Trevor Blake: 3 Exits, $600 Million, Zero Employees

Oh, boy. Friends, this is the one we've been waiting for. Today we're gonna be chatting with Trevor Blake. Trevor is the author of Three Simple Steps, which is my most recommended book of this year. He also recently published Secrets to a Successful Startup, which is about starting a business, particularly in recessions, which would be a really good thing for you to pick up right now. And Trevor and I got together to record a bonus call for the capitalism incubator. So occasionally every couple of will bring in kind of a guest person for the capitalism incubator, somebody who has built or built and sold a company. And Trevor's story is interesting because he didn't start a company until he was 43. He was not an entrepreneur until he was 43 years old. And then he had three exits within 10 years valued at $300 million collectively. And he showed up to talk about raising money, casting, visions, intuition, and a bunch of other amazing stuff. We don't always release recordings from the capitalism incubator, but this one is going to change your life if you let it. So I hope you enjoy this conversation that the students and I had with Trevor Blake. Enjoy.

Welcome, everybody. Good to see you guys. Say hi to. You can wave to Trevor. You're all on mute, but you can wave to Trevor Blake. Trevor and I are going to wrap for probably 30 minutes or so, and then if you've got a question that you want to bring to the table, go ahead and put it in the chat box and then I will kind of hand pick them based on the topic. So, Trevor, I don't think you want.

To hear me rap. Ryan.

Trevor, welcome to capitalism.com. thanks for hanging out with us.

My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

Me too. Treasure, I've. I have recommended your book more than any other book this year. So I think that somehow makes me an influencer or something because.

We'Ve sold, We've. We've told a lot of people specifically about three simple steps. And before I go into kind of my series of questions, I just want to make sure that I'm right about this. This fact. I have been describing you as someone who started their first company at 43 and then had three subsequent exits that totaled about $300 million within about 10 years. Am I representing you correctly if I.

Say that historically, that would be correct. That was correct in 2012 when I wrote the book. The thing is, I'm in biotech pharmaceutical, so deals are layered. So you get up from fee and then another fee on certain milestones. So the actual value is 600 million of those, of those three companies. And then I'm on company number four, which I'm still just started the exit for company number four, that's valued at about a billion. And I don't have the whole billion. Obviously. I have investors too. I make a lot of people rich.

And then I've started for companies 5, 6 and 7. They're sort of in my mind, they're in the incubator stage for me right now.

And just, I mean, for full transparency, you don't own all of that 600 million, but you own some of it. Right.

So I'm not complaining. Yeah, of course. Smiling like a Cheshire cat. But no, because I'm a great believer in bringing investors in early, not so much for the money. Although half having access to money takes the stress away. Obviously, you can focus on growing a business when you don't have to worry about putting food on the table. But I find investors bring so much more than the money that even though I don't need my companies right now, I don't need investors, obviously, but I like them in the company because they bring.

A front row seat to opportunities I'd never know if they didn't come to my company. They bring a network of people who've gone through similar experiences as I'm about to go through. Because I'm always uniquely unqualified for the companies I've started. I really don't know what I'm doing at the beginning. I just know I want to fix something. And so I find that a real resource for me. And when I first started out bringing investors in, I could sort of beg, steal and borrow accounting and business development and regulatory and all those sort of services and claim that. But I'm poor and I'm starting give it me for free. And it really helps a lot. So I find investors bring so much more than just the money. A lot of the money helps.

Would you tell me about.

How you structure that? Because to have three companies in 10 years be worth $600 million, and you up front are like, I know nothing about the business that I'm going into. I just know the problem that I'm trying to solve. Explain to me how you bring those two things together. Because my brain says, must be hard to raise money or to start a business in something that you don't know what you're doing. You just have a problem that you're solving. So how do you tackle that?

I think the key thing, particularly when in front of investors, is I made the mistake very early on trying to Tell investors everything I thought they needed to know, and then realizing that I'd given them loads of reasons to say no to my business after 18 months of doing the smoke and mirror show all over the United States to try and raise money for my first company. And I got nice responses and people pat me on the back and saying, that's really good. When you've established yourself, come back and see us. That's typically the response you get. No one really says no.

I realized that I'm trying to raise this tiny amount of money I'd worked out exactly 2.1 million is what I wanted, and that's all I needed. And then suddenly a light came on to me one day when I was walking in the woods and I thought, hang on a sec, 2.1 million to an investor is nothing. So if they want, say, a 15, 25% return on their investment, it's not worth them even spending the time. So I went back to them and said, I want 20 million. And the doors were open to me and I gave them the same pitch and the same story, and I got a completely different response from them because they could see a benefit to lending someone, you know, 20 million and getting a 25% return on their investment. And so it didn't really matter whether I knew what I was doing or I didn't know what I was doing. If I could show them the big number of the market, and it was a fairly big number, I could say, look, this is what we're aiming for. I am not an expert in this market. I can barely spell the disease that we're going to be working in. But I am very good at handling or hiring and managing a small group of people. That's been my skill. And you can check my resume out. And they do do references for your previous career. Obviously, as I talk to anybody, talk to my previous CEOs, they'll tell you that I can handle a small group of people so I can hire the right people. I already have my list. He's who I want in this team and I'll manage them and we'll get the job done. And I think that gives investors a certain degree of comfort in that it's not all on one shoulders. It's not a one man band so much. Whereas I think if I go in and say, I can do this, I don't have a track record at this point. I'm just full of confidence, I'm full of optimism. Give me a chance, I can do this. Whereas by going in and saying, look, I can pull this team together. They're already committed. I just need the money and then we can get this done. And my job, therefore, is kind of the manager of a small group of people. And when I think about my regular career, that's all I ever did. I managed seven sales rep when I was a sales manager, then seven regional sales managers, then the seven directors when I was a vice president, and then seven executives when I was, you know, deputy CEO. And so when I've started my own companies, I've done the same thing. I've had, you know, like a virtual group of vendors and consultants. And I just kind of. The managing of them is very different to the career because it's not supervision now. It becomes a less sort of trust, mutual trust. And so give them direction and an end goal if you like, or a milestone and let them get on with it and check in every now and again. If you can manage that way, you can do absolutely anything. You don't need to know the solution. You just need to find the people that can figure it out.

So it sounds like your approach then is you're going out and finding some of the team or some of the people that you're going to partnered with first and you're coming to some sort of an agreement with them on an. I think an equity share is how you usually structure it, and then you use that as leverage in the pitch when you're going to investors. Is that the right order?

Yeah, I don't give equity to the consultants and vendors. I just say, this would be a really fun project to get involved in. If I build it, will you come? And they'll say yes. And I'm not their only client, you know, they've probably got half a dozen clients. And I say, yeah, and I've seen what they've done with the other clients. I've obviously done my own reference checks. And most of these people I've sort of interacted with every now and again throughout my regular career. And I thought, that guy's good and that girl's good and you know, she's brilliant. She's, she's should be higher up in the hierarchy than she is. And then when I have my opportunity to put my things together, I say, you know, come and work for me for so many hours a week and, you know, we'll have a lot of fun. But you'll also probably make more working for me in a few hours a week than you'll ever make in your regular career. And a lot of them have left the regular careers and then gone on to be consultants because of that experience, because it's so rewarding to work in that way rather than work up the hierarchy where you're basically spending your whole time trying to impress your boss and not screw up.

So I've heard you say many times that you've never had an employee.

No.

And it sounds like I never quite understood how you were able to be so effective without, without an employee. But it sounds like what you're saying is that you hire people as consultants and sometimes that means recruiting people from your past who were in the corporate world or working for a competitor or another team of yours. And you're saying, I want to hire you as a consultant, all I care about is the result. And then you go bring in the money to be able to fund the operations. Is that correct?

