The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast -Secrets to a Successful Startup: A Recession-Proof Guide to Starting, Surviving & Thriving in Your Own Venture by Trevor Blake

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

Secrets to a Successful Startup: A Recession-Proof Guide to Starting, Surviving & Thriving in Your Own Venture by Trevor Blake https://amzn.to/47OiXMn Everything You Need to Start and Succeed in Your Own Venture Trevor Blake built three successful startups and sold them for more than $300 million. Now he’s written a complete instruction manual that covers everything the budding entrepreneur or existing business owner needs to know to build the career or business of their dreams. Unlike the many theoretical guides out there, this is a practical handbook based on Blake’s wildly successful in-the-trenches experience. It incorporates leading-edge strategies that cover every aspect of running a business — including funding, developing systems, and marketing. Blake presents in-depth insight into managing effectively, maintaining cash flow, and adapting to the changing needs of customers in volatile economic times. One of his most innovative contributions is an emphasis on cultivating the right mindset, and he tells you exactly how to do that. “The secret to success isn’t in the plan,” he writes. “It’s in the person holding it.” His proven methods will give you the confidence to take the entrepreneurial leap and turn your winning idea into an efficient, profitable company.

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When the Iron Lady sings it, that makes it official. Welcome to the show, my dear friends. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Thanks for being part of the show. As always, we couldn't do it without you guys. You guys, for 15 years, going on 16 years, can you believe it, have been supporting us and being with us. The Chris Voss Show family, the family that loves you but doesn't judge you.

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give us a five-star review on iTunes. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissfoss, the Chris Foss LinkedIn newsletter. Subscribe to that thing. It grows like a weed in the 130,000 group there on LinkedIn. Go to, let's see, Chris Foss 1, Chris Foss Facebook. You know the drill. Refer the show, dammit, already. We have an amazing multi-book author on the show. Trevor Blake joins us. He is the author of several books. His latest we'll be talking about today, and we'll probably trounce through some of them all of them his book

is called secrets to a successful startup a recession-proof guide to starting surviving and thriving in your own venture which is much better than secrets to an unsuccessful startup which is a book i'm working on no i'm just kidding so i'll be talking with him about his book getting some research on him telling us he'll be imparting to us all of his knowledge. I don't know if we'll get it all in one hour because there's probably a huge amount of it. But Trevor G. Blake is a multiple bestselling author and New York Times bestseller of Three Simple Steps, a map to success in business and life. He started his first business at the age of 43 and went on to sell three of his businesses for over $300 million, which is quite extraordinary when you consider he grew up in poverty with literally no advantage in his early years.

He started at 43 too. Since then, countless people have asked what is his secret to success, and he created the webinar series, Three Secrets to Escaping the Quicksand, Living Your Best Life, Accelerating Success in Every Area of Your Life with Confidence. Welcome to the show, Trevor. How are you? our series three secrets to escaping the quicksand living your best life accelerating success in every area of your life with confidence welcome to the show trevor how are you i'm doing great chris thanks so much great introduction thank you very much i've actually had people on the show they're like can you follow me around to events yeah can you talk to my wife can you tell my wife that please she still is not going to care so anyway i'm sorry to break it to you the you probably already know that being married the wife jokes so give us your dot coms where can

people find you on the interwebs please it's all in one place it's trevor g blake dot there you go like to make it simple this simple is always good so give us a 30 000 overview of the book secrets to a successfulful Startup. Well, it's born out of frustration of watching so many brilliant ideas burn out because people start the wrong way, in my opinion. Most people come from the corporate world and they are indoctrinated into let's hire people, let's build a hierarchy. And it just doesn't work in the startup. It starts at the first two years. It's so bumpy. It's not a straight line. Startup, the first two years, it's so bumpy.

It's not a straight line, and you need to protect that cash like it's your own blood. So there's a better way to start. So that's what it's about. It's about, first of all, coming up with a winning idea, not just another idea. And then how to structure in a way that's kind of an idea whose time has come. It's basically structuring around a hub, building a hub model. So what is a hub model? Define that for me, if you would, please. So one of the things that a lot of entrepreneurs do is they say, okay, well, I've had a career

in sales and marketing. I don't know finance. I'll hire a CFO. And I don't know manufacturing. I'll hire a head of manufacturing. And that just ducks all the cash away. So there's a smarter way of doing it, and that is to go to companies that provide those services. So the hub model is basically a model of alliances with people who know what they're doing. And the reason for doing that, the main

reason for doing that is the cash thing. The second reason for doing it is that as an entrepreneur, it frees me up to focus on growth. I don't have to be a supervisor anymore. I don't have to train. I don't have to hold the hands of disgruntled employees. So all my companies, you know, I've been a band of one. I've never had another employee. That's good. And you sold them for $300 million? Call Medical.

