In a world where hash tags rule the internet, influencers are on the money. Men’s health advocate, model and athlete Lachy McLean gives Editor in Chief Michelle Giglio a lesson in content creation.
#hot. #hotmodel. #hotmalemodel. The world of social media is an infinite beast, and those who know how to play the game reap the rewards. Lachy McLean is a former professional footballer who is doing the hard yards at building a global following as a content creator – aka influencer. His Instagram posts average 15 to 20 million views a month. Add to that millions a month on TikTok, and you begin to understand the reach of this 29 year old, who grew up playing soccer on Collaroy Plateau.
The world of influencers is a mystery to me. I see them pose with products and dance around on Instagram, with thousands of ‘likes’ peppering their profile. Is that all it takes to make it?
While sitting at a corner table in the gorgeous Manly Pavilion overlooking Manly Cove, Lachy sets me straight. “There’s an unspoken element of market research that you need to do with social media,” he declares.
“A big part of it is understanding the market, understanding what could be successful. Then there’s a whole experimental trial and error process between what you do, how often you post, when you post, what you post.”
Why do content creators get so much traction? “We live in a digital world,” Lachy explains. “You can get sports highlights through social media. You can get breaking news through social media. You can get marketing through social media. An influencer is just a person who is investing in themselves and they are bringing themselves to social media through things like their lifestyle products or a service.”
On Lachy’s socials you will see him sprinting up and down Bondi Beach (near where he now lives), spruiking a brand of men’s active wear. Or looking downright debonair in a BOSS suit at the Logies. Or displaying a kaleidoscope of couture at Australian Fashion Week. Or washing underneath an outdoor shower in the Maldives wearing…not much. And even in a cleaning frenzy in his apartment, getting very obsessed about scrubbing the toilet! This is Lachy being his ‘authentic self.’
Loving the Logies in 2024
Lachy did a stint on Channel 7’s Made in Bondi in 2024
“I try show that you can have a purpose in life in a bunch of different ways,” Lachy states. “And how I’m finding purpose through the things I care about with my health and the way I like to style myself.
“Boys and even men reach out to me and ask questions about the acne I had when I was a kid,” which he reveals in numerous photos. “Or questions about confidence, or gym routines or diet.
“But for me to be able to spend time every week speaking to people who I’ll never meet and maybe never speak to again after that conversation, and give them even 1% back, which could help them, there’s something about that which is so fulfilling.”
Lachy came into the social media world quite by accident. For the first 26 years of his life, Lachy was dedicated to football, which led him to play striker in the USA with United Soccer League (USL) professional team Greenville Triumph in his twenties. The life-long passion started in the under 6 team at Collaroy Cromer Strikers, though Lachy’s mum is adamant he first kicked a ball at just nine months!
After progressing through Australia’s pre-professional National Premier League 1 for Manly United and Ku-ring-gai while still in his teens, Lachy moved to the US in 2016 at just 18 on a college scholarship. Just three years later he went pro with Greenville Triumph in Southern California, but the striker found he had a lot of downtime when not on the pitch.
“The life of a professional sportsman is great, but you have a lot of, I call it dead time because you train in the morning, do your recovery, and then you don’t really have a lot that you can do with that ‘in between time’ because you don’t go out and you don’t party.
“It is cutthroat as if you have a bad training session, you might not play on the weekend.”
So Lachy starting gaming with his team mates. A lot. Hours and hours and hours!
“I loved it!” Lachy admits. “But I got through my first year of pro and I felt like I was wasting time. I felt like there was something better I could have been doing.”
One of Lachy’s teammates had a Spanish girlfriend who was a very successful content creator, and the teammate also started to get a following on TikTok. So Lachy thought he would give it a go.
“I was (thinking) ‘Maybe this is a way to grow my brand, see where it can take me.’ (And that) maybe this was going to open up more opportunities than just soccer. So I started posting because I wanted to invest in that rather than video games.”
The move into socials paid off, but not long after Lachy started, he broke his collarbone in the off-season. Then Lachy’s second season was injury-strewn, with calf and repetitive knee troubles. “I couldn’t stay on the pitch. And when you’re an athlete it gets quite lonely when you’re injured because you’re away from the team when they’re training. So I started investing more time into social media because I wasn’t going on away (football) trips.”
What was he posting? “Honestly, it was really a learning process. This is probably my most cringe period!” he laughs. “One of the things that I’m very relieved at is social media has become a lot more authentic. At that point, TikTok was shifting from being known as a dancing app to trend-based content.”
Picture lip synching to the latest songs, photo ‘trends,’ and there were even three shower scenes which got 27 million views – “It was shirtless in a shower and it was just wrong. Just stupid!” Lachy laments now. But whatever Lachy was posting, it was working. In his first year on TikTok he gained 620,000 followers. By the second year he had 1.3 million followers.
“It was crazy!” Lachy laughs. What was he doing that worked? “I don’t know! It was one of those things that I wish I understood at the time. But following the trends was working.
“That was one of the early points where I saw the potential to monetise social media. It made me realise there was a real opportunity.”
While social media was taking off, football was tanking. In his third pro year, after having taken so much time off in his second, Lachy changed clubs and had three surgeries (hand, foot, collarbone). He barely played a match.