Yeah. And my response would be it takes a long time to convince somebody to leave the comfort zone of, of a typical employment situation and to go on their own. So my responsibility is to help them through the transition of leaving regular work and becoming a consultant. And I know that I can bring them lots of business. So it's not just my business. I know half a dozen people who would love to have this person as part of their project. And it's a very difficult transition for most people to go. As people are finding out now, we've got this tsunami of people moving away from regular employment in a, in a bricks and mortar situation into working from home and then working on their own from home. It's a tremendous transition and it takes, you know, it took me six months to get used to it. So I kind of hold their hands for the first six months until they stop feeling guilty for going to the gym at three in the afternoon and going grocery shopping during daylight hours and those type of things. And once they get over that feeling of guilt, then their life, they get success and balance. So they're able to work a few hours a day on a really high quality project, earning more than they would have earned in a regular place, being able to save a lot more on tax deductions and all that kind of thing. So the lifestyle goes up. They build a group of clients so they can help them build their company. And then from that point on they're self employed and having the time of their life and they would never go back to working for the man, so to speak. So that's, that's part of my responsibility. It's not just to say I'm hiring a vendor and that's it, you know, if it's somebody I really want and I can convince them to leave the regular employment, my responsibility is to help them succeed as well.

Well, what's interesting about that model, Trevor, is even in my business, when I think about hiring a consultant, I'm thinking about the people who are already consultants or I'm thinking about the people who already have an agency.

Yeah, I have that too.

But I've never thought to just go to the exact person that I wanted and be like, you don't have to make a hard pivot. I just want to pay you as a consultant.

Well, I learned a lesson. I worked at my regular job. I was working for 3M and I left 3M and I went to work for a biotech called Biogen, which is well known now as Biogen Architect, massive company, hugely successful. I was there on day one when they were nothing, you know, and there was just a handful of us in the company. We had one product, we had zero sales. And Jim Vincent was the CEO. He was a darling of Wall street and all the rest of it. He'd see of Wall street two years running or something like that. And when he joined Biogen, they were just about to put the lights out. And he had a small budget and so he figured what he could afford, so he had a bunch of people based upon what the budget allowed. And it was a disaster for him. He told me the story, so it's a disaster for him. And he said to me, so I changed my mentality, rethought the whole thing and I decided if I can only hire one person, but it's the best person that's available in the world to do this job, that's where the budget's going. He changed his mentality to hire only the best, no matter what it took. And so Biogen went on a sort of crusade throughout Europe and the United States to hire what they called the creme de la creme, to put their team together at every level. Even the janitor knew what the share price was. It was that magical, that place. And in that first year we went from 0 to 750 million in sales. And it was the most beautiful working experience in a regular career I ever had. It was perfect balance between male, female, age wise, everything. It was just brilliant and. But everybody was the best that they could be at their particular job. So I didn't have to put fires out anymore. I could just get on with my job. I was a national accounts director at the time and so I learned that lesson because it works so beautifully at Biogen. When I started my own company, I thought, that's the way to do it, hire only the best. So I go to find the best and they may already have their own company and I may just be an extra client to them, and I add that to the virtual model. But in my career, I've been fortunate enough to work with some really, really talented people and I know that that's the person I want. And it's kind of like a sports mentality. It's like saying, you know, I need that player for my team and I'm going to do whatever it takes to get them.

I want to ask you about the raising process.

And if you're comfortable with it, I'd like to, like, go through a case study like this most. This fourth company of yours that's currently in process. Are you willing to share a little bit about that company? That your ballparking is worth about a billion dollars?

Yeah, absolutely.

Space or is that in a different space?

I'm very proud of it. I'm very excited by it, so you'll have to shut me up at some point.

Well, fire away. Tell us about it.

Well, of course, it's so like everything in life, you know, it comes by, you know, a form of magic. So the converting of one thing into another thing by the power of will, that's the definition of magic. And so, you know, I. I grew up. My mother had cancer when I was seven and she was told she had six months to live. And she was determined not to die, by the way. And she told the doctors, you've got it wrong. I decide when I die. And I was there when that happened because we didn't have a car. So wherever Mum went, the whole family had to go. We were left in the corridor, but the walls were so thin, I could hear the conversation between her and the doctor. And she tore a strip off him and that was stuck in my mind. And so she handled the cancer with tremendous grace. But I was with her when she had a chemotherapy as well. And it just. And her radiotherapy and it just destroyed her dignity and her womanhood. She was very pretty, very, very sort of sensual sort of woman, and it destroyed it. And that always had a major impact in my head. So as I was going through my regular career, I always had one eye open for an opportunity to find something that could treat cancer, maybe not better, but equally as well, but without the side effects. And so I always had that in the back of my head. And I think when you keep putting that out to the universe, One day, whether it happens the next day, or in my case, 20 years later, you'll stumble over the answer to that. And so I happened to have started my first company and I was looking for investors and the phone went. And this guy had never met, never heard of before, and today we're friends still. So his name's Paul. And so Paul still doesn't know how he got my number, where it came from, but he called me, I was in Florida, he's in Seattle. And he says, I've got a job for you. I want you to come and be my vice president, commercial development. And I said, I don't know who you are, I really appreciate it. They were a biotech, I really appreciate it, but I'm starting my own company. So he said, well, I'd love to see the business plan. So I sent the business plan. He called back and said, I think we can do something here. You come and work for me for two days a week and we'll invest in your company. So I moved to Seattle based upon that and I had an office for free. Therefore I worked two days. Actually, to be honest with you, I worked two hours for the first day and one hour for the second day. And then I was done. So I went home and walked the dog. But to his mind, I was there for two days. And then I had the free office and the computer equipment and all this photocopy and all the rest of it that I could use to start my first company. And my job at that company was to in license oncology assets. So they had on the board of directors two or three people who had been presidents of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. So they had a front row seat at everything that's being invented right now. This is back in 2001, I think it was. Yeah, 2002. And so, and so, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. So I got that group together and I said, go find me something. And so they went, they searched all the institutions, United States, and they came back with three programs, two of which we immediately discounted, the third of which looked really interesting even to me. And so my job was to end, license it. So I did the contract, the license, and negotiated all that sort of thing. And then this company was called SEPTA. And 18 months later it ran out of money, imploded, and by the laws of this contractor's license, the license had to go back to the inventing institution because they couldn't put money in and they couldn't pay the maintenance. Fees for the license. But I had had a front row seat now at what the scientists had done and what they were saying to me in coffee breaks and things about the amazing data they were producing from this particular program. And it was just hard. I thought, this is just too, too hard to let go. So I went to the institution willing to pay them $500,000 for the license. And I, you know, the law of negotiation is Hugh mentions price first loses. So I don't mention price. So I waited to see what price they wanted for it. And he said, is $7,000 too much? So I said, oh, brilliant, thank you. I've just saved $493,000. So I took the license for $7,000, and now I've got another company which I didn't ever anticipate having. And so I started it under the name our new pharmaceutical company. And they had three patent portfolios. I put a team together to work on the first patent portfolio. It went really well. And then I sold that patent portfolio. That's really company number two, to be honest. I sold it to a company in Taiwan. They won't let me disclose the amount, but it's a lot of naught. So you can imagine. And it's done very well. It's in phase three clinical trials right now. And so then I went back to the inventor, who's a personal friend of mine now, Lishi, and I said, okay, where do we go next? And he pulled out of this portfolio of 68 inventions, this one invention that was way ahead of its time, I didn't even understand at the time. And he said. And I said, well, what's the benefit of it? And he says, no side effects. So here I am. There's like a full. This is exactly what I'm looking for. So he says, better potency, no side effects. So we started to develop that. Round about 2008, we started to develop that, and that became our lead project. And it gets expensive. The further you go through drug development, the more expensive it gets. And you're talking huge numbers. And I didn't have the huge numbers. I had decent amount of money, but not huge numbers. So I needed a business partner. And then again, I put it out there, went for a walk. And then, you know, I was at a meeting, a scientific meeting, talking about something completely different. And the chap walked up to me interested in something completely different. I went to Taiwan to meet his company, to set up distribution in Taiwan for that product. And we got talking about cancer. I told them what I was working on. And they became my joint investor just like that. And it was done with a verbal agreement. We didn't even sign a contract. And he still remains my partner in that. So the two of us have been funding this company called Neovia, as we call it now. We came up with a name. It's a joint venture. It's my company are new. His company, New Pacific, we put it together, registered in Hong Kong and we said, okay, we need a name. So we called it Neo via meeting New Path. And we've been going through. So you go through pre clinical development. The data was too good to be true. And that's what most investors said to me. We couldn't invest in this. It's too good to be true. And now we're in. And the FDA looked at the data and within two weeks, it only takes months to get approval to go into clinical trial. Within two weeks, Christmas, three years ago, they said, get into human trials as soon as you can. And so now we're in clinic in human trials and the data is backing up what we found in the lab and what we found in the. In the precursors clinical. So it's very, very exciting. But I'm at the point where it's out of my depth and this needs to be in the hands of a company that has many more resources than I can possibly put together. And so I'm ready for the exit now. I always know when it's time to exit. I think that's. That's important.

