180K GONE.

If you've ever built something, loved it, lost control of it — this book is for you.

180K GONE. is the honest account of how a working life — busy, building, doing everything right on paper — quietly came apart. It is written for anyone who has ever poured themselves into something and watched the numbers, the people, or the dream slip out from under them.

You do not need to own a business to read this book. You need to have lived a version of it.

Thirteen chapters. True figures. No consultant-deck language. No redemption arc manufactured for the last page. The loss was £180,000. It happened across bad hires, a VAT threshold that hit like a wall, burnout that got dressed up as dedication, and one very specific moment where £96,000 was turned down because it felt wrong to say yes. These are not hypotheticals. They are the receipts.

What the book covers:

How it starts. Not with a catastrophe. With small decisions that individually make sense. Chapter 1 sets the scene: a life that looks like it's working, on paper.

The £90K VAT trap. The chapter that most readers say nobody warned them about. What the threshold actually does once you cross it — and why crossing it is not the win it looks like from the outside.

Banking 800 clients in a year. The survival period. What maximum capacity feels like from the inside. What it costs, quietly.

Said no to £96,000. A decision that looked like self-sabotage from every external angle. The book explains the reasoning. You can judge for yourself.

Two chairs, one stylist (£3K/week). The stripped-back model that worked. Late. But it worked.

This is not a how-to manual. There is no five-step framework. It is a specific, honest account with real numbers attached, written for anyone who has run something, worked inside something, loved something, nearly broken it — and needed to know they were not the only one.

Who 180K GONE. is for:

- Anyone who has ever felt seen by a story about burnout, blind optimism, or quietly carrying too much.

- Anyone working inside a small business, a salon, a service industry, a creative life, a side hustle, a household.

- Anyone who has watched a parent, partner, friend or boss live this version of it.

- Anyone who has been managed badly, or has managed badly, and is honest enough to want to understand why.

- Anyone who has looked at their own life or a set of accounts and genuinely not understood how it got here.

- Anyone who loved Shoe Dog, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Open, or any honest book about what something really costs.

It is for the grafters, the late nights, the ones holding it together for everyone else. It is for the people who don't see themselves in glossy success stories — because their life looks nothing like one.

Format: PDF. Reads on any device — phone, tablet, laptop, Kindle via the Kindle app. Instant download on purchase. No DRM.

Author: GLEN BROPHY. 23-year salon owner. Business management degree. Real loss. Hard-won truth.

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€7.99. Instant download. No subscription required.