A 2nd Chance

Helping 10,000 dogs

Just over a year ago I spent 3 days in ICU and at times during that stay I thought I was going to die. I’m not sure if that was just a panic induced exaggeration but I guess they don’t keep you there for 3 days unless it is pretty serious.

It’s fair to say that my life flashed before my eyes.

Besides family and loved ones I thought about traveling the world for 10 years as a chef. About building and selling businesses. Writing a book. Media appearances. Awards. All that sort of stuff that you think is important and that I spent so long working towards. It turns out when push came to shove that those things meant fuck all to me.

Apart from memories of some of the great people I worked with and travel everything else faded away into nothingness. It turns out that trying to make money, selling advertising or having your photo taken just aren’t as satisfying long term as you might hope. Given a 2nd chance I vowed I would do it differently next time…

My Year Off

I was extremely lucky that I’ve been able to take a year off since then. Time to focus on myself and my rehabilitation in every sense of the word. Recovery was very slow. After spending a quarter of a century of working all the hours in the day my brain was fried.

I’ve dabbled in things here and there but for the most part I’ve been thinking about a plan for my life. None of this was thought out in a day or even a week or a month. It involved countless long walks, staring into sunsets looking for answers and blank pieces of paper.

During that time I found myself coming back to the great Steve Jobs commencement speech featuring this quote…

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Although it has taken a full year of reflection to figure it out what is truly important to me I finally got there…Dogs.

The Buzz Of A Dog - Creating My Dream Life

When I see a dog my whole body shoots with excitement. I’ll cross the road or park up my scooter just to say hello. Scroll through the pictures on my phone and every second one is a puppy. My own dog Snoop is like my shadow and I’m at my happiest with him on the beach. Dogs are my life.

I came to a conclusion that I could package up all the things I love (business, content, travel, friends, community) and have dogs at the centre of that lifestyle. If I was already naked and had no fear what would I do?

10,000 Dogs

I want to work towards a goal of helping 10,000 dogs every month.

Why that number? I’d love to say there is some scientific well thought out reason for it but there isn’t. It just happens to be a big number that I can understand (10,000 daily steps, 10km run etc) and one that although terrifyingly big I still think it is achievable. Within the realms of possibility.

I want to get to a place where I can look after that amount of dogs on a monthly basis. Giving them a better life, a better chance or even saving them from death or illness.

It will probably take me a decade to get there or even the rest of my life but that is my North Star that will guide me from here on in.

So What Does This Involve?

In short it involves every waking moment for the the rest of my life. Everything I will do will be tied back to how I can use my time to help more dogs with the overarching strategy of helping 10,000 per month. That is broken into 3 main areas of focus..

1. My Lifestyle

I always thought it would be best to start a charity in later years. When I had nothing left to do personally or professionally but it has dawned on me that isn’t good enough. Why not start helping now? Dogs need help immediately so by starting small and being hands on myself I get to make a difference. Thats starts with…

• Feeding dogs

• Learning more about how I can help dogs beyond just feeding them

From the small amount of helping dogs I have done already I’ve made one huge realisation. You aren’t just helping the dogs but you are helping yourself. I’ve never felt as content or slept as well knowing I’ve helped some dogs that day.

2. Content & Community

• The things I am passionate about and I think good at

• I’ll be able to help more dogs through storytelling

• I’ll be able to engage with partners, funding and other useful levers via content

• I can’t help 10,000 dogs alone so I’ll need to scale this up and content is a wonderful way to help me do that

The first part of content is this newsletter. I’ll share it twice a week and it will feature my ideas on community building, content, personal fulfilment, remote working as well as progress reports on the 10,000 dogs target.

3. An Online And A Real World Business

Perhaps the hardest debate in my head was about working. Did I have the energy and passion to do so again? Was I well enough? How hands on would I be? Where would it be located? There were 100s of questions and I didn’t really have the answers to until recently…

• I’ll build an international online dog focused business. This will be global

• I’ll build a dog focused business on the ground in Thailand (still at the ideation stage).

• The aim will be to help support more dogs using these businesses

I don’t like the idea of only building a charity and doing it that way is not for me. I think I can create compelling businesses to support my ultimate goals of helping more dogs. Creating a system that makes money and then doing good with that money by having more resources gets me excited.

A 2nd Chance

Ultimately I’ll be in a hospital bed again one day thinking about my life. The next time I am in that position I want to be thinking about the 10,000s of dogs I have helped. The structures I have put in place for it to continue long after I am gone. The people who came on the journey with me who have similar passions. The dogs I met along the way.

For now I need to look at logistics, funding, business models, research and everything else I will need to make this happen. Most importantly though I’ll be up at 7am tomorrow buying a big bag of food to go feed the first 10 or so dogs that need it. Only 9,990 to go each month after that :)

It will be one hell of a journey and if you are a dog lover or just want to read a story about 2nd chances I’d love it if you came along with me as I share it here and on Instagram and Twitter. I promise it won’t be dull and there will be lots of lovely puppy photos along the way.

N

P.S Apologies for the poor spelling and grammar in this post but I just wrote it as I was thinking it. I will have everything properly edited in future :)

P.P.S I asked some of you over a year ago for feedback via email about Snoop’s Bucket list. That didn’t happen but it was part of the genesis of this plan. Just hit unsubscribe below if this isn’t relevant!