The Soul-Science of Business with Trevor G. Blake

All right, welcome back to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad, and today I have got an exciting guest on the show. I first heard about Trevor Blake, who's going to be joining us here through my friend Ryan Moran. I heard him talking about Trevor's book Three Simple Steps Back. I don't know if it was a year ago, and listen to his podcast. Really was really inspired what he was able to do, and he's able to come on the show today. So Trevor is a physicist by background. He grew up extremely poor. He grew up bullied. But he tapped into the workings of energy and consciousness and transformation and in particularly, the science behind it all so that he could begin creating his life, his businesses, very intentionally. And over the past 10 years, he's done such a successful job at that he's exited three separate companies for over $600 million. And one of the most remarkable facts is he's never hired a single employee. So let that sink in. If you think that's not possible, it truly is, and we're going to dive a little bit deeper into that, as well as the secret behind Trevor's success. But, Trevor, welcome to the show. I'm really excited to dig in and learn more about you, what you've been able to do and what you're doing these days.

Thank you, Brad. Looking forward to it.

Yeah. So with somebody with your background, it's really hard to think about, like, where to start, but I would. I would love to dive into that story. So you said you're a physicist and then you became an entrepreneur, and you've done things in a slightly different way than a lot of other entrepreneurs have taken it. Give us a peek into that, into that world. Like, how did you get started? Because that's a really fascinating trajectory.

Yeah. And it wasn't planned that way, I have to be honest with you. So what you said in the introduction was correct. I did grow up poor and I was bullied. I was living in a place where the English weren't welcome anymore. And being English in that place was like having a sort of target on my back.

Where was that?

It was in North Wales back in the 70s. They were burning holiday homes down and stuff like that, you know, because they were saying the English were ruining the Welsh economy because they could buy cheap homes, turn them into holiday rentals and stuff like that. We didn't because we were poor, but they heard the accent. That was enough. And so I used to fight a lot, and then I was only 5 foot 8, so I didn't win many fights. And then, so I ended up just hiding. So I hid in the town library and I just started reading and killing time until the idiots went home for dinner or something. And that's where I started. I started reading physics books and psychology books and then biographies. And I just thirsted on biographies. So I can't really claim to have created anything in my life. I really just stolen the good ideas that people had before me and just used it in my life. And I saw in these biographies that they had, they were, they started off in these atrocious circumstances. So first of all that stopped me feeling sorry for myself. And secondly, I was totally inspired by how did they get out of that mess. And then I found these patterns of behavior and I just introduced them into my own life. And that's when I went from being, you know, pretty average student to being a top student and becoming a physicist and. And then from there, you know, I had a fantastic career, just a regular fast track career. And then when I turned 40, decided to start my own company. And that was the first of. I'm on company number seven now, so it's kind of.

So you didn't start really the entrepreneurial journey until about 40, huh?

Yeah, I was, I was 41 when I first started my first company. It's just because, you know, money was I growing up poor? I'd never traveled. So for me, my passion in life with my wife and I, we were together 40 years. She unfortunately died a year ago but. But we had 40 years of luxury travel around the world because we both. She was also poor when she grew up. We just wanted to travel. You know, I didn't know what a holiday was like. I didn't know what flight was like. I didn't fly Till I was 22, I think. And so, so, so we got caught up in that. And then, you know, some, some weird things happen when you turn 40. So I went to bed feeling immortal and woke up looking six months pregnant.

So I took the 40s of sneaking up on us like that. I agree.

That's when you change your mind. So I thought, well, I better start thinking about it. And, and that's when I started my first company.

What was that company?

Qual Exists. I sold it to one of the original investors in IT and we specialized in developing drugs for rare diseases in children. But a unique model. You know, my, my experience has been for me and also for other successful entrepreneurs that I've been lucky enough to know. Nobody sets out to be a successful entrepreneur. We find something that annoys us or irritates us or we want to, or fix and off we go. And so this was something that really got under my skin. I was working for a company that had a solution to a very rare disease, but kept it on the shelf because they couldn't justify spending the money to educate physicians that this was available. And it sounds crazy, but, you know, it was a public company.

The unfortunate part of like where the incentive is and it's like if we can't, you know, this stuff takes money and if you can't really monetize it.

Yeah, I understood their reason. But I still believe there's always a solution to everything. So I had stand up rows with my CEO, which is not smart because you're never going to win. And then in the end I convinced him to give me the rights or sell me the rights to the product. And I started a new company with a new business model that you touched on by saying no employees, because I didn't have the money to hire employees. But I found that using a sort of model of alliances was very successful, highly profitable. And I just kept doing it. Plug and play.

Okay, I want to dive into that alliance model because. And I'm really fascinated by this. Like I've actually never had any employees. I've had a, I've had business partners, but that's as close as I've ever had where employees are there. I've had contractors, I've had, you know, other people like that. But. But I also haven't grown as significant of a business, you know, as you have. But take me back through the. Obviously you had experience in, as a physician, so you had medical experience. And then the first business was medical related. So you obviously created something in your, in your field of knowledge. But was that a, was that hard to kind of really transition from a physician background to now a business person or was it really easy?

It's the other way, other way around, really. Brad, to be honest with you, I was uniquely unqualified to start a company, so. And I've continued to be that way. So I was actually in sales and marketing when I started my first company. So. But what I did was, was when I was in a regular career, I used to get frustrated by the amount of time I spent in a meeting room talking about keeping employees happy instead of talking about the customer or improving products or anything like that. So I was kind of not a very easy employee to have because I was always kind of fighting against that a little bit. And so I was quite motivated when I started my first company not to do that, not to end up sitting in a meeting room all day long. But also while I was in my regular career, I was smart enough to go and talk to the other functions because all I knew was sales and marketing. I didn't understand money, manufacturing or distribution or regulatory, things like that. So I made a nuisance of myself over a number of years just taking pizza and sandwiches into someone's office and saying, can you spend half an hour with me? I'd love to know what you do here and how we. Because we never talk, we never communicate. And just by doing that, I realized when I started my first company, I had a higher degree of confidence than I would have had if I'd just come from one function. So if I'd just been in the medical side or if I just been on the regular side. And that's what I find a lot of entrepreneurs do when they start their own company is they go and hire ahead of this and ahead of that, a VP of this, a director of that, and, and all that wonderful cash goes like, it's like an internal whirlpool. It goes down into the whirlpool. And that's where a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs I see get into trouble quite early on because they don't realize, you know, they're not cash flow savvy, they're cash savvy. And there's a huge difference, which I talk about in both three simple steps. And I have another book, Secrets to a Successful Startup which goes through how to start this way. Don't, don't, you know, so the way, the way I, the analogy I use is if you buy a new house, you wouldn't hire a full time handyman to sleep in the spare bedroom just in case something goes wrong. You tend to do that in businesses. When you start, hire this person, that person, get a personal assistant and before you know it, that incredible wonderful thing called cash, which has either come from you and your friends and your savings or from an investor, it's gone. It goes really quickly. So it's an opportunity to pause and just think about do I really need to hire a full time person here or not? And in this age, when I started my first company, 2001, it was still dial up Internet, so it wasn't as easy as now. Now it's so easy just to find a vendor who can, you know, you can get a volume contract or a time contract and you can get, you know, you can get. You don't need a CFO anymore.

Yeah, you can get fractional CFOs.

Yeah, I apologize for the CFOs who are out there, but you don't need it anymore because technology has really replaced all of that. So now I use this model, alliances. You know, a model of alliances. It's, it's basically a hub model. I have companies that I've come to know over the years who will provide the full function for me and on the terms of, you know, as we grow, obviously they add more people to it and add more time to it and the price goes up over time. But why I like it is because you only have to pay for what you need. So you can ramp up really quickly or you can, you know, turn it back down a couple of notches if you, if you, if you budget and forward. Entrepreneurs are always optimistic. Right? We always, we always under budget and over forecast.

