Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Rejected 50 Times, Then $105M: How He Built a $105M Empire Around Only 300 Patients

Transcript

Rejected 50 Times, Then $105M: How He Built a $105M Empire Around Only 300 Patients · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  stop trying to get it perfect.
• 0:01
  Just start. You don't know what business you're in until you get in the business.
• 0:04
  Fortunately for me, the business model worked really well.
• 0:07
  it worked so well, I started with $200,
• 0:09
  and then, six years later sold it for 105.5 million.
• 0:12
  most entrepreneurs immediately start hiring and That might have been fine
• 0:16
  20 years ago, but it's not fine now
• 0:18
  take time off not time on only work two hours in the morning
• 0:21
  if it ain't broke, don't fix it,
• 0:28
  All right, Trevor Blake, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 0:31
  Thank you, Dave. Pleasure to be here.
• 0:32
  Yes, sir. We appreciate you taking the time.
• 0:34
  So, Trevor, you are a very successful entrepreneur with several,
• 0:39
  large exits. And we're just talking off camera.
• 0:42
  And you said you didn't even start your first company till you were well into your
• 0:45
  forties. and then you found a model that you've been able
• 0:48
  to repeat successfully time and time again.
• 0:50
  So if you could just to set the stage for our audience,
• 0:53
  can you talk about how you became an entrepreneur?
• 0:55
  Yeah, pleasure. I just got fed up of attending stupid meetings.
• 0:58
  So I
• 1:00
  Yeah.
• 1:00
  had a very good, I had a kind of fast track corporate career and then moved
• 1:04
  to the United States it just got better and better.
• 1:06
  was lucky enough to work for some amazing companies and also got well mentored.
• 1:11
  These were cutting edge people like George Rothman and Jim Vincent.
• 1:14
  wasn't the sort of guy that, you know,
• 1:15
  I'd rather.
• 1:16
  watch somebody who's successful,
• 1:18
  then try to figure it out myself,
• 1:19
  and then just kind relocate their ideas.
• 1:22
  And then I just got to a point where I thought,
• 1:23
  something not quite right in what I was doing,
• 1:26
  and I wanted to fix it. in my life,
• 1:28
  and also in the lives of all the other entrepreneurs I know,
• 1:30
  no one sets out to be an entrepreneur.
• 1:32
  at least if they do, then it's probably not going to go that well.
• 1:35
  They pretty much set out to fix something that irritates them.
• 1:38
  Something gets under the skin and they say,
• 1:40
  I'm going to fix that. Like Elon Musk,
• 1:41
  going to develop an electric car.
• 1:43
  it doesn't matter what the motivation is,
• 1:45
  doesn't matter whether the facts are right or wrong.
• 1:47
  say, I'm going to fix this. And so there was something I wanted to fix.
• 1:50
  went to my CEO at the time and presented the plan.
• 1:54
  He told me put it in front of the board of directors.
• 1:56
  I don't think he ever did.
• 1:57
  did,
• 1:57
  he said they turned it down. I did that three times and after the third time
• 2:01
  I kind of woke up and said, okay,
• 2:02
  this is not going anywhere. I'll do it myself.
• 2:04
  And that's how I got started. I just wanted to fix something and didn't have
• 2:08
  any money. So I had to come up with a smart way of building a company fast.
• 2:11
  My CEO told me, don't even try it.
• 2:13
  Go get another job because you're not good enough.
• 2:15
  you don't have a financial background.
• 2:17
  You're just a junior manager. You're not even an executive at this point.
• 2:20
  anyway, I figured it out.
• 2:21
  Fortunately for me, it was the right time,
• 2:22
  right place, I guess, and the business model worked really well.
• 2:26
  it worked so well, so I started with $200,
• 2:28
  believe it or not, and then, six years later sold it for 105.5 million.
• 2:32
  And although I had investors come in,
• 2:34
  I still held quite a bit of that company,
• 2:36
  which is unusual. so just repeated it after that.
• 2:38
  And that's what I do now. it's a plug and play model.
• 2:40
  I've written about it. It's in a book.
• 2:42
  You can go to my website and read all about it get free chapters.
• 2:45
  We live in a time where you've got to get big fast.
• 2:48
  There's no time all we have to do is look at the local malls and all
• 2:51
  of the big companies that we were told would last forever.
