The Anti-Hustle Path to Sustainable Success

Here's an uncomfortable truth. A lot of business operators are not building businesses anymore. What they are building is very expensive cages. I mean, the cage may have a nice logo. It may have a decent website. It may even have a team, customers, revenue, and a coffee machine that only works when Mercury is in retrograde. But inside that business, the owner is exhausted. The managers are reactive. The team is confused. Decisions are being made under pressure and stress is being treated like a badge of honor. And somewhere along the way, success quietly becomes code for, I haven't had a full weekend off since 2017. And that's what we're talking about today. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up some core skill sets to create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that your customers and your employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And I'm so happy that you're here with me today because My guest today is Trevor G. Blake, physicist, serial entrepreneur, and internationally bestselling author of 3 Simple Steps. And today, we are going to be exploring how business operators can build sustainable success without sacrificing their health, relationships, clarity, or sanity on the altar of the hustle culture. So, stay with us. And if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. That way, you'll get notification when we bring you new episodes each week. It's a fantastic way to stay in contact. You know, there is a point in business where busy stops being a season and starts becoming the operating system. At first, it feels noble. You answer every message. You solve every problem. You stay late. You skip lunch and you tell yourself, this is what it takes. And for a while, it might work. But then, the cracks start to show. The scary part is that many leaders don't see this as a problem. They see this as proof that they are committed. And that brings me to our Question of the Day. So, where is stress, overwork, and Constant pressure quietly lowering the quality of your decisions, your leadership, and even your life. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead, share the link to this episode on your favorite social media platform. Put down your comments. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and we'll make you part of the conversation. Love to see your comments and your ideas about this topic today. My guest today is Trevor G. Blake. And he is, as I mentioned, a physicist, a serial entrepreneur, international bestselling author of the book, 3 Simple Steps. Over the course of his career, Trevor has built and sold multiple companies collectively valued at more than $600 million. But what makes his story especially powerful is not the scale of the success. It's how he's achieved it. While many entrepreneurs are taught to worship the altar of hustle, Trevor took a very different path. He challenged the idea that success requires endless stress, heroic overwork, and the occasional emotional collapse conveniently scheduled between meetings. Instead, Trevor built businesses around clarity, focus, discipline, emotional awareness, and high-leveraged action. His work blends science, psychology, entrepreneurship, and practical leadership principles to help people really build success that actually improve Trevor, it is such a joy to have you here today. Welcome!

Thank you, Marc. And thanks for the introduction. I appreciate it.

So, maybe we can dig into— can we dig a little bit into who your customers are and how you serve them?

For me, a customer is anyone who's the recipient of a message or a conversation I'm having right now. So right now, you're my number one customer. And for you, everyone who's listening to you, they're your number one customers. So, It just depends who I'm talking to. I just got off another Zoom call with one of my other companies. And that person was my most important customer in that moment.

In that moment, yeah.

That's my philosophy in that we don't segment them. We don't say, this is an important customer. This one isn't. Anyone who connects with us is the most important in that moment.

In that moment, yeah. And it's the same thing even with your employees and such as well, right? It's like if an employee comes to you, it's like they become your most important customer. Yeah.

But here's an interesting thing because when you were doing the introduction, you were setting up, I do things differently. I like that phrase, right? I like the, let's do things— why do the same thing all the time? Do it differently. So, I've been building my own company since 2001. We're 2026. I'm on company 7 now. The company I'm running or spending most of my time with right now is a $3 billion company. I own it.

Wow.

So, we're talking decent sizes, decent things. But in all of that time, I have never hired a single employee, not one.

Wow.

And so, what I've done is I've used the hub model and I've done it because what you are talking about is that I'm the anti-hustle person, if you like. I don't believe in hustle. And one way to avoid hustle is to build a hub model, which consists of vendors and contractors. And I like that because typically vendors and contractors, so long as we select carefully, know what they're doing and they don't need supervising and they don't need encouraging because they're on a contract. They have to achieve what they're contracted to do. And then if we work well together and we like each other, the contract renews automatically. All my companies have been built with this hub model. And when I first started it in 2001, people told me that's impossible. You'll never get away with it. And it was so successful with net profits of 76% that I just kept going and plug and play. I do the same model each time and it works each time. And the advantage is for me that I can focus on using my intuition and coming up with great ideas. And I work more like the conductor of an orchestra rather than having to play all the instruments at the same time. Right, right.

