#142: Five Non-Negotiables for Your Business (and Your Life)

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there.

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 1, 4, 2. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources we mentioned during the show. Many of us spend time at the end of the year setting goals for the months and the year ahead. But have you ever sat down to figure out what you value most in your business and, and your personal life? And more specifically, I'm talking about the values criteria or rules, if you will, that will guide most of your decisions. I know I think about those things occasionally, but until I talk with my guests for this episode, I'd never considered formalizing this process in order to end up with a clear set of non negotiables for my business and in my personal life. And today you're gonna hear from Trevor Mock. And Trevor is a very successful entrepreneur who started just a few years ago, just like many of us did as a freelancer. He was a marketing professional, a consultant, and he eventually founded a software company that's grown into a multimillion dollar business. Now, along the way, Trevor had a series of challenges and epiphanies that changed the course of his life. And in this episode, he's going to explain how clarifying his own set of non negotiables made all the difference in the world. This is one of those topics that are perfect for this time of year when we're reflecting on the year that's passed and the year that's ahead. And I hope you find it inspiring and thought provoking. Enjoy. Hey, Trevor, great to be talking with you today. Thanks for coming on.

Ed, thanks for the invite, man. And like we were saying before we hopped on here, this is one of the things that I love the most about what I get to do in business today. So I appreciate you bringing me on here to chat with your audience today.

Absolutely. This is a great topic and I'm anxious to dive in. And before we do, though, why don't you give us a little bit of background, give us some context. What do you do today? What's your background? Where did you come from? Give us the backstory.

Yeah, man. So going real micro here. So I Live in a small town in Oregon called Roseburg. Grew up in Oregon, but after college, you know, so I became an entrepreneur actually in college and I'm in real estate specifically, started buying investment properties. But I've always loved marketing. I've always loved building businesses. I've always loved going out there and how can I provide value with my knowledge base and with my knowledge set to other people, specifically businesses. And so after college, while I had some, some rental properties, we moved up to Portland, my wife and I, and I started to go out there on my own. I started to go out there and be a freelance marketing consultant and realized I had no clue what I was doing the first year, year and a half and fast forward through today and that's some of the stuff we're going to talk about in this podcast is kind of in that gap period between the time that I started off as a marketing consultant, a freelance marketing consultant to the time, you know, we're point where we are now, where I have a SaaS company, software as a service business that is well into the multiple, multiple millions a year. We have 16 full time employees. I know most of the people on this call probably aren't looking for that. But the cool thing is that the perspective I've got on being a freelancer to growing and scaling, I can really show you my experience on how to really best set up a business that suits your goals, that suits your passions and your purposes. And that's really what we're talking about here, Ed, is we're saying everyone's different, everyone's got different passions, everyone's got a different purpose for being here. How do you make sure you suit your business to that? And that's what we're going to be talking about.

Oh, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. A lot of people think, well, you know, freelancers, you know, that's not really a business. And one of the core concepts that we really hit on here, and most of what I put out is you got to treat it as a business, even if it's a business of one. So that's really cool that you've had this perspective and you understand where we're coming from. So why don't you tell us a bit about that journey, the struggles that you had that eventually led you to this idea of sending these key non negotiables that we're going to be discussing today. I want to hear a little bit of the backstory of how that came about.

It's so funny. So anytime there's a big change in life, let's say you get married, there's the honeymoon period, right. I think as entrepreneurs, there's a honeymoon period, too. A lot of freelancers, they became freelancers because it was their side hustle, or they left the job and then they started freelancing. And during that time, that was, you know, after college, it was kind of a really cool honeymoon period for about two to three years for me. As I was going, okay, all my friends, they have jobs. They're out there having jobs. They think it's awesome. I think that's not awesome, because you don't control your destiny, I feel, unless you can really control your client base and control what you're offering them. And so during that period, I'm out there, you know, hustling, trying to get clients here and there, failing more than I was succeeding. The first year in business, I made about $16,000 as a freelancer. Nice. Yeah. Paid everything on my credit cards, Actually paid my taxes on my credit card that year, which I didn't know you could do. And I don't suggest you do because it's expensive. They charge you the extra three or three and a half percent or whatever it is to cover the credit card fees. And that first year, man, I was just trying to figure out the basics of it, you know, it was like, how do you actually provide value to people? You know, how do you. How do you market? How do you go out there and crack through that clutter? Because no one was wanting to buy any of these marketing services I had. Cause I wasn't someone who was a famous marketing consultant. I was just some dude who came and said, hey, here's these things I can do for you? And so that first year was all about that, man, was the foundations of just how do you hone in on what it is that you want to offer, what it is that you are good at, can be great at? And then next, you know, it was like, how do I actually provide value to people? So that was the first. First year and a half or so. And as soon as I flipped this switch in my brain, so it was about eight to 12 months through that first year, just really not making any money. I had a lot of fun. And I was still in the honeymoon period, so I wasn't. I wasn't down and out, you know, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was going to work. I just didn't know when it was going to work. It wasn't a matter of if, but when. And so I wasn't selling Stuff already. So I just said, you know what, Let me just go out there and just find my ideal clients and I'm just gonna do work for them for free and I'm already not getting paid. Hustling, you know, hustling to try to sell some marketing consulting work. And let me just go find my ideal clients, go find some things I know that I can help them with on their website or over here, over there, I'm gonna pitch it to them and I'm say, hey, I'm not asking for any payment here. I just know that this is something that you need to change in your website. It's gonna improve things going this way. Or I can dig in and do this for you, drive some backlinks to them and get the ranking higher or whatever. And I did that with a couple of them. And what happened was by me shifting that, that value equation in my head from how can I go out there and sell something and get mine to how can I help them get theirs, not ask anything in return. I can just do that for experience. It opened up these doors to some clients I never would have been able to sell a marketing contract to. Never. Because I went out there and said, hey, let me provide value. I showed them the value, didn't ask for anything. Then they said, hey, I don't feel good about not paying you and I want you to do more of that. Can we work together? And so then that, that led into that second phase, which is that second year of me actually making some money. So I think I made 30 or 40 grand that year as a freelancing freelancer. But the non negotiables, this is where this came in, is that first couple of years, like I said, it was a honeymoon period where I was trying to figure out the basics of it. Everything was exciting at that time. Everything was exciting. You know, even though there were a lot of failures, it was all exciting. And it was probably about this. This was 2010, after I had launched another business on the side. I was still doing marketing consulting, but then I started to do publishing, online publishing, content. I had a blog, found out how to generate leads and traffic, and we actually ended up publishing training courses and books and things like that. And during that phase is when I discovered what I did not want out of a business. You know, during that honeymoon phase, I realized, man, this is great, but this income is boom and bust. I can't have a boom and bust income because that's stressful. It's stressful not knowing with pretty good clarity what your Income is going to be next month.

