Best Template for Wholesale Real Estate Website (2023)

Steve Trang: Everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disrupters. Today, we've got Trevor Mach with carrot.com, and Trevor flew in from Eugene, Oregon. Talk about the best way to find motivated seller leads online in 2023. Now as you guys know, I am on a mission to create a 100 millionaires.

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Trevor Mach: Ready. Let's do it.

Steve: Alright. So first question is, what was your life like right before you got into real estate?

Trevor: Dude, so right before we hit record here, we're we're kinda talking briefly about it, and I got into real estate young. Mhmm. 21 years old. I was going to college A few years ago.

Steve: It was, like, five or

Trevor: six years ago. A couple a couple years ago. Yeah. A couple years ago. Yeah.

And I ended up buying, an apartment building, a four unit apartment building there by the college, no money down. So, honestly, right before that, it was me going to college, playing baseball, and flunking the LSAT two times. So I, Steve, I I wanted to be an attorney Mhmm. Before I got into real estate because I had this, this this business law professor. He was he was Arie de Groot, was the most captivating, engaging professor Mhmm.

Steve: At

Trevor: the whole school with the most boring topic in the school, probably business law. And I and he would teach business law through his real estate deals. Mhmm. And I'm like, if that guy's that excited about his work, I just wanna do exactly what he's doing. Yeah.

I got 50% of it. I got the real estate part, and I flunked the LSAT, so I couldn't make it in any law school.

Steve: So you played baseball in college.

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: So you're pretty athletic then.

Trevor: Yeah. I've I've I've always loved sports and stuff. My dad, he played for the A's and the Mariners back in the day Oh,

Steve: I didn't know that.

Trevor: In in the seventies. And then Gene Mach, he was the manager of the Angels for for quite some time. Mhmm. He's my dad's great uncle. So in our family, it's an athletic family, but I wasn't blessed with the height that my dad and my brothers have.

They're all six foot tall. I'm I'm not. Yeah. And, so I had to work a little bit harder.

Steve: Sure. Where'd you go to college?

Trevor: A little tiny college called Oregon Institute of Technology. It's it's the MIT of Oregon. And the MIT of Oregon, man. It's OIT. It was in in the hometown I grew up in, Klamath Falls.

And that's right where that four unit apartment building is.

Steve: Buy a fourplex near there. Mhmm. What compelled you to buy a fourplex?

Trevor: Yeah. Being honest, I I remember way way back to when when I was a kid, my mom and dad weren't entrepreneurs at the start, and they became entrepreneurs by necessity. My dad lost one of his jobs. He lost his job, and so my mom, out of necessity, started a business in in the basement. And so I remember walking in the basement in this house, and she had shelves up, and she was, like, doing wedding consultations for Brian's.

And so then my dad got another job, and then he got in in that business went out of business, and he goes, I'm gonna I'm just gonna start my own company now.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: So he did. We're we're we're turning to real estate. It was my dad started buying some real estate as it was related, was related to that company. The the real estate that the business was on, then he bought the houses behind it to expand that business. It's a it's like a United Rentals type of a company, equipment rental.

And him and I would have conversations, I remember, young about, hey. Did you know, Trevor, you can buy a house a foreclosed house for $200? I'm like, dad, I got $200 in the bank. And I'm like 10 years old. You know?

And so that that kind of planted the seed probably. It was just my dad speaking into me the possibilities. Mhmm. And then in college, we were sitting there. We were watching TV one day and Carlton Sheets' infomercial comes up.

And I'm like, man, I wanna I wanna get in real estate and buy those properties like we used to talk about when I was a kid, dad, like, a younger kid. And he goes, well, I'll work a deal with you. I'll buy that course for you. I'll pay the $500 to get the no money down home study course, and you don't have to pay me back Mhmm. As long as you buy a property using it within twelve months.

Mhmm.

Steve: And I'm

Trevor: like, I don't have $500. I'm I'm only gonna take the deal if I think I can do it. So I did, and I just hunted for that year, college kid, no credit, no money. I didn't have any money and bought a four unit apartment building, no money down. I'm still doing it today.

Cash flow from day one because I don't have any money.

Steve: Yeah. So

Trevor: that's how it started. So you

Steve: did the Carlton Sheets thing?

Trevor: 100%.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. Alright. That's cool. So, like, a lot of people bought bought the Carlton Sheets Yeah.

Product. Very few were able to actually do something with it and turn it into something. Right?

Trevor: It was the most basic stuff. I mean, I remember the contracts. I was going through the contracts, and and I still have the course today in my office. I was looking through it a couple years ago. I'm like, this is the most basic stuff.

But I think for me, Steve, and I think probably for a lot of people listening to this, if if we have the fire, if we have the the desire to go change the circumstance, we will find the how. Right? The Carlton sheets gave me a little bit more belief that I could do it in a couple tools, but then I honestly just started seeking out resources online. It was, like, before BiggerPockets, it was Cree online, creonline.com.

Steve: Oh, yeah.

Trevor: That that was my jam. I was on Cree online in the in the school

Steve: library. Yeah.

Trevor: And, finally, I I got over the nervousness of getting that first deal, and I and I I landed a deal. Yeah.

Steve: I mean and they're so sounds like for Carlson, she's for you, it was like a lot for a lot of us, right, was Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: It's not so much the technical know how. It's just to open our eyes about the possibility.

Trevor: Yeah. Dude, I've never read Rich Dad Poor Dad, believe it or not. So

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: People that come on my podcast, the biggest book they're always like, Richead Pornad. That's what started it off. And I almost feel like I don't need to read it now because I think I'm a single quote of it.

Steve: I think you probably figured out that. Yeah. The the magic of the freedom number and, like, cash flow and yeah. You can can quit your job. I think you figured that out.

Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. I've I've figured some probably that took the long route a little bit, but, yeah, that was the the the start.

Steve: Yeah. But the other thing too, you know, talking about opening your eyes, like, it's so cool that at ten years old, you were thinking talking about real estate with your dad. You know, like, my 12 year old, we were in the car the other day, and she was we're talking about, you know, at some point, she's gonna have all these she's gonna have this investment income. Yep. And she called it investment income.

I was like, okay. And that's you sound so smart. What kind of investment income? I was like, well, I'm gonna have real estate. It's like, man, like, just exposing them to that information Yep.

At such a young age, who knows the possibilities. And the other thing too is, you know, you look at Carleton. She's I don't call the infomercials. Mhmm. Were they, like, kinda, like, one of those, like, in your face, super flashy?

Trevor: Well, I I remember Carleton talking, then I would, like, show some guys at a swimming pool, getting interviewed about how they, you know, have 20,000 a month. But, yeah, it was definitely putting the lifestyle in front of you and stuff like that.

Steve: Another reason why I bring that up is, like, you know, that inspired you. Mhmm. Right? So there are so many people that say comparison is a thief of joy, and I get where they're coming from.

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: But for me, like and you're talking about the fire. Mhmm. If I see what's possible, I'll figure it out. Yeah. I just need to know what it's possible.

Mhmm. I'll figure out the how. You show me what can be done, and I will get it done. Yep. Right?

That sounds like the same thing here. Right? It wasn't like he told you this magic thing that no one else knows about.

Trevor: He he he he gave me the spark. And, dude, one thing I've been I've been doing a lot the last five, six, seven years, especially the last five, It is pulling back, and I I draw a lot in my iPad. Like, I draw circles and shapes and models, and that's, like, 50% of my work these days is taking concepts and going, how do I simplify this down to something that makes sense for me but also makes sense for others? And one one that I did years ago, I was just drawing down, why is it that I keep going through these patterns of I'm pumped about business, I'm fired up about it, and then three years later, I'm like, oh my gosh. I went out.

Mhmm. You know, I I wanna shift the business or adjust this or whatever.

Steve: Tear it all apart.

Trevor: Yeah. And so probably five, six years ago, I drew this thing, and I I today call it the three year turn and burn cycle.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: And what I'd recognize about myself and I found is true with pretty much every other entrepreneur that I've met so far is in the early days, like, we always have to have some sort of motivation that drives us forward. Right? A a vision.

Steve: A carrot. No pun intended. Yeah.

Trevor: There we go. A carrot. Ex exactly. Yeah. And in the early days, usually, it's to run away from something.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Right? It's it's that we want to run away from our a job that we have, an income ceiling that we have that we wanna get away from, people telling us we can't do it. Or in my case, it was I didn't wanna go to a job. That's what I was running away from. I saw my buddies over here.

They were getting good paying engineering jobs Mhmm. Like, $60.70, $80 a year out of the gates. And I was going and not getting a job the first year, and I dragged down the average starting salary at our school pretty heavily because I made $16,000 the next year. But I was pumped about it because I said, I don't want that. I've seen enough people go into the traditional world, family members, friends, and they they took the more guarantee high pay upfront, and they're in the same spot thirty years later.

So I was running away from that. And the challenge a lot of us have then is once you get that initial success out of the way and you build a business that starts to get some sort of consistency and you buy back some of that time, then around that three year mark, I call it the three year turnover and, cycle, two to four years, people start to have this series of things happen. They start to get bored of the business. It's not new anymore. It's not fresh.

The startup is kind of behind them. They start to get burnout potentially because now they're not really sure what is the fire that drives me forward to this thing again. And they start to get distracted. Yeah. I'm gonna become a coach now.

I'm gonna do this or I'm gonna do that. Then they start a new business instead of now going, no. This is the opportunity rather than running away from something where my vision and motivation is moving away, and I need to move towards something. Mhmm. I need to move towards something I believe in.

So that that that Carlton Sheets was the initial spark. He got me moving away from getting a job. But then over the years, I've had so many times where I had to reignite or what I call refuel that vision. Refuel the vision to keep this part going.

Steve: Gotcha. Yeah. So you buy the fourplex.

Trevor: Yep. Don't have

Steve: to pay your dad back?

Trevor: No. Didn't didn't have to pay him back. He did, though. I'll I'll I'll fully admit to this. I didn't have $10,000, and the seller was asking for $10 as a down payment.

Steve: Gotcha.

Trevor: And so I go back to my dad. I didn't know what private money was. Right? I just knew I didn't have $10 to make the deal happen. I said, hey, dad.

I learned about this on this website in Cree Online, that I can get people who have money, and they can loan me money. And would you just loan me that $10 that I don't have, for that same interest rate the seller is carrying the note? The seller carried a thirty year note at 6%. I still have that note today. We negotiated it down to four and a half percent

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Years ago. But so he put the $10 in. I paid him back way early. But, yeah, I got the property. I was mowing lawns.

I was fixing stuff. I'm a college kid. Mhmm.

Steve: Just

Trevor: getting it done. So I was

Steve: a learning process. Fourplex. That's not common. No. I'm upset.

Trevor: No. My my buddies on the baseball team, I would always rope them into into entrepreneur stuff, so I started a landscaping business. And I'm like, I like designing stuff. At that time, Steve, I didn't know I liked drawing. I just yeah, I've recognized over the years that I like taking something and sketching it out.

And so in that time, I would go to a person that had a crappy yard. Mhmm. I would go draw something in front of their house. Mhmm. I'd walk up the door and knock on the door and start talking with

Steve: them. Mhmm.

Trevor: I'm like, hey. I kinda think something like this would be kinda cool. And most of them threw me out of there, but I I got three people to say yes. Yeah. And so I hit my buddies up.

I'm like, guys, I got a landscaping job this weekend. We're gonna get it all done. We're gonna get, like, five days worth of work done in a week. And so we don't have time. We have baseball practice.

And we we had three of those jobs that way. And so between that and the fourplex, I think they were kinda used to me bringing them in on on some crazy business ideas.

Steve: Gotcha. So after that fourplex, how much more real estate did you buy while you were in college?

Trevor: Yep. That was the only one in college. One thing I wish I would have done, Steve, as I look back and if there were I wouldn't say regrets. I'd say data points and things I learned that I'd like to pass along to others and I have since changed is I got that property, and I go, what if I would've got one property a year? Mhmm.

Right? It's almost twenty years since then. What if I would've got one fourplex a year for twenty years? That's 80 something units. That fourplex is almost paid off now.

It'd be way different. Instead, I go, oh, I did that. Now let me move to the next thing.

Steve: Yeah. So That's that's the challenge for us. Yeah. Visionaries, entrepreneurs is, like, is exciting. Let's do it once.

Trevor: Yep. Yep. Exactly. So I I didn't do any more in college, and then we moved from Klamath Falls where

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: The college is and went to Portland, the big city. Mhmm. And my wife was getting her master's degree there, and that's when I gave myself a year. I'm like, I'm gonna keep on picking up rental properties over time, but I I wanna I thought I wanna do wholesaling at that time. And that's where years ago.

Yep. And that's where the Internet, where online marketing for me started to come in Mhmm. Is is right in that moment. It would have been 2007. Mhmm.

I go, I'm gonna start figuring out how to do this thing, and I set up websites and Craigslist and the whole thing.

Steve: That's funny. Yeah. So, Craigslist is where you started?

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: Yep. So, talk talk about how you're buying properties on Craigslist in o seven.

Trevor: Yep. Yeah. So I didn't buy any. That that that was one of the things where I dove in and wanted to do it Mhmm. And I didn't stick with it.