And that's company number four that you're describing right now, right?

Yeah.

You're at this point now where you're thinking about going to market. When you are working with investors at the beginning stages, how do you get a gauge for how much you need and how much you're willing to give up when it comes to your valuation?

Yeah, that's a great. That's a tough question and a great question. I appreciate that, Ryan. I meet a lot of would be entrepreneurs who aren't willing to give up. And it's kind of a mistake.

Right, when you say give up.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's their baby. Right? And what people don't understand. I took a long time to learn this too. You know, money's the power. Money talks. And until you have 100 million sitting in the bank, you don't have power. And so when investors come in, whatever, I mean, I was told if someone offers you a fair deal, take it. So I agree with that too. Typically in my business it's kind of a 70, 30. So if you bring in money, they'll take 70% of the company and leave you with 30. And that's three times what. So Tufts. Every year Tufts University does a survey of CEOs in biotech and pharmaceuticals. What's their ownership? And the average is 10% equity. So the founders, it's about founder, CEOs. Founder CEOs end up with 10% or less equity in their own company. And if you Google, that's fine because that's probably $20 billion. But if you're a small company, it really hurts, you know, that can. It's a really hard decision you have to make. There is a. What I did with my first company was that they offered me the same thing. You know, we'll put the money in, but we want 70%. And I said, I don't want to do that. So we came up with, I think, a nice little compromise. They took 70%, I took 30%, they put 6 million in. When I gave them their 6 million back, I get the 70 and they get the 30. And it's kind of a hybrid deal. And that takes the risk mitigation away from them. They don't have to worry so much. And it gives me an incentive to get big fast.

We never managed to do that, by the way, because we did another deal within about three years for 28 million. So that got put aside. But I think that's a fair way of doing it, saying, okay, I'll accept your money for 70% of the company, but if I give you your money back in a certain period of time, I want the 70%. And I think most investors would say that's fair, that's a fair deal. Yeah.

I've done similar structures where if an entrepreneur hits certain milestones or if they return my capital, I'm fine with either one, then they can claw back some of that equity and get it back. I've never done it where the scales are flipped, but I've done it where they can earn additional points back. Because what I really care about is the total valuation of the pie that it is the pie that is that we're building. And there's so many entrepreneurs who are obsessed with keeping 100% control of a grape sized little business when they could be taking a slice of a watermelon or they could have half of a watermelon. And the point is to grow it as big as possible, not to control the whole thing of this tiny little piece.

Yeah, I always say it's a bit of a cliche, but I always say it's better to own 10% of 100 million than 100% of zero.

Yeah.

And you know, and it really is, and I go back to the same point I made earlier on. Investors bring so much more than the money. It's not just so. You have to be really careful investors. You don't just accept the first that comes along. The chemistry is really important. I think you've got to have this sort of magic between you where you think, you know, we are a team. This person is bringing so much in that I'm happy to accept the money that's kind of locks us in together and we grow it together. I make that person exceptionally rich when we exit. But that's good. So what? I'm not complaining. I got rich too.

You know, Trevor, in your second book, Secrets to a Successful Startup, you go at length at talking about the importance of the plan, of having the business plan and the vision. So many entrepreneurs just kind of jump in and start guessing at things and sometimes that can get you to a certain point. I mean that can actually take you to like a million dollar run rate sometimes. But it's pretty hard to jump in and guess and build nine figure companies. So how do you manage? How do you have this balance? These two extremes of I don't know what I'm doing, I just know the problem that I want to solve and having a clear plan and vision to be able to align interested parties behind what it is that you're doing. Those seem like opposites. How would you bring those? How do you bring those together?

Well, first of all, I eliminate for my life the word plan because as soon as we say plan, you think of a document, you can't help it or a diagram on the back of a napkin. And that's not what it's all about. So I say I call it the business planning process. It's a process and so I get obviously like you, I see hundreds of business plans and you can tell that a person or a group of people have sat around late hours at night putting together an MBA style document that's supposed to impress me as an investor. But they've not actually left that building and gone to talk to potential vendors or potential customers. Customers or you know, finding competition or all that kind of thing. They've never actually done the detective work. I love the business plan process because I always fancied myself as sort of a inspector pluso, sort of a detective, you know, And I think there's a beautiful aspect of the business planning process. Whereas you go to Test your great idea out on the people who really would be the recipients of it. And the feedback you get changes everything. You're constantly changing and adapting because of the feedback you get. But I would say 95% of the plans that I get, there's been none of that activity taking place. Someone sat in front of a computer and tried to solve it all, you know, with their brain. And that's not what it's about at all. So the business plan process is a very important thing. And I go through it on a regular basis. I don't just do it once, I do it every year, sometimes several times a year, for every one of my companies. Because the world is in. We're in a situation where you have to adapt really quickly now and everything's changing. So you can't just sit there and say, the way this worked last year is going to work next year the same way. So you're constantly trying to adapt. And proof in point being that the company I'm using to do business development now is completely different than the company I used last year. It's just you have to adapt at the time. So the business plan process is something that you should look forward to and be excited about and not think of in terms of fear of, oh, my God, I've got to produce 96 pages of MBA speak to impress somebody. That's not what it's about at all. I don't care if it's on a matchbox or it's two pages on toilet roll, so long as the content has really good feedback from potential customers. So the customer would say, if you can do this, this would solve my problem in this way. This is what I'm prepared to pay for it, and this is what it could do for me. After doing all that, that's not enough to get investment, I find today. So the business plan process puts you in a position where you can say, I now understand enough about it. Still don't know what I'm doing, but I understand enough about it to find some people who can do a proof of concept. And so you go out there, maybe you have software, and you give it away to a potential customer for six months and you collect the data and you have the customer say, what did this do for me? And the customer might say, well, it saved us time and our costs went down 20%. Golden. You can go to any investor in the world and say, now I'd like to build it, and you'll find somebody who's willing to put the money in. But I think Today, if you just go to an investor with a business plan, they'll say, thank you very much, it's really interesting. I'll file it. And then as you walk out the room, it goes in the trash can. So it's kind of a double thing. So you do the business plan process. That puts you in a position to be able to do a really good proof of concept. If you don't have a proof of concept, I think it's really hard to raise money. I really do. Especially when you. A winning idea typically is something no one else has thought of and it's fixing something. So you're going to have a great deal of cynicism coming back at you. Why hasn't anyone else thought of doing it this way? Who are you to say that you can solve it?

If you don't have the proof of concept, then you're going to struggle. I learned that the hard way because I went at investors without the proof of concept. So then I went away, found a really small product that was doing. Then it was doing $60,000 a year. It was so tiny, I got it for free. It was so tiny because it was a nuisance to the company that had it. And I committed to $90,000 for manufacturing. And I did a proof of concept of the unique business plan, a business structure that I had. And then I went back to some of the same investors and said, look what I've done with this tiny product. Now imagine what I can do with the product I really want. And so I'd shown that I could put this business together, it could run effectively, and I could increase sales by 25% without hiring anybody, and I could increase the price without anybody complaining because it was so small. And I had this manufacturer laid up who would also be able to manufacture my other product. Once the investors saw that kind of all, the fear just dissipated. And they say, okay, now we get it. Those investors had seen my original business plan. They'd been intrigued by it, they liked it. But it wasn't enough to press the trigger.