Yeah, because you're still selling at that point, mainly professional services. Right. Marketing consulting. And you might have a, you know, a great couple of months and then that engagement is done and now you're looking for the next one. Right. So it's that variable income that, that can be maddening.

Yeah, it's the variable income. And also like once we shifted over to selling information online too, through training courses and books and stuff like that, even that was a boom and bust business model for us because we didn't find and make ways, we didn't make it intentional to create something. That is one of my non negotiables I'll introduce here of having something that is consistent and predictable. There's so much value to having consistency and predictability in your income stream, in life and it adds so much flexibility. I know we all, we all become entrepreneurs in one way shape or another because flexibility is one of those things you're looking for. You know, it's the Fs, it's the freedom, flexibility, finances. There's probably some more Fs in there somewhere, but you, you become an entrepreneur because of those. And what happens is our income model, our revenue model prevents us from gaining the freedom and the flexibility and the finances because we're out there just going after these one off things the whole time that like you said, expire after a couple months or six months or you sell something one time and it's over. So during that period where I was, I had the publishing company, I was still doing marketing consulting on the side. I'll walk through a couple ways here in a bit on how I basically took what I was able to charge someone from this to about 10 times that and deliver more value and attract the right client. I'll talk about that here in a bit. The same amount, it took the same amount of time to do the work, but I was getting paid 10 times more by this time. But during that phase after that honeymoon, I'm like, man, I was waking up in the morning and this is like, so this is 2010, we had our first daughter. I've got three kids today. They're three, five and seven. Amazing kids. But McKinley, our oldest, was born in 2010, in August. And I remember vividly in the spring of 2010, summer of 2010, even after she was born, waking up in the morning and really just not wanting to get out of bed to tackle the day that I had created for myself and my business. I wasn't excited about the work that I was actually doing every day. There wasn't something that was connecting me at my core to be excited about doing that work. Was I good at the tasks? I was pretty good at some of those things. And I think that can really trick people when you're good at something. And maybe even if that something brings in money, it can oftentimes trick us that that's what we should be doing more of. Yep.

So true.

Yeah. And that, to me, was a big thing because in that period, writing email copy, you know, being the marketing guy, executing on the marketing stuff was what made us money. What really charged me up and excited me was this kind of stuff was teaching the things that I'm passionate about and coaching great people, coaching great leaders. I really love strategy, but I hate implementation. I didn't realize it then, and 95% of my day was implementing stuff, and very little of it was strategic. And so during that phase of that business, we ran that for about two and a half years with my business partner. I finally came, came to this period in 2012. So it was about a year and a half of me living life that way, where I was making okay money, you know, low six figures a year for me personally, still had consulting on the side, had this publishing company, had investments in a few software companies that two of them went out of business, one of them still alive, that is doing great now. And I woke up one day and I'm like, man, a friend of my brothers, my older brother's three years older than me. He was 34 at the time, and three kids was in his backyard, and he was. He was doing yard work, you know, it was on a Sunday. And him and his wife earlier that day were talking about the future as. As oftentimes you do as families. Right. Hey, you know, it's gonna be really cool 20 years out when it's like this or just kind of thinking about that stuff. And he had a brain aneurysm. And while they were planning out, you know, 20 years out earlier that day, they. They didn't know that he wasn't going to be there for dinner that night. Wow. And, yeah, man. And that hit me hard. That hit me hard because at that time, I had a couple kids. You know, our second was born in 2012. I was in this period of my business and life where I was doing work, I was making okay money. It wasn't crazy consistent. It was still boom and bust. But I'm like, man, do I do. You know, I don't have the urgency in my life that I really need to be happy. I don't really have the urgency in my life that I really need to go out there and make great things happen for me and other people. And it kind of became this mission where it's like, man, Nick, you know, he's the one who passed away. Nick doesn't have any more time to do this. Like, every second that I'm wasting feeling sorry for myself, we're doing the wrong activities or doing a business that I'm not fully passionate about. And something within that business is pushing forward my purpose. Like, man, I'm just going to part ways with everything I'm doing that doesn't fit that mold. And out of that came these non negotiables. I sat down about a month after that happened. I said, I, I'm going to sit down and write down a list of all the things that are 100% non negotiable that have to happen with my business. Otherwise I'm either not going to run the business or, or I'm going to shift the business immediately to where it fits these, or I'm going to shut the business down. If any of my businesses ever don't fit these again, it's not going to, it's going to be shut down. I got to shift it. And I'll kind of read through the non negotiables here and talk about why these were important to me. And I think that a lot of these will apply to other people. Whether you're a freelancer, you're just getting going, or you're wanting to build momentum and add consistency, or maybe you're wanting to scale. But the things that I sat down and said, you know what, these things absolutely have to happen, otherwise I'm not going to waste time in my life doing this business. Are these. The number one was singular focus. And the big thing, I think as entrepreneurs, whether you're a freelancer or you run a bigger company and Ed, I think you can relate to this. Once we have a little bit of success in doing something, let's say you lock down your first client that actually paid you money or you, you are able to repeat it a bunch of times, you go, man, I can do the same thing over here. And man, I can really provide a lot of value over here. You see opportunity everywhere. You see it everywhere.