Or having to know how to play each of the instruments at the same time.

Yeah, most of the time, I haven't got a clue what I'm doing.

And what I love about that model is that what you're basically doing is working with other entrepreneurs who are dedicated and proactive to support their success as well.

I am. And we enjoy working so much that typically, we'll come back together for a new idea, a new company, their idea or my idea. And we'll get around the table and say, okay, we'll do it in this way. Most of the vendors that I work with or that I've worked with for many years now talk about their interaction with the companies that I've had and that I currently have as the best times of their lives. because they take such ownership in it. There's no politics.

Right.

We are adamant about reducing meetings to the bare minimum. A meeting typically will last 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and it has to be because there's an absolutely essential reason to take people away from what they're doing and all gather in one space. That's the opposite of the corporate world that I grew up in, where I spent 75% of my working time in meetings talking about how to keep employees happy, completely ignoring the satisfaction of the customer, completely ignoring ideas to improve or upgrade our product. It was all internal whirlpool, as I call it. And that's why I started my own company back when I did, was because I just— that to me became a sort of self-fulfilling egotistic prophecy in that we're a company, we know what we're doing, we know better than the customer. Let's sit around and talk about how many snow days to take. It was just nonsense. And so, when I started my own company, the number one rule was you only meet if it's essential.

Yeah, I love that. Many business owners believe stress and sacrifice are just part of the price of success. Like we've been inbred. Where did this belief come from and why is it so dangerous now, especially in today's economy?

Well, so I take a different approach to it in that we have to work, most of us at some point. We have to do some work. And if we're going to do some work, we should probably do it smartly. And so, why not figure out how the brain works? And so, I figured out a long time ago that the brain can only really fully concentrate and focus for 2 hours maximum. And for most people, 2 hours is even too long. And then, we fool ourselves into thinking, oh, we're in the zone and we know what we're doing. But actually, we get diminishing returns. So, I have a program called The Practical Magic of the 5-Hour Workday. And I've never worked more than 5 hours a day my whole life. Right now, I only work a couple of hours. And I'm including this as part of my work, by the way, as much fun as this is. And so, what we do is we do a switch-on, switch-off program. So, you switch on for 2 hours of productivity and then you completely switch off for 2 hours completely. So, in those 2 hours of switch-off, you will go to nature, take a nice walk under the trees, or you'll take some quiet time, or you'll do something that has nothing to do with what you were just trying to crack on the computer or in your meeting room. So, it's 2 hours on, 2 hours off, 2 hours on, 2 hours off, 1 hour on/off. And when you're off, you're off. No cell phones, no interruption at night, all of these things.

And so, the idea being that you're refocusing because a lot of leaders would just tune into this and say, I don't have time to slow down like that. What are they misunderstanding about this idea about clarity and decision-making around kind of how they drive their businesses?

So, one of the tests we do is when I go into a company and they say, We're not growing. People are— the turnover of the staff is high and it's hurting us a lot. And I look at the way the company is sort of structured and how the day is structured. So much of the time is spent feeling that you just have to be there. So much of the time is spent feeling, I've got to be seen to be doing something. I've got to be seen to produce. And when we're honest with ourselves and we take a look around that environment and we look at how much time is actually used, All of the studies show that in the average day in a corporation, an employee works productivity-wise, an employee works for 2 hours, 53 minutes out of a 10-hour day. And the rest of the time is around the coffee pot. It's searching the internet for a better job. It's going into ridiculous, stupid meetings they don't even need to be attending, but they have to because it's politically correct.

Right.

It's all of those nonsense that goes around the corporate world. So, when we leave the corporate world, typically, someone starting as an entrepreneur has had some corporate experience. And when we leave the corporate world, the temptation is to repeat that because it's what we know.

It's what we know. Yeah.

It's a habit. No one's at fault. No one needs to beat themselves up about it. It's just to start to think about, hang on a sec, I had to do that because I wanted to impress my boss. Well, I'm the boss now and I'm not impressed by me at all yet. So I'm going to structure this differently and I'm going to follow peak brain performance. That's a neurological program. And so I'm going to work for 2 hours now. And then I'm going to switch off no matter what and take my dogs for a walk. And it takes a while to get used to that. At first, you feel like you're cheating. You feel like maybe I'm doing it because I don't know what I'm doing and I'm supposed to be busy. But the funny thing is when we're not distracted by all that nonsense stuff around us, we are really productive for 2 hours. We do more in 2 hours than we were able to do in a week previously. And so once we— it takes a while to get into the habit. So what I coach people to do is don't try and switch from the way you're working today day to only working 5 hours tomorrow. Just start to build in tomorrow. Look for a point tomorrow where you say, I actually don't need to hold that meeting.

