Charlie Johnson: How An Overweight 15 Year Old Kid Founded The Largest Fitness Coaching Business In The UK
“Human potential is the only limitless resource we have in this world” ~ Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Charlie Johnson has had many achievements:
- Owning the largest online fitness coaching business in the UK
- Transformed 8000+ men and women
- Became an International Speaker
And while his achievements may be monumental and his vision will only get bigger from there…
Charlie had very humble beginnings.
He started off as an overweight kid when he was 15-17.
Realising that his weight was destroying the quality of his life and refusing to settle…
Charlie began playing sports and he trained day in, day out no matter what.
No matter how much he wanted to quit, he put in the reps and sets.
Not only did he drop excess weight that was holding him back from having a good quality of life…
But he trained so much that he even became a trainer himself at the young age of 18.
And it wasn’t until he was age 24 when he had built a model-quality body.
Read this article until the end to see:
- How Charlie had broken through his fitness and income glass ceilings
- The “Infinite Scaling” Framework that ensures his business never stops growing
- 3 Principles to building client loyalty (Principle #2 comes from an ancient Babylonian King)
- Why an entrepreneur is actually a “firefighter”
- And much more
Breaking Through Glass Ceilings
There were 3 key defining moments of his early life.
The first time he had a trainer in a proper bodybuilding gym.
The first time he had trained with a professional athlete.
And the first time he had competed.
All 3 of these moments had one thing in common.
Charlie had a support network that ALIGNED with his goals.
And this support network had helped to push him through the limitations, the glass ceilings he had set himself.
It was during these moments that his body transformed from a body with excess fat to the chiselled, model quality body that people all over the world aspire to have.
“I learned a lot by being coached by someone else and having external accountability”.
The level of accountability that pushed him to break his glass ceilings is the same level of accountability he gives to all his clients today.
“People don’t fully realise what they’re capable of. My gift is to help people maximise their potential”.
Even with all the success he had achieved…
Charlie still deals with limiting beliefs to this day.
But what sets him apart is the support network that inspires and pushes him to maximise his potential.
If you want to be in awesome shape then train in a gym where everyone else is in awesome shape.
This is a big part of the environment that Charlie creates for his clients too.
Because you are a product of your environment.
This is why Charlie also took people out of his life that were holding him back.
“If they’re not on the boat then they get left behind”
So if you’re wondering Why you haven’t broken through your glass ceiling yet, first, take a look at the network you have.
Fitness is simple
Charlie was not genetically gifted.
He had to learn the hard way by pure trial and error.
Over the years, he sought to find the most efficient way to go from point A to point B.
And this is part of why his clients enjoy consistent transformations.
People make fitness more difficult than it needs to be.
In truth, fitness is a simple, straightforward process.
“Once you learn the right skills and habits, you can go around the world, eat what you want and stay in decent shape”.
Biggest Mindset Shifts in Business
When Charlie starts his day, he wakes up at 5 am so he could have a “jump start on the world”.
He makes it a daily ritual to have clarity on all the big tasks he needs to get done everyday so he has full clarity on what to do throughout his day.
And it’s this relentless consistency that is crucial to his long term success.
“If you get 1% better everyday, it compounds and you’ll keep improving”.
There are 2 needle movers that have helped Charlie to build these habits (without fail).
The first is accountability.
He and his friend would text each other at 5 am everyday to make sure that they’re up.
The second is having skin in the game.
When you invest money into a coach or mentor that has achieved whatever it is that you want to achieve…
You won’t be able to procrastinate without feeling like you’ve just wasted your money.
On top of that, “It’s human nature to not want to disappoint others….especially your coach”
When I asked Charlie for pieces of advice he would give to anyone who wants to live his lifestyle, here’s one of the things that he told me…
“Change your job title to fire fighter because things will always go wrong. You just have to roll with it and not get stressed”.
As an entrepreneur myself, I couldn’t help but resonate with what he said.
And having these habits and routines in your life is not only crucial to getting things done…
It’s also crucial for your mental state.
When entrepreneurship becomes chaotic, building habits and structures is what gives you clarity and order.
4 Ways Charlie Sets His Coaching Business Apart
- Pure Honesty
There are two types of people.
Those who want to be pandered to and to be told what they want to hear.
And those who appreciate pure honesty (no matter how harsh it is) because they know it’s good for them.
When I asked Charlie what separates his fitness coaching business from other businesses…
One of the things he said was “cutting through all the bullshit”.
He knows that honesty plays a huge role for clients to get actual results.
He doesn’t care what people say and he doesn’t pander to people.