You do.

And I think it's a blessing and a curse, right? Because those of us that are entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs because we see opportunity, because we're not out there being pessimistic about everything we see the world through Our eyes in a better light than most people do. We just do. So opportunity comes natural to most of us, but for many of us who. I'm not sure if you've taken the Colby score before. K O L D E. The Colby score.

Oh, yeah, the Colby A. Yeah. It's brilliant, dude.

So what. What, What. What are you. Are you a high quick start?

I'm very high Quick start. Yeah, I'm a five, six, nine, one.

Okay. Sweet, dude. So five, six, nine, one. So the six is follow through, nine is quick start. So you're like, almost as high as you can go on Quick Start, which for everyone listening to this, that has not taken the Colby test. It kind of grades the way that you work, and it's not great. It's not a right or wrong. It's like, here's the way that you naturally tend to work. And high quick starts are visionary. You're okay with things changing. You're okay with having multiple things halfway done. I'm a five, two, eight something. I can't remember what the fourth one is. So I'm really low on follow through, really high in Quick Start. Therefore, I've got four halfway read books on my nightstand right now, like I do at that period of my life. I had investments in two software companies. I had the publishing company. I had four or five consulting clients. I had an entrepreneur co workspace, which we still have. That's why I'm doing this. Real estate investments. And you start to look at this and go, oh, my gosh, that sounds amazing. But it was a nightmare. So I wasn't able to do my best to any one of them.

Yeah, Just everything sounds good, you know? Oh, that. That sounds great. You need to do that. And that sounds really good too. And I happen to be really good at it. So I should pursue that and I should do more of this. And it starts becoming. You're diluting your efforts and your talents. Right.

You are in. The thing is that so many people, like, once they see that you're good at something, you get a lot of people reaching out to you to want to. Want to engage you. Right. Which that's a good thing. Normally that's an amazing thing to have people reach out to you where you don't have to go and do a bunch of marketing to engage you on something. So I was still in that period where there was the scarcity mindset a little bit to where it was really hard to get clients at the start. Now it was really easy. So therefore, I must take all these clients on or I must take all these projects on. And so at that point I'm like, man, you know what? This next year I'm going to give myself the pass. I'm going to give myself the okay to focus on one big thing. That's it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna shed everything else in my business life, life off except for one big thing. So that's that. That first non negotiable is singular focus on the big thing. Singular focus on the big thing. And it's not saying that we can't add multiple things as we go, but I think the mistake that many of us make is we add on another thing before we've systemized the first thing, you know, before we've made the first thing consistent, predictable, built a team or systems around it that require less of your time. And if you don't do that with the first things and you keep on adding more things, it's just going to lead to stress and delivering a mediocre result.

Yeah, I found that most of us are way too optimistic as to how much we can accomplish with any one of those things. And we don't realize that just to do them well and for them to, like you said, to be systemized and, and actually delivering value without too much of your time and attention, that takes time, that takes more effort than we realize. So we end up having all these things that are kind of half finished or not even there. And then we get frustrated when none of them are really yielding what we need them to yield.

It's so funny, man. So around this time and we'll move on to non negotiable number two here in a second. But around this time I read this book called the Pumpkin Plan and have you ever read the Pumpkin Plan?

I have not. I've heard of it. I know it's supposed to be a.

