work with you.
Let's talk about this AI problem.
AI tools and pieces of software are only going to become more prominent as time goes on.
And what I believe will happen is you will see big companies
starting to develop AI tools, whereby, somebody will be able to put into it,
"Here's my lifestyle, here's my diet, here's my likes, here's my dislikes.
Build me a program."
-And it will almost be like a coach in your pocket. -Yeah.
Now, that will 100% jeopardize a coach's ability to coach,
because it'll be more precise, it'll have more energy.
It'll be able to provide more firepower and accountability.
So, what is your proposed plan
when it comes to incorporating AI into the coaching program?
What would it look like? What would we feed it?
Bear in mind we've got years of events, private calls,
trainings, uh, frameworks, tools that we can put into this thing.
We don't want it pulling from the general database because--
-General information, lot of... -General information. Yeah.
-There's no-- Right. So-- -Totally. Yep.
Um, what, what can we do?
With all of the hours of content we have,
sometimes it's hard to find what they need.
So, from my perspective, we win by giving our clients what they need faster.
And we only do that if we can create an accessible
amount of information that we train the model on.
So with, like, ChatGPT, GPT4, et cetera, et cetera,
it's trained on all of the internet.
The problem with that is that it's all general information.
It's not the correct information for, say,
building a business or coaching a client to get a result fast.
And sometimes based on the questions that you ask,
it can feel like very general, generic information.
-Yes, absolutely. -Thank you very much, mate.
So, my perspective, we need to take all of the information we have,
all of the videos, all the podcasts, all the documents, all the assets,
and we need to prepare that in a way to train the model
so we can essentially replicate your voice, your intention, your viewpoint.
-What is the fastest time that we can build this in? -It's going to take time.
We've got an event coming up in the next two months.
Can we execute and build a prototype by then?
I, I feel like we could do an initial version,
and we can get that off the ground and get our clients using it.
If we get that working by the time the event is here,
we'll get a really good idea what they need from how they use it.
-Okay. -So I feel that if we push and we put our heads down,
and we get the right team in place, we should be able to make it happen.
-But it is a tight deadline. -Well, we, we've got to solve problems quickly.
Question. Do you have any idea what we could call it?
What about Catalyst? Catalyst kind of feels like a natural word that would work.
-I don't want to call it something-bot. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that's too kind of like whatever.
It gets rid of the human aspect or usefulness aspect.
-Nah. Let's give it a name. -Okay, so will we run on Catalyst for now?
-Let's run that. -We can play with this and we can change it down the line.
-Yeah. -But it's important that we get moving on this.
Let's call that the prototype, Catalyst.
One thing when I was a personal trainer,
I knew that the work that I was having on a one-to-one level,
and small group level was colossal.
I was giving people confidence. I was giving them their health.
I was helping them in their social life,
and that had carry over to the people that were around them, their families.
And being able to see somebody enjoy their life from not enjoying their life,
like coming to me with no confidence,
coming to me with health problems
that were holding them back,
to helping them become healthier,
stronger, more powerful versions of themselves was just amazing.
When I met Phil, I was studying in childcare
and I always had a vision of opening my own daycare.
But then, when I was with Phil, I found a new love for training,
and gave up my career to be a personal trainer.
But I don't personal train anymore, and I work for Phil in the business.
All right, let's go through the last week. We'll look at wins...
-Mm-hmm. -...um, whether that's in personal life, business life.
Uh, challenges, personal, business.
Relationship, what went well, what could have been better?
Who wants to go first? We'll spin, we'll spin the pencil.
You.
It's me? All right. Uh...
We have an open table every Sunday where if we were annoyed,
if we are triggered, if we are embarrassed about something,
whatever it may be, that we want to be able to bring it to the table and talk it through.
Communication is number one thing for us.
You know, being open, being honest.
We don't see, like, silent treatment... all that kind of stuff,
that doesn't happen in our relationship now.
You know, and obviously it's through learning through the years.
But communication is the number one thing that works for us.
