In the summer of 2007 I started my fitness company in London in order to help my clients stay fit and active while they were traveling. I had collaborated with a film production company to create digital content to be watched on the phone. In 2008 the financial crash hit London and the film company was absorbed by a larger firm and cancelled us. At the same time I lost many clients and made a decision to leave London. I travelled to Saudi Arabia with a plan to work for two years to save money to be able to return and set up again.In 2009 I fell in love with a local girl and somehow managed to convinced her family and the government that a non-saudi should marry her. For almost 4 years we saved money, had a baby and during the second pregnancy decide to launch our health business in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We invested everything and more and launched our own fitness facility. However due to many different obstacles hitting us at once, our business was shut down. Timing was a little early for the Functional fitness industry in Saudi, the government created a three year beach front project outside our gym and semi-closed all access to us. We ran out of money and quickly dropped into deep depression, worry and financial stress. It was extremely hard physically and mentally but we scrambled. We got jobs, was forced to put the kids now 1 and 3 in child care and we struggled back. I hustled, going door to door selling a diet plan that I had created back in 2012. I sold supplements, I began to speak and network and for a year just gave FREE talks to whoever would listen. In 2016 I entered a competition for health cooking and gained some great exposure. From that moment, I quickly focused on creating a health cooking program and collaborated with a center to bring to life. It was a hit. From that success we were able to launch a cooking course for kids and then the demand for sport came. We opened our kids sports club this summer (2017) and 3 months later we reach capacity. We own our business 100% and focused on getting the cash in by working very hard in a fairly wide area of health and fitness. We had a go at many small projects, like juicing, food deliver, fitness classes etc and the market told us what they wanted. Then we double downed on that and followed the smiles. In January 2018 we open a third location for our kids sports and have grown our team to 8 people. We have had a good run of press coverage in magazine, radio and social media and have started to be paid as food influencers by restaurants. We have been selected to tell our story to at many universities to help inspire and prevent mistakes.
If I could do it again....
I would do one thing different.....make more mistakes in my 20's....way more. Mistakes create your strengths and help you find your way into this world. I waited till I was 35 with two kids to make my biggest mistakes. Make the mistakes early, find mentors, work for free, gain knowledge before money, start business that don't need investments, focus on cash in, find others that are good at what you are bad at and be patient.