Great book, dude, It's a great book. And Mike Michalowicz, the author's gonna kill me for saying this. So it's one of my favorite books of all time and I haven't made it past chapter one. Now. I know it sounds really funny, dude. I've referred that book to hundreds of people. I've bought hundreds of copies that book and send them out to people. Because the difference that the concept, he wrapped a very normal thing into a very simple concept that connected me in my brain. And this is a great marketing lesson, number one. But number two, it was, I think, page 16 of the book and you can actually get the, you can actually get the first Chapter for free. Just go to go online and type the pumpkin plan PDF and Mike's got the first chapter up on his website and you can read that first chapter. And the rest of the book is amazing, I hear, but the first chapter, and that's the way that my high quickstart goes. As soon as I get what I needed out of that, I shut it and I move on. And page 16, I think it's page 15 and 16 did it for me. And basically what he does is he walks through this analogy of a pumpkin farmer and those people who grow those world champion huge, huge, huge pumpkins you see on tv. The guy asked, he said it was in a newspaper article, he's like, how do you grow these world class giant pumpkins? And the farmer walked through the basic process and Mike read it and goes, oh my gosh, that is so applicable to business and life. And the basic process is this. Number one, you gotta have a great seed. The seeds that grow these giant pumpkins aren't the normal seed. You gotta have a great seed. And so with business, what is the great seed? It's a great idea. You have to have a great idea. It can't be just the run of the mill idea, but oftentimes the cool thing is you plant multiple seeds. You're not just planting one seed, right? So if you're trying to grow that, if you're trying to grow that massive pumpkin, you don't just go, oh my gosh, here's this one seed. I think it's a pretty good seed. But I'm just going to plant this and see what happens in the starting phase. When you're getting going. You should be planting seeds everywhere. Plant some seeds, see what catches, see what takes. And then the next thing that the farmer does is they water the heck out of that seed, right? Plant it in good soil and water the heck out of it. And after a period of weeks, you know, you're going to see those seeds sprout and you're going to see those 5, 6, 10, whatever it is, pumpkin vines going out there. And he said, pretty soon you're going to be able to see on the pumpkin vines where some pumpkins are growing. And he goes, pretty much go through that pumpkin vine and trim off everything that's not a pumpkin at that point. Trim off leaves, trim off everything that's not a pumpkin because those are zapping the nutrients from going to the pumpkins. And then he said, as you go, you're going to see some pumpkins that are bigger and have More promise. Cool. Those are the ones you're going to now focus on. Trim off every small pumpkin on that vine. So now all the nutrients go towards those bigger pumpkins and then eventually you're going to see one pumpkin and just seems to be outperforming the others. He said at that point, ruthlessly, go on that pumpkin vine, trim off every single leaf, every single other pumpkin, so there's nothing left but the vine and that one pumpkin at the end of it, and you water the heck out of it. He said towards the end, those final days before the competition, the farmer says you can almost physically see the pumpkin grow in that last week. And man, as soon as I heard that, that hit me so hard because I had, I had a bunch of pumpkin vines, I had a bunch of pumpkins on there, thinking I was all cool because I had a million things going. But that year I said, okay, I'm going to pick the one pumpkin. I'm going to focus on it this year. I'm going to figure out what that is in the first few months and then I'm just going to water the heck out of it that year. And if that's the thing that takes off, cool. At least I gave myself the shot that I focus on it for that one year. And if that wasn't the one, then I'll switch and do something else. And that one became Carrot, which is our business today. And it's grown insanely fast. And it's been my number one focus for the past three and a half years. The second, yeah, man, the second non negotiable is have fun and have a big mission. I believe in at my core. So this is one trap I fell into, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs do, is originally when you launch a business, most of the time it's about the income. I'd say, you know, it's about the income and freedom. You're wanting to leave a job or you want to have the flexibility to travel or whatever it is, or you think there's a bigger opportunity for earning income. And I know that was mine, I think out of college. It wasn't per se, really the income that was my main driver. It was that I just didn't want to be tied down by a job. I wanted to kind of do my own thing. And the income was obviously a good thing that attracted me. It's like, hey, there's no cap on your income as an entrepreneur. But the one thing that I didn't do very well in those businesses those first three, four years was I didn't really have much fun. You know, I, I was out there hustling all the time. I was out there doing good work, but we didn't bake fun into it. And at the end of the day, when you see something happen to a dear friend of yours, like, like I did to, to my brother's friend who passed away young, I'm going, man, life is way too short to not have fun every day in business. You know, it. It doesn't matter if you sell toilets. It doesn't matter if you're a. I don't care what business it is we need.

It's got to really jazz you up. And you got to wake up at least most days feeling like, yeah, I want to do this right.

Exactly. And I think the key that you said there, Ed, was most days, because no matter. I mean, you look at guys like Richard Branson or some of those guys that look like they're having amazing fun. Elon Musk, right, With the filtered versions of their lives through social media, they make a lot of fun into their businesses, but there's, I mean, 100% guarantee they wake up many days also just with days that aren't very fun, because they've got to run a business. They've got thousands of employees or tens of thousands. So you got to make sure to know, okay, funds should be in a massive part of your business, but not every day is going to be that way. So you got to stick through those ones.

But, you know, let me interject real quick. Is there something. For me, the, the litmus test was two very simple things. Sunday evenings, looking forward to Mondays, that I didn't set that as a goal, but I started noticing. For me, I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. I'm ready. I'm really excited about what's coming in. Number two was I would get very depressed at the beginning of the year. It's a post holiday blues and, you know, now you're starting on a clean slate. And I came from sales. So now you're starting all over. Right. All the quotas have been reset and for years I would be really depressed the first two, three weeks of January. So when that changed and I started feeling really excited to get back at it, that's another thing that just told me right away, yeah, this is cool. I'm where I should be, dude.