I don't think any of my ex-boyfriends would have been
up for sitting down and talking about stuff like that, but he seems to make it work,
and it seems to bring a lot of value to the relationship as well.
It makes it more secure. If anybody's having an issue,
they sort it out and they talk about it weekly. I think it's really good.
- Let's move into relationship. - Mm-hmm.
Um, where did it go well this week, and then, what could have been better?
You've done incredibly well with Penelope this week, despite everything going on,
I've seen the effort and the time that you've put in to, to looking after her.
And even though I've been pretty full on with the team stuff and everything else,
you've allowed me to have the space to be able to do that.
-So... thank you. -Thank you.
Well, I know when to lean in and when to lean out, and it's been a busy few weeks,
-so I've just kind of stepped aside. -What went bad for you?
So I had teamwork, both of us. Teamwork was unbelievable.
-You know, we've done it over and over and over again... -Mm-hmm.
...and now we've kind of got the gist of it,
but I find that we've just been like ships in the night.
-We didn't actually get-- -We didn't get our date night.
-We got, we got out... -We got out.
-...with lots of other people. -But it was with loads of other people.
Um, so, and obviously with everything going on,
it was very hard to actually connect and review, you know, the week,
and then obviously as well, yesterday,
-I took the car, and, uh, ended up taking... -Mm-hmm.
-I had to get my-- Yeah. -...75 minutes, an hour and a half too long.
You had to get your hair done. I was probably a little bit abrupt...
-Mm-hmm. -...with you on the phone, and, uh,
-I wanted to apologize for that. -Thank you.
So, uh, heat of the moment...
When you're always focusing on what's going well,
-you turn a blind side to what's not going well. -Not going well.
-Yeah. -And then, what happens is that builds and builds
and builds over time, and it turns into resentment.
It turns into guilt, it turns into insecurity.
And, you know, you feel it in the relationship down the line.
We have very full on schedules and stuff can be missed
in between the week.
He's incredibly passionate about what he does, and he's always very, very focused.
He gets into the detail of everything that he does.
He understands exactly what the pain points are of other people,
and he helps other people with those pain points.
Even as a friend, he's good to talk stuff over with.
He's always very objective. He's got a good ear, he knows how to listen to people,
and he knows how to break problems down into small parts.
And with that, you build confidence in people, you build solutions for people,
and people can really, really trust that individual.
As the old saying at the end of the day, I have a life, you know,
"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck."
He has created a positivity in people's lives.
He has created change in people's lives.
It's not just all about the muscles.
He has moved, I would say, to a different level.
In the B2B in the earlier years, it was the odd personal trainer that would email.
Then it was a gym that would email and ask me to train their team,
whether it was a sales team, whether it was a coaching team,
depending on what they needed, what the biggest challenge was in the business.
And then, it turned into just more and more people asking,
"Can you mentor me? Can you mentor me?
I loved what you've done. I've seen your journey.
I've seen the, the growth that you've had.
I've seen people that have worked with you before and I've seen their growth."
People were just reaching out to him when they'd seen
his personal training business so successful,
they wanted to know how he'd done it.
Helping others to create their business
into the same sort of success his has been.
A lot of personal trainers or online coaches
have the perspective that if they're just great coaches, um, they'll build a great business.
But if you don't know how to run a business, operate a business
um, or build a team around you, it's very difficult for you
to actually get what you need out of your business.
So, guys, what I want you to do now is just basically share our challenges.
So what didn't go so well this week? What did you find tough?
I had a business that was quite new. It was eight weeks old, but it was overwhelming.
A lot of local clients came in to me very, very quickly,
and it brought the clientele up to 70 or 80 clients.
I was working 15, 16-hour days, seven days a week.
And I was like, "Is this supposed to be like this?"
And I said, you know, "This is great,
but how long till will this last?"
I stumbled across Phil Graham. Joining Phil,
being able to actually go through how your business is going to work,
what I should do, and how you can actually deliver in a business.
When someone has a certain problem,
we've addressed that problem X amount of times before,
there is a number of avenues that we can go down
to figure out what it is that we need to do
to fix that problem inside the business.
