The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Overcoming Life’s Challenges: Lessons from Trevor Schade’s Journey

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

Overcoming Life's Challenges: Lessons from Trevor Schade's Journey Linktr.ee/trevorschade About the Guest(s): Trevor Schade is a distinguished entrepreneur in the real estate industry, known for his deep understanding of market dynamics and innovative business strategies. With over a decade of experience, he has successfully built a robust real estate portfolio valued at over $4 million. Trevor is also a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, which highlights his commitment to operational excellence, and has a programming background that allows him to leverage technology effectively. His profound knowledge of human behavior and sales strategies is complemented by his experience in overcoming significant personal challenges, including near bankruptcy, divorce, and surviving a stroke, which have shaped his empathetic and strategic approach to helping others navigate their life paths effectively. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of "The Chris Voss Show," Chris sits down with Trevor Schade, a multifaceted entrepreneur with a rich background in real estate, programming, and personal development. As Trevor shares his journey, listeners will discover how he transformed personal adversity into professional triumph. With insights drawn from his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification and programming expertise, Trevor delves into the significance of understanding core values and the importance of asking the right questions to achieve business success. The conversation highlights Trevor's vast experience in the real estate industry, where he has fostered a company culture that thrives on operational efficiency and innovative strategies. Trevor offers valuable advice on wealth creation, and managing a diverse range of investments, and discusses how his unique blend of skills can help entrepreneurs streamline processes, maximize potential, and avoid common pitfalls. Whether you're interested in real estate, personal development, or business optimization, Trevor's insights are invaluable. He also candidly shares his personal story of overcoming significant life challenges, including a life-threatening stroke, which ultimately shaped his empathetic approach to business consulting and mentorship. Key Takeaways: Trevor emphasizes the importance of efficiency and maximizing potential in both business and personal life, sharing strategies he has used to build a successful real estate portfolio. He advocates for finding a balance between business aspirations and life preferences, highlighting the value of aligning personal and professional goals. Trevor discusses the need for entrepreneurs to leverage technology and outsourcing to optimize business operations and focus on high-value activities. The episode underscores the necessity of adaptability and resilience, learned through Trevor's personal experiences, which have contributed to his success and empathetic mentoring style. Trevor provides insights into investments and wealth creation, advising on when to focus on growing a pile of money versus strategically parking assets to ensure financial stability. Notable Quotes: "Just because I was living and breathing off of efficiency and maximizing life, it wasn't wrong that somebody would choose and want and prefer to build a life that was the most peaceful." "The part that I gravitated to was the asking the right questions." "If doing the dishes can be hired out at a smaller number than what your potential earning rate number is, you shouldn't be doing it." "With what you're equipping them with, they'll still have to go through it, but they won't fall as far and they won't stay there as long." "I tell people a lot to test this 'cause I have so many people fight me on…You just gotta know how freeing it is."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain.

Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Folks, it's Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen,

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You know, just go proselyting door to door around your neighborhood and knock on doors. Tell them to go to GoodReese.com, Fortress Chris Foss, Facebook.com, Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and all the other crazy places we are on the internet. Opinions expressed by are on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Cris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind.

Today we have an amazing young man on the show, Trevor Shea joins us. We're going to be talking to him about his insights, his experience, the things he's overcome in life, the challenges and different things, and we're going to be talking to him about his insights, his experience, the things he's overcome in life, the challenges and different things. And we're going to get into with him. He's a distinguished figure in the real estate industry, blending a deep understanding of market dynamics with innovative strategies and relentless drive. Over a decade of experience, he's built a robust real estate portfolio valued at over $4 million and led a skilled team of agents to

new heights. His programming background allows him to leverage technology for advanced operations and marketing. Well, his lean six Sigma black belt certification highlights his commitment to operational excellence. Note to self, don't fight Trevor. As a voracious reader, Trevor has absorbed insights in over 100 books on psychology and sales, equipping him with a profound understanding of human behavior and sales strategies. Overcoming a season of near total life implosion, including near bankruptcy, divorce, and paralyzing stroke,

now allows Trevor to understand, empathize, and strategize with others regardless of the season or the next move they want to make in their lives and he helps a ton of people do that. Welcome to the show. How are you, Trevor? Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me. I'm doing well.

Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Giveassure.com is where you want people to learn more about you on the interwebs. Absolutely. TrevorShade.com, where everything spawns from. I've got all of the socials on there. You can throw my name in Google. You can throw my name in any social media and I've got videos and posts on every one of them. So if somebody has a preferred one, TrevorShade on any one of those, that's usually my my tag name as well and username and all that.

And the website is Trevorvorshade.com And you're a bit of a maybe a jack of all trades is that a good analogy for you? Yeah, I would say that's very accurate. Absolutely. Keynote, promoter, investor, coach, consultant, full-time maximizer, inspired foundations and life wealth courses. So you don't give us in your words, a 30,000 over you what you do. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I started really quite young about fifth grade. I started writing a computer code. And so that began the, you know, bite into basic was the name of the course. And it was the basic on a Mac computer. And that's where the techie side of my very linear brain began. And that transferred all the way into the Lean Six Sigma,

which to the listeners that don't know what that is, Lean is a methodology to streamline and make efficient processes, companies, business. Six Sigma, so that's like when 99% isn't good enough, meaning like landing an airplane. 99% is not quite good enough. You need a smaller deviation. You need a smaller error percentage.

So that's what Six Sigma is, put them together and lean Six Sigma Black Belt. And very statistically analytical, very deep, big data, deep dive, that kind of stuff. And it really the part that the part that I gravitated to was the asking the right questions. Because I started seeing about the same time I was running a multi level marketing company. And, and I saw that a lot of the times people just weren't asking themselves the right questions. They weren't asking about where they wanted to go. What did they already know about what type of industries or avenues or directions would get them to there? Even just very basic knowledge. You know,

you ask a group of people, hey, who are some, what are some careers that tend to make you good wealth? Well, we all start rattling off the same ones. We would start thinking doctors and lawyers and we judges and we go down that real estate and you go down those same paths. And so if someone's not asking themselves that same, that right question, they're never gonna come up with the right answer.

And so in the Lean in Six Sigma training, that is certainly the portions that I gravitated to was getting into the psychology and asking the questions. And I told you from fifth grade, I've been a very linear mind, but then I thought, but humans are not necessarily linear and emotions and emotional decision-making. And so that's where my study into the books

of the psychology books came in my early 20s to start learning a very analytical approach to human nature and decision making models and decision making processes. And it really changed the way I viewed people. And the biggest, most monumental moment that changed the total trajectory was when I read a book that talked about just a very basically quadrants of personalities and temperament. It's kind of like a Myers-Briggs. It was a personality plus by Florence Littauer.

I for the first time realized that just because I was living and breathing off of efficiency I for the first time realized that just because I was living and breathing off of efficiency and maximizing life and what can be done and what is possible and what could we create, it wasn't wrong that somebody would choose and want and prefer to build a life that was the most peaceful or the most structured, predictable and safe or the most entertaining and enjoyable. And it could be at the foregoing of the others. And it was the first time in my life that I really blew apart the construct of right versus wrong and moved on to preference. Ah, so it, it w now you said you blow up right versus wrong versus preference.

Give us a deeper dive into what that means for you. Sure. Sure. I really do believe that it is, you know, even like let's go a dating world or, or, uh, you know, somebody trying to find a significant other and it applies to business partners, it applies to everything. It's not about whether somebody is in the way they think and are, or wrong in the way they think and are, it really is more of a preference.

It's a fit, not fit question. And again, that's that right question. So if somebody believes that eating out regularly is a more comfortable, peaceful way to be, you never mess up the kitchen so you don't have to do it. And then someone else that they don't mind the dishes and that's just actually kind of peaceful to do dishes and to do a task that gives you immediate gratification. And they're like, but I can eat healthier at home for cheaper. They just have a different priority or value system. Neither one of them is wrong. It's a preference, not right and wrong. And then, you know, obviously in the dating sector, it's a, it would be like a fit, not fit type sector. Or when it comes to a business partnership, same type of questions.

