How I Made £13,000,000 - The Exact Steps I Took to Build My Business

Hey, Adam Haley here. And we've just hit a pretty cool milestone within our business of crossing over £10 million GBP. So we've been going since 2018, but just in the past four years alone on one payment process. Since moving out here and moving countries, We've tracked over £10 million, which entitles us to this kind of semi wanky award, but a pretty cool milestone nonetheless. So most of my time is spent on Instagram. However, I was talking to my partner Sandy, and saying, you know what? You know, at this point, I've made mistakes, I've learned a lot. Ultimately, I've got a lot of value to give somebody that's willing to put the work in, watch these videos, go and implement it, and so on. So I'm now going to make a commitment to turning up at least weekly on YouTube and running you through sort of how I've been able to do this. So this video is going to be sort of 5 higher level, like strategic slash things, thinking reasons as to how we've crossed over 10 million in the past few years. In other videos, I'll go through the more like tactical stuff that you can go and implement like right away. So I would really implore you to watch this one first to get a deeper understanding of what to do, what not to do. And then we'll go through like, you know, sales, marketing, delivery, ops, productivity, all that sort of stuff in future videos. So I'm going to start with this and just quickly give you a bit of background. So this has been my journey. Let me write this over here. Let's just call that mentor. Ignore the really bad handwriting. So my Backstory is at 16, I became a personal trainer. I did 11 years on the gym floor, every gym that I worked in, I became the busiest PT on that gym floor. And pretty much every gym that I worked in, I beat all of my colleagues. When it comes to getting results and transformations. This is really important. Next, I realized that I'm a huge introvert. I wanted to travel and that having done 11 years on the gym floor, anytime that I traveled, I lost money. I was drained at the end of each day. You know, making small talk, counting clients, reps, making awkward small conversation in between their sets. And one of my colleagues at one point, this is before online coaching was really a thing. He was like, I could just imagine you sitting in a big bastard leather chair at a desk and, and just coaching all your clients from your laptop. And I was like, that sounds fucking amazing. So I took a plunge and became an online coach. Now again I focus on results. So I had no idea what I was doing from a marketing perspective. It was myself and one of my colleagues from the gym floor that set up the online coaching business. And within 12 months we had gone from zero to about £225,000. We built to a team of coaches. We were at full capacity, business was growing and so on. And we did that again through like crazy results. We just became like the best in the space at getting general population people amazing like fat loss transformations. After doing that for a while in the second year, I exited the business and I'd set up a mentorship to help personal trainers or online coaches become better online coaches. Naturally, over time I was getting more and more questions about how to get more leads, how to close people on sales calls and it eventually ended up sort of accidentally falling into a full business mentorship. Now the reason that I want to point this out is because I see a lot of people like come from pulling the pen the wrong way, from just, you know, nowhere, scratch and trying to frog leap all of this experience and end up trying to become mentors. The space is full of them. Maybe you've already invested into one that hasn't delivered the goods. It's shocking at the moment. Whereas for me, you know, I, I earned my stripes on the gym floor. I learned that skill, I mastered it, I nailed it, I became an online coach, I became proficient at that. I built that business, I hired team, I made mistakes, you know, I got a shitload of experience. And then of course slowly I went into mentoring what I had previously taught and was good at in terms of getting client results. And then it was a natural evolution to then teach business because I was getting asked it more and more and more. So this is the first thing which is just pay your dues, become really freaking good at something, like obsess over it, aim to become the top 1% in the space before sort of like running before you can walk. So that's that second thing that I want to do. I've got another pen tucked away in my back pocket, is run through the five sort of key principles, values, reasons, high level thinking that I think has been the reason, you know, for, for myself hitting the 10 million. So I'm just going to move that out of the way without breaking it. So the first one here is if you are wanting to build a decent sized business, never forget the former you. For me, I feel that we had like a, almost like a secret hidden advantage compared to most of my competitors. See after 2020 and then in the sort of like, boom of the online coaching space, 2021, 2022, all of my competitors, other fitness business mentors, were banging on about six figures, 10k months, 100k years, because they had frog left this process and were going straight into this because they were forced to do it from COVID Whereas because I genuinely traveled the journey, I never forgot where I came from. So I remember being on the gym floor and thinking, man, if I could just do like three grand, but work from a coffee shop on my laptop, that'd be the dream. And I never lost sight of that. So I always think, number one, when you start building a business, you should market to a former version of you. And don't just, like, go with the masses, don't just follow everybody else's message. I think about your unique backstory, strengths, weaknesses and so on. For me, it was like being an introvert, being a quiet personality, not being the biggest, like, loudest person in the room, wanting to travel, wanting to have more freedom. All of this sort of stuff played into my message here. And remembering that for me, it was really important just to be able to earn 3, 4, 5k from my laptop and put the blinders on to the whole six figure thing, because back then it wasn't on my radar to do those sorts of numbers. So I knew that all of the pts that I was talking to, you know, in my socials and my content, they weren't at that stage yet where they were ready to start thinking about six figures. So what we had is we had people jumping on sales calls with us going, Adam just seems so much more relatable. This seems so much more realistic. You know, I hear these coaches and business mentors talk about 10k months. I don't think I even want that right now. So lesson here is, number one, dig into your unique backstory. What makes you different to your competitors? Don't lose sight, don't just follow the masses like, you know, craft your little piece of the pie. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is then all of these previous mentors that saw us get ahead now have changed their message to copy the whole, you know, 0 from, from 0 to 3 to 5K. But that's beside the point. That's just business. The second thing that I would recommend is to have one channel. So forget what Gary Vee says in terms of being everywhere, all over socials, just pick one channel and dominate that. You. So you need to learn all of the ins and outs of that platform, how to grow on it, how to get into conversations on it, how to monetize it. In my case I picked Instagram. And if you're a fitness coach, if you're a personal trainer, if you're working in the corporate space and you want to become an online fitness coach, I think Instagram is the best platform, number one, because it's a visual platform. So it just lends really well to sort of fitness and transformations. Number two is it's one of the easiest platforms to grow on and to get into conversations on. You've got other platforms, TikTok, LinkedIn and so on, but I just don't think there is like complete as Instagram. And I actually did a video a couple of weeks ago talking about this. So go and check that out. Now, once you've like quote unquote dominated the channel, so you know how the platform works inside out, you're growing on it at a good pace, you're picking up leads consistently. I would say once you're over, say probably 5, 10, 15k a month, then you want to start looking into doing some page traffic so that you can amplify getting more and more eyes on you. So that would be the second thing that I would do. The third thing would be being results first. So taking a results first approach. So what tends to happen is right now you'll get a load of new coaches into the space, they find the marketing and sales interesting and geeking out about funnels and insights and reach and conversions and so on and opt in page percentages. So they start becoming a marketer first. That's not what got you into the industry. So again, the reason I think that I stood out is because I've just been so focused on getting results back from being a PT to being an online coach. And then of course in the fitness business space, I still, in terms of the fitness business stuff, I haven't seen a single mentor match our track record at getting coaches off the gym floor from zero fully online and hitting an excess of 5,000 pound months. I just haven't seen anybody come in and match us. That's because I'm so obsessed with results. So I would implore you to do this. There's a couple of things you want to do here. You want to continually be asking yourself, what can I do to remove friction from my clients getting results. This applies to any business that you're running, but especially of course, if you're running like an online fitness business. You want to continually assess what are the challenges they have, why can't they stick to their meal plans what's stopping them from getting into the gym? When they get to the gym, why can't they train at a certain intensity? You want to start thinking on a deep level like what can I do to just make results inevitable for my customers? So take a results first approach. And when you do this, all of the sales and marketing is amplified. You'll have clients that want to stay longer with you, you'll have clients that will refer. You'll have more social proof and results you can put into your marketing that will push things to a, to a higher level. This is kind of tied in, but I'm going to put it as its, its own thing which is to be customer obsessed. Now this is a Jeff Bezos value from, from Amazon. But I try and carry over into business so I make it abundantly clear to my team that my worst nightmare is for any of our students, any of our clients to ever feel like a number and to just feel like, you know, OTE student 364 like that just, I just hate the idea of it. So I'm always trying to come up with ways to truly build rapport and have each person, you know, feel heard and seen when we run our live London events. You know, I don't even coach one on one at the core level of the OTE yet. I'll spend time trying to pay attention to everybody on our group calls in our community slack channels. I'll go through my coaches one on one channels and try and get like a sense for each student even if I'm not directly working with them. And this has been like highlighted and people have pointed this out at our big events where we'll have 200 people in the room. I'll be on stage having never spoken to somebody before. They'll put their hand up for a question. I'll be like, yeah, Sarah, yeah Dan, Tom. And I'll try and know their names and stuff beforehand. And I've had people come over to me at the end and go, I really wasn't expecting you to know my name. Like we've never been on a one to one call. I've never spoken to you one on one. How the hell do you do this? And it's because I'm customer obsessed. Every single person that comes into my business that trusts us, I massively value. So quick recap so far market to a former version of you. Don't lose sight of it. Don't fall into the noise of the rest of the market. There's, there's like, there's huge power in standing out from the crowd and crafting your own little segment of the market. Second, don't run a shotgun approach to social media. Pick one channel and work out how do I best grow on it and then how do I best convert from it? Results. First, become the best coach that you can study. Hire other coaches, go through the process yourself, walk the walk, all of that stuff. Be customer obsessed. Everybody that comes into your business, like, value them to a huge level. There's so much competition out there, they have so much choice. Like take massive pride when somebody decides to invest into you and take a risk into you. And then the fifth one is vision. And, and I don't even know if you're going to be able to see this at this point. Maybe the camera's cropping off vision and belief. So this bit here, vision. I've always said that my worst nightmare back from when I was younger is doing what most people do, which is drifting in life. I'm sure you could pick 10 random, you know, say 60, 65 year olds and ask 10 of them, are you happy with where you're at right now? Did you predict that you would be living this life, that you'd live, you know, in this house, that you would drive this car, that you have X amount of holidays