It's still alive. It's still on the internet, callmedical.com. I started it with a few hundred dollars, and I sold it, I think, five years later for $105.5. And so then next time I could use my own money, I borrowed money for that one. Next time I did our new pharmaceutical company, and I sold that for $200 million. And then I have Niavia right now, which I'm negotiating a sale, which is going to be somewhere between $800 and a billion. Holy crap, dude.

Yeah, it's fun. This is fun. All starting from, what did you say on the first one, just few hundred dollars it was a few hundred dollars yeah i had enough to to i had enough to incorporate the company this is pre-internet days well it was dial-up internet in those days and i had enough money to incorporate that was pretty much it the rest i had to make up but i i think necessity is the mother invention so it's amazing what we can pull off the necessity is the mother invention you know i started my first companies with i think the first one that we really hit with, that we built in a multimillionaire company was with $2,000. I talked about it in my book. And then within a year and a half, we started a second company with $4,000 and built companies on them.

And they both went on to gangbusters for almost 20 years until the 2008 recession so there's that but you know that that's the power of it some people think you need a lot of money to start a business and really i guess a lot of it can be put into sweat equity is that sound about right yeah i did the other quirky thing about trevor jim blake is that i i don't believe in working 12 or 14 hour days i'm basically a lazy guy. So I'd rather spend time in a hammock than in a meeting room with everybody saying. So for me, I also have a thing. It's on my website, trevorgblake.com.

It's called the practical magic of the five hour workday. So I schedule my day between productive working periods and then productive off time where all the magic happens. You know, it's like when you're in the shower and you have that aha moment. What I do in my schedule is I create space for those aha moments. And I think that's where the success has come from. It's not because I'm clever at anything. I'm actually not.

I actually don't have any skills. I once looked at myself and said, okay, what shall I do? And I found out I have no skills. So that was a bit of a shock. So I found that the way to build a really good company is to come up with something to fix. So I started to analyze what gets under my skin, what makes me mad, and then decided, including this, what I'm doing now, business coaching, I feel there's such a lack of authenticity. And so you see that in the marketplace with other coaches, I guess? Yeah. So the authenticity is missing sometimes. It's a lot of management consultants telling you how to build a company, but they've never actually experienced the joy and pain of that,

the exhilaration of that experience. So I just felt it's time that somebody who's actually done it with a formula. It's not like I've built seven companies out of 20. It's seven out of seven. And so this formula works and it takes all the stress away because you're not spending all your time holding the hands of employees. And it's very profitable. And today, it's a different world now.

You mentioned at the beginning, I started at 43. That's actually the average age of a first-time entrepreneur, believe it or not. Oh, is it really? Yeah, that shocked me too. I thought I was an old guy. I thought I was a late bloomer. And it turns out I was banging the bullseye.

That's good to know. You know, I remember when I was 22, my first company was at 18, but I was 22 when we started our first successful, massively successful companies. And I remember saying to my partner, I go, you know, we have two choices. We're 22 right now. We can do the sweat equity. We can work the 18 hour days, whatever it takes to build. We had our first company was something that you had to be available 24 hours on call. And so I'm like, I think we can handle it between the two of us. And I said, I don't, or we could go work for the corporations like everyone does,

go up the ladder, hopefully get some sort of golden parachute we can jump out with through savings. And then, you know, we're 40 or 50, start our first company. And I go, I don't know, though. I got to tell you, I don't know that I'm going to have the energy to do it when I'm 50. From what I hear, it's not fun. And why am I glad? For that shit now, but no, you hear, always hear about late bloomers and it's never too late. I see a lot of memes on social media about that,

but 43, that's good to know that forties are the, are the good average for people to kind of find themselves kind of midlife crisis. Maybe, I don't know. I mean, I don't think there's a rule Chris,

because I have, I have a coaching course about personal transformation called the Transformation Experience. I have a guy in there who started his first company at age 87. He's 93 now. And he says he feels like he's 20. This is the best time of his life. He'd been procrastinating,

been putting off. He was an ex-professor of economics at some university. And he'd been putting off his whole life. And then he read one of my books and he said, okay, if this guy can do it, then anyone can do it. Just to clarify that for the audience. The age?

