298. How a Physicist Built a Billion-Dollar Business Without Hustle Culture—Trevor G. Blake

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Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey.
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I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky franchise team.
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And as a leader in your company, you're probably familiar with this idea of hustle culture in business.
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What if that hustle culture was a myth?
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Something that has yet to be proven?
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Well, our guest today is Trevor Blake, who shares with us how he's achieved success with balance and finding a different way of working outside of this hustle culture mindset.
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Now, Trevor G.
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Blake is a seasoned entrepreneur, best-selling author, and advisor known for building companies that thrive and exit successfully.
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He's had three exits of over$100 million each.
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He proves that success doesn't require hustle culture.
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His approach centers on alignment, vision, and energy mastery instead of burnout.
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Starting his first company with only a laptop, he went on to build multiple nine-figure businesses in the biotech and health sectors, all without employees' offices or unnecessary stress.
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As the author of the New York Times bestseller, Three Simple Steps, Trevor is a leading voice in entrepreneurial mindset and energy management.
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His work empowers founders and professionals to achieve exceptional success while maintaining balance and clarity.
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You're going to love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.
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Trevor George Blake, but people know me as Trevor G.
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Blake.
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So they can find me on uh the website, TrevorG Blake.com.
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And I am a serial entrepreneur, so I don't really believe in fancy titles.
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I always think the smaller the company, the bigger the badge.
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So I've had seven companies and uh I've been the founder CEO of all of those, if you want the particular titles, but I think of myself more as a fixer than an entrepreneur.
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I think that's a great starting point.
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So you think of yourself as a fixer as opposed to an entrepreneur.
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So let's unpack that a little bit.
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What do you mean by that?
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Well, I haven't met many successful entrepreneurs who actually set out to be that.
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I know it's a it's a cool thing these days.
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I people want to be an entrepreneur.
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But for me, I I think the winning ideas always come from something we want to fix.
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So we walk around the world and we say, I wish that was different, or I wish there was such a solution for this or that.
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And oftentimes we look for it, we don't find it.
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And typically we'll say, you know what?
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I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is and I'm gonna fix it myself.
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And that's been how all seven companies have been my desire to fix something.
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And in every situation, and I'm sure your your viewers and listeners can feel what I'm about to say, I felt completely unqualified, undefined.
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You know, it's like, what am I doing?
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I must be crazy.
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But I said about doing it anyway.
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And I think one thing we have as entrepreneurs is the ability to figure it out.
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And we do that, we end up doing that.
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And when we get it right, it's a wonderful thing, and we don't always get it right, but when we get it right, it feels fantastic.
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I think that's a great description.
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And yeah, for those that kind of make it through that initial push, you survive and all of a sudden you start thriving.
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And one of the things with your success in the different businesses that you've started and grown is talking about this idea of succeeding without burnout.
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You know, succeeding to me is a topic I find very valuable.
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I'd be curious, I'd love for you to share how you've been able to do that and some of the things you've found to work for you.
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Yeah, I mean, great question.
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And so I come at it from perhaps a slightly different perspective than many people because I'm a scientist by education.
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I'm a physicist.
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And so I'm always fascinated with how and why things work.
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And what I've learned over the years is that as popular as it as it is, the hustle culture has no scientific support.
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But the sort of more this sounds woo-woo, but you'll I think you'll understand the more, the less we try, the more we let go.
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There's scientific evidence and neuroscience behind the power of that.
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And I learned that in the corporate world because I worked for people who wanted just to crush the day, you know, to make 20 sales calls instead of five good ones or to, you know, to sit on the phone for 10 hours thinking that's going to be successful.
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And also held me as I went further up the totem pole and became, you know, the big fancy title, the big badge, holding me in meeting rooms for hour after hour after hour, talking about nonsense that had nothing to do with expansion or product upgrade or customer satisfaction, and had everything to do with how do we make ourselves more satisfied and more entitled.
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So when I started as an entrepreneur, and I was 43 before I started my first company.
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So when I first when I started as this quote unquote entrepreneur, I was determined not to fall into that trap.
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And the beautiful thing about, I'm sure many people associate with this, starting on your own is that there's no one to blame, and there's also no one going to praise you.
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And the book kind of stops, stops here at this point, and you think, okay, this money's coming out of my pocket now.
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Why would I spend it wasting all of this time on a Monday update meeting and a Friday how do we do meeting and all this and performance and appraisal conversations?