Honestly, I didn't stick with it. And for me, I discovered for me that I didn't wanna do real estate as a active income.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Like, man, I like this marketing thing.

Steve: What if

Trevor: I do marketing or something like that as the active income when I take my money from marketing, put it into real estate long term? Because I got this property over here. It's kinda working out. I can see the numbers stacking up. And, even back then, I coined the term evergreen income.

I'm like, I just want this evergreen income. Stuff that keeps coming in instead of hamster wheel income. So I didn't pick any up, but I I learned a lot about marketing. I made a little website from a GoDaddy website builder. It was brutal, man.

It was like, you could still pull it up to today, I'm sure, on Wayback Machine, but it got my start, and I got leads. And I was just going to Craigslist, writing up little ads and posting to go over there. And I talked to sellers and met with some. Mhmm. I've made some offers, but Yeah.

I shifted my focus about midyear to to learning marketing.

Steve: So you want to to buy real estate

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: And then instead you became a marketer. Yep. Hey. Look. I went through I I am the last one to judge.

Right? I I went through this marketing world as well. I Yep. I was just at ClickFunnels a couple weeks ago, and someone pulled me aside. I was like, Steve, where did you learn all this marketing stuff?

Yeah. Because it's readily apparent. Right? Like, you're doing a marketer. You're doing all this stuff to marketing stuff.

And I was thinking, like, where did I learn? Because it's been so long, right, from when I went to a realtor to gain my own lease and this and that. It's like, oh, yeah. There was, like, a year and a half where I was obsessed with Dan Kennedy. Yeah.

I completely forgot about that season.

Trevor: Dude, Dan Kennedy, if if if anyone's wanting to be great a great marketer well well, number one, be a great salesperson.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: You I think you need to be great at marketing too. Right. They don't have They go hand in hand. Yeah. They they do.

You don't have to. Like, you can be a great salesperson who know nothing about marketing, but if you're gonna own the business, you should you should be proficient in both. Yeah. And Dan Kennedy, so kinda talking through that journey, and if I were to plant some seeds for y'all, if you become a great marketer, if you become a decent marketer and decent salesperson, you're gonna have more income potential. Hungry.

Yeah. Than 98 percent of everyone out there. Yeah. If you become a great marketer and a decent salesperson, even better. If you become a killer salesperson, okay marketer, you're gonna be good.

If you become killer at both, you're an 8 figure entrepreneur.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: And so in in in that stage, I started to have a hunger for marketing, but it was from it wasn't from the perspective of I need to go sell stuff. Honestly, where I got bit by the marketing bug, Steve, was, two things. So I was doing I was cold calling Craigslist leads just to make some money on the side for a mortgage broker. I wasn't making any money in real estate. So I I tried to be a marketing consultant, and it turned into me cold calling Craigslist leads for this guy.

Steve: And, Prospecting is a form of marketing because that's the most effective.

Trevor: Yeah. Exactly. And I discovered I didn't like it. Yeah. And he walks in one day, and and he goes he goes, like, pull up pull up the computer and type up, you know, Portland, Oregon mortgage brokers.

Mhmm. And I did, and and, he goes, how do I get there, you know, at the top of Google? And I go, I don't I don't know. And he goes, can you figure it out? I go, yeah.

Let let me give it a try. That was 2,007, and that sparked my desire to go, let me see how Google works.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Let me once I figure that out and I got traffic, then it goes, I got people coming to the website, but it's not converting.

Steve: Right.

Trevor: Let me not figure out how conversion works. At that moment, that's when I found Dan Kennedy

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: And all the, you know, the the marketers. Yeah.

Steve: All the direct response marketing. So man. Guys, if you guys wanna get better at marketing, I highly recommend you check out Dan Kennedy. I also recommend that you keep your wallet as far away from you as possible, because the guy, his his copy is so good that he can sell you something he doesn't sell anymore Yeah. From his copy.

Trevor: Yep. Oh, exactly, dude. Yeah. I I remember getting for years his Dan Kennedy no BS newsletter.

Steve: Oh, see. I I I remember the g k GKIC. Yeah.

Trevor: Yep. Yep. And then, yeah, when he had his newsletter and then GKIC, they merged, and then his new newsletter became, like, the cool I thought it was the cool part of

Steve: the rest of the news. Oh, I loved. Right? Because, like Mhmm. Back in I mean, this for me, I think it's, like, like, maybe 2010, 2011.

Like, I love getting mail from GKIC Yep. Because it was never just, a newsletter. I mean, there was some widget or something in there. It was lumpy mail.

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: Right? It was just something that, like, made you, like, want to open and figure out what's in there.

Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. And one one of the cool things kinda, hopefully, I'll drop some nuggets for y'all to kinda pull away from this in in my in my journey. And to kind of set context for everyone too because people might be going like, what the heck does this guy know? Over the years, I've had a chance to build a few businesses.

Carrot, we're well into the eight figures. We have about 65 employees there. And then, part owner and several other companies. Salesmessage.com is a neat figure company now. Help found that company.

And so throughout that journey, you know, we've been executing these things. But one of the cool things I learned from Kennedy that probably started to change things for me and started to actually make me money at that time was, number one, he told stories a lot.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Right? So in in his marketing, oftentimes, it's story.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: It's not just, hey. I've got this thing. Go, you know, go click this thing and go buy it.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: It was usually a story that was compelling. It wrapped you in, or he would use language that would just be different than in other marketing, and it would pull me in. And so I started to use story more. Mhmm. And the next thing that I also started to do is I started to give more things away Mhmm.

Free. If if you guys are are salespeople and you're looking to to grow something, oftentimes, our first inclination is I'm gonna go sell this thing. And when I didn't have much of a product on the other end or confident confidence in it, I wasn't selling it well. And if you're not a good salesperson, it's hard to sell something.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: And so in those early days when I wasn't, I was trying to sell something, get no no no over and over again. And Dan was giving all this free stuff away, and I go, what if I just gave the thing away for free? What if I just, like, literally went to people on Google and the same ones I was trying to pitch some SEO stuff to? I just emailed and did a little video and sent it to him and said, hey. I looked at your site, and they're all up in Portland, Oregon.

I looked at your site. There's a few things that are really killing your search rankings. If you just do these things, it'll fix it. Literally put these things on your site here. Just send this to your web person, and good luck and hope things are great.

Steve: Right.

Trevor: And most of the

Steve: people SEO audits.

Trevor: Yeah. And just giving it to them. Yeah.

Steve: That's awesome.

Trevor: And just saying give it to your web person. I always said that give it to your web guy because then it made it sound like I wouldn't sell them anything. And, a lot of them would say thank you. That's amazing. But then some of them would say, thank you.

That's amazing. I don't have a web person. Can you do this for me? Mhmm. Sometimes the first couple, I even did it for free.

I'm like, yeah. Heck yeah. Just give me the login. I did it. I pulled away.

And then that person, the first one who did it for free said, can you do more of this stuff for me? I don't wanna pay it for it. Mhmm. Heck, yeah. So it's like doing sales, but actually novel idea, actually adding value first.

Right. Right? Before before you go in for the sale, that was a biggie for me.

Steve: Yeah. And then, you know, just to modernize it, right, just for 2023, if you look at, like I don't know if there's a better storyteller than Pace Morby.

Trevor: Yeah. Pace is amazing.

Steve: Yeah. Right? So if you guys are looking like, you know, we're talking about the context of telling stories. It's

Trevor: just Dude.

Steve: So see what he's talking about

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: On any platform.

Trevor: It base is amazing. And and he's a giver, so that goes back to that same Right. That same concept.

Steve: Value at no at no charge.

Trevor: Yeah. And one one of the best things I found, we're going through this with Carrot right now too, is is anytime you can give away what people are are charging for Mhmm.

Steve: All of

Trevor: a sudden you stand out. So if you're if you're marketing a product or selling a product, pull back and ask them one, is it a commodity

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Or is it close to that? And if if it is, like, real estate information, I wouldn't say it's a commodity, but,

Steve: you

Trevor: know, it's there's a lot of it out there you can get for free.

Steve: It's it's hard to justify a premium.

Trevor: Yeah. When you look at the basic SEO audit, there's a lot of things you can do do out there for it, but people are charging for it at that time. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Trevor: I go, let me just give it away for free. Right. And I'll figure out something else to sell. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Trevor: so think about that, y'all. What are people selling? Can you give it away for free? And then can you offer a service or something on the back end of that? Mhmm.

It's actually even more valuable that they're gonna need.

Steve: Right. So you want to go figure out how to rank SEO. Mhmm. You're how to rank for this mortgage broker. Yep.

And after figuring out how to rank, you figure out how to get people to opt in. As you always say, conversion. You should take they're on the page. How do we collect their information?

Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. So people people were coming to the site, and I had Google Analytics up and all that stuff. And I had a couple sites at that time. So we had the we had the mortgage one.

I had my own, which is called reibrain.com. It's still up there. It was, like, where I was typing up all the things I was learning Yeah. Which I ended up hitting the end of my knowledge pretty quickly because I was just I had some rental properties. And so I was putting, like, property management reviews, and I was putting my documents up and just teaching some basic things, talking about market and stuff.

So I would get people to the site and looking at the stats, I'm going, man, people how do I get someone to take the next step? And I dove into things like Dan Kennedy's stuff or Ryan Deiss's stuff and just really learning conversion rate optimization at that point. And that's a fancy term for how do you how do you remove the resistance

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: From someone, in this case, a web visitor. So they are clear, and they feel confident in taking a next step with you to solve a problem they have.

Steve: Well and the question you gotta answer when they're on the website is, am I at the right place?

Trevor: Yep. Exactly. And part of that's copy. Part of it's the structure of the form, the page. And over the next, I guess, really decade, Steve, and that's what led into carrot after a couple business failures, couple that did okay.

I I carried those skill sets with me in every business. How do you create content that ranks well in Google that's compelling, that builds trust? And how do you once people are there, convert them into a lead, and then how do you take that lead and do something with it?

Steve: Right. Yeah. So how long did like, how much time did it take from the point of, like, hey. Trevor, can you figure out whether you can rank this to, like, hey. I have something that I can sell?

Trevor: I I think it's probably a year and a half, two years maybe. I I I probably knew a little bit more than I was giving myself credit for at the time, but I didn't know how to sell it or didn't have enough track record. But where where things really changed for me with my own businesses at that time so this is kinda dating it for people 2008, and I'm gonna keep on dropping as many sales or marketing tips as people can pull out because these these are the dots. Right? Like, as Steve Jobs says, it's very hard to connect the dots moving forward, but you can connect them backwards.

Steve: Right. So

Trevor: if anyone's behind where I am right now as an 8 figure entrepreneur, then it's hard for you to connect those dots forward. So, hopefully, you can use my dots Mhmm. To make that for you. So, I was learning that skill set. You have to master one skill set at least.

Like, master a skill set. Put your head down and say I'm gonna become amazing at sales Mhmm. Like Steve, or I'm gonna become amazing at this form of online marketing. And I got good at it. And so a guy named Patrick Riddle, you've probably seen speak.

Steve: Yeah. Patrick Riddle is a genius. Yeah. We're in Family Mastermind together.

Trevor: Yeah. Amazing. So so Patrick and I used to be business partners. And a lot of people don't know my background in this industry, but I'll keep on connecting all the way to on how each thing built to build what we have today. So Patrick was making comments on my blog, and I'm like, I ran out of stuff to write content on.

So, this guy seems like he knows a lot, and he keeps on making comments. So I hit him up. We hop on a call. He done a bunch of flips and raised a bunch of private money, and he was just ready for a change. He hit the three year turn and burn cycle.

Mhmm. He was three years in, and he didn't know how to grow through that pain line. He didn't know how to grow through that pain line of once I hit a million dollars a year, who do I need to hire? How do I need to grow? Mhmm.

And so what he did is he got distracted.

Steve: Mhmm. He he he Self sabotage?

Trevor: Yeah. Self sabotage is Dan Martell says in in his book, and he found my block. And so I'm grateful that he did. So we hop on a call. He's great at private money.

Hey. It's perfect time. No one can get bank loans for properties in 2008. Let's just do a free call

Steve: to

Trevor: all these leads I have over here that I have no clue how to monetize Mhmm. And add value to. And I ran out of waste to add value to them. Let's do a free call, dude. We're not selling anything.

It's how to teach, to teach how to raise private lending Yep. Or money. So we did with no intention on selling anything. We get to the end of this call, and this is kind of in the early days of the Internet marketing world and launches and people being used to buying things and webinars. I was naive to that.

I was just doing content. And you're using that thing again to just give away give away. Someday something will come back. And at the end of it, people kept saying, where can I, like, where can I buy something? Can we have Patrick coach us?

I'm like, oh, man. No. We're Let's schedule another webinar. Let's just do another one and give all you know, guys, just come on again and ask all your questions. It'll be free.

And so between that, we did talk. We said, I don't know. May are are we are we are we not serving people well if we don't actually package together your knowledge, Patrick, and give them something they can truly use

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: More effectively versus just a bunch of random free stuff? And so we prepared it on that second call. A bunch of people still asked that. We drove them to a wait page, and we ended up having our first product that we ever sold. And that turned into a business that it didn't make millions, per year.