Right.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave my office and I'm going to go for a walk. And let's see how I feel. Well, I guarantee one thing will happen. As you're going for a walk, you'll get this magic moment, like when you're in the shower and you'll get this idea and you'll go, oh my God, I just spent 2 hours trying to figure that out. And I've walked away from it and the answers come to me like that. And that's how all my business ideas have come, but not just the businesses themselves, but the smart stuff we did in the business came when I wasn't actually doing business. I was doing something completely different off the track, off the radar. And so you build that in, just start with 1 hour and just enjoy the benefit of it and then you'll want to do it more. And eventually you get to the point where you can structure your day a bit like like I've suggested, the on-off switch. And of course, I learned this not out of any genius. I learned it because I started off in the military. And the military do their shifts, right? They do the watches. I was in the Royal Navy. So 4 hours on, 4 hours off, 4 hours on, 4 hours off, 2 on, 2 off. And so they do that for a reason because it's very bad form if a young officer falls asleep on the bridge in a fully armed warship. It's not going to end well.

Right.

So they know how the brain works in the military and they require this on-off all the time. And I brought that into the corporate world, but I used to have to cheat because if I told anybody that I'm going for a walk for 2 hours, they'd have fired me. So I had to develop these little tricks whereby I looked like I'm really intent on something important and I'd walk really fast through the office. I'd go out the fire escape and go for a walk and then come back 2 hours later looking like I've solved the company's problems. I had to cheat in order to repeat what I'd learned in the Royal Navy, which was You're no use to anybody when your brain's tired.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because casinos figured it out with dealers. That because dealers are so focused on— they have to be so focused on the game, so in the game that after an hour, they pull them out. They go for a 45-minute break before they get put back on the floor because they've realized after an hour of this constant repetitive task in dealing blackjack or whatever, that after a while, it just becomes almost brain-numbing. And because of that, the dealers may end up making bad decisions.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know, there are lots of examples where you have to, you know, you're on and you're off. NASA requires all of its pilots to take a nap after lunch. It's not a choice. It's you have to nap now. And you nap for 45 minutes after your you've had whatever break you have. And they did a test and they found that their reaction times in the afternoon were 34% increased just for taking a 3/4 of an hour nap. Now, I'm not suggesting to any of your clients or your listeners that you immediately start napping if it feels uncomfortable to you. But just so you know, I am authentic. I don't just say this stuff and then don't do it.

Right.

I take a nap every day after lunch, every single day. And I come back from that nap just so focused, so refreshed. But also with new ideas.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because we've all faced that post-lunch kind of down where we're exhausted and we're just forcing ourselves to stay focused on everything else. And to your point, this matches up with kind of Stephen Covey's sharpen the saw idea, right? Take that 45 minutes, sharpen the saw so when you're back at it, you're aware and you're focused and It all starts to make more sense.

Yeah, it's a great analogy. I actually haven't— you're the first person I've heard say that. That's a great analogy for what it is.

Yeah. So, for the people tuning on, are there any early warning signs that a business operator is not just busy but actually burning out? Because again, we tend to wear this as a badge. It's like, I'm exhausted. I have no time. You don't understand how busy I am.

Well, first of all, you'll see it in your relationships. That's a pretty easy place to go and look and say, I must be messing up here because this is not fun and it's not going well.

Yeah.