How old was he when he started his company? You said 85, I think? 87. It's never too late, people. There's a guy at 87 and 93 running companies. What's your excuse?

Holy crap. I love that. I always joke about the Warren Buffett line, I'll retire seven years after I die. Because I'd love to keep doing everything I do until I die. Write books, I write books, host a podcast, talk to interesting people, hopefully improve the quality of the world. I love doing this.

You know, maybe the podcast is mostly audio, so no one has to look at how old I really am as long as my voice will hold up. As long as I'm an actual rose. That's good to know. Oh, that's... Yeah, there you go. But no, that's just amazing, man.

And it's inspiring because it tells people that, hey, you can still do it. So what are some of the secrets that you can tease out that are in your book? Well, so I'm a physicist by training. And so I like to play with energy and understand it. I like to know how many things work. So as a physicist, I can sometimes see or feel how things are changing. So the old ways of doing things, the hierarchies and the, you know, if you have a problem, call a meeting.

Clearly those things weren't working anymore because so many companies are going out of business so fast. So when I was looking at it, I think, okay, well, it's time to grow up, Trevor. I'm going to start my first company at 43. You know what? I was different to you. You started so early, but I had the corporate career, and I was as good a BSer as anybody in the corporate world. So I had a good corporate career, and it's all BS when we think about it.

I woke up at 40, and I suddenly thought, hey, it's all bs when we think about it you know i woke up at 40 and i suddenly thought hey it's time to grow up and you know you wake up you go to bed at the last night on your 39th year feeling fit and immortal and i woke up 40 looking six months pregnant and i thought okay time time to time to grow up and decide what you want to do and and so i looked at my career and my career had basically been 75 of my time sitting in a meeting room and talking about things that had nothing to do with customer satisfaction or product improvement or upgrades or anything like that or profit. God forbid we mention the profit word in the corporate world. And so I decided I want to do it differently,

and that's really how I got going. So I thought I can do a different structure in my industry. I can build a different type of business. But I couldn't prove it and everyone dismissed me i was rejected by investors you like 50 times and standard story if you like and so i did i did a proof of concept let's let's fall back to your other book the three steps book tell us about that book and what was inside of it yes there's three simple steps it's more on the personal development side and it's what i've done in my life because I grew up really poor I grew up on this basically the streets of Liverpool escaped to the broken down farmhouse

and you know my father was unemployed my whole life my mother was dying of cancer from the age seven so so my life was kind of mapped out for me and and it was a sense of lack and I didn't want that so I was being bullied and I hid in the library and in the library I started reading biographies and they basically saved my life, literally. And made my life, I have to say. So in all the biographies, I must have read a hundred when I was in my teens,

I noticed these three patterns of behavior. And so I started to introduce them into my life and then I had this amazing life of adventure and travel and luxury and all that sort of stuff. And then, like we were saying before, I decided to grow up and start my own company. And I've used the same three simple steps, the same things. One is mentality control. The other is how to develop a really strong intuition to make better decision making.

And then the third is how to set a really strong target with confidence. And so I set that up. And so the thing is, I wanted to write that book for a long time but the problem that with the self-help industry is pretty much that most books are written by people who've never achieved anything before the book caught on if you get if you're lucky enough to fall into oprah's lap you've made it you know and so and it's an it's the it's the oldest trick in the book it's just it's to give people feel-good ideology and make them feel better about the life they have, but you don't give them any idea how to build a better life.

You call it a law or a secret or a habit, and, hey, you're a bestseller. I always felt there was lack of authenticity. And so when I sold my first company, I waited until I sold Qual Medical, and then I thought, okay, now I can write the book to say this is what I did. And, honestly, if I can come from my background and do this, then pretty much follow the same steps. You don't even have to believe me, just do it. And you'll change your life. And that's how Three Simple Steps came out. But I also threw it out into the universe and said, go by word of mouth. I didn't put any money behind promotion. And

it became a bestseller three times, actually, in its first year. My claim to fame is that for two hours, it knocked Fifty Shades of Grey off the number one spot on Amazon. New York Times bestseller. Well, there you go. Maybe you should have put more bondage in, I don't know. I'm going to take that to my grave. I'd like that on my headstone if I ever have it. Three simple steps and how to use the BDSM principles of the grey,