It's a real systematic approach to trying to fix something
that's not right in your business.
When we do client check ins,
essentially, I see everything
that the client does or doesn't do,
so we can watch it like a hawk to make sure you're progressing, to make sure...
I knew exactly what I wanted to do,
I wanted to help as many Type 1 diabetics around the world as I could.
I wanted to have an impact on their life. I wanted to run my own business.
I wanted to have that element of freedom that can potentially come with it, too.
Everything was just kind of messy.
I didn't, I didn't know how to get from the place that I was,
to actually running a business that impacts as many people as possible.
But, basically, when I started working with Phil,
it just instantly gave me clarity.
Delivery with clients, he looked at, looks at
marketing, sales, systems, he checks in on you.
You can run things by him if you're struggling with something,
if you're having a challenge with something.
And even just how he has built what he has built,
it's, it's almost like a roadmap.
If people come to me and ask me what would be the best way to structure a business,
the ideal setup is something like Phil's.
His clients are growth-oriented fitness professionals, generally online,
and they're people looking for systems and processes to be able to
repeatedly scale the business.
And he is teaching them how to run a business,
not teaching them anything to do with health and fitness
because they have that knowledge already.
Kirk's been a client of mine for, like, four years.
He came to me as a, a fitness model, you know, had,
you know, hundreds of thousands of followers and, um, obviously couldn't monetize it,
didn't have the systems or didn't have a team
and was just, you know, doing personal training. Here he is.
This guy used to be called, uh, Kirk, Kirk Abs Miller.
Get, get this bad boy on camera.
I'm speaking with a client today who's
uh, just about to do consulting with one of the world's largest logistic companies,
and they have asked him to come in and pitch to their head of global directors
as to how can you improve the health of the workforce,
and how can you put that together into a deliverable service.
If this talk goes well and obviously they're bought in and all that stuff,
I would not have a clue how to price it.
So, um, what, what, what do we need to make a decision on here?
Uh, the price, the, um, is there anything around the delivery of it
that you're afraid of or worried...
The clients, they need foundations.
The foundations of a solid business require leads,
they require sales, they require fulfillment.
So they're coming to fill less for one specific problem
and more for the whole spectrum of business fulfillment.
I think the delivery side of this thing is fine,
but the main thing that you need help with is obviously the pitch, right?
Essentially, the first and most important thing is
when you go into that room, you need to identify
the problem, uh, immediately.
What is the problem that is associated that these people
can share in common with health, with productivity,
and essentially just non-sick days?
I think it was a Buddhist quote where individuals spend
so much time and energy trying to build their wealth or their money or their riches,
that they end up spending their riches back than getting their health back.
That is a very important principle, because I know
so many entrepreneurs that have gone after business,
gone after the hustle, and end up neglecting their health.
So you're contrasting between the reality of fast food, traveling, jet lag.
A lot of these, like, CEO, director people are going to be, you know, very busy.
Health will come second. Business will come first.
The purpose of that meeting is to shift their perspective
from health first, business second,
because health will drive the business.
When you look at, you know, directors and CEOs, they're busy.
They're on planes, they're traveling, they're eating,
you know, stuff out of hotels or constantly on the go. They're stressed.
And if the right systems aren't in place, their decision-making will be flawed,
their sick days will increase, which will cost the business money.
So, from a corporate wellness perspective,
looking after the wellness of your employees
is probably one of the most profitable things that you can do in terms of production.
You need three, you need three questions. No more.
A question on nutrition, a question on training, and a question on lifestyle
because they are the three drivers of the result.
A great question to open with would be,
"How many of you have compromised your own health
-for the sake of this business?" -Yeah. Yeah.
You want it to be ultra simple
to the point where, you know, the silence and the single questions
are the weight of what's coming.
You do not want to hoard these people with information.
This is exactly the emotion that you want to hit in their head.
"Fuck me, he has a point."
If one wants to be a successful entrepreneur,
there are a range of different traits that need to be present.
