Ok here is the long post:
Pretty much 3 years ago to the day I left full time coaching to focus fully on business and being around for my son. Here's the link to when I made that announcement:
keirwf.medium.com/why-i-turn…
This past week, I was delighted to close the sale of Strength Coach Network to @coach_j_lima. Firstly a bit about Justin...
We met purely by chance as competing coaches in the CAA. He reached out to see if we wanted to meet for breakfast when Towson came to play, and myself and the staff went along.
We immediately hit it off and felt like we'd found another guy who got it. He was a smart guy who was calling out the same bullshit we were, and they duly beat the brakes off us in the game 😂
I don't recall how he became a member and affiliate of the site, but he was soon our most successful affiliate by some distance and a huge advocate for the site.
It was an obvious natural progression for him to first become the face of the SCN podcast, then the admin of the forum, then the eventual owner of the site when
@Towson_FB shit the bed and canned him.
I can't think of someone better positioned than him to move the site forward into the future. He's been a college athlete and strength coach, he's a PhD, he counts some of the biggest names in the business among his peer group, and this mf WORKS.
More importantly he's a family man, good friend, and he actually gives a fuck about making strength and conditioning better for everyone involved, rather than just paying lip service to it like so many.
If you like Justin and want to see him win, head over to
strengthcoachnetwork.com and sign up for everything on offer. If you dislike me, make the site a bigger success than I ever could- head over to
strengthcoachnetwork.com and sign up for everything on offer.
Next up, thank you to
@jameskeay1 and Fernando, my assistants...
I met JJ on a trip back to the UK when I was working in Japan. He started out as an online athlete of mine, then an intern for Scott and I at W&M, and eventually an assistant to me for all my online stuff.
Whatever I asked him to do, he took it on and knocked it out of the park. Most people can't grow their online following to 20k when it's their own. He did it in less than a year with someone else's brand.
Fernando: if you combine women and business together, he's easily the longest relationship of my life. We met in Sydney when he was an intern, and he likes to remind me that the first work we ever did together, I paid him $50 and burrito.
Almost 10 years later, he's taken a team to the podium at the Olympics, and he's an elite coach in his own right with big name teams in the EPL *asking* him to apply for jobs.
It's not even the most remarkable thing about him. He is without question the most loyal individual I have ever met. I tell everybody who'll listen that if there's no Fernando, there's no SCN, and I mean it. I'm eternally grateful for the (stress inducing) faith he's showed in me, and the bets he placed on me and the business.
Lastly me... this quote by Bukowski sums it up nicely:
"Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover."
Formalised training of one kind of another has occupied the last 20 years or so of my life, and that's quite enough.
The writing was on the wall when I went to CVASPS in 2022 and my wife said "did you notice that every speaker mentioned you by name in their presentation?", and I didn't even care that much. Once upon a time that would have meant the world to me.
I mentally checked out a while ago, and the intervening time has been spent trying to facilitate this sale so that everyone is taken care of and that I have the runway to do the next thing.
In the immediate short term, I will put my efforts into helping coaches on the business side of things. The first two rounds of Money Moves have been extremely promising, and I genuinely get excited about helping coaches to put themselves in financially more robust situations. I hope to make some announcements in the next few weeks about some developments in that regard.
Long term, I anticipate that real estate will play a bigger and bigger role in my business life. I am currently at 6 apartments, with plans to build another 6 this coming year.
Right now it is the best path I have to ensure my wife and son are looked after, and those two are the most important thing to me. Thank you to them for their patience and love x x x
If you want to follow me, a blog is on the horizon at
callmekeir.com. Watch this space