It made, you know, probably millions or two over the years. But we did we had a great business together. Right. We were fifty fifty business partners, and that was probably that time period, 2008 through '12, closer to the '12 is probably where I learned the most about myself as an entrepreneur. And that time period, that 2,012, is what then completely changed the way I looked at business that turned into what we have today.

Steve: So how do how did you change your your outlook on business?

Trevor: Yeah. So in in the early days, I followed a lot of advice that I think is good, decent advice, well meaning, but Mhmm. I kept on hearing people say, man, take a take a piece of paper, line down the middle of the paper, and write out the things that make you money and the things that don't make you money. Right? And all the things that don't make you money that you're using, like cross them off or have someone else do them and delegate it.

And all the things that make you money spend more time doing that. Right. So I did. Learned copywriting became pretty good at that. Creating products became pretty good at that.

I ran the business, did all the marketing. Patrick was the educator. The funny thing was about 80% of those things that made us money, marketing campaigns, writing copy, they drained my energy, dude. Mhmm. They drained my energy.

And so once again, got three years into that business. K? And I didn't recognize these patterns at that time. I got three years in. I'm like, I don't like this business anymore.

We're making some good money. I'm grateful for that. We have great customers. We have great products I'm proud of. But if it's gonna be like this for ten more years, I don't know if I want this.

Right. Maybe I should go get a job at Nike or I'm seriously thinking about that. And so I thought, well, maybe it's the next income level. Maybe maybe if we hit 1,000,000 a year Mhmm. Then it'll change me.

That'd be more fun. Yeah. And and what I've found now is that doesn't change. You have some more resources to do some things within. You can now hire people to buy back your time, but you're always gonna have the next level, the next thing you're chasing.

Right? And so what I, I I I had met a guy named Greg Clement. You may you may know you know Greg?

Steve: I'm not familiar.

Trevor: RealFlow? Yes. So Greg started that. He's not really involved in the day to day, but now I look at Greg, and I'm like, it seems like from the outside in, Greg's life is kinda like what I want. Mhmm.

He's coaching his kids' football teams. He's he's I think he's probably five, six years older than me, maybe a little bit more. He he had a business with, you know, those multimillion dollar business. He had employees. Like, he had a couple dozen, which I'm thinking, dude, I never want 20 employees.

And we have 60 plus in one company today. But I evolved and I grew. And so the first ever mastermind I joined was that year in 2012. The only year Greg had it, he did it that one year, closed it down. And it's almost like like it was built for me that year.

You know? And I was just trying to figure out how he was able to have multiple businesses that looked all really interesting and exciting. And he literally spent, like, a day or two in this business a week, and he would only do the things that he was good at, and he would fly out. And I'm going, that sounds like a dream.

Steve: Perfect.

Trevor: Yeah. So I joined his mastermind to get closer to him to figure this thing out. Right? Yeah. And he told me this one thing, and he said he said he learned it from strategic coach from Dan Sullivan's, program.

Steve: Great program. I've gone through that.

Trevor: Yeah. I did it for a year after that. I should have done it longer. And it was, like, the third session. I even bought the book, on unique ability.

I read the book all of a sudden. Unique ability, it didn't hit it didn't it didn't make sense to me. I thought it did, but I kept going back to that list of the things that made me money. Mhmm.

Steve: Right?

Trevor: I'm like, well, I'm good at these things. People tell me I'm good at them. I get paid well-to-do them. Those must be the things I should do more of. And this gal, as I was wrestling through that, she's our coach, and she said, Trevor, the way that I found unique ability the way I found my unique ability is is you have more energy when you're done doing those things Mhmm.

Than when you started. Yep. And she goes right down that list. What's the list of things that give you more energy than when you're done than when you started? Mhmm.

I go, okay. That's a little different. I had a tough time with it, though, Steve, because I was trying to justify a lot of the things on on the list. Didn't make any money. They didn't make any money, or I had no clue how to make money.

Yeah. I'm going, but if I do all that, all these things over here that make money, who's gonna do those? And does that mean I just need to be broke and happy? Because if these things make me money, I don't wanna do them anymore and these things don't. I don't know.

So right after that, I I went home and I created a process I I still use today. I coach it to our customers and team members called the energy audit. We sold it in 2012. I made the energy audit. And it's same thing, lying down the middle of paper.

But I switched the words. I said energy give, energy drain. And then I write down all the things that drain my energy in an average work week. Life, business, everything. Right?

Everything. And I'm writing all these things, writing copy, like, literally executing anything. Like, anything. Okay? And then all the things over here that are, like, meetings, all this stuff.

And I'm going, I don't know how I'm gonna be in business if I wanna do those things anymore. Then over on the right side, I go, I like strategy.

Steve: Mhmm. I

Trevor: wanna blow up the whiteboard and leave.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: How's that happen? But but you just dream. Like, that gives me energy. Working out gives me energy. This kind of stuff gives me energy.

You're talking with entrepreneurs, and SF gives me energy. And I go, well, I don't know how to make it happen now, and I know I want what Greg wants or what Greg has, but I think I'm a little way ways away from it. What if every quarter I go down here, I do this audit, and I at the bottom, I I measure it. Like, just gut level. What percentage of my average work week is energy draining and energy giving?

Mhmm.

Steve: And I

Trevor: did that gut level thing at that time, put it at the bottom. 80% of my work week was energy draining. Yeah. I go, oh my gosh. No wonder.

I'm not enjoying my business. Why I was trying to sabotage it? And I go, what if I do this every quarter? And I circle one or two of the things in the energy drain column right now and how many hours I'm spending on each one of those. And before any project at work, that's what I do.

I create a process. I either say no to that, or I create a process for it, and I delegate it. Mhmm.

Steve: When I

Trevor: go to the energy gifts column, I say, now I've got ten hours a week that these things are getting done. What am I gonna fill that with? Even if it doesn't make me money. Especially if it doesn't make me money. Because if I can show up with more energy at work Yeah.

I'm probably gonna be better, and we might even be able to make more money.

Steve: Right.

Trevor: So I I did that, and that actually led me to discovering that that business with Patrick. Patrick. I love Patrick. We're still we run a mastermind together still. But that business wasn't gonna get me where I wanted to go.

Mhmm. Funny thing is, Steve, years later so Patrick, their company does 25 plus million a year. Garrett's an 8 figure company. We completely switch roles. Garrett's the guy or, Patrick's the guy behind the scenes doing the marketing Mhmm.

Running the business. He hates being out front. Mhmm. I'm the guy out front. I like educating, training, and I don't like any of the execution stuff, and I've got a team that does it.

So go after optimize for energy rather than productivity or revenue. Yeah. That was the big change for me.

Steve: Well, I like what you say. Right? Because they they they do tell you. Just write down this list, like, what's income producing, what's not income producing. Yep.

Right? And at a high level, that's still there's truth to that.

Trevor: There is. Yeah.

Steve: But then one thing we talk about inside the Whale Club is we talk about there's multiple currencies. Yep. So there's the money currency, which is what that list is. Yep. There's also the energy currency.

Right? Like, hey. Which one gives you energy? Which one doesn't? Mhmm.

And we talk about which one gives you more influence?

Trevor: Which one doesn't?

Steve: There we go. Which one gives more attention, which one doesn't. Right? So we talk about the the multiple currencies. But the other thing too is I went through the same exact exercise as strategic coach.

Yeah. We went through unique ability. You know what unique ability is?

Trevor: Probably this stuff. Right?

Steve: This stuff for sure, which I didn't know yet. Yeah. Teaching. Gotcha.

Trevor: Yeah. That makes sense.

Steve: But then I look around. It's like, well because I did say at some point when I was growing up Yep. When I have enough money, I wanna be a school teacher because I actually love teaching. You're right. And then well, that's never obviously come to pass.

But then when I have my brokerage, what I enjoyed the most, not showing houses, not talking to homeowners, it was teaching all the realtors in my organization how to run a business. Right?

Trevor: There we go.

Steve: And I got massive fulfillment from that. However, that's also not profitable because realtors don't like to pay splits.

Trevor: Yep. Yep.

Steve: Right? And so my friend, my best friend, my accountability partner to this day, was telling me to shut it down because you don't make money from it. It's like, it's fulfilling. It's like, I don't care what's fulfilling. Find someone that's something else is filling Yep.

That gives you energy that you can make money from. I was like,

Trevor: I don't

Steve: know what it is. And so I think that a couple different things, you know, and this is gonna sound, you know, entirely boastful. Mhmm. Right? But, like, there's a lot of people that get into coaching for the money.

Yeah. And that works. But how can you deliver the same level if you're doing it for money? Like, I'm doing it because I love it. I love watching people win.

Trevor: Yep. I I can tell. You you can tell that, man. And and I think that's also why you guys are making the the the pivot not pivot, but the adjustment to broaden your audience. Right?

Because you're going, I love it. How can I get in front of more people and help more people do the same thing?

Steve: You wouldn't

Trevor: be like you didn't love it.

Steve: Right. It's exciting. And then the podcast part, like this right here. Mhmm. This is what I was doing before I had a podcast.

Yeah. Right? We just turned the cameras on. Yeah. But, like, before, I was like, hey, Trevor.

Could you wanna go grab some lunch? Mhmm. Let's talk business.

Trevor: Yeah. Exactly. All we're doing here. Dude, that and and that that's so key, and and that's something I I want every single person listening to. I don't care what I don't care if you're doing 10 a year.

It's like, I I know so we both probably know so many people who have a lot of money, and they have great businesses, and they're absolutely hating their business. And we all go through that ourselves.

Steve: We go through those seasons.

Trevor: We do. Right? So it's not like I'm sitting here walking on clouds, and every day is a a 10 out of 10. You know, we've got hard times, and and that's where those cycles like, I talk about the three year turn and burn cycle. It's three years.

It's not just three years from the time you start your company.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: It's every three years. Yeah. It's like every two to four years, and you have to refresh that vision or refuel that vision.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Because now what was exciting you and driving you forward three years ago, you ran out of runway in that vision. Yeah. And now we need to go, cool. What's that next bit of fuel that's gonna drive me forward? So as as long as you know the things that give you energy and those unique abilities, you get to carry those with you.

And those things actually are what elevate that vision I've found the next time around because you go, oh my gosh. I love teaching. I love this. I love this. K.

Now how can I expand that vision this next time around to to expand my impact there? Ideally, every time you go up in those threes and tens, because businesses break at threes and tens.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Every time you go up in those threes and tens, ideally, it should be to refine and put you more into your energy work every single time you do it. Mhmm. Then you figure out what are the right next hires to replace myself and the things I'm good at that make money, but drain my energy. Yep. And that that's the key.

Replace yourself and the things that you're good at make you money but drain your energy

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: And spend more time in the things that you're good at, make you money but give you energy. Exactly. It's hard, though.

Steve: It is hard. And, you know, you talk about the vision. So last week Mhmm. I bought, closemoresales.com.

Trevor: Oh, that's a good domain, man.

Steve: Yeah. So, you know, we, we had a, a meeting in our organization, but we need a unifying message. Right? Like, Steve, what are you? What do you do?

What do you offer? Yeah. You know, we teach you how to close more deals. Right? Like, that's been our that's what we say, but it's, like, you know, we we have this product sales leadership.

We have, you know, how to buy them houses deeper. We have, like, this mentorship course. We do this, do that. We have a podcast, this and that. Like, you're confusing the audience.

Okay. So what's our unifying message? Which we got, Matthew Pollard wrote a book,

Trevor: The

Steve: Introvert's Edge, which is a great book. He talks about the value of a of a unifying message. Yeah. So, like, you know, our message was, you know, we solve sales problems, which still sounds pretty good. Mhmm.

I was like, man, like, I'm doing the going back to our marketing days.

Trevor: Yeah.

Steve: I go to Google keyword search tool.

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: What are people searching for Yep. When they're struggling with sales? Yep. And it's it ultimately comes down to is how do I close more sales? How do I close sales?

Right? Yeah. Like, alright. So closemoresales.com. That is the unifying domain.

Right? And so I'm I'm gonna bring this and I'm bringing this up to you because you made a significant purchase.

Trevor: Yeah.

Steve: Well, it's actually just before I get there. Yep. Buying that freed my mind to focus on, like, alright. What are we gonna do now? Now that we got this Mhmm.

Right? Now we've got an excellent address. Yep. Right? This is, like, 1600 Pennsylvania.

Yeah. We got a great address. Yeah. How do you build the best house on this? Right?

It's like, you know, what if like, perfect world. We get Donald Miller to build our website.

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: Right? We get Dan Kennedy or Frank Curran to write a copy.

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? Like, we have Yeah. Neil Patel to do all our SEO. Yeah. Like, this is the perfect world.

Yep. So, like, this is what I've shared with the team. But, like, you're talking about refreshing the vision, the three year burn turn. I'm glad you put it this way because that explains why I'm losing sleep because I'm so freaking excited Yeah. Yeah.

About what we're gonna do with this. Yep. So going back to you Yeah. Carry.com, that was not an insignificant investment.

