Joe Wicks - Number 5 in the Top 10 influencers of 2017

Joe Wicks - Number 5 in the Top 10 influencers of 2017

We hope you enjoyed our blog posts about the top 10, here at Kiht we've picked a few of our favourites, and Joe Wicks had to be one. 

One of the only UK entries in the top 10 list, coming in at number 5, his career rise has been unmatched by anyone before and much to the disbelief of himself! 

Born in Epsom in Surrey on a council estate, Joe admits his life could have taken a different turn. In an interview with the Guardian he remarks:

“If you had met me as a kid you would have never predicted me to be a success. I had a pretty ropey upbringing and you might have thought I’d have gone the other way,” he says. His parents split up when he was young; he stayed with his mum until he went to study sports science at university, when he moved in with his dad, a roofer. He says his mum “didn’t have a clue about nutrition” when he and his two brothers were kids. “Our cupboards were always full of chocolate, midget gems and Wagon Wheels.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/09/lean-in-15s-joe-wicks-i-dont-understand-the-clean-eating-thing-ive-just-had-bangers-and-mash 

Despite this Joe has never been overweight and always loved sport and fitness. This led him to his degree in sport science and from there a career as a personal trainer, he then borrowed money from his parents and set up a boot camp style training in Richmond Park, which wasn't initially a success, it took over a year for him to breakeven. From this he set up an instagram account to try and get more customers, and only started recipe and diet plans in the hope that if he sold 10 a month, he could do less training, and have an extra morning in bed. He began posting 15 second recipe videos of super healthy and lean meals that could easily be prepped and cooked in 15 minutes with the catchy tag line lean in 15. From a small following in 2014, fast forward to today, he has topped the bestselling book charts with all four of his cookbooks, (selling more than any author in 2016) and has 1.9 million followers on instagram. This isn't taking into account the hundreds and thousands of subscribers he has for his fitness program! 

He puts his success down to:

'The reason I think it’s been so successful is that people do it, they love it and feel better about themselves. You’re not starving yourself. You can still eat burgers and make curries and have nice bagels and baguettes and things. If you do exercise, you can eat this food.”

He is a preacher of moderation, you can still go out and have a drink every now and again, as long as most of the time you are eating the right food and training, he puts this message across in a genuine and real way. In an interview with radio times:

www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-08-29/joe-wicks-the-body-coach-on-his-rise-to-fame-his-realist-approach-and-his-new-channel-4-show

Wicks, as I discover when we meet, is an engaging, energetic character, passionate about his mission to “get people moving and eating healthily”.

He’s genuine. Sure he’s ambitious, sure he wants to make money, but punters don’t care about that. What they want is commitment, realism and authenticity. Which is what he offers, and why he’s pulled ahead of a crowded online field, and why he will be a star of what is still ( just about) the mainstream media before the year is out.

 

Thanks for reading