Founder's Story - Zero Debt, 100 Stores: The Truth About Scaling Nobody Talks About with Brian Treu | Ep. 188

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Brian Treu, CEO and Founder of Intelvio. shares his remarkable journey from bypassing traditional education to building a thriving, debt-free enterprise in medical training. With his innovative “Miracle Hour” strategy, Brian reveals how early-morning focus transformed his daily grind from mere maintenance into breakthrough momentum. He discusses balancing a day job with entrepreneurial pursuits, overcoming fear, and the power of strategic delegation. Brian’s candid insights offer actionable lessons for entrepreneurs striving to scale sustainably and achieve long-term success.Key Discussion Points:The Spark of Entrepreneurship:Embracing an entrepreneurial spirit early on despite unconventional beginnings.Transitioning from a day job to fully committing to his business dream even after many years working both.The Miracle Hour Strategy:Leveraging uninterrupted early-morning productivity to drive growth.Shifting focus from maintenance tasks to creating real momentum.Overcoming Challenges:Balancing multiple roles while learning from failures.The critical importance of delegation and risk-taking in scaling.Takeaways:Structured routines and early-morning focus can fuel breakthrough growth.Resilience and strategic delegation are key to long-term success.Embrace change, overcome fear, and build momentum to scale your business.www.intelvio.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com* Check out CoinFlip and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://coinflip.tech* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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visibility at indeed.com slash podkatz13. Just go to indeed.com slash podkatz13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. H. Indeed is all you need. Hey everyone. Welcome back to founder story. Today we have Brian True and Brian, you are the CEO and founder of Intel Vio and you've had an incredible time scaling this company, this business. We're going to go into all that. We're going to dive into all things, scalability

and how other people can also replicate in their business the ability to grow as big as you have, which I know I'm sure there's been challenges. There's been amazing things along the way. So let's kick it off Brian with how did you get into this business and why this industry? Yeah, I was actually very similar to most entrepreneurs. I had a very entrepreneurial spirit about me. I didn't really want to go to school. College wasn't my thing. So I was looking for kind of a way to make an impact. I was super young, I'm fresh out of high school and I was at the doctor just getting normal after high school, where am I going to go to college?

Kind of check up. And, uh, the girl who was drawing my blood was, was missing and I have rate veins, absolutely incredible veins. And, and I said, you know, where'd you, I was joking. I said, well, where'd you go to school? And she said, well, there's no school for phlebotomy. And a light went off and I said, we're putting in, we're doing invasive procedures on individuals and there's no education, there's no formal education

for it or structured training for it. There needs to be, uh, and by February 7th, February 3rd of 1993, I was two weeks short of my 18th birthday. Uh, I got together with a guy named Jason blood and we started our first class and he taught and I did the business side until I got a little more experience. So that's kind of how things started. Wow. So, uh, talk about finding a problem that you need to solve in the marketplace that you're not even in.

Many people, I think are only focused on like what they know. You found a major problem that needed to be solved in an industry that you weren't even in. That's amazing. So, uh, you figure this out, you find this partner, you get going. And then what? Uh, I was actually super scared of needles. And so it was really hard for me to actually determine, Hey, we're going to do this.

And so he said, look, I'll do the business side. I said, I'll do the business side. You do the, you do the training side. So we did that for two or three months, maybe six months. And then we, and then we parted ways and I, and then I just stayed with it. For the first six or seven years, it was really like a working day jobs, doing the training thing at night and it was kind of building steam, building steam. And then maybe a 10 or 11 years into it. And my wife looked at me and she said, you know, you the training thing at night. And it was kind of building steam, building steam. And then maybe 10 or 11 years into it,

my wife looked at me and she said, you know, you're making more at the side gig than you are at the day gig? Maybe you ought to quit the day gig and do more of the side gig. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. And so that's when I decided to really buckle down and start scaling.

And it took a little bit of a shift in mentality for me. I was already fairly disciplined, but I learned a good business lesson that I essentially taught myself. I don't, I didn't really get it from anyone else, but that was the, uh, maintenance versus momentum mentality. And that's when my, the interesting part about my business and my life story was the schedule that I maintained for, for a better part of 20, 25 years. They got me to where I'm at today. You can talk about that if you want.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's amazing. So you're working six or seven years in the business and then also a job. That's incredible. And then you realize that your income now has surpassed your job. It's better to go all in on the business.

