What Coaching Athletes Teaches You About Building a Business

Lewis Moses is a high-performance running coach and business owner, helping athletes and coaches grow through clear systems, strong values and long-term thinking.

In this conversation, he shares the parallels between coaching elite athletes and building a service-based business – from people management and leadership to patience, consistency and handling setbacks.

Lewis also talks about scaling a coaching brand, maintaining standards across a team, using routines like journaling and exercise to stay grounded, and why technology and AI should enhance great coaching rather than replace it.

A thoughtful discussion on performance, purpose and building something that lasts.

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:18 What’s harder: coaching athletes or building a business?
01:46 What surprised Lewis most about starting a company
03:47 Patience, process, and long-term thinking in business
04:26 Sticking to the plan vs knowing when to pivot
06:35 How improving a business is like improving a runner
09:02 When Lewis realised the business needed systems
11:42 Building trust and consistency across multiple coaches
14:22 How to motivate athletes and employees who lose belief
17:13 Fear vs belief in performance and business
19:27 Resetting after setbacks, injuries, and difficult periods
22:36 Daily habits for long-term performance and resilience
25:12 Micro-recovery, structure, and avoiding burnout
26:26 Will technology and AI replace coaches?
28:29 Lewis’s advice for starting a service-based business
29:52 Outro