And then you'll, and then you'll see the dogs look at you as if they've never seen you before. Like, who are you taking me for a walk? You know, I haven't seen you for 2 years. You know, you see it all around you. So, so, you know, as a physicist, one of the things that I was lucky enough, blessed enough to learn early is how to interact with energy in ways that are more beneficial. And so energy can neither be created or destroyed. We can't make new energy and we can't destroy the energy that we have. All we can do is convert it. So when we just stay at the wheel the whole time, the energy that we have, we convert it into different types of energy and we're left with very little. We have nothing left. And if we then go home at night and we're there with our family and we fall asleep within 20 minutes of getting home or we're just had such a stressful day that we numb ourselves with some alcohol or something, then the first strain is going to show in those relationships, those family relationships. And I think when people see that, that's when they start to panic and they say, what am I doing wrong? Because I feel like I have to work even harder to maintain this now. And the opposite is the truth. Now is the time to get balance. So The Science of Making It is the business coaching course that I have that I think is probably of most interest to to your clients. In The Science of Making It, we talk a lot about how to use the same approaches that we use in business to be successful in business without burning out, to also build really good relationships without straining the relationship. And then also the benefit of both of those things is our health naturally improves because we're— I've worked with cancer patients for 40 years now.

Wow.

Every situation, every patient has those stressful stories to tell me before they tell me what's wrong with them. You know, this happened in my life and now suddenly I've got cancer. What else can go wrong? Well, they're not unrelated. They're just not unrelated. And so, so one has to start to take, you know, command of this vehicle, this, this body. So, okay, I'm not doing the right thing. I don't feel good. I'm, I'm, maybe I'm overweight, maybe I'm not eating well. Maybe I'm just not getting good quality sleep and everything. And when those are the signs we have to look for, like there's a reason for that. So what can we change in our lives? Well, we can change obviously our lifestyle, the way we eat and the exercise we get, but we can also change our workday so that we introduce into our workday these moments where we get to chill out a little bit. Okay, I've just worked really hard for 2 hours. That was a tough meeting. My boss was giving me a hard time. I'm going to chill out now. I'm not going to rush my lunch. I'm not going to stand up with a bag of food and shove it down my throat. I'm going to go for a walk. And then I'm going to sit in a cafe and I'm going to have a nice quiet 15, 20-minute lunch. And you have to be a little bloody-minded and selfish to do that because everyone's going to give you a hard time at first. Like, where have you been? You're supposed to be here 20 minutes ago. But no, you have to take your time.

It's interesting that you say that because I assume that there's a semblance of guilt that creeps in because you're gonna have people. And I think it was Sheryl Sandberg who said, when she had a child, right? Then she had to leave the office and people would look at her and it'll be like, oh well, aren't you special that you get to leave at 4:30 while the rest of us now are stuck on this project until 9:00, 9:30, 10 o'clock. And so, how does one overcome kind of this? Number one, it's programming from how we were brought up. But then, it's this idea that It's like, am I actually a fair contributor to this business if everybody else is staying late and working through lunch and I'm insisting on taking care of this my way?

Yeah, and it's a great question. I think that's something that everybody thinks about. Do you feel like you're cheating or getting away with it or privileged in some way? The benefits of working this way far outweigh the criticism you'll get while you're doing it. And the best example I have is when I worked in the corporate world, I went from So after the Royal Navy, I worked in a hospital for a decade and then I couldn't afford the mortgage. So I had to get a job that paid better. And so I started, I didn't want to start in the corporate world, believe me. But I told my wife at the time, and talking about relationships, we were married for 40 years until she died in 2020. Wonderful, incredible, happy, inspiring marriage. They go together. Working the right way, relationships, health go together. But I said to her, I'll work for 2 years as a pharmaceutical sales rep. I'll make a ton of money. We'll get out of this debt and I'll come back and work in the hospital. Well, it turned out I was quite good at it. I had no idea. I didn't think I could sell a rope to a drowning man, but it turns out I was pretty good at it. Because I listen more than I speak because I'm quite introverted as a person. I prefer to listen to people than actually do what we are doing here. And so I started and I went from sales trainee, right? So trainee sales rep to vice president corporate development in 6 years. That's a fast-track career.

Yeah.

How did I do it? I did it by working less than 5 hours a day.

Wow.

