How to become so successful it TERRIFIES people.

Once upon a time there was a poor little Welsh kid from South Wales studying at university without a single penny to his name. A kid whose parents literally had to pawn their jewelry just to get enough fuel money to drop him off at his student accommodation. And that kid was me. And this is the story of how that kid went from being a broke student to a dog trainer and then ultimately to a owner of a multi seven figure business. And it's a story about the lessons I learned along the way. And it's a story that I hope will help you write your own story. So for anyone new here, I own a company called Yorkshire Canine Academy. We've been operating for five years now and it's been a roller coaster. There have been some great times and there have been some difficult times, but the journey has been the reward. As cliche as that sounds. My background isn't in business. I actually studied law and criminology for like six or seven years. And I played semi professional sport. I was on a sports scholarship that paid for my university and we were, to put it mildly, impossible, impoverished. So you can imagine how my parents felt when I told them that I wasn't going to use my education and I was instead going to become a dog trainer. They weren't best pleased, but to their credit, they supported me anyway. And for that I'm eternally grateful. My dog training career didn't start with me being my own boss. I started working for someone else at another company here in Yorkshire. I'm not going to go into detail about that because of. I have nothing bad to say. There just came a point where I knew I wanted to do something for myself. I wanted to train dogs my own way and ultimately I wanted to make more money for myself. So I left. I was walking away from a substantial salary of like, I want to say like 60,000 pounds a year at the time, which at that time felt like a significant amount of money. But I just knew I had to do it. So I actually sat down with my best friend, Ian Kirk, a former Leeds Rhinos player. There he is. And we decided to set up something ourselves and we established the Yorkshire Canine Academy. And we started from absolute zero. We spent our last bit of money. We paid a friend 500 pound to build a website, we got another friend to make a short video advertisement and that was it. We had no reviews, no followers, no clients, just a website, a video and a belief that we could make it work. Fast forward to today in 2026, Yorkshire Canine Academy has told the world to live in, sold out seminars, we mentor other dog trainers. We've moved into our brand new dream facility. And to give you a metric of our growth, last year we did just shy of 2 million pound in revenue, I believe. And in January this year we turned over just shy of £250,000. I'm not telling you this to showboat. I'm telling you this to illustrate the scale of the journey, to show you what is possible, and to share the lessons I learned along the way. Okay, lesson number one. Money is oxygen. Early in my journey, I had a business mentor. His name was Will. He was actually one of our first clients and I was helping him with his dog Walter. One day after a session, he asked me how business was going. And I said something like, you know, a lot of the same. Other dog trainers probably say, I'm not really bothered about money, Will. I just want to help more dogs. Will looked at me, he kind of tilted his head and said, what do you mean you don't care about money? And then he proceeded completely dismantle my false beliefs of, of what money actually is and what it means. He explained to me that money is like oxygen into your business and in turn to your life. Whatever your mission is, having more money, being more profitable will help you get there faster and if anything, get you there in the first place at all. And it will help you help more dogs. And then he asked me, what's your favorite thing in the world? And of course I said, my dog, Ranger. And he then looked me square in the eye and said, if Ranger needed a 10,000 pound operation tomorrow to save his life, is he going to live or is he going to die? And that question changed the trajectory of my life because I knew deep down what the answer was. And I knew I had to change it. So from that day forward, I understood that making money was not a selfish act. It was the direct enabler of my mission. The more profitable we are, the more, the more dogs we can help. Example, we donate all of our revenue from YouTube to charity. We can take on rescue dogs for free. We run a boot camp that helps over 500 dogs a year. Not to mention our online clients. Our ability to make more money is directly correlated with the ability to make an impact and listen. Like on a personal level, it allowed me to give my own dog a better life. When I first got Ranger, this was his garden. It was tiny. And now this is his garden. And that is the direct result of prioritizing revenue. So that same conversation with Will dismantled another false belief. I had the fear of being judged. I was terrified of putting myself out there, of being like a sleazy salesman. I was prioritizing the opinion of strangers on the Internet over the quality of life my own family and my own dogs had. And will ask me another very potent question. Why do you care? Why are you prioritizing the opinion of. Of people you will never meet over doing the right thing by your loved ones? And it was another epiphany. From that day forward, I stopped giving a fuck what other people thought. With one caveat. If I respect someone, someone who achieved what I want to achieve, and they give me criticism, I take that as feedback. But if someone has a life I do not wish to live, I completely disregard what they have to say. When you grow online, you will get criticism. You will have to be able to deal with it. And would never let a stranger on the Internet dictate the size of house my partner lives in or the size of garden my dog gets to run around in. And neither should you. I've been vulnerable in this video and I hope these stories have helped you. I do feel like they could help someone else. So do me a favor. Hit that share button. Just send it to a friend that you feel like it might be helpful to and yeah, I'd really appreciate it. And finally, lesson number three. The perfect moment never exists. This is perhaps the most important lesson of all. Waiting for the right time will absolutely destroy you. Comfort is a killer. I probably stayed at my last job for a year, longer than I needed to, out of pure hesitation. I've stayed in relationships for longer than I needed to. I was. You know, you're always waiting for the perfect moment to take action. But the perfect moment never exists. If you are thinking about doing something, taking the leap to work for yourself, launching a new service, building an online program. You are probably waiting for all your ducks to be in a row. You are waiting for perfection. But let me give you some advice. There will never ever be the perfect moment. And while you wait for perfection, you procrastinate. Perfection is the enemy of progress. And when you look for perfection and fall short, it fills you with doubt. And doubt is another fuel for procrastination. I learned to take aggressive action in everything I do. And I live by the mantra of the book. Ready, fire, aim. You get an idea to 70% good enough and you fire. You launch it, and then you aim. Based on feedback from the real world. Please, for the love of God, if you take anything from this video, do not wait for anything to be perfect before you hit the execute button, you will never get there. There's nothing special about me. There is nothing special about any of my mentees I work with, and there is nothing special about you. I wasn't born an entrepreneur. I wasn't born knowing anything about business. I just had the right information from the right people at the right time, and for that, I am very lucky. This journey from a piss from broke student to where I am today was built on all these three lessons and understanding that your money is a tool for your mission, understanding that the opinion of strangers is completely irrelevant, and understanding that action, however imperfect, is always better than in action. If you want me to be that right person for you at the right time to help you on your journey, you can check out the link in the description. Otherwise, have a wonderful day and I'll see you next time.