Is somebody valuing a lot of runway in the bank or is somebody valuing capitalizing on the opportunities? And everybody's probably going to be on a gradient of those, but there, how far away are you on each little category? And I think that would tell you whether or not, uh, you should jump into business together. That's a good predictor of stuff. Now, what do you mean the focus on or what do we want to talk about and promote today?

Do you have some products or services we want to focus on? Yeah. Yeah. I think what I like to share with the world most is it, if I have the ability to help an organization, help a company, help a small business owner, even on a large corporate scale, if somebody is struggling with some kind of pain point and it's just too hard and they shouldn't have to be the everything, then there's a whole set of consulting services that I can offer and bring in, questions I can ask,

exercises we can do together that ultimately find out, what do you actually want as an end product? What's the goal? What's the aim? What's the end? And then we work backwards. I learned this in my programming life. I, anytime somebody needed, you know,

usually the business department would come to me and tell me about a, a report they needed and, and, uh, what they, what they thought they wanted the criteria to be. And I would just kind of stop them there and I would take them all the way to the end and I'd say, okay, after you get the report, what actions do you want it to prompt you to do? Because I'm not going to create something that's neat.

Just because it's neat doesn't mean it's not actionable. Once we figured out what they actually wanted to be able to do, what's the action taken? Shut the machines off, host a celebration, like what's the red light, green light? Then I would back into, okay, so then what needs to be on the report? Okay, so what needs to be in queries and criteria?

What needs to be already held in the database? What needs to be on the input form? And we would go all the way backwards instead of trying to design an input form that we were like, okay, on this input form, I feel like we want and need, but it doesn't even capture the data point that you need for the actual action at the end.

And so I would say that's where I bring a technology, a culture creation, a business operations and outsourcing. I bring those unique views into companies that I just honestly, I didn't realize were a unique lens, a different look, and understanding how to put things that are seemingly unrelated together into a very simple plan to follow. My culture creation, one of my examples in that is so after I had the whole lean Six Sigma added to my programming days, I decided to flip a house and I didn't have

a real estate license. I was like, why not? Let's give it a go. And I didn't go backwards. I made a positive three grand I think it was I watched my real estate agent made more without the risk. So I took note of that and I got a license and I joined his team ultimately. Oh really? Yeah.

And so, so from there I could then flip houses and I could, you know, I was just a math guy. I just, that was better margins. I just had my bets. And so, so I started flipping some houses and then some coworkers found out that I had a license and asked if I could show them a house and help them buy a house and I remember looking at him and I said I don't know are you sure because I was

just honest I was not like I had no idea what I was doing I know how to write a contract for our client and they're like no it'll be fun and I was like you guys are crazier than I am and so we dove in and got him a house and and then over the next I had had some layoffs that happened in there and over the next few, uh, uh, probably seven months, I sold 27 houses while I had a full-time job of being a operations director. Wow. And I didn't know that that was weird and unique.

So any real estate folks that are listening to this, they're like, on the site, they do, they're like on the side, you just like crank out 27 houses. What are you talking about? And what I didn't realize is I was putting in 25% of the hours that most real estate agents put in. I had automation, I had systems, I had outsourced folks overseas that were doing a lot of things. I had API tools and systems like Zapier and API Nation that were automatically handling funnel and follow-up. And I was doing it because my sister, she called me ambitiously lazy. And that's the working title of the book that I'm writing right now. She said that

when I was about eight years old, she's like, Trevor, you will outwork anyone so that you don't have to work. And then I'm like, it's like me. Yeah. And now there's all these very like promoted legit terms of like smarter, not harder, and I'm like, see, I was just a head of the head of the times. That's all. And I mean, I, I, I remember looking, I've always looked at things outside the box and I remember watching baseball and I'm just like, this is stupid. Why you run around on those bases?

Just run out to second base and come back. Like why, why does it have to be all that? Just, just, just make it a sprint back and forth. Yeah. And I'm like, it's just, it's just too much rigor more. It was great, Chris. I love it. Just like, just like cut to the chase.