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You know, you just basically get on with it.
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A guy called George Rothman, who's no longer with us, unfortunately, he built Amgen from zero pretty much to 60 billion.
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And then he built the company that invented Psyalis and they sold it to Eli Lilly for 26 billion, I think.
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When I met him for the first time, he was in his 70s, and and I was waxing lyrical about this business plan I had.
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And he said, Trevor, the secret is not to figure it out.
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The secret is to just start.
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And once you start, you'll realize that you're in a different business than the one you thought you were going to be in, and off you go in that direction.
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And then you realize there's something else there you'd never have seen if you hadn't been in the business that you go in that direction.
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And he said, and that's how you spend your time.
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You don't spend your time in meeting rooms trying to figure it all out.
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And I took that to heart and it's been a blessing to me.
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So when I started my first company, I went with what I call the hub model, which is by basically no employees.
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I've I've in all seven companies, I've never hired a single employee, which people find surprising.
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But the reason I've done that is I decided I didn't want to spend all my hours training people or holding hands or, you know, have negotiations over an extra 10% salary or something like that.
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I wanted to focus on getting the job done.
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And I find with vendors and contractors, they're already prepared.
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They already know what they're doing.
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And they, you know, you give them a contract, they go get the job done.
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You decide whether you like playing in the sand together, so you may or may not renew the contract.
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It's a it's a much less stressful way, I find, to build a business quickly.
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And that's the key thing for me, Tom, because we live in a world where get big fast is the way to succeed.
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We don't live in a world anymore, I don't think, anyway.
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All the companies that are in the good to great and and uh built to last, they're pretty much going out of business every week.
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And reason being they're too slow to adapt, they they're too their middle management's is bloated, and it's hard to compete in a fast-paced world.
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So I think the hub model, if people are interested, I I do have a couple of books.
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One that would make even a successful entrepreneur would, I think, like to free up some time in their life by having other people do the work for them.
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And so I have a book called Secrets to a Successful Startup.
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It's a New York Times bestseller.
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And even though it's about the startup world, it talks to tenured entrepreneurs about think about using the hub model more than the hierarchical employee model.
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Because what you'll get out of it is you'll be able to spend time at home with your dogs or down the or or or just time being human again and get the success with balance right.
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Uh, the hustle culture has no foundation at all.
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That's very interesting.
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And I find it interesting that you knew about this and stayed focused on this idea of trying to avoid the hustle culture.
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And let's be frank, it's easy to buy into it and to get absorbed or consumed by that as you start a business and start growing a business and going through it.
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And as you were expanding into and growing through some of this, it made me think for this hub structure that you're talking about with the different businesses you've grown.
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That's not the typical transition or starting point that you would go with, is to maybe think of this hub structure.
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You might say, okay, well, I get going, and then maybe I'll hire an operations person or a technician to help with this thing or hire an admin to help support here.
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You've grown businesses, and we're not talking, you know, small enterprises of a few hundred thousand dollars.
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We're talking a few hundred million dollars of companies and things that you've helped grow.
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Yeah, actually, actually, one of my companies right now, Neo V Oncology, is 1.2 billion.
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It's important to talk the numbers because we do get, I think when we start out, we can be quite fooled into thinking too small.
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In the get big fast culture, you you really want people who immediately hit the ground running.
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I know it's a horrible uh cliche, but you really do need that.
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And what I felt that I needed as the sole proprietor of the entrepreneur, if you like, was the ability to focus on expansion and marketing and not on all the other minutiae.
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And I'm good at the other minutiae.
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I built a whole corporate career out of it.
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So it's an easy trap to fall into, and that causes burnout.
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And so I wanted to be able to focus constantly on what's next, what's next, what's next.
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It's worked really well.
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I mean, good, you know, real-life examples are important.
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So my first company, like I say, I started with, you know, no idea where I was going or what I was doing and and and uh no money to to build anything working out of home.
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It went from zero and I sold it for 105.5 million after just five and a half years.
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The number is really important because it's not an attaboy profile and it's not showing off.
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It's that to let people understand that these things are possible if you get it right early on.
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And if you didn't get it right at the start, you have time to get it right now so that you can align yourself to the way the world works now, which is basically you can go from zero to a hundred million in just a few years.
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Probably today, people would say, wow, five years?
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What took you so long?
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But you know, when I was 43, it was unheard of.