• 2:53
  They're all gone.
• 2:53
  because we have to be adaptable and technology can put it as a business overnight.
• 2:57
  So for me, the best model is to grow big,
• 2:59
  fast, get taken out, get purchased.
• 3:01
  And then that's also a stress-free model because then I don't have
• 3:04
  to keep growing and I don't have to keep adapting and reinventing myself.
• 3:08
  for those who like this type of thing,
• 3:10
  think, yeah, that would be fun.
• 3:11
  It'd be cool to build a company for five years and then exit and then
• 3:13
  go do it again. my kind of experience.
• 3:15
  Okay, so let's talk about that first company.
• 3:17
  You started with two hundred dollars,
• 3:19
  six years later you sell it for over a hundred million dollars.
• 3:22
  what industry was that in?
• 3:23
  So that was in pediatric rare diseases.
• 3:26
  It was actually a supplement company,
• 3:28
  but worked with the FDA to get a pharmaceutical grade supplement.
• 3:32
  So we had a special permit that we used with the FDA to make
• 3:35
  it legitimate and repeatable and all rest of it.
• 3:37
  this is what I argued with my CEO about because thing existed already.
• 3:41
  It was sitting on the shelf a company.
• 3:43
  But the market was so small, there were only 300 potential patients in
• 3:47
  the world and nobody knew where they were.
• 3:49
  We just knew it existed. Statistically,
• 3:51
  there's about 300 babies who were born missing this particular enzyme.
• 3:55
  And here's the replacement enzyme,
• 3:57
  but they wouldn't take it off the shelf because they couldn't justify
• 4:00
  to the shareholders spending money on something that only has 300 customers.
• 4:03
  And I thought there's got to be a smarter way doing this.
• 4:05
  There's got to be a solution here because this is wrong.
• 4:07
  It's just wrong. There's babies out there dying and it's wrong.
• 4:10
  so I had to figure out different way of doing it.
• 4:12
  had a big rouse with my CEO told me go find another job somewhere.
• 4:16
  You've got six months severance.
• 4:17
  And I used the six months severance sort of figure everything out.
• 4:20
  Ran out of money. I talked to George Rothman who told me,
• 4:23
  Trevor, stop trying to get it perfect.
• 4:24
  Just start. You don't know what business you're in until you get in the business.
• 4:27
  And so I just said, okay, I'll start.
• 4:29
  was the beginning of what is a great story actually.
• 4:32
  so you're convinced you wanna get this product out there and help save these babies
• 4:36
  that are missing this enzyme. you're told don't bother by your current company.
• 4:40
  So you're gonna do it yourself.
• 4:41
  You run out of money within that first few months and then a mentor tells
• 4:45
  you just start. So then how did you get that product out there and what
• 4:49
  was that first iteration?
• 4:50
  I kept badgering my old company to let me buy the rights to the product and
• 4:54
  I had to find an investor to help me and I got rejected over 50 times because
• 4:58
  I don't have the experience. I've not done financing.
• 5:00
  I haven't been at the highest level of a corporate.
• 5:02
  I had a good career, but was 40.
• 5:03
  I still wasn't at the highest level.
• 5:05
  eventually, you just knock on enough doors and eventually one opens.
• 5:08
  And so a door opened, the money became available.
• 5:11
  The investor was pretty unsure about me.
• 5:13
  He thought I was a cowboy. called me that several times.
• 5:15
  But he was really intrigued by the whole thing.
• 5:17
  And he sent like a third party.
• 5:20
  investigator to me who later on said he turned up to tell me forget about
• 5:24
  it go get another job but was blown away by my passion for this he said
• 5:28
  it was because of that I went back to the investor and said it might
• 5:31
  be gonna give this a second look or a third look or whatever it was
• 5:33
  so the money became available and then
• 5:35
  company who refused to allow me to buy the rights to this product,
• 5:38
  they got into financial difficulty at the same time.
• 5:40
  And then all of a sudden I was popular again.
• 5:42
  And all of a sudden I was able to take power and negotiate a price that suited me,
• 5:45
  not them. this always happens and
• 5:47
  one of the secrets is to always hold on to that dream and to keep reenacting
• 5:50
  it in your head. Imagine it being successful,
• 5:52
  imagine what it feels like for it to successful even when we're struggling to put...