Everyone wants to see me mix it home. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so let's see. I, I, I was cut to the chase. Everyone wants to see me mix it home. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah. So let's see. I, I, I was putting in fewer hours. I have this automation, I have this support. And, and as I learned, I was putting in this 25% of the time that everybody else was,

uh, I decided, well, okay, let's lean in and let's scale it. And I opened up a real estate company within the brokerage and I grew that and here's the stat that I think I was the most proud of about this company. I grew that from zero people to 26 agents plus, I think we had two managers and four support staff overseas with zero attrition in five years. No one, they didn't renew, they didn't not renew their license. They didn't switch brokerages. They didn't switch teams.

Nobody left. Nothing changed for five years. We just grew. And some of that was a few things that I did very right on accident. And that I just took note of them. And so then I could start telling people, well, you should try the same thing too. I didn't know that it was the right thing to do, but it really was. And so now I have this, uh, this, you should try the same thing too. I didn't know that it was the right thing to do,

but it really was. And so now I have this real estate organization and now I was flipping houses and I got into multifamilies and I started teaching people how to invest in homes. So if any of the listeners here want to learn about wealth creation and flipping houses versus long-term holds versus multifamily versus large scale syndications going in on an eight million dollar apartment complex and

owning 17% or something like that, but I'm involved in tons of those as well so again any of the channels on on my websites or or Social medias they they can reach out to me on that and And so that company scaled and grew out of inefficiency. All I did was scale what was already smarter, not harder. And I just kept knitting together all these processes and all these systems. And even to this day, now I run a marketing company

and I come on and I share with others on podcasts like this. And when I can get on the top 1% podcasts, I aim for those again for having me on. And- We've done one or two podcasts. Yeah, yeah. I think we're up to three now. Are you?

Okay. 3500 or something. Wow, you're really getting some momentum. Yeah, we're gonna do four tomorrow. That's amazing. We're doing three a day, damn it, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you've got quite the operation going. I love it.

Pete We try. We try. We've done, we were trying to be the Amazon of podcasting so people can binge whatever the hell they want. They tend just to just press play and binge everything. Now, you went through some other crisis in your life, because our cathartic moments. Tell us what you went through there and overcame it. I think I alluded to them in your bio. David Yeah, I've got a few chapters in there where, you know, I was very unique in how I perceived the world even from a young age. And when I was eight years old, my dad said one of the saddest things that he saw was his son

learned how to turn his emotions off and decide if I wanted that emotion to serve me. And if so, then I would let it come through. And so it was this very strange calculated way. What it was is I didn't like being controlled and I considered emotions a form of control. So I thought, well, I'll control you. You won't control me. And plus that's just kind of emotional intelligence, right? That it is. I took it too far. Oh, you took it too far. I took it too far and I took it all the way into controlling everything about my emotions. And I controlled everything about my environments. And I thought the only way to be safe was to control others around me. And it was that whole birthing of what one would call a narcissistic

way of life. And what was funny is when I was eight and I flipped that switch, that's when I was actually a softy empath feeler, energy of the world. And I was more of that. And I learned and created this false persona to control out of safety. And that lasted into high school, my 20s and all the way into my early 30s. And I went back and forth a few times on being controlled because I was still fighting with, I was having Jerry Maguire moments. I was having those moments of, I just don't like who I am in this world. And I didn't know why. And I didn't

realize I had created this thing. Well, when I was in my early 30s, a divorce started and you know, a divorce takes 12, 18 months to do all the court filings and all that. Well, so as that started, now what I had found myself in was my high school sweetheart and I had gotten married and we had created an incredibly codependent relationship. Both of us gave up our individual friends. Both of us gave up our individual interests and hobbies. I mean, we had the friends that we went out with together. And then once we had kids, well, yeah, we all could go to the grocery store together, but there wasn't any time of individuality and rest and healthiness. And so, um, so as that started shattering, that was a, all I could hear in my head was you're not wanted. And I didn't understand the bigger scale and the big picture

until much later, but that was what I could feel. And now all of a sudden I was like, well, I don't have any hobbies. I got, I got, I got laid off right then. I didn't have a career. Really? I didn't know. Yeah. And, and then my closest grandparent passed away in hospice, and I had never experienced death before, and I had never experienced hospice before. My fiveplex, I bought five unit converted house,

and it got bed bugs, and I had to let everybody out of the units. But again, I'm unemployed. And now I'm switching over to 100% commission, and I'm looking at financial bankruptcy. This house is about to take me under. I have to let everybody out of their leases and carry all five units of utilities through the winter. And I had not been working out.

