Tra Williams, Author of Boss Brain

Greetings, folks, and welcome to episode 328 of the Small Business Show. Here we have a fantastic guest for you today. And I don't say that lightly.

Could be the best small business show we've ever recorded, right?

Certainly it's up there, man. Yeah, it's. Yeah, I, I'm always hesitant when we bring on guests that are in the, you know, entrepreneur coach realm, but that.

He'S not really a coach.

But he's not, he's on a mission.

Yes, he's on this mission and the way he puts it together and he's an author and I think his, his message certainly, you know, melds with and promotes what we've been talking about over the past six years. And I know everyone who listens is going to get something powerful and positive out of this show.

There, there are, there is at least one phrase that he shares that you will hear us integrate into the show. Like we, like we have with, with many others over the years like this, this might come to the top of the list. I'm not going to tell you what it is. You got to listen. You got to hear him say it first before you hear Shannon and I just like jump all over it and, and, and share the love. But, but yeah, Trey, Trey's onto something here. I think it's gonna be a great show. I think you're gonna love it.

I'm definitely gonna steal it and oh, definitely amplify it because it's just a great concept that encapsul and even more.

So than, you know, one of our other mantras, which is, you know, don't make fear based decisions. I love that one. I still love that one. What you're about to hear I think might top it. So there you go.

Yeah, I'm ready, dude. I'm ready. To small business. I'm excited to listen to the interview and I'm excited to see what everyone thinks.

I'm ready to small business too. He is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton and this is episode 328 of the Small Business Show.

Wrote the book and thank you for saying that. So anyone who's listening right now is likely in the position that they are in for years, if not decades of work, right. They've made decisions, they've chosen to maybe build walls around themselves in some literal or metaphorical way. They've suffered the consequences of what they thought might be good decisions. Then they had unexpected results that they were forced to deal with. So if it took us years to get to the point where we are we have to accept that becoming an entrepreneur, not an employee, is a process. And just as you constructed those walls, you have to realize that it's a process to deconstruct those walls. So the book is about getting you to stop thinking and living like an employee and start thinking and living like an entrepreneur. And that's simply not something that you can wake up one day and say, yesterday I was an employee, today I'm a full time entrepreneur. It is a process so you can unstick yourself gradually over time because that's how you first got started.

Hey there. So over the last six seasons on the Small Business show, our listeners know we always discuss tactics and actions required to make the jump from just being an employer or, I'm sorry, an employee to an employer, how to get out of the comfort of that 9 to 5 job to start your own business and to create the charmed life that Dave and I talk about all the time. Our guest today is a true believer. He's on a quest, a mission, if you will, to rescue 1 million entrepreneurs from traditional employment. Trey Williams has escaped employment and founded several companies. He's helped other business owners franchise their concepts and he's led several franchise companies to success. Trey, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure to be here, really. Thank you for having me. I'm excited about the conversation.

Yeah, I'm really glad you're here to talk about entrepreneurship with us and to tell us about your mission. And we're going to talk about a book that you, that you've written as well called Boss Brain. So let's get a little background to our listeners before we jump into other topics. Give us a quick rundown how you got started working in your own businesses as well as then working with other entrepreneurs.

Yeah, so I grew up in a largely rural environment in the sort of sticks of southeastern Georgia, if you can't tell by the accent. And I like the sticks.

I'm a big fan.

The sticks are good. Yeah.

So I actually grew up about 10 miles from a red light. So I was pretty out there in the sticks. And it's strange to say, but I really think out there in the middle of nowhere is a great place to have entrepreneurship sort of imbued into your personality because no one has now hiring signs up, right? No one is trying to give you a job and there aren't really low hanging fruit or readily available opportunities. So you're forced to manufacture ways to generate income and to supplement maybe the income that you have. And I think that's really where I got that mindset and earned that mindset. My mother made ceramics when we were a kid, and we used to sell them beside the street at Christmas time, and we sold all of the extra vegetables out of our garden that we couldn't freeze or eat. And sort of supplementing and creating these side hustles just was part of who I was growing up as the youngest of four. So I really think that's where it began.

Yeah, that's. That's great. It's out of necessity, right?