I love that so much. And here's a couple of things that we did with Carrot, our current company. So once again, these non negotiables are leading into the business. I'M running today. That fits me. My passions, my purpose in life. And man, we make a whole line of dolls. Like we've got I think five or six dolls now. We call them carrot buds. But there's one which is our original carrot doll. And we've got Farmer Carrot, super carrot who's like wearing a Superman suit. And we've got Agent Carrot now because we're rolling out a product for real estate agents. And we've got some other rolled out carrot gal who's our first carrot girl. We have a coloring book, a kid's coloring book that teaches our core values in a way that kids can understand. That's coming out in about a month and a half. We ordered Santa Claus hats for our carrots that are going to be here in about a week. We're going to start doing some fun things with. We send some of our partners and customers fun stuff. So what can you do as a freelancer even if you're a one person shop to have fun with your clients. You know, send them, send that client something fun in the mail. Back when I was a solo person, I had a couple of vas that were doing some work for me. One of them was in New York. Name is Christina and she's awesome. Every now and then, you know, it seems like probably every couple of months she was just crushing it with stuff all the time. I'd send her a $50 gift card to go have ice cream with their kids. Or I'd find out what she's passionate about and what she loved. And I'd gift things because it was fun to do that. So as a freelancer, find things that you can do to have fun in your business. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be that. You have to have a business that on the outside is inherently fun. Software and real estate is not inherently fun. You can make anything fun if you want to.

That's creative. I love that.

Yeah, man. In the second part of that was a big mission. This is something that I don't want people to beat themselves up over this part of it. But I know purpose and passion is such a big topic as it should be with people, entrepreneurs especially, because we're more motivated, it seems more ambitious than the general crowd out there. But we all want to feel like we're waking up in the morning for something that matters in this world. We all want to feel that what we're doing is making a difference more than just putting food on our table. And there's this, there's this kind of trend that happens as an entrepreneur. At first, you're motivated by the income and money because your back is probably against the wall or you've got a job you don't like or whatever it is, and you've got to go out there and create the income so you don't have to do what you were already, what you were doing before. But once you get to the point to where the income is taken care of and you're at least meeting your. Your needs maybe a little bit more, the income becomes a lot less important without admission. And I know for me, with my previous business, we made good income. You know, we made more money than I was spending. So at the end of the day, the money was just going in the bank. And when you wake up in the morning, you see money going in the bank that you're not using anyway, and you're doing work, you're going, why am I, Why am I doing this? You know, the value equation of the extra money in your bank account diminishes as it gets higher. Unless. Unless you have a mission that requires more growth. And so that's one thing that we did here at Carrot big time, is I didn't. Dude, from day one, I wanted to build a business that did 30 to 50 grand a month with Carrot. And I'm like, once we get to that point, it'll be sweet. This will be a lifestyle business. And then we can also really use this to inject, you know, to truly amplify part of my mission locally here in Roseburg, Oregon, to improve rural entrepreneurship and starting in Oregon and moving across the states, because I really believe in rural. I really believe that rural is an amazing place to start, start and grow businesses of almost any type. And so that was kind of my mission with that. And I'm like, once we get up to that revenue, that I can really go in here and invest and do micro investments in some businesses here and really help to build some. Some good culture and community. And the funny thing is, as we started to put mission out there like that, and we started to put it out there and started to do great product. We grew and we grew and grew. And today we're doing, you know, almost 400,000amonth. And it's not because of the finance of the finances. We grew because our mission required us to that over the course of starting Carrot, the first year, the challenge was, can we prove a product and make it work? The second year was, can we cement ourselves into this market and really start to dominate the market? The second the third year transition was really, it's like, man work. The second year was, can we cement ourselves into this market and really start to dominate the market? The second, the third year transition was really, it's like, man, what are we passionate about on the impact side of things? And I'm not going to dig into that side of it a whole lot. But there's something at our core. At my core, I wake up to every day with this business knowing that the bigger we get, the more impact I can make in that area. And the money just happens to be a byproduct.

You know, I'm glad you were very honest about how you evolved to that point, because I know for a long time I felt weird about this whole idea that I didn't really have a mission. And it's because at first you're just trying to make a living, right? You just, like you said, your back up against the wall, and you're just trying to get to a certain level so you can feed your family. But at some point, you have to pivot in that area and you have to crystallize that. Otherwise, it's very dangerous. Your lifestyle will quickly grow to that same level of income, and it'll be a constant treadmill. So I think it's two things. One is just kind of holding tight, living well, but, you know, just. Just making sure things don't get out of control and then taking the time to think about what is, what is your mission, you know, what, what, this. This is bigger than you. How can you impact your community in the world? And it may come to you right away. I know for a lot of people, it takes several weeks or months for the answer to emerge or.