So you've got all of that fun extra of just your, your feeling stress on your whole system. I am wondering if I'm gonna lose custody of my kids because I didn't have a place to live and I also now had no income and you gotta be able to shelter and feed children. And so I've got that coming in a custody battle along with the divorce and I have a chiropractic adjustment to loosen me up by a very good chiropractor,

even does more of the sports kind of stuff. But because of the amount of pressure on my entire system and my, I, I had this adjustment in the artery in my neck would not stretch a normal distance and the inner wall snapped and it created a little flap as a vertebral artery dissection. And that little flap slammed to the other side of the artery and shut the blood off to the left side of my brain. That's it. Yeah and my my face stopped working the whole right side of my body quit working and I called to tell my dad I'm gonna head to the hospital because I think I have a

pinched nerve and and he's later told me that he could not understand me at all and my face wasn't working. Yeah. And so, uh, yeah, I had a TIA stroke. Yeah. My dad had one right in front of me. I was on a video call with him. Yeah. I was, I was talking to him and all of a sudden he just, he suddenly went slow motion and his voice went like slow motion. Yeah. Yeah. That's when I watched his face droop and I was like, holy shit. Yeah.

Crazy. Yeah. That's legit. That's what happened. So yeah, I got, uh, I got taken to a, to a hospital and MRI and all that. And they got to show me where a blood clot hit a, hit a part in my brain and, and, uh, got to start understanding, explaining what happened and why. And I have a, uh, they have a very lucky bed of capillaries

that allows blood to transfer from one side of the brain to the other. And so I had feeling back mostly in about 20 minutes. And I didn't really lose strength. Everything was pins and needles and obviously droopy and numb. Well, two days later, when you know, you've got nurses that are trained like ninjas to military style tuck them sheets into that bed,

I'm bent over it and I'm yanking the covers out of the bed and my neck pops and this one was a little more scary. It did, it put me through a second TIA and this time I lost strength. I couldn't open my hand with speed. I couldn't lift my foot against the weight of itself. My calf was too tight. And I just didn't even have the strength

to move the right side of my body. And it was just a re-tear, and it was a small blood clot again. It was no big deal and a total fluke. And they had me on the blood thinners. And that is when I was moved into the Nebraska Med Center. And so the Nebraska Med Center, pretty world renowned, sought after. I'm on the neurological floor.

Again, the feeling does come back within about an hour and I'm able to walk and stuff. And about three days there, I'm walking down the hallway and I remember going through the kind of like shaped like an H. You got rooms on both sides and then the H, you know, has a crossbar where the elevators and reception is. And I hit that, as I walked toward that crossbar, I'm looking in the rooms and I'm seeing people that, you know, they, you've got a lot of gray hair and you've got somebody leaning over them. You've got somebody crying in another chair. You got another person that's just alone, you got, I'm getting all these pictures. And I look across down past the elevators and there's a lady that's using the walker.

She moves the walker one inch and moves her feet one inch and the walker one inch and my knees buckled and my hand hit the ground and I, it really shattered me and I got to understand that I was the only person on this floor that could both walk and talk. Everybody else could do one the other or neither. And that was what it took with all of my belief of control. It took all of those things to finally crack that shell. And finally, for the first time since I was eight years old, I could feel again and feel

authentically, feel real time. And now I could connect to other people. I could empathize. I could understand where they were coming from, the pain or the struggles or the annoyances or the angers that they had in their life that I actually was uniquely equipped to help them with. And so that really is where everything changed in the direction and the reason that I started building companies in a way that I could provide that example or those stories or tools or methods or thoughts or questions to other people

that have the same thing going on in either their business life or their personal life or even just their whole lifestyle of where they want to go and be. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Sometimes we need those moments to make up with and stuff like that. Sometimes we need those things. I mean, I think I struggle with being connected by emotions and empathy.