Purely out of necessity. But. But. But when you're in necessity, you know no other type of world, so you think that's purely how the world exists. So by the time I did receive W2 employment, I had that sort of hustle on the side mentality just burned into my psyche. So I continued throughout.

That's the key, isn't it? Having that. You know, this is a. This is a business. The entrepreneurship business is for people who have that burned into them. And you can certainly burn it in after the fact, but it needs to be burned in at some point to kind of get you through those tough moments of being an entrepreneur, right?

It does. And if you don't have that burned in early, I think you still feel that drive later in life. And the statistics show that. Right? Studies prove that totally. Except you've never. Except you've not converted that sort of inspiration into action.

And that's what we talk about here all the time, man. Because it's all about taking action, isn't it?

100%. Absolutely. It all begins there, certainly.

For sure. Yeah. And I think that's a good point to focus on is you're used to this type of entrepreneurial cycle and starting companies and everything else, and it puts you in a good position to help other people that perhaps have dreamed about doing it but didn't grow up and didn't evolve in that space where that's just the way things were.

No, for certainly. I mean, I feel blessed to have had that opportunity and to have thought of that just as a natural part of life. The systems that America uses to educate and mature us also turn us into employees. Right. There's no. There's no coincidence that the school day matches the workday. Right. Or that bells that tell us to change class when we're in middle school turn into alarms that go off on our phone to tell us when the next meeting is. So it's really designed to churn you in and create or to burn this in and then churn out employees and it's kind of a relic of the industrial revolution. And I get why it was originally created, but it needs to be enhanced and revised at this point because it's become somewhat self defeating now because entrepreneurship is in such decline.

So I have a question for you, because this, what you're describing, I mean, I certainly believe in it. I see it. I actually just finished teaching my first semester of a college class. Now it was a class of. I was in there because I'm an entrepreneur. Not, not just as a teacher, because I'm definitely not a teacher. But, but, but what you're pointing out, like it's tr. Things all just sort of lead people down this path and is it. And they teach you not to sort of bang into the walls too hard and, you know, just sort of stay the course. Now for some of us, that doesn't work. Right. And that's, that's what we're talking about here. But do you think. We've said on this show many times, and feel free to disagree with us, but we've said on this show many times that it takes both types of people, it takes employees and employers to make the world go round. And both types are okay. Like there's nothing inherently wrong.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. My work in no way is meant to vilify the idea of being a W2 employee.

Sure.

My work is really centered around the balance between those two. And I'll give you my standing metaphor for this. So imagine it's 2,000 years ago. You're standing on the shore of some land far off, and you decide that you want to build a raft and you want to sell beyond the horizon, because out there you think there's something better for you, that where you'll flourish and you can leave a legacy and create a family and have all the things that we want out of life.

Sure.

Simultaneously, there is likely somebody in your village standing on the beach looking at you, going, what are you doing? This looks like the dumbest idea I've ever seen in my life. And that's okay for both because mother nature wired us in a way so that we had to have balance. And the reason behind this is it kept us all, it prevented us all from jumping on that raft, sailing into the void and sinking and killing the species. Right.

Sometimes you jump on that raft and it doesn't go well. It doesn't go well.

Sometimes it sinks. Yeah, absolutely.

That's right. Absolutely certain percentage need to stay back. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. But my work really is centered around the fact that in today's world or today's America, I should say 93% of us are now working for the other 7%. And I would argue that that is not balanced. Right. So there's this tremendous skew in the direction of traditional employment, and it has been cut in half in the past 25 years. It has been cut by 90% or so in the past century. So we see this precipitous decline in entrepreneurship, and it's coupled really with the rise of the middle class and with the rise of the quality of life in America. And this is true in every other country as well. So in a way, we've become victims of our own success.

Yeah, I get it.

Yeah. I also think that I've seen this embracing a certain thing in our society that I didn't really didn't notice that much, maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And that is the embracing of safety. We want things to be safe. We want to be sure that things are taken care of. And I think that the concept of things being safe is kind of the opposite of what a lot of entrepreneurship is all about. You have to create. You're starting at zero, often every day. One of the things I see too, that I wanted to ask you about is this rise of gig workers. These people that are doing their own thing, but under an umbrella of another company, whether it's Instacart, Uber, doordash, whatever it is. And I've talked to some of those people that kind of consider themselves to be a small business person, an entrepreneur, but working under that, do you think that, do you consider those folks entrepreneurs, or is that just another form of employment?