• 5:56
  food on the table and then eventually these things sort of collide like timelines
• 6:00
  and away you just happens it's beautiful and magical it feels magical
• 6:03
  and that's what happened in this case.
• 6:05
  So are you saying too that even in these early days too,
• 6:08
  you're struggling just to make it,
• 6:10
  you run out of money, you're desperately trying to get this company
• 6:13
  off the ground and you're reenacting this in your head and the company that told
• 6:17
  you don't bother got into financial difficulty and next thing you know,
• 6:21
  they need to sell you the rights just to stay afloat themselves and it
• 6:24
  all works out perfectly and then you you're not even surprised at that
• 6:27
  point.
• 6:27
  Yeah. Yeah. And it's done that seven times in a row.
• 6:30
  know, if it ain't broke,
• 6:33
  don't fix it, as they say. So that happens every time.
• 6:36
  My current company now It's 20 years old now and I've struggled with
• 6:39
  it and struggled with it. I've tried to sell it so many times.
• 6:41
  I got close so many times. it was a 98 million dollar deal.
• 6:45
  And now the company's worth somewhere between three and a billion because
• 6:48
  it didn't work out the way I wanted it to.
• 6:50
  But I kept the dream of what it would be like in the future.
• 6:52
  my technique that I share in science of making it is called a mini-mind movie.
• 6:56
  So we play this mini-mind movie of...
• 6:58
  how does it look? more importantly,
• 7:00
  how do I feel when it's there?
• 7:01
  How do I feel when I get that success?
• 7:03
  So for instance, on the first company you mentioned,
• 7:05
  imagined that when this company sold my intention,
• 7:08
  My intention was, I have sold my company for over a million dollars.
• 7:12
  So when it happened and I was on a flight and the flight landed and
• 7:15
  I didn't know until the flight landed that it had actually happened.
• 7:17
  my mini mind movie, my imagination was I spent 24
• 7:21
  hours.
• 7:21
  in my pajamas and slippers because I've earned the right.
• 7:23
  And that's what I did the next day is I got to live in pajamas and slippers
• 7:26
  for a day, went to my favorite restaurant.
• 7:28
  No one bothered. No one questioned it.
• 7:31
  so it's holding that thing in your head.
• 7:32
  How do you want to feel when you get there?
• 7:34
  And I just wanted to feel so free,
• 7:35
  so financially independent that I don't give a damn what anyone thinks of me.
• 7:39
  And for me, my image of that was I'm going to spend all day and 24 hours in pajamas.
• 7:44
  it
• 7:45
  Ha ha.
• 7:46
  sounds silly. It sounds sounds a bit daft,
• 7:48
  but
• 7:48
  That's how the technique works.
• 7:50
  This is what I teach in the science of making it.
• 7:52
  Okay. All right. how'd you go about getting the company off the ground too?
• 7:56
  So you get the rights to this enzyme.
• 7:57
  There's still only three hundred potential patients.
• 8:00
  So how did you go about turning that into something that could sell for that much
• 8:04
  money?
• 8:04
  had to be really smart. this was in America and there's 96,000 positions
• 8:08
  I could go and approach. There's no way I've got the money to approach 10,
• 8:11
  let alone 96,000. So I had to figure who's the right target,
• 8:14
  Who's my most likely customer?
• 8:17
  wasn't the kid and it's not the kid's parents.
• 8:19
  They're the most important beneficiaries of the solution,
• 8:22
  but they're not the customer. for me,
• 8:23
  the customer is the guy who can find them.
• 8:25
  And in this case, it was a subset of medicine called pediatric gastroenterology.
• 8:30
  And so I found the subset and then there's only a thousand of those in America.
• 8:34
  So that makes it a lot easier.
• 8:35
  And then I couldn't afford to go door to door with these people with a bag saying,
• 8:39
  hey, you want to look out for this,
• 8:40
  for these symptoms. So I went to where they gather.
• 8:43
  So all of these physicians specialists and big egos.
• 8:46
  so they all gather two or three times a year in these massive conferences.
• 8:50
  So I went to the conferences and I basically bought them dinner and talked to them.
• 8:55
  And the reason for doing was...
• 8:57
  being the type of specialists that they are,
• 8:59
  they're put in a position where they have to be a hero.
