A Liverpool entrepreneur has revealed how he went from competing as an 18-stone bodybuilder to running his own SEO, automation and social media consultancy.
Daniel Luke only launched his Royal Albert Dock-based firm Hedge Socials last year, but has seen considerable success already, generating hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue for dozens of clients.
Daniel has told BusinessLive how his journey led him from growing up in Rotherham to becoming a successful personal trainer (PT) and bodybuilder in Manchester, to officially launching his own firm in Liverpool. And according to Daniel, 31, his experience in fitness gave him the entrepreneurial skills required to succeed in business.
“Growing up, I had zero clarity and no real vision as to where I wanted to be. I had no idea about business, and leaving school, it was just about getting a job here and there,” he said.
“Then I discovered this passion for the gym, and that’s what took me on this personal training journey.”
Moving from PT to a stint as an assistant manager with PureGym, Daniel soon began bodybuilding.
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And through that hobby, which involved attending and competing in physique shows, he soon realised people were keen to hear more about his fitness regime so they could replicate it for themselves.
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He explained: “Bodybuilding is how things took off for me, really, because people saw that I practice what I preach.
“I did 12 months as an assistant manager at PureGym and that’s when I started to compete.
“I started to take photos of what I was doing everyday - what I was eating, how I was training, then people just started to get in touch on social media wanting me to help them with their own fitness journeys.
“Leaving PureGym, I then went completely online, and people would send me their pictures of how they wanted to look, and every week send me an update. I’d then give them their training and diet plans until they were where they wanted to be.”
With a sizable social media following, Daniel was managing 150 online clients, and upon moving to Manchester, he leased office space at a complex in Spinningfields.
During this time, he launched his own firm called , an app-based training regime.
His work also involved helping other PTs grow their business, using the techniques he had developed for himself. And he soon found clients were achieving more success from his methods and advice than he was for his own PT firm.
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He said: “I was slowly letting my personal training business fade off because I was so focused on trying out new things with these new trainers.
“Seeing the results that they were achieving, I was becoming more passionate about business than I was about fitness.”
He soon began to eye a career away from the PT sector.
Daniel said: “I was surrounded by people and coaching people who were wealthy. And this really began to open my eyes as to what was possible in business.
“This is where I started thinking, ‘well, where am I going with this because I'm happy doing what I'm doing and I really enjoy fitness, but what's the long term plan?’”
He launched his consultancy Hedge Socials at the end of last year - a business consultancy specialising in SEO, automation and social media helping businesses - and not just PTs.
“I grew a following on Instagram and Facebook, talking about my bodybuilding journey and got people messaging me and lots of interest in my posts. Before I knew it, people were booking calls with me.
“I think maybe at times I thought ‘who am I to teach these people?’
“But I was really good at planning systems and helping people understand who it is that they want to work with and how they can communicate with them.
“It wasn’t just PTs, it was sole traders, freelancers, anyone who needed help managing clients.”
One of Hedge Socials' main specialisms is helping firms adapt to automation - something Daniel said should be embraced and not feared.
He said: “Why do you need a sales team of 15 when you can have two or three people managing a system that does the sales outreach for you?
“It's about helping businesses be more efficient and reducing human error.
“If there are going to be 10 jobs at risk because of a move to automation, it's about how can those people be repositioned within companies doing work that actually matters?
“I love numbers, but I don't want to do spreadsheets all day - so if that means we can move people to do work that they actually care about, then that's quite powerful.
“So it makes complete sense to introduce AI automation into a business so that we can have it work for us - taking a step back and working on what other things are that are going to help us grow.”