Now, Trevor, I have not heard you use the word profit or profitability in this discussion. So you haven't talked about profitability in the raising process or the planning process. You've only spoken about bringing assets and resources together. Now you're in the pharmaceutical area or the biotech sphere. So that means that valuations often are very high. So is what you're talking about unique to the biotechnology sphere? Is profitability less important at the beginning stages in those types of businesses? Or do you put this over all business in general?

Well, I invest in a lot of different businesses. I'm in solar industry as well. I mean, all kinds of everything that it has nothing to do with pharmaceuticals and everything. I see exactly the same thing. Everywhere I go, I see it. You know, I don't think it matters what industry you're in. The same principles apply. One of the reasons I don't mention profitability is because the business structure that I put together is incredibly profitable.

Typically in pharmaceuticals, the profit margin is something. If it's just pharmaceuticals and biotech, profit margin is like 12 to 15%. Net profits in distribution, it's down to 4%. It's a really fine margin. And generics is 2%. Tiny, tiny things. You can't afford anything to screw up. In my companies, the net profits are 76% on average. 76, because I don't have employees, I don't have human resource systems, I don't have bricks and mortar. It just frees you up. So for me, profit is a given because of the business structure that I'm in. But I never underestimate the importance of profit in the research and development side of my life, which is my company number four. Of course, profit never gets mentioned because it's just a big drain of money. You're pouring money in all the time, and it's all about data. And data equates to value. So the better the data, the higher the value. But when I look at the deals that have been done, they're all over the place. It's like trying to define how long is a piece of string. They don't make any sense. Two deals for similar concepts to what I've got right now just went down. One for 6 billion and one for 21 billion. I wouldn't buy either. I don't think they're any good. And yet that's what happens. So I can't figure out. I'm sure it's the same in all industries that you scratch your head at the valuation of some deals that happen and also some deals that happen. You think, but that's such valuable. Why do you sell so cheaply? You know.

It'S difficult, really. But profit is a very different thing because profit implies revenue coming in. And so in my previous companies, revenue came in. So my first company, it was quite small. So we were doing 15 million a year and 12 million profit.

Well, first of all, those margins are insane. Nice work. But the interesting thing about this is that the profit is not what you're getting your valuation on. You're Getting your valuation based on the data at the beginning of the feedback from those customers and the team that you're putting together. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yeah. I mean, the valuation changes dramatically from startup to sometime after startup. I did use, I did. So when I sold Qualmedical, I used profit as the, the, you know, the deal metric. Really. And so I settled for seven times profit, which is 105 million and at the time, 105.5 million. And that seems to be market for this business, this industry. So, you know, I was happy.

But in those beginning stages, when you do that 70, 30 split or you raise $20 million, there's no way that you're profitable at the beginning. You're just going off of the valuation of other similar companies, the team that you're putting together. Is that correct?

Well, the beauty of raising money for equity is you don't have to pay it back, you don't have interest and you don't have monthly payments. That's fantastic. You take a loan, you've got the pressure of paying it back.

It's really important, the type of money that you bring into a company. So equity is a lot less stressful, I find. So you get kind of three or four years free period, if you like. So never worry about that. But for Core Medical, I was profitable from day one. So I like to be positive cash flow from day one if I can. In research and development, you can't, obviously, it's a different model.

Trevor, you invest in companies as well. How do you know that you've got a winner when you're looking at the deals in front of you? And then I'm going to ask you another question. How do you know to discount something? What makes you run scared? Would you comment on those two things?

Yeah, certainly. If someone comes to me who's never talked to a potential customer or vendor, then forget it. I'm not. What's the point? It's crazy. You're not ready yet to be a CEO, that's clear. But it's pure intuition. Pure. I just go on intuition and.

I've spent decades developing my intuition, trying to deepen my intuition so that I hope before I die, my intuition is 10% as good as my wife's and then I'll be a multi billionaire.

So intuition is absolutely key. So I take in all the data and then I go for a walk and I kind of interact with energy. And this all sounds very new age, but it's quite scientific, actually.

And then I get a feeling for it and if it feels right, I'll do it. And you have to be careful with that, because I like a lot of the people who come to me with their business. I like them, and I want to invest and I want to help. And it's kind of. It's a slippery slope. It's very easy to invest in somebody you like and not pay attention to the actual thing that they're building or the service they're providing. So you do have to take that time out and go away and really sort of let your intuition speak. Speak for you. So, you know, I've turned down an awful lot of things that I really wish I could have invested in because I like the people like this, like the founders, and I've invested in things that I didn't know anything about until this person came into my life. And it just kind of feels intuitively correct to do that.

You're blowing my mind, Trevor, because, I mean, I agree with you on so many things, and I still have. I still have a part of me that wants to hear the nugget that is the how to piece, even though I've discovered for myself that the more pressure I put on the how to piece, the less room I have for magic, as you call it. And so. And yet. So when you answer that question, part of my brain still wants me. You to tell me, like, the data points that you're going for. And yet I know that you're right, that it's. It's intuition. Do you hear this? Do you hear the struggle that I'm having mentally right now, Trevor?

Yeah, I do. And I've struggled the same way myself, Ryan, many, many times, because I'm a bit of a control freak, and I've had to learn to let go, which is part of learn, you know, part of deepening intuition. And, you know, I've always had the saying in my head, if you want something done well, do it yourself. And. And I've had to learn that's not the best way, you know, so the intuition is really strong. But there's another aspect to that, too, and that is because I've never met anybody who started a company who ends up running a company that was the same as when they started. And so, you know, someone said to me, many decades ago, actually two decades ago, said to me, you know, you don't know what business you're in to get in the business. Just get in. Just start. Something will happen. And I didn't understand how profound that was till I started. And, you know, I started in a Business that I thought was sucrase, isomaltized deficiency, congenital sucrase. It's so these little kids are born lacking an enzyme that they need to convert sugar so they can absorb sugar, and they have a bit. Just a dreadful, dreadful disease, easily solved. And so I thought I was getting in that business, and I started out all enthusiastic, and off I go with Solventaire. And if I hadn't been in the business, I wouldn't have met the person who said, have you seen this company? Have you seen what they're working on? And the next thing I'm working on, Nasal B12. In a million years, I'd never thought of Nasal B12 as a market, but I ended up buying the rights of that product for probably 12 million and two years later, selling it for 57 million. And because I saw straight away the opportunity just intuitively so that I can get hold of that. Because what I can do is I can change the formulation because I know someone who works on formulations who can change this magically like that to make it much more user friendly, patient friendly, which we did. Get it approved by the fda, which we did. And then I realized that, you know, they didn't have a sales force. So I can hire six people and show increasing growth, and then 12 people and show another increase, and then 24 people and show an even higher increase. I can go and sell it to a company with 200 sales reps. And that's exactly what I did. And I ended up selling it to Par Pharmaceuticals or their pharmaceutical arm, which was Strativa at the time, for 57 million. And it was purely because as a sales and marketing guy, I could see if I can show this is sales representation sensitive. I've got a profitable product. Now. I never would have worked that out before starting a company. One, I wouldn't have known about the product, and two, wouldn't have seen the opportunity, you know, that type of thing. So. So I think there's that aspect to it, too. You don't have to know how and you don't have to figure it all out. You just start. You just start. Humans, we're incredibly intelligent. You know, robots or holograms or whatever we happen to be. We're incredibly smart if we allow ourselves to be. And we can figure just about anything out, but never try to figure it out ahead of time. Figure it out while you're in it. And that's much more fun, actually.

Trevor, what advice would you give to someone who's already in motion and is now thinking about going back to the drawing board and doing a raise or bringing on partners. If someone has started something and is excited about their product or their vision or their mission, but they haven't had the sales or profit to justify going out and asking for $20 million like you did, what advice would you give that person to reframe the argument so that they're in a powerful position to ask for what they need to grow the business?