Trevor: No. It it it was a big one. And at that time, it forced me to refresh the fuel on my vision again because, kind of fast forward and through that time period, 2012, energy audit, you know, did that stuff, tried a couple businesses, two software companies. One completely failed, and the other one thought it was gonna fail. It pivoted, and now it's doing 1,200,000.0 a month right now.

Not Carrot. Like, it's a it's a different company.

Steve: That's awesome.

Trevor: I don't run it. My buddy, Chris Persson, runs that company. He owns the vast majority. I own a little sliver of it. But through through that process, that got me hooked on software.

Mhmm. Like, okay. I like that business model. How can I now use the skill sets that I built? Searching optimization, conversion rate optimization, real estate knowledge, marry those with this model, with this new model.

And so that's where then Karat came in. And so Karat, you know, we have, just shy of 7,000 active real estate investors, mostly flippers, wholesalers, and this feeds into the the domain purchase. If you were to Google sell my house fast or cash home buyers or we buy houses, insert any city in America, Canada, even in South Africa, you're probably gonna find, like, three and eight current sites controlling page one in Google and all those markets. We did we did some math the other day. It's about seven or 800,000 leads a year.

Most of those are sellers. One in 15 closing a deal on average. You know, we're talking close to around plus or minus a few 100,000,000, a billion dollars in transaction profits that have came for our plus customers of last five years. And so when we were looking at moving away from our old domain, which was on carrot.com

Steve: I remember on carrot.com.

Trevor: Dude, it it was like the blessing and the curse that got us going, and it made sense to me when we started it because I'm going, well, I couldn't get carrot.com. We couldn't I was looking at getcarrot.com. Mhmm. But that was another guy in Oregon had that one. He literally registered it the month I was gonna register it.

So on carrot, like, what are you using? Well, I'm on carrot. There's a thought behind it. But this is an important thing in sales branding marketing is recognizing the value of the domain name. That a lot of times people will make the domain name synonymous with your company name Mhmm.

With your company identity. So close more sales, is amazing. Right? It's really, really good. On Carrot is confusing.

Then then it makes sense for a company name. So we would have at least half the market only as On Carrot, on podcasts in

Steve: Oh, yeah. This is Trevor with On Carrot.

Trevor: Yeah. Max Maxwell's big event. I'm speaking in front of a thousand people, and I I tell Max's team, like, it's specifically carrot.com.

Steve: That's where we first met.

Trevor: That there we go. It it is. Yeah. Yeah. And that was right after we had bought carrot.com and moved over to it, like, within months, I think it was.

And Max announces me as Trevor with OnCare. I'm like, oh, dude. Because it it it's hard to brand that. Right? And so at that time, I was going through that that period of refreshing the vision because we started the company officially about 2014.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: You know, 2013. The original vision was a five year vision. Okay? And I kinda looked at it every year and and updated a little bit. But we were kind of towards the back part of that five year vision, and we're wrestling with this big investment.

And when you're wrestling with the big investment, the vision drives every decision.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Right? The vision drives every decision.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: And so we were pulling back and saying, what if we don't buy it? Would we be fine in a year, five years, ten years if someone else owned the brand of Carrot? Mhmm. Not just in real estate, but everywhere. I go, well, if we just stay in real estate, I'd probably be okay with that.

If some other company bought it for a ton of money and be okay with that. But then I pull back and refresh the vision. I go, where do we wanna go with this thing? Is it just gonna be in real estate forever? Can we serve other people in high margin service businesses too?

And the answer to that was yes. The founding of the company, the reason it's carrot.com or carrotandnotrealestateinvestorwebsites.com is because we saw the same problem happening happening in other high margin service businesses. Real estate's where we start and we expand out from there. And we go, yeah. We're gonna expand out.

How much would we pay in ten years to buy carrot.com if we try to own the brand? Like, I literally want when people see the color orange Mhmm. To think of carrot. Yeah. I want when our customers or people in our industry are at a restaurant or they order from Instacart Mhmm.

They literally take pictures of it and send it to me and say this made me think of you. Yeah. And that happens all the time.

Steve: Oh, that absolutely does happen.

Trevor: And so we go we wanna own the word. Mhmm. Literally, we wanna own every bit of that word. And so making the $600,000 purchase, which that's a whole journey of a of a combo there, we lost it three times. We finally got it through a whole unique process, but, I would make that investment again 10 times over.

Steve: How do you talk to me about almost losing it three times.

Trevor: Yeah. So the I'll I'll try to give you the cliff notes version. So one guy bought it, and he bought the domain in 1996, I think it was. He was an artist out of Canada. And he had pioneered this type of art called, like, stair sterile or stereo oil or something like that, and, it it was interesting.

Art was cool. But he used that website to display all of his art. Here, it had nothing to do with his art. It was just he bought the domain when the Internet started, and he's like, dude, I got this cool domain. I'm gonna put my art up there.

And so we reached out to Michael over and over again. Just no reply, no reply, no reply. And we're like, man, we're never gonna get it. That's like his that's his spot.

Steve: That's his baby.

Trevor: And so my CTO hits me up. This would have been probably 2017 or so, maybe 2018. He said, Trevor, go to care.com. He didn't say anything else. I go, man.

And there's a a coming soon, like, launch page for a software company. I go, man. I don't know how they got it, but they must say it's at the right time, and they got it. It was a it was a Reddit like, some sort of a Reddit chat thing. Mhmm.

It did something. I don't remember what it was. They were venture funded. They literally had care in their license plates Mhmm. And the whole thing.

They had 7 figures of funding. And I'm going, we're never gonna get that back.

Steve: All in on it.

Trevor: Yeah. We're we're yeah. License plates, dude. They're we're not gonna be able to buy it from them. And so long story short, we see them launch, and then all of a sudden, we see the domain get shut down, like, sixty days after their launch.

So they had done something in the Reddit community that they're collecting data from the Reddit people that they weren't supposed to collect, didn't disclose it, and that's what happens to Reddit. They flame you out of there, man. Like, you're gone.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: Yeah. They just got flamed out. So they went out of business before they started. Wow. So I hit up the guy, the the CEO, and they still had the Carrot dot com emails working at least.

And we were going back and forth, and and he said, well, yeah, we do wanna sell it because we have to pay back some of our investors. And he was the least we can take for it though is 250,000. And I'm in my mind, I'm gonna do it. I'll pay up to $50 for this thing. And I and I he says that number.

I go I'm thinking, good luck. Like, whoever pays $250 for that is an idiot. And I I kinda thought I was playing mister sales guy and doing a pullback sale and whatever. What I learned later was he bought it on terms. The previous owner had got cancer and, passed away.

But before he passed away, he must have got the email at the right time from those guys. He sold it on terms, took a down payment, and then carried a note for $250,000. They went out of business. They stopped paying on it. All of a sudden, they didn't answer my emails.

I wasn't gonna pay $2.50. Domain's down. Their emails stopped working. We're like, I don't know. Lost it again.

So another year later, I get an email from, my CTO again or, Slack. He'd go to yeah. Dude, I just found carrot.com on GoDaddy Auctions. Mhmm. Like, what are you talking about?

Go so I go over there, and there's, like, seven days left in the auction, and it's already at 80 something grand. And I go, hey. This is gonna go high, so I gotta bump up my my number if I think we're gonna get this. So we did a bunch of math, justified this, that, and the other. Ask that question, what would we pay later for it?

Recognize it's an asset. Other people probably want it. At the very least, I could sell it for some sort of price. So there's all these justifications. I go, okay.

I'll I'll I'll offer up to $3.50 for it now. And so I'm waiting for the last day waiting for the last day. Two days before the auction ends, it gets taken off auction. And I'm so oh, man, dude. So here here we go again.

I get an email from a bogus, domainer. Name doesn't check out. Phone number goes to a busy signal all the time. And that's how the domain world is. And he says, hey.

We took it off because we think we can make more money with the seller off market. Make your best offer. I'd submitted an offer through escrow.com for $350 going, this is my best offer. Don't hear back. Okay.

Two months later, we're like, we lost it. Someone else wants to edge us out. And if they they paid more for that, good for them. And I'm like, big domain sales, if if it's sold for more than $3.50, these all get an article. Like, they get an article.

Yeah.

Steve: They go to Domain name journal.

Trevor: Yeah. Domain, domainsalecaret.com, and up pops an article. But it wasn't what I thought. Like, it wasn't that it got sold. It was that this big domainer, he's one of the bigger guys in the world, part of his philanthropy is finding domains that expired and shouldn't have expired because the people lost track of it or the person's representative messed it up or whatever.

He found it. He researched heavily in a day and a half to find the owners. The guy who passed away, he didn't tell his family or his estate that he had sold this domain. They had no clue about it. This domainer finds the family before the auction closes.

They do whatever they need to do to get the get ownership to them, and I just reach out to that domainer. I tell our story and cast a vision and and, you know, just really said I appreciated Michael's art over the years. I did because I looked at it a lot, trying to get that domain. And, over about three months, we had a chance to build a connection with the family, build a connection with that guy. And, they said they wanted $900.

I said, that's more than I'm willing to pay, but we came up with a number that works for us Yeah. And 600,000.

Steve: Were you the sole person? Are you the sole owner of Carrot?

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: Okay. So you didn't have to get approved by anybody.

Trevor: Just Well, I I own 80%. So I I I took it back, to my cofounder, my technical cofounder, and he was all in on it too. And we just we did the math on it. We had the cash. We did buy it on terms.

So kinda use some of the real estate stuff in there. 600 k over five years, with the I think it was a 125,000 on down payment, but with the full intention that in two years, we were gonna renegotiate with them to get a early payoff

Steve: for a

Trevor: big discount. And and we did. I think we got $100,000 off by paying it off. It was really

Steve: Explain to me the justification. Not to justify to me, but for the listeners, because I'm a giant domainer. Right? I I own way too many domains.

Trevor: Mhmm. So

Steve: Yep. Not giant domainer in that. I I have I'm a big deal, but I have a bunch of domains.

Trevor: Of them. Yeah. I've got so many I I at one time, I went through because we have land selling, land flipping websites on Carrot where you can get a a ton of leads that come through Carrot or land, mobile home. I just went and bought, like, all the states that I could find on, you know, sellmylandoregon.com. Like, all those.

I've got a gazillion of them not using. But for for me, one of the things I've always I've always believed in, I mean, if you guys are watching the video of this, you see my water bottle, you see, like, you guys mentioned orange on my darn suitcase in there. That carrot t shirt. Yeah. Carrot t shirt's black.

Just, you know, change up so I'm not an orange all the time. But I I believe in branding because if if we can I I Steve, I call it, I call it, subconscious retargeting? Mhmm. So if you're gonna retarget someone on Facebook, right, someone they visited your website, now you can serve them up an ad to stay in front of them. And early on, I'm going, how do I build a brand that I can get into the their their psyche so much and become a part of their world so much that anytime they see the color or the vegetable or the word, they think of us in subliminal are we targeting?

And so I'm going, well, I need to own the word then. I wanna own the color orange in our industry. That was part of part of Carrot when we started the company. I looked at the the brands the brands and the colors that are, that are in the industry. There weren't any companies orange that had orange at the time.

They were blue and whatever. So I'm like, cool. We own orange now. And we can take that word and have create creative fun things with it. We can make dolls.

We we've sent out thousands of carrot dolls that are super carrot and farmer carrot and all this stuff. So that that was it. We'd already gone it all in on this whole carrot thing. And we said, if we are gonna go expand out of our our industry, we wanna own the word. Because if I'm on a podcast or if if we're talking at eXpCon like it was two weeks ago, and I mentioned Carrot or Carrot software, I want you to be able to Google that and find us.

Yeah. Which is hard when it's a vegetable versus just, like, you know Kleenex? Yeah. Kleenex or Kajabi or something like that. I mean yeah.

Steve: Well and and, the other thing too. Right? Like, I had to justify it to my team. So even though I'm the sole owner of the company, I sought to justify it. Right?

Like, how Yep. How can you justify spending on like, because I I bought in the last just in the last few years. Right? Like, disruptors.com. Right?

Trevor: That's a big one.

Steve: Yeah. That was disruptors.com, closemysales.com. Mhmm. And there's a few other ones. But, I mean, even over the years, right, like, I because my broker just Stunning Homes Realty.

Right? So I bought stunninghomes.com. Right?

Trevor: Like Yeah. It's just You got some good ones, man.

Steve: I've been buying them over the years. Yep. And so, like, how do you justify it? And for me, like, again, for everyone listening, is, like, the SEO optimization. Right?

The if someone's looking to buy if they got a sales organization and they need some sales training and they do a search something about sales, And the first not the first organic result because SEO is tough as heck. Yeah. But the first pay per click result is close more sales.com/objections. Yep. That's it.

Right? They can see that. It's like, okay. Like Mhmm. I'm gonna get credit from the user.

Yeah. There's some there's some associated credit. But then on top of that, Google Yep. For SEO reasons or optimization reasons, will charge me less. Mhmm.

So, like, the what you pay for it does you get that money back.

Trevor: Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep.

Steve: And then, for example, I just posted on Facebook last week, say, just bought closemoresales.com. Mhmm. And the first person that commented sends me a direct message. I need to hire 200 salespeople right now. There we go.