And so, I taught all of my sales reps. So, I got promoted within 18 months to regional manager, then within 2 years to national sales manager, et cetera, et cetera. I taught everybody who I was responsible for how to work a 5-hour workday. So, I don't just talk a good game. This is the good game, right? So, this is what works. And so, they all did the same thing. My sales representatives, the first time, won Sales Rep of the Year. There were 5 categories. They won all 5 categories. I won Regional Manager of the Year 4 years running. I got all these amazing prizes, free holidays, an extra week's vacation, all of this kind of stuff. It was wonderful. So the benefits far outweigh the criticism you would take if people knew you were only working 5 hours a day. Because of the corporate world and what you are saying is we're sort of indoctrinated to work harder and hustle more. So we feel guilty if we stop doing that, even though that's crazy because the brain doesn't work that way. The corporate world doesn't really tolerate thinking outside the box. And so, I had to, like I said, those things I told you I did, I did all of those things and taught all of the people I was responsible for to do the same thing. And the results proved themselves. And those people now have gone on to be very successful entrepreneurs and they don't work anywhere near 5 hours, let alone 5 hours a day. They probably work 2 or 3. And we hang out every now and again in one of my masterminds at Science of Making It. And it's so much fun to see everybody being so successful. Yeah, amazing.

Hey, for the people tuning in who goes, that's good for you. But what about for me? I'd love to dig into how leaders can turn the tide for themselves. And we'll get to that right after this.

When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book Welcome back! I am speaking with Trevor G. Blake. Trevor, why don't you tell us about your book?

I just I just flogged my book. Tell us a little bit about your book.

So, I actually have 2, one specifically for entrepreneurs called Secrets to a Successful Startup. And it's completely different. This one is a New York Times bestseller. This is 3 Simple Steps. And it's a map to success in business and life. So, it's about what we've been talking about, how to get that balance right. To get the balance right requires that you learn some different habits, which are Going back to taking mentality control, understanding how we make decisions using not just our brains anymore, but our brains, our heart, and our solar plexus. And so, bringing that into the regular workplace makes all the difference in the world. So, the funny thing is I wrote 3 Simple Steps after selling my first company. I started it with a few hundred dollars, sold it for $105.5 million 6 years later. It was a great success. It's how I learned the hub model. And so I was going to take a sabbatical and Lynne, my wife, sort of raised her eyes thinking, no, you don't. You never stop. And after 2 weeks, she lifted a kitchen knife and she held it up to me and she said, if you don't write that book you've been going on about for 2 years, I'm going to kill you. And so I wrote 3 Simple Steps that I'd been talking about for years. And everything we are talking about is included in there, but it's not just a textbook. It actually has a beautiful arc. I also write movies, so I know the importance of arcing. And so, chapter 1, if you read nothing else, read chapter 1. It's a very inspiring story with a lovely twist at the end of it. And it tells you everything you need to know.

Yeah.

For the people listening— Or you can get chapter 1 on the website. Sorry, I should say that.

Oh, okay. And we do have the link to your website in the show notes.

Yeah, I told you I was a lousy salesman.

I should have said that. For the people tuning in that says in their kind of mindset, they're thinking, well, that's good for you but you don't understand my business. You don't understand what I have to do. What's the one mindset shift that they need to have in order to turn the ship around?

Yeah, it's not about what you think. It's about how you react to what you just thought. That's key, right? So, we're all like that. We're all self-doubters. I have doubts as you do, as I'm sure, Marc, you have doubts all the time. It's natural. It's part of being human. Nothing wrong with that. It's what keeps us safe and secure. If we think, I think that person's texting while they're driving through this junction, you've got doubts about whether to step into the road. It's a survival mechanism at work.

Mm-hmm.

But sometimes we have these self-doubts. Can I do this? Can I be my own boss? Can I do a 5-hour workday? Or is it feasible? And when we have that, it's not about the thought, it's about how we then react to thought. And that's the key thing. So we change the way we frame our— because as a physicist, I understand that everything in the universe is made of this thing we call or give a label to called energy, everything. So you and I, Marc, are made of the same stuff. Although to other people, we might look differently. If we go microscopically, you and I look identical, right?

Right.

The screen we use, the screen is made of the same stuff, the fermions and bosons. And so when we know that, we understand that we also have to figure out, do you know what? That means that thoughts and words are also made of energy. They're just as powerful. They're like silver bullets. And we use them without thinking. And oftentimes when we use them, we use them against ourselves. We look in a mirror and go, oh, I look tired. Well, and as soon as you do that, you start to feel tired. And so we have all these exercises at Science of Making It where I share them mostly for free, but you can look in the mirror and you change it. And so You go, oh, I look tired. See how you feel now. See how you look now. And then you step back and you say, I could use more energy right now. And you lift up automatically. You can't help but do that. And you start to lose age in front of yourself. So we learn the tricks and the hacks, and then it's just a question of practice and making it more of a habit. We don't try to become saints in this, by the way. Everyone's as flawed as everybody else. But every now and again, we catch ourselves doing something or thinking something or saying something that's not going to be in our best interests. Like, I'm no good at this. Or I hate being in debt. Well, you're just going to get more debt because everything's made of energy. And whatever you think about, you get more of.