• 9:01
  They've got to find cures. They've got to find solutions.
• 9:03
  And typically in that world as a physician,
• 9:06
  it doesn't come easily and it doesn't happen a lot.
• 9:08
  And they feel like they let people down all the time because they,
• 9:10
  don't have answers. can put these people in a position where they become
• 9:14
  a key opinion leader. So I gave them the slide deck,
• 9:17
  I gave them the tools, I gave them all the information they needed to then
• 9:20
  go out into the world on my behalf without being paid to tell the rest
• 9:23
  of the world how smart they are.
• 9:24
  And that's what they did. And they couldn't wait to give a press.
• 9:27
  about this rare disease and how to look for it particular symptoms to find
• 9:31
  and then when you find it here's a solution.
• 9:33
  the or six years we located over 250 children around the world.
• 9:39
  at just doing this and it didn't cost me a whole lot of money.
• 9:43
  It just cost me a bit of time to put all the tools together for them
• 9:45
  and provide them. And so that became kind of a smart model.
• 9:48
  call it the hub model get, vendors contractors and key opinion leaders and experts,
• 9:52
  and you bring them into sort of an ownership field because they love
• 9:56
  to play like that. Think of it like an orchestra.
• 9:58
  They love to play their particular instrument,
• 10:00
  but I can't play any of them, but I can,
• 10:02
  understand harmony so
• 10:03
  I can bring them.
• 10:04
  all together and be the conductor of an orchestra instead of what I've done
• 10:07
  in the corporate world which is to be a supervisor.
• 10:09
  I look over people's shoulders and I do at the end of the year an appraisal
• 10:13
  and all that nonsense that everyone has to put up with.
• 10:15
  Doing the hub model.
• 10:16
  frees you from that and allows you to be sort of peer to peer one can talk
• 10:20
  at the same level Help each other out and make everybody a hero it's just
• 10:24
  a more fun way to be an entrepreneur I think most entrepreneurs I know come
• 10:27
  out of the corporate world and immediately start hiring and That might have been
• 10:31
  fine 20 years ago, but it's not fine now because that is death to the cash flow
• 10:36
  and you've got to get big fast
• 10:37
  So if you start out that way, you pretty much already shot yourself in the foot.
• 10:41
  So I do go into companies and I do look at the,
• 10:44
  you've hired somebody for regulatory,
• 10:46
  you've hired software people, you've hired hardware people,
• 10:49
  you've got all of these assistants in here.
• 10:51
  You know, it's crazy what people do,
• 10:53
  but it's what we're trained to do in the corporate world.
• 10:55
  It doesn't work anymore, not in the entrepreneurial world.
• 10:57
  You've got to be smart, you've got to be quick,
• 10:59
  you've got to very, not just lean,
• 11:00
  you've got to be flat as a business.
• 11:38
  Okay, so talk more. So you call it the hub model and go into a little more detail
• 11:42
  about exactly how that works for someone let's say they're starting today.
• 11:46
  Well, there's a choice, right?
• 11:47
  One, don't do this. if you don't do this,
• 11:50
  you're have to hire somebody. Typically,
• 11:52
  you can't afford to hire the best.
• 11:53
  They're not available. So when you start out,
• 11:55
  you're gonna hire someone who's probably not the best that's out there,
• 11:58
  but is available. And then you gotta train.
• 12:00
  And then you gotta supervise. then after a year,
• 12:03
  they turn around to you and say,
• 12:04
  what do mean there's no bonuses?
• 12:05
  No.
• 12:06
  I'm going to leave and I'll take this know-how with me and it's a nightmare.
• 12:09
  So the alternative to that is to start a business and say,
• 12:13
  okay, there are experts out there who do this for a living all of the time
• 12:17
  and they probably do it for very big companies.
• 12:19
  I'm going to pretend I'm a big company.
• 12:21
  I'm going to go talk to them and I'm going to tell them what my dream is.
• 12:24
  And then they're going to come along.
• 12:25
  what I found is that this, sort of hub model of vendors and
• 12:30
  contractors stay with me through all the companies.
• 12:32
  They love it. They absolutely love it because then they don't have
• 12:36
  to do update meetings. They don't have to tell me what they're doing.