You know, I do consider them entrepreneurs and I actually consider the people that have found themselves stuck and locked in traditional employment to be entrepreneurs that just need to be rescued. Right. So we still have the same mentality, this distribution. So here's why I consider them entrepreneurs. A study was done in 2018 and 70% of the American workforce indicated that they would prefer to be self employed. That's 100 million people. So, yes, they are entrepreneurs in their mind and they feel stuck and they feel like they were meant for something more than what they're currently living. And to be honest with you, I still call them entrepreneurs and I want to help them escape the bonds of that employment that they're in. So I most definitely consider gig workers and supplemental workers to be entrepreneurs. It doesn't necessarily mean that you pay all your bills that way. There have been many times in my life where I was a W2 employee, but there have been very few times in my life where I wasn't also working on something else that I hoped to eliminate that. That traditional employment.

Okay. So, yeah, no, I like this, that it. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I mean, as. As many entrepreneurs have learned that, like you, you have to start your side hustle as a side hustle, and then it can become your. Your. Your main hustle. Right, but.

Right, that's why it's called a side hustle.

That's why it's called a side hustle. But if you're doing a side hustle, you're still an entrepreneur. In fact, you're like, perhaps the very essence of an entrepreneur. Right? Like, that's the key of it.

Yeah, absolutely. So I opened the book talking about this ancient battle in our brains. And the reason the book is called Boss Brain is the battle is between this hard wiring in your brain, the optimist side of your brain, and that's really your boss brain. That's the side of you that wanted to build that raft and sail beyond the horizon. And because we all have that to some extent, some or more than others, there's also. There's more modern brain that seeks. What you. You said earlier about certainty, right? Our brains crave and love certainty.

Oh, yeah.

And it has been proven over and over again.

And if it hadn't been, the last year certainly proved it to us.

Yeah, the last year really knocked it out of the park to prove that what you think is safe and predictable is actually not. But the point is, our brains really have this ancient battle happening between optimism and certainty in which we are craving certainty. It really has diminished and smothered our inherent optimism, and that's what's causing this skew. So the battle in your brain is ancient. You've been fighting it for million, for millennia of years here, since our brain came into existence 100,000 years ago or so. And we feel this today for a really good reason. So let's say that traditional employment, in the sense that we know it, where you go to school, you go to college, get a job, you work 40 years, buy a house, get a gold watch. If you condensed the existence of our brain down to 60 seconds, that mantra, that linear path I just described to you, would exist for 0.4 of those seconds. So the existence of your brain ticked away for 59.6 seconds until we asked it to deal with this question, right? And how could we not feel conflicted? Right? How could we not feel like, gosh, I know this is something I want to do. But I really want the certainty. But I have this vision of the future, of what lies beyond the shores where I want to sail away from. So this feeling is very natural. And I want to tell entrepreneurs this is not unique to you. Don't feel miserable unless you just want to share that misery with everybody because it's what we all feel.

Yeah. Yeah, no, this is great. All right, I want to take a minute here and talk about our sponsor for this episode. All right. Our sponsor today is Custom Comet. So they are a Portland based company that makes custom merch and promotional products that we can use in our businesses. They actually sent us some of their stuff and they like, they sent us some stickers with small business show logos on them, which are awesome. They also make air fresheners, coasters, coffee sleeves, patches, pins, more. Their most popular product is these custom air fresheners. And they're one of the only companies that creates custom shapes for every order. So the air freshener is like our sticker shaped like your logo or artwork. Most companies only allow to use like 10 or so stock shapes, not Custom Comet. They let you do whatever shape matches what you're looking for. And they carry over 70 different scents. I checked out the new car scent. One smells awesome and 17 different string colors so you can really, really match it up. They use this three layer process to make them. They have this cotton core to suck up the fragrance and that's sandwiched between printing paper to keep it like really crisp. And it's great, really, really nice stuff. And they offer retail packaging options if you want to sell them, of course. If not, you know you can get them in like a normal packaging and then you just distribute them to your customers or however you want to do it. They focus at Custom Comet on using high quality materials and they know that every business is the customer service business and they focus on stellar customer service, too. They provide free design help. They are a company that was founded by artists and graphic designers. So they're there and they can do everything to make sure your project looks great. And if you mention that you heard them here on the small business show, you get 5% off your first order. So let Custom Comet help your brand create a unique and memorable promotional product. Visit custom comet.com c U-S-T-O-M C-O-M-E t.com and our thanks to Custom Comet for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, take it away.