Always ask you. Let me ask you a clarifying question on that. So. And this would be, I guess, I don't know if it's appropriate to say a devil's advocate question, but so when I know that if you're hiring people who are either like in an alliance, and I don't know if there's a big difference between alliance and a contractor or something like on a contract model, like an agency, et cetera, but I know that one of the issues that I've had, my clients have had, et cetera, is that that often works in the very beginning, but as you grow and then you need, your team needs more focused effort. So I actually need that other person to be almost 100% focused on my business as opposed to being one of multiple clients. I may only get 10% of that person's work product or mind share per day. And I know as a business gets bigger, it requires some more attention to it. So at what point it sounds like you didn't necessarily outgrow the alliance model where I think a lot of companies do, they start to outgrow it and then that's why they start to hire all the full time staff, et cetera. So how do you kind of account for that aspect?

So it's pure choice on my part because I was, I enjoy doing building companies so much and I get bored so quickly and so easily that you're absolutely right. Every company gets to a certain point where it's no longer cost effective to run the hub model or you can probably run it crazy, you know, like a crazy hub model at some point and then it would go full time. I exit before that point. That's my personal strategy. And so for my first company it really did start to get to that point. And I don't work more than five hours a day ever, never have, and don't see it's not productive to do that. And so when things start to get busy where I find other people seem to have convinced themselves that they need to work eight or nine hours a day, I can talk them out of it if they will let me. But if they're convinced about that, that's when I exit. And so with my first company, qual, it was six years and I exited for 105.5 million. And then my second company was only three years and that was a 200 million exit. And because at that point it's already got big and I'm going through it right now with company number four, which is my oldest company actually I started it alongside my first company and now that's got to the point where I'm finding it's not cost effective to keep running the hub model. And so I'm talking to other companies about being acquired.

Nice. What kind of company is that? What's that company?

It's a research and development company. It's looking at a non toxic treatment for colon cancer.

Oh, beautiful. I love that. One of my best friends just went through a colon cancer surgery. Luckily it was a surgery, removed everything and it was early stage so he didn't have to go through chemo, et cetera. He lucked out. But that just like last month, he got the clear for that.

So you know, if you catch it early, it's great. You know, that's, that's the most important thing, you know. Unfortunately some people, because it's what we call a silent cancer, it can grow a long time before you know it and, and then it becomes late stage and there really aren't many options. And so for me, when I was growing up, my mom was given six months to live. She had breast cancer. And I watched it go through all the various treatments and the side effects were awful. I mean she helped, she managed to have cancer and bring up three kids with tremendous grace living on welfare. But the side effects of always sticks in my mind what she went through, it stole her womanhood, her confidence, you know. And so I've always been passionate about finding alternative, natural alternatives to conventional medicine that can, you know, help in that situation, but don't diminish the quality of life of the person taking it. And so everyone said it's impossible. I couldn't get any investors to invest in it. But here we are at the end of phase one in our FDA clinical trial.

Wow. Yeah, that's. That's amazing to hear. Now, have you, in all of your ventures, did you go through capital raising in the beginning to do that, or did you bootstrap it?

I bootstrapped. And then, you know, someone. Someone told me once, the best piece of business advice I ever had, you don't know what business you're in until you get in the business. So just start. And I found that to be very true, especially in my first company, going off in the direction of rare diseases in children. You know, I came across an opportunity to purchase the rights to three more products I would never have known about if I hadn't been actually in the trenches, you know, in the battle, if you like. And so that required 28 million, which I managed to. I learned my lesson is that trying to raise a small amount of money is exhausting, but raising a large amount of money is relatively easy. I raised 28 million in six weeks, and we did that deal. So when there's a specific opportunity, then I like to have other people come in, not just for the money, although obviously the money helps. But the investors, I feel, bring so much more to a company than just the money. They bring experience, for one thing, access to all their systems, including accounting and that sort of thing, but also connections that you'd never have by yourself. So I liked. Even if I don't need investors, I like them to be in the. In the business at some point.

Yeah. And then do you typically tap your existing network for those investors, or did you go out cold and find people that potentially had the interest in the money?

Yeah, it was cold. All of it was cold calling. And the interesting thing was, after the first success, I thought those investors would say, okay, what's next, Trevor? What can we invest in? Because I made them a lot of money. Right. So I told them what my next venture was, and they said, that won't work. It's impossible.

Okay. So, yeah, it was like.

So every time it's been new people every time.

Wow. Okay. And how critical do you think raising the capital is to the success of some of these businesses, you know, along with it?

I think it's essential, Brad, because we live in a get big, fast world now, and you're going to get left behind or crushed, in fact, if you don't do that. And, you know, I'm the same as every other entrepreneur. I overestimate my abilities and underestimate the costs.

Yeah.

Complexity. So. So I, you know, even if you don't use the money. If you can be sure at the beginning that you've got access to it if you need it, that's a nice place to be because otherwise you're just going to get so burned out and so stressed, you know, worrying about day to day bills. That's not the life of an entrepreneur that I ever wanted. I wanted to have fun building, creating, you know.

Money enables that. Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's better to have 10% of 100 million than 100% of nothing. You know, so why not do that? Why not dilute? Right.

And I know, I know you work with and advise other entrepreneurs right now and obviously through your books and then through personal engagements, et cetera. So how often when people are starting out with a new thing like do you typically encourage, Let me back up. I know this is all dependent upon the business model they're going after. Right. If somebody's trying to create a huge B2B SaaS business or medical thing versus maybe a service based business, et cetera, it kind of depends. But how soon do you typically advise people to look to raise capital right away or after they've got a proven concept and kind of prototyped it out, validated the business model?

I think before you even start, make sure you have access. The key word is access. If you don't use it, you don't have to pay. VC is hard to get right at the beginning. So typically you're looking at seed capital and angel investors and they're usually very patient people because they want to see success. So, so typically they'll put money in that you don't have to pay back for a long time, that that's a nice position to be in. So if you can get that for the first two years, which is always a bumpy time to get out that, that is. I always advise get, you know, even if you don't think you need it or if you don't think you're ever going to need it, get it anyway.

Yeah, I like that. You know, that's been a challenge for me. I've had, you know, I've had a few successes and I've had, you know, a few more failures obviously like, like any entrepreneur. But there was a, you know, there's a couple recent, let's say E Commerce ventures that I started up with some partners and the two biggest, well, the biggest reason that didn't work out was two things. What? Partnership differences between vision and bandwidth. That was one. And then the other piece was running out of capital where we Believe that we could have done a lot better with this model had we had the right capital to put it into place. But with none of us, we had all put in our initial owner's capital but then it got to the point where we needed extra. But I think our, maybe it was our confidence in it, like we could have gone, we didn't want to go to completely cold people, put together a huge pitch deck, just run out and try to raise a bunch of capital for this that we. I think it was a confidence issue of we could go to friends and family, we could go to people who we had closer connections to. But the idea of taking their money on something that we are still really trying to validate and prove out made us a lot more concerned because the last thing we'd want to do is burn through capital and relationships. And I think that a lot of people, when they're thinking about raising friends and family seed rounds, that's probably a big concern for them, which is that, yeah, a lack of confidence that it's going to work. Right. So I don't, I never want to raise money on something that I don't have a lot more confidence in. How would you advise people who are kind of in that similar situation to look at that, you know, they need the money but they're not quite sure how it'll all pan out for the people involved.

I think the stress of borrowing from friends and family is not worth it personally.

Right.