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We still had dial-up internet.
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And so things were a little slower in those days.
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Things like uh near VR oncology, you know, from it's a research and development company, you know, from zero to 1.2 billion has taken a bit longer because of the nature of the company we've been, but it's still been the same structure I've used.
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I've still only hired vendors and contractors.
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And what I like about that model, controversial though it seems to some people, is that it frees me up not to have the mentality of a supervisor.
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Like the CEO is almost like idolized by everybody else.
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Well, you're the CEO, you must know everything.
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In fact, I what I found in the corporate world is the CEO knows less than anybody else and is somehow managing to get away with it.
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And and I've played that role.
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It's to go away from supervision to go to peer-to-peer trust.
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So I trust implicitly the vendors and contractors that I rely on.
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And they love the fact that I'm not calling them up every five minutes saying, How's it going?
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I'm paying X amount of money to get the job done.
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If you can find a way to do it quicker, good for you.
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And and that that's what's worked.
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And so it allows me not just to build one company and then stop and exit and build another.
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It's allowed me to build several companies at the same time.
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So, for instance, companies seven, six, and five are all existing at the same time.
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And I spend less than, I'd say, an hour a day on each of those companies because I'm not taking a supervisory role and taking peer-to-peer trust.
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My job is like a conductor of an orchestra, not the person who gets in and tries to train people how to play really well.
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And I'm um my job is harmony, get them all working together.
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And I I like that role, and I think it fits.
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And again, you know, necessity is a mother of invention.
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So starting in my first company and not having any money, I had to come up with a new way of doing it.
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And it worked so well, everyone doubted me.
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Everyone said I was crazy.
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It took me ages to get anyone even to consider to invest in me.
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But when that all happened, and people telling me, you know, it's it's impossible, it's impossible.
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Once they saw the net profit number, they were convinced.
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So a startup to, we were doing about 12 to 15 million a year in that company that I sold for 105.5, it still exists.
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You can check it out online, Qual Medical, uh, is doing very well.
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The net profit 76% on that was very attractive to suddenly the investors who said I was crazy and weren't interested.
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Once they saw that number, they said, okay, can we do it again and again and again?
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And so that's kind of what I've been doing.
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Very interesting.
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So as I'm listening to you talk, it makes me wonder.
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So as you start to scale and the volume starts to reach where it does in terms of revenue and customer served and all of that, do you eventually bring in a leadership team or a management team to kind of help you manage all these pieces and parts out there?
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Or do you still try to follow this hub model and essentially contracting that out?
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So no, I don't, I don't uh never had an executive team.
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I have not brought in any executives.
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I don't even do board meetings.
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I just think that's such a waste of time and money.
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There's just ego caressing exercises.
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And so and and that wasn't a popular decision either when I first started out, but I held to it.
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And of course, if I hadn't have been successful, I'd then got rid of me.
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But but uh because it was successful, they were just happy to do it differently with me than they do with other people.
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And they would they would, you know, I I assume they thought, oh, it's just him, he's quirky, we'll do it his way.
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But it worked so successfully.
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One time I was brought into one of one of my investors' main meetings they hold annually down in Florida.
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There was about a hundred other successful entrepreneurs in there.
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And they asked me to present this hub model because they wanted everybody else to have 76% net profits instead of relying on the 20 and 25%, which is still pretty good for most companies.
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And so I found that, and then people came up to the askers and said, Well, how do I do that from where I am now?
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And I was able to show them how to just change out one thing at a time, let that work, and then go with the next one, and then the next one, the next one.
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And I said, the big surprise for you, the side effect for you, will be one day you'll be sat in your office and you'd be thinking, I must be doing something wrong because the phone's not going and I'm not getting any emails.
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And that's actually the sign that everything's going really well.
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Because you're no longer needed.
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I actually went on vacation for the first time a couple of years after starting call medical.
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I went to London to visit family because I hadn't seen them for a while.
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I was gone three weeks.
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And it's at the time when cell phone internationally wasn't brilliant, and I couldn't get any contact with anybody.
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And so after three weeks, I thought my company must be over.
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It's got it's got it's got to have collapsed in the time I've been away.
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And when I got back, the most common response I got from people was, oh, we didn't even know you'd left.
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We didn't know you'd gone.
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They're just carrying on the car.
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So the companies end up running themselves to an extent, and you one's job then is more sort of directional or harmony, as I like to say.