Yeah, so I want to, I, I really believe in this concept that you're espousing here. This, you know, these kind of hidden entrepreneurs that are working for other people and trying to break them free. So, you know, and it seems like just this vast chasm for so many people to jump over, to leave maybe that safety or perceived safety, which I always say because you're, you're at the whim of someone else that's, you know, issuing a paycheck. What are your thoughts about this process of being stuck there? And I would just. Can we. Safe. Can I safely say that was one of the reasons you wrote Boss Brain was to try to train these people to switch things up and don't just dream about it. I mean, how do they take those first steps?

It's exactly the reason why I wrote the book. And thank you for saying that. So anyone who's listening right now is likely in the position that they are in for years, if not decades of work, right? They've made decisions, they've chosen to maybe build walls around themselves in some literal or metaphorical way. They've suffered the consequences of what they thought might be good decisions. Then they had unexpected results that they were forced to deal with. So if it took us years to get to the point where we are, we have to accept that becoming an entrepreneur, not an employee, is a process. And just as you constructed those walls, you have to realize that it's a process to deconstruct those walls. So the book is about getting you to stop thinking and living like an employee and start thinking and living like an entrepreneur. And that's simply not something that you can wake up one day and say, yesterday I was an employee, today I'm a full time entrepreneur. It is a process so you can unstick yourself gradually over time because that's how you first got stuck.

I like it. I also like the emphasis on the living part of it as well, and the thinking, because it is an entire system of your thought process, how you frame things, how you embrace failure and how you recover from failure. Because it's. Nothing is guaranteed when you get out there and you're going to have to struggle through some hard times, right?

Well, failure is part of the process. So in the, in the second portion of the book, as we're illuminating his entrepreneurial instincts that I'm helping people unlock, we talk a lot about embracing the fact that failure is, is both inevitable and should be viewed upon as a positive opportunity. And even as classical conditioning would tell me that failure made you smarter.

Of course, we call it tuition.

Anyone who's never well and, and look, hey, anyone who hasn't Failed in small ways along during their journey is likely to fail in a big way at the end because they haven't experienced it and learned how to. To learn.

Oh, yeah. We put out a book. We put out a book last year called We Love Mistakes. And it's exactly this. As Shannon just said, we call our mistakes our tuition. Now, we mainly call them that so that we can justify what they've cost us. But. But they really are the things that teach us. So. Yeah.

Yeah. So. So, Trey, since, you know, we love mistakes so much and we talk about them all the time, and I'm so good at making them. Can you share.

Join the club.

Yeah. Can you share one of the. Of your. And I'm My quote signs in the air your best mistakes that really taught you something important in your career.

Yeah. I'll tell you something that harkens back to when I was very, very young. And I've made this mistake a few times, but this was the first time I make it. I started a restaurant when I was in my early 20s, and I feel for you, man. I started a restaurant in my early, early 20s, and it was a Cajun concept that had blues music and, you know, all the things you would expect to go along with a New Orleans.

Sounds fantastic.

Yeah, right. Well, I happen to be a huge blues fan, so I had this idea that everyone should love blues, and this was a Cajun concept, and I was only going to have blues music played here. And as it turns out, fellas, not everybody likes everything that I like. And I've learned this lesson painfully then and over and over that what is a priority for me and what I prefer really should play very little in the strategic growth of my company. It should be based on the needs of your customer, what they need you for, and why they need that thing, not what I'm trying to educate them on or force them to like.

You can pepper your stuff in every now and then. Right?

