Did TV fame turn into fortune for the Make Me A Million internet entrepreneurs?

Channel 4's Make Me A Million had a simple premise.

Take three pairs of business virgins who had a hot business idea and a commitment to raise £30,000 to start the business.

Team them up with three multi-millionaire business mentors.

Then give them a year and see who comes out on top.

Internet entrepreneurs, Brayley Pearce and Todd Donnelly, were one of the three teams selected out of the 2,500 entries received - the other two being Freshbed, a ventilated bed system that claimed to get rid of dust mites and regulate body temperature, and Halos N Horns, producers of a range of children's shampoos.

Brayley and Todd's idea was to provide bespoke diet and fitness advice and the Make Me A Million series followed the trials and tribulations of launching their internet business.

An incredible 50,000 man hours and £120,000 later, and The Lean Team's website was open for business. It managed to attract 1,000 members before judgement day (thanks in part to a corporate client which bought memberships for all of its 700 staff), with £35,000 being banked.

The winner of the show was announced in November, 2005 - Halos N Horns. It has since gone from strength to strength, with its range of children's toiletries now on sale in the likes of Tesco, Asda and Sainsburys.

But what has happened to Brayley and Todd and The Lean Team business since they failed to win Make Me A Million and have they gone on to make their million anyway? You're about to find out.

"A lot has happened since the show Make Me a Million," explains Brayley (pictured left). "In fact the most exciting parts really happened after the cameras stopped filming – keeping a new business running in the first year after launching is far harder than setting it up.

"If they had carried on filming I think the production team would have got a lot more of the conflict they were after initially!

"There were several times when it got scary, and we thought we’d have to give it all up, but we successfully saw it through the tougher times.

"One thing that has changed is the name of the business - The Lean Team became www.getfitwellness.com after we merged with the online fitness business, getfit.com. And we changed The Lean Team healthy eating service into getfitnutrition.co.uk in 2006.

"We now supply a comprehensive range of on and off line wellness products both B2B and to the consumer.

"And to think we spent half the darn show trying to choose the name of the business!"

The Make Me A Million Show

Starting a new business can be difficult enough, but to do so with a TV production crew in tow must be nigh on impossible - especially when you have imposed TV deadlines rather than business deadlines to meet.

"Appearing on Make Me A Million was a calculated choice – risk even," explained Brayley. "I had taken a night job to pay bills and found the ad in the London Metro paper on the way back home from a night shift.

" We discussed the TV show as Todd and I had already started the business and we saw this as a good way to get exposure for the business and access to an expert mentor, though we didn’t know who it would be until judgement day.

"There were certainly the positives, as was the fun of having the cameras around, though it felt a bit surreal at times – such as when they followed us to my parents home, went to the local village fete and interviewed my secondary school English school teacher – it didn’t make the programme, but it was very odd.

"The negatives were the false deadlines we had to try and achieve. Sometimes what we were doing were just plain boring administrative things and the production team would see if they could get us to argue. They were actually lovely people, Katy, Danny and Matt, and now I realise they had a job to do and were expected to deliver an interesting TV show.

"I would certainly do it again – Todd maybe not, as he didn’t like it that much and it would really depend on the type of show. We were approached by a couple of TV production teams to do further work, but we said no as we had to focus on the business.

"I have spoken to a TV production team recently about a couple of business programmes that we’d like to do now and they want to take it further – one is about getting people off their backsides and getting them to achieve what they want to achieve, and another is about how people really made their fortunes."

Building a business in public

Whereas most internet entrepreneurs get to start their business in "stealth mode", Todd and Brayley had television cameras filming their every move. The pressure must have been immense at times to come up with the goods for the cameras, but as Brayley explains it certainly helps focus the mind!

"At the beginning we didn’t even know what we didn’t know!

"The idea was initially not internet based, but we soon realised the business model would not work unless it was.

"Initially the TV crew really kept us on the ball as we HAD to get the idea right – without them we could have taken months to decide.

"The cameras were sometimes there 12 hours, three days in a row, following you from your front door, to the airport to fly to Glasgow and right through whatever meeting you may be at (tip - having a camera crew following you on a flight guarantees you get on/off board first and you get the best seats!).

"This helped distil the idea. We were the only team to start with just an idea – the kids shampoo and the Freshbed ideas were already formulated, they just had to work at how to get them to market. We decided early to really spend time building the foundations of the business – our mentor Chris Gorman always had the idea that this business was a three to five year investment for him.

"Once we had decided on the business model the cameras made it more difficult as we needed to get the product to market by the end of the filming. It turned out we were the last to begin filming and we were filming the last show (part 4) after the first part was shown on TV.