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I understand you've got this five-hour workday.
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Can you talk about that a little bit?
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Yeah, it's not about the so I don't work five hours a day.
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I probably work about an hour, but that's because I've learned what I'm doing over the years.
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So, you know, I found out in the corporate world how quickly burnout can happen and have such nonsense is spoken about, you've got to put in your 10 or your 12 hours.
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You can succeed that way, but probably you'll be on your third marriage, you'll be taking something to numb the pain of it.
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It's not a way to live.
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I like success with balance.
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I like to spend as much time in the hammer because I do sit at a laptop having an amazing conversation like this.
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This is work to me, right?
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This is part of my workday, which is so much fun.
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So, so to help people get from one set of circumstances where they feel like there's not enough hours in the day, to another set of circumstances, I teach a thing, and you can get it at Trevorg Blake.com.
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Everything's on that one website.
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I teach a thing which is which I call the practical magic of the five-hour workday.
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And immediately someone sees that or hears that, they think woo-woo.
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And the second thing they think of is, oh, he means only being present five hours a day, but I don't.
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When it's explained, the science behind it, which is based on peak brain performance, so the neuroscience behind it, it's about how you schedule your day your day, because it's clearly shown by science we can't we can't concentrate for more than two hours.
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We kid ourselves into thinking we're in the zone after that point, but we get diminishing returns and they drop off really quickly.
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And so the secret is to s is to schedule the day into productive periods where being analytical is more beneficial, and then relaxation periods where being creative is more beneficial.
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And so I sp I split my day up.
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I never work before nine, I never touch an electronic device before nine o'clock in the morning.
00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:19.360
I get up at six, I've got all these nice little morning routines that are that suit me.
00:16:19.519 --> 00:16:23.039
And then at nine o'clock, I'll work from nine to eleven or more the analytical side of things.
00:16:23.120 --> 00:16:26.639
And that's when I'm answering emails and you know, doing that kind of thing.
00:16:26.879 --> 00:16:31.120
And then from 11 till 2, I'll be completely off and you can't get me.
00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:35.440
I will not have my cell phone anywhere near me, so you can't disturb my quiet time.
00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:42.240
And in my quiet time, everyone who's listens to this knows what I'm talking about because it's like being in the shower when you have that aha moment.
00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:50.559
And so for that period of time, I will be I'll spend time with my wife, I'll spend time with my my I have an animal sanctuary too, so with my animals.
00:16:50.720 --> 00:17:01.360
Um, I will spend time just walking by myself amongst the trees, trying not to have an idea, and then all of a sudden this great idea hits me, and I'll go, I'll always do the same thing.
00:17:01.600 --> 00:17:03.600
Why didn't I think of that earlier this morning?
00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:05.680
I could have saved myself an hour of work.
00:17:05.920 --> 00:17:07.519
And it happens every single day.
00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:13.920
And so we split it, and I come back at two, probably after a nice long lunch with Jess, my wife, and I'll work from two to four.
00:17:14.079 --> 00:17:15.839
I'm also a writer, I like to write.
00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:22.720
So the brain shows that it's at its most creative when it's tired, which is the opposite to what people think.
00:17:22.960 --> 00:17:30.559
And so between five and six, when my brain is probably more tired than it has been any other time during the day, that's when I spend an hour just writing something.
00:17:30.720 --> 00:17:36.000
I'd write screenplays, I write three simple steps, which I think you know about and uh seeks to a successful startup.
00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:41.200
They came out of having the winning idea and then writing between five and six every day.
00:17:41.279 --> 00:17:42.720
And I'm done at that point.
00:17:42.880 --> 00:17:45.759
I have separate devices for home and work.
00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:49.759
That's really important if you want to work that day successfully.
00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:56.160
And so that means that I can't be disturbed at night by work, and during the day I can't be disturbed by family.
00:17:56.480 --> 00:18:01.759
Because then I've got my work devices, and then at nighttime I've got my domestic devices.
00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:12.000
And that keeps my life nice and split, which means I'm being fair to everybody, giving my uh same amount of time and dedication and energy to everybody, and that leads to a very happy life.
00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:15.200
I mean, I think hopefully I come over as a pretty happy guy.
00:18:16.160 --> 00:18:17.920
I'm having a pretty good time here.
00:18:18.079 --> 00:18:20.880
And I'm gray-haired, it's not like I'm young talking about this, you know.