Or years. You know, for me, it was years, because I know, I know with my. My previous business, we were doing great work, and we had started doing the local entrepreneurship culture building with my previous business. And that, that's always been a mission of mine the past five, six, seven years is how can we amplify Roseburg specifically and really tell the Roseburg story all throughout Oregon, which we've done that in a massive way, and we're getting even better at it. Actually. This Friday is our fifth, I think, investor conference, where we've invested about $700,000 into five businesses over the past five years in Oregon. And that's something we. We started five years ago. So this is. This is something that has been a part of what I've been doing. And we baked that into carrot also. But, yeah, I think things evolve, and I think One, one thing here, Ed, that I'll toss this out to people, depending on the phase that you're in, then I'll go through the rest of the three non negotiables here in a quicker pace because then we're nearing the end of the call. But during that period where I pared things down 2012, where I said, hey, you know what? I'm going to simplify my life and focus on, let me give myself the credit of focusing on one thing and seeing how good I can do with it this year without distraction. Another thing I also did that year was I said, you know what? I'm also going to stop beating myself up about my purpose. Because for years I put a purpose on the wall, thinking it was cool, I can inspire a million entrepreneurs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That all sounds cool. And I'm not saying that's not worthy and many people, that is their purpose. But for me, it didn't hit me in my core. And I think one thing that, that I have found anyway, that's a good indicator of whether you're on purpose or whether that is your purpose is where subconsciously you're baking almost everything you do on a daily or weekly basis into this thing, whether you know it or not. For me, I love amplifying leaders because I know that leaders and entrepreneurs are the people that are really the change agents. I know that they're the people changing communities. They're the people going out there and solving the problem. So how can I amplify leaders? That's why I'm on this call. Most of the people on this call, our customers will never pay me a dime, ever. But that doesn't matter to me because I get fired up about amplifying the people on the other end of this call so they can go out there and make their bigger difference. It's the butterfly effect side of things that hits me on my core, dude. Like, I love that. So find something that hits you at your core. You'll know it when you start to bake that into everything you're doing. The conversations you have, you're excited about. Find out why you're excited about it, because that's probably, there's probably some part of your purpose in there. The next thing is if you're beating yourself up over it and can't find your purpose, give yourself permission for a year to not find your purpose. And that's what I did in 2012. I said, you know what? I'm just going to give myself permission this year that my purpose Is this one thing. At the end of the year, I want to look back with conviction and say that I did the best I could possibly do as a human being at everything in life that year. I did the best at the small things. I did the best at the big things. And the only way I could do the best is if I focus in. And so that was my. That was my only purpose that year was like, I'm not going to look for my purpose this year. I'm not going to beat my head over on a wall over it. I'm going to look back at the end of the year and feel good that I did the best I could do as a human being. And there's a few reasons why. Like, at that time, I had a couple kids. And so you start to adopt new schedules as you have kids, of course. And I wasn't the best person. Like, in general, I wasn't the best father I could be. I wasn't the best husband I could be. I wasn't the best entrepreneur I could be. None of that stuff. It wasn't the best friend. So I remember vividly one time I was. I opened up my dresser drawer and I give myself excuses for years that I was just a kind of a messy person because had a messy room when I was a kid and my mom wasn't the cleanest of people. I mean, she's very, very clean, but she kind of allowed us to have dirty rooms, kind of, so made it okay. And so as an adult, I always kind of wanted to have my space. My wife is insanely clean, but I'm like, babe, just let me have my space. You know, it's kind of the way I am. And just let me have my. My closet, my drawers, and my truck. You know, that's kind of what it was. And so I open up my dresser drawer one day, and it's just a mess. My shirt drawer. And immediately in that moment, it popped in my brain and said, this isn't the best I can do. So I dumped everything out of my drawer, got rid of half my clothes, folded my shirts, printed shirts in the left, plain shirts with no print on the right. And it's been that way ever since. That was 2012. So five and a half years later, two, three weeks later, my closet opened up. This isn't the best I can do. And I got rid of half the clothes in my closet. Nothing on the floor anymore. My closet's still that way today. And so that, to me, is something I'll pass along to people if you're banging your head against the wall. To find your purpose, you need to declutter your life and do the best you can do to everything first. And that so opened up my mind that year to where my purpose then was able to. My purpose is in front of me the whole time. I just didn't notice it because I had so much clutter in my life personally and business. And once I decluttered everything and did the best I could do as an individual, my purpose kind of just fell on my lap and it was pretty amazing.

Wow. So you have to, yeah, you have to give it the right space for it to surface.