One of the most important things is courage
and the ability to step out into the unknown.
There have been times in my life where I have
voluntarily put myself forward for situations, scenarios where I wasn't ready,
but the commitment of publicly saying that I was going to go for it
was the very thing that grew me and evolved me.
We always wonder, how can we pluck up the courage to do this?
Or we have stories going through our heads,
the scenario might go like this, it might go like that.
But, really, you've got to surrender and step into the unknown.
And, you know, trust the outcome, and...
Confidence comes after you take action. It never comes before.
You know how many times I've done this in my life?
All the same emotions come before any event.
I'm going to change lives.
They're phenomenal events. You're talking about hundreds of people,
thousands of people at these events.
Like, I love them. Every time I go to them, you walk away pumped.
They're for fitness entrepreneurs.
And it's Phil's opportunity to stand on the stage and talk
to multiple people at once.
For Phil, he gets a lot of fulfillment doing that.
He gets a really big buzz out of that, he loves it.
But on top of that, what it also does is it allows Phil
to impact more people, show people what's possible.
It's Phil like the Tony Robbins of fitness?
So, it's hard, because that-- Literally you think like that and it's like--
You know, with Tony Robbins, you jump about-- The guy is phenomenal.
The difference in my head is there's procedural outcomes.
So what that means is we will actually put a system in place
that gives you an outcome.
So, I want to talk about the four things that are going to apply
to most of you in this room. Not everyone.
Most people who are selling personal training on the floor
and who are also selling online coaching services.
If you're like me, you might struggle to switch off.
How many people in the room struggle to switch off? Put your hand up.
If your prices are the same and you haven't increased them,
but the cost of living has gone up, you're actually
not making anywhere near as much money as you were.
People stay because they like the community.
People stay because they see future in utilizing your service
-to essentially help them ascend through the ladder... -Yeah.
...of status, recognition, health.
Every event, there's usually tears of some kind.
Um, yeah, you got me, bro.
I remember coming off stage and speaking to a young guy.
He said to me, "I've been hearing about you for a long period of time.
I'm also Type 1 diabetic.
You really need to do something for us.
You've got all this knowledge and you've been able to build your physique.
You've been able to do what you've been able to do,
all whilst having this condition.
I can't control mine. I can't keep on top of it.
I don't know how to eat. My blood sugars are always erratic and I never feel good."
And that really hit me.
Yes, I have committed my life to studying this.
I selflessly did that for that for myself, to prolong my life.
And I went, "You know what? He's right."
So, I then set out to write the Diabetic Muscle & Fitness Guide.
When I was starting my bodybuilding journey,
there was nothing out there about bodybuilding and diabetes.
You can google it and you might find something
on Bodybuilding.com or whatever it was,
but it was very light and superficial.
It wasn't the detail that you needed,
because when you're bodybuilding with diabetes,
everything that is being talked about and preached
has to be slightly tweaked.
And I had gone and tried and tested all this stuff,
and plus, as well, I had the education to, to back it up.
So it was a very hard book to write.
And I created that book like I was writing it for my younger self.
Because I had a vision in my mind. I went, "You know what?
There's going to be a lot of young guys, a lot of young girls
that really want to build an awesome physique but
but feel they can't because of this thing."
And I went, "I'm going to write to those guys."
I came across the Diabetic & Fitness Guide.
It was just something that I instantly resonated with and connected with,
because living your life with Type 1 diabetes, it can be difficult at times.
And look what he has done. You know, look what he continues to do.
And I found that kind of instant connection with what he was doing
despite living with Type 1 diabetes.
As you can see, it is an absolute beast of a book.
It goes into human physiology and all aspects of, of diabetes.
It's loaded with tips and insight, but, you know,
it's also got the, the mindset shifts
that somebody with Type 1 diabetes needs to make in order to,
you know, prioritize their nutrition, their training, their lifestyle.
All those elements combined.
It was a very hard write.
A lot of research, a lot of time.
And it covers everything, medication, management, mindset,
complications, supplements, training, health, nutrition.