I wouldn't. Fortunately, none of my family believed in me so they weren't going to give me any money anyway. So that was a blessing. But I think the stress of the worry of having to pay that back. I've done the partnership thing too and I regretted it. So I'm now a one man band. I like that. One man band. In our current business climate, I think it's really essential to have a proof of concept before you go to any investor, whatever type of investor it is. I did that with my first company because before I got I was negotiating the rights with my ex CEO, I found there was another product that I could get for zero so long as I committed to the manufacturing very tiny, tiny little product. And so I put the business model around that and I showed that I could get this product that was doing 100,000 in sales and I took it very quickly to about one and a half million, which is as much as I don't ever get with this particular asset. But I was able then to go to any investor and say, look at this model. See how it works. Imagine what I can do if we can get this bigger product. And that just opened all the doors to me because that's what they want to see and what they want to hear. Plus, I'd made. I find a lot of entrepreneurs don't get away from their computer. They spend a whole year doing a business plan, but they don't ever talk to a potential customer or a potential vendor. And they don't have that feedback. They're never going to get investment. An investor, and I'm an investor in a lot of different startups, you need to know what the potential customer thinks about this, and you need to hopefully see the idea or the service or the product being tested on these potential customers. So you get data back that you can say, okay, we can scale this up quickly, because like I said before, we do live in this get big, fast mode. Lots of great examples of that. You know, mirror.com cape, that was only two years old, isn't it? Even now it's only two years old. You know, the wonderful creative entrepreneur, she had this idea around Christmas time. She built the proof of concept, and she was able to get Lululemon in as an early investor. That shows you that anything's possible. And then, you know, 18 months later, she sells it to Lululemon for 500 million. Yeah, that's the world we live in right now. But the key thing there was the proof of concept, being able to go in with not just an idea of, hey, I've got this idea about a mirror, but here's a real copy that can be improved. You know, here's a real thing. So that's. That's really important. And I think you can. You don't need to go to friends and family. You can go straight to angel investors, of which there are a thousand groups. You know, you just get on your computer and there's a. You know, all these angel investors willing to listen to you. Sometimes you have to pay a little bit of money to be heard, but.

That'S fine right now. Have you ever used sites like Angellist or things like that? Or do you have other places that you look when you're looking for angels or that you advise people to do that?

Yeah, so all of them. Because it's not just the opportunity for them to hear you out and to give you, you know, to invest in you. They know everybody because they're out there talking to all these entrepreneurs and all these other investors, and they can really help you. Quite often. I'm part of a seed investor group and we're independent. But quite often people will be wanting me to invest and I'll refuse because they're not thinking big enough and they want 200,000. And I'll say, you'll blow through that in a few months. What am I going to put then you'll come back to me, you want another 200,000. So I talk them into thinking bigger and bigger. So finally they get the concept. Hopefully they get a concept and they come back to us and say, okay, actually you're right, we need 5 million to do this properly. That's not me. Now, I'm not that investor. So I'll say, but I do know who is.

Yeah.

So me taking this entrepreneur to somebody works far better than that entrepreneur knocking on the door saying, would you listen to my pitch? So I find that's how it works. So I think, I think everybody should put themselves in front of seed investors first of all to get that feedback, you know, get some, some, some kind of response, real, real life response. But also that's the best way of networking for the type of funding that you. Quite often at the beginning, you don't know what you need. And you know, we start we're fixing something or creating something, so we don't really know. We don't have all the answers. And so, so putting yourself in a position to be challenged by people who've been there before you and done it, you know, watch the movie, bought the T shirt type of thing. That's.

Yeah. When you hire the alliance people.

Right.

Call the alliance people. Right. Whether it's a CFO or there's a somebody who is, you know, providing other types of services, sales, whatever. Do you, is it typically just a fee based arrangement or do you ever do like profit share, equity, like, et cetera? Like, does it tell me about the way that you incentivize some of these people to really work deep with you besides just writing a check for fee for services?

Well, at the beginning it's mostly emotional blackmail because they're not interested at the beginning, because I go in with my new idea and I say, I'm just starting. And they say, yeah, well, we're busy, we've got all the customers we need. And so what I have to do is tell them a real life story, a patient story or something like that, or the little engine that could type of story and try to get them to understand, imagine now the future. And this is a 200, $300 million company. And you can say to all of your other vendors, he was nothing when we first started with him. That type of story really grabs people and they like to get involved. I finally take ownership. I make it a point to share every bit of good feedback I get from customers with everybody who's in the network, everyone who's in the model of alliances. So even if it's a guy who's on a, on a, the production floor, you know, making the vials that our product is going to go into, I like, I like to get him, you know, get his attention and show how important what he does for me is in the lives of these people, that his work really matters. And they love that and they, it's sincere, it's authentic, I mean it. And everybody has a critical role. And then as success comes in. You mentioned profit share. I think it's the number one way of motivating people to do more and go beyond the scope of the work, if you like. And that's what I find. So in all my companies, I've got four right now. I've had to convince the vendor, including my digital company, my digital marketing company. I've had to convince the vendors that profit sharing is a really good thing. They want a contract price, they want X thousand per month. And I'm saying, well, I'm willing to pay this amount per month, but I'll also give you 20% profit share. And they don't understand what that is. And then of course, the first really good year and they get this massive check and it changes everything. Now that's all they want is profit share. Oh, forget the contract price, let's have more profit. So it's a mixture of all of that, but you can't do all of that on day one. You've really got to because you're a tiny fish in a huge pond. The danger is you're not going to get the attention or concentration or focus that you want. So it's very much a case of making everybody who's in this model of alliances, making them feel that they're a critical part of building something special that I put most, most effort into that and then all the money and stuff like that takes care of itself. The other thing about the model alliances is that you can play the card of I'm small and I'm new and I'm doing something really everyone says is impossible but could make a huge impact in the world. Can I have six months free? You know, so you get like, especially in the service contracts, you can get six months and you can get 90 day terms and you can negotiate all of, I find the vendors really willing to be flexible with the small new guy if you like.

Especially I guess, if you really enlist them in the vision. People want to be a part of something big and there's an art to that. Do you ever give up equity or is it technically just profit share?

With venture capital you have no choice but to give up equity, but the rest of it is just cash, profit share.

I like that. I think in Ryan Moran's interview with you, I think you alluded to this. I was going to ask you. All entrepreneurs have particular sets of qualities that kind of are behind their success. Like none of us are. The most full, well rounded entrepreneur can do everything. But I think you said that one of your big strengths there was, was it managing or leading or something like that, that that was the, one of the things that you really brought to the table, that you were a good manager. Putting these pieces together and making sure that every. Like that everybody rode together. But is that accurate or was there, is there anything else that you think that your particular skill set really lent to your success versus something else? Like, like what are you great at? What are you, what are you kind of like terrible at as an entrepreneur?

I don't think I'm great at anything. And you know, I've gone through this in my own head many times because when I started my first company, I just said I like to start a company. What am I good at? And it was a bit of an eye opener to find out. I'm not, I'm not very skilled at anything. I'm not, not good with my hands and I'm not good around the house. My wife would never let me need a toolbox, you know, sales and marketing, although it has a certain skill level to it, anyone can do it. So it's any number of successful sales and marketing companies. So I really couldn't think of anything that was good at. But I think what in the, in the Ryan Moran interview, I think what I was referring to is that when I got into the business I found out it really wasn't any different to what I was doing in sales and marketing. When I was a sales manager, I had seven or eight sales representatives. When I was a regional manager, I had seven district managers. When I was a national sales manager, I had like six, seven, eight regional managers. And so all it was my whole career. And then one day I had this huge title, you know, executive vice president of commercial development. The smaller the company, the bigger the bags, you know, and all it was was seven directors. I mean, just seven business Directors. And so really it is if you have the ability to manage a small group of people, you're capable of building any type of company in any industry. There's no limits. You don't need to, you know, I haven't had to go to school to learn certain aspects of an industry. I've just been able to, you know, I've got enough smarts to pick, I've got good intuition. So I'm able to pick people who I think they can do a good job or vendors or you know, contractors. And then, you know, we just get together and we become a team. We all take ownership. And so my, we live in a, you know, we can get into energy if you like. We live in a time where the energy has shifted from that old fashioned sort of lateral, what we used to call masculine type of energy where you know, you know, if you have a problem, call a meeting, you know, if you got an opportunity, hire somebody, that, that, that energy speech is shifted now to this sort of fast spiraling energy. And so intuition becomes very important now. You don't have time to call anymore. So, but also my, my sort of management style has changed from when I was in the traditional hierarchical companies. You know, it's sort of, it's like top down management style, you know, protecting yourself, you know, covering your own back, that type of thing. But also you kind of suppress the people who are ranked below you a little bit and you try to impress the people above you. In the hub model, that all goes away, which is lovely, it's wonderful. And so it's peer to peer, it's trust level. So building a team like that, where you're in the team too, you know, you're not sort of looking down on the team and supervising. You're in the team and you're all figuring this out, this stuff out by yourselves. That is a really motivating and inspiring way to work, I find. I would never change it for that, for that. That would be my number one reason for always using the hub model is that it's like working with, you know, you work with people you really trust and they trust you and there's no performance and appraisal nonsense.