And then you come up with this lesson. I mean the fact you've been in business for over 20 years is Obviously not common right most businesses, you know, they die in that five, you know, two to five year timeframe So please I want to learn more about this lesson and then I really love to learn about longevity So 32 years now February this last year was 32 years We've had the operation albeit, you know You really count about 20 of those years as a solid actual business because it wasn't really making as much money when I was kind of double dipping.

The nice thing was that I was actually working in the day jobs as in clinical research or in medical jobs. So I was using my skillset every day on the job, which was nice. The lesson that I taught myself, um, was I worked in the business. So when I finally quit the day job and went to work just in the business, what I found was up to just the eight to five, all I was doing was doing maintenance. It wasn't, the business, so when I finally quit the day job and went to work just in the business, what I found was that just eight to five, all I was doing was doing maintenance. It wasn't, the business wasn't growing.

I couldn't scale, I couldn't find time to scale, I was just answering phone calls, returning emails, printing certificates, making curriculums, putting kits together, and then showing up at night to train, and then coming home the next day and repeating the process. And one day I was just sitting there, I thought I'm figuring out a way to build momentum.

But when? It was a big question of when do you build momentum? And that was when I started with my work schedule. And it was really, really odd. Historically, I've always loved to sleep, but I kind of shifted my focus and I stopped sleeping as much. So I would go to bed around 10, 10.30, and I would get up at 3.30 in the morning. And I would be sitting at my desk at 4 a.m. and I would build all my momentum between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. And then I'd go in and spend some time with the kids. And I've got, I've got five kids, had five before 30 years old. So I had a bunch of kids.

And so I do all the kids stuff. And then I go back to the office around nine to 11, and then I go 11 to one at the gym and then one to five working on maintenance and then family stuff in the evening. And I'd go back and do a couple of hours of work in the evening or teach in the evening. But that uninterrupted quiet time between four and eight a.m. to one at the gym and then one to five working on maintenance and then family stuff in the evening. And I'd go back into a couple hours of work in the evening or teach in the evening, but that uninterrupted quiet time between four and eight AM was the most priceless thing to me because no one interrupted me. There wasn't emails coming in.

I didn't, I could focus on what's the plan. What's the Gantt chart look like for the growth? What's the group? What's what does it look like for us to open three more campuses this year? How do I do that? Uh, I could look at leases in the morning when I didn't have people interrupt me, I could look at, uh, I could, I could shop for properties. I could, I could do all the things that required me to build momentum in the

business as opposed to just doing maintenance all day long. And I think it's where a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck is they go to work all day and they're like, they're gassed at the end of the day and like, man, it was a hard day who I'm spent. And then you go, well, did you build any momentum or was it all just maintenance? And most guys will tell you, yeah, I just kind of did maintenance today. I just kind of solved problems and put out fires, but I don't really feel like I built momentum.

And that was my thing. I had to have time where I built momentum and then I would do maintenance to balance of the day. And that was kind of the secret that I taught myself. Ironically, about a year ago, I stopped doing the 3.30 AM thing. I was about two years ago now. I sold half the company to private equity. And the early, early morning thing was kind of, it kind of burned me out.

And I was in a financial position to not have to put in that time. I could delegate to others. And I had employees that would build them up, that I could give the story and the narrative to about what I wanted and the vision. And they could go get up early and build the momentum for me. No, that's amazing. So when you, because I think some people might hear momentum and

that might mean something different to them. So what did momentum mean to you? Momentum is just the ability to make sure that the business is making progress forward. If you have a goal, like I had a goal to open 150 campuses and 50 states. And I think I had six or eight at the time. And so I'm like, okay, well, how do I get to 10 by the end of the year? And that momentum was, okay, well, I've got to get myself in a financial position to sign to be able to take on more debt, or sign leases that were more debt.

