Dan Martin
I don’t much care for what people achieve. I care about what drives them.
The fears they hide.
The beliefs they cling to.
The habits they can’t break.
Most founders don’t realise it, but success doesn’t remove pressure. It magnifies it.
The weight of decisions, risks, and responsibilities grow as the business scales.
They tell themselves it’ll get easier once they hit the next milestone. But it doesn’t.
Because the problem was never the business.
It was always the way they carried it.
My Journey
I was adopted at three months old.
From as early as I can remember, I felt like I had something to prove. Like I had to earn my worth.
I carried that feeling into everything.
At 15, I got expelled for selling weed.
By 18, I had no real direction.
So I fell into sales.
For nine years, I worked in recruitment, then financial services, and finally software.
On paper, I was ‘successful’. Inside, I was deeply unfulfilled and had this relentless drive to prove I was enough.
That’s when I knew the problem was internal.
So I walked away from sales and trained Cognitive Hypnotherapy, NLP, and Performance Coaching.
My Coaching
From early 2022 to the end of 2024, I focused on coaching ambitious online entrepreneurs, primarily in the fitness industry.
In the early days I worked with founders at the beginning of their entrepreneurial path, typically earning between £0-5k/month.
Their challenges revolved around fear of failure, scarcity mindset, and imposter syndrome.
As my experience grew, so did the calibre of the clients I supported.
By the time I became a senior coach, I was working with more advanced entrepreneurs, many in their fifth or sixth year of business, earning £15k-30k+/month.
The Common Thread
Despite their success, they all shared three things in common:
Lack of clarity.
Lack of time.
Overwhelm.
They were bringing in more clients and generating more revenue but burning out in the process.
Scarcity-driven behaviours led to overwork, stress, and a constant state of panic.
They just didn’t know how to manage their time or scale sustainably.
My role was to help them break the cycle so they could:
Build solid psychological foundations through clarity and confidence.
Leverage deeper self-awareness to create structure and focus.
Develop mental resilience for consistent, high-performance output.
As their confidence grew, they became more intentional leaders, better equipped to handle the demands of growth.
Those years gave me invaluable experience working with entrepreneurs across all stages of growth that continues to shape my approach today.
What I Believe
Most founders don’t start a business for the money.
They start because they want freedom.
Freedom from a boss.
Freedom to control their time.
Freedom to build something meaningful.
But somewhere along the way, they lose sight of that vision.
They’re driven by the need to prove themselves.
This pushes them to scale, but it also traps them.
Instead of creating a business that serves them, they create a machine they can’t switch off.
I believe business is a vehicle, not the destination.
When you don’t take control of where it’s taking you, it becomes a runaway train.
My work is about helping founders step back and rebuild from the inside out.
Because success isn’t just about hitting £50k months.
It’s about building a life you’re proud to live.