My Story

Some of you know me as Leigh, others know me as Coach Leighroy.
Here's the story about how I became a coach, for the 2nd time in life.

I’m the founder of Hillspeed Group, an international coaching company that merges my background in elite sport with my experience as a founder, builder, and advisor in high-growth companies.

Hillspeed is an environment designed around the CEO, built on the same principles we use to develop elite athletes in sport—because that's where my career story starts.

I competed at elite level in triathlon and swimming as junior athlete, and my vision was to represent my country at an Olympics.

But at some point, that dream felt out of reach, burnout set in, my training habits changed, and I began questioning how my development as an athlete could have been different.

That led me to study sports science, where I spent years working alongside Australia’s top sports scientists, coaches, and administrators.

Eventually, my career shifted—from sport to retail, then from retail to digital business.

🔶 By 2010, I was running hackathons and building startups.

🔶 By 2014, I built a VC-backed tech company.

🔶 By 2016, I moved to Berlin as one of the first Australians in a tier-1 accelerator.

🔶 By 2018, burnout struck again—this time, as a founder.

I lost my company, my stability, and my identity.

Starting over, I mentored and advised other founders and I was preview to things I couldn't unsee. It became obvious to me that on some level all founders were badly injured (to use a sport metaphor), yet the ecosystem would enable them to ignore the fundamentals and run faster.

One thing you learn as a sports coach is that you have a fiduciary responsibility to prevent your athletes from injury. So I came back to the coaching game—this time for CEOs.

From 2018, I spent a few years refining my Company Model framework for high growth businesses—consulting, training with world-class leaders, and getting certified across multiple coaching disciplines.

In 2022, I introduced the first iteration of the Hillspeed Protocol - a system that puts the CEO at the centre of their growth model, so we can look at performance objectively through the lens of constraint.

Coach Leighroy is my professional alias—a reminder to myself, and a commitment to my athletes, that I’m here to win with you, at speed, without burnout.