“I had a passion, which I loved, but I don’t think I had the body for it,” Lachy reflects. “Even when I was 14 or 15, I had every growth injury you could think of. I had an ankle reconstruction when I was 17. God bless my parents because they sacrificed so much to get me to where I was. And I never would have been where I was without them.”
Content creators have their own awards!
Football has always been a passion
Winning the USL cup with Greenville Triumph in 2020
Playing for Manly United in his teens
Motivation was a real issue, given Lachy was spending more time off the pitch injured than on the pitch. “I felt like all the love that I had for football left because of the injuries, but I wanted to give it one more go. And I lived my whole life saying, ‘I never want to finish something if I’m going to regret it.’”
So while Lachy stayed for that third year, he then retired from professional football in 2022 – with no regrets.
“In the end I had a short pro career, but still achieved so much. I played against MLS team Real Salt Lake in front of 25,000 people in a national cup competition and we won.
“In two out of the three years I played professionally, my team made the USL final, winning the championship in 2020. It was a lifelong dream come true.”
Everything happens for a reason, Lachy reflects. So while the football pitch was closed to him, ‘there was enough going on with social media to a point where I could genuinely see a career in it.’ “And there was longevity. And at that point it was still quite unknown. But I knew that there was something there.”
Despite the increased collaborations from brands on his socials, Lachy had somewhat of a crisis after he stopped playing football. “For 26 years I’d been focusing nonstop on soccer. I didn’t have a Plan B. I didn’t have anything. I just wanted to play soccer my whole life. And at that point, I think a lot of athletes speak about this, when you commit everything to your sport, to reset and to just go back to something else is very, very hard.
“I was struggling with the idea of ‘Where do I go next? Do I really want to go down the social media path?’”
Enter Love Island USA, a reality TV show which pairs unknown couples who attempt to have a relationship, despite imposters who try to break them up. Lachy was prepped to go on the show as an imposter, but eventually opted out.
“I didn’t really want to be on Love Island,” he admits. “It’s not really something I’ve ever aligned myself with. I went there purely as damage control and I just wanted to get away from it all and settle and reset.
“It was 40 days in a hotel room, with no phone, no clock and no access to the outside world. I felt like I needed to be there, and have the time to just breathe and reflect.”
After this reflective period, Lachy then signed with an American talent agent, returned to Australia, and things started falling into place in 2023. He had started modelling on the side while playing football, and was picked up by veteran Australian agency ICON in 2024: “One of the best things that ever happened to me!” Lachy enthuses. “They have transformed my life here and my outlook on things moving forward.”
Working with ICON has elevated Lachy’s profile, providing access to premium opportunities like Australian Fashion Week and the Logies. “It has also helped align me with brands that truly reflect and complement my personal identity and vision,” Lachy states.
“One of the things with social media is that people get the perception that (content creators) just say ‘yes’ to every deal to earn money, but it’s not really like that,” Lachy explains. “There is such a trial and error process that there are (times) where you’ll say ‘yes’ to a brand, and then you’ll go, ‘We didn’t love that. It didn’t work.’ Or, ‘My audience didn’t resonate with this.’”
Gone are the days when companies would be happy just knowing the amount of ‘likes’ and views on an influencer’s product posts. It’s all about ‘conversion rates’ now, Lachy says. Each of Lachy’s product posts have a ‘promotion’ link and the company will track the level of engagement, link clicks, conversions to sales and profit.
“I think there are elements of creating engaging content which go a long way. Because I think some people can probably post anything and get a lot of views. So it is important to spend a lot of time focusing on making sure your content is like you, but engaging.”
Authenticity is the key to this, Lachy states. “A lot of my content comes across as relatable, or hopefully it does because that’s the way I want to present things to people. My personal brand is about modern masculinity, encompassing fashion, grooming, health and lifestyle.
“I want to show men simple, tangible ways to take pride in how they present themselves. Whether that’s through the way they dress, how they take care of their home, or how they show up every day.”
Because of this, Lachy can spend up to 12 hours a day curating his posts way before anything goes online, starting with meeting a ‘brand ambassador,’ doing a photoshoot, editing the content and finally posting.
“I think, to be the most successful, you have to be in 100 per cent. And the only way that you’re going to be successful at it is if you are the one that’s working hard.
“The last two years have been very much about bringing more of me to my page, putting more time into my content, more effort, making it more authentic. And now it’s about taking that platform, that foundation I have, and creating really strong relationships with brands.”
It’s definitely not all sunshine and roses, and Lachy admits: “I have my days of doubt. I always do, especially with this industry, because sometimes you do a lot, you put in so much effort knowing that you’re going to get nothing now. But the hope is you’ll get something later.
“And I think the hardest part about this industry is there’s a lot of investing and belief in yourself that you have to have. But I think when it comes down to it, it’s the people that you (have) around yourself.
“And honestly the best thing that soccer taught me was just this intrinsic motivation to work hard and put everything I can on the table.”
In his heart, Lachy dreams of getting back to sport somehow, perhaps through hosting events. Meanwhile, he has just come back from a shoot in the Maldives for New York Swim Week, modelling brands before it launches on 26 July.
“I think there are a lot of really good things coming. And I think that is motivation in itself. I feel like I’m in the right place. I feel like I’m doing the right thing. I enjoy what I do. And for me, that’s enough reason to want to throw the kitchen sink at it.”