• 12:38
  they offer to give me updates.
• 12:40
  I say, no, just tell me when the job is done.
• 12:42
  I'm paying you to get the job done.
• 12:43
  I don't care if it takes you an hour or a year.
• 12:45
  If you can do it an hour, good for you.
• 12:46
  If takes you a year, that's your loss,
• 12:48
  not mine.
• 12:49
  a pleasure to work with peer to peer where everyone trusts each other than
• 12:53
  to have to be in a position where I'm supposed to be the expert in every function,
• 12:57
  but I'm a sales and marketing guy.
• 12:58
  What do I know about finance?
• 13:00
  What do I know about distribution?
• 13:01
  Nothing. I need people who are experts at that.
• 13:03
  I need to know enough about each of those functions to have the confidence
• 13:06
  to hire good people, to know genuine or who's bullshitting.
• 13:10
  In science of making it, we have some techniques.
• 13:12
  It's called the torso wand. We have some techniques deepening
• 13:15
  our intuition whereby we can hire and pick really good people.
• 13:18
  if you pick not so good people...
• 13:20
  a year later, you've got to part ways and you've lost a lot of traction.
• 13:23
  We don't have the time anymore for that.
• 13:25
  It's not cash is king anymore.
• 13:27
  It's cash flow is king. And so,
• 13:28
  I grew up being forced to read two books in the 90s,
• 13:31
  built to last and good to great.
• 13:33
  And in those books, it was said that those companies will be here
• 13:36
  for another hundred years. Well,
• 13:37
  if you pick those books up now,
• 13:38
  you'll find that half the companies don't exist
• 13:40
  anymore.
• 13:40
  We don't have time. The average age of a company used to be 50 to 75 years
• 13:44
  is now five to 15. So we have to be smart about it.
• 13:48
  So doing things the old way clearly doesn't work anymore.
• 13:51
  So just be smart, just do it a different way and it's actually a lot more fun.
• 13:55
  Okay, so let's get into when you scaled out this company,
• 13:58
  you went to this conference and you bought everyone dinner and then what what
• 14:02
  happens next?
• 14:03
  Well, they become, expert and they can't wait to tell everybody else who's
• 14:07
  not at that level, how smart they are.
• 14:09
  So you provide people with the tools to feed down.
• 14:11
  really no different to some kind of multi-level marketing model,
• 14:16
  except I've never done that, but it feels like that sometimes where
• 14:19
  you have people who are in first and they're the experts and now they
• 14:22
  can show everyone else how smart they are.
• 14:24
  And then those people who have shown how smart they are are going to
• 14:26
  be the first ones that come to them to say,
• 14:28
  I've got this
• 14:28
  patient what do you think and there's a fee involved in all of that.
• 14:31
  I physicians make a lot of money.
• 14:32
  and they do it because they get paid by insurance companies.
• 14:35
  They do it because they get paid privately and that's fine,
• 14:37
  nothing wrong with it. instead of,
• 14:39
  being against that.
• 14:40
  understand how they operate, then we provide them with the tools they need
• 14:44
  and then they provide their audience with the tools they need and then that audience
• 14:49
  talks to an even bigger audience and that bigger audience has the kids
• 14:53
  who are coming in with these terrible side effects and they haven't been able
• 14:57
  to figure out what's wrong yet.
• 14:58
  And then they all talk and then they say,
• 15:00
  you know what, I know someone else who's going through the same thing.
• 15:03
  know a doctor in Tennessee who,
• 15:05
  talked to me at a conference and had this issue.
• 15:07
  And word spreads and before you know it,
• 15:09
  you are the hub. I am, the company that I put together and myself are the
• 15:13
  hub of all of this effort. beautifully and it's such an honor and pleasure to do it.
• 15:18
  At some point ego gets in the way and you think,
• 15:20
  I'm just going to keep going. one thing I've got is I'm smart enough to know when
• 15:25
  my race is run. And I know that I'm really good in the building phase.
• 15:29
  So I know from the start point to a period after the start point,
• 15:32
  which is probably four or five,
• 15:33
  six years, I'm at my best.
• 15:36
  and then someone else with a different mentality needs to come in and take over.
• 15:39
  So all my companies still exist.
• 15:40
  All the companies I've sold. So the first one was called QOL Medical.