I had to take stiff scientific information, and distill it down into layman's terms.
I mean, you can see at the back all the references.
I mean, there's, there's just so many pages
of scientific references.
That was all from my experience, trying things and testing things
and applying things and...
Building muscle with diabetes is, uh, quite challenging.
Phil started out as my personal trainer.
We then became friends. But everybody needs a coach.
I'm very lucky to say that I have Phil there as a peer and as a mentor.
The main reason people will stay inside of the business rather than leave,
is that the market is constantly changing.
So we don't just focus on the lead generation and marketing and all of that.
We also focus on actually helping people build out teams
and scale infrastructure to build real fitness businesses.
I run and operate a number of business
across many different fields.
Health and fitness, hospitality and food manufacturing.
I currently have 135 staff, and there's some of them
that I absolutely love to bits and trust unequivocally.
But there's some things, just as a business owner,
that I maybe don't want to share those worries with them,
or they're quite possibly not experienced enough
to give me the answer, the support, the help that I need.
That's where I can look to somebody like Phil.
As a business owner, the decisions that I make on a daily basis
not only affect my own life, my own income,
my family's income, the 135 staff that work for me,
their families, all of the people that are tied into them,
the suppliers and the partners that we work with.
There's a massive reach of people that any entrepreneur works with.
The impact that they can have is so vitally important.
But there, there are challenges that present themselves every day.
And, as an entrepreneur, you're tackling challenges that you didn't know you had yesterday.
- Hey, what's up? - Yo, what is up?
All right, let's, uh, talk about this AI thing,
because I know you've been working away on it.
Uh, listen, I, uh, want to get this live
for the next live event.
Um, there is a small bit of challenge
with the quality of the responses coming out.
They're a bit too general at the moment.
So we're training the model. It's going well,
but sometimes the responses aren't exactly as they need to be.
And when we're advising our clients on business
as you know yourself, that is a big risk.
What do you mean it's not coming out correctly?
Is it too complicated? Too vague?
Does it-- Is it mumbo-jumbo? I mean, wha-- what--
-Like, fill me in-- -Sometimes it's-- Yeah.
So, sometimes it's on the mark, sometimes it's off the mark.
So, sometimes it's a bit too vague.
Sometimes it's a bit too general.
-Sometimes it doesn't pick up on the nuance of the challenge. -Right.
And the problem with that is, uh, the nuance is important, so...
Right. Well, listen, you know, the importance of getting this out there.
Whilst we have to be fast with this,
I don't want you rushing it to the point where
we're just shipping anything out.
It's everywhere now.
So, listen,
I want to get that announced
at the next live event. Can you
-commit to that deadline? -So, I totally see where you're coming from.
Yeah. So I totally see where you're coming from,
and I would love to have it announced at the live event.
Um, I think it's more important than anything else that our clients feel safe.
They feel like we're taking care of them.
They feel like we have what they need.
But that live event is a very short time period.
And there's a bit of a risk. What if we announce it
and it doesn't work, and it doesn't give them what they need?
We can't ship this to clients yet.
The quality just isn't there, um, in terms of responses.
I mean, a good bit of it's there, but...
Yeah, it's not... um, it's not exactly where I want it to be.
There are gaps.
Sometimes it may not take into account the exact context
because the inputs might not have been clear enough.
And as a result of that, it may come across very vague.
It may come across, in a way, abrupt, or,
just essentially in a way that it lacks understanding
of the complete scenario and situation.
And, essentially, it doesn't look great.
It reads like a computer's written it,
and clients can tell.
I'm pushing for the event.
It's one of the most important times
to launch something like this,
because it's an, an opportunity
for our clients to come together,
learn, network, grow, and also get key updates
on how we're going to make their life better.
We literally could have the attention span
of everybody instantly.
And if people don't hear that we've launched it,
then they get confused with the marketplace
and just creates more stress and more work down the line.
So... yeah.
Covid was challenging for everyone in the fitness industry.
Every personal trainer on the planet, every gym owner on the planet had to go online.
So I was a traditional in-person coach.