I think you have to match what you have to the time that we're living in. Okay, so now I'm going to get. And if you put off by esoteric, then hit the silence button and then come back in two minutes. So, you know, we're living in a time so you can feel it, you can see it everywhere. Go to the high street and look at all the, the boarded up shops and stores and you know, the old, you know, household names disappearing now. You know, this started with companies like Blockbuster and Circuit City. Circuit City was in the book Good to Great and Built to Last. It's gone, okay? And it's gone because it's an old. So we're going through a period, but I call this the great transformational age of rebalance. So. And it's nothing to be scared of. Everything goes up, everything comes down, everything goes up. Everything in life is made of energy and energy moves in waves. So if you're aware of that and you know how to interact with them. I'm a physicist, okay, so if you, if you're aware of that, know how to interact with energy or change, how to interact with any, you can stay ahead of the time or even in the time. But we're moving from a time where the old sort of what we, what we horribly call masculine energy, which is a very slow, linear, almost like a tick box done that tick, that tick, that hierarchy structure where you have, you know, you know you've got a CEO and then VPS Executive, vps, VPS Associate, VPS Directors Associate. And it comes down this hierarchy. If someone at the very bottom of this pyramid sees an opportunity or a problem, by the time it gets to the top where a decision has to be made, it is too late. And so most, what I find is most entrepreneurs leave their corporate world but having learned how to build a hierarchical business, how to build a pyramid, and that's exactly what they do when they start, they immediately start hiring, hire a personal assistant, hire someone in charge of sales, someone in charge of marketing, someone in charge of software, some in charge of hardw. You know, they do all this kind of stuff and before you know it, they've got exactly a smaller version of what they've just left. And that is fatal, I have to tell you, that is today that's fatal because we're moving away from that slow, linear build a Runway builder, you know, build a motorway, build a, build a freeway. Everything going in straight lines and very, very slow method to a really fast time of energy where technology is changing almost by the minute and it's swirling and it's exhausting, it's overwhelming. And if and because of that, you have to completely change the structure of your company and you have to completely change your mentality whereby you are no longer thinking of see a problem, call a meeting, you know, see an opportunity, hire someone to take advantage. Can't do that anymore. You've got to use your intuition to make instantaneous decisions and you've got to swirl with the energy yourself. So a lot of people who are finding themselves struggling right now, you know, they had this great idea a few years ago. It seemed to be like it was doing well. Now it seems to be stuck. It's because of this and it's because it doesn't match the energy of the time. You know, I'm not the only one in the world that talks about this new people call it feminine energy and I think it gives it a false impression. But it is spinning, it is fast, it is changing and it's adapting. So as an entrepreneur, I have completely changed my approach to business. So I now have learned to be very adaptable, very quick when I'm negotiating. It's no longer a six month ego battle between two men across the table. Invariably it's a female across the table from me and the decision has already been made. I just don't know it yet. And so if I'm smart enough, I'll realize that there's no point me arguing here that person. Because female energy or feminine energy, I don't want to get into a gender thing because we're all female and male. It's just that as a man, I've relied on my male energy too much and I've learned to start to bring into my life more feminine energy. And so feminists have all the advantage now. You're seeing it in every aspect of life. You're seeing feminine leadership in every institution, in politics, even in the hospital environment. And now for the first time in history, more females have started companies this year than males. First time in history. And you can just see more and more of that because they have the advantage now because they're in tune with the energy. So I've learned to change my style, to say, okay, bullshit, and egos don't exist anymore. You know.

All the surveys show now that in a situation where there's conflicting interests, the feminine energy, let's call it that, is more likely to come up with a perfect outcome than the old male type of energy. And so I've learned to adapt to that and I'm benefiting from it greatly. I'm really enjoying it. So all of that switching. So if you've got a business model or a business which has got stuck, you've got to look at it and really review it and be really hard on yourself and say, is this the old model or does this fit the new model? And I think the answer will be it doesn't fit the new model. So change it to the new model and then go back to the investors. And I bet you you get a completely different response because they know it too, and they feel it, although they're slower to adapt.

And would you explain how what you call a feminine business model looks different than that? Very structured, predictable, linear, more masculine business. What does a feminine business look like?

It's flat and circular. And so, and so this is, this is the time of the model of alliances. Let's call it that. In the old days, people, you say virtual and that, that gives you a false connotation of it. And I call it the hub model. That kind of, it's not a bad name, but it's not perfect. A model of alliances. And so, and so. And you're seeing everyone, you know, the whole world is shifting towards this now. There will be no hierarchical companies at some point in the future. It will all be decentralized. That's fine, that's great. I love it because, you know, I'm from a country where, you know, before the industrial revolution, everything was village centric. And then we're going back to that kind of village centric mentality, which I like, because that allows you to bring balance back into your life because you don't have to work 10 hours a day anymore. And because technology allows you to take a bit of balance, you take time out and that kind of thing. So it's going to be flat. So I think of it visually, I think of it as circular. So I've got my manufacturer, I've got my distributor, I've got my expert in regulatory, I've got my expert in marketing and sales. I've got my experts in all the different pieces of the business. And my job is now no longer a supervisor, but a conductor of an orchestra. I recognize in myself that I can't play the musical instruments anywhere near as good as the people that I'm conducting. But I know that I'm a good conductor and so I'll get it to work harmoniously. It sounds all cliche and corny, but this is how I see it in my head. So I'm a conductor of an orchestra to get the best. I want to get the best sound out of this, out of this thing. The advantage of it is that they can work unsupervised primarily, which is great. But the other advantage of it is that if we need to change or adapt, it's really easy to take out one piece and bring in another piece in the hierarchy. It's really hard to change that hierarchy under any circumstances. And to try and let somebody go in that hierarchy is a nightmare. It could take you two years to fire somebody. In the contracting situation, if it doesn't work, you don't renew the contract and you go your merry ways. It's much quicker, so much as much, it spins more quickly. From a management style standpoint.

I've had to change from supervisory mentality to mutual trust. I've had to learn to trust and negotiate with trust and do it. So I'm learning, which is great at my age to still be learning new tricks, but I'm learning to be a different type of conductor than I would have been, say, 10 years ago.

If you're watching live, if you're here live and you want to ask a question, this is the time to put it in the chat box and I'll bring it to Trevor. And while you're thinking about that, Trevor, I want you to tell me if I'm representing something correctly. When I have bragged about you or talked about what is fascinating about your story to me, I have said, what is so interesting to me about this approach is Trevor chalks up most of his success to working five hours a day and two of those hours are spent walking in the woods. Is that correct when I say that? Did I hear you write that rear two hour walks are what you call your productive time?

Oh, the times I'm not at my desk are the most productive times. There's no doubt about. I would rather have one moment of insight than a lifetime of sitting at a desk trying to solve the problem. So.

It'S really important, but it's scientific too. Again, it all sounds new agey. It's too good to be true. But we're moving into this world, thank goodness. Finally, so scientifically, it's shown through neuroanatomy that it's impossible to concentrate for more than two hours. We kid ourselves because we like what we're doing and we get into a zone. I do that. I'm a writer too, so I love writing. So I get into the zone of writing, scrabbling away, scrabbling away. Kind of like to write by hand first. And you know, eight hours has gone by and I can guarantee the next morning, six hours of that is going in the trash. Can guarantee it. It happens all the time. And so, so you have to discipline yourself to stop at the two hour point because that's probably really, really well done and productive and worth keeping and editing and on. So science shows that, you know, you can work up to two hours a day. And the surveys done of the corporate world show that on an average day, the Average employee spends 2 hours and 53 minutes being productive. 2 hours and 53 minutes. The rest of the time is searching on the Internet, looking for other jobs at the water cooler and the coffee pot and all the rest of it and you know, just basically goofing off. So it's not, it's not, you know, so in the corporate world that's fine because you've got the social interaction with everybody, you've got the relaxation, you've got your buddies, you've got all that. You can go into a meeting and mentally fall asleep for a couple of hours while everybody around the table speaks. You know, you've got that kind of downtime when you're working on your own to work. You know, you feel guilty not working. And so after two hours you just keep going and you just keep going, keep going and you get burned out really, really quickly. So it's very important to understand the science. You can go to my website, there's a freebie, no strings attached. The practical magic of the five hour workday. So I note and quote some of the science behind this. And so you stop at the two hour point. It's very important then to kind of recharge your brain. And the way to recharge your brain is whatever turns you on. For me, I go for a walk with my dogs. So I'll do two hours in the morning work and I'll go for a long walk with my dogs and I'll come back, I'll have a two hour lunch with my wife, I'll do two hours in the afternoon. Theoretically, actually these days only work about three hours and then I'll go and do something else. I might even go grocery shopping or something, and then I'll come back. And I like to work between five and seven, preparing for dinner because we, you know, we've always made from scratch every day. It's part of our ritual as a married couple. And I write during that period, but typically I work a lot less than five. But I thought if I say, if I said, you know, the practical magic of working less than three hours a week, people probably wouldn't even download it. So five hours is kind of the ideal thing. Two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, productive time at your desk or whatever, wherever you are. And then the rest of the time, you know, doing things that stimulate your brain in a different way. And it's when you go walking or working out or going, having a shower or whatever it may be in the down times, that's where that magic stuff comes in. And you go, ha. Why didn't I think of that before? And, you know, you think, I just wasted two hours of my life, if that's the answer. And then, so you need to have that balance because it doesn't happen if you don't do that. You just, you know, you'll just be trying to crack the nut all the time.