• 15:43
  still out there. Qolmedical.com.
• 15:46
  Doing really well. Still has the same core product.
• 15:49
  I think they have 350 patients now.
• 15:51
  but they also have 60 employees.
• 15:53
  So their profit has gone way down.
• 15:55
  That's just their decision, it's the way they decided to run the company.
• 15:58
  But for me, you're an entrepreneur who wants to grow fast and exit,
• 16:01
  you really don't want to burden yourself with bricks and mortar and people.
• 16:05
  You really want to be very light,
• 16:06
  very fleet of foot. And then that way,
• 16:08
  when the deal comes in, there could be pretty good deals.
• 16:11
  I mean, today is a great time to do this because...
• 16:14
  stats show that you can start a company with virtually nothing and you
• 16:18
  can be global instantly. If you get to $1 million a year in revenue,
• 16:21
  you can get 12x today, 12x. I was lucky to get 7x back then.
• 16:26
  So that's kind of how everything's changed.
• 16:28
  So it's a model that works for today.
• 16:30
  And like all models, won't last forever,
• 16:32
  but it is a model that works in this period of time for now and probably
• 16:36
  for the next, maybe decade until new platforms and new technology get invented.
• 16:39
  Okay. All right. So you have this first exit,
• 16:43
  And then you spent time in your pajamas for twenty four hours and
• 16:47
  you celebrated and all that, and then you decided to jump right back
• 16:51
  in and build another company?
• 16:52
  I had already started it. like George Rothman said,
• 16:54
  you don't know what business you're in,
• 16:55
  till you get in the business. If I hadn't started,
• 16:57
  I wouldn't have seen the next opportunity I wouldn't know about it.
• 17:00
  had no clue that this next opportunity even existed in the world.
• 17:04
  And so an opportunity came my way because I was doing the things we've been talking
• 17:08
  about. I was setting up key opinion leaders and I was at a conference
• 17:11
  and I saw something that caught my eye.
• 17:13
  And I was really intrigued by it and I asked about it and I spent some time talking
• 17:17
  people who had this issue. this is really interesting.
• 17:19
  I'm pretty sure I could take this on and do the same thing.
• 17:22
  now I had some money, you I had some cash cause I still owned,
• 17:25
  at this point, like 35 % of the company or something.
• 17:27
  So I started that company the first one.
• 17:31
  And that's the beauty of the hub model.
• 17:32
  There's no limit to how many things you can do at the same time.
• 17:34
  Right now I've got three companies.
• 17:35
  I've had seven at one time I looked at this and I thought if I set that
• 17:39
  up and I start drip feeding into it start providing some cash from
• 17:43
  my other company where I was getting like five hundred thousand dollars
• 17:46
  distributions a month or something like that and I could drip feed this
• 17:48
  and build this this could be really interesting
• 17:51
  After two years, it became obvious that I could split the company in two
• 17:55
  and I could sell the first half very quickly and I could keep the second half
• 17:58
  for the long term and I still have that company,
• 18:00
  Neovir Oncology. And the one I split very early on,
• 18:03
  I sold to a company for 300 million.
• 18:06
  And it the easiest 300 million I've ever made.
• 18:08
  I didn't have to do anything, I just sold it and
• 18:10
  that was really easy. it's the same model.
• 18:12
  It was plug and play. And then I realized I was onto something and all
• 18:16
  of a sudden people started to notice.
• 18:17
  so investors started to notice this model.
• 18:20
  It scared some.
• 18:21
  we're brought up to think employment is a good thing and unemployment
• 18:24
  is a bad thing. And so it scared them that what we're doing here
• 18:27
  is very contrarian to the standard statistics that we're all indoctrinated with.
• 18:31
  But others were really intrigued,
• 18:32
  especially by net profits of 76%.
• 18:34
  And so then investors started bringing ideas to me,
• 18:37
  would this fit this model?
• 18:39
  kind of how it works. It's exactly what George told me.
• 18:41
  It's not with us anymore, sadly,
• 18:42
  but it's exactly what he told me.
• 18:44
  You don't know what business you're into to get in the business,
• 18:46
  so you just start. And he knew what he was talking about because
• 18:49
  he built two companies, one for 60 billion and the second one for 28 billion.