And I think society helps lend to that as well, right? Like I just turned 65. Well, I'm getting all sorts of stuff from the government that says basically, now that you're old, here's— And it's like, who says I'm old? I'm just getting started.

You have to protect yourself from that. I use the bell jar technique where I imagine this bell jar coming down. And so all the things I see in front of me that would really irritate me or make me feel old or make me feel unwell or make me feel overweight or make me feel that being bald is wrong or something, you know, and all you have to do is drive up the freeway where I live and there's like every billboard is telling you there's something wrong with you. Well, so you have to protect yourself from that and say, you know, I'm okay. I do the best I can. I'm okay. I'm a good guy. Whatever it is, you just have to change the way you think. Because I don't drive anymore. I have a driver. But in the old days when I would drive from where I lived up to, say, the airport, 45-minute drive, I'd be really depressed by the time I got to the airport because of all the things they say that's wrong with me or that could happen to You know, the number of lawyers I'm supposed to have called along the way that's going to save me from something. You know, it's, it's, we have to be very diligent today, more so than ever, I think. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's not, there's not a problem with any of it. It just exists. But we have to sometimes protect ourselves from being influenced by that, especially with, you know, social media can be a force for good, but also can be a negative influence. You have to, you have to protect yourself.

It sucks me, like, it just sucks my, my energy. It sucks my mental state. It's just like, it just— and you can't help it because people in your industry and stuff are posting the success that they're having. And they're not talking about all the negative stuff. Nobody's— I found that in social media, people post things if they want the result to be, oh, I'm terribly sorry. How bad for you. But most are posting how wonderful their life is. And look what I just did. And everybody's comparing themselves to that and going, what about me?

The last thought anybody I think ever has is, I should have spent more time thinking about myself.

Right.

Yeah, yeah. Trevor, for the people tuning in who this is really resonating with, if they want to work with you, how can they get hold of you?

So, just go to scienceofmakingit.com and then everything's there. The 5-Hour Workday freebie's there. I think I have a backend team like you probably do as well, Marc. So I don't know exactly what the latest is, but I annoy the devil out of my backend team because I give so much stuff away for free, which they don't like, but I think it's right. And so you can grab a bunch of freebies that you can use tomorrow, tools and techniques that will change your life tomorrow, and you'll see the benefit of that. And then I know you'll want to come back and dig deeper.

I love that. How should leaders think about this idea of working less without confusing it with avoiding responsibility or not fulfilling their job duties? Or how do they change that mindset?

Well, the American mindset has to change because it's slightly out of step with some other countries that actually have introduced a 3-day and a 4-day work week because they find that they're more productive. I mean, everyone knows in Europe, don't bother going to Europe in August and try and get some work done because everyone's gone. They're off on vacation for a whole month. But you know what? They're no less productive. They're no less successful. And they don't work while on vacation. They're on vacation and you cannot get ahold of them. And so other countries and other cultures have figured out a way to— maybe we shouldn't use the phrase work less, work smarter perhaps, understand the power of of silence and understand the power of slowing down sometimes. America is a very different culture. I can talk about both because I've lived in and out of America for the last sort of 35 years. I love it here. I'll say hand on heart, there's no way I could have had the success that I've had in America anywhere else.

Right.

Because in America there is this can-do attitude that you don't find anywhere else in the world. And I thrive on that. I thrive on trying something new like The 5-Hour Workday. And if it doesn't work, no one's going to say, ah, you're wrong. I knew you'd get it wrong. Everyone's going to say, well, so what's next? What are you going to do next? No one condemns you for having a go. So, I would say to anyone who's listening, go to scienceofmakingit.com, play with some tools. What do you have to lose?

Yeah, yeah. Experiment a little bit. Get curious. Yeah.

Yeah, and I say that to all the leaders I work with in the masterminds that we have and all that I have. And I say the same thing. You won't know till you try.

Yeah. Are there ways that leaders can begin to identify the internal patterns that drive them back into their past behavior? Is there any way that we can have like a check and a balance if somebody's trying to make the change that— because I know that one thing happens is we try to make changes as soon as we get into crisis. We revert back to our past behavior. And then that becomes the big suck-in, right?