00:18:20.960 --> 00:18:27.839
So it's so it's it's a beautiful way to live, but it takes a little practice, and you can't go from one set of circumstances to the other overnight.
00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:29.759
You have to build it in slowly.
00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:35.920
So if you go to trevorgieblake.com, there's a free PDF, which is called The Practical Magic of the Firebar Workday.
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:42.799
And it sort of teaches how to start to build success with balance into what for most people is a crazy life of hustle.
00:18:43.039 --> 00:18:46.319
And it changes the whole life, it changes relationships, it changes your health.
00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:48.160
It's just a wonderful way to work.
00:18:48.559 --> 00:18:50.319
What's the website again for them to go to?
00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:52.000
Trevorg Blake.com.
00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:54.960
Everything that we're talking about here is on that site.
00:18:55.119 --> 00:19:05.680
I I started all this after I saw Qual Medical because most people who are teaching, most life coaches, have never really had any success before they entitled themselves that way.
00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:11.440
Most of the self-help and personal development books out there were not written by people who'd used a formula to get success.
00:19:11.599 --> 00:19:13.200
So I waited until I could prove it.
00:19:13.519 --> 00:19:16.240
Proof of concept, I think, is essential for any business these days.
00:19:16.480 --> 00:19:27.440
So I waited until I approved the model, the five-hour workday, and and and basically the mentality to run both, and then wrote Three Simple Steps.
00:19:27.759 --> 00:19:31.359
So you can get a copy of Three Simple Steps on Trevorg Blake.com.
00:19:31.519 --> 00:19:33.599
I think you can read the first three chapters for free.
00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:35.519
It's a New York Times bestseller three times.
00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:38.079
It's done really well without any promotion.
00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:45.039
So yeah, the information's all there for people if they're if they're a little more interested and want to go down the rabbit hole, then I've I've got lots of freebies for everybody.
00:19:45.359 --> 00:19:47.839
And Trevor, this is a great time in the show.
00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:52.319
And we make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go.
00:19:52.400 --> 00:19:56.880
And the first question is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
00:19:57.200 --> 00:19:59.680
Yeah, or too many, we don't have enough time for all of them.
00:19:59.920 --> 00:20:06.000
So uh yeah, so the big one for me was I started a company with two partners, and that was a big mistake.
00:20:06.319 --> 00:20:17.119
And it uh for me it was a big mistake because of the personality clash, because we all start we all got into the venture together for completely different reasons, and we never took the time to ask each other why we're doing it.
00:20:17.200 --> 00:20:18.240
We just got in and did it.
00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:24.079
And then I found out that one was to get rich quick, that didn't happen, so we ran off with with uh uh quite a bit of our owl money.
00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:29.039
And then the other person was interested only in growing big enough in order to put his kids through college.
00:20:29.119 --> 00:20:30.400
And I had other dreams, right?
00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:36.640
That doesn't mean mine were better or right, or there's no judgment here, just that we were never aligned dream-wise.
00:20:36.799 --> 00:20:38.480
And so that was my first big mistake.
00:20:38.559 --> 00:20:45.519
I never did it again because it's painful and stressful when it happens like that, and it's always sad to say bye to people you've actually got together with in the first place.
00:20:45.759 --> 00:20:57.599
The second thing is when I first started out, I didn't know anything about the finance world or the investor world, and I knew I needed to raise exactly 2.1 million, and it took me 18 months to raise 2.1 million.
00:20:58.559 --> 00:21:04.079
And then halfway through that company, this was Qual Medical, so about three years in, I saw an opportunity.
00:21:04.319 --> 00:21:10.319
This was a great opportunity, but I needed 28 million, and I I raised 28 million in less than six weeks.
00:21:11.279 --> 00:21:12.160
Big lesson.
00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:18.880
A big mistake, first off, because I ended up giving away 30% of the country for just of the company for two million.
00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:22.160
With the second deal, the 28 million, I only gave away 10%.
00:21:23.279 --> 00:21:33.759
Because the investors were working off a perception of 25% of two million is not even worth the paperwork, whereas 25% return on 28 million is worth getting involved.
00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:40.559
So I learned a very good lesson early on that you should always bring investors in because they bring so much more than the money.
00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:42.559
Connections, network, skills.
00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:46.960
You know, there are a lot of freebies that come with them, especially on the attorney side and the IP side.
00:21:47.039 --> 00:21:51.599
So I always try to bring investors in at some point, but I won't bring them in at a small number anymore.