He told a client one time…
“It’s impossible to lose weight if you’ve been eating 1500 calories a day. Scientifically it’s impossible”.
And the client said, “yeah I fucked up”.
Charlie focuses on getting his clients results with speed. “No bullshit”.
It’s about getting them to where they want to go as fast as possible as opposed to trial and error.
It’s much better to have an honest process that gets results in months instead of years.
- Community and Support
Aside from the pure honesty that he brings, his clients feel like they’re a part of a special community through the group call meetings they have.
On top of that is the extra support for the clients that need it.
- What he focused on during Covid-19
While a lot of business owners chose to focus on the fear and chaos during COVID…
Charlie went in a different direction.
He knew that during COVID, people needed help more than ever.
And with his coaching business, he had the power to elevate people’s well-being during times of confusion and uncertainty.
- Infinite Scaling Towards His Grand Vision
Charlie realised that the biggest bottleneck to his business was himself.
So he focused on building teams, systems and structures.
“Now, we have a client on-boarding and sales process that is infinitely scalable. We get about 30 sales calls a day”.
This process is crucial for Charlie’s 5 year vision which is to scale even more and grow towards the European market.
Charlie focuses on 4 needle movers to scale.
- Driving traffic to his website
- Getting people to book phone calls with him
- Getting more referrals and reviews
- Improve the quality of the program
“The sky’s the limit with the infrastructure, the systems, the team’s I have built. So ultimately it’s about how many people can we help and want to help?”
On top of that, Charlie wants to help educate children not from a business point of view but from a humanitarian point of view.
Despite never having received a medical degree, Charlie has had doctors, GPs, and surgeons come to him for advice in terms of getting into shape.
From there, his frustration for the lack of systematic education motivated him to want to give proper education to young children.
“If we can fix a lot of these issues when they’re young then there won’t be issues to fix”
3 Principles To Building Client Loyalty
- Focus on their challenges
Charlie customises his programs to suit the clients he works with.
Whether he’s working with a client in the middle East who practices Ramadan.
Or he’s helping people to manage their stress and fears during Covid.
Speaking to the situation, the pains and the challenges of his clients has been crucial to building loyalty within his clients.
- Killing them with kindness
It is a principle of human nature that when someone gives something of value to you, you naturally want to give back.
Psychologists call this the Law of Reciprocity.
And this principle even dates back to the time of Hammurabi, the sixth king of the first Babylonian dynasty from 1792-1750 BC.
Charlie does this masterfully on his social platforms.
He gives free value.
And what happens is that people who have not worked with him yet would get their first win just from his free value alone.
Then they say, “holy shit, that works. If this is what the free stuff is like, I wonder what the paid stuff is like”.
Charlie “kills them with kindness” until they crack and they just have to buy something from him.
- Be everywhere
Lastly, Charlie creates omnipresence.
He creates so much content that he is putting himself in the front of mind awareness of his audience at all times.
He even uses re-targeting ads to pull this off.
How Fitness Ties Into All Areas of Your Life
I asked Charlie about who his top 3 clients were.
The first was a busy father of two children, who suffered with depression but after working with Charlie, he lost 25 kilos of fat in a year.
He no longer has blood pressure and stress management issues and he is a happy father today.
The second was a guy who had hormonal issues due to being so overweight that even traditional doctors couldn’t help him.
Then he was freed from all that excess fat.
The third was a female who lacked confidence in the way she looked.
After working together for 4-5 months, she was comfortable enough in her skin to do a photoshoot.
She was so proud of what she had achieved when before she was too afraid to even go to the beach.
She went on to get promotions in her workplace before getting speaking gigs on stages in front of thousands of people.
Her whole career blossomed from there.
These are all examples of people whose lives have been transformed completely because of fitness.
It’s a necessity to your business/career, your relationships, and all areas of your life.
And while, Charlie focuses on getting clients results efficiently…
The most important thing to focus on is how consistent you are.
Everything you’ve ever wanted is the result of the actions you take on a daily basis.
“Fitness is a bit like Crypto. If you lose weight really quickly, it’s going to come back really quickly. So focus on incremental wins in a period of time”.
The Biggest Mistake That Leads To Failure
When Charlie wanted to attract female clients, he came up with new advertising to see what works and what doesn’t.
Similarly, when he wanted to get better results for his clients, he created a 12-month muscle gaining program at the start of the year.
Whenever Charlie wants something, he takes action to create it.
And that’s part of what separates him because the biggest mistake people make is not taking enough action in life.
“When you come up with a vision of something you want to create, and then it comes to the real world, you see the results from that and you essentially create your own luck. That’s an awesome thing”.