I totally agree. And the biggest culprit for that is an unbalanced balance sheet, right? That's panic sets in. So, profits are down this month by 20%. Got to work harder. Got to push more. And it's actually because you're pushing too hard probably that they're down. So, I would say the number one thing is to try this for a period of time. And then check your balance sheet at the end of that period compared to the beginning of the period. You'll never go back to the old way, ever.

I love that.

It's all about profit, right? Without profit, we don't exist as entrepreneurs. And you can't look at the— so 76% net profit. Who doesn't want that? I've had that in every single company.

I love that. I mean, that's a model that we need to learn.

Well, then it frees you up because if you put the model in, if you get it right at the beginning or go back to it, redo it, go back, say, okay, I'm going to do this hub model, you'll find yourself sitting next to computer with nothing to do. Right.

That would be terrible, Trevor.

Nothing.

Look at— we're gonna have to rehash the old solitaire game. I'd like to, for the people wanting to make a change, I'd like to talk a little bit about some cautionaries and pitfalls that we should be aware of as we try to rewire our brains to start making sure we're moving ourselves into this direction. And I'd like to get to that right after this.

When you're delivering an important speech to a huge audience, it's easy to lose your place or go way over time. Give yourself an advantage with the Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app. No No more checking your watch or calling for time. The Pro Speaker Presentation Speech Timer app keeps you on track with easy-to-see timers, even changing color for visual prompts during your speech. And you can set audio cues to practice or set it to vibrate so you don't even have to look. Be the pro you know you are. Download the app at speakerpresentationtimer.com.

Welcome back. I hope you're getting a lot from today's episode. As you could tell, Trevor and I on are on a mission to support leaders just like you. If you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you or someone you know might be planning a leadership retreat or a conference and you need some expertise, you need some speakers, drop us a line. Our contact information is in the show notes. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people. Trevor, is it fair to say that most leaders confuse this working less with doing less?

I don't think most. I think it's common. But you don't have to look far to see the evidence of good and bad practice, I guess you could say, the best practices. So there was a way of working, but it worked in a different time. And so if you look out at the strip malls or the high streets and you see all of these companies that were household names that don't exist anymore, You see them boarded up. The average age of a company, especially publicly traded company, was 75 years. It's down to 15 now.

Wow.

And it's probably going to be down to 5 very, very soon. And that's because everything changes so fast. Technology changes, the marketing attitudes change, and people have great trouble adapting to the new thing, the new fad, whatever it is. And one of the reasons they have great trouble is that they're in hustle mode. And they're so busy, they don't notice. And that's tragic for companies. And if you look at the history in one of my books, I have some of the histories of some of the biggest companies that were in books like Good to Great, Built to Last. Well, they didn't and they weren't because they don't exist anymore.

Yeah.

And when you look at the history, if you do a forensic analysis and you say, okay, why did that one go out of business? They didn't notice things changing around them and they didn't adapt quickly enough. because they're so busy, so focused on their issues, their internal problems. So, there's actually, there's a physical and a financial responsibility to slow down and start to observe better, start to look. And therefore, with that comes the natural evolution of companies getting smaller and leaner. Because lean companies have the ability to do that. You have the ability to look around and see what's going on and say, we need that platform. We're going to be out of business in 2 years if we don't change the way we're doing things.

Yeah.

So, it's a necessity for leaders to do it. I don't think it's something like we have to encourage leaders to start to think in a different way or we have to sell an idea to them. It's not about that at all. It's about if you're a leader, you want to be cutting edge always. And if you are so busy with the hustle mentality and encouraging that amongst the people you're responsible for, because I have this pet hate that when I hear leaders say, people who work for me, they don't work for you.

No.

They work for them. You're responsible for their success. And so, if you take that attitude, then you should always be looking at what's the next best thing? How do we grow faster? How do we get bigger quicker? And the way to do that is to follow what the communication trends are of the day. And the communication trends are not, let's work 10, 15-hour days. That doesn't work. I mean, unless you're a very particular personality who can kill that, like an Elon Musk, Then, then you, you, you, and you know, you, I cannot argue too. Elon Musk, hugely successful, has created all amazing things, but why not read his biography and investigate his personal life? I don't want that. I don't want that personal life. I don't, I don't want that lifestyle. I don't want, right. I don't want that stress. I don't want to be projectile vomiting in the early hours of the morning out of stress, you know, which, which has been his signature tune most of his life. You know, I want, I want to be able to sleep well. I'm very lazy as a person. I want to be able to watch my soccer when it comes on. I want to be able to have a nice leisurely breakfast. And I also want to enjoy a modicum of success. And for most people, selling companies for over $100 million or sitting on one now that's $3 billion, that would be enough success for most people. And you can achieve it without having to do the hustle thing.

