Good morning and happy Sunday,

Three quick questions for you to reflect on as you wrap up the week:

1. What were the major distractions that held you back from performing your best this week?

2. What decisions are you avoiding and haven’t made yet?

3. What is the single most important thing that you need to focus on next week?

This week, I had the opportunity to reconnect with one of my first mentors, Dr. John Demartini. Dr. John has been a mentor of mine since I was 21, and he’s the person who helped me understand relationships better than anyone else,starting with the relationship with myself, my parents, and my wife.

I just turned 37, and reflecting on that journey with him was a powerful experience. We sat down, had a great conversation, and recorded an incredible YouTube interview. If you’re not subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, make sure you click here and subscribe. The content I’m sharing here is highly detailed and valuable if you’re on a mission to build personal sovereignty and freedom using your business.

One of the biggest takeaways from my conversation with John was this:

“When you’re excited to wake up in the morning and serve, others are excited to wake up and serve (and pay) you.”

Take a moment and ask yourself are you still excited to wake up and serve? Because if not, there’s a reason:

• You’ve fallen out of love with your business.

• You’ve forgotten the mission behind it.

• You’re doing too much of the stuff you hate and not delegating enough.

• You’re distracted by someone or something that’s pulling your energy away.

• You don’t have a clear vision of where your business is going.

That brings me to the main topic today: How big should you grow your business?

Most entrepreneurs that run a cash business make the mistake of treating their business like an equity business. And in many cases, some equity business owners make the mistake of running their business like a cash business.

There are two types of businesses:

1. Cash Businesses – These generate strong, predictable revenue but don’t necessarily increase in value over time. They can be highly profitable, but at a certain point, complexity kills your margins.

2. Equity Businesses – These take time to build and don’t pay out much in the early years, but when they do, they have real asset value,something you can sell or that compounds over time.

The mistake? Many entrepreneurs assume that if they just keep scaling, they’ll eventually turn their business into this massive, hands-off empire. But what usually happens is they overcomplicate things, burn out, and end up making less profit than when they were smaller and leaner.

Here’s the smarter play: Use your cash business as a wealth generator, not just a career.

Make it as profitable as possible. Build your business to a level where it generates significant cash flow, sustain that for 5–7 years, and use the profits to invest in other wealth-building opportunities. That could be property, stocks, software, or even an entirely new business model that scales beyond your current business.

And don’t invest outside your business until you get it to a level of profitability and freedom that you actually want.

A beautiful sweet spot is between 1M and 2M in net profit per year. That’s where you maximize profit while keeping operations manageable. Can you go bigger? Sure. But the complexity, overhead, and operational headaches often mean your margins take a hit.

Also, remember that you can only get your business to a certain size based on market cap. If you look at the leaders in your field, go and see where they’ve taken their businesses. Don’t fall for the trap of scaling based on revenue alone, thinking you’re going to sell it.

I was at a mastermind recently with a group of entrepreneurs who were scaling their businesses to mega levels. They weren’t making much profit,they were playing the equity play with a cash business. I asked them three simple questions:

1. Have you got evidence that your business can sell?

2. What exactly are you selling?

3. Can your business run without you?

Every single one of them answered NO to at least one of those questions. They were dumbfounded.

So before you chase the idea of selling your business, make sure you have a track record of similar businesses being sold, you know exactly what you’re selling (usually IP, team, and strong recurring revenue or a valuable data list), and most importantly, your business can run without you.

If you can get a cash business to run without you, it’s an absolute dream.

^ Read that again!

As you guys know, I’m working on something really special right now outside the fitness industry. I’m taking all the principles and lessons that have allowed me to build a business that has generated between £2M and £3M in net profit per year,that’s after all expenses, working a week of 10 to 12 hours of full-on work (yes, I do work a little more, but if I were to measure it intensely, I don’t work more than 10–12 hours a week, and I don’t work Mondays).

There are businesses that do x10 the turnover i do and don’t even take that home

There’s an art and science to getting your business to this level of profitability and freedom, and that’s exactly what I’m building right now to bring to the wider market. I’ll share more with you soon when it all comes together.

For now, let me know you’re enjoying these emails – shoot me a reply if you’re up for it. I read every email I get.

Until next week.

Phil Graham