Give it the right space. So number three, consistent and predictable, we talked about that a little bit ago, is the boom and bus business model is just really stressful. So try to find a way to create consistency, to create recurring income in there. If you're a freelancer, can you lock someone down to a 12 month contract? So we here at Carrot, we do have some services that we offer. We only sell the ongoing services in 12 month contracts with people. While a lot of people are doing three or six month contracts for let's say pay per click, marketing or something, we will not do it for under 12 months and we do lose some clients that way, which is fine, but then we gain consistency and predictability. So find ways to make your business consistent, predictable. Get off of the boom and bust business treadmill, you're gonna be a lot happier. I can right now tell you with 98% certainty what my income will be in December next month. And that's pretty darn awesome. Having that feeling. I can go on vacation and know that it's going to keep on coming in. I can plan, you can actually plan out hires or having people help you. When you, when your income's consistent and predictable, the next thing, build a long term valuable asset. This is one thing I think a lot of people are guilty of and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but we, we get so into the transactional side of business. Let me do this transaction, let me do this bit of work, let me do this and let me do this one. And at the end of the day you're a year, two, three, four, five years in and you've done a lot of transactions, but you haven't built a business, you haven't built something that is of any, any more value than the active contracts you have at that point. And I'm not saying that everyone aspires to build a business. A lot of people are Insanely happy with being a freelancer, making the extra income inside, which is amazing. If that's it for you, do that dive. Dive in for full, you know, full steam with that. But for a lot of people, you want to make sure that what you're working on is actually building momentum. It's building something that someday could be worth something. Maybe you would want to sell it. Maybe it's something that you can bring in another team member to work on with you. Because it is something, is building something valuable rather than just transaction work. So that's what we did with Carrot was we said predictable, consistent income, valuable asset. SaaS business software as a service is that you get paid monthly or annually. It's very easy to plan it. Let's build the best possible product we can to solve this need that I know we can solve really well as possible. And then the last one was kind of something we've talked about a little bit, but live on purpose and work on my unique abilities. So we've talked about living on purpose quite a bit. Wake up every day knowing what you're doing that day matters not just to your client, but to the world. That you're going to do something that day that actually creates a butterfly effect of creating the positive change you want to see. Even if it's making a Facebook post that gets in front of your 200 friends that is going to inspire them that day to share, to be nicer to people. It doesn't matter. Find something that is your purpose. It doesn't have to be this grandiose thing like Elon Musk of getting humans to Mars. They can literally be. I've met some people that their purpose is just to be kind because they know that kindness rubs off on people. It's so amazing. There's. There's a guy, Leo, I'm going to totally butcher his last name, but Leo, look at this. Or look, something like that. He has a Netflix series called the Kindness Diaries. And yeah, it's amazing. You should check it out. It's amazing. And he goes around the world on this motorcycle, basically meeting people and finding the kindness in the world, because he believes that kindness can change the world and that everyone, you know, there's kindness all around. You just have to go find it. And if you can be it, it inspires other people to be more kind. The world becomes a better place. And I had a chance to interview him with my younger brother four, five, six months ago, and we've talked since then, and my brother collaborated on him on a T shirt with him. My brother has a clothing business. And getting to know Leo or Leon, man, it's like kindness is his purpose. So it doesn't have to be this big grandiose thing. Simplify it, get excited about it. And then that last part of number five, unique Abilities. This is the thing going all the way back to the start of this call I was talking about. I was doing all these things in my day that was pretty darn good at, and they made me money, and therefore I thought that I should do more of those things. But I kept on hearing this term called unique abilities pop up. Friends of mine would say, hey, you know, there's a lot of phrases for it. Unique abilities, your superpower, your unique genius. I've heard all those phrases for the same thing. And this one thing helped hit home. This is in 2012, like the same year I went through a coaching program called Strategic Coach. And one of the things that they help you do is hone in on your unique abilities. And I bought the book. It was a $20 book the year before. I thought that was going to solve it for me. It didn't. Once I was there live, the lady asked me a simple question. It was probably written in the book. I think it was just timing, and I had to hear it at a certain time for it to hit me. She said, you know, unique abilities are the things that you're not only good at. I mean, you could potentially be world class at these if you really dove in and focus on. But they give you more energy when you're done with them than when you started. They give you energy. Your unique ability should. And I went back through the list of things I was doing that year, and I created something in 2012 I today called the Energy Audit. And I still do it to this day. I walk my team members through with it. I've got a link up on my website, actually, where you can download the Energy Audit.

I left the link to that because I was going to ask you. I'm intrigued by the concept.

Yeah, let me. I'll get you the link, Ed, and you can put it somewhere.

Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes. I'll include it here. So that. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's something I've paid a lot of attention to over the past few years. It's this idea, and Dan Sullivan got me in it. Same thing as Strategic Coach for a long time. And this is. This is something freelancers really struggle with because we're supposed to wear all the hats, right? We Got to do all these different things, and we assume that we're supposed to be good at all of them. And there were aspects of my work that I hated, and I just felt bad about it. I wouldn't talk to anybody about it because I just felt, well, I'm supposed to be doing that. I'm supposed to be good at it. And my life changed. My business changed when I was honest with myself. And then I stopped feeling bad about the fact that, you know, out of all these things, I'm probably good at three of them. And there's a big group that I'm okay at, and there's a big group that I suck. Totally suck at doing. And I just try to really shift more of my life and attention to the things that I'm. That I'm really good at.

Dude. And it's. It's such a. Such a big deal. And I want everyone listening to this podcast to really zero in on this. And in the second part of that, because, like I said, I was so focused in on what am I good at, what am I not good at? And out and trying to outsource the things I wasn't good at. But for me, the part that really hit home with me at that time was the energy side of it, because I was doing things I thought I was pretty good at because they made money and people liked it. They would come to me saying, you're very good at these things. So I trapped myself into thinking, everyone says I'm good at them. I'm pretty good. It looks like they're working, therefore, that's what I need to be doing more of. But when I would really go through this energy audit, and I'll give you guys a link, you'll link it up, but you guys can all do this right? Now, grab a piece of paper. I know this podcast running a little bit longer than your normal ones, but hopefully this is good value for everyone.

It is. This is great.