You know, but yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Don't get me wrong. I did my best to balance it out, but I made this mistake. Mistake. As a W2 employee at the head of a large beverage franchise, I decided very early in 08 or 09, before everyone realized how bad sugar was for you, that I wanted to lead the charge of this stevia type sweetened beverage so that we could eliminate the large amounts of sugar that were in our beverages. And it turns out most people just didn't care. And now you call me ahead of my time, call me whatever. We failed, and people just did not care. They didn't want to pay a premium for that, of course, cost a premium because healthy food costs more. And I learned that lesson again, that it was a priority for me and what I needed to be focused on was what is my customer's priority and why, why do they need me? And I've learned that one several times. And it's tough to give up your own preferences. It's tough to go against what you personally would choose and do what is best for your customers instead.

Yeah, that's a great, that's a good lesson. One of the things that do a little research for the show here and one of the terms or phrases that I noticed on your website a few times that was kind of interesting to me where you say the gap between entrepreneurship and employment is its largest in history. What do you mean by that? So I can understand it a little better.

Yeah, sure. So in the early 1940s, the percentage of self employed Americans hovered almost 30%. Among immigrants, it was even higher than that and still is today. Should be noted, immigrants have a huge entrepreneurial spirit and no wonder they would want to come here. By the 70s, that number had fallen to say 20%. A little bit less. 18, 19, as late as the Clinton second term. In the late 90s it was around 12 or 13%. Today it has been cut in half in 20 years. So we're about 7% or so self employment in America. And if you follow that trajectory, guys follow that exact same trajectory from the late 90s until now, it means that sometime in the mid-2040s, 99% of America is going to work for the other 1%.

That's scary.

And that is, that is a hell of a gap, especially in a country where 100 million of us have already admitted that we would prefer to be self employed. So think about what it means for there to be a tenfold difference between those who are thinking it and those who are doing it. And that's where the entrepreneurship gap lives.

That's a great explanation.

And yeah, it's a sobering thought.

It is. It is. So you wrote the book Boss Brain, and is there any other systems or processes involved and people can. The book is on pre order, is that correct? They can pre order, yeah.

So we just finished up a big pre order launch last month and the book itself is going to be available in a few months through regular traditional means. In the interim, they can always go to treywilliams.com and gain more information, have the opportunity to snatch down a free sample for themselves.

That's Great. Yeah, but go ahead.

No, I was going to say, but the systems within it are really part of a larger effort that I'm making working with chambers of commerce, economic development councils. Because while I like to work with the individual entrepreneur and that is most definitely the best way to affect change, I've grown weary of doing it one at a time and I wanted to do it faster, just like I want to do everything in my life. And I've had some success working with some municipalities who embrace the need for the balance that we talked about at the outset, for recapturing that balance between employers and employees.

That is great. I commend you for giving back. That's. It's huge. It's one of the reasons why we do this show. Not we just don't like to hear our own voices, but that too, but try to help other, other people. And you know, I have this kind of aspirational listener in, in my head that I'm talking to all the time. And it's this person that just wants to go out and start this business and we're just trying to help them, just give them that push that they need. If someone were to come up and ask you, based on your experiences and creating the book, which is an education in itself, I know if they would ask you what's the most critical thing I can do, the most critical action I can take to kind of break the, the chains of employment to start their own business. What do you tell them?

I tell them that belief is reverse engineered. So the longer we wane in sort of the laws of traditional employment, knowing or feeling as if we were meant for self employment, the less we believe in the inevitability or even in the possibility that that might ever happen. And the only way to recapture that belief is to take action. And that's what I say by reverse engineering. Very often people feel as if they need to believe something will happen before they'll take action. When the truth is, the way to recapture that belief that you once had is to just do something right. Design that logo, form that llc, call the local library and try to join a group of entrepreneurs who are supporting each other. If you just take action today, then that yields a result and that yields another result. And over time, it isn't the results that change your belief, it's you begin to view yourself as a person of action and a person who will eventually succeed. So belief is reverse engineered, guys. I can't say it more clearly.

If I had a bell at my desk, I'd be like, Ding, ding, ding, ding. You know, and it is absolutely the truth. You know, we talk about creating your own story here all the time. So that, that's it, you know, it's. It's wrapping your head around this concept and this framing how you frame things and, you know, really rewiring it. I love the reverse engineering now.

That's it. Yeah. Shannon. Shannon taught me a long time ago that the an easy or way. I don't want to say it's easy, but an easier way to get to where you want to be is to decide what story you want to tell at the end. And then you live your life to tell that story. And you're like, I love it. Right?

