About
Who I am
I’m Isaac, founder of Lead From The Front™. I help Founders and Senior Leaders close the gap between how they lead at work and how they’re actually living, so they can become strong, respected, and burnout-proof.
I’ve spent years in health and fitness, competitive sport, personal training, and coaching leaders through their own burnout, including three of my own. What I’ve learned along the way, often the hard way, is that you can’t lead other people well if you haven’t learned to lead yourself first. That’s the whole idea behind Lead From The Front™.
My Story
I broke my nose and cheekbone in a rugby accident as a teenager, and it knocked my confidence properly. Finding the gym is what rebuilt it. I was always a skinny kid, and getting stronger, physically, gave me something to hold onto.
That took me into CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting, competing at a high level, at one point finishing fourth in Britain in a national comp. Training consistently, even on the days I didn’t want to, taught me a lot. But it also taught me something I didn’t expect: I kept telling myself I’d feel confident and successful once I hit the next lift. Every time I got there, I just moved the goalposts. Getting physically stronger never actually solved the problem underneath it.
That sent me looking deeper. I got into journaling, personal development, setting goals outside the gym. I did my degree in Strength and Conditioning, graduating with First Class Honours, and went on to work with high-level sports teams and athletes. But helping someone shave a tenth of a second off a sprint time never felt fulfilling to me. Helping someone actually change their life did. So I started personal training, with two clients I’d travel to and train in their homes. It was daunting, doing it entirely on my own, but it was the first real step up in my own confidence, because I had to learn how to lead people well, not just programme a workout.
Why I Created Lead From The Front™
After university, I went travelling for four months with my partner Connie, across the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. It was the first time I’d had proper autonomy in my life, after twenty-one years of straight education with no real break. The space it gave me changed how I saw everything. I had a choice: chase a career for the money, or build something I actually found fulfilling. I chose the second.
I came back, worked as a personal trainer, and built my own online coaching business alongside it. Then lockdown hit in 2020, and I saw it as a chance to properly step up as a leader. I ran a free challenge for around seventy people, showing up daily with tasks on training, organisation, and looking after their mental and physical health. It worked. I picked up new clients and grew the business financially. But I also experienced something I never thought I would: my first ever burnout.
I had no systems and no idea how to lead effectively. I was firefighting constantly, replying to people at all hours because I thought I had to be available. I remember signing a new client, something that should have felt exciting, and instead sitting on the sofa completely fried, lightheaded, unable to think straight. I took a month off, doing the bare minimum just to function.
I told myself it wouldn’t happen again. It did, a few months later, because nothing had actually changed in how I looked after myself. I thought growing the business further would fix it. It didn’t. I invested in mentorships that genuinely changed how I ran things and how I saw myself as a business owner, but none of it taught me how to lead myself underneath all of it. So the third time I burned out, it was worse, because I had more clients and more money coming in, but my ability to look after myself hadn’t improved at all.
That’s when I started seeing a therapist. Here’s what we found was the cause.
The only time this anxiety ever happened was when I had too much on, when I wasn’t resting, when I wasn’t setting boundaries with clients or myself, when I wasn’t sleeping properly, when I wasn’t training.
Working with a therapist is what taught me how to actually look after myself. But here’s where the name Lead From The Front™ came from. It was around authenticity. A lot of that anxiety came from saying one thing and doing another. It’s not about being ahead of your clients or better than anyone else. It’s about your actions matching your words, and staying authentic in both. Every single thing I recommend to a client, I do myself. I don’t ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t, and I don’t do anything that isn’t authentic to how I actually live. That’s what leading from the front means, and it’s built on five values I hold myself to: honesty, integrity, communication, leadership, and compassion, the last of which came directly from finally understanding, first-hand, what it feels like to struggle with anxiety and stress.
My Own Experiences and Journey
I’ve burned out three times. Each one taught me something the last one hadn’t quite landed. The first showed me that ignoring your limits catches up with you. The second showed me that growing a business doesn’t fix a leadership problem underneath it. The third showed me that you can have every business skill in the world and still be running on empty, because looking after yourself is a separate skill entirely, one nobody teaches you.
The daily panic attacks were the wake-up call I couldn’t ignore. Working with a therapist to understand what triggered them, always the same pattern of overcommitting, no boundaries, no rest, is what gave me the tools I now build Lead From The Front™ around. I’m not coaching from theory. I’ve lived every part of the cycle I now help leaders get out of.
Lead From The Front™ actually started as something narrower: a programme for personal trainers who showed up for their clients but never looked after themselves, because that was the old me. It didn’t take long to realise I was selling the idea short. It was never about the job title. It was about anyone carrying the responsibility of leading others while quietly neglecting themselves, and that’s a founder or senior leader just as much as it’s a personal trainer.
Experience Helping Leaders
I’ve run Lead From The Front™ for over five years, and in that time I’ve helped more than 100 founders and senior leaders improve their health, avoid burnout, and lead more effectively.
The outcomes vary, but they’re consistently significant. Clients who were signed off work with burnout, back full-time and getting promoted. People promoted from the bottom of a company to senior leadership within four years. Others who’ve gone on to become directors. Businesses that have doubled or tripled once their leader started showing up differently and getting more from their team. Clients who’ve lost up to 85lbs over 22 months while growing their business at the same time. People who arrived stressed, overwhelmed, and crying most evenings, who’ve gone on to run their first half marathons and rebuild a social life they’d lost.
Alongside 1:1 and group coaching, I’ve run in-person events, mountain climbs, retreats, awards evenings hosted at my own home, training sessions, coaching seminars, and ice bath and sauna sessions, all built into the experience for people inside the programme.
The measure of success was never the number on the scale, the size of a pay rise, or the number in a bank account. It’s hearing “you’ve changed my life.” That’s the outcome I define as success. I don’t take lightly the responsibility of people who invest in me, and I build a genuinely close relationship with every client, working with them closely over a long period of time.
My Story
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Why I Created Lead From The Front™
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My Own Experiences and Journey
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Experience Helping Leaders
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My Mission...
To build strong, respected and burnout-proof leaders who lead themselves first. By focusing first on personal leadership, individuals can thrive and achieve excellence within business and life. Ineffective leadership affects more than just outcomes. It causes burnout, disengages people, prompts valued personnel and clients to leave, and results in underperforming businesses.