Good. So grab a piece of paper, blank piece of paper. Draw a line right down the middle of that thing vertically. Okay. Right. Right in the middle of it. And on the left side, right. Gives energy or gives me energy or something like that. On the right side of that line, right. Drains energy. Okay? And then at the bottom, like, right below that, that vertical line at the very bottom, do a little dash mark and a percentage, and then a dash mark and a percentage. Basically just put some spots so you can fill in your percentage here in a second. Now go through that. And on the left side, take 5, 10, 15, minutes, whatever it's going to take. And look back at your last week, your last two, three weeks, and write down the activities that you have been doing that give you energy, that when you're done doing them, you're fired up, you have more energy. When you start podcasts like this Give me energy, I wasn't doing any podcasts or any training in 2012. I had a business partner who was the front of the business. I was behind. Therefore, these things that gave me energy, I was doing none of them because I didn't see how we were going to make money doing it because I was the guy behind the business. And then on the right side, right, all the things that drain your energy, you know, what are the things that just drain your energy? This isn't just in business. So on the energy side, write the things that, even if you're not doing them, that they give you energy. Working out gives me energy. There's a lot of things that give you energy. Write those things on the left side because those are life energy things, not just business side things. And even if you're not doing them at all, especially if you're not doing them, write those things down and the right side of the things that zap your energy and then go through. And at the bottom of that, do a ratio. Go. Okay, right now, every week is about 80%, you know, drains energy, 20% gives me energy. That's what my ratio was in 2012 when, when I, when I actually went down that list. Like, whoa. Well, most of my week is actually these things on the right. Very little is these things. I don't even know how I'm going to make money doing these other things. Just being strategic, but not implementing, you know, going out there and speaking and coaching on entrepreneur things when I don't have products to sell for that. All these things, I was making excuses for these give me energy, but I don't see how I'm going to do them in my business, in my business, current business. That was a fallacy I had. I was trying to wrap these into my current business model and make money. And so you have those ratios. Your goal should be to be over 60% energy work every week, for sure. If you're under 50%, you're going to be miserable, you're going to be depressed. And this energy audit is a quick way. If you're depressed or feeling like your momentum's head in the wrong direction, do an energy audit. My guess is you're well above 50% of your time draining energy. The last Part now this is where the magic came in. And this I actually put in a couple years ago. This wasn't original. The last part is, now that you've got that list, you've got your ratio. Set your goal for over the next year to 2. If you're 80% and drains energy and 20% the other way, or 50, 50 or whatever. Set a goal where every quarter you're going to increase the amount of work every week. That is energy work. And what I do is every quarter I take that list and on the right side, I circle one, two, three things that I want to get rid of the most that zap my energy the most. I write down how many hours per week I'm spending on them. So I just did it here just recently, and there were two items that were about seven to eight hours a week that together I was doing them, but they really drained my energy. I circle them, I go, okay, I'm gonna get rid of those this quarter. I go to the left side and I find one or two activities that give me energy. And I go, okay, which one of these am I to add this quarter? And that's what I do in that quarter. The first things I tackle that quarter before I do any of my other task work is how do I get rid of these energy drains to add that one that gives me energy. And now my energy work is about 85, 15 every week, most weeks, not every week, most weeks. And I can tell you, business is way more fun, it's way more on purpose. You can focus a lot better when you're focusing on doing stuff you really enjoy and it gives you energy and actually unlocks why we became entrepreneurs in the first place. So I'll leave it with that. And I can talk about this topic for hours.

Man, I love that, you know, and you make, you made it actionable. Because it's one thing to identify and get that clarity, but it's another to say, okay, how do I shift? How do I start shifting? And you be. I love the simplicity of just highlighting the ones that you want to get rid of. And I think that intention alone will set you on the right path. Right? Because you may not know exactly how that moment, but if you keep looking at it, you will find ways to get rid of them.

Yep, exactly.

I love it.

Exactly.

I love it. Trevor, this has been eye opening. I love what you shared. You've really inspired me, especially this time of the year, just to sit down and I don't have these non negotiables. I'll Be honest with you, I'm going to borrow some of what you have here and I'm going to put some of my own because I've already just listening to you, I thought of some things that. You know what, these are definitely non negotiables. It's not on your list, but it's unique to me or it's more personal and I encourage everyone to do the same. I mean, I use these as inspiration. And this is the time. There's no better than today, right, to start clarifying these intentions and being very clear about what you're not going to do and what your business will be about and what direction you want to move in. So thank you for not just inspiring us, but sharing these concrete ideas with us. Yeah, and I want to make sure before we leave though, that you tell us where we're from, folks can find out more about you. We'll make sure to include these links in the show notes. But where can I send people?

Yeah, man. So our software company is called Carrot, so you can find us@oncarat.com we have a blog over there that we publish a lot of content on, but also I pull away and usually publish about once a month on kind of behind the scenes business stuff. And my podcast is probably the if you guys liked anything that was talked about here. Even though our podcast is focused on on the real estate side of things, probably well over half of my episodes are not real estate specific at all. It's me talking about things exactly like this that I'm passionate about. So find the Carrot cast. Carrot cast on itunes, follow that and pick the episodes that are not real estate specific and I think you'll be able to get a lot of takeaways from it.

That's fantastic. Thank you, Trevor. And we'll make sure to include links to the podcast. And man, I appreciate you sharing all this with us today.

Likewise, dude. I appreciate the invite. And this one thing I want to finish with is everyone listening to this. Just remember why you became an entrepreneur freelancer in the first place. Okay? Don't let your business box you in. Make sure that you're creating the business that matches exactly where you want to go in life. And business success and happiness is just as much focusing on what you are not going to do as it is in what you are going to do. So use the energy audit, go out there, create your non negotiables and let me know how I can help.

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