00:21:51.759 --> 00:21:55.279
I'll go as high as I can possibly go without laughing at myself in a mirror.
00:21:55.519 --> 00:21:57.519
I find it's much easier to raise money that way.
00:21:57.599 --> 00:21:59.039
But that was yeah, that was a miss.
00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:02.640
I didn't Out of ignorance on my part, but I've I learned the lesson.
00:22:03.119 --> 00:22:03.680
Great example.
00:22:03.839 --> 00:22:04.640
Thank you for sharing.
00:22:04.799 --> 00:22:08.160
And on the flip side of that, a make or a highlight or two.
00:22:08.559 --> 00:22:09.920
Well, I'm proud of all seven companies.
00:22:12.240 --> 00:22:15.920
They've all had an impact in the world in some way, which wasn't what I set out to do.
00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:18.480
I'm not trying to make myself sound like a hero or anything.
00:22:18.640 --> 00:22:23.599
You know, I set out to be successful, financially successful, egotistically successful.
00:22:23.759 --> 00:22:26.799
I wanted all my family and friends to say, oh, didn't you do well?
00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:28.240
You know, so I'm the same as everybody else.
00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:32.720
I'm not as not afraid of the recognition or the praise, I don't think.
00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:42.799
But the highlight of it all is that when we go out and fix something, we automatically start to make an impact because everybody else was using the solution that we found we found a way to figure it out.
00:22:42.960 --> 00:22:44.400
So I'm I'm most proud of that.
00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:48.720
And I think my current company, NeoV Oncology, I'm really proud.
00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:53.680
We set out to do something that the whole world said was impossible and I was delusional.
00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:57.839
And I couldn't get any investment into this company because of that.
00:22:58.000 --> 00:23:02.720
And what we set out to do was to create a cancer treatment that had no side effects.
00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:04.799
And this is a personal thing to me.
00:23:04.880 --> 00:23:07.119
I'm a cancer survivor, but the side effects were horrible.
00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:11.759
My mother was a cancer, she didn't survive cancer, she had cancer, died, but the side effects were horrible.
00:23:11.839 --> 00:23:20.400
So I've always been fascinated in finding a way to provide powerful treatments to cancer cells that don't cause the side effects.
00:23:20.559 --> 00:23:21.599
And we figured it out.
00:23:21.759 --> 00:23:24.079
We started this in 2005.
00:23:24.160 --> 00:23:31.680
We'd figured it out by 2012, and we've we finished our first clinical trials, phase 1A, they're called, just over a year ago.
00:23:31.839 --> 00:23:35.839
And now we're negotiating with the with a bunch of companies that that want to take it.
00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:42.799
And it's at the right stage where it needs to be it needs to graduate from my little kindergarten idea mentality to something massive.
00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:43.839
And that's very exciting.
00:23:43.920 --> 00:23:54.400
So I'm really proud of that because at the end of it, yes, it's a successful business idea because it's unique in the market, but also it's you know, it's going to have a legacy effect.
00:23:54.640 --> 00:24:00.079
And the more I look in the mirror and see the gray hairs, the more important the legacy comes to me or becomes to me.
00:24:00.240 --> 00:24:01.920
So I'm I'm really happy about that.
00:24:02.319 --> 00:24:03.519
Well, thank you for sharing.
00:24:03.599 --> 00:24:06.240
And the name of the show is Multiply Your Success.
00:24:06.319 --> 00:24:13.759
And so always ask, have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally or professionally or some of the organizations you've run?
00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:17.119
So uh it goes back to what we talked about earlier on with the hub model.
00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:23.039
I think that is a is a big opportunity for people that they may miss, even if all it does is reduce costs.
00:24:23.599 --> 00:24:30.559
You want to get that delta, you know, between expenses and and revenue as wide as possible, because then the stress goes away.
00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:34.799
And then we can have fun playing with things, saying, Oh, I've got this I can invest, and this I can invest.
00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:36.240
So you want to make that as wide as possible.
00:24:36.319 --> 00:24:38.079
So for me, that was the big multiplier.
00:24:38.240 --> 00:24:41.039
Only because not because I figured it out, but because it worked.
00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:42.319
It worked the first time.
00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:44.000
And so I've just used it every time.
00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:45.680
So that is my multiplier.
00:24:45.759 --> 00:24:48.960
And I have so much fun doing it that I will never stop.
