New year. Fresh head. Big opportunities. 🚀

In this episode of the Off The Tools Podcast, Wayne and Andy kick off 2026 by diving into one of the most important — and most ignored — skills in business and life:

👉 Setting real targets… and actually hitting them.

This isn’t fluffy “New Year, New Me” nonsense.
This is about visualising, planning, and executing so you don’t end up in December thinking “how did another year just disappear?”

Inside this episode:

• 🎯 Why targets beat vague “goals” every time

• 🧭 Why you need a destination before you can plan a route

• 🧠 The power of visualisation (and Wayne’s real £90,000 debt story 😳)

• 📄 Why writing things down massively increases your chance of success

• 🛠️ How tradesmen get stuck just “fighting fires” all year

• ⏳ Why lack of planning keeps you broke, stressed, and stuck

• 💷 How year-end reflection exposes pricing & profit problems

• 🏋️‍♂️ Body, Business & Balance — why all three must move together

• 🧒 Time with family, holidays, fitness, freedom — it all starts with targets

• 📆 Why now (January) is the best time to reset and raise your standards

Wayne and Andy also share their personal 2026 targets, including:

• 👨‍👦 Training Wayne’s son to become a qualified engineer

• 🔁 Growing service plans for long-term security

• 📵 Getting stricter on phone boundaries and family time

• 🏋️ Building the best physical shape of their lives

• 🥋 Andy’s jiu-jitsu, marathon training & dive instructor goals

• 🏢 Scaling their heating businesses and Off The Tools Alliance

Plus…

🎁 Wayne explains how you can get access to a free goal-setting workbook inside the Skool app to help you map out your own year.

If you want 2026 to be:

• more profitable 💷

• less stressful 😮‍💨

• more structured 🧱

• more family-friendly 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

• and actually heading somewhere instead of nowhere…

This episode is your starting line. 🏁

🎧 Hit play.
🎯 Set your targets.
🔥 Let’s make this your best year yet.

FREE ACCESS TO SKOOL COMMUNITY APP

Want to scale your trade business… but keep telling yourself “I make more on my own”?
This episode is going to blow that story to pieces. 💣

Wayne and Andy dive into the real, practical side of scaling a trades business — not the Instagram version. We’re talking engineers, office staff, wages, vans, tools, hidden costs, pricing, risk and mindset… all the stuff most lads avoid until it bites them.

Recorded in early December 2025 (while Wayne’s freezing down south and Andy’s even colder up north ❄️😂), this one goes deep on what it actually takes to grow beyond “just you in a van”.

Inside this episode:

• 🔧 Why “I make the same money on my own” = a pricing & setup problem

• 📊 The real cost of putting an engineer on the road (and why it’s NOT just their wage)

• 💷 Salary vs true cost — PAYE, pension, van, tools, insurance, tyres, breakdowns, sick days & more

• 🧮 Why you MUST factor in “phantom costs” (repairs, fuck-ups, training days, overruns)

• 💣 How lads end up turning over £1m and earning less than a good employed engineer

• 💰 Why an engineer should be a profit centre, not just “keeping customers happy”

• 🪣 The “two buckets” analogy — why you can’t catch more water with one bucket

• 🧱 Foundations first: pricing, systems, software, back-end support… THEN scaling

• 🧠 Mindset: fear of risk, bad past experiences, and why most owners stay stuck small

• 🔄 Why the first hire is the hardest — and why every one after gets easier

• 🏗️ What a real business looks like vs just being self-employed

• 🧓 Future you: why staying solo gives you nothing to sell or pass on at retirement

Plus:

• Wayne breaks down why your van, tools and gear MUST be priced into your hourly rate (not paid for out of your back pocket)

• Andy explains why most horror stories about staff come from lads who were undercharging in the first place

• They both hammer home why scaling done properly = more profit, more security, more options — not just more stress

If you:

• feel capped out and knackered 😮‍💨

• are scared to take on your first engineer 😬

• have tried staff before and “it didn’t work” ❌

• or want a business you can sell or step back from one day 🏡…

…you need to listen to this.

Sort your numbers.
Build the foundations.
Then scale properly.

💬 Got questions about pricing, hiring, or using the Off The Tools Pricing Calculator?
Hit up Wayne at wayne@offthetools.co.uk or Andy at andy@offthetools.co.uk, or jump into the Off The Tools / Plum Chat Facebook groups and get involved. 🦁🔥

In this episode, Wayne and Andy tackle a brutally honest topic most tradesmen don’t want to hear:

👉 If you’re still answering your own phone… you’re holding your business back.
Full stop. End of.

This week’s conversation dives deep into why taking calls yourself destroys productivity, kills your pricing confidence, and keeps you trapped as the “local guy who does everything” instead of a real business owner.

Inside this episode:

• 📵 Why answering your own phone instantly caps your growth

• 💁‍♀️ Why women outperform men in admin, customer service & call handling (stats don’t lie)

• 🧠 The emotional bias that makes YOU terrible at quoting — and why office staff fix it

• 💼 How a female voice on the phone elevates your brand, reputation, and perceived value

• 🔧 The difference between a tradesman mindset and a business owner mindset

• 🕒 How many hours you’re wasting every week flicking between jobs and admin

• 🤯 The hidden lost revenue when you miss calls or call customers back “later”

• 📈 Why outsourcing your calls isn’t a cost — it’s one of the best investments you can make

• 🧩 Why you MUST have a job management system before getting admin support

• 🔥 The real reason customers won’t pay your new prices… and how admin staff fix it

• ☎️ How missed calls sabotage every pound you spend on marketing (listen to last week’s episode!)

This is a big wake-up call for tradesmen who:

• want to charge more 💷

• want to appear more professional 🧑‍💼

• want to scale a real business 🚀

• want more time back with their family ❤️

• want to stop being chained to the phone like a 24/7 emergency hotline ☎️🔥

If you want less stress, higher profits, and a business that grows without you doing everything…

Get off the phone.
Get someone in the office.
Grow like a real business.

💬 Got questions about hiring, systems, or call handling?
Drop Wayne or Andy a message or jump into the Off The Tools community on Facebook. 🦁🔥