I've always gotten my best breakthroughs on vacation or when I'm staring at the problem for 10 hours trying to make myself work on it. And then I go away for three, and I'm like, there it is, there it is. And you're the, you're the first person that I've really heard talk about structuring that into your day of, like, making that the priority because that's where all the good stuff happens.

Well, I have to, because I'm not naturally disciplined. I don't think many of us are. And I've looked, so I've had to learn that through, you know, my thirst for biographies. So I, you know, the Mary Kay biography is brilliant because she was a list woman in the days before the Internet and devices and stuff. And she, you know, she changed the lives of thousands of women throughout the world, gave them empowerment. But she insisted that you list everything. Can you prioritize everything? Can you do a to do list before you leave your office and you, you start on the first thing, no matter what, the next day? I need that discipline in my life, so I need to do it. But I also, you know, I've learned over the years to recognize the importance of the downtime and.

The temptation is that you're working, you know, Two hours and it's coming up to the two hour point and my, you know, my device rings and says now it's time to do something else. And then the phone goes and the temptation is to reach for the phone and it could be a half hour phone conversation that. And then you've lost it all. So I will not pick up that phone. So you have to be as disciplined about the quiet time as you do about the productive time. And it takes a little bit of practice before that becomes a habit. It's quite hard, actually. Same thing for having separate devices for work and separate devices for the office. If your phone dings, you're typically going to go and see what it is. Science shows the minute you do that, it takes you 35 minutes to get back on track to where you were before you did it. And why waste that? Why blow that opportunity? So I've learned that and I have to, I need to structure for me because I'm pretty lazy as a person and not very disciplined.

I want to take a question from Damien who wants to ask about intuition versus data. So Damian, go ahead and take yourself off mute and ask your question to Trevor. Hi, Trevor. So my question is, when you have a tough decision you want to make, do you always make your decision based on like how you feel in your intuition rather than like the data presented to you?

Well, I take the data with me and then use intuition to decide if the data is any good or not. So I can take the data and it can give me sort of clue like, okay, it should be blue instead of green. But then I'll go and allow my intuition to either confirm that or deny that. And so, and sometimes, you know, even though the data, it's like in the old hierarchy, you know, you could be in a room and seven people say it should be green. And there's one person in the back that says, well, I know the data says it should be green, but I think it should be red. And that person now is an outcast, you know, an outlaw. But that person might be the only one that has got it right because their intuition is speaking. So I allow myself that period of time to take the data and let it digest and then use my intuition to decide. I never make a decision based on data and particularly because I'm in the oncology drug development business and it's all data really, and a lot of it is above my pay grade. I don't understand it. So I'll read the data even though I don't understand it and I'll still go make an intuitive decision. And, you know, it's yet to let me down, I have to say. So, you know, so long. May that continue.

Okay, so just take a. You just kind of glance through the data and then based on your intuition, you make that decision.

Yeah, I think of myself. So, like computers, like, you know, put the data in through my mouth or into my mind and let it crunch. And I'll go while it's crunchy and I'll be walking my dogs or relaxing somewhere or doing, you know, meditating or whatever it is that I fancy doing in that down period. And then at the end of that, the answer comes out. It's a bit like a. It's like hitchhiker, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You know, the answer might be very profound, like, you know, 47 or something of the meaning of life. So, I mean, so I do that. I allow it to digest. I don't think about it, I don't analyze it. I just walk with it. I just let it digest, walk with it. And then I come back and think, okay, you know what? Even though the data says it should be green, I'm going to go red.

How do you know? Like, you know, if you know, like, how do you know that? Like, that is your intuition?

That's a great question, actually be cut. Because everyone, everyone experiences that slightly differently. For me, I always get a physical sensation in my solar plexus, always. And, and if I don't get that, I know I'm using an analytical process, not an intuitive process, but when I use my intuition and I get the answer, I can feel like almost like a tug, almost like a little trip, like a little moment of excitement. And it doesn't last very long, but I'm aware of it. And I think, oh, it's almost like my part of me is going to tell me something and fed up and me not listening. You know, he's like this, come on, listen to me. And it's kind of. So I do feel a physical effect. And, you know, a lot of the research I've done over the years says that people, you know, when they use it, when they develop their connectivity and intuition, they do feel that. In one of my courses, Transformation, we know there's a whole section where we work on how to develop intuition, how to deepen it. And all the feedback from people who do that says the same thing. They have a physical response. And when, and when they accept that, ah, somebody's telling me something, it's kind of how they say it their decisions always turn out to be easier. Even though they might sound crazy to everybody else, they always turn out to be the right one.

Good question, Damian. I will piggyback on that question, Trevor, because Monica posted a question in the chat box about how did you develop your intuition to the point that you trust it? And I'm going to add to it how'd you develop it to the point where it gives you that physical tug.

So you can't just sit around and hope it happens. So there's a whole host of practical tools and techniques that you know, I've, some I've developed myself but most I've stolen from other people in biographies. So when, I mean a lot of you don't know me, so most of you probably don't know me. So when I grew up, I grew really poor and I was in a place, I was English in a place where the English were not wanted. It was, you know, the graffiti everywhere was English out. And so I suffered a lot of sectarian bullying. They came out with clubs and a 12 bolt shotgun. So I found a way of avoiding that and that was to hide in the town library and I used to hide out in the reference section. And while I was there I thought well, I may as well read. And I started reading biographies and I just completely devoured the whole of the biography section in that library. And ever since I've just devoured every biography I can get my hands on, even ones I like and ones I don't like. I just let it all that data come in and I found common. This is where three simple steps comes from. I found three or four kind of common behavioral patterns, one of which that all of these people had a way of trusting their intuition. They called it different things in different times and the techniques they used, they gave different names to depending on what was acceptable for the time. And I thought, you know, I'll just do those tools and techniques and, and so I introduced them into my life and by doing that my, my ability to connect with my intuition more as a man more than I would do normally. It's just sort of developed naturally and then I, and then I found other techniques, you know, through reading different or studying different.

Sort of, you know, not just religions but different, different belief systems and you know, all over the, I mean I'm not, I'm apolitical, a religious but, but I've studied all of it if you like. And I find that the same patterns of behavior exist everywhere. And so if you can have adopted them into my own Life and kind of developed them. And in the transformation course, they're all laid out there. It takes a month to do the transformation course. And then the middle part for most people is the most exciting. And that's where we use these things, tools and techniques. And people find that they have abilities and a knowing that they never realized they ever had. They've been suppressed for so long. You know, when you were a kid, our intuition is really strong. We just know stuff and then we tell our parents and the parents say, oh, don't be so stupid, you know, and you say, oh, I won't do that again. And so as an adult, it's a little bit like going back, kind of trying to sort of, you know, revert to childhood a little bit, whereby you start to trust yourself again. And you know, I'm not crazy. There is something here, I can feel it. And so. But you can only do that by sort of doing certain tools and techniques that then allow you to. So you can experience it. And you say, ah, now I get it. And you continue doing those things for a period of time.