I've got to be in a position to understand marketing better. I've got to be SB at a better SEO. I've got to be better at my pay-per-click. I've got to evaluate the market, do comparable market analysis. During the daytime, it was, hey, there's an instructor with a fight or this person locked out of the building or this person forgot their book or it was all the, it was all just maintenance that wasn't, didn't build productivity, didn't build any, wasn't really producing anything.

The momentum was all the stuff that allowed me, gave me the time to do things uninterrupted that actually built the business one location on the next. And I think, you know, now we have, oh, there's a few behind the scenes that are about to launch, I think we you know, now we have, Oh, there's a few behind the scenes that are about to launch. I think we're 110, 115 locations in 40 states. Uh, and so that's kind of where that that's really for me, the momentum was uninterrupted time to do things and activities and behaviors

that allowed the business to grow as opposed to helping people with their, you know, their keys got locked in their car out in the parking lot. Now I got to go solve that problem. So we, a lot of the, the guests that we have on they talk about transitional milestones and how they had to change in business going from a million to 10 million to 50 million to 100 million in revenue or one store to five stores to 50 stores or a thousand employees. How was that for you when you had some you know when you went from went from, I'm sure 10 stores to a hundred stores, you had to make some significant changes or maybe milestones of employees or revenue as well. What was maybe looking back some sort of milestone that happened where you had to completely change maybe what you were doing because it was so different?

Yeah, great question. And the single answer And the singular answer to that is one thing, and that is I had to stop being scared. I did 80 locations before I sold to anybody. So I had 80 leases on my plate, which at three or $400,000 a lease would be 30, 40, $50 million in potential debt that you're carrying on your shoulders if it doesn't work out

with personal guarantees on every single one of them. And so to get to that point from 10 to 80, I had to completely dismiss all the fear and walk away from all things that scared me about growing the business. And most of it was just fear of failure. So changing your attitude from hey, I want to grow, but I don't know how I want to grow, but I'm scared to grow to I don't care what happens. I've seen 10 work and as soon as I I want to grow, but I don't know how I want to grow, but I'm scared to grow to I don't care what happens. I've seen, I've seen 10 work and as soon as I get 15 to work, I'm going to go for 25. It's just 25 work.

I'm going to go for 40, et cetera. So you just, it's just, your, your, your shift has got to be the fear. And a lot of business owners and young entrepreneurs, they're scared, rightfully so, but I was able to kind of encapsulate that fear and put it in bottle and put it onto the side of the desk every single day and go, I'm building enough stuff by way of momentum and I'm doing stuff maintenance-wise that I can actually become, that I can actually do great things when it comes to the business and grow it without that fear involved. Man, fear has held me back in my life. That's one of the one things that I am totally working on.

I could see that. You open up one restaurant and you have, you know, you open up one restaurant and you have the fear that if you opened another one it's gonna be the same, another one, another one. But it sounds like something you did very differently. And by the way, personal guarantee scares me. I have a fear around that. But something you did differently is that you,

it sounds like you started setting yourself up for the future instead of waiting till you had 80 and then making the change. It sounds like you had to do a lot of change. What were some internal changes that you had to do or maybe even external? So maybe in your family, I know you talked about some of the times, but I imagine there were some changes that had to either been made internally or even externally, maybe with your family. Yeah. Yeah. Having a lot of young kids was tough.

And so it was really a balancing act. Right. My dad would always tell me you got to take time to sharpen the saw. And I would just work and grind through work and then not have as much time for the kids, but you don't become as productive as a father and as a husband. Um, and as an, as a, as a, as a CEO or a founder of a company, unless you have a lot of balance in your life, I've heard that lesson taught many, many times by a lot of successful entrepreneurs, or the lesson of balance of, hey, take time for family, take time for your kids,

take time for your wife, take time for yourself. The mental health portion of this is very, very important as well. I think that's a lesson that I'm not scared to share, which is lots of closet crying sessions. I mean, just like scared to death, just like looking at my wife, like, are we doing this? Like what happens at like all Christmas time comes and none of the classrooms are full and we still have leases due. And can we have Christmas with 40 locations? Um, you know, there's a lot of those, which is the fear and the, and the

scare. So yeah, you got to take time to balance your life out and make sure that you give enough time to your kids and your wife and your, and your, and your business and things like that. But a balance is, is, is key. And, and one philosophy that I've always stuck with my whole life and it's a philosophy a lot of Utah people follow, which is no success in life makes up for failure

in the home. And so you really wanna make sure that your children are good people, your wife's in a good place, your relationship's in a good spot, and that you're giving the business the attention that it needs in order to succeed. I imagine 32 years ago, nobody was talking about mental health or balance.

