MEET THE COACH
Some people know me as Leigh Sherman, others know me as Coach Leighroy. Hillspeed is a performance coaching system I founded, drawing on the principles of elite athlete development in sport - because that's where my journey started.
/ COACH LEIGHROY /
I went from athlete, to coach, back to athlete.
The pro game is not easy.
Elite sport had been the focus of my life for as long as I could remember, and by my early twenties I was knocking on the door of the professional level. What I hadn't realised was that getting close wasn't the same as belonging there - the gap was enormous. Frustrated and burned out, I turned to sports science and studied sports coaching and business at university. For the next half a decade I worked under some of Australia's best human movement specialists, performance coaches and sport administrators.
But it's addictive.
Eventually my career shifted from sport to digital and I reinvented myself as an athlete of industry.
- →By 2010, I started winning startup hackathons.
- →By 2014, I was the founder and CEO of a VC-backed tech startup.
- →By 2016, I was one of the first Australian's to go to Techstars, the tier-1 silicon valley accelerator.
“By2017Iwassuffocatingundertheweightofmyownsuccess,stuckinagameIwasneverpreparedtoplay.”
And then I crashed out, again.
Four years into the journey of founder I had exhausted my resources, my team and my mental health.
I really had no idea what good looked like at the level of the game I was playing. I had no choice but to stop.
It took me 6 months to move customers off the platform because they had nowhere else to go. The frustration was immense and the cost of failure was prolific.
And this time it was bad.
I lost my company, my stability, and my identity - life went to 0 in all areas.
In the aftermath of my experience it became obvious to me that on some level all founders were injured (to use a sports metaphor).
In sport, injuries are part of the process, and you address them. Every athlete knows this.
But in the startup world everyone wants to share some form of “just run faster” advice.
Once I saw this I felt stupid for not trusting what sport taught me. I was completely blinded by the silicon valley approach to growth.
“Irealisedfoundersneedfeedbacksystemsthatbringthemintoalignmentwiththeirthinkingaboutthegame-thesamewaywedevelopathletesinsport”
So I went back into coaching
Between 2018 and 2020 I built the Company Model framework while working inside scale-up companies Zwift.com and Booking.com. Then I switched into education and training and worked for industry giants such as Jack Delosa, Dan Martell, and I studied coaching under one of the top 5 life coaches on the planet Benjamin J Harvey. I launched the Hillspeed coaching protocol in 2022 and developed that into a self-coaching system in 2025.
My brand is my commitment
Coach Leighroy has been my professional alias since 2022. A reminder to myself and a commitment to you that I'm here to win with you, at speed, without burnout.
I live on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia, with my beautiful family. I work with athletes all around the globe, from North America to India.