I think I was disconnected for a lot of my life. And my dogs really helped open me up to just being empathetic and being a better human being. I mean, I kind of cite them for those things, but sometimes we need to have those moments of clarity. Sometimes they're not the brightest moments or funnest moments to experience, but the important things we learn from them, right? Yeah. Yep. I definitely agree. I think as much as I wouldn't wish any of it on anyone, and I can even in my mind think, man, that was too much. That was too heavy. And then I've had about three business implosions since, or pressures, or questions, but I was more equipped to deal with them the next times through. I didn't give them as low. It's really given me some hope when it comes to my kids. Because one of the concerns I had,

everything I've heard people talk about is if somebody is going to really be successful in life, they're going to have to go through some of the nasty to then learn how to be on that successful. You can learn from other people. be successful in life. They're gonna have to go through some of the nasty to then learn how to be on that successful. And you can learn from other people. But I was like, man, I want my kids to be able to do anything they want. I want them to be successful in whatever definition they choose. I just don't want them to have to get pummeled like I did. And it was my sister that said, well, Trevor, with what you're equipping them with, they'll still have to go through it,

but they won't fall as far and they won't stay there as long and it won't hurt as bad because you're equipping them to, yeah, still experience and check the boxes of hard and pain that lead to success, but they won't have to live it for six months or 18 months. They'll be able to experience a 30 day burst of pain, maybe, and be able to come out of it with the same lesson and not be so tattered for so many years. I think that's what my mom did. She would spank us and say, this is going to hurt me more than hurt you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was, uh, uh, so what's, who do you work with? Usually is there a certain minimum net worth? They have a certain amount of spend. What are, what are mostly people utilizing your services for? Yep. Yeah. It depends on, uh, it depends on who's reaching out and for what purpose. So if I'm working with a real estate investor and that's our purpose, we're gonna talk through strategies of,

one of the things I teach a lot about is, is it time to grow the pile of money or is it time to park parts of the pile of money? My number one rule is never invest your last dollar because now you're stuck on the sidelines. I really promote, make sure that you have a way to grow the pile of investment money and then use parts of that and park it in wherever you want,

but never lose sight of you still need some of that money to grow it back again so that you can keep going. Otherwise you get stuck on the sidelines and you're just watching until you sell something. And so if I'm working with a real estate investor, if we're gonna flip some houses, it doesn't take much of a net worth to get that rolling. And if I can help someone,

if I can help someone make 30, $40,000 on a flip house and I consult them the whole way through and instead of keeping $40,000, they keep $35,000 and I get paid a $5,000 or something like that. I'll arrange all kinds of agreements designed around that type of wealth creation on the flip houses. If it comes to the larger wealth creation and the strategies that are gonna be, probably a call every two weeks or a call a month, and then maybe we actually look at some spreadsheets

or we go through your data and your goals and your directions and we start talking about multifamily investing or are we gonna split it and where are we headed with everything. That type of stuff I'll set up retainers with everyone and we'll just work together on a project or a process. And that has taken me into a lot of different levels of net worth.

So, I'll have someone that will lock arms with me when they have, if they've done their first one flip or maybe will lock arms with me when they have, they've done their first one flip or maybe they did it with me. And then maybe they've now kept one piece of real estate personally, and they wanna use that for the depreciation, but then they wanna lean into more passive designs

for the rest. All the way up into, I mean, somebody that's already got, I mean, $10 million of real estate, and they now want to make their systems unreal and full automated and outsource where they can and get machines to do everything that they can. And that world, so same products, same offerings,

same design of consulting, but with a retainer model. And then in public speaking settings, I mean, that can go from coming to do a team workshop and I can spend an hour or two with a department or a department head and their team, and we can talk about Gallup Strengths Finders and culture creation and getting people

into these flow zones of inspired atmospheres. So you don't even have to use metrics to hold them accountable because they're outperforming everything that you could possibly hold them to because they're neurotic, just like all of us have been about some high school or college paper or project that we already hit all the criteria. And here it is midnight and one in the morning and two in the morning, we're still trucking, right? And so that type of team building in a company or in a culture at a high level, a C level, I've done how do you actually keep your core values talked about?