Those weren't even things that we even thought were, or burnout, like these are phrases that nobody even thought was a need, which maybe that was an issue. Maybe we should have been thinking about that 30 years ago as a society. I'm curious on challenges that you've been through and what you learned from that. Was there maybe one challenge that

stands out and what was the lesson? Good question. There's been a lot of challenges along the way, financial challenges mostly. We chose very early on to never go into debt. And so outside of the money that we owed on leases over time, we chose to never borrow money. I could have expanded a lot faster, but never taking on it and never taking on debt was something that was very, very challenging. So basically bootstrapping the entire business up until we sold to private equity and then

even short time after that, private equity hadn't taken on any debt for us. We were a debt free organization and a lot of people were like, well, how'd you get to the size and scale without carrying debt? I said, well, you make a lot of individual sacrifices. You drive old cars and you live in your old same home that you lived in forever and you make a lot of those sacrifices that make the business successful. But that was probably the biggest challenge was wanting to take on debt, having the ability to take on debt, having, making enough money to service debt, but not taking on the debt because the growth trajectory was nice and measured.

debt, but not taking on the debt because the growth trajectory was nice and measured, although fast. I mean, I think we grew to, I think we grew for one year. I think our biggest year was 35 locations we set up. That was three a month. We were expanding rapidly. But yeah, just, just a very measured approach to the, to the growth and expansion was important for us, but it was very challenging because you got to now save up for the next location.

Well, I need 50 or a hundred thousand dollars to do that. So now I'm, I'm taking a profit from these classrooms and pouring it into the next ones, and then you got to measure those on a timeline on a Gantt chart. Because if you get too many, too much expansion going on late in the year, then you go into your week, your dip months, you have a big dip in the winter months when it comes to education training, November, December, January, because people are thinking about other things. So you got to make sure that your, your approvals

from the States come at the right time. You really want them to come right in spring, but sometimes it strings out. You didn't get the bond you needed or the bonding requirements were too great, or you didn't have the net worth requirement. There's a lot of challenges from a state licensing perspective. And really to this day, there's nobody who's done what we've done as far as the volume and quantity of state licenses, uh, you know, operating in 40 plus States, you know, the 110 or so locations is very complicated.

We've got a licensing department that is a very, very important department to our company. And so yeah, that's, that was a big challenge was expanding without, without, you know, borrowing money. I mean, that's amazing. I think most people have the mindset of I need to go raise funds before I start versus I need to go raise funds before I start versus I need to get started and slow. When you say the word slow to somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur in business, I think many times they want to go super fast, which as you and I know,

it's not most of the time a reality. And you've really proven that you can make it happen. You've done all this stuff. You've had success, sold half the private equity, grown really first in your industry, maybe one of the only people to even do what you've done. What's next for you in terms of a milestone that you want to hit in the future? Yeah. The next big milestone is taking what we've built in the allied healthcare field. As far as phlebotomy is concerned, we're now offering pharmacy technician classes. I think we're licensed in 32 states to do that now.

Medical assisting is on the next on the horizon and that'll go over quickly. So now it's just scaling what we build. We built the infrastructure, we built the foundation. Now it's just time to scale out the different programs. So medical assisting, pharmacy technician, phlebotomy. On top of that will be dental assisting, which you're gonna jump into the EMT market. We're so good at the brick and mortar slash hybrid training program style of training

that we feel like will be very successful in those five medical modalities. Build it for two or three more years and then we'll have another liquidity event with the private equity group and at that point. Onto the next venture, no idea what that is, but my wife tells me it'll be something, even though I want to kind of retire, but I think there'll be something else in the works.