And for me it has been a process of getting quieter and quieter and quieter and quieter and doing less and less and less. And just when I think I can't get any quieter or do less.

Maybe take a break and then do less.

That's a better answer than mine, actually. I think that's perfectly true. So, you know, at a young age I introduced meditation into my life, but didn't tell anybody because it was weird back then, just in the 70s, you know, it's like that would be even more of a target for bullying if I told people I was meditating. But so I did it secretly. And the benefits of just. I couldn't imagine my day without meditation, to be honest with you. And that's part of it. That's obviously one of the tools, but that's part of it.

I want to give Kirthan the floor. Kirthan, this question about excitement at the starting point, go ahead and unmute yourself and ask your question to Trevor. Hi, Trevor. So we're told by Ryan and the entire team to always do the business that excites us.

In your personal case, were you excited for your businesses from the very get go or did you become. Did you build up excitement as you progressed further along?

No, actually. So excited. It's a great question. So excitement right from the beginning, but because.

You can be really good at something and love doing something in arts or music and be really talented and you'll be excited right from the very beginning and succeed for me. I don't have any talent, unfortunately. I sat down one day to decide, what am I good at? Because I wanted to start a company and I came up with, well, I'm not very good at anything. I'm not even allowed near a toolbox in the house. You know, I can't. I can bake, but I can't bake at the speed that would make a. I could make cupcakes for the public or anything. So it was a bit of a shock to me that I have no talent. And so I decided, you know, what. What can I do? And so in the biographies, I started to notice that most of the successful entrepreneurs, or if not all of the ones I read, didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. They found something that they wanted to fix, and that got them excited. So there's lots of modern examples. So you can take Netflix, you know, the founder of Netflix, who had been a successful entrepreneur before that, of course, you know, he got frustrated taking back a cassette tape that hadn't been rewound. And he got fined, and he got fined because it was past its date. And he thought, this is really frustrating. There should be a better model because he also just come from the gym where he can pay a fee, and he has to pay the fee whether he goes once or 50 times that month. So he said, why not do it like that? So he started Netflix based upon that type of model. Whereas you can rent through the mail a cassette tape, which then became a cd. So here's another good point. So the cassette tape, and I signed up for it, I subscribed for it in the 90s, and so I would get a cassette tape, and if I was too lazy to send it back, I own that cassette tape forever, but I still have to pay my $20 a month or whatever it was. And then CDs were invented. He couldn't have imagined CDs were being invented, so now became CD by mail, and then streaming. He couldn't possibly have imagined that streaming was going to be a thing of the future. And so Netflix becomes, you know, the lead at leading, at that time, the leading streaming company. So, I mean, just a magical process. But he was really excited at the beginning to be able to fix something that he felt was fundamentally wrong, even though he didn't know how to go about doing it. So he's excited by the challenge and excited by the ability. I'm going to fix this. So in my companies, it's always been the same way. I'm excited by the challenge, even though I'm thinking I have no idea what I'm doing, but I really want to fix this. And that's exciting from day one. And I think if it's not exciting from day one, I don't know how you drum up the energy or the motivation to actually make a success of it. And maybe you can. Maybe there's reluctant entrepreneurs out there somewhere, but I've never found one. I've always found really enthusiastic, energetic entrepreneurs because they fixed something.

You know, excitement, Trevor, is over. The solution to the problem, not necessarily the result of the business. Is that right?

Right. Yeah. It's about fixing something like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to fix this. Having said that, I always set, you know, because big part of my life is transformation in three simple steps. If you read it as intention, setting the difference between goals and intentions, you know, so I always set a big intention at the beginning, depending on what I want out of this. So. So I imagine the outcome of the business before I even start the business. It's a critical component to success, I believe. And so if that doesn't make you excited, if the outcome you're imagining doesn't make you excited, then don't even start. So I started my first company already imagining that I would sell it for $100 million, even though I was struggling to raise the money I needed to get started. That's very, very important. And so every time something knocks you back and you feel this is going nowhere, you know, am I cut out for this? You start to double second guess yourself, then you imagine the outcome again and it picks you right back up and you get all excited. That's, that's an important technique.

Trevor, that's a beautiful segue into what Greg posted as a question, which is, is it possible to have that strong vision without being attached to the end result?

Yes, absolutely. Because you don't need to know how. It depends what you want for yourself. Okay. What do you want out of being an entrepreneur? Okay. So everybody wants something different and there's no right or wrong, there's no judgment. So somebody might want to be a successful entrepreneur because they want to be recognized. Somebody in my first case, I think was this was more likely for me. I wanted to prove all the doubters wrong because I got told I was, I couldn't, I wasn't, you know, I couldn't be a CEO, I couldn't run a company. I'm too lazy. You know, I don't have. Everyone said I was Incapable of being an entrepreneur, basically including back into my childhood, my father used to tell me this. And so I wanted to prove all the buggers wrong. And so that was really a high motivation for me. Nothing wrong with that. And it might be money. You might want to be an entrepreneur because you want to be financially independent. It doesn't matter what the motivation is. It's your personal, private motivation. But that's what you set as your. As your template, if you like. That's a given. So whatever your motivation is, you set your outcome according to that and you imagine it. So let's say it's recognition. So you imagine yourself on stage receiving Entrepreneur of the Year award. Okay, brilliant. If that's your thing and that gets you all excited, you don't need to fill in the rest. You can let life fill it in for you. You just get started and life will take you on that journey.

I want to give Tiffany the floor. Tiffany wants to ask a question about presenting your plan to investors and what they're looking for. Tiffany, go ahead and unmute yourself and ask your question to Trevor.

Hi, Trevor. Thank you for your time. It's appreciated. Hey, you're welcome. So for business owners starting to look for investors, what are the top three recommendations? Anything across the board that you have to offer on that, that you have for owners presenting their business for investment, Basically, what should we focus on sharing with you? So it's not a thing.

So number one is, and absolutely without it, you're not going to get it. Number one is you have to demonstrate passion, absolute passion. And so when I got my first investment, so just to give you a personal anecdote.

A guy agreed to meet me for lunch because he was doing a favor for someone else who said, please, really meet this guy. He's driving me crazy, bothering me with his business. So he met me in lunch. It was a really crowded, busy restaurant. And later on, he said he came to lunch only with the intention of tapping me on the head and saying, look, this is crazy. Go back to a real day job. But he said, what caught me was your passion. And I just, I was caught up in it. And he said, so then I start, and then I actually read the business plan. He wouldn't have read it otherwise. So first of all, his absolute passion for it, you don't need to have all the answers or have it figured out yet. You just need to have this real enthusiasm and passion for it that sort of exudes, fills the room with your energy. And the second thing is for me is to keep it really, really simple. So typically when you're presenting to investors, it'll be in a slide format or something like that. Never ever present more than five slides. Never. And no matter how.

What would be the right word? No matter how noble the investor thinks he or she is and how noble you think they ought to be and how noble you think you are, the first thing you talk about is a huge number.

Seriously, Seriously. And they'll be embarrassed and you'll be embarrassed, but if you don't do that after that you've lost their interest completely. So fairly upfront and you don't need to. So I do five slides. In fact, in Secrets to a successful startup, I think I've got my five slide format and I'm not very good at slides and stuff like that, so everyone can do better than me. But there's no point putting a slide up that introduces the name of the company and your name and the rest of it because they know who you are. So don't waste the slide. So you go straight into the market, the potential and the unmet need that you're going to solve and then you say how much money you're going to want, how you're going to use that money, how you're going to solve the problem and then exit and the exit for me and the easy exit and the thing that puts a lot of entrepreneurs off, I think Tiffany, is that there's a little fear of asking for the business like, you know, so are you going to invest in me? So I always think go with an action close that says something like, you know, I've done a proof of concept. I would love for you to talk to the CEO at such and such a company or institution who's been using my product for the last three months to hear from him or her the benefit of the product. Myself, I know he or she is available Friday afternoon at 2 o'. Clock. How many of you will be able to be available for a zoom call? Make it easy for them. And so. And they're not going to because people are nice people. I mean it doesn't matter who the investors, everyone's nice and wants to be thought of in a positive way, wants to be loved and liked. So that gives them a really easy option to say that's a good idea. Okay, who's available Friday, 2 o', clock, whatever it is, and then you got them and then it's all about after that it sells itself and. But the worst thing you can do is keep them pinned in a corner for an hour. Show them 63 slides until they're almost brain dead, and then ask for the business because it just doesn't work that way.