whatever the hell that book was. And you know, what's funny is that, yeah. And I mean, originally it had like, uh, my understanding is it had like a, like really bad syntax and it was, you know, somebody had to go through and reedit it. It was really badly misspells and stuff. And then it became a hit and people like, Hey, we should probably make it so it's readable. So there you go. Three simple steps

a map to business and life what do you think some of the most important lessons that you've learned over your business career that have really shaped you what sort of things do you use that you kind of always go back to they're in your toolbox so i'll look at it two ways there's one one way that i used to think and i think differently now and then and then to succeed and others not there's only really one great study and it was done by the guy who invented the iq test and he over 30 years he followed the life journeys of 1500 genius iqs some were successful but most weren't and you wanted to know why and it came down to two things the first thing was self-confidence and the second thing was a tendency to set big targets i saw the same thing in the biographies i read but i didn't have a lot

of confidence growing up the way i did i had this kind of sense of lack and when i when i got into the corporate world i was really intimidated by those with power and those in the executive level but i figured out over time i had a kind of a fast track career and oh somehow miraculously and and i figured out that everyone's making it up no one knows what they're doing everyone's in the process of figuring it out and that was like a release it was like a cork out of a champagne bottle for me i thought wow well i can do that i can figure stuff out and so for me it it would be to anyone that'd like to be their own boss and think, and you think that you can plan it ahead of time. Like you can sit for a year doing a business plan and, you know, you know, build a prototype that nobody really is

interested in. The thing to do is just start. And when I, just before I started my first company, um, a guy who was the Bill Gates of the biotech world, Rothman, George Rothman. He's not with us anymore, unfortunately. But he said to me, took me aside one time because I was waxing lyrical about my business plan. And he said, Trevor, just start because you don't know what business you're in until you get in the business. Ah, you don't know what business you're in until you get in the business. And I found that to be so true because I got into the business and within a few weeks i was off in a different direction i never imagined i don't know if you experienced the same thing

oh yeah i mean we talked about that a lot on the show over the years with different authors that you know the joke is you meet people and they're like hey i'm going to start a business like you chris you're like okay we'll do it and they're like well i'm just waiting for the time to be perfect and you're like there's no perfect time do it. And they're like, well, I'm just waiting for the time to be perfect. And you're like, there's no perfect time. You need to do it now. Because there's stuff you have to problem solve as you go through it and learn. And then you'll see them a year later

and you'll be like, hey, how'd that business go? I'm still going to start it. I'm just waiting for the time to be perfect. You're like, dude, you got to get in there. And it's exactly what you said. You've got to get in there and problem solve. And there were some companies we started for 30 days with the business model loosely in my head that we wanted to take and do. And the market was like, no, we'd rather have you go this way.

And we're like, okay, well, if you're paying, we're going. So, yeah, I've seen that 30-day mark where you're just like throw that out let's do this but if you don't if you try and like hammer down your force the force some sort of model you have a business model you have down the market that's like we really don't want that you're just going to end up in bankruptcy within a you know whenever you run out of cash the first company i was sure i was going in a certain direction. If I'd gone in that direction, I probably would have made a $5 million company. But when I was in the business, I saw an opportunity I never would have seen except the fact that I was in working, talking to these

particular customers and they said, hey, do you know about such and such? I went in that direction and that then turned the company into $100 million. Damn. That's the difference of going one way or going the other. So tell us about what you offer on your website, your coaching programs. I see some transformational tools here as well. Yeah. So my tagline, and I'm very proud of this because it happens to be true because no one's ever asked for the money back. So my tagline is the last course you ever need to buy. And it's the transformation

experience and the reason i put that together again is because i want to fix that space probably like you i come across a lot of people who call themselves life coaches and business coaches but their qualification is they they walked on some hot coals one weekend at a they're causing a lot of a lot of issues and so i want to put that right so i have the transformation course which is based purely on science i'm using i'm using my physics training to explain in layman's terms how we can interact with energy in a slightly different way to get better outcomes and that's what i do that's basically what i learned to do through reading all those biographies. Now I understand why it works because

a physicist is continuously curious. We're never satisfied. We always want to know how and why things work and why they don't. And so I put that together. So it's a life-changing course. And the beauty of it is you don't have to believe anything because it's science. Oh, wow. It's science. You can come in as the world's greatest cynic, and I encourage that because I am one myself, and think that I'm full of BS, but do it anyway and see what happens. There you go. And so with your transformational tools, you've got the transformation experience, practical magic of the five-hour workday, quiet time, and logging into the experience. Can you give us a tease out on the magic of a five-hour