I love that. So, for the people wanting to make the change, they tune in, they go to your website, they want to make the change. Are there any cautionaries or pitfalls they should be aware of as they try to change not only themselves but the culture of their businesses?

Yeah. So, when you change yourself, everything around you changes too because it's energy. Everything is energy. And energy is resonance. So, if we change even just the words we use or the way we behave, everything around us changes accordingly. And so, we have a choice in what direction do you want it to change. And I think everyone who's listening has worked for a boss that inspired them but also a boss that drove them up the the wall. And so you go with the best practices. And so you follow the boss that inspired you and bring that into your environment, and that will help tremendously. But it goes back to the same thing. You have to have the courage to change. And that's not easy for most people because most people, even the top leaders, can't make a decision to save their lives. But you have to make a decision. You have to say, okay, I'm going to change something because I don't want to be feeling like this. I don't want to be waking up at 3 o'clock every morning. And just try it. And you try it on for for a day or a week. And the pitfall is that everything around you changes too. And it's going to shock you. It's going to make you laugh and smile. It's going to make you— you're going to have people come up to you and say, have you had something done to your face? You look 10 years younger. What happened? Have you been Botoxing or something? You're going to have all these amazing benefits. So that's the pitfall, is that there's no downside to using your brain smarter. There's no downside to slowing down. There's absolutely no downside to taking quiet time. I try not to use the word meditation because it conjures up all kinds of crazy stuff, but taking time for yourself, quiet time. I take 20 minutes, half an hour just to me every morning. Have done since I was 16 and had this amazing adventurous life. You would be shocked at what my actual age is, but I still have another 25, 30 years to keep going and keep going. And I can do it because I'm relaxed. And I am, you know, after this, I'm going for a nice long lunch. You know, what's so hard about that? And then this afternoon, I'm talking to a wealth management company. That's pretty nice. That's a pretty nice lifestyle. So why wouldn't you want to try that on for size? The downside is that everything changes, not just you.

Yeah, I love this. Trevor, this has been fantastic. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get ahold of you?

The Science or just scienceofmakingit.com.

scienceofmakingit.com. Thank you. As we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we've talked about today? Anything that we've missed or anything you want to highlight?

No, I enjoy it. I love these chats. I just say to anyone who's listening or watching us, if you're cynical, you're in the right place because there's no bigger cynic than me. But try it one time. Just try it and see what happens. And then share your results. And that way, you'll encourage everybody else because It's all about leading by example. Yes. So if I suggest this and you try it and it works, you'll want to share it. If I suggest this and it doesn't work, and that's not going to be possible because it's based on science, but if it didn't work, then you'd have a right to come back with me. But if it didn't work, I wouldn't be here and neither would Marc. Right. We'd be doing something completely different, hustling away somewhere in misery. But we're not. We're both out. You can see Marc smiles all the way through this. He was smiling before we went on air. He's just He's having a good time. He's enjoying life. So, why not give yourself the chance, the opportunity to experience it the same way? scienceofmakingit.com. It's all based on fact and science. You don't have to believe any of it. Just try it.

I appreciate it. Trevor, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge. I said offline before we got started, I said this was going to be a really important conversation, I think, for the audience. And you nailed it hands down how important a conversation this really is. So, thank you so much for doing this for us today.

My pleasure. Thank you, everybody.

If you have any questions about today's episode, or maybe you're thinking, hey, we could really use a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with Marc or with Trevor. Well, good news. You can snag a spot on my calendar. Just hit the link below the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com and you are all set. As always, I am at your service because as Trevor said, you are my customer and nothing is more important than you. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you go ahead and make sure you're subscribed To the social media feed, to social. Why don't you subscribe to the podcast and follow me on social media? It's been so great having you along for the ride today. Thank you for joining us. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

See you next week!

See you next week!