There's no, you know, I love that. And it's, it also kind of makes me think about like, I don't know the difference between leadership and management because there is, obviously there is a big difference. I find myself, for instance, when I'm in companies, I'm a better leader than I am a manager because the minute it gets down to And I don't even want to use the word micromanaging, but if I, I hate trying to stay on top of people. Okay, Trevor, did you do this? Like, tell me this, tell me this. I hate that aspect of management as opposed to setting the vision, setting the expectations, getting it into motion. But when I feel like I start to have to babysit and manage and, you know, cover, you know, deal with mistakes and all that stuff, that's the stuff I don't like. As an entrepreneur, did you find yourself ever getting into that real kind of micromanagement role? Or did you stay much more of a, as a, like in that leadership space?

I mean, you can call it leadership, Brad. I, you know, in the books, like in Three Simple Steps, I talk about, you know, if you look at your regular career, how little time is productive, how much time you spend in the office. And all the surveys show, you know, that the productive time was less than two hours. Okay? So as an entrepreneur, the tendency as an entrepreneur is to suddenly feel guilty because you've got all this time on your hands. So you sat in front of your computer waiting for an email or you're waiting for the phone to go. At first I started to question, am I crazy? Am I doing, I must be doing something wrong. I've got all this spare time. And then I realized, hang on, I'm not attending any meetings, I'm not supervising, I'm not checking up on people. There's no update meeting. There's no, like, so what are you going to do this week? And at the end of the week, what did you do this week? All of that nonsense that we all have to put up with in the corporate world. Right? And so because of that, you do have to sort of retrain your mind into, okay, I need to think differently now and I need to manage in a different way and I need to structure my day differently. It's okay for me to go to the grocery store at 10 o' clock in the morning. I don't have to feel guilty. I can go to the gym, you know, so you're breaking your sort of time up like that. So that was when Three Simple Steps was launched. That's what I got most emails about. Was this new way? Is that really possible? Could I leave my corporate world and then actually not work more than five hours a day, you know, actually be productive? And the whole reason is because I can show in those references that most people in a regular career, you know, are wasting their time most of the time. So when you're, I think that's really.

That'S challenging to do. I've been challenged with that myself. And it's, you know, you may be done with the productive stuff, but there's always something to do or it always feels like there's something to do. And even if it's not that important, we're just in front of our computer like, okay, we'll come up with something and we'll be busy but not super productive. But we feel like if we leave, we are shirking our responsibility to the company. I know, I've dealt with that and I've been at my desk for 12 hours, but I look back at how much actual productive time and it was a couple actually reminds me, I bought a business and it was a small business, it was an online based business and it was a relatively small purchase versus the rest of my income, et cetera. And I remember when I bought it, I was like, all right, this is actually, I can do this. The whole idea of the four hour workweek, I was like, I could work on this business for four hours a week and it would be fine because it doesn't need that much from me. And I bought it. And then I realized, well, wait a minute, those four hours a week that it got from me because they were almost like my extra hours were really bad hours. Like my brain, I was brain dead on them. I wasn't giving it my best because I was doing all the other stuff in my normal businesses that required real brain power. So when I sat down, like, oh, damn, what did I just do? Because I don't have four quality hours a week for that. And it really, more than anything solidified that concept that, you know, it's not time management, it's energy management and it's bandwidth management. Like, you've only got a handful. And the older we get though, you know, the less of that productive focus that I found that I've got.

Like, so, you know, it's science shows that our brains are at the most creative when they're tired, which most people think is the other way around. And so, so@traffic blade.com There's a free download, no strings attached for everybody. Because this is such an important point, I put a little course out there for free. It's called the practical magic of the five hour workday. And so what I think is, you know, everyone has the right to understand why does it work, how does it work. So I talk a little bit about, you know, brain management and productive planning and stuff like that, but also take it back in Time. So I go to pre industrial revolution days. The average worker only worked four hours a day. And this shocks most people. Most people have this image of somebody, you know, being slaves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they worked, they had the priorities, right? They had family, church or spirit, whatever you want to call it. Leisure and work. Work was literally number four priority. And so now we're work, work, work, work, right? And so I show that the old village centric lifestyle is somewhere where we have the opportunity to go back to today because of technology, it allows us to do it. And as I was writing that that's in secrets to a successful startup too. And as I was writing that Covid hit and cause all of this is tsunami of people moving away from the, the factory floor, in the workplace if you like, and going working from home without any training, without any experience, you know, of understanding.

They're calling it the zoom boom.

Yeah, I mean it's a cultural shock to everybody. But now a lot of people really like it and don't want to go back. But what the point I was, I tried to make in this practical magic of the five hour workday is to, is not to think of, well, I've got my work. Oh, and by the way, I also need to take a break. You have to treat the break as equally important as the work because that's where the magic happens. Everyone's had the experience of being in the shower and coming up with a magic idea, right? So what I do is I structure. I don't do any work in the morning before 9. So 9 to 11 is my productive work, whatever that may be. And then I treat 11 till 2 with the same degree of commitment. But I'm going for a walk in the woods and I'm going for a long lunch somewhere and that's where the magic happens. And I get all those aha moments. Why didn't I think of this before? Slapping yourself on the forehead. Just wasted two hours of my life trying to figure it out. And it comes to me from this, from the ether if you like. So structuring your workday like that and scientifically proven to be the right way to do it. But I also can point to people we should admire who do it. So like for instance, all NASA's pilots are required to have an afternoon nap. It's mandatory and it improves their performance 34% once they get behind the stick again. So there's really good scientific reasons for structuring your world that way. And I found in my businesses, you know, all of the solutions and all of the great ideas, they don't come when I'm sat at my computer, you know, they just don't. That's computers with my spreadsheets pretty much.

You know, that's one of the big interject there that I've really noticed. And I was, I've thought about this for years. I keep on. Is one of those things, I keep on telling myself I'm going to do something about that but then it ends up not getting done. But I realized like I'm a very extroverted, highly people oriented person where that, that's where the magic happens for me. And I find myself behind my computer way, way, way, way too much for what it's worth. And it's not where it's the ma. My magic has never happened behind the computer. But then, you know, obviously Covid made a, made that even more pronounced because you just nowhere else to go, right? But it is funny, I was thinking about that the other day. I was like, I need to force myself off my damn computer with that. One of my friends said one of his hacks is he'll take his laptop, let's say it's between 9 and 11. He'll take it to the beach, he'll take it to a coffee shop, but he'll take it without a power cord. And he'll say I'm going to work on this computer until my power runs out. Most computers run out two to four hours or whatever. So he goes, once that's done, it's done. And then I'm doing my other stuff. And I thought that was kind of an interesting way to force yourself to stop working once the battery.

That's smart. I'd never thought of that. That is smart.

You know, and then. And you're going to probably take a lot less breaks or like check Facebook, a lot less because like, wow, I've got a limited amount of power here to work with. I got to get it done. It's like where nobody's ever as productive as the day before vacation.

I also, one of my hacks is separate devices for work and separate devices for personal. Never make, I never mix the two because it's, you know, you'd have to be really strong willed if you've got it all on one iPhone, say for instance, you've got to be really Strong willed at 7:00 clock at night when the thing dings and it's a work thing and you're immediately back into work. And yeah, so having separate devices means that I can't be disturbed. I Lock. So I lock my devices, make my work devices, you know, behind the door, and they don't see a lighter day till 9 o' clock the next morning. And so that, that was vital to me because I never wanted my businesses to interfere with my personal life because I was very lucky to have a really amazing personal life. So I was very sort of disciplined about that.