Dude. It's a unifying message.

Trevor: The the credibility too is huge. So, Dan Martell, I think he stopped by here.

Steve: He stopped by last week?

Trevor: Yeah. Last week. So, that's why I'm down here this week. He's hanging out with Dan the next few days. And, Dan's been my coach since 2017, I think it is.

And I ran this by him. I'm like, Dan, it's a big number. I'm getting ready to submit this thing. What do you think about it? And he asked me some questions.

And, to give more tactical justification for it, number one, it's an asset. I can sell it. Software company do we don't have assets. Right. I have a computer that's three years old, and I have a domain name

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Really. And we we have we have code and we have customers. Right? So if if everything worst case scenario, the code were for some reason to be garbage and we didn't have any customers, I would have no assets anymore. But I have a domain that's worth something now.

Yeah. Right? So that that's one of the one part of I can sell this one word domain, and there's a bunch of other startups that are based that have the Carrot name. They're well way, heavily venture funded. The the next thing with it was the whole question of, am I gonna regret this in ten years?

Would I what would I pay in five or ten years if I was really one to own that? Would I regret not paying the extra $100 or $200? Like, oh, yeah. Of course. The one that Dan pointed out to me, though, and he and he would he would introduce me, after this.

You were in the we're at the the boardroom with the CEO, Jeff Jeff Lawson of Twitter of Twitter or at the thumbtack,uh,.com CEO room or the HubSpot's boardroom with their number three guy. And what I was going and here here's Trevor Mach or here's Trevor with carrot.com. He never said my domain before I had that. Mhmm. And Dan goes, he goes, dude, can you imagine the doors are gonna open when you send an email with trevor@carrot.com versus trevor at on carrot?

Because your status and the the way people are gonna treat you seriously in the in the bigger world

Steve: Mhmm. It's

Trevor: gonna go way up. You're gonna get the email open. You're gonna get the reply. Right. And it's happened.

So I can get better replies, better opens, people paying attention because they look at it and go, they're not a slouch if they were able to get that domain name.

Steve: This is versus, like, the realtor that has a Hotmail.

Trevor: Yeah. It it exactly.

Steve: Send me an email. Stevetrang@hotmail.com.

Trevor: Yeah. Dude, so if if you're a real estate investor as an example or an agent or whatever, and and and you have an email that's you know, I I live in Roseburg. Right? So it's like roseburgrealestate.com or something.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah.

Trevor: It's probably gonna get a few more doors open than, you know, Marsha, whatever it is.

Steve: Yeah. Rosemary real estate hotmail dot com.

Trevor: Yeah. So the the the brand is is is a big deal, and and look at it as an asset. But I do understand that not everyone wants to build a brand, and it does take real work to build a brand.

Steve: Investment.

Trevor: Yeah. It's it's an investment. Here's a couple other things, Steve, that that we've done over the years that might be interesting for people. May not be, but but because we're going this is our opportunity that if we can if we can surround our client with our brand and make it so our core values, our shared values, and then they then they they transfer the values that we have onto the things that we sent them in the mail, then we're able to now have them relate to our brand on a daily basis. But not because of the color, because of the character, because of our values.

That's step one. Your brand has to stand for something that Right. Is important, you believe in, and then everything else is a vessel to deliver those values. So we created a coloring book at one time. So we have all these these carrot characters.

There's, like, super carrot that has it's Superman carrot. It's dolls we've sent thousands of them out to our clients, farmer carrot, coach carrot, carrot gal, carrot you know, the carrot bud. I can miss them one or two. And when people would hit milestones in their software, we would send out one of these in the mail, and they'd, of course, post it on social. You'll see you'll see them up in the on the shelves of people on the back of videos and things like that.

But we go, well, how can we this is on accident, Steve. We found that they were giving those dolls to their kids or their animal a a lot of the time or they would put them back there to display. And they would send pictures of their kid in their first day of school with the super carrot. And, like, that was the thing that was protecting them on the way to school That's awesome. On the second grade.

And I'm going, dude, that's amazing. That's so cool. And I was going, how can we and our customers would send that to us. I go, how can we connect deeper with our with the people and the things our customers care about, their children, their their animals, the causes they care about, and do it in in a truly intentional way that we're doing it because we care about them, not because it's a tactic for marketing. And so that's why we'd make more dolls.

We made the cut the the coloring books that had the care characters enacting a scene, and there is one scene for every one of our core values. And it and it, was something where our customers could go through it with their kids, and they could impart on, our values in a way where it's not like word for word, but it's a person being positive and encouraging to somebody else. One of our core values would be a beacon of positivity and possibility. Or one of our core values at that time was was add humanity, show that you care. And so same thing.

It's like someone going up to a, I think it was a a carrot bud walking up to an old carrot gal house and giving her some flowers or something like that. But little things like that over time have been kinda cool where you see a you see a customer who's on a fitness journey. I remember a guy out of out of Tennessee. He was on a big fitness journey, and he kept posting, kept posting, kept posting, and he posted something that said, man, I've been running so much. He was way overweight and he lost a lot of weight.

I'm almost done with these shoes. I go, opportunity. Nike just came out with these killer shoes that I love that were, like, all orange, and they're crazy comfortable. I hit up Jen, my assistant, sent him out two pairs of those because he's gonna wear out one pair. I want him to wear it put the second pair on too.

So we sent out two pairs. Loves it, posts on social media, but now he's running out there. It's like he's powered by Cara now. Right? Yeah.

Cara in our values. So that that's why we chose to spend to invest $600 in that because it's way more than a color or a word or removing we spent $300 per letter

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: To remove

Steve: three

Trevor: we spent $300,000 per letter to remove o n Mhmm. From our domain name.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: And it's worth millions.

Steve: Well and just to your point about the, anytime someone thinks of care, they think of you. Right? Like so Adrian Yeah. Adrian knows. Like, I got a chance to hang out with him for some time.

Mhmm. And we were in, it's Biloxi. I can't remember the name of the hotel. It's like a little mini Bellagio. Yeah.

And, I was like, dude, I'm buying you this carrot cake.

Trevor: There you go. Exactly.

Steve: You don't have a choice. We posted made stories of bio. I was like, yeah, you don't have a choice. Like, we're we're eating this carrot cake together, and we're sending this to Trevor. Like, we're we're posting this on Instagram, and we're tagging Trevor.

Trevor: Love it. I love it. I and I I remember that, and and that's happened so many times. And even with, like, close close more sales

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: That's something I think about as I go, love domain, that's a killer domain. And now what's the mechanism that delivers that domain, delivers the values through other things? With us, it happens to be colors and cutesy little things because there's, like, a carrot is a carrot, but there's something there. Like, there's something there that when people think about close more sales or think about sales disruptors, like, it's this thing. Tom Kroll, it was the rhino or it was the bell.

It had nothing to do with Wholesale Inc. No. But it had everything to do with his values and behind it. The rhino and the bell. And we've seen other things like that with other companies too.

So as soon as you find that thing, it just keeps keep injecting it into the conversation to get peep people to recognize something, as you my favorite one, Steve, are the ones that people see on a common basis. Like, they're gonna see the color orange every day. They're probably gonna see a carrot at least once a week, and I want them to see see that all the time. Mhmm. So with Tom, I guarantee when people are watching, you know, National Geographic with their kids and a rhino comes by and they're in Wholesale Inc, they're like, oh my gosh.

They'll probably send a picture of it.

Steve: Oh, for sure. Rhino and Tom Kroll. Yeah. You can't you can't not make that connection.

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: So Carrot. So we we jumped in the domain, but, you know, like, why carrots?

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? I mean, like, website design is an innovation. Yeah. Right? Like, there's all sorts of different options.

I mean Yep. See, right now, they're making it so easy. Like, when I was doing it, right, like, I was using WordPress. Yeah. I did some HTML, but, fortunately, WordPress came along.

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: Right? So now you got freaking, like, Wix and Squarespace and GoHighLevel.

Trevor: Like Everything. Yeah.

Steve: It's it's almost dummy proof. Yep. So why Carrot?

Trevor: Yeah. So at at that time, so it would have been 2,012 or so.

Steve: That means it's today.

Trevor: Oh, today.

Steve: Like, why should I

Trevor: I got you. As as a product. As a product.

Steve: Why should I use Carrot? Yep. There there's like there's so many options here

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: That, anyone that's in college Yep. Can do it. Like, not graduate college. Like, someone that's, like Yeah. Freshman year college, you can make a website today.

Trevor: A 100%. And and so the the original the original theory of Karat, and it still it still spans today, we've just amplified it, is even back in 2012, it was still easy to get online. Mhmm. Right? And so 2000 let's say 2002 through 2012, the call to arms for small businesses was get online.

Right? That's when you saw your Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, GoDaddy, all your local web developers popped up in that decade Mhmm. From 2002 or so through 2012. So everybody was online who wanted to be, or they could get online very quickly. Mhmm.

The challenge that comes up is just getting online is not enough. K? It's actually performing and squeezing out those performance edges. Now for most companies, like, if you're if you're the corner, convenience store in Roseburg, Oregon, conversion rate optimise optimization doesn't really matter. Right?

So go set that up with your $9 a month thing, and you're just fine. When you're in a high margin service business, and that's that's what we identified when we when we came into this industry, high margin service business where if you lose a deal, it costs you 10,000, 20,000

Steve: It hurts.

Trevor: $30.50, 100. Right?

Steve: Yeah. Losing a losing a a snicker bar sale doesn't hurt. No.

Trevor: It it doesn't. So it it it's a big one, and no one wants to to lose a a $50,000 deal.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: So we walked back and said, can we make our sites and system perform in the three core areas better than anything else to help you save lost deals that you don't even know you're losing right now. And it's, speed is the first one. That's something every quarter we're we're launching page speed updates. And even on the even on the PPC side of things, we have landing page we're we're revamping the landing page builder right now that are blazing fast where a lot of people will will do Google pay per click tests as they're sending them to their 2,000 word home page with all the pictures and videos. And, of course, that's gonna load a little bit slower, but there's different pages for different for different types of marketing.

But page speed is number one. Number two is is ranking ability. So I believe in evergreen marketing big time. That marketing you do one time, it builds momentum, and then it keeps working for you even after you stop doing it. And that's getting ranked well in Google.

Right? Or offline version of that is networking.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: So that's the second one. We wanna be the best in the world at helping you get an edge to rank better in Google for, the highest quality and highest converting leads. By far, there's no other system including custom WordPress sites, in our data that have more top five rankings and have more seller leads coming through them other than Carrot. So there's something there that's working. There's some secret sauce there.

There's some stuff that's not secret sauce. I was just banging on it for a decade, just refining and refining. The third part of it is conversion rate optimization. This is probably the one that's the hardest to show apples to apples. Right?

But it's also one of the ones that we've pioneered the most over the years. So when you look at, sell my house or when you look at, like, the call to action buttons, the the words and the buttons or the flow, most of those things emanated out of care over the years. So what what we focus on now is where, at any given time, we're running 10 to 20 split tests a month across a network of usually, couple dozen or even a couple 100 websites. So when we find things that convert quicker, we roll them out to the system so you don't have to worry about doing that yourself or we educate you on it. If it's something we can't just go change anything.

We don't wanna change your logo or something like that. And we're always rolling out page speed updates in the quarterly basis. We're always rolling out SEO, updates in the quarterly basis as well to make you guys stand out. So could you replicate a high performing and high highly optimized caret site, with a custom word per site? Of course you could.

Right? Of course you could. The the the question is, what are you gonna have to invest to make that happen? Who you gonna have to have on your team? How much money are you gonna have to spend now and over time to be able to make that true?

We've had so many people. Tony Javier is a a latest example, but so many big guys moving back over from custom sites. Gabriel Gabriel Garcia went Carrot custom site, $10,000 custom site back to Carrot the last three years because performance. Right. So that that's the main thing, Steve, is is, yes.

Your cousin Eddie can build a site. I can go launch a site on Wix. I can make it even look a lot like Carrot. It's that one tweak, the five words, the placement of the of the of the button, the size of the button, the way it's displaying on mobile. If you miss that one thing, that could be that one lead that was that 50,000 ordeal you lost.

Steve: Yeah. And I think you look at here's something that I have I always have to it seems spend more time explaining than I feel like I have to, but it seems like there's always the case. Mhmm. It's like, they'll look at a site and say, but that doesn't look as good as this other site.

Trevor: Yeah. Oh, man.

Steve: So here, why why don't you speak on that?

Trevor: Oh, hun 100%. Dude, I've I've written blog posts on this. You know, 1,200 word bigger pockets replies. So I'll I'll start with this. What's the highest grossing and high probably highest converting ecommerce site in the world?

Amazon. Is it as pretty as apple.com? Not even close. No. K.

So here here here's the thing. I'll go down to science now. Okay? So Amazon and Apple are are probably among the top, you know, top three or four or five highest grossing retail sites in the world. Yeah.

K? Why do they look so different? If if on one hand, Apple is sleek and lots of white space and big big images in in low text, and Amazon is not sleek and a million different small images clutter, clutter here and there. Why are they both looking completely different yet also working? It's not that it it it it's not that, well, it it it's this.

