How a Personal Trainer Built a Multi-Site Practice Across London

He Knew He Was Worth More. He Just Needed the Right Place to Prove It.

Jasper McDermott had been a personal trainer for the best part of a decade when he hit a wall. Not with his skills or his clients, but with his environment. Working out of a CrossFit gym, he was good at what he did, but he was doing it largely alone.

"I don't have a lot of colleagues," he says. "When the classes aren't on, it's just me in this big empty gym."

He was ambitious. He always had been. But ambition without the right surroundings can turn into stagnation. Post-pandemic, like a lot of self-employed practitioners, Jasper found himself stuck.

"I found that I was just really stagnant, but the people I was working with, the environment that I was in and how I felt about my career."

So he asked himself a simple question: where do the people who can stand on their own two feet actually go?

The answer, for Jasper, was UNTIL Liverpool Street.

Losing 90% to Gain Everything

The move wasn't easy. Jasper knew his worth and raised his prices to reflect the premium service he could deliver in a premium space. The result? He lost roughly 90% of his client base.

"There was like a six month tough, tough period, but I never actually for a moment doubted that I made the right decision."

He held the line. Every new client interaction confirmed he was in the right place. And over the next two years, he rebuilt, not just to where he was, but far beyond it. Sessions delivered have increased by 87.5% since he started at UNTIL.

"I never would've imagined I would've arrived at this point. Even in so cliched, but it came after one of the toughest periods of my career, certainly."

More Than Numbers: Time Freedom

For Jasper, the growth isn't just about the business metrics. It's about what those numbers have unlocked in his life.

Specialising in strength, muscle and mobility for time-poor professionals means he can deliver high-quality sessions with high volume without working every hour under the sun. Most days, he's done by early afternoon.

"Somehow I get to do this thing that I adore in one of the most expensive cities on planet Earth, and somehow not have to never see my kid."

He makes his daughter Cheerios at 5am, heads to the gym, and is back for afternoon pickups or free to film content and build other areas of his business. As a dad who grew up without a father, that presence matters deeply to him.

"More recently I've tried to be like, man, look at this. You're nailing it."

Where the Best Go

Jasper didn't stumble into UNTIL. He went looking for the highest standard he could find.

"Where do the people who can stand on their own two feet, such as being self-employed, which isn't for everybody, but it does signal on a certain level of efficacy as a business owner, as a practitioner, as an expert in your field. And they go here more or less."

He calls it plainly: "I presume this is where all the killers hang out." And that proximity to excellence has raised his own bar in ways he didn't expect.

"It also raises your standards. Instead of, I spent a lot of time on my own."

At UNTIL, every practitioner has carved out their own speciality. Jasper describes being surrounded by people who've each put in their 10,000 hours in their respective disciplines, and the effect of that is cumulative.

"Everyone's kind of got their own little specific discipline or where they've been put their 10,000 hours as their PT career, so you're like, oh yeah, that's cool."

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The Ecosystem Effect

Beyond the social connections, the professional ecosystem at UNTIL has fundamentally changed how Jasper delivers for his clients. Working alongside physiotherapists, osteopaths, and other specialists means he's not operating in a silo. When a client has an injury, he knows exactly who to refer them to, and he gets direct feedback on their progress.

"You just get a really nice feedback loop. I'll see said practitioner, and they'll be like, oh yeah, cool, so and so's doing really, really well."

Compare that to his old setup, where a referral meant sending someone to a person he vaguely knew at another gym. Now it's tight, immediate, and the client benefits directly.

He frames it as something that compounds over time. Being embedded in an ecosystem of high-calibre practitioners means absorbing knowledge passively, constantly, and filtering it down to benefit clients.

"Having an ecosystem of people who are kick ass in their field and you just sort of by proxy soak that knowledge up that you can filter down to the benefit of your clients."

"You can enormous feel yourself week on week, getting better and better just by osmosis."

And that improvement feeds directly into what Jasper can charge and how confident he feels charging it. When you can deliver a faster, more integrated result for a time-poor client, the value proposition becomes clear on both sides.

"The caliber of people we work with, that much valuable resource is gonna be time. Can you get a result in the best possible timeframe? And being able to deliver that with confidence becomes a huge part of the level of service that you can deliver."

"And that's why you can charge a handsome rate that you feel good about, that your clients feel good about. And like everyone's a winner."

The Confidence Shift

One of the less expected transformations was psychological. Jasper grew up modest. Self-deprecating by default. He'd tiptoe around his own ability and hold back from asking for what he was worth.

Being surrounded by other practitioners operating at a high level didn't just improve his skills. It rewired how he saw himself.

"I actually realized looking around, I was like, not in like a bad way necessarily, but I was like, oh, I belong here. I'm great at this. And nothing surged my confidence. Not that I got better as a practitioner, but I was put in a place where I was like, oh yeah. And it was transformative to my mental health."

That shift wasn't just about feeling good. It changed what he was willing to go after.

"Then how I felt about myself. But to what I was like willing to risk asking the universe for, if we're talking about like career goals and things, I was like, heck yeah man, step up to the bat and let's make it happen."

The environment didn't just raise his standards. It gave him permission to match them.

"Everyone's just a person trying to figure it out, you know, and with their own strengths and everything."

Opportunity

When asked to sum up UNTIL in one word, Jasper didn't hesitate.

"Opportunity. It's almost like a pallet of tools as opposed to a lot of the other things. You have a slate and some powerful tools. What you do with those is gonna be up to you."

Two years in, Jasper has taken those tools and built something he's genuinely proud of: a thriving PT business, a schedule that puts family first, and a community he calls home.

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