Yeah, that's definitely been an issue in mind too. I mean, I've worked from home for a long time. I've had offices, but. And I like working from home. I have. This is a spare bedroom that is now my. It's solely an office that I'm in. But having that room just a couple steps away, it's really easy to just get always sucked back into doing that. So speaking of the three simple steps, I bought the book and I believe I did start to read it, like right before our interview, but I have not gone deeply. But I would love to hear, like, can you summarize what those three simple steps are and how they've been so powerful in your life and that of the, you know, readers and people you've helped?

Yeah, easily, because I, I am as flawed and screwed up as anybody. So I need this, these three steps today as much as I've ever need them. So that's the authenticity part of it, if you like. So the first step is all about mentality control. Because we tend to not think about the words and the thoughts that we're having, we tend to let them happen randomly and their energy. Thoughts are energy. Today we can use MRI to take a picture of a thought happening. So the real pieces of real parts of energy, but with a slightly measurable charge. And the problem with that is that everything is energy and therefore energy follows the laws of thermodynamics. So energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted into another form. So all of our thoughts go out to the universe and they come back and give us exactly what we just thought about. So if you start out, if you start your day thinking, I would love to be an entrepreneur, but I'm not ready yet, or I can't do it, or it's too much or I can't get money, all of those thoughts go out and they give you more reason to keep thinking the same thing. So the first, the first part of three simple steps is to get control of that mentality back again. It's not positive thinking. That's impossible because thoughts happen so fast, 500 milliseconds. I think positive thing is a bit of nonsense, but personally but what you do have control over is positive reaction. So you can catch yourself having these thoughts and as you catch yourself, you sort of reframe anything. I'll say that differently and think that differently. And by doing that you end up pulling your individual self back to where you're supposed to be. Most of us have lost that, you know, very early on in life, by the time we're five.

Yeah, I learned that, I learned that technique years ago when I was studying neuro linguistic programming and I was doing.

A lot of that.

And one of the things that my mentor in that space said, like just whenever you catch yourself saying one of those, like, oh, I, I don't know, like I suck at this or whatever, you know, like some negative thoughts is say cancel or delete, like cancel, cancel, cancel or delete, delete, delete. And you're verbally saying like delete that thought out of my head. And it's a quick little pattern interrupt. And I know I've done that. I've caught myself going, I don't. Delete, delete, delete. Rephrase that. Because you're right, words are extremely powerful.

So sorry to interrupt, but I did the same thing. I actually do say out loud, delete. So we're on the same track.

I love it.

We probably went to the same course and read the same book. But you know, it's really important to do that because there's no shortage of people out in the world who will tell you, you can't do this. Okay? They're going to tell you that you can't. Your idea is crazy. Or, you know, I was told by the person I was negotiating with to get the rights, you can't be a CEO. You're not, you don't have the skill, you don't have the financial background. You know, a thousand reasons why I won't be successful as an entrepreneur. And so you do. So you need to have these protective tools which, that three simple steps has, you know, like I think about 40 or 50 different tools that you can use to, to get yourself back from that because that will affect you. We're humans. So when someone tells you you're rubbish, you know, that goes into our heads. It's not, you can't stop it. And so, but you can react to it. So that's, that's the first part. And then once you've got that control back, the second part is about how to prepare yourself for the modern business world or the modern life, if you like. And that is this new spiraling energy that we're in how to be, how to, how to create, the ability to adapt and adopt quickly and how to use your intuition. So I was lucky enough to be married to somebody who had incredible intuition. And I was in awe of it, to be honest with you, because I didn't. And so I've worked for a couple of decades now on creating a better connection between my, my thought process and my intuitive decision making. That's absolutely vital for the modern business. We don't have time now to have meetings and, and strategies and stuff like that. You've got to go with your gut. I think that's vital. So. But there's things you can do, there's ways to learn and splitting up the day, the five hour workday is all part of that. Because getting out into nature is a good way to develop deeper connection, that's one thing. And then the third part of three simple steps is about where to direct that power. And that's about intentions as opposed to goal setting. Goal setting is very poorly taught in the world. And so I wanted to show the difference between goal setting and intention setting. And that's what the third part about. And it's partly about the magic of thinking big parking about aim really high. And it's also about crushing time and imagination together because time's an illusion. So you imagine your success has already occurred and you feel how that feels and, and you start to bring it closer and closer, closer to you, whereas it would always have been slightly out of reach for the next 40 or 50 years. And you'll die frustrated by, by crushing that time and imagining what success feels like already. The success you want for yourself, you pull it in and all kinds of miracles start showing up. And that's, that's really how the intention setting works.

Yeah, I love that. So can you give me an example? And I've got to like, I talk about this stuff a lot with like friends, colleagues, et cetera. Like the difference between, I call it goals versus aspirations. But I like actually the intention a little bit better. I know. I read a book by, he's an innovation consultant named Steven Shapiro and he wrote a book called Goal Free Living. And it was exactly about this concept about how and when you look at the highest performers, it's never, we all think that oh, if I achieve this goal, I'll be happy. And it's science is even proven. No, I mean, I think it's even called like the gold medalist effect or the Olympic effect that, you know, the actual celebration of this lasts minutes and then sometimes People go into depression if they only focus on achieving goals. And if you're so myopically focused on a goal, you miss so many potential opportunities. And so he ends up focusing on, you know, like, aspirations or, like, intentions. And I know when I did this, there was a. There was a. This was really powerful for me, but it was also. There's a. There's a downside to it. So I've always had a hard time coming up with very, very specific goals for my life. Like saying, I have a number that I want to make in revenue or assets, or I want to get to this size. Like, none of it just drives me. It's like, okay, that sounds good. I want a $10 million a year business. Sounds good, but it doesn't wake me up in the morning and drive me. And I focus. Like, my three biggest aspirations or intentions have always been I want to be fully engaged in what I do, right? Like, I want to enjoy the hell out of what I'm doing. Because if I'm not doing that, life's too short. I want to be surrounded, work with, play with people who inspire me, surrounded by amazing people. And I want to make really good money. Now, the nice part is those are. Those are great intentions. The bad part is they're so non specific. They're hard to realize when you've got them. And I remember I woke up one day and I looked back, I was like, I actually am living all these things, but it doesn't feel like. It doesn't feel like I ran through that finish line and like, I crossed it. I achieved this. So there's kind of that. It opens the opportunity up to, I think, enjoy life a little bit more, but it makes it harder to shoot for that target because it's a bit of a fuzzier goal. So I'd love to hear kind of like your version of, like, goals versus intentions. And I don't know if what I said is kind of like along those lines in alignment with this.

It is. Except. Except you've used the word I want a lot. And therefore, you. You haven't crushed the time. So you have to go. You have to go present tense or past tense? That's critical. That's a free tip to everybody. So. So it's, you know, before I even started my first company, part of the intention was I've sold the company for at least $100 million. I'd already done that. But the key thing. So if you go back into all the great sages through the ages, people like Neville Goddard, and people like that, they talk about, the feeling is so important. It's about what does that feel like. So the mantra for all my companies has always been the same, make a positive difference in someone's life, have fun doing it. You touched on that. That's so, so important. And then share in all the rewards, material and otherwise. They come naturally as a result of setting that energy and flow. That's been the mantra, my mission, vision, values, if you like, through all of my companies. And the reason for that is exactly what you're talking about is I want to be involved in something that inspires me and that for me, that's always making a difference, some kind of impact. I'm not just going to start a new landscape company or find a new cupcake recipe that's not going to inspire me. So what I want to do is do something that everyone says is impossible and go fix it. And that inspires me to do it. And like you say, when you go with that intention, you pretty, you know, I mean, always draw to you the people that you need, the people who will help you keep building that and building that excitement. But as far as, as far as imagining the attention, intention, and, and then it arrived and what you described is absolutely how it feels when you achieve that intention. You don't feel excited because you've got yourself to such a, such a level of desire called just knowing.