They're going after different avatars. Mhmm. Right? Different avatars with different needs. The person who's buying an iPhone is looking for the sleekness.

If they if they went to amazon.com, and amazon.com as it is currently laid out was the thing displaying what an iPhone looks like, you look at it and go, that sucks. Like, the branding of Apple is sleek and stuff. So the the the design needs to match the avatar. The design needs to match what the avatars are looking for, and the design needs to remove resistance for that avatar. I'm buying an iPhone once again or an iPad.

I wanna see the the fine design notes on the edge of that thing, which means it zooms in and makes

Steve: Tell me how many pixels per inch or whatever something.

Trevor: Whatever it is. Right? Over on Apple, it's a different avatar.

Steve: Or on Amazon.

Trevor: Or on Amazon. It it's it's quick purchase at your fingertips. It's being able to, get anything you want. I'm not looking for fancy design, but anything I want with speed, with confidence. It it has reviews, has different things to build build confidence for that and help me discover a different avatar.

When we go and look and talk about motivated sellers as an example, there's been, we've done a bunch of tests on it. We've done short copy, long copy, full white beautiful Amazon looking or apple apple looking pages versus the cluttered wordy pages that we have today. And marketingexperiments.com has ran many studies in long copy, short copy by industry. And what we found in marketingexperiments.com found, I I linked up in some blog posts, is that higher risk the transaction is for the prospect, the more the person wants to be educated and the more copies needed to push them over the edge. Mhmm.

So if you're if you're doing a free report, you don't need to have very much copy. K? Very little copy. A form, maybe a picture of what you're getting, couple bullet points, and you're good. Very low risk.

If you're looking at selling your house and getting an offer on it, it's a high risk transaction. The two industries that marketingexperiments.com found actually benefited from longer copy and converted better with longer copy than shorter copy. The only two were medical and real estate. Medical and real estate. Every other industry actually got better performance with short copy.

Steve: Interesting.

Trevor: So why is that? Big stakes things. When I'm looking to sell my house, I'm in distress. Oftentimes, I need to do some research. I need to feel comfortable with the solution I'm finding.

I need to even find out what options there are. My dad, was diagnosed six weeks ago with a terminal brain cancer. Tough situation. Sorry to hear that. Yeah.

I I appreciate it. It's it's it's been tough. Really, really tough. But what we've been doing is researching the heck out of stuff.

Steve: Right?

Trevor: And so before we go and make a move on any sort of treatment, I'm not gonna do it off of a slim landing page. I'm reading 4,000 words on that thing, and I wanna read every word of it.

Steve: Yeah. Every

Trevor: page. Every page. So the same is happening for a lot of sellers is we we've tested squeeze page landing page on paid traffic versus not. We've tested the heck out of that. So it's not like we haven't tested.

We've tested dozens of times across hundreds of websites. And what what a lot of people talk about with with the data is they say squeeze pages for PPC work better. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But what we've found on

Steve: That's a general principle.

Trevor: It's a general principle.

Steve: Not necessarily real estate specific.

Trevor: Exactly. So here's where our data over decades. And believe me, we could make a switch and have all PPC traffic go to squeeze pages. Reason we don't is because the data shows us we shouldn't Mhmm. A a large scale of data.

Now Facebook ads should go to squeeze pages. We found that that in general, when you're driving from social media to a website, it should be to a squeeze page without a bunch of buttons to click and links to click because they're in distraction mode. They're not in research mode. You need to capture them while you got the attention. Mhmm.

Right? And and especially getting crazy quick load time.

Steve: Well, we're we're interrupting them in the middle of something Exactly. Versus the intentional of a Google search.

Trevor: Exactly. So crazy quick load load times are even more important on Facebook, ads, because they're all mobile pretty much. And then you want it to be pretty slim content because they're mobile once again. Mhmm.

Steve: So

Trevor: you go over to, Google searches. A lot of those are desktop searches. Not all, but a lot of them are desktop searches. Persons in the mode of searching. And so when I when I drive to a Google pay per click ad or an organic page, we actually found that you serve them up more information.

You need to eliminate all objections that they have. Mhmm. Now you still may get a little bit of a higher click conversion rate on a Google Ad to a squeeze page. Where we found the real differences, Steve, is lead to deal rate. And so when you track it all the way to deal because we own InvestorFuse now.

So we have the data all the way to deal now.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: When you track it all the way to deal and we took the leads that come in through all sources of through Invest Refuse Mhmm. Direct mail, all the other systems you can think of. And we know exactly what the lead to deal is. We know exactly what the profit per deal is

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: When all lead types are coming in and even other systems. Okay? So we we can come out with with with that data and show that lead to deal when done this way is is markedly higher.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. That's so it's fascinating. The fact that you have between squeeze page and SEO and Facebook and this and that. But, you know, just again for everyone that's watching.

Right? Like, could you Mhmm. Make your own page?

Trevor: To a 100%. Yeah.

Steve: Yes. You could. Right?

Trevor: And that's

Steve: what I did before Mhmm. I was working with you guys. Yep. Amount of work necessary. Yeah.

Amount of testing involved. Yep. Plug ins breaking for no reason whatsoever.

Trevor: Yeah. Or spam stuff. I mean, that that's the latest one that, you know, I was reading a Facebook thread the other day, and one of our clients, like, man, we're getting hammered by spam. Everybody is across the industry. And so our team men measures and monitor those trends.

And then we have the aggregates. We can see the trends across everything. We put spam blockers in when that next wave comes in. So it's all those things. Right.

Updating plugins, having the right plugins. You know how many people have came over to Care because they didn't update their whatever whatever plugin for two years. It got hacked. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Trevor: they had to go to Upwork to pay someone $400 to unhack it. Mhmm. And then they're like, I don't wanna mess with that anymore.

Steve: That was the other thing I was gonna say was the Russian hackers.

Trevor: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That stuff we we have a 7 figure payroll on the on the tech tech side that takes care of that stuff for you.

Steve: But So you could do this yourself.

Trevor: Or Totally could.

Steve: You could just use a professional who's already testing it with 7,000 other clients Yeah. Who optimized it.

Trevor: The the biggest objection that comes up, and this is a real objection, is all carrot size look the same.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Right? That's a bit and it's it's logical. If you were to go if you were to go look at, like, NASCAR. Right? NASCAR, the the car that wins repeatedly or or is is winning more than others, it looks generally the same.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: But there's certain tweaks and modifications. They made the drivers a little bit better. They hone this in. They hone that in. They really tweaked it, and they're winning more consistently than someone else even with a car that looks similar.

And so the first thing I say is, if something's winning, you should model the thing that's winning first. Right? Don't go, that's winning. Let me go this direction and do something completely different just for the sake of being different. The model is winning first, and then you make it your own.

And so, you know, guys like Tony or Tom Caffarello, one of the biggest, buyers in the country, or you can just go down the list. You know, Cody Hoffine and all those guys, they have caret sites, but they've gone through and customized them.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Use the structure that performs great, our system of support and and tech behind it, but then went through our concierge program or something else where you look at it and go, that doesn't look like a carrot site, but it's got the carrot elements there. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: So it has it has the the wireframe. Yep. Yep. So you talked about this a moment ago, but I was hoping you could spend some more time on it. So you're talking with Energetics because you you made some great content around Energetics.

So I know we talked about it a moment ago, but, like, you know, for someone that, see how how can I elaborate this? For someone that is newer, right, as far as the energy audits, what are some specific exercises they can do today to, to to maximize their energy? And I know we touched on it a little bit, but very, very specific instructions Yep. For someone that's listening to the episode right now.

Trevor: Dude, so the the first thing I I would I would do, Steve, and same thing. I wish you would have done this years ago. Mhmm. And, are you a disciplined guy? Like, do you are you naturally disciplined?

Steve: I like to think so. Yeah.

Trevor: I'm not. So I'm I'm absolutely not naturally disciplined. I I have to try and do everything in my power Mhmm. To try to stay disciplined.

Steve: All

Trevor: the way to the fact that I tried five gyms in five year all five gyms in Roseburg, including the one across the street, and I wouldn't say consistent. So when I built a gym in my office that I literally have to walk through the gym with my coach there at a certain time to work out. Yeah. And now I have friends who work out with us with me in the gym, and it's amazing. Right?

But that's how I have to build in these triggers for me. And so the the the things that that that I would guide people to do very, very tactically is come up with your five nonnegotiables, five daily nonnegotiables. And and make those five daily nonnegotiables something that gives you energy, something that drives you forward that you're learning from, something that allows you to reach out and connect with people. Okay? And I'll I'll give you a few of mine.

So I love reading, but I don't have the discipline to do it oftentimes. I get distracted by Instagram or whatever. So, one of my daily nonnegotiable is to read 10 pages a day. I I get energized when I read. I get all these ideas.

I find social media content potential, a bunch of stuff. Another one is sweat every day. I got that one from Dan Martell, my coach. Because he was just really leading the way with it, and he's like, every day is working out. Mhmm.

And I was going, man, I'm working out three days a week. That feels pretty good. And he called me out on it one day. And he goes, dude, but you're not working out more days a week than you are. And I am.

Mhmm. When you count count the weekends, right, you're actually you're actually barely maintaining if you're working out three days a week. And so I found when I move daily and work out daily, even if it's just a couple mile walk, I have more energy. Mhmm. So walk daily, move daily, take some of those calls and walk outside when you're on those calls.

Take some of those meetings instead of Zoom meetings. They're walking meetings now or whatever it is. Another one for me is a five to five nonnegotiate or nonnegotiable reaching out to five people a day. It could be a text message, an Instagram DM. Mhmm.

That gives me energy. If I can connect with people instead of being stuck in my little bubble over here, the world gets bigger. Things are great. So come up with your version of five nonnegotiables that you can do today with your current income.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: And then ideally, those nonnegotiables are probably gonna be the same whether you have $10,000,000 in the bank account or $10 in the bank account. Mhmm. I wanna move every day no matter how much money I have. I wanna read every day. I wanna be able to reach out to people every day.

And I've got a a couple more of them. Like, I wanna do those things every single day. Every single day of my life, hopefully. So come up with those now. Not for the future.

You can do them now. I think the other thing is recognizing when you do your best works is very tactical. When you when do you do your best work? For me, I do my best work before noon

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Unless it's like this. So if it's like this, I'm doing all that afternoon. Mhmm. If it's me drawing and doing focus work, it's all before noon. So change your schedule if you're able to to cater towards when you have the most energy to do the work that you love to do.

Yeah. So just adjust that schedule and try as much as you can to to hold fast to that. I don't take meetings before 11:00 except for on Mondays now. And so that's my time when I get to kinda do what I wanna do.

Steve: You and I were talking offline. Yep. And you were talking about how you felt like you caught you called it mostly right between 2022 and 2023 Yeah. With a shift. Mhmm.

What do you do to stay on top of trends?

Trevor: It's a good question. I'm I'm gonna say something that isn't very replicable, and it's probably not true. So we'll we'll let's go through and process this a little bit. I was gonna say, I think I just have this kind of a innate ability to see trends, which I think might be true in some way, but there's gotta be a way to replicate it. So, for for years, Steve, and and I'll kinda tell you about why I think I I called 80% of it and the part that I didn't, is I I do a pretty good job going macro.

Right? When when a lot of people get stuck in the day to day or as Gary v would say, the the dirt, being in the dirt on the day to day, you know, hand to hand combat's great. But but if you're in that too much, the world's moving around you. Right? And we don't know what's going on.

So I I go I go macro quite a bit. I'll have conversations like this. I message our customers a lot. I'll say, hey. How is the market doing for you?

What are the challenges you're having right now?

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: I'm always reading in in in learning up on ancillary products and ancillary industries. So I know that real estate invest in investor world is this industry. Six, seven years ago, I'm I'm reading up and diving deep in the retail market because I'm like, I think somehow these are gonna converge together. How I got that

Steve: as well.

Trevor: Yeah. How I got that is is is history repeats itself as they say. Like, what other major industries like, what are the trends been over the last hundred years with major industries? With auto, with, the the mortgage or not the mortgage. Yeah.

The mortgage industry. With, the stock industry. Look at all these industries and go, what happened to all those? They all went they all went through a phase where launch and everything every everyone and their dog was selling cars or making cars or doing newspapers or doing mortgages or whatever, then it goes through a consolidation phase. Mhmm.

Steve: And

Trevor: then once the consolidation phase happens, the second technology catches up with the inefficiencies in that market. It, it makes more efficient the things that human beings are doing, yanks human beings out of it. It drives margins down. Things get squeezed. Do this happen in all of it?

If you go look at the travel industry, the mortgage industry, the stock industry, all of it. So I think being a student of trends outside of your industry is key because odds are history is gonna repeat itself. You seem to look and go, what other industries maybe had this for us, it's technology. Right? What other industries had technology impacted sooner than real estate?

Real estate took a while because it's a complicated transaction. The stock the stock market is a little bit simpler because they they can all route it through this It's all New York. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

But the real estate transaction is complicated. Mhmm. You've got the buyer with varying degrees of of of knowledge and experience buying property. You've got the seller with same thing, varying degrees of knowledge. You have the agent in there now.

