Welcome to a fresh pour of Lone Wolf Unleashed! I’m Mike, and in today’s episode, we’re brewing up some hard truths about running a solo business—and why it’s more like making great coffee than you think.

Forget about the fancy beans, shiny CRMs, or the latest AI hype.

The secret to a consistently strong business (and coffee) isn’t what everyone sees on the surface.

It’s the unsexy, behind-the-scenes prep—the cleaning, the patience, the discipline—that makes all the difference.

Today, I’ll show you why skipping the 'boring stuff' leads to bitter results, and how mastering your foundational processes—think cleaning your machine, getting your ratios right, and not rushing the ‘bloom’—can free up your afternoons without sacrificing a cent.

Plus, you’ll get a simple, practical maintenance checklist you can use right away to strip down admin and keep things running smooth. Scroll for the link to that freebie.

Get this episode's free download:

http://lonewolfunleashed.com/coffee

00:00 "Business Brew Basics"

04:24 "Consistency in Measurement & Method"

09:18 "Simple Business Maintenance Guide"

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Right. Coffee. Everyone's got opinions about coffee.

Single origin, this oat milk, that artisanal bullshit

that costs more than your lunch. But here's the thing. Good

coffee isn't about fancy beans or the Instagram worthy setup. It's about

doing the boring stuff nobody talks about. And your business. It's

the same deal.

Welcome to Lone Wolf Unleashed. I'm your host, Mike, and today we're talking about

why your business is exactly like coffee. And why most of you

are brewing burnt swill when you could be pulling perfect shots.

You know what separates good coffee from brand water most people drink? It's

not the machine. It's not even the beans. It's the stuff that

happens before you even turn the damn thing on. Same with your

business. Everyone sees the fancy website,

the polished Instagram posts, the effortless client work. Nobody

sees you at 11pm cleaning out your email filters

or updating your invoicing templates. But that's where the magic

happens. Let's start with espresso. You want a

good shot? Your puck prep better be perfect.

Grind, consistency, dose, weight level, distribution,

tamp, pressure. Miss any of these, your shot is

cooked. Might taste fine to the untrained palate, but you'll know

it's crap.

Your business systems work the same way. That client intake process you've

been meaning to document, that's your grind, consistency. Your

pricing structure, that's mostly in your head. That's uneven

distribution. Your follow up process, that depends on your mood.

That's inconsistent tan pressure. And you have the fanciest CRM in the

world. But your foundation's wonky. Everything that comes out

will taste bitter. Here's what coffee snobs won't tell you.

Even the most expensive machine makes crap coffee. If you don't clean

it all. Grounds clog up the group head. Mineral buildup affects

temperature. Your perfect shop you pulled yesterday can't happen if

today's machine is dirty. When's the last time you cleaned

your business machine? I'm talking about the unglamorous stuff.

Updating your client files, backing up your data,

checking your recurring payments for subscriptions you forgot about. Most

solo operators are running their business on a machine that hasn't been properly

maintained in months. Then they wonder why everything feels harder than it

should. Every few months you need to descale,

strip everything back. Run vinegar through the system. It takes

time. It's tedious. Your machine's out of action for hours.

But skip it. Your machine dies a slow

death. Temperature goes haywire. Pressure drops. Eventually you're

pouring expensive disappointment. Your business needs

descaling too. That means auditing everything. Every

process, every tool, every reoccurring task. What's actually

necessary, what's just build up from decision you made three years

ago. Most of you are afraid to just descale. Most of you are

afraid to descale because you think you need everything running all the time.

But here's the truth. A day of downtime for proper maintenance saves you weeks

of brewing crap. Customer outcomes. Maybe espresso isn't

your thing. That's fair enough. I have a V60, a Chemex for pour

over. I have an aeropress. There are heaps of different methods, but the same principle.

Preparation matters more than equipment. Your

grind size, your water temperature, your pour technique, your timing.

If you skip the prep, the best beans tastes like

disappointment. This is the path for solo operators who don't need

the complex setup. You want quality without complexity.

Focus on the fundamentals. Client communication,

delivery standards, payment processes, boundaries,

discipline. Do these things well and you'll outperform most

operations running complex systems they don't understand. Coffee has

ratios. So there's a 1 to 15 ratio typically for

pour over, and a 1 to 2 ratio for espresso.

Golden ratios that pros swear by.