Yeah.

Which I talk about in all my courses and books and stuff. So when you get to just knowing when it happens, your emotion is one of gratitude. My emotion is one of gratitude, not one of excitement. And I'm prepared for that. But what I do in order to sort of fuel the intention is I know that after every milestone that I've set as an intention, so let's say it's selling the company for 100 million or whatever, after that happens, I know I create in my mind a celebration event. And so when it happens, I allow myself to celebrate. And that can be all kinds of things in this company I'm negotiating for the sale of now I know what the celebration event will look like. I know where it's going to be. I've touched it, I've felt it, I've smelt it. I know what the expression on the faces of the people who will be gathered there is going to be like because they're going to have a really nice and surprising night because of what's in the secret envelopes. So I've got this event already planned. Even though I haven't yet achieved the event. Itself. I'm negotiating it right now for my first company. That celebrating event, in my mind, was buying my wife an Aston Martin Vantage. That was the car of her dreams. She went to. She was specific. She wanted in tungsten silver, and she wanted the red caliper brakes. And the day after I did my first deal, when I sold the company, I walked into the dealership in Bellevue in Washington, and it came in that day, that car. And I purchased it with cash. $143,000. I remember like it was yesterday, but I did that because I had imagined for the previous six years the look on my wife's face when I show it, when I bring it to her. And it was priceless. And you couldn't put a price on that, on how special that was for me. That just made me proud and felt like an achiever, and I made my wife happy. But that was part of my intention, and so I could wake up every day in the previous six years and imagine that event as part of my intention setting. And that's the difference between a goal, which is typically a target with a specific milestone, and intentions. Intentions are lifestyle that just fire you up.

I love that. Yeah, that. And that was actually one of the things you mentioned, feeling, you know, and how important that is. And I remember this, maybe three or four years ago, I did an exercise which was, you know, I started off with, like, what do I want? And when it comes down to physical things, like, if there's nothing, there's nothing that I can say, I want this. Like, oh, that'd be nice to have a nicer house. It'd be nice to have a nicer car. But I can't say that those were ever drivers. Like, oh, I want this. There's no emotional pull. So I reframed it as, like, how do I want to feel? I was like, I want to wake up. I want to feel energized. I want to feel loved, But I also want to feel like loving. I want to feel safe and secure. I want to feel excited and curious and like, these are all the. These are all the different ways I want to feel. And I think I maybe came up with about 10 different aspects or feelings. And then I asked myself, you know, what would it take to feel these things fully, you know, regardless of the vehicle that brings it to me? Maybe it's not the business, maybe it's not the, you know, something else. But actually, that reminds me to kind of go back to that exercise, because that's really what life is all about. How do you Want to experience life, I want to experience it through these emotions and these states of being. And I think a lot of us, myself fully as guilty as anybody. We think of the vehicle first and then we hope that we get the other. Like I want to build a business to do this and maybe I'll achieve these things. What if you can achieve those things without the vehicle you think you need?

I get this in email a lot, Brad, but people have attached the vehicle already. You're saying it beautifully. And they're trying to figure out they want to be a multimillionaire and they're trying to figure out how to do that. You don't need to, you just have to intention it and it'll happen somehow and. But they're in a business and they're assuming that the business is what's going to get them there. It doesn't have to be. It could be a lottery win. It could be someone turn up at your front door, an uncle you didn't really have. You know, I mean it can be anything but. So, so that's why like you say, by feeling that success is really important but you don't ever ask how and you don't attach anything to it along the way.

Yeah, and that was a, that was one of my biggest takeaways from Tim Ferriss book, the Four Hour Workweek. I don't know if you ever got a chance to read that, but one of the biggest things was he said, I can almost remember it verbatim, which is that most people think they want to, to have millions of dollars. They want to be a millionaire and have millions of dollars. What they really want is they want to experience what they think only people with millions of dollars can experience. And that is they see freedom, freedom of movement, freedom to take breaks, freedom of stress, freedom of lifestyle, et cetera. Because you actually don't need to have millions of dollars in the bank to experience that. You can experience it with a lot less money. But as long as it's coming in a way that affords you freedom, et cetera. Thus the, that concept of like a four hour work week is like, all right, I got things doing this for me. I don't need millions and millions of dollars coming in. And I know that really reframed my vision of success. I was like, oh, you know what, you're right. Millions and millions of dollars helps. You can do a lot more fun things. But it's not, that's not what people actually want. We want that experience.

And part of that is so money is Just another form of energy, right, Brad? I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it's just another form of energy. And so one of the things that I find people do when they start out, intention setting, of course we all make these kind of mistakes and it's a process. We work through it in my course of the book and people figure it out. But typically they view financial independence as like getting to the summit of Mount Everest. Like it's something to have, like it's a place to go. And it's not like that at all because money is energy. So financial independence means that you have a lot of financial, financial flow through your life, but you have to let it flow. As soon as you try to stamp, as soon as you try to grasp it, put it under the blankets or something like that, you create stagnation and it all unwinds horribly for you. So it's learning that financial independence isn't a place to get to, but is a lifestyle is a big eye opener for a lot of people. So you know, you start out with a little flow but have the courage to let it flow. I mean, you know, the Richard Branson's and the Elon Muscle world, they don't have a Hogwarts vault where they have all the gold coins stacked, you know, you know their money flow is huge and it's because it's been reinvested and reinvested and they're using it to build this and try that and not always successfully, but it's. But they're sort of conductor of an orchestra and it's almost like, it's almost like trying to achieve harmony with finance.

Well, I think that's one of the greatest skills that most people don't have. I don't have it in a, in enough abundance, which is, I don't think anybody does well, very few the people you mentioned, which is that understanding how so money flows through everybody. Like sometimes it flows through to just. People just spend everything they get right. So it's flowing but it's flowing in the wrong direction. And I think it's really understanding how to direct that flow to productively and efficiently so that you're not just directing it to the wrong. Whether it's just spending on, you know, the Rolex watch and the cars and all this other stuff or that you're not just chasing bad investments. Like a lot of people will throw it into bad investments. Whether it's like, and I've done that in the past where a perfect example was I started off As a financial Advisor in my mid-20s, back in the late 90s, and I was, you know, and I had some really good savings from that. You know, I didn't spend on college. I had about 50 to $100,000, and.

Boom.

I'm sure you remember it. You throw a dart at the, you know, at a stock ticker, and you'll make money as long as it had a dot com behind it. And, you know, I got heavily margined and I lost everything within a couple months when it crashed in 2000. And then I got back, I got into real estate investing, and I made all that money back over a couple years. And then I saw an oil and gas well that was pitched to me as an investment, and I put about $100,000 into that. I was making stupid investments, right? I was like, trying to make that money flow, but I wasn't good with money. And I was just like, all right, I just thought of here. I lost it, got into digital marketing and started to make money. Luckily, I've not made that dumb mistake yet. So I've learned from that experience, But I know that I had to have experience was a really son of a bitch teacher. But I think that's a. That's a real nuance that a lot of people don't understand, which is like how to direct that flow wisely so that it's not recklessly. That's the first time I've really ever kind of had that thought that you really kind of.

And that's why intuition becomes so important, particularly as things change so fast. Now, you know that the latest fad, the latest crypto, whatever it may be.

I was just going to bring crypto up.

Intuition's. Well, yeah, it is a classic example of that. So intuition is really important. I had this very similar experience to you during the dot com madness, by the way. It was. I put 5,000 in, got it up to about 250,000, and then lost it on the same day that I was traveling to Chicago. So by when I got to Chicago, it was all gone. You know, just. Just one of the. One of those things with the. With bitcoin. I tried to buy $10,000 worth of Bitcoin when it was 8 cents. That would be. That'd be worth about 3 billion now. So go with your intuition. I got put off because you have to go in the dark, into the pain back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm very happy where I am right now. But I didn't get back in until it was a lot higher above 8 cents.

