An agency owner compares his early days working from a kitchen table on £300,000 revenue to running a 14-person operation making seven figures, and argues the growth cost him his life. He now meditates daily, tracks sleep with an Oura ring, and reads Eckhart Tolle instead of chasing endless scaling.
Questions this video answers
14 staff
Seven-figure annual revenue ("seven figures plus a year")
Just over 300,000 (currency not specified) in the first year
Half an hour every day
Six holidays in the first year/18 months
Hi. In today's video, I'm going to be talking around what I've been thinking lately that has made me change my concept and views on life. So in today's video I just wanted to cover off over the last few weeks, obviously working from home and being in this, what you call lockdown, as it were, it's given me a lot of time for personal reflection and to work a little bit more on my inner self. And what I found is like always chasing the money and keep growing your business and your agency and just being fully immersed in that. It's hard work and it takes its toll on its body as well. So I've always been one for meditation and like making sure that I try as much to live a little bit more stress free. But what I realized over time was that I was probably getting a bit more stressed again because having an agency with 14 staff and doing seven figures plus a year in terms of the agency and having a big office, etcetera, and taking on a lot on my plate, I think what the reflection was was it's not always about obviously chasing that end goal of creating a amount of wealth, whether it's 10 million, 100 million or whatever it is, like the quality of life's important. So looking back, when I first started my agency, in its first year we did just over 300,000 and that was just with myself and my brother from the kitchen table. Then we moved into a tiny little serviced office. And those times were really, really great because every time you won a client, there was a great buzz. Every time you did a deal or got money paid in the bank account, it was a great feeling. And I actually had six holidays in that first yet 18 months of the agency. So some people, most people would say, well, that's crazy because you need to hustle, work hard. But I did work hard, but also work smart. And also those breaks enabled me to have a clearer vision in terms of what I wanted in the agency moving forward and made me more productive as well. And then that followed up. In year two, I had about four to five holidays. But I think recently, like the year last year, I didn't really have as many holidays. I think I had three holidays and one was a longer holiday. The rest were shorter breaks. And what I tended to find was you end up what you call being the white rabbit, white rabbit around the racetrack. So like being a greyhound, just running around, chasing that white rabbit. So no matter what you do the next year, you're always chasing again, running harder, running harder and harder. And harder around the racetrack. And that's what most agency owners do. And I think a lot of people are reflecting around that now because I've seen a lot of agency owners in the UK and in the US and around the world, they've hustled hard, they've reinvested all of the profits every year back in the agency and hired more staff, more headcount, more overheads, more operational costs, bigger offices and none of them are happy. And yes, they might have higher revenue and some may have higher profits, but they're not having a quality of life. And I think life's all around balances as well. And that's why I love the fact that you could be a solopreneur, so you could be a recruiter that starts up on their own. Really carve into a micro niche where you drill down on that location, drill down on the skill sets that you specialize in, offer a key service along with a product. There's no, I mean it's quite straightforward to do 100, 200, 300K within the first 12, 18 months of your agency. Be happy doing that and spend time with your kids, family, take your dogs for a walk when you can take the breaks of holidays that you want. That is pretty much the ultimate goal and can be the goal for most agency owners. So the, the time that I've had for personal reflections also been around meditating more. So now I do half an hour every day. I sleep a lot better. So I'm gonna do a video on the Oura ring that I use to get a better quality sleep, get more REM sleep and deep sleep and make sure I have a full eight to nine hours. And when you actually get that ring as well, you'll be surprised. Like if you spend eight hours in bed, you're only really getting six hours sleep. So most of the time when I'm say I'm getting eight, nine hours sleep, that's because I'm in bed for at least 10 hours a day. So I actually get up later in the mornings now. So I get up around about 8am, whereas I used to get up at 6, 6.30am Extra bit of sleep, a couple of meditation, I'm far more productive throughout the day. I get a lot more achieved. And even at 6, 7, 8 o' clock at night, I still feel really energetic, which is important. But also just taking these moments when I'm walking around the park. Being present is probably one of the key things. Listening a lot to Eckhart Tolle, who is quite a famous meditation guru, expert and a person that teaches stillness. So where you can actually teach teaches you how to not getting lost in your own thoughts. Actually just being still and calm in terms of your mind, that's quite important. And then yeah, I think just giving everyone the confidence watching this YouTube video, that it's not all about constantly chasing the money and chasing bigger, bigger, bigger, better. Bigger doesn't always mean better. I'd jolly have a high profit in my agency without having too much hard work rather than having high revenue. Same amount of profit, twice amount of stress. So yeah, put your comments below, let me know your thoughts.