00:24:49.119 --> 00:24:53.279
You know, I'll be six feet under before I'm forced to stop doing this.
00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:54.880
And that is that's fun, right?
00:24:54.960 --> 00:25:05.359
So to wake up every morning and get excited about what's next is I think you know, the multiplier might work physically and analytically and mechanically on the company, but it works just as much mentally for me.
00:25:05.519 --> 00:25:08.160
Because I'm excited about what's happening, what's going to be next.
00:25:08.319 --> 00:25:18.880
And to get to my age, you know, I love being this age, but to get to my age and then still feel like a kid who's who's got so much more to contribute, that that means that's a really good thing.
00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:20.720
That hub model is a great multiplayer.
00:25:21.039 --> 00:25:25.279
Trevor, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
00:25:25.599 --> 00:25:27.920
For me, it means waking up every morning excited.
00:25:28.079 --> 00:25:30.079
That's for me number one in my life.
00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:33.920
And that that might not be important to most people, but you know, it that fits my character.
00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:38.640
I want to I don't want to wake up with open my eyes and go, oh God, it's Monday.
00:25:38.799 --> 00:25:41.680
Uh I want to wake up going, it's Monday.
00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:42.960
You know, can't wait.
00:25:43.039 --> 00:25:44.079
What's this week gonna bring?
00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:52.640
And so that's the that that I think is is the the side effect or payoff of being an entrepreneur and it going well.
00:25:52.799 --> 00:25:55.839
You know, because you just want to go more and more and do better and better.
00:25:55.920 --> 00:25:58.160
And so for me, that's that's it.
00:25:58.240 --> 00:25:58.319
Yeah.
00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:03.599
The Messiah happens for me in business, because we're talking about business, is to wake up really excited.
00:26:03.759 --> 00:26:06.079
I have to say I've been very lucky in relationships too.
00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:08.079
So I wake up excited about my relationships.
00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:09.200
I've I've had two.
00:26:09.359 --> 00:26:10.480
I've never dated.
00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:15.599
My first wife, we were married 40 years, minus one month before she died in 2020.
00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:20.400
And then I met this amazing ex-Disney executive who's now independent, Jess.
00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:21.680
And so we're four years old.
00:26:21.759 --> 00:26:24.960
And so we're very excited about building companies together.
00:26:25.279 --> 00:26:31.359
As we bring this to a close, Trevor, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?
00:26:31.759 --> 00:26:34.640
No, sometimes when it's easy, you know, talk is cheap, I guess.
00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:40.400
And so sometimes I I even though I say don't try to figure it all out, just jump in and start.
00:26:40.559 --> 00:26:42.240
Most people still try to figure it out.
00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:44.319
And sometimes I don't talk enough about that.
00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:47.920
I do get people asking me sometimes, can you help me write my business plan?
00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:50.799
And I'm saying, you know, that this is conc controversial.
00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:53.359
I'm saying, no, this isn't a different world now.
00:26:53.519 --> 00:26:55.119
We don't start with a business plan.
00:26:55.279 --> 00:26:56.319
We start by going out.
00:26:56.480 --> 00:27:02.720
We get away from our computer and we talk to real customers and real stakeholders, and we let them tell us how to build our business.
00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:06.000
And then we go and find the vendors who can do it for us and for them.
00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:10.079
And you can't lose them because you're giving them exactly what they asked for, exactly what they need.
00:27:10.319 --> 00:27:18.960
I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who come out of like MBA school and they think that the secret is to figure it all out on a piece of paper for two years before they even begin to start.
00:27:19.200 --> 00:27:23.599
And then they erroneously think that that business plan is gonna get them an investment.
00:27:23.839 --> 00:27:34.400
All the evidence I've seen is that the investment comes when the entrepreneur says, yes, I spoke to these people, yes, I spoke to those people, yes, I learned this from what they told me.
00:27:34.559 --> 00:27:38.000
I've had a prototype, I've redone the prototype, redone the prototype.
00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:39.519
I've got to proof a concept.
00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:44.480
I went back to those people and said, here is for free, try it, let me know how it goes and what the benefits are.
00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:48.480
And I use that as data, and I can now come to you and say, let's go fast.
00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:52.240
Let's scale this as fast as possible, because I've proved the concept.
00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:57.359
So I don't talk enough about that because in you know, in these wonderful podcasts, time goes so quickly.