workday? Yeah, I put that together for COVID really, because there was this tsunami of people moving from home, moving from the corporate workplace into home with no support, no training, no sort of understanding of what that's like. And you can get burned out really quickly because in the corporate world, there's so many distractions. It's been shown that, you know, the average employee is productive for only two hours out of a 10-hour workday but when they go home work from home you know you sit by the computer waiting for an email you sit by the phone waiting for it to ring and if it doesn't you think you're doing something wrong so it was to put it was to help people get into the mindset of peak brain performance

so there's ways to work that allow you to stay on top of your game and there's ways to work that will put you in you know in the doctor's office and and so this was about i've never worked more than five hours a day even when i was in the corporate world but don't export to keep so it's about finding productive periods where we work for two hours and then we we switch off and then we go somewhere where we do something that allows us to restore that peak brain performance. That's kind of what it's about. It sounds a little woo-woo, but actually it's the way we used to work before the industrial revolution. The average worker before 1740 didn't work more than four hours a day. It's only the fact that there was no source of light other than natural light. And so factories were created and production lines were created and shifts were created for the first time. And now we pride ourselves and say, no, yeah, but we used to have to work 16 hours because that was the amount of light available.

Now we only work eight. Well, actually, we only used to work four. Wow. People are much happier. I put it all together and I wrap it all in the thing that I call success with balance. Because I know a lot of entrepreneurs who work 10, 12-hour days, but they're on the third marriage. The dogs don't recognize them. They're on their third biop on their heart.

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be that way. Because everyone's had the experience of being in the shower and then suddenly getting that breakthrough insight when we switch off. So it's about treating the switch-off moments with the same discipline as the switched on moments that's really all it is in a nutshell but it's nice to know the science and the history behind it there you go you have something called the trevor's guild tell us what that is yeah it's a group so a guild is a gathering of of you know wizards wizard means wise ones it's you know the derivation is wise so every village had a wise guy and so it's a it is a gathering of wizards. Wizard means wise ones. It's a derivation is wise. So every village had a wise guy. And so it's a gathering of wise guys.

And so we just, you know, this, you know, yourself, you know, in business, it can be a lonely path, right? Not everybody's there supporting you and applauding you and telling you how great you are. Typically, they can't wait for you to fail. And so it can feel a bit lonely. So it's nice to gather together. But I am not a fan of masterminds.s ah so i like to do something a little different where where we so it's kind of a mastermind and i think um part of the guild which is called the vibrational leadership sanctum and that's where we actually get people to start their companies.

And when they get it right, we fund it. I just funded our first other in-house brilliant idea. And that's so much fun. So, so we were trying to provide everything, not just a place for people to talk or moan or complain. We don't allow that,

but people to share best practices and to learn, to learn how to pitch, to learn how to present themselves and then learn how to structure the company. And then, and then when it's ready, we'll fund it. Why don't you allow people to piss and moan and whine and complain? It's just a waste of time. It's a waste of time.

It's just a waste of energy. Yeah. So it's better to be self-actualized, to be self-accountable, and just get it done, huh? Yeah, it's kind of a mentality thing. So mentality control from my book, Three Simple Steps, is about, you know, being for what you want, not against what you don't want or you don't have. Mother Teresa said that once in an interview. She said to an interviewer, young man, I'm not against war.

I'm for peace. I thought that was a beautiful summation of mentality control. I'm for success. I'm for finding an issue, for fixing stuff. I'm not against what's wrong. That's kind of the mentality that we are. We don't allow any kind of mentality other than that. There you go. There you go. So give us a final pitch out as we go out on how people can onboard with you, reach out to you, get involved with your services, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's all at trevorgblake.com. And if you're serious about not just wanting to feel good about the life you're living, but you actually want a better life, that is the only place you need to be right now. There you go. Thank you very much, Trevor, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. There you go. And order of the books, folks, Secrets to a Successful Startup,

a recession-proof guide to starting, surviving, and thriving in your own to Starting, Surviving, and Thriving in Your Own Venture. Available, what is that, January 28th, 2020, that came out. And all that good stuff. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, 4ChessChristmas, LinkedIn.com, 4ChessChristmas, YouTube.com, 4ChessChristmas. See the big 130,000 LinkedIn group, the big LinkedIn newsletter, and ChrisVossFacebook.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys

next time.