That's very informative and helpful. Thank you. You are welcome.

I think you blew.

I'm proof of the pudding. The proof of the pudding is in eating of it. That's what I do, and that's when I've done that. And believe me, I'm also the guy that made the mistake of doing the 63 slideshow. It's worked for me beautifully when I keep it really simple.

Yasmeen, I'm gonna give you the final word today. You want to ask Trevor a question about staying aligned with your vision? Go ahead and unmute yourself.

Hi, Trevor. I feel like a little bit of a nerd right now talking to you, but this is really exciting. So thank you for being here. My question to you is, when you start out with a big vision, you have a really big number in your mind. How do you stay aligned to that on a daily basis? How do you stay aligned to that vision? And even when it seems kind of crazy when you're thinking about crazy numbers, how do you focus on that on the day to day? And that is an absolutely great question. Question, Yasmin. So first of all, you don't need to believe it yourself, because I work from a scientific physics standpoint. So when we learn how energy works, and then you learn how to change your interaction with energy, you change the outcome. And the beauty of that is you start to work in a scientific process. So whether you believe it or not doesn't matter. It's going to work because energy, one of the laws of energy is that it can either be created nor destroyed, only converted to another form. So if you have a good thought, a really strong thought, a brief positive outcome, a vision in your head that has no choice but to convert into the reality of itself. So if you can step back and allow it to happen and not interfere, you're going to be a very happy person at the end of it. But every time, every now and again, you know, like. And I do this all the time now. I'm no different to anyone else, I think. Am I crazy?

Am I qualified for this? Am I making a fool of myself? All of these sort of thoughts go through your head every time that happens. I use a technique called mini Mind movie. So I've created in my mind a movie. It lasts just a few seconds, but it takes a long time to create in my mind of what my life will feel like when that outcome has been achieved. So it's not just about the. Not the outcome of the business or anything. It's how do I feel as a person? What's my life going to be like? How do I feel? How excited am I? You know, the thought of being able to, say, buy my spouse an Aston Martin, or, you know, buy my mother a house or whatever it may be, whatever. In that position of financial independence, you can do so many beautiful things. And it's not about the financial independence, but, my God, it's wonderful when you get there. So you have that mini mind movie and you feel it and you smell it and you sense it. And so one of my techniques in the course and in different books is to build that mini mind movie. And you build it first of all by imagining it, but then you fill in the pieces over the interim period. So let's say your dream was to have such success that you could go to an Aston. I've done this. I can talk about this one. So my first success, my dream was to go to an Aston Martin garage and pay cash for an Aston Martin Vantage. Brand new, tungsten silver with red caliper brakes. Very specific. Okay. And I imagine what that felt like. And I had the wonderful day when the money hit the bank. And the bank called me and said, now you can go, because we talked about it, now you can go and get your Aston Martin, pay cash for it, and we'll wow the money immediately, which very rarely happens. And so I went to Parklay and Aston Martin here, just over in Bellevue from where I am now. And that day, a tungsten silver Aston Martin Vantage with red calipers drove into the. Into the parking lot, ready to be sold just that day. And they had to clean it for me. And so I paid cash for it. I had imagined every specificity of that, but only because when I imagined it before I started, I then went to an Aston Martin garage and sat in an advantage. I did all the visualization techniques. I did everything. So I felt that I knew the Aston Martin vantage like I built it myself. That made the mini mind movie really strong. And why this is important, you do it at the beginning is because as you go along your journey, no journey goes from, at least in my experience, from starting as an entrepreneur straight to success. I mean, it's up and down and round, back and back, and it's all over the place. I call it the way of the winding staircase. And so you have to keep your focus on the outcome, no matter what happens. And that's why the mini mind Movie technique is so strong, it's really powerful. And, yes, I stole it from very successful entrepreneur.

Richard Branson, actually.

And if, you know, my attitude was, if it worked for him, who the hell am I to say it's not going to work for me? So I. So this mini mind movie, and you can read about it in many different places, you don't have to get my stuff, but if you're really interested in it, you know, we talk about it a lot on the website. I have two private groups. I don't have social media, but I do have two private Facebook sites because it's a good way to interact and I can control who's in there. So it's just entrepreneurs and scientists and people who are really on a great path. So you'll find it in there. People talk about their mini mind movies all the time, about how it's developing and very exciting. How often do you play that in your mind? I'm doing it now, so I'm doing it all the time. Whenever you get knocked back, I find it's really. Because it does hurt, you know, so, like, you know, the investor doesn't return your phone call, you know, the emails go unanswered, or, you know, manufacturer calls you and says, I'm not manufacturing this anymore because we can't just not make it. We're not making profit. When you get knocked back like that, it's very important to take yourself into a quiet corner. I find, nice dark corner, play a mini mind movie, and then you kind of come out fighting like Rocky. You know, you come out feeling a different person than what you just felt, like you were punched in the stomach. And then you come out feeling, here we go. And then. And then I go for a walk and an idea will pop into my head and I'll think, I'm off again, off on another journey. So particularly useful when you get knocked back, which as an entrepreneur, is a regular thing.

Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome, Yasmin.

It's a great question, Trevor. I think you've changed some lives in the last hour. Is there anything that I have not asked you that you think I should in the context of those early stages of entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship?

No. I mean, we could talk for days. I think, Ryan, you and I and all of us, actually, we should be at a retreat, talking about this stuff, drinking wine and enjoying each other's company.

Hey, if you want to set that up, we're pretty good at retreats.

Trevor.

I think history will show that there's never been a Better time to be an entrepreneur. I truly do. And I think also history will show there's never been a better time to reinvent yourself and achieve rapid financial independence. And I say that because the old energy, the old way of doing things, it was quite slow to get from start to financial independence. You know, you have to build a local, like a local referral group, you know, satisfied customers. Then if you were good, you could go regional. And then if you were brilliant, you could go national. And it took years to establish that today you can have a winning idea. You got to react forward. So you must incorporate your idea. Don't wait. So you incorporate your idea, give it a name, doesn't matter. The name is now you're a CEO, now you're a founder. And at that point you can sit in front of your computer and you can engage the whole world immediately. So the opportunity to grow fast. And that's what the future companies will be. Companies that have a brilliant idea but grow fast and then get acquired very quickly. Strategic acquisitions very quickly. There's nothing wrong with that. My favorite example of the current time is the company mirror. They have this in home workout thing. It looks like a mirror and it provides all kinds of data. Those guys came up with the idea Christmas after bottle of wine, Christmas 2017, and they sold at the beginning of this year for 500 million and they'd only sold a few units. They sold it to Lululemon, who was one of their investors. What a brilliant thing. But I think that's going to be the more common experience going forward. You're not going to have to spend 20 years to build a company successfully. You'll be able to do it very, very fast. And I think history will show there's never been a better time to do it. Should take advantage, particularly because we're probably going to hit a really deep recession and that's the time to start a company because all the vendors are desperate for your business. Whereas previously, when things are going well, they shut the door in your face because you have no use to them. I find the attitude is so different during a recession. It's the time to get going.

Trevor, we so appreciate your time today.

This is great fun. I appreciate it.

Please give some love to Travis in the chat box. But Travis, I think we're all hanging on your every word. So thank you for being so accessible and willing to share your knowledge with entrepreneurs. For the books that you write, for the interviews that you do, I could listen to you talk all day. So you're the most interesting person that I've discovered this year. Thank you for oh, can I get.

My wife back in so you can. Did you hear that? Most interesting person. I don't think she.

Trevor, you're the most interesting person that I have discovered this year.

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