per year, that your average, you know, revenue 10 years ago was X like, that you're able to pass down X to your kids or grandkids or whatever. Like the position you're in now was as intended. And I think you'll be pretty scared to know that. I'd imagine like six to eight of them are probably like, no, I just, I've ended up here. Like I've just subconsciously sort of just got my head down, collected a paycheck each month, took my four weeks annual leave a year, paid into my pension, got my retirement like every other person. And they've just coasted and just been swept along and then suddenly one day they wake up going like, I didn't choose this. So that's been one of my biggest fears. So I think number one is spending time crafting, like, where do you want to get to? And even if you don't hit it, at least knowing where you want to get to and falling somewhat short of it means that at least you're on track. So. So that's part one. Part two is the belief side of it. So we have coaches that sign up to our program and they don't implement everything at the intensity level and the tenacity that they should do because I Think there's, there's this like inner belief that it's not really going to happen for them. And I don't know how much I can change this through a video. But I would just say to you, if one person has done it before you, you just have to think, why can't I do it? So I'll give you a couple of examples. Number one is I remember being 19 years old, I was in a relationship with a previous, you know, an ex girlfriend. And I remember saying to her, like, one day I'll have an Aston Martin. You know, I'd watch all the Bond films when I was younger and so on and just loved the classic sort of, you know, British handmade Aston Martins. And she just sort of half laughed and she was just like, oh, you know, that's nice, but we're not those people. She's like, you know, you're working in a gym cleaning treadmills for fourteen and a half thousand a year. And I said to her, like, somebody's got to drive it. You know, there's enough of them being produced each year, why can't it be me? I was genuinely like that naive, just that, you know, if I put the work in, why can't I have it? And then lo and behold, when I turned 26, I had my first, you know, sports car supercar which was an Aston Martin. So that's story number one. Story number two, and that was just following this process. Story number two is the analogy that I give to my own students is I use the Elon Musk analogy where I'm like, I'm not asking you guys to go and put men on Mars, right? You've got next level beliefs and then you've got things that are totally possible. So if you think of Elon Musk, he's trying to colonize Mars. He's trying to send humans to Mars to go become multi planetary. Never been done before. Any scientists you speak to, you know, suggests that the probability of that happening are pretty slim, yet he's got this inner belief that he can do it. I'm not asking you to have that crazy belief that you're going to try and, you know, colonize Mars. I'm saying to you that if you want to earn 5k a month, 10k a month, 100k a month, whatever those numbers are, it can be done. You just have to think back to this, that award that I showed you earlier, that I'm here doing this video to you. I've done, you know, I've earned over £10 million in the last few years coming from just a PT on a gym floor with no formal qualifications, no university, no college, nothing like that. Become an online coach, just followed the process because I had this naivety and this belief that if somebody had done it before me, why can't I do it? So I really want to instill that into you, that no matter where you're at now, no matter what your situation is, no matter what it is that you want to earn, as long as you know that one person has walked that walk, just get after it. So as said in the videos following this, I'm going to go a bit more tactical. This was more higher level. Hopefully it's still been useful. If you're not following me on Instagram, that's where as I said, I hang out most of the time. YouTube's quite new for me. So go follow me on Instagram. It's just Adam, I'm not even going to write it. Adam Haley 1. You'll see it in the, in the name of this channel. So just am Haley1, go give me a follow. Feel free to message me and go, hey, just watch the, you know how I earned whatever I'm going to title this 10 million or whatever video and then I can voice note and figure out if we can put an action plan in place to you for you. Sorry. And if you are in the fitness space, if you're a personal trainer, if you're an online coach, you're just feeling a bit stagnated, feeling a bit stuck. Then there's actually a little sort of six minute training video below in the description. Go check that out. It will take six minutes to watch it. You'll get a load of light bulb moments. Who knows, maybe one day I'll be able to help you earn these sorts of numbers. Number two, and that was just following this process story number two is the analogy that I give to my own students is I use the Elon Musk analogy where I'm like, I'm not asking you guys to go and put men on Mars, right? You've got next level beliefs and then you've got things that are totally possible. So if you think of Elon Musk, he's trying to colonize Mars. He's trying to send humans to Mars to go, you know, become multi planetary. It's never been done before. Any scientists you speak to, you know, suggest that the probability of that happening are pretty slim. Yet he's got this inner belief that he can do it. I'm not asking you to have that crazy belief that you're going to try and, you know, colonize Mars. I'm saying to you that if you want to earn 5k a month, 10k a month, 100k a month, whatever those numbers are, it can be done. You just have to think back to this, that award that I showed you earlier, that I'm here doing this video to you. I've done, you know, I've earned over £10 million in the last few years coming from just a PT on a gym floor with no formal qualifications, no university, no college, nothing like that. Become an online coach. Just followed the process because I had this naivety and this belief that if somebody had done it before me, why can't I do it? So I really want to instill that into you, that no matter where you're at now, no matter what your situation is, no matter what it is that you want to earn, as long as you know that one person has walked that walk, just get after it. So, as said in the videos following this, I'm going to go a bit more tactical. This was more higher level. Hopefully it's still been useful. If you're not following me on Instagram, that's where, as I said, I hang out most of the time. YouTube video.