That's probably one of the biggest ones is how do you keep your core values being talked about?'s probably one of the biggest ones is, how do you keep your core values being talked about? Because a lot of the times your department heads don't keep it translating. It doesn't because come normal conversation and how do you get all of the folks doing all of the positions and roles, how do you get them decision-making based on

that true core value that you're saying and little nugget for everybody, how do you put in the feedback loop? Because I see what happens a lot, is you see a lot of the people that are on the lines doing the work and they're pretty upset because they want to make decisions based on the core values.

But they have a manager somewhere in between that gets their own agenda, that gets their own little empire going, and things start getting twisted, and now a different decision-making model gets put in place. So those type of culture conversations at those levels is where I also lean in. Now, did I see you had a fund?

I think I was reading something in the bio that may have implied you had a fund maybe for real estate or is that just for you? So the funds that I tap into, I'm a catalyst, I'm a conduit. So I lock in and I grab on to syndication groups and we've got commercial real estate strips, medical facilities or nursing care facilities, 200 unit apartment complexes or a series of buildings. I work with about four syndication operators. So, you know, let's say someone has $100,000 or $50,000 and they want to have it backed and grown by real estate, but they don't want to do anything.

They don't want to deal with tenants and turn and repairs and property management and materials, none of that. And so we allow people to be an owner in the LLC of just that property. So it's not a REIT, it's not necessarily a trust. You actually are one of the owners. And so you get the depreciation and the benefits and you get your dividends. And then basically what we aim for in most of the projects in all of those operator groups is,

for example, over a 10 year period of time, whatever investment you put in, about year three, four, we're gonna do a refinance. You're gonna get your entire initial investment back. And over the course of the whole 10 years, you triple your money. And that's, that's the simple version of what we target, what we aim for. And those are the funds that we set up, we share, we talk about. Most of them, we don't necessarily do full public. We've got to operate within the SEC guidelines and we make sure that we actually have a working relationship. We have some consulting going on and we have an understanding of what someone's creating and doing and then we can bring them into an invite into those funds.

There you go. So lots of different things. Do you ever find it difficult to juggle all these hats that you have? Absolutely. I'm not gonna sit here and lie to anybody listening and I'm gonna give people some hope that if they're struggling and if they're like, I can't keep this podcast straight, let alone do it. I know that's, I feel the same way. Okay, I've got, I've got some tricks and I've got some tools and I've got some methods and you know, it's like once you get down a certain set of moves, you can go to those a lot. You know, when you pull your car into the garage, you kind of know when you're going to put more pressure on the brake pedal and then slide it into park. You don't have to like

think about all those things. It's the same way. I do feel like I have a lot of hats, but I really delegate a ton. I mean, I really do, I implement what I preach. I think the only way I can keep all of this straight is by having technology do an obscene amount of tracking and executing for me. And then I started learning about, I learned I could put somebody's kid through college in the

Philippines by hiring them at what I could afford and it allowed them to just be unreal grateful, produce well, and all of a sudden they had the ability to grow a life beyond what they could ever do and it was something that I could afford. I mean, the symbiotic relationship that came out of that. I tell people a lot to test this because I have so many people fight me on, oh, I just don't know if I can give somebody a credit card. Oh, I just don't know if I can trust that. There's places and ways to checks and balance,

safety check, make sure that someone's income is driven off of their reputation, meaning reviews. So if they do anything wrong, their entire lifestyle implodes. I like that safety net. And so, and so there's there's things I've told people just hire a virtual assistant and order yourself flowers. Order flowers for yourself. You just got to know. You got to know how freeing this is and what you can do. And then you can move into outsourcing, returning your Amazon boxes. I've even gotten to that point. And I was listening your mail. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'll share it. I share openly care.com. Have you ever heard

of care.com care.com? Here's its intent and here's its purpose. It's to find a caregiver, a babysitter, somebody watch the kids for a night out. You can also find house cleaners. You can find nannies. You can find a lot of things, a lot of people in a lot of professions on there that are kind of in that same home, home care aspect. Well, I thought, what if I just found a nanny for me that has run a really big house and has had to order lawn care and has had to order plumbers and has had to return things and

has had to do all of these things for this house? What if I just hired them? Don't I just then pay them hourly? And so to the tune of $500, all of a sudden, I don't have to fold laundry and put it away anymore. I don't have to turn the bedding. It automatically gets done every two weeks. And I'm a single guy. I'm doing this, man. It's amazing.

