You Get More Of What You Focus On...

There’s a phrase that I really like, which is: ‘You get more of what you focus on’.

It’s unequivocally true and what I find especially interesting is that we can think that we’re focusing on one aspect of our lives / ventures but really our focus is a little skewed and, subsequently, not bringing us the results that we think we’re aiming for.

That’s what I realised about my work running UKWT recently.  My focus has been 100% on ‘getting as many wildlife casualties & orphans as we can to a fair go at a second chance’.  This has involved making sure that I really knew where I could take animals to, for them to benefit from high welfare medical & rehabilitative care - in a government unregulated wildlife rescue industry - and then extending our reach & services as much as I could, across the UK, to say ‘yes’ to helping as many animals as possible.

But funding has consistently been something that UKWT has struggled with and I was finding it frustrating as, in my mind, I was doing all that I could to set UKWT up for success.  I only realised yesterday that almost ALL of my focus has been on helping as much as we could but almost NONE of my focus has been set on reliably bringing in the funds that we need to operate smoothly.  [What I mean by that is that, while our transport services have run mostly very smoothly, the funding of all our work - including funding the Wildlife Care Badge - has been a real ‘hand to mouth’ existence, where I am repeatedly clawing in relatively small amounts to just about cover our costs and not thinking much more about it, because there was always a new demand for our UKWT services that I was distracted by & more intent on fulfilling.  Demand for our services has exploded SO much this year, that this has led to being behind on payments and having to fundraise for payments that were overdue].

I was focusing almost all of my efforts on ‘getting animals to emergency care’ so of course what I was getting in return was MORE demand to help even more animals to emergency care.  But I wasn’t giving the same necessary attention to setting up our funding sources to grow in accordance with our increased transport services.

SO, CLEARLY THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE…  I need to dedicate a lot more of my attention on making sure that we have a financial buffer that we can rely on - so that pop up veterinary costs & fuel costs can be effortlessly funded - and I need to make sure that we have a reliable £3390 a month, at least, coming in, to fund our running costs, my salary - constant Driver Recruitment Adverts, to keep our Driver Database healthy & growing - and the afore mentioned veterinary & fuel costs, without my constant scrambling to keep us funded.

So that’s what I am going to do this winter (or I am going to get as close as I can).  Once this is in place, I can keep working hard to have us running smoothly, and as we grow - which we must, as there is a BIG nationwide transport gap to fill - I will make sure that I am growing our funding alongside it in the future.