What ratios do you as a solar operator swear by? Your

business has ratios too. Time spent on client work vs

admin, revenue per hour, client acquisition cost,

lifetime value. Most solar operators eyeball everything

feels about right becomes your standard. And then you wonder why some months

you're drowning and others you're just scraping by. Start measuring.

Not obsessively, just consistently track what

matters, ignore what doesn't.

Pour over coffee has a step called blooming. We need to

do like a 40 second bloom, which means I need to pour a little

bit of and wet all this coffee grounds

and then I'm going to give it a little bit of a wiggle.

It's when you prepare the grounds and you have a little well

in a filter and you wet the grounds and you need to

do it really consistently and evenly across all the grounds.

And then you wait 30 seconds and you just watch the coffee come

up. It's all the CO2 escaping. If you skip

the bloom, your extraction will be uneven and the coffee will

taste flat. Most business owners hate the bloom.

They don't want to wait. They want to pour everything in

at once. They want to get it done, they want to move on. But they're

sacrificing results. And the best results come from

patience. You don't want to have that Client who's not ready to buy yet.

Let them bloom, that project that needs thinking time. Let it

bloom, that process of improvement that requires slowing down. First

it's bloom time, so then you have the part. Everyone sees

you've done everything right. You've cleaned the machine, you've got the ratios right, you've got

a good bloom. This bit's almost automatic. Steady

circles, consistent speed. Trust the process,

your client delivery, your sales calls, your project execution. This is your

pour. This is everything the client sees. By the time you

get here, the outcome is almost already decided.

Stop building the plane as you fly it. If you screw up the

preparation, no amount of fancy pouring is going to save you.

So the last thing is quality control. So water

quality matters more than most people think. When it comes to brewing coffee,

the best beans in the world taste like ass if your water is

not right. So your business water is your

energy, your focus, your decision making capability and your capacity.

Running on three hours of sleep and five cups of yesterday's disappointment,

your water is contaminated. Everything you produce tastes off,

even when your systems are perfect. And your beans, your core skills,

your unique value, they matter too. But even average beans

make decent coffee with good preparation and clean water. So here's what

pisses me off about business advice. Everyone wants to talk

about beans. The premium this, the artisanal that.

The fancy equipment you need to buy, you need a CRM, you need technology,

you need AI. But nobody is talking about the boring

stuff. The cleaning, the ratios, the

patience, the discipline. So you've got solo

operators spending thousands on new software, new courses, new

systems. Meanwhile, their business machine hasn't been properly

maintained in years. They're trying to pull perfect shots

on a dirty machine with inconsistent prep and wondering why

everything tastes bitter. Clean your damn

machine first. Document your processes.

Update your templates. Check your recurring expenses.

Audit your time allocation. It's not sexy,

it won't get you LinkedIn likes. But it's the difference between good

coffee and brown disappointment. So here's a practical takeaway.

This is this week's homework, and it's simple. Pick one

business process that feels inconsistent. Could be client onboarding,

project delivery, invoicing, whatever's been giving you uneven results

lately. I want you to document it every step,

from start to finish. How long does each part take?

Note where the things go wrong. This is your puck

preparation. Get it consistent first and then you can

optimize. Don't buy new equipment. This is not a time

to be buying new software systems and things like that. Don't look for

shortcuts. Just clean your existing machine

and perfect your preparation. Good coffee and

good business starts with the stuff nobody

sees. And that's it for this week's Lone Wolf Unleashed.

If this resonated, share it with some other solo operator who's tired of

brewing disappointment. Now, I know some of you are thinking, yeah, mates,

maintenance sounds great in theory, but where do I actually start? And that

is a fair question. So I put together something for you. It's the Business

Machine Maintenance Checklist. It's not rocket science, just the

boring stuff that keeps your solo operation running smoothly instead of grinding to a

halt. Daily tasks that take five minutes, weekly cleanup that

saves Monday headaches, and monthly cleans that prevent

quarterly disasters. Think of it like your business equipment

manual, the stuff coffee machine manufacturers putting in the manual

that nobody reads until their expensive machine starts making

expensive disappointment. No theory, no motivational

waffle, just maintenance schedule your business actually needs.

You can grab it@lonewolf Unleashed.com Coffee

it's free, obviously, because charging for a maintenance checklist would be like

charging extra for an instruction manual. Until next week, keep

your machine clean and your shots consistent.