You have a title company or you have attorneys. Like, it's just complicated. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's been a student of trends outside of your industry going back a 100. Look at the major industries.

How do they change? They all did the same thing. Mhmm. Blew up consolidation, technology add add efficiency, removes a human element, makes it more efficient for the client at the end of the day, and then massive opportunity opens up after that. That's what happened.

Steve: Massive opportunity for who?

Trevor: For, well, for for the customer at the end of the day because it should make things better for the customer.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: But let's go to the mortgage or let's go to the the SOC SOC world. Okay? So back in the eighties when the big crash happened in in this, the 1986 or '85 or whatever it is, stock crash, you had to call the stock broker to make a trade at that time. And so what happened was this thing was crashing. Everyone's picking up the phone and calling.

And getting through. Not getting through. They're they're letting the phone ring because they're freaking out. They're going, I can't answer all those phone calls, nor am I wanting to. Everything is it's it's a nightmare.

They're not able to sell. It then all of a sudden amplified the inefficiency. The customer got pissed off finally. Yeah. The customer said, this is no longer okay to have to go through a gateway or a tollgate in the middle between me and my stock.

Mhmm. Okay? And so when when we look at that, where are their tollgates or gateways between the customer getting what they want and that tollgate taking money? Because eventually that tollgate's gonna go away. Mhmm.

So when we look at it from the mortgage side or the stock side or now the real estate side, there's a tollgate in there. And we're all looking at it going, I know a lot of people don't like that they had to pay that agent $35 to to do a little bit of work.

Steve: Right.

Trevor: It's an inefficiency. So the way the stock market did it, that that happened. And then their regulations happened after that in the industry to say, hey. Stock brokers, you can't do this thing anymore. At the same time, technology came in.

And I think it was Charles Schwab was among the first, if not the first, followed by E Trade right after that. Now technology, along with the regulations, made it so they could, add more efficiency and lower cost. Mhmm. Okay. So now the customer wins.

The customer wins to where it's a it's a lower price. Now here's how the stockbroker won at the end of the day. The stockbroker who didn't shift lost their job, or they went and became a call center employee at at Charles Schwab. Right? But the stock broker or the stock the stock broker who was able to shift and go, what can't be made more efficient with technology right now?

It was, I'm gonna shift to be a certified financial planner. All these dead designations popped up the next thirty years.

Steve: Oh, really?

Trevor: You saw CFPs. You saw all these designations pop up over, late eighties, mostly nineties, early two thousands, gazillion of them. Okay? So the people with the same skill set said, well, that's no longer valid for me, or I'm just gonna be okay with high volume, low low low commission, which some did that. But most of them either got out of business, became a call center employee at Charles Schwab, or they said, I'm gonna go actually try to add value by being a consultant and delivering solutions that technology cannot provide.

Yeah. They they went out there, and they became fiduciaries for the clients. An entire new industry really, blossomed at that time. And and there's a little bit of that with the travel industry. I wouldn't say it's as much, but a lot of travel agents went out of business.

People are buying online. But now you have a lot of these specialty, experience based, travel opportunities that came up where they're gonna craft and curate these crazy cool experiences. It's more than just going, I wanna go to this place and do this cruise and get this hotel, and the travel agent takes care of it or booking it on on booking.com or whatever, Expedia. It's now I want something that I want someone to craft a freaking cool experience. Yep.

And that industry isn't giant yet, but there's loads like that. Yeah. So I think the same thing is gonna happen in real estate. I've been saying this for five years in the podcast, Steve, where I'm like, literally, so many times in the podcast, I was calling this before all this happened. I'm going, real estate agents, if you don't embrace the hybrid approach, retail market and wholesale market are coming together.

IBuyers accelerated it in the middle. Right? Because they became brokers brokers too, and they're offering an offer and and a listing. That's accelerating the move towards the middle. Commissions are being compressed.

Steve: Right?

Trevor: That same thing that happened in all those other other markets. As commissions are compressed, and they're being compressed by technology and competition, then all of a sudden you have people leaving the industry Mhmm. Because they can't make it on the commission or the ones who shift. And they say, I'm gonna be hybrid. I'm gonna be a consultant to the seller rather than just taking an order of a listing Right.

Or an offer. And then you look at that and go, okay. Well, that's better for the seller. The seller gets a more direct way to sell their home. Might save a little bit of money maybe.

But then we ask, well, what are the things that technology is not gonna take care of?

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Well, they're not gonna flip out. It's not gonna flip houses for for us still. That's still gonna be a thing for a long time. The more creative transactions, they're not gonna happen through technology anytime soon.

Steve: Not at

Trevor: all. It's gonna be the bread and butter. The buyer's comfortable. They bought a house or two probably. They they have the mortgage lined up, and it's that bread and butter home, or it's a higher price somewhere.

The person just bought a bunch from. They could give a crap about an agent representing them. But the complicated stuff isn't going away. So that's why I say people should double down on the complicated situations. They should double down in creative solutions, creative finance, sub two, all the things you guys know about and and become specialists in their area for those things.

Steve: Yeah. One thing that, you and I have had long conversations about Mhmm. Is leadership. Yeah. So you have so how many employees at Carrot?

Trevor: 65.

Steve: Yeah. 65. Mhmm. So a lot of humans. A lot of emotions.

Yeah. How did you go from, let's make this website thing to 65 employees?

Trevor: Yeah. I remember I remember pretty darn vividly in the early days when we had six, seven, eight employees, and we're driving to our first ever company retreat. Like, we did a you know, we used to get everyone together twice a year at that time. Now it's once a year in person, then once a year, you know, the big virtual in the middle of the year. And so it was Pete, my my head of sales at that time.

He's like, hey. And Adrian, I remember very vivid conversations with Adrian. He was at our very first company retreat in 2016 too. And and they're asking, like, how big do you think this is gonna get? I go, man, I don't I don't think we're ever gonna have more than, like, 12, maybe 18 employees.

Like, I don't know if I can handle that. And so the the the challenge I think that we have to go through, Steve, is it goes back to vision. Number one, is my vision big enough that it's gonna require me to learn how to be a better leader? At that time, it didn't. I was just trying to get to a million a year, and I'm like, cool.

Mailbox money. Let's sit back and just do whatever we're gonna do. But as I saw the impact we were making for our clients, as I saw the impact we're making for our community there in Roseburg, Oregon, being able to take profits and put them into buying buildings and building entrepreneur group and entrepreneur co workspace and other things and really solidifying our company mission to help people build businesses of freedom and impact. I go, man, who am I if that's what I'm truly passionate about, who am I to say there's all these other people out there in the world that don't deserve that because I'm scared to become a better leader.

Steve: That's a big question.

Trevor: And I just I was thinking about it. I'm like, well, what if I just wanna have a pile of money and just go relax and whatever? And I'd have to ask those questions. Well, would I truly be happy about that for happy with that for a long time? And the answer for me kept going back to, no.

I I don't I I always wanna be doing interesting work. I wanna be doing work that's valuable to people. And as I kept asking that question, I say, well, if I'm not gonna grow with carrot then, and I still want those things, and let's say I sell Carrot or just hit pause on it so it doesn't grow, I'm probably gonna need to go find that same feeling somewhere else. I'm gonna start another company. Mhmm.

And I'm gonna continually be stuck at this at this level. I'm gonna be continually stuck at 1,000,000 a year. Whatever that number is, I can never grow past it because I will never step into that grow that pain line and say, how do I need to grow as a leader? What do I need to learn? Who do I need to get around me?

So that pain line is now something I just know. And so I just internalize that and recognize that there are those lines. And I just said, man, I remember a buddy of mine ran his first marathon.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: And, he got done with the marathon. I haven't ran a marathon yet. I'm gonna I'm gonna do it this next year. But, he got another marathon. I asked him how it was.

He goes, dude, I get mile 18. Dude, it it it just hit me. Hit hit this massive wall. And then I said, what did you do? And he goes, man, well, I pushed through it and took me a couple miles, but then I got my second wind.

Then he said it hit him again at, like, mile twenty twenty four or something like that. And so he said the thing that got him through that, was the fact that he knew it was coming. He knew that that pain or that pain line in running, that pain was gonna come somewhere around mile 16 to 20 and probably again because people told him that. Right? And so when he hit that pain, he knew it was coming so he could go, I know it's gonna go away too because the guys said it would.

Mhmm. If I just push through it and I and I, you know, and I adjust my mindset and adjust my gait or whatever I need to do, I pop a little gooey thing or whatever to get energy. I'm gonna make it through that. And I look at business the same way. When you're running the marathon of business and you don't know where those pain lines are and you're running blind, did you hit the pain lines?

It feels like pain that you don't wanna go through.

Steve: Yeah. World's falling apart.

Trevor: Yeah. If you hit the pain line in running a marathon, let's say no one ever told you you're gonna hit that or how to get through it, a lot of people are probably gonna give up.

Steve: You stop.

Trevor: They're just gonna go, dude, I think my leg is gonna fall off. I'm probably, like, I'm probably burning a hole in my my gut right now. It's a health issue. But in business, that's why I say things break at threes and tens. Right?

Things break at 100,000, 300,000, 3,000,000, 10,000,000, 30, and and above. And at every at every spot during that, I've got an entire matrix. Like, it's insanely detailed. Every single level all the way in the identity you need you need to adopt, how leadership changes, how your team changes, how your marketing changes, how your strategy changes in this industry all the way up to 10,000,000, insanely detail. And as long as you know that that pain line is coming, then you know you can plan towards it.

You know what you need what you need to grow in, what you need to learn, who you need to get around you. So that for me is how I got over that. I had the vision going, I don't wanna leave all these people in the world hanging if this is what I truly believe. If if this if this mission is actually what I believe, not just a thing on paper, then I should reach as many people as possible with it. Yeah.

Then number two, how do I now not kill myself in the process? And it's knowing the pain lines so you know that they're gonna go away, but also using this business as, business is the best personal growth tool I've ever I've ever encountered. Oh, definitely. And so that's the that that was that big challenge for me at the million dollar mark when I was getting ready to hit pause in the business to go, I'm I'm good. I asked those questions, and I said, okay.

What am I gonna have to do now, and who do I need to surround myself with? Who do I need to learn from to remove these limiting beliefs that more employees equals more pain?

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Because it doesn't. I would say my business today was 65 employees, and my job is far easier than it was when I had 15. Yeah. But you have pain lines in employees too. Twenty, twenty five employees.

20 between twenty and thirty is hard.

Steve: That's good because I'm at 19. So Yeah.

Trevor: Wonderful. It's it's it's hard. And the reason for that, Steve, is because that's usually the spot where you might have a manager or two

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: If you're between ten and twenty that like, you have this manager who manages two or three other people that kinda do the same thing. Right? But once you get up upwards of twenty, twenty five, 30, depending on the business, you usually have to have, like, your first director, your head of. Right? And that's usually also where you're probably around that 3 to 10,000,000.

3 to 10,000,000, you get your first head of it, your first director. And the difference with the director versus the manager, a manager manages the day to day delivery of the thing that's already been decided. Right? This here's this plan. Here's the motion.

You just make sure that that happens every day. The director works with you as the executive or the strategic person to make the plan. They are buying on it, so you should be working on it together, but it's still your plan. They just they they are collaborative in it, but they own the result. So they're fully on the hook for making sure that plan gets executed and the result happens.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: That's way that was way harder for me to lead a director than a manager.

Steve: Yeah. Well, it's a much higher level executive.

Trevor: Yeah. And and you you have to you have to lead completely different. If you lead an individual contributor versus a manager versus a director versus a c level, completely different. Mhmm. Like, when we hired our COO, I hit up Dan.

I'm like, dude, I've never hired a real c level person. Like, an actual legit c level.

Steve: Like, a Fortune five hundred c level person.

Trevor: Yeah. I mean, for a person who who deserves the title. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: Most c COOs in in the real estate industry are not COOs. They're operations managers at best, but they have the inflated title and the inflated pay. And so the the the legit COO, I was getting ready to make the full onboarding like we normally would, like this this this sixty day onboarding or whatever it was and all these details. Go check out this and do this and learn this. And I'm looking at it, and my my head of people built it all out based off of how we hired other people.

I'm looking at it. Oh, man. It just doesn't seem like our COO would have to go through all that stuff. They hit up Dan and go, Dan, how do you onboard, like, a COO or C level? I said, you know, do you make a ninety day plan for them or whatever?

And he goes he goes, no. He goes, they make the ninety day plan. Mhmm. Because you just give them the goals, and they need to come back to you with a plan. You don't onboard them.

They onboard themselves. And so you you ask them, here's where we're going. You onboard them into the systems, make sure they're familiar with other things. Like, they are the ones who are supposed to tell you what to do, Trevor. You're not supposed to tell what them what to do for ninety days.

That's way different than any individual contributor or manager or even a

Steve: director. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it gives me some clarity.

Trevor: Right? Yeah. Dude, I'll I'll share the the the deal with you that literally walks through it in detail what pain line you're probably in at your phase

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: How you get out of it, who you probably need to hire. Mhmm. It's it's fun once you have that.

Steve: You asked me about a post, right, that I made. It's like, you know, like, everything okay? And I was like, well, I'm learning these lessons.