Tim Cynova Can an entrepreneur really ever retire? I'm not really sure. It seems like people retire for a year and then they have a new idea, a new problem to solve. Um, plus your tremendous amount of experience, uh, that you have, I'm sure makes things much easier in the future. If you could share maybe one more lesson, one more tip, a strategy, something else that you really love to share with people when it comes to business. Good question.

Fear's a big one. We talked about that a little bit. Getting over your fear of failure. Nobody wants to be judged for failing. I think that's the biggest thing. Fear for me is more like financial fear. Like what if my family goes bankrupt and I've got a house full of five kids and we've got nowhere to go?

So fear is a big one to get over. I think emotion is probably the second biggest lesson that I would teach people. I've been involved with a lot of people in the world of business and there's definitely a time and a place for it to be very, very emotional and strong, strong about your feelings when it comes to business. But it's generally not with your employees or the partners or the people who you've got an investment in yet. Um, unless, unless there's, you know, an incredible case where you feel like you

need to be very emotional about something and have passion about it, but I, but communicating with the content communicating is one of the things that I teach my employees and my staff. And that's just, listen, I don't things that I teach my employees and my staff. And that's just, listen, I don't need all the emotions behind why you're upset. I just need the content so we can make really good educated decisions. So communicating without emotion. Like I said, in the world of business and entrepreneurialism, there's definitely a lot

of emotion, but it doesn't necessarily have to be there on a daily basis. So communicating with content is very important and keeping your emotions in check. Hey, if you got a problem, walk away for 15 or 20 minutes. I'm keeping your emotions in check. Hey, if you got a problem, walk away for 15 or 20 minutes or half an hour until the next day. I'll be surprised how much better you'll handle the situation. If you just take a deep breath and, uh, and leave. Yeah, no, that's been amazing. That I had to do that yesterday, by the way, obviously there's a lot of stuff happening in the news right now.

You know, markets are crazy. I had to walk away for 15 minutes. I love learning a few words before traveling it's opened up doors to new friends and unforgettable experiences all thanks to Rosetta Stone. This isn't just any language tool it's the leading program on desktop and mobile immersing you naturally in your chosen language with an intuitive design you learn like you learned your first language through real conversations without endless memorization.

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What if this happens to my business now? It could be impacted. So that might be the best thing that most business people do. Because it's more not to be reactive. You're doing great in business and then all of a sudden you get that email or that message where like your whole world just feels

like everything is collapsing. And it's hard not to be emotional and to be reactive in that moment. But I really like the walk away for 15 minutes because everything does change when you kind of take a deep breath and walk away. But Brian, this has been really amazing. I'm super inspired today.

So many sound bites that people are gonna walk away with, but if they wanna get in touch with you, they wanna find out more information about the company, how can they do so? Yeah, you can reach out to Intellvio. Go through Intellvio.com. My staff's there. I'd be happy to share my email or phone number

and the link if you so choose at the end of the thing. But yeah, I love the, I'm a real big fan of helping young entrepreneurs. I speak, I've spoken a couple of times at the BYU entrepreneurial class and, and, and I love mentoring younger kids and in tough spots that they're in with making business decisions when they're young, uh, predominantly love helping them not give away their equity. Please stop giving away giant chunks of your equity as a startup known as your

idea and your money, uh, but love to help the younger generation kind of determine where they're going and how they're navigating things. And yes, I'd love to, love to help the younger generation kind of determine where they're going and how they're navigating things. And yes, I'd love to reach out and help people wherever I can. There you go, that's your one lesson right there. Stop giving away all your equity. By the way, Utah is one of my favorite states.

It's one of the most beautiful states, I think, overall in terms of outdoor activities. But Brian, this has been really great having you today. Super I took a lot away. There's a lot of things. That's why I like to get to. I love to talk to people like yourself because I learn. And as you're talking, I'm even thinking like, OK, you know what?

I need to do this, this and this because I need to I need to get my momentum. So thank you so much for joining us today. I'm super appreciative of your time. And I can't wait for you to come back in a few years from now. Tell us how things are going then and whatever your next venture is. But Brian, thanks for joining us today on Founder's Story. Sounds good. Thanks for having me.