Losing a million (because I was an idiot).

I was exceptionally lucky in my first real year of consulting.
I say “real” because it was the first year I took my business seriously.

A few big companies gave me a chance. Fortunately, I delivered on my promise.

My first month generated 7K in revenue.

I doubled that in my second month.
On average, I was making between 8K and 15K a month.

Considering I had no staff, office or equipment, it was pure profit, minus VAT and corporation tax.

The problem?
It was me.

I was finally out of the pain of making money. It became normal to invoice 3K+ every week.

I went from near bankruptcy to making more money than I could spend.

In my mind, I was making a huge amount of money.

But truth be told, I wasn’t successful.
Nothing fails like a little bit of success.

I was in my first chapter of business. I was lucky that clients trusted me and paid well to help them.
I was in a strong position to build my reputation, keep my costs low and, most importantly, keep winning new clients.

Instead, I moved to an expensive home, rented expensive cars and stopped thinking about taking on new clients entirely.

I even hired my best friend and matched his salary from his previous job, all because I was an entrepreneur now, not a mere consultant.

It’s easy to look from the outside and say, “Pete, you weren’t an entrepreneur. You were an idiot.”

And you’d be right.

It’s easy to look from the outside and judge.

What I haven’t shared with you is the immense pressure I was putting myself under to perform.

Clients trusted me to help transform their sales. I was being flown all over the world. And mostly, I had never made this kind of money before.

Yeah, I was stressed.

Mostly though, I didn’t feel I deserved this level of success.

I grew up in a loving family. I don’t have a council estate or big childhood trauma story.

But whatever I did never felt good enough because I never felt good enough.

It’s a fascinating psychology. It’s also why most lottery winners are broke again within two years of their big win, and why so many people sabotage loving relationships or only go for toxic partners.

Pain, struggle and feeling like a loser become familiar.
Abundance, fulfilment and money in the bank are strangers.
Worse, they’re not who we believe we are.

No matter how much we want success, freedom and abundance, we will always return to who we believe we are on the deepest level.

My dad owned a music shop for 20+ years. During that time, he had a brilliant staff member called Jacob. Not his actual name.

Jacob was never late. He was fantastic with customers, and he never once let my dad down.

His only complaint?
He never had any money.

I was about 12 at the time, but I said to my dad:
“Jacob does an amazing job for you, so why don’t you pay him double and help solve his money problems?”

In my 12-year-old wisdom, I figured it was a good solution and would keep Jacob loyal for years.

My dad gave me an unorthodox answer.
“Son, I can pay Jacob 100K a year and he’ll still be broke because he’s broke in his mind.”

That made zero sense to me at the time.

All these years later, I’m grateful my dad shared it with me.

In case you’re wondering, Jacob stayed loyal until my dad closed the business and retired in 2007.

And yes, he always complained that he didn’t have enough money, despite my dad paying him well above the average wage for a shop assistant in a music shop.

I’m not excusing the decisions I made in my early consulting days. But I can see clearly now that the perceived pressure of success was far greater than the actual success.

In reality, my clients were happy, and I loved helping them.

In my mind, I was still a kid trying to make it in life.

I never shifted out of that identity, so I eased the pain with a lifestyle I couldn’t afford and quickly returned to what was familiar: pain, frustration and struggle.

I created the perfect storm.

Not feeling good enough�Increasing my outgoings�No longer marketing or taking on new clients

Losing one million.

Speaking of my dad, he sat calmly with me and said:
“Son, I don’t understand how you have so much debt. You make far more than I ever made.”
I brushed him off.
“Well, it’s a different generation now. We have things much tougher.”

But he was right.

I was my own problem.

The perfect storm I’d created was imploding my entire life faster than the tornado destroyed Oklahoma in the movie Twister.

I was taking out loans to cover excessive spending.
I was drinking a bottle of red wine every night, or every two or three nights.
I took loans to cover the loans I couldn’t pay back.

Meanwhile, I was people-pleasing like never before.

Remember my “best friend” who now worked for me?