Like it costs you nothing for now with your mental freedom and how far you can run and what you can earn. Oh yeah. I mean, all that stuff is such a waste of time when you look at your productivity, if you're successful. Yep. Yep. Yep. I have people work the math a lot and look at what is your potential, realistic potential. Don't go crazy. I'll do the dreaming conversations too, but what is your realistic

current day potential earning for the year? Okay. How many hours should you be able to whittle down to so that you're only working a certain number of hours, you have time for the other people in your life. Okay, do the math and there's your hourly rate. And then we just measure everything against that. If doing the dishes can be hired out at a smaller number than what your potential earning rate number is, you shouldn't be doing it. You're being wasteful.

You're being frivolous and throwing money away. You should be out there earning that full dollar amount with your time so you can spend time with your family. Yeah. You should. Yeah, dishes ain't it. Dishes aren't where it's at. Folding laundry is not where it's at.

If somebody runs that operation, great. They can run a great company and make a great lifestyle for themselves. But if you're running other kinds of businesses and doing other things, get out of that lane. That is not your lane. Yeah. I mean, you have to look at, you know, I learned this long time ago from some sort of CEO or executive over the years. And basically, you know, I

would go to the store, wait in line, fuck around with stuff. I would, you know, do other things and, and, and then I would look at, you know, how much am I worth per hour? Why am I doing this? I can either somebody else should be doing this or should I should be paying someone else to do this because this isn't worth my hourly rate. This isn't worth what I, what I'm valued at. And well, I'm always my time doing this. I was like, felt like an idiot. And so, yeah, I totally agree with you there.

I mean, that's something that, you know, take a look at your time and decide what you want to take and do there. Yeah. And I know there's some listeners out there going, oh, okay, but I gotta be the everything. I agree, I understand. I've been, it took me years to accept the title,

but I am a serial entrepreneur. I have started up so many companies and done so many things and some of them have gone well and most have not. But, so I'm very familiar with running all the hats. I get that. And I have a section in one of my courses that I talk about redlining and how I do believe that that is necessary.

And I've sat down with my sons a few times and I've said, all right guys, I gotta go into a redline season and I have to, and I'm talking about like the RPMs, the tachometer on a car and how you bury the needle up into the red because you have the engine running so hot, so hard, so heavy for so long that it's dangerous. The engine could blow.

And I'll tell my kids how long I'm going to do it for. Tell them, all right, I need three months. I'm going to redline. I'll still be around. I'll still be present. We're still involved. I'm going to be a little thinner. And I'll communicate that I need a minute or anything that comes up. But I just wanted you

guys to know on the front end that I'm diving into a red line season. And then in three months, we'll talk, we'll revisit, and we'll make sure that everybody's doing okay. Pete Slauson Yeah. That's what I do. I put my kids up for adoption. I put into a red line for 18 years. Just call me when you get out of military school. That's gonna earn some money. All right. Well, Trevor, it's been very insightful to have you on the show. Give people your final pitch out on how to onboard with you, reach out to you, get to know you better, utilize your services, et cetera, et cetera, in the dot coms. Trevor Burrus Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'd say if you've

got that weight on you of feeling like you have to do the everything and be the everything and always be on, if you feel like you're living in some kind of a crazy rat race life that there's not an exit strategy for, there's not a way to go actually create something that you want to be living, you're not going to be living a life that you don't want or need a vacation from. If you've got all of these dreads in your workspace or in your company, or you want to create long-term wealth or create generational wealth, any of those aches, then trevorche.com, all my social medias are on there. There's lots of ways to contact me, emails, phone numbers, there's all kinds of

everything and I've got different categories on there for what do we need to talk about? What do you need? What do you want? You can book a Calendly with me or just reach out directly and I'll be able to ask and learn what you need, where you're at, and we'll start exploring together. Learn how to be better because we all need to be better folks. Absolutely. Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, man. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1, the TikTokity and Facebook.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. See all

the crazy places we're on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out.