"This made us launch a product that we felt was not 100% ready, although we had nothing but positive feedback from the 1000 odd subscribers we got in the few weeks before the show finished."

There's only one Chris Gorman!

Chris Gorman is a serial entrepreneur and then some. After making his fortune by selling mobile phone retailer DX Communications to BT Cellnet, he's famously been involved with The Gadget Shop and today has his fingers in a number of mobile and internet pies.

But once the cameras stopped rolling on Make Me A Million, you half expect the mentors to disappear. So are Brayley and Todd still in touch with Chris Gorman?

"Absolutely. He has become more of a business partner now. We are in touch with all our shareholders. This is something I would recommend to anyone who is setting up business. Cash is great to bring into a business, but having shareholders with skill that can help is invaluable."

Brayley and Todd have also received a lot of help from an unexpected source - someone who was originally working with the opposition on Make Me A Million.

"We met Permjot Valia, who actually worked on the Freshbed team, but he saw the potential in our business, invested, and has helped Todd and my sales skills immensely.

"He runs helpwithsales.co.uk and is a wizard when it comes to fund raising and sales and negotiating training. If you saw the show you would know how bad Todd and I were at selling. But now, Todd is closing contracts with both public and private firms!"

To the present

So how has the business been doing since the end of the programme? Has it proved viable and do the boys still have Weight Watchers in your sights?

"We are just now turning a profit. Merging with getfit.com, becoming getfitwellness.com, and building new products - such the most advanced and personalised online Health Risk Assessment - has enabled us to approach business clients with a whole package of preventative online health products.

"We are in an excellent position to work with the Public Sector to help them tackle the rising costs obesity is costing the NHS.

"As we always based our products on UK and US health guidelines, we are finding both public and private enterprises want to use our products instead of spending time and money on developing their own.

"And as we always developed the products with further future development in mind, all can be integrated with existing wellness products or support existing health care initiatives.

"So it’s important to always be thinking several steps ahead in your business plan – and be flexible to change. We thought Public contracts would take years to come through and the way forward was B2B or consumer. Turns out Public initiatives are the first to be signing up!"

And the best thing about building a business via the internet?

"Working from home! It doesn’t even have to be internet based. We have begun two other businesses that are not internet based, but can be built and run via the internet.

"The downside is, if you’re not careful, you cannot get away as if you are anywhere near a PC, it takes strong will power not to check emails, reports or customer service, even abroad!"

We've all been there - in the internet cafe on holiday when we could have been on the beach!

And the future

Brayley really got me interested with talk of new ventures. So what else are they up to at the moment?

"I have set up Origen ID – the interior remodelling and design arm of www.origengroup.com. It was something I had begun to do with my partners David Palumbo and Adnan Sajid in 2003, but left to do GetFitWellness.com and the TV Show. We purchase and develop land in the East of London, helping investor grow their wealth through property.

"The concept is simple; instead of buying buy-to-let property, we build the development and the investors either holds, re-finances, sells or lets their property. They’re more in control of the whole process and the returns are built in from the start.

"Believe it or not most developers leave it to the architect or the builders to sort out the finish and spec of smaller developments – whereas we always have the end user (purchaser) in mind; the person who will buy or live in this space.

"Origen ID builds value in from the start. The group has over £2 million invested in over 50 units contracted to build, with several exciting developments in the pipeline.

"Todd has set up a private initative – Partners in Learning, a not-for-profit organisation, with Tony Hirving RD, our head dietitian in GetFit Wellness. They are looking at ways that the internet can help children from all over the world, from different backgrounds, to collaborate on projects which teachers set.

"He has already got his first trial organised in this country between a public and private school. He is very focused on education.

"In addition, we have some great contacts in China from working with our development team. Believe it or not, they need help in sourcing certain products from around the world, but often foreigners are not keen to deal with China direct, so we help broker sales deals."

Tips for the top

Given the journey both Brayley and Todd have been on during and since the making of Make Me A Million, I wondered what advice they had for someone wanting to start an internet business?

"The most important thing is, don’t make or buy it until you know you can sell it," says Brayley. "How are you going to get people to come to your site and who actually will really want to buy your product?

"Research research research. We have had many private affiliates who think it’s just a case of getting a website up and then waiting for the sales to roll in. It can take years just to get a good natural ranking with search engines, but of course you can pay for advertising."

And did they make their million?

And the final question has to be have they made a million yet?

"Mmm . . . perhaps on paper. However, it doesn’t help when negotiating an overdraft with our bank! Ask us again this time in 2009!"



If you would like to introduce a wellness programme to your business, you know who to contact - www.getfitwellness.com.

4th March 2008

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