Do Not Waste the Next 3 Years of Your Life (like I did)

There's an old story about a ship that breaks down, massive engine, no one can fix it. They call in engineer after engineer and no one can figure it out. Eventually they bring in this old guy. He walks around the engine room for about 10 minutes and then pulls out a very small hammer, taps one pipe in one specific spot and the engine, it starts right up. He sends them the bill, 10,000 pound. The ship owner loses his fucking mind. 10 grand. You were here for 10 minutes, you hit it with a hammer. Send me an itemized bill, Will. So the old man sends it back and he. He writes, tapping with a hammer, £1. Knowing where to tap. £9,999. So I want you to hold on to that story because I'm going to come back to it. If you're watching this channel, you're probably a dog trainer, a dog walker, maybe you run some kind of pet business, and chances are you're busy, genuinely busy, running around back to back clients, replying to messages at 10pm, trying to squeeze in the social media posts between sessions, you're grafting. And because if you're so busy, you've probably told yourself something along the lines of, I just to get through this patch and sort the business out properly, or I haven't got time to learn new stuff right now. I'll do it when things calm down. I hear this constantly and I need to be honest with you. If you haven't got time, you're already cooked. Let me explain what I mean. The reason you haven't got time is because of your business is fundamentally set up wrong. It's at the foundation. Somewhere along the line, things got mismanaged. Maybe it was pricing, maybe it was how you structured your services, maybe you just said yes to everything. And now, now you're drowning in fulfillment and delivering sessions. Whatever it was, the result is the same. You're maxed out and you're probably not even making great money for it. So what happens next? You've got two options, and to be honest, they're both shit. Option one, you try to grow. You take on more work to bring in more money. But now you've got fulfillment stacking up from last month and the month before work. You've already done that, you haven't been paid for and you're adding more on top. And that is inevitably going to lead to burnout. And burnout reduces your capacity even further. You are digging a hole. Option two, you take your foot off the gas, you slow down. But slowing down means either your fulfillment drops or standard of or your income drops. And when your income drops, you panic and you start hustling again to fill the calendar. And then you're right back where you started. The worst version of this cycle. A good month cost you your sanity and a bad month cost you your bank account. And the months where you do actually have the time, well, you've got no money. And that cycle will eat you alive if you let it. Here's what most people miss. There are things you know, there are things you know you don't know, and then there are a few things that you don't even know that you don't know. The unknown unknowns, I call them. I can almost guarantee that right now you are doing stuff in your business that is a complete waste of time and you don't even realize it because no one has told you. And that's the first thing I do when I work with someone. I don't look to create more work. I look at what they're already doing and then figure out what's eating their time for zero return. How do we buy back hours in the week without losing income? I worked with someone recently who was a dog walker. She was running herself into the ground, making ends meet, but only just absolutely ragged. We looked at a business, found a couple of those unknown unknowns, and bought her back a day or two a week while actually making more money. She now consistently is doing like eight, nine grand a month doing dog training, supplemented, albeit by a little bit of dog walking, but way less than what she was. Less work, much more money. And that's what happens when you find the right levers. Now listen, out of respect for the people that pay me, I'm not going to break down exactly what we did. That wouldn't be fair on them. But here's my point. Priorities. Someone who runs a successful business is very good at one thing above all else. Prioritizing, knowing which stuff brings the highest leverage and then doing that, focusing on that and executing that while ignoring everything else. Let me give you some context. Our company consistently does six figures a month. It's been a long time since we haven't. More recently, multi. Six figures a month. I'm in there training dogs. I'm putting out two YouTube videos a week. I post short form content. I look after our Instagram account. Posting once or twice a day. We have a weekly podcast. We have a weekly vlog. I have 50 mentees that I personally look after and every single one of them gets a reply within 24 hours maximum. I have 6 dogs. I have a partner at home. If I ran myself into the ground, none of that would be possible. The only reason it works is because I know exactly, exactly what to focus on. And I have the tools and systems to make it exceptionally efficient. You might be watching this thinking, I'm gonna go sell some balls on a rope or I'm gonna make some merchandise, some beanies with my logo on. None of that matters at all. That is what I call shiny object syndrome. And so many dog trainers get completely distracted by it. And I was the same. We were doing YCA coffee beans, wherever they are, little branded cups and all sorts. And while that stuff is cool from a branding perspective, it actually makes zero difference to whether a business succeeds or fails. It took a mentor grabbing me by the scruff of the neck and pointing me in the right direction. That's what changed things. Okay, so now remember that story about the old engineer? I did a one to one call with one of my mentees a couple of weeks ago. That call lasted nine minutes, a genuine nine minutes. In that call, I told him what to focus on, which was one or two very small levers. It was a very simple paid ad strategy based on content he already had and a follow up sequence we drafted together. In those nine minutes since that call, he's doubled his revenue. Nine minutes. Because when you know where to tap, you don't need to swing a hammer a thousand times. So my most recent mentor, I've paid him, I don't know, like fucking 30 grand at this point. And he's added over 100 grand a month to my business. That is a worthwhile investment because he showed me exactly where to focus. So if you feel like you haven't got time, I need you to hear this. You are already in trouble. Best case scenario, without changing something, you stay poor but keep your sanity. Worst case scenario, you burn yourself out and then you're still poor. There is a third option, the unknown unknown, where you keep your sanity and build a healthy bank account. But you need someone to show you where to tap if you're watching this channel and just consuming video after video. Listen, I appreciate that I am putting out good stuff, but what you get in here is maybe 5 to 10% of what I actually know. And I've also got a team behind me that are part of the coaching setup inside my mentorship program. This is the tip of the iceberg stuff, purely out of respect for people that actually pay me. If you want the actual systems, the secret sauce, I call it the templates, things done for you access to me personally coaching you with real accountability where I will not hold back so you're not just sat there consuming but never actually doing anything about it. You can click the link in the description to apply for the mentorship. Hopefully I can help you change your life like I've done for so many others. Catch you in the next one.