00:27:57.519 --> 00:28:00.079
But I think that's a podcast in and of itself.
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:03.519
The value of a proof of concept over a business plan.
00:28:04.160 --> 00:28:06.000
I'd love to talk about that topic one day.
00:28:06.319 --> 00:28:07.519
That's a great idea.
00:28:07.680 --> 00:28:19.839
And, you know, it's something we definitely see for sure with so many of the clients I've worked with over the years that had an idea, as you said, to fix something, to solve some problem they identified, and just said, I'm gonna do it.
00:28:19.920 --> 00:28:30.400
And they started doing it and started figured out a way to monetize it, and all of a sudden it started growing and then franchised, and all of a sudden it's uh a national brand.
00:28:30.559 --> 00:28:32.880
So I see exactly what you're saying there.
00:28:33.119 --> 00:28:38.240
Yeah, and the franchise thing, because it you know you and I had a like a two-minute conversation before we started about franchise.
00:28:38.400 --> 00:28:40.880
It for me that that is definitely a stage.
00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:46.400
And you know, when I first started my my company, my first company, I wasn't thinking in those terms.
00:28:46.559 --> 00:28:47.680
I wasn't thinking franchise.
00:28:47.839 --> 00:28:49.759
So I wasn't thinking like big sky or anything like that.
00:28:49.839 --> 00:28:58.319
Because I don't you I don't know if you existed when when I started my first company, but I was thinking more in terms of okay, you build it to a certain size, then you sell, you exit, you get acquired.
00:28:58.400 --> 00:28:58.960
And that's fine.
00:28:59.039 --> 00:29:00.720
It was a really good business model for me.
00:29:00.880 --> 00:29:04.880
But uh with Trevorg Blake.com, and that's definitely one that I'm thinking about.
00:29:05.200 --> 00:29:07.359
This is something that would be an amazing franchise.
00:29:07.519 --> 00:29:10.559
So, you know, you put that idea in my mind right at the beginning.
00:29:10.720 --> 00:29:14.960
It's it is about getting big fast, whatever mechanism we can use to do that.
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:18.720
Trevor, thank you so much for a fantastic interview.
00:29:18.799 --> 00:29:22.880
And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways.
00:29:23.119 --> 00:29:29.920
So, takeaway number one is when Trevor shared, he's a physicist by training and likes to fix and solve problems.
00:29:30.079 --> 00:29:38.079
And he said he's done research and looked up this research on hustle culture and he found no scientific support for that.
00:29:38.319 --> 00:29:39.519
I found that interesting.
00:29:39.839 --> 00:29:54.160
Takeaway number two is that he runs his businesses on this hub model or this hub structure where he keeps his employees as low as possible and hires contractors and consultants to work with him on contracts.
00:29:54.240 --> 00:30:01.519
And he's found a great deal of success in building companies, one of which is a$1.2 billion a year business.
00:30:01.680 --> 00:30:07.359
And he sold one of his companies for over$105 million running on this type of operation.
00:30:07.680 --> 00:30:19.039
Takeaway number three is he described his five-hour workday that he builds on, and he talked about working when there is peak brain performance based on your schedule of the day.
00:30:19.200 --> 00:30:30.559
And so he has found scheduling his day in a very specific way where he's able to do analytical time in the morning and creative time later on in the day.
00:30:31.119 --> 00:30:34.240
And now it's time for today's win-win.
00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:48.160
So today's win-win comes from when Trevor was talking about thinking of himself as a fixer and as opposed to an entrepreneur or a founder or something else.
00:30:48.400 --> 00:30:53.119
And he said all seven of his companies were designed to solve a problem.
00:30:53.279 --> 00:30:58.079
And he started them underfinanced, unqualified, but he decided to do it anyway.
00:30:58.319 --> 00:30:59.119
And he did that.
00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:09.680
And what he learned, as he shared later on in the episode, that you're able to talk to real stakeholders, real customers, and listen to what they say when you get started.
00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:20.160
So talking about things, researching, yes, that can be beneficial, but ultimately you got to get started and get some customers and hear what they say and take that feedback and learn from it.
00:31:20.400 --> 00:31:22.720
And so that's the episode today, folks.
00:31:22.880 --> 00:31:25.519
Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review.
00:31:25.599 --> 00:31:37.119
And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule your free no obligation consultation.
00:31:37.279 --> 00:31:40.880
Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.