And then, essentially, it was Covid that forced me
to build an online business.
It was a challenging time, but at the same time, too,
what happened was the amount of
online coaches grew tremendously.
Also, the market actually became much more accepting of online coaching,
whereas, before, people were kind of uncomfortable with it.
Some people had temporary success. The pandemic made
a lot of people rich, it made a lot of people lazy.
And now, we're in a scenario where there's economic challenge.
People view coaching as a nice-to-have, not a must-have,
whereas during the pandemic, it actually gave a lot of people
a break from their everyday life.
I suppose the main thing you can learn from it is that nothing will ever stay the same.
There's always going to be something around the corner.
Well, I mean, all the evidence would point towards us
heading into recession right now.
And I mean, if you look at the cost of living,
if you look at interest rates, if you look at everything going on,
there is going to be blood on the streets.
When it comes to growth, when it comes to business,
it's not about who knows the most,
it's about who takes the action.
And that comes with being ruthless
and fastest, quickest and most consistent.
I would definitely say he's relentless in terms of what he wants to get out of his business
and he's willing to do whatever it takes to get there.
He can be demanding at times, but it's because
he knows what he wants and he knows it's right.
He has changed the lives of so many people
just through being a little bit ruthless.
I wouldn't say a little bit ruthless. He's pretty fucking direct.
If you were a really driven business individual
and you continuously want to push forward,
you have to be relentless with execution.
If you really want to get to where you want to go.
He's ruthless where he needs to be ruthless.
So, there's no excuses. Nothing will get in the way.
If there's something that needs done, it'll get done.
It's looking a lot better, a lot better.
We can definitely present this to clients.
There's no question about it.
Clients are going to win with this.
Yeah, very excited, because it's going to help them win.
It's going to help them get answers to their problems quicker.
They can do it anytime, day or night.
They don't have to wait for a team to get back.
Um, also as well, one of the most annoying things
about running a business is having team members
that don't know what to do.
We can give this to our coaches to give to their team members,
their sales team, their client success team.
And they can ask questions on this.
We've built Catalyst using all of our internal trainings,
private calls, events,
and all that insight has been put together into the AI tool.
Business is all about solving problems for people,
and if they can solve them faster, then clients aren't going to get stuck.
So, if our clients are making decisions faster
because they've got the backing of all our insight, training and wisdom,
and they can do that 24 hours a day,
they're going to grow their business faster
they're going to keep clients happier.
And happy clients, happy business, happy owner.
AI is not a threat to Catalyst, because we are putting in
our own specific information that's based on our beliefs,
our experience of what needs to happen to grow a coaching business.
And in the general realm of free content online,
there's just so much randomness to it,
there's no specific circumstances.
We have got case studies galore for so many different types
of fitness business across the world
with different models, online, offline, different niches,
and we really bring unique, specific granular insights
to our model, which allows us to solve problems for a vast range
of coaches in the industry.
Catalyst, the AI tool, it's good, it's solid.
It's definitely going to work. It's definitely going to help a lot of people.
And to be honest, it's actually going to free up a lot of work for us.
There's no question about it.
So I'm a little bit apprehensive
as to how clients are going to take it,
what they're going to think about it, are they going to use it?
Anyway, we've built it. We've adapted to the...
"the threat to the marketplace," so to speak,
and we did our best.
So let's just ship it, get it out there,
iterate the feedback and continue on building.
Another day, another challenge. As simple as that.
So, Phil has developed an AI program, and it's incredible, really.
This is speed.
You type this into Phil's platform
and it'll give podcasts down to a video to the timestamp on it.
You have the answers within 20 seconds.
The community that he has with the business is just unbelievable.
There's so many people in there, and they're all in the same game,
but they all support each other.
For him to host us at the house and have meals for us
and have that kind of intimate community,
it just shows how much he actually cares about the people that he works with.
Be able to meet so many like- minded coaches under one roof.
Like, the energy is phenomenal.
You can't help but be inspired and motivated by it.
And Phil gives you the belief.
