The Founders Story

Almost two decades ago, Jason Rickaby and Phil Learney first crossed paths over a public discussion forum and discovered they shared a passion for nutrition, exercise and the pursuit of knowledge in that field. After meeting, they instantly became great friends, setting out on their own individual career paths within the health and fitness sector.

Jason in 2005, co-founded and bootstrapped the now globally renowned brand, PhD Nutrition, as CEO guiding and growing the business through two major acquisitions, before finally exiting the business in 2019 with a valuation of £32 Million.

In that time Phil positioned himself as one of the world's leading personal trainers. In 2015, he founded the Advanced Coaching Academy, a global education platform for the health and fitness industry.

From that first meeting, they stayed firmly in touch working on numerous collaborative projects together, always discussing and brainstorming their shared passion and agreeing that one day, if the opportunity arose, they would bring something new and innovative to the space.

In 2021 that opportunity came, and HMN24® was born.

A brand built on a lifelong passion for holistic human performance, one in which mental and emotional wellness is just as important as the physical: all synergistic, all needing to be optimised for us to be at our best. A brand about the solo or family-centred strivers, the business leaders, the students, creatives, entrepreneurs but more than anything, the individuals that want to fulfil their own very unique potential and put health, wellness and critical thinking at the beating heart of that.

HMN24 is a community where like-minded people can truly relate and be a part of. It’s the culmination of our four shared decades of life experience in business, coaching, physical challenge and epic failures, all wrapped up into a brand and proposition we are truly proud of.

We hope you become a part of it; we hope you love it, enjoy it and share your potential with us.

I first stepped foot into a gym as a stereotypical 17-year-old, a bit lost in life with no real direction. There, merely on a work experience placement to pass the time and tick a box. After two weeks, I left there with the realisation that it wasn’t the place I’d imagined. It was a place where people came to work off the pressures of life. They came, from all communities, to come together and share a passion for purpose and progression.

The health, strength and wellness pursuits gave them direction and developed mindsets that carried over into all aspects of their lives and often framed their direction in life: physical struggle that managed and positively framed mental struggles.

It was from here on in, my own commitment to physical habit and discipline was cemented. It was from here that I realised performance was truly a 24-hour mindset. Performance is holistic, and it always has been.

In 2005 when I founded PhD Nutrition®, I was 28 years old, hungry to build something meaningful in my life and recruit more people into the lifestyle I truly believed in. A learning curve that was steep, full of mistakes and thankfully had more good decisions than bad.

In that time, I learned of the vast number of people committed to striving passionately for things to improve their quality of life and what they needed to do that. People, like me who wished to retain focus, stay sharp and tap into their creativity alongside the important physical support their minds needed from their bodies.

HMN24®, for me, is my passion for this lifestyle bottled up and put into every area of this brand. It’s twenty years of me not only knowing the performance-driven consumer and what they want but being that person and living it.

HMN24® brings it all back to the same thing. We call it Living On Form- the search for optimal mental, physical and emotional performance.

We are HMN24®, and we Fuel Human Potential.

Throughout my life, I’ve been constantly fascinated by performance. As a youngster who struggled with my weight and self-esteem, I looked to seek out answers that facilitated a change, not only in my physicality but in the way I managed my internal narrative. Over time, as those answers became apparent, the limitations and expectations imposed on me by both my peers and the society I was brought up in, lifted.

By embracing exercise and nutrition, my mindset evolved and the way I framed things changed. I slowly began to adopt behaviours that aligned with the outcomes I wanted and became more dismissive of those that didn’t.

This led me to crave and pursue knowledge around human performance. Knowledge that could assist me on my own personal journey and knowledge that would eventually lay the foundations to my career. What began merely as a personal battle for acceptance became much more. I wanted to help people on their own journey and help pave those foundations for others.

I spent 20 years as a coach and sports scientist, guiding and supporting people towards their own goals and individual definitions of living on form. Considering their world at each given moment, their evolving commitments and responsibilities. Their necessity to be ‘present’ for others and to be a part of something that was both selfless and meaningful.

Since then my focus shifted to those that dispensed that all-important knowledge-creating a global educational platform and thus an umbrella effect, extending my knowledge and experience in business, nutrition and coaching to those that so desperately needed it.

HMN24® for me is the culmination of an unwavering desire to provision the tools people need to reach their potential. A platform, a brand and products built around a community that supports and serves this new age of human performance that extends way beyond the physical.