Sam Spalter

Over the past 10 years, I've helped other founders grow their businesses. Now I've launched my own: a fitness marketplace connecting people with coaches globally.

Over the last couple of years, I started to notice that a lot of my motivation started to fizzle out. I was incredibly comfortable working for other people, earning great money, multiple six-figure amounts every single year, and building great relationships with clients.

I started to realise that my full potential was capped in that position, and it's not something I wanted to settle for. I wanted to start to excel again, bring back some of the motivation which I had lost, and just generally be more ambitious, like I used to be.

Day to day, things weren't awful, but I felt like I was becoming very lazy. I didn't feel like I was bringing out my full potential. A lot of the time, I would end up sitting on the sofa when I could have been working. I just wasn't motivated anymore because I wasn't driven to work for somebody else. When you don't have the vision in front of you to actually work towards, and you're not getting any real gratification from building that business, it's very hard to get fulfilment out of it.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the job. It gave me the opportunity to travel around the world. I think I visited 15 or 16 different countries over a couple of years, meeting clients and building genuine relationships, which I still have today. But travelling constantly also took me away from what I actually wanted to achieve. I spent my time building other people's businesses and other people's dreams, and in the process, I lost sight of my own.

That made me think about what I needed to change. I started researching life coaches because I'd heard good things about coaching before, but didn't really know much about it. I kept seeing people say that if you want help with maths, you get a maths tutor. If you want to become a footballer, you get a football coach. So if I wanted to improve my life and get the most out of myself, I needed somebody to guide me in the right direction.

The reason I chose Michael came down to a number of things. He was completely different from every other life coach I spoke to. He genuinely cared to get to know me, and because you're opening up about your entire life, that relationship is incredibly important.

The other coaches all felt very scripted. Michael didn't. What also stood out was the amount of time he invested. We'd spend the first part of the session having a coffee and catching up, and I joked that with the other coaches, the session would've already been over. He wasn't watching the clock. He wanted to make sure I got the most value possible.

At the beginning of the process, Michael asked me to score 20 different areas of my life. Six or seven months later, we looked at those scores again, and the improvement across every area was incredible. It showed me how powerful the process is if you actually do what you say you're going to do.

We sorted out the basics first: getting to bed on time, going to the gym consistently and cutting out junk food. Once those foundations were in place, we moved on to the bigger goals, like leaving my job and starting my own business.

Today my life is completely different. I'm creating daily content, building my go-to-market strategy and onboarding coaches onto the platform. I wake up excited to work because I'm building something for myself. I've got that spark back, I've got that ambition back, and all the time I used to waste procrastinating now goes into building my business.

One unexpected result was that I quit vaping. During my first session, I went to the bathroom for a vape. Later on, Michael asked me if I vaped because he could smell it. He said he didn't mind, but that conversation made me realise it was probably time to stop. I threw my vape away that evening. My sleep improved, my focus improved, my fitness improved, and it became another small step towards becoming the best version of myself.

The return on investment has been incredible. When I first heard the price, I thought it was expensive because I'd spoken to coaches charging a fraction of the cost. Looking back now, it doesn't even compare. If I'd chosen one of those cheaper coaches, I honestly think I would've needed hundreds of sessions to get anywhere near the value I've had from working with Michael.

One moment sums Michael up perfectly. At my consultation, I said my birthday was coming up, then I was going away, so maybe we should start in January. He interrupted me immediately and said, "This is exactly the problem. You're always waiting for the perfect opportunity." Then he said, "There'll never be a perfect opportunity. We're starting next week."

At the time, it made me uncomfortable because I wasn't ready. But his response was simple: "You're never going to be ready. You just have to start." That lesson has stayed with me ever since.

Michael also taught me that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Having him as one of those people genuinely raised my standards and changed the calibre of people I now surround myself with.

I spoke to a lot of different life coaches before making my decision, and I can honestly say that if you're looking for the best, I'd recommend Michael. He's changed my life for the better, he's helped every area of my life improve, and I couldn't thank him enough for everything he's done.