Brian Keane
speaker
176 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Brian Keane’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And what happened was I said, I'll give myself a six month window. If I'm not making enough money to move out and live in six months, I'll go back on the teaching registry and I'll get a job in September. That was the promise I made to myself But what happened was because obviously I was very passionate about fitness.
So I spent all my waking hours reading books and reading blogs and listening to things that were all fitness based because I was obsessed with that topic. So I was getting all these different types of clients and getting great results with them. And then what started to happen was the other trainers in the gym, their clients started to see the results mine were getting.
A lot of them started to jump over to me. And then I was getting referrals from my current clients for family members and friends to the point that I had to bring other coaches underneath me to clear waiting lists. And that six months went from, I might have to go back teaching to how many trainers am I going to have to hire to actually potentially clear this waiting list? And
The beautiful thing about business, and you know this a lot, is no problem goes away. There's always problems. You just have better problems to handle and deal with. You know, having no money is a problem. Having too much money is a problem. I know which one I prefer to deal with. Having no clients is a problem. Having too many clients is a problem. Again, I know which one I want to deal with.
And it was that. And because of 2014 onwards, and it wasn't all... playing sailing, we spoke right before we went on air. It wasn't the four hour work week dream. It was the 60 to 80 hour work week and burning out and then trying. Yeah, the grind and the hustle. And it's interesting now because I have a very good life balance. My daughter is nearly 10.
She's going to be 10 at the end of this month. You know, I've got a partner who I love dearly. I've got my family that I see regularly. I've got loads of hobbies and I do my races and I still play sport for the social side. But I've got a business that's thriving over here that a lot of it is on automation at this point. I've got staff that cover a lot of the heavy lifting underneath.
I spend most of my time in my desire zone versus my drudgery zone, my zone of genius, as you'd say. And because I do that, it gives me a lot of energy and I stay very nourished and it allows me to stay very high energy. And that balance now, after more than a decade, now I've got that balance. But For three, four, five years, I didn't.
And it gets skewed sometimes online because we see the end results. We see the figurative after photo of somebody doing amazing in business and they miss that actually this cost of entry was 60-hour work weeks, 70-hour work weeks on occasion, borderline burnout, breakups.
not seeing your family when you wanted to, not being able to spend time with your loved ones because you were either too stressed or you were working. That's a very real thing. And sometimes it's a case of, well, what's the goal? What do I want to do in terms of my career, my business? And what's the timeline?
Because no one says you have to do this today or tomorrow or next week or next month or even next year. You can do small gradual steps as long as you're directionally correct. and moving towards the thing you want, the speed is up to you. I was 26 years of age. I had no child at this point. I had no anyone underneath me that needed to be supported financially. I was able to make this jump.
I was able to make this transition and go all in. Somebody else will have a different life scenario and they won't be able to do that. But that's not to say that you can't start getting your figurative ladder up against the right wall. Just how slowly or how fast you climb depends on your circumstance currently.
Understatement of the year there, Alana.
I'm going to take us back in the time machine. When I was in London, after I got my qualifications, I went broke the first time by just not knowing how to get clients. I wasn't good at my craft and I didn't know how to get clients, but I still had a little bit of income coming in from teaching, so it was fine. The second time I went broke,
was the only time ever, now I've never gone into debt, but I've been broke. I was living in a flat in West London, in the banks in the UK, if you've got less than £10 in your account, you can't even take out a £10 note. So I was having to pay my rent for my house or my flat that month, and I couldn't even take out a £10 note.
So I was living with three other teachers at the time in a tiny little flat in West London. And I waited for all of them to go up to their bedrooms. And I started going down the back of the couch to get money for the bus so that I could get the bus to the bank to get an overdraft to pay my rent that month. That's when I was out. I was done. I was like, I am not doing this fitness thing.
I'm not doing this personal training thing. I am rubbish at this. And the universe or God or a higher power, something randomly came my way. And I ended up going into another school as a long-term substitute teacher. Tail between my legs. I'm back into teaching. This is what I'm going to do. And one of the girls in the classroom next to me was preparing for a wedding.
And she came across me one day and she goes, I heard you're a personal trainer. And I was like, oh, no. I was like, Zoe, that's something I did. I don't do that anymore. And she goes, Brian, I have a wedding coming up. I don't want to go into the gym. I'm terrified to go into a gym. Everyone will be looking at me. I just need help to fit into my wedding dress.
And I was like, oh, Zoe, this isn't something I do anymore. She goes, please. I said, okay, fine. I was like, but I can't charge you. I was like, if you want to come down and meet me in the park, I'll take you a couple of evenings a week and I'll take you through some sessions. And we started doing two sessions a week, three weeks into it.
And I was tweaking her nutrition and helping her with that as we were going along. And she went and got into her wedding dress and was like, oh my God, my wedding dress is fitting. I have loads of energy. This is the best I felt in years. I have to start paying you for this. And it was in that moment I went, I'm not a crap personal trainer. I just don't understand business.
And they are two completely different things. They're two completely different skill sets. But like most things, when you know you have a gap in your knowledge, you can fill in the gap. And I started to work with mentors. I started to read more business books. I started to listen. Podcasts were kind of in their infancy at this stage. They were around, but they were in their infancy.
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