It's like, "You're going to be like that one day, or better."
It's a close community that you have.
You're, you're seeing these people on calls.
You're connecting and chatting and engaging
with these people on a, on a weekly basis.
It's huge benefit for me to be able to talk with like-minded people
experience the ups and downs, the highs and lows of emotions of business
and be able to relate to that, because if I didn't have it,
I wouldn't have any, anyone to, to be able to relate to.
Sometimes it, it can feel as if it's kind of lonely to a certain extent,
because there's nobody above you,
because it's your, your business.
But to be able to meet people and interact,
and, you know, become like friends
with a lot of these coaches,
it's not just a business mentorship.
It's creating friendships, relations with other people
that, you know, I, I didn't have before joining Phil.
Me joining has literally been life changing.
Like, I, I don't say that lightly. It's, it's life changing.
I always build a business around,
"You have changed my life. That is priceless."
If I didn't hear those words, I hadn't done a good job.
Everybody that I come in contact with, I want to inspire.
I want to open their heart. I want to stretch them.
I want to make them realize that, "Hey,
there's more out there for you."
Unfortunately, with diabetes,
I see a significant amount of people that totally disregard it.
I took responsibility for my health,
and I think that decision was based off the fact that
I was blessed to be given this life, and it's my duty to live it.
I want my child to be challenged.
I want my child to understand, you know, what adversity is.
I want my child to understand what hard work is.
I want my child to understand what love is.
And most importantly, she trusts herself and loves herself.
That's the biggest gift that I could give her.
I'm not going to influence her into going into her own business.
She will find her own natural interest.
She will find her own natural values.
And I will do my best to support those.
- Is it scary being a father? - No.
- Scary, meaning, like thinking of the future.
-What can happen, all these different things? -No.
I think if I was to focus on what could go wrong in the world,
I would end up disserving my daughter.
I want her to focus on what she wants in life.
Give him a wee kiss. Mwah!
-Mwah! Show him. Mwah! -Have a kiss? Oh!
Well, the future for Phil, I think he's just
he's just going to grow into his role as a dad.
You know, he's going to continue to just
to just blaze his own trail in the fitness industry.
Because that's what he does. He just blazes his own trail.
The place that I'm at with my business,
where I'm at personally, where I'm at professionally,
where I'm at location-wise, it comes down to being part of Phil.
Before I started working with Phil,
I was at that stage where I was chasing money.
I did not feel connected to my business.
I didn't feel connected to actually what I wanted to do in life anymore.
And Phil just really gave me that love of coaching women back.
Phil was the one that planted the seed for me to,
you know, start coaching gym owners in the local market.
And, you know, I think we opened like 15 other gyms across Northern Ireland,
through him just planting that seed and giving me the belief that,
"You know, Aaron, you can do this.
You know, you, you have the ability
to help other gym owners as well."
So, Phil's impact in the fitness industry,
you know, the ripple effect of helping one person
who helps multiple other people is massive.
And the impact that he has in the industry
is so far and so wide, it's, it's just incredible.
Where do you see yourself in ten years' time, Phil?
I still want to be impacting people, changing people's lives,
shaping their perspectives, expanding their thinking,
letting them go after their dreams.
Be a great role model for my kid.
Yo!
Do I think he'll be in fitness forever? Probably not.
But I think Phil has massively changed and reshaped
what it means to be a fitness business owner.
What does the future hold for Phil?
He's not going to stop. He's going to keep going.
Back whenever I was growing up,
I was told that in order to be successful,
you had to work hard, behave yourself,
get great grades at school, become a doctor or a lawyer,
marry a good Protestant girl,
behave yourself, say your prayers, go to Sunday school.
And...
I was really talked out of building a business.
People told me it was the riskiest thing that you could do.
It was stressful and it was just a really bad idea.
But there was a part of me that really didn't sit well with all that,
and I decided to do the complete opposite
to everything that I was told, and I'm so glad that I did.
Ooh! Ooh!
Give me a kiss. Give me a kiss.
Come on!
That was fun. One more.