Yeah. Because you have a choice. You have a choice and you see people around you, you're like, oh, boy, that's a cautionary tale. I don't want to do that. Or that. You know, and for me, I'm kind of a first generation entrepreneur and I didn't want to be that flaky person that was always trying something new and didn't work out. And I was like, oh, boy, I don't want to be that, that dinner table talk, like, what's this guy doing now? So it just drove me to be successful at least. At least to be successful enough to where I could tell the story, you know. Now many, many of my businesses didn't work out right, but they were still learning. That's probably why we say, oh, mistakes are tuition, because it, again, part of my story.

So. Yeah, well, Shannon, you only got to be right once.

Yeah.

You can be wrong.

You can. You can be wrong a lot more than you can than you need to be right. It's totally true.

Yeah.

And there's an entire chapter in the book about how we use our own personal narratives. And to your point, but the bad news is sometimes we use them as a limiting factor. Right. Sometimes we use those personal narratives to create this perspective and say, well, I'm not the kind of person who ever succeeds and I always fail at what I do. And without that resilience and that diligence, really, you do remain stuck where you are. So that personal narrative and that story you tell yourself is so important. And I love the idea of starting in the beginning to say not just what you're going to do, but why you're going to do it.

Yeah. That's huge. This is such an important show and we're going to highlight it over and over. And I'm going to print that phrase you said about reverse engineering on A T shirt because it's so powerful and it's often overlooked by the nuts and bolts. You made a comment about when I asked that action question. You're just like, just do something. And you made a comment about designing the logo. And I can remember I've had lots of partners over time and one of the first things I always like to jump into when I'm thinking about a new company is to what would the logo look like? What would be the color scheme? And I've had folks that I'm no longer partners with that would be, oh, that's a waste of time. We don't need that yet. But I need it right, because it's convincing me like this is a cool logo. So it's that reverse engineering that, that, that story and the concept. And Trey, I can't thank you enough for, you know, coming on the show and talking about that concept and, you know, sharing your story about writing Boss Brain and it's just really powerful stuff.

Well, it really is a passion of mine and one that I could talk about all day. And I appreciate you guys letting me get on my soapbox here for a little while because I take this mission very, very seriously. And I hope one day when I'm no longer around that the momentum behind this movement continues. And I would be honored to say that I was able to positively affect the lives of others and help them feel as blessed as I feel now. So it's truly my honor to be here and thank you guys for, for doing the work that you do every day and allowing me to contribute.

Yeah, that's really great. We love it. What's the best way for our listeners to connect with you and to learn more about Boss Brain?

So you can always go to trey williams.com, which is t R A. It's spelled strangely t r awilliams.com and you can learn a lot about me and the things that I do and from there can connect with me in a variety of social media. I love speaking with aspiring entrepreneurs and it's my favorite thing in the world to get into a room filled with can do people. That's dangerous in a good way when you get those kind of single minded folks together. And it's always my favorite thing to do. So I would welcome your listeners to reach out. I'd love to have conversations with them.

That's awesome, Trey. Thank you again. Please keep in touch. We'd love to check in from you time to time and be well, man.

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Man. You know, I am so glad we did that interview, Shannon.

Me, too.

I am always a little bit leery of people that fall into the realm of coaching other business owners, right?

Sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, me too. In general, it has been more failure than success. Although, as Trey said, you only need to have one success or. Yeah. And I think this one certainly falls into the category of success. What a great guy. Great conversation.

Yeah. Four words. Belief is reverse engineered.

I love it.

And that is a great mantra to think about. It is, you know, encapsulates this concept that we talk about all the time about writing your own story. And you get to pick, pick and all that kind of stuff. And these. The more you can hear this and the more you can train your inner judge, your inner narrator, the more success you're going to find no matter what you do. So.

No matter what. Yeah.

Thrilled to have him, have him on the show. You know, we'd love to hear from you folks, if you liked what Trey had to say or if you have some different ideas. Feedback@businessshow.co if you really enjoyed the show in wherever you're looking, listening, please go leave us a review and then let us know when you leave that review because we'll talk about it on the show.

Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Make sure you. You check out Custom Comet, of course, @custom comet.com and keep living that charmed life, will you?