World record freestyle football champion now make millions in different career

Liv Cooke is handing over the keys in both her worlds – symbolically in the case of football freestyling, and literally as a property tycoon.

The seven-time world record holder realised her dream when she was still a teenager…so she set about finding a new one.

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The Brit joined Preston North End by the age of 10 and worked her way up to Blackburn’s Centre of Excellence four years later.

Struggles with injury saw Cooke pivot her focus to freestyle football, and she became the UK’s first woman professional freestyler.

In 2017, the now-26-year-old became the world champion, but soon after stopped competing and wrestled with what came next.

“I think that happens to a lot of athletes,” Cooke told talkSPORT’s Hawskbee & Jacobs. “Everybody thinks about the training, the discipline, the years of work to achieve your dream, but nobody really thinks about what happens afterwards.

“I think that’s something that I experienced pretty heavy and I was quite young, 18, to be crowned the world at what you do.

“It’s hard to then top that, I think.”

Women’s freestyle football has been left in good hands (or feet), in the form of three-time world champion Isabel Wilkins from Bradford.

“She is incredible,” Cooke added of the 18-year-old. “I’m not competing anymore. I stopped that a long time ago.

“I retired from competitions after winning the world champs. I carried on to get seven world records, which I still hold today.

“But in terms of actually competing, no, I passed that torch down a long time ago. And who better to continue representing the country than Isabel?”

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Football freestyler turned property tycoon

Cooke, meanwhile, applied her skills to investing as she entered her 20s, having been inspired by property expert Grant Cardone.

She added: “I like to go for properties that nobody can buy and nobody wants because they’re completely run down.

“So, even if somebody wanted to buy it and they wanted to move in, the mortgage lender wouldn’t approve it, and that’s because it’s completely uninhabitable.

“There might be a roof falling in, there might be no heating. I go for like the worst of the worst.

“Like my dream is a property that hasn’t sold at auction, and then I go in, fix all the problems, make it into a home and primarily, I actually like to renovate it and house women that are fleeing domestic and sexual abuse. But we do have quite a range of tenants.”

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Cooke has since amassed a £10million fortune by converting run-down properties into HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation).

However, as the Lancashire entrepreneur revealed, many of her HMOs shelter women escaping domestic violence and sexual abuse.

“Yeah, 100 per cent [looking to help people along the way],” Cooke continued to talkSPORT. “I think a lot of people get confused.

“They think that you have to, like if you’re making profit, you can’t have purpose, and I actually think it’s a beautiful industry where you can be commercially smart and socially conscious at the same time.

“Like, of course, I make a profit. I’m a developer. If I wasn’t making profit, it wouldn’t be sustainable. But at the same time, I’m also taking housing that is serving no purpose in the market.

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“Nobody can live there. Nobody’s going to buy it. I’m fixing it up. I’m bringing it back to the market, and I’m giving these women a second chance.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to experience recently quite a few women actually moving in and seeing, like, I can’t explain the feeling, when you see them see their new home, their room for the first time, the gratitude that they feel, it just brings them to tears.

“And to see that in front of you, to see somebody experience like safety for the first time in a long time, maybe even the first time ever in their life, it’s a pretty powerful feeling.

“It actually reminds me back of like my freestyle days.

“Sounds a bit bizarre to link the two, but winning a world championship, that feeling you get inside of like accomplishment is very similar in some ways to housing these women.”

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‘Don’t have to be rich to get into property’

Cooke’s success as a fresstyler saw her become a UEFA ambassador and BBC Sports presenter with 5.3 million followers on TikTok alone.

Yet on money to start her property empire, she revealed: “I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions in property.

“People think that you need to be rich to get into it. And it sounds a little bit cliché, but I’m constantly trying to drill it in on my social media, but you don’t have to be rich to get into property.

“You can get into property and get rich, and I’ve proven this countless times. Like I’ve taken a firefighter, I’ve taken a waiter, I’ve taken an accountant, people that are taking home two or three grand a month after tax and taught them the tricks of the trade, how to go out, find amazing property deals.

“Although they’ve no money in the bank to actually do the deal, what they can then do is take that deal, take the information, take it to a busy investor and say, ‘Hey, here’s an amazing deal. I’ll be honest, I can’t afford it, but I know you’re too busy to find your own deal, or you don’t have the knowledge to find your own deal. So pay me a finder’s fee and take this deal.’

“And if you do that enough times, I mean four times, and you’ve got the budget to then take the next deal yourself.

“So you don’t have to be rich to get into property. You can get rich in property.

“But one thing I do try and also drill into them is when you’re doing that, don’t get too greedy. You know, like money’s great, but making an impact feels so much better.”

Property Elevator

Leyland-born influencer Cooke has now joined Amazon Prime series ‘Property Elevator’ ahead of it’s ninth series due to air this year.

“I’m so excited,” she told talkSPORT. “It’s going to be airing at the end of the year. We’re actually filming in February.

“So the best way I describe it is it’s a Dragon’s Den-style property show.

“I’m honestly honoured to be even be asked for this and to be featuring as one of the angels we’re called, where the investors on the panel and people come in, and they pitch us deals live, just like on Dragon’s Den.

“And if we like the deal, we can back it, we can joint venture. It’s a chance for people to get into property, get some funding and get in front of a panel of investors.

“I’m honoured to sit on this panel. The investors on here are incredible. They’ve got like 20, 30, sometimes 50 years experience. They’ve built hundreds of millions of pounds of property.

“So if you’ve got a deal and you think it stacks at home, but maybe you haven’t got the money, this is an opportunity of a lifetime to come on and get funding and change your life.”