He decided he needed to move back home, five hours away, and would need an office to work from.

I ended up paying for an office in a village I’d never heard of on the other side of the country.

Several months after he left the business, I was still paying rent. The only way to cancel the contract was to hire a van and make the very long drive to this random village.

The craziest part?

The receptionist said she’d never seen my friend show up once. She wondered why I’d kept paying rent for so many months.

Despite never going to work, he still managed to leave several bags of rubbish in the office.

More than 10 years later, the pungent smell still hits me the same way it did when I opened the office door.

The icing on the cake?

As a thank you, my friend decided I owed him money and took me to small claims court over 1K.

I don’t blame him. I wasn’t the victim in this story.

I was operating from survival mixed with overconfidence.

The more money I made, the more it amplified my self-sabotage, people-pleasing and overspending.

All I had to do was step back, slow down and trust myself.

Most people believe money will solve all their problems until they start making money.

Unresolved trauma is a bitch.
Whatever problems you have at 1K a month can multiply at 10K a month.

Contrary to what most people believe, money doesn’t change you. It amplifies who you already are, the good and the ugly.

I’m not against making money. Make as much as you humanly can in this lifetime.
I’m also not a financial expert and will never claim to be.

From personal experience, I know there’s a high probability that you want to make more money.

My best advice is to remember who you are in the process and stay true to yourself on the deepest level.

The funny thing is, you likely don’t need to become anyone different.

What led to my self-sabotage was insecurity, survival mode and ego. It wasn’t the real me.

Deep down, most of my frustration came from not being me. The universe, or God, was showing me I was on the wrong path through everything I’m sharing with you today.

Take a breath. Ask where your decisions are coming from.

The real you is waiting to come to life. It takes a little bravery in a world that encourages ego, material gain and insecurity.
AKA, trust you.

So, how does all of this add up to losing 1M?

Before I share, I’m fully aware that what I’m disclosing may change your perception of me.

Perhaps you’ll feel I’m not the guy to introduce you to the world of consulting.

Maybe you believe I haven’t got my shit together.

Honestly, I used to care what people thought.
Today, I only care about the truth.

If reading this changes your view of me, my day stays exactly the same.
I’ve put myself through far worse than worrying about what other people think.

I’m here for total honesty and the full picture.

If my words help one person avoid making the same mistakes as me, my work has been worthwhile.

Back to losing a million.

The quick maths easily adds up to 1M+.

I’ve taken out and paid back well over 500K in bad debt, loans and credit cards, all in the name of building my business.

I sabotaged several brilliant client relationships in the early days. Not because of the level of my work, but because I was a mess in my own head.

One relationship was with a recruitment company that gave me a huge opportunity in year one of my business.

They had offices all over the UK, and I quickly built a great reputation across the brand.

They paid well and on time. Most importantly, they were super easy to work with.

In the background, I was secretly stressed about my entire business for no reason other than not feeling I deserved success.

That led to an inflated ego, trying to compensate for my lack of self-esteem.

At the end of the year, I emailed the HR director to say I was in more demand than ever and would be doubling my prices.

I think I’d attended a motivational seminar the weekend before. The core message was “charge your worth”.

There were anecdotal stories about the struggling coach who got angry, multiplied their prices by 10 and became a millionaire.

Those stories sound great on the surface, but seldom have any truth behind them. Even more seldom do they translate to reality.
As you can imagine, the recruitment company wasn’t impressed.

They sent a harsh, one-line email that read something like:

“Thank you for your consulting this year. Our teams have appreciated you. We will not be renewing for any further work with you. We wish you the best with your business.”

…Idiot.

Me, not them.

Out of curiosity, I ran a report today on my invoicing software.

The recruitment company had paid me 28K during those 12 months.

Imagine losing a 28K client in your first year because you’re an idiot.

I have total certainty they would have continued for many years if my ego hadn’t emailed them with my “price increase”.

I could keep listing the things that led to losing 1M, or far more.

But I think we’ve laid it on thick enough.

Don’t be an idiot like me.