Same here. And you know, to use a perfect example of that, where, you know, I started investing in that, like dabbling back in late middle of 2017. So I watched, but it was like five grand. I watched it go up, I watched it go down. And I never really dove really into it to really understand what was going on until about middle of 2020, which is before it started to really rip higher. But one of my close friends who became my kind of crypto investing mentor, luckily he's a very methodical, relatively conservative investor and not one of these degenerates who just like, hey, welcome to the new casino. And because I'd learned my lesson several times about betting on just the wild high flyers, it allowed me to temper my investments to primarily blue chips. Going in very methodically and not getting caught up in a lot of the crazes. And I get caught up in some of the crazes and the crazy coins and all this NFT stuff. But I would do that with a very small amount of money. And I look at that as this is my learning money. I'm willing to waste that just to pay attention to it and learn. But I do have a bunch of friends who got caught up through money at absolute trash coins. And now we're sitting on major losses. I can sleep at night because of those past mistakes I've made. It's like experiences.

Yeah. I think the dot com taught me the same thing.

And we know what it's like to lose everything, and it's a lot more painful than those wins. Feel good?

Yeah. And I was like you. I thought I was a brilliant stock picker, but everybody was picking stocks. It didn't matter what it was. Like you said dot com and off it goes. And you think you're a genius. So, yeah, that lesson was good for me too. So I've been. I'm pretty much the same.

But that's been. It has actually been challenging for me, especially being burned twice.com and then oil and gas, to have the confidence in myself for letting money flow to the right places. And sometimes that's with people with vendors. Like, a lot of us get burned. We'll hire a vendor, we think they're going to do something good and they, you know, they let you down. And that happens enough times. You kind of get burned more and more. You get stingier. I've had to reopen myself up, but I definitely went through that period where I got like really close and I just said, you know, screw it. I'm just going to do this all myself. And that's when my business really slowed down, which was when I was like, I don't trust anybody. They're all going to waste my money. And I became a little bit miserly and it.

Yeah, and that's a dilemma. Especially, you know, being a guy. Our intuitions aren't as good as, you know, I mean, if I could bottle women's intuition, I'd be the richest man on the planet. But there's things that we can do to improve our connection with intuition that help us not make the same mistakes. And I use that a lot with picking vendors. So I'm an intuitive entrepreneur in many ways. I would rather get the best entrepreneur than the best price. That's what I learned.

Do you have anything you can share there that could help people? People kind of improve their intuition with that. Because I know that intuition can also be tricky. We can think, oh, I just really like this person.

Right?

And liking somebody and making the right judgment is oftentimes not the best way to do it.

You know, I was blessed because my wife would. I would often ask her, say, what do you think? And I remember one time I was thinking of bringing someone into one of my companies. I knew this person, been working with him. I trusted him. Been working for about three years. I said to my wife, I just happened to mention why we're having dinner. Actually, on going to talk to. I won't use his name because he might be listening, but I'll talk to this guy tomorrow. And she said, no. I said, what do you mean, no? And she said, he's bad news. I said, how can you. I got indignant. How can you say he's bad news? You've never met him. You don't know anything about him. I've worked with him and all this kind of stuff. She's absolutely right. I mean, 18 months later, he left with all the money and left me high and dry. And so I was always inspired by her, but also fascinated by that.

How do you do that?

So, yeah, how do you just know? How'd you get to just know? And she would describe the feeling that she had when. When. So she had this, like, feeding in her solar plexus. And so some of the tools and techniques and three simple steps and secrets to a successful startup teach you. When you go for your nature walk, it's essential to get into nature as often as you can when you get into nature, how to connect. How do you. How you recognize that you are energy, that you're made of fermions. And bosons, but so are the trees and so are the birds, so we're all made of the same stuff. And then start to connect that way. And it works beautifully. And so you end up. You end up in a situation where previously you didn't trust your own decision or didn't trust yourself to the point where you can feel it. You can literally feel it in the solar plexus. And that's when you know. So with vendors, I always do that when I meet them. Doesn't matter what I think of them or what they think of me. If I get that feeling in my solar plexus, I know it's the right one. And it has never, never failed me.

That really. Yeah, that. And I think that is the difference, like, tuning in to the feeling here versus just the feeling up here. It's like, oh, I really like this person. They're really. They're just like me. We have so much in common. I'm going to hire you. And. But, yeah, I think. I think when you take a moment to really.

Yeah.

How does it make you feel right in here? The human. I don't know if it's the mind. Just our consciousness is so much more advanced than we give it credit for and ability to find that stuff out, and it's. It fascinates the hell out of me, too. You also mentioned something that I really liked. And I've done this. I don't do it as consistently as I need to, but you talk about not talking about future, like, I want this, but it's like, I either have this or I did this. And for a while, one of the, I guess, journaling exercises I did, but it wasn't really journaling. It was like creating my to do list. So a lot of us, we wake up in the morning or whatever and, you know, create a to do list. I got to do these 10 things today. And what I started to do is instead of saying I have to do X, do Y, do Z, I would write it almost like a journal. Like, I already did it today. I called so and so and sold successfully sold this product. Right. Like, I was almost writing it down, what I had to do, as if I'd already done it, like, at the end of the day. And what I noticed that that allowed me to feel is that I almost have an obligation to do it now because I've already. I said, I've already done it. So if I don't do that and I don't cross it off my list, it's almost like I'm Violating a law of nature. And it was, it was really effective. You bringing this up reminds me to do that. I haven't done this in like, in over a year. I think I'm rewrite my to do list today.

Yeah, it's. And you've got it. I mean, you're doing it exactly as I would teach it. That's exactly what I say. When I was kind of training salespeople and marketing people in previous life, I used to get that before you open the door, you imagine this has already gone brilliantly and you say to yourself, this was. You don't say, this is going to be. But this was a brilliant call. Or this customer loved me. And when I moved on from that to the sort of boardroom level and stuff like that, before I would open the door, before I would go in, I would imagine that whatever meeting I'm going into was brilliant. And everyone's patting me on the back, I'll do a little play in the head. Everyone's patting me on the back and telling me how brilliant I was and the great presentation and everything. And then I'll go in and. And it, it always goes well because of that.

It works. And when you think of the opposite way, when you think about what could go on in the future, like, I hope this goes well, or whatever, what you've done is you've opened up infinite possibilities for it to go any which direction. But when you think about it the way you just described, you've collapsed it into only one possibility. And I think it's a little bit easier to just live into that possibility as opposed to going, all right, I'm here, like, what's going to happen next?

Yeah. And you know, in physics that's called the observer effect, so.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, all this stuff we're talking about, it can sound a little bit New Agey sometimes, but it's actually science, you know, it's.

I love how. Yeah. Have you blended. I love how you blended this higher level of conscious thinking and physics and metaphysics etc into entrepreneurship. You don't see that very often.

Right.

It's very, it's a very unique approach to it and it's obviously been very successful. When, when you're working with. So you do work with. You have, you have courses, you have books, etc. Do you do, do you do any kind of individual or group coaching and consulting? Is that part of your business as well, or.

I've stopped doing it because I take it too seriously. I mean, I take it. Take it really serious. When someone asks, you know, help with this stuff, I end up putting too many hours into it. And like I. They couldn't afford that. The hours I put in, they couldn't afford to buy. So I stopped doing that. But I did replace it. You're quite right about the course. I got a course called Transformation. And basically it takes us through, you know, three quantum physics principles. But then we don't ever have to use the word quantum physics again. So three principles that we understand energy and then we start to play with it in slightly different ways. And so it takes you through the whole journey. It takes about 30 days to do. So you go through this journey of coming in, thinking you know who you are and coming out the other side a completely different person with the world at your feet. Basically, thousands have gone through it. And it's one of my most fun things to be involved in. But I'm active in the course as well. So I'm there as a helping hand should anybody have the need of it. And it's very inspiring because it's transformation. It's not that it just works for some people and others, it just works. It works for everybody. And so everyone gets this life changing experience.