• 18:53
  and he was 70 when I talked to him,
• 18:54
  and I figured that's the advice he's giving me,
• 18:56
  that's good advice.
• 18:57
  And it's the advice I'm trying to give everybody else.
• 18:59
  Don't try and figure it all out at the beginning because you'll be too late.
• 19:02
  Just start
• 19:03
  Mm.
• 19:03
  and you'll figure it out.
• 19:45
  Trevor, looking back at this whole journey,
• 19:46
  right? Where you started and you had some early opposition,
• 19:50
  you stumbled upon this model. You kept working even when things didn't look good,
• 19:54
  used your physics background to really imagine the end in mind had
• 19:58
  so much success over your career with these exits and this new hub model.
• 20:02
  looking back on all of it, what's been the best part of it for
• 20:04
  you?
• 20:04
  So an easy answer for me. there's actually two parts.
• 20:08
  There's a part A and a part B.
• 20:09
  Part A is understanding how to play with energy in a different
• 20:12
  way because it's magical. whilst we're talking about businesses,
• 20:15
  that's how a lot of people, especially in America,
• 20:17
  define success. I also had a 40 year marriage,
• 20:19
  a wonderful 40 year marriage until Lynn died in
• 20:22
  2020 and I've been married five years since I met an amazing woman in Canada
• 20:27
  so now have the benefit of that.
• 20:29
  That's just as important to me and also I've had really good health that's just
• 20:32
  as important to me. playing with energy benefits every aspect of our lives
• 20:36
  and I call it success with balance.
• 20:38
  Cause you can hustle, right? There's a lot of hustle peddlers out there.
• 20:41
  I don't even need to use their names.
• 20:42
  Everybody knows them. And they say,
• 20:43
  work harder, work more, do more.
• 20:45
  And I say the opposite. I stop trying.
• 20:48
  Accept that the world is energy figure out a clever way of playing with energy Which
• 20:52
  typically is to take time off not time on only work two hours in
• 20:55
  the morning Maximum that's all I've ever worked in these businesses Because
• 21:00
  the rest of the time I'm looking for great ideas I'm looking for a moment
• 21:03
  of insight and so I'd rather walk in a forest for two hours and have these things
• 21:07
  that smack me in the head Than sit at a computer trying to crack it
• 21:10
  up crack it open. So that's one aspect of it.
• 21:12
  that's part a part B
• 21:14
  is I've been very, very blessed in life to be surrounded by powerful women.
• 21:18
  So my mother was an amazing inspiration to me.
• 21:21
  She was given six months to live when I was seven.
• 21:24
  She refused to die. told the doctors,
• 21:26
  no, I'm not dying. Not yet. Not till my kids are grown up.
• 21:28
  What an inspiration to me. And everything I claim as success in life
• 21:32
  is down to things I learned observing my mother's feminine power.
• 21:36
  And I teach now.
• 21:37
  particularly for men, but also for everybody to have faith in how we
• 21:40
  can develop and deepen our feminine power because we're all half and half.
• 21:44
  This is XX and XY. That's the only difference between any of us.
• 21:47
  But most men, I was indoctrinated to be more analytical and now I'm more intuitive.
• 21:52
  And a lot of women are told that intuition is not valued that now I
• 21:55
  try to help female entrepreneurs gain confidence that they already have
• 21:58
  an advantage. That's been the most powerful thing to me.
• 22:00
  So my mother, my late wife, Lynn,
• 22:02
  and my current wife,
• 22:03
  Jessica, just inspire me. And if I could develop my intuition to even 10
• 22:08
  % of what they have naturally,
• 22:09
  then I'd be richer than Elon Musk.
• 22:11
  And so part B, that's the most important thing.
• 22:13
  Okay. All right. And Trevor, if people want to find more about your work,
• 22:17
  your book or any of the other stuff you're doing,
• 22:19
  your coaching, what what's the best way people can find you online?
• 22:21
  Yeah, everything can go through scienceofmakingit.com
• 22:24
  Science of making it dot com. Okay.
• 22:26
  We'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 22:28
  All right.
• 22:28
  Thank you.
• 22:28
  Well, Trevor, thank you so much for taking time to be here and sharing
• 22:32
  all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 22:34
  We greatly appreciate Okay.
• 22:35
  Appreciate it Dave, thanks for having me on.