Oh, that's fantastic. Now you are. You also mentioned you have like four different businesses right now that you. So like how do you split your time in between four businesses? I know running one business can be really challenging. Have you kind of elevated yourself out of the day to day stuff on a lot of them or how does that.

Yeah, I don't really do a lot of day to day stuff, Brad, because. Because the hub model does it for you, it does all the minutiae for you. And they've got their own systems, their own human resources and all this. I don't have to deal with it primarily. I just give direction and encouragement. I would say that's 90% of all that I do. They're all very different companies. So I have the cancer company that in early stage negotiations for exiting that. I have an animal sanctuary which is very different, of course, and that's much more hands on. And they're happier when I'm not there. The staff volunteers, but I just love animals. So I'm there probably there too much with those. With those. And I've got a movie coming out. So Three Simple Steps is. Has been made. Is being made into a movie. Really?

Movie, documentary or what's the.

No, no. So it's called Audrey. It's based on my mother's life, which my mother's life is One of the themes that runs through three simple steps.

Okay.

Because she's, she was such an inspiration to me. Everything I've ever done in life is down to what she and my wife taught me.

That's amazing.

Yeah. So I've been very lucky to have very powerful women in my life.

Now in some of these businesses, especially like the medical one you've got right now, do you consider yourself like the CEO, the chairman? Is there a role you've kind of adopted in that space or.

Well, I do. I'm founder and CEO if you like. But the CEO, I don't say chief executive. I see. Chief energy officer.

Oh, I love that.

So that's my role is to keep the energy high, keep everyone buzzing, you know. And in all the companies, do you.

Have anybody, I guess in more of the day to day managerial space to where you're like, they're reporting kind of to you with, hey, this is what's going on. These are all like all of the various spokes of the hub or is that still you who's kind of paying attention to everything that's happening around the wheel?

Yeah, that's me. And I see myself just as the conductor. I can't play any of these instruments that's in the orchestra, but I can hear harmony. And so that's kind of my role. And I love that role.

Yeah, that's fantastic. That's the role that I think is the ideal place to get to for an entrepreneur. To where, yeah, you are removing yourself from that. I know in some of the smaller businesses I've had or been a part of, I've almost had too much capability to do things. And so I'll do it. I've always been jealous of some of my colleagues or friends who are successful entrepreneurs much like yourself. To where there's almost like a. It's almost like an ignorance that like, I can't do this, so I'm not even going to try. I need somebody else to do it. Like when I know I can do something, I get tempted to roll up my sleeves and get in there and screw things up.

Most of the time I know I can't do it.

I've always said I need to just start a business that I have no, absolutely zero knowledge of all the various functions to where I'm just, I don't know what I can't do and I just need to rely on the other people and just bring the vision on that. But this is super fascinating. Are there any nuts you're trying to crack right now and by that I kind of mean what could be people you're trying to meet, a skill you're trying to learn, a problem you're trying to solve, money you're trying to raise. I mean, it could be anything personal or business. But this is an opportunity for you to jog my imagination and that of my audience to go, ah, this is great. He said that this is a something he could use some little help with that we might be able to provide.

Well, trevorgblake.com, which is my digital marketing, I didn't really envisage that as a business. I was giving the course away for free. I was giving books away for free because all my proceeds go to cancer research and development. And I happened to bump into literally online, somebody who said, you're sitting on a gold mine. You've got all this information to share, but you're thinking of as a hobby, not as a business. And it was a bit of a wake up call for me. So I put Trevor Blake.com together as, you know, so just over 18 months ago, LLC did and then started to take it seriously as a company. And the trajectory for that has been fantastic. It's been quite an eye opener for me that just how big this thing can be. And so, so now, you know, one of the reasons I'm exiting the my drug company is I want to have more focus, more energy on Trevor G. Blake.com because there's such a need for it now. You know, people, we are living in a world where science, spirit and entrepreneurship have all come together finally, not separate silos anymore. And people, we're all more willing to talk about it, come out of the closet and talk about energy. I think the time is right for that. And so I can't tell you what my intention is because I have to be private. But as part of the intention, it is to take trevorgblake.com to a level that's never been seen before. That requires me doing things I've never done before because I haven't got a clue what I'm doing. And also getting involved in things that I've never done before. So, like new, exciting, like I've just started shamanic dancing. I would never have imagined doing that. I mean, nobody wants to see this body dancing, but I've really, I've got so much out of that that I think, you know, learning all of these new ideas and bringing them together and showing how they impact what we think of this as the material, physical side of life, like my businesses or whatever, but bringing it all Together is very exciting for me. So that's, that's why kind of where I'm headed in the next few.

I love that. Are there any things in particular you're looking for? Whether it's resources, people, anything like that, of that nature? Obviously this is like an opportunity for more exposure to that. But is there anything else you can think of that would help you further that vision along?

Yes. So there are two people, I have been told there are two people I have yet to meet who are going to be integral part of it, I don't know. Part of what I don't know and who they are, I have no idea. But in 2023, 2024, and this is, this is all part of the bringing, bringing all of these disciplines together is that when we get in touch with our intuition and we learn to extend our senses a little bit, we start to get messages coming to us from all different directions that were always trying to come to us, but we weren't recipients, we weren't tuned in. Now that we're more tuned in, those messages are getting through. And so it helps me to have my eyes wider open to look for who are these two critical people coming into the my life at this period of time and, and to talk to me about a specific thing which I won't mention, but a specific thing to do with energy and taking that information, being an ambassador for that. So I can't say specifically who they are or where they are, but I'm looking forward to meeting whoever they are.

Right. Oh, that's good. It's just ambiguous enough to where it could fit into any thing and I guess you'll know it when you see it. That's fan. That's fantastic. Trevor, I've really enjoyed talking to you and hearing your story and your approach to this. It's really refreshing. As opposed to some of the traditional entrepreneurs who are just like go, go, go. Success, money driven. Let's build this business where it's very almost like robotic or mechanic. I love the organic approach you've taken to this throughout your career and you know, how it ties into what seems on the surface like a really well balanced life between like life and business and how one serves the other or they serve each other like, like a marriage. Right. Are there any parting thoughts you'd like to leave? My audience with?

This lifestyle is it's not. People look at the lifestyle, I call it success with balance. They look at this success with balance and they think that must be a very rare thing and that he must have a Secret of some kind. It's not. It's available to absolutely everybody right now. And so my response to everyone is don't wait. As my wife used to say to me, don't wait, create. That's what she used to say to me all the time. Because we have the tendencies to wait for something to happen. Right. And wait for a sign. She would say, don't wait, create. So you make it happen. So just start. If you're listening to this and you're thinking of starting, don't think anymore. Just start something. Because you don't know what business you're into to get started. That's a key message to everybody.

I love that. Yeah, there's absolute magic and just momentum. And I've been guilty of that as well, where I'll get analysis paralysis. And it's not until I just stop that and just go do something and I figure it out. So I'll tell you one thing, you've inspired me to do more 11am to 2pm time away, because that's definitely where I found also the. The best ideas and the brilliance is when I allow myself to wander and figure it out. But so where people can get more information on you. Is it trevorgblake.com that's the best.

Yeah, everything's there. Everything you can get, the books, the courses, and there's loads of free stuff. I love writing, so there's lots of free articles, podcasts, that sort of thing. So rabbit hole that you'll enjoy going down, no strings attached. So it's TrevorJeblake.com. love it.

Well, so for everybody listening or watching, go check out trevorgblake.com if you really resonated with what Trevor had to say. I know I did. And I look forward to finishing the book, the three simple steps, as well as diving into the. What is it? Secrets of a successful startup.

Yeah, Secrets to a successful startup.

Yep. That's fantastic. And seeing what else you've got. And I hope to be able to keep in contact with you. I mean, we're both here in Southern California, so maybe we'll run into each other at some point before too long. For all my listeners, I hope you've really enjoyed this as much as I have. If you have any questions, feedback, ideas, or any nuts you're trying to crack, feel free to send me an email to ask bradaconrappedbusiness.com and I look forward to hearing you guys and seeing you on another episizzle of the show. Until next time. Talk to you soon.