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: Right? And and here's the single most painful part for me in all of this. The reason why it hurts me so much is that I'm on a Michigan 100 millionaires. Yep. I said this one over again.

Mhmm. And part of that is lifting everyone that's around me, especially the people that work in my organization. Letting someone go is consciously being aware Yeah. That this person is not going to be one of the millionaires I'm gonna create.

Trevor: Gotcha. That's a hard decision too. Right.

Steve: Like, I am like, I you cannot like, and, right, the person that got me here won't get you there. Yep. Right? And loyalty is so important to

Trevor: me. Yep.

Steve: Right? So, like, have a person that works with you that wants to that has raised their hand and says, yes. I wanna be part of this journey. Yep. And says, I'm sorry you don't get to be on this ride with us.

Yeah. That's hard for me.

Trevor: It's hard, man. And I'm I I love people. Right? So the reason I had to pull myself out of the hiring process until, like, the very end is because I love everybody. Like, every every candidate looks great to me unless they're terrible.

Right? Which which in general yeah. Then I have paralysis at the end of the hiring decision, so we have a great hiring process now. But, I found that it's that for me, the hardest was that three to 10,000,000 Mhmm. Because at that stage is where it really shines a light on those who are not able to grow in the leadership side of things.

Your individual contributors who are fine being there Mhmm. They can still be fine as long as they're okay with the change of the culture. Alright. And and that's what was a challenge for some of our team members early on that are still individual contributors and were early on too. As you would hear these little grumblings, I was like, oh, the good old days or Mhmm.

Well, man, we can't do that anymore, which is true. In some of it, you kinda, you know, long for those days a little bit, but it's it's a trade off.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: But the three to 10 is where you had this person who was an individual contributor. They became a manager. And and you I need to have a director for this or a head of or whatever you wanna call them, for this department for marketing or for sales or for product or whatever. And the logical thing is to give that guy or gal a chance. Right?

He's in the department, and they're kinda positioned for it. And and I did that a lot. And some worked, some didn't. The the problem when you love people so much like you and I do and you believe in them as I go, maybe it's next quarter. Like, may maybe next quarter, they're gonna unlock.

Mhmm.

Steve: Well,

Trevor: you know what? I'm I'm gonna make a better plan this time. And then you do, and there's some justification on why they didn't perform. Then I'll go, I don't know. Maybe I wasn't coaching them good.

It's my fault. Mhmm. Because they're a good person. And some of the things they're saying, like, it sounds like I didn't set them up for success. All of a sudden, you're a year or two into this thing Mhmm.

And now you have shrapnel on the people who work for them. It's hard. I I let go of my uncle who's worked with first for five years in July. It was hard. Yeah.

Him and two other amazing people I love. Like, I love these people. They didn't have a spot anymore at the company. He wasn't able to grow into what we needed for that that next phase. It was creating, surreal challenges around the company.

It's

Steve: It's really painful. Right? It's, what the company needs right now, that vision, what the company needs right now, there's not a spot for you Yeah. Where the company needs.

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: And, logically, that makes sense. Yeah. And when coaching someone, they're like, hey. I have this problem. Oh, it's easy.

Go do a, b, and c. Yeah. It's easy. Yeah. Pulling the trigger and actually make and and and doing it.

Like, looking someone because I still I'm doing it. Right? Like like, looking you in the eyes. Like, hey. Look.

This isn't it. Like, this isn't working. Like, it's still Yeah.

Trevor: Hard. Mhmm. Yeah. Those combos are hard. A a couple of things I have learned that, if for anyone who has employees or who, is in that situation possibly, is there are right and wrong ways to do it.

Yeah. I don't believe in pips. Mhmm. I've tried pips, performance improvement plans. Mhmm.

Steve: It's

Trevor: like the second you make a pip, you already decided that they're not a right fit, and you're just prolonging the challenge. What what I've found usually is is a performance improvement plan tends to be you delaying the decision because you think that you're gonna get more information and more context, or you think that they're gonna rise to the occasion when you put a deadline on them. Mhmm. Right? And it's like, that's never I've never one time had a PIP work, and we've probably put a dozen or or more people onto a true PIP.

And and it also is usually like, well, I wanna add that last little layer of just justification on why I let them go. So in instead and it's hard. Right? Because it takes more intentional, thought on it. But instead, what if what if we're really clear that they own these numbers?

Like, they what does ownership truly look like? And making sure that you're you're all really clear on on what we call the racy. Who's responsible, who's accountable, who's consulted, and who's informed? Are they truly accountable to that metric? If they're, let them be accountable to it.

Mhmm. And don't take that away from it. That's where I'm bad. Mhmm. Like, I'll see someone struggling with them.

Like, dude, I can help you out.

Steve: Yeah. I'll dive

Trevor: in and help them out. And how the number works or I didn't. You can't let them go because they didn't succeed or fail with it. Mhmm. So we dive in as entrepreneurs who wanna help our team and wanna help them win, and we mess them up by either helping the effort win or helping it lose.

But now you can't they weren't accountable to that now. Yeah. And so making them truly accountable to it, giving them a chance to truly rise that occasion and step into that, or not, and in setting really clear timelines. Hey. By this date, you know, can can we all agree that if we don't hit these these these goals or whatever it is by this date, it's not gonna be a fit.

Like, saying that up front.

Steve: Mhmm. And

Trevor: even when you hire the person, here's your ninety day plan. We all agree that if if we don't feel like you're here by this time, then it's probably just not a fit. Let's part ways in before the ninety days. Have that conversation early.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, again, for everyone, like like, it's this is a take your petition.

Trevor: Yeah. It's hard. I'm still not great at it. That's why I've got a COO who's great at this stuff. I don't know.

Steve: And I I role played this, like, a whole bunch of times

Trevor: Oh, man.

Steve: Before having the conversations. I wanna make sure I do it the right way. Mhmm. Right?

Trevor: I I role played the one where we laid my uncle off. Of course, nothing that I role played, I said.

Steve: No. That's what I got now.

Trevor: The emotions go in there. I'm like, oh, man. This sucks. But yeah.

Steve: It's hard. So, I mean, you got a lot going on. Right? So you got, sales message. You got Carrot, InvestorFuse Mhmm.

Now. You got a lot of things going on. Yep.

Trevor: What is your why? Yeah. My my why, man, goes goes back to that company mission. When when I considered selling Carrot a few years ago when I got a got a big offer from a PE firm Mhmm.

Steve: I

Trevor: asked the question, like, why would I take that that why would I take that number, a big number? And would it be life changing? Yeah. It it it would be, to a degree. I mean, I'm I'm fine money wise right now.

Would it really change my lifestyle? Not really. I might fly private a couple times a year, but other than that, I'm not a fancy car guy. I want a 63 split window vet. Like, that's pretty much my thing, but that wouldn't change my lifestyle a lot.

So when I looked at it, so why would I consider selling? It's either you don't believe in your mission

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: Anymore,

Steve: or

Trevor: you think that the market shifting is timing. You need to you need to capture the opportunity there. And I look at that mission. I go, man, if I sell a company, I'm still taking that mission with me. Mhmm.

It's to help people build businesses of freedom and impact, and we've even expanded it to help people live lives of freedom and impact. Mhmm. And so that that's because, Steve, I built two businesses that trapped me. I built two businesses that made some money, and they trapped me. I wanted out of them.

I was miserable. I wouldn't have used the word depressed at that time, but I probably was. I was moping around, getting out of the house maybe once every once or twice a week since working in my home. I was the guy who everyone would look from the outside and go, man, he kinda got it made, which I did. I wasn't grateful about it.

But, dude, I wanna prevent that from happening to more entrepreneurs because I know when people are able to build businesses that they enjoy more often than not, that make good money, enough money where they can cover all their wants and needs and enough to make an impact outside, the world changes. Yeah. And that's it, man. I wanna help people build a business of freedom, which is a business that allows them to have time to do what they wanna do, and a business that creates impact, which then, once again, takes that time and the money to go truly change something in the world. Yeah.

I don't think the government's gonna solve our problems. It's gotta be guys like you and I creating, you know, a 100 millionaires

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: To go out there and then go do something with that.

Steve: Well, yeah. I mean, that's the reason why we talk about, you know, the the gospel of capitalism and entrepreneurship is because, if everyone not everyone, but a good healthy percentage population, whether it's 2%, 10%, whatever, knows how to make money.

Trevor: Yeah.

Steve: The rest of society benefits. Right? The velocity of money, the way it goes, if I buy Karat Mhmm. And then someone at Karat an employee at Karat can go buy this Yep. And that, like, that is never talked about as far as how like, when the money travels, everyone wins.

That's a national GDP. We measure the national GDP, but we don't I don't think school teachers or anywhere else really talk about, like, how the money moves

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: Everything's good. So when money stops Yep. That bad things happen. Like Yep. You know, we're kind of feeling that a little bit Mhmm.

Right now. So yeah. So I think the the ability to teach people how to make money

Trevor: Yep.

Steve: It it helps everyone.

Trevor: Oh, big time. And with within that too and this is probably three years ago. I was taking it level deeper and, like, if if I were to really go for my why, you know, I I know a lot of people say family and Mhmm.

Steve: You know,

Trevor: I absolutely love my family to death, and they are a y. Right? Dan Dan Martell talks about your big bag of whys. You got that from the Iron Cowboy, a guy who did a 100, Ironman in a hundred days.

Steve: Or

Trevor: no. Yeah. 100 Ironman in a hundred days. And he said the only way you can do that is by having not just one y, but a big bag of y's. Mhmm.

Because the second that y doesn't work for you to push you through that hard thing, you gotta have another one and another one and another one and another one. So that's my professional why. You know, family, obviously, is in there. I wanna make my kids proud and my my my wife proud and provide for them and wanna be a great example for my my daughters and my son who wants to be an entrepreneur. He he's a sheep farmer right now.

He has sheep, and he sells them and stuff. He's 11 years old. And, but the the other part of it, dude, is I truly wanna contribute. And when I thought about, like, when do I feel when do I feel the best? It's when I'm not chasing significance of myself when I'm chasing service, and it's when I'm creating and connecting.

Dude, when I'm creating something and I'm connecting with people Mhmm. I'm loving life. Yeah. Yeah. I'm helping people, and I'm helping to serve.

The second I pull it back to me, and it's about significance and building my greatness, is the second the weight comes on you. The heaviness comes on you. And, that's where most people's why tends to to focus in on. Become financially free or whatever. Those are all good things, but, that's all you and your significance.

That's a heavy burden to, to to pull. Put back on other people and serve.

Steve: What's your biggest struggle right now?

Trevor: Biggest struggle right now, honestly, is, on on the business side is learning how to lead, executives well and not messing things up every day. Every single day. Like, I had I had a meeting yesterday with my COO, and she's amazing and nice and very, she's exactly what the company needs and love her to death. And she came to me with a challenge that I created and very nicely walked me through how I created that challenge. And I'm, like, baffled in my mind how I did it again because I'm like, I know not to do that, but I did But I did it to try to help my team.

Mhmm. So it's me getting out of my own way and getting out of the company's way and the things that I do best. That's the hard part. The things you do best, getting out of the way is hard. Yeah.

So that's the hardest thing right now.

Steve: I got a I got a nice Slack a Google chat message, I wanna say, about six months ago, maybe nine months ago. Mhmm.

Trevor: And it

Steve: was me. It was like, oh, we're gonna do this. Right? Yeah. And I I have this idea, so I went to Text a Full, made the keyword, put in the podcast, and this and that, and then create all this automation.

Right? Because I know I still know how to do these things.

Trevor: Right? Mhmm.

Steve: But I don't think about we have a different process now. Mhmm. So making the change over here breaks this thing over here.

Trevor: Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Right? Yep. Because our process have changed. Mhmm. And so I got a nice message.

Mhmm. Like, if you could just please get out of our way.

Trevor: Dude, 100%. A 100%. And the the thing with that, Steve, that that's a piggyback that's a learning lesson is, I need to get a couple things strategically ahead of my team so they're not so so they're not moving on things that are misalignment from up here Mhmm. Strategically, and then they go do it. And I'm like, ah, shoot.

But that's not where we're going. And I've created that, shrapnel a number of times the last six months. Mhmm.

Steve: But

Trevor: then the real challenge is now how do you get your team ahead of you? How do you get your team ahead of you? So the vision is clear enough, the strategy is clear enough, the principles are there so they can make decisions. I have to come back or wonder if Trevor's gonna flip that decision later because I've done that sometimes in on in inadvertently. Yeah.

But right now, get them ahead of me with the clarity. Just sitting down, getting clear, clear, clear ambition strategy for the

Steve: doing things before you think of it.

Trevor: Yeah. And and making sure that it's heading in the right direction this time. Because they're still doing things that before I think of it, right now, it's kind of just making sure it's going the right direction, which is on me. It's not on them. They're doing their best with, gaps in direction.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. That's, that's definitely my biggest struggle today.

Trevor: Oh, man. It's hard. Yeah. As soon as I master, I'll let you know. You know, I'll teach you what I learn.

Steve: What is your superpower?

Trevor: Oh, man. Superpower. I'm gonna say one of my dad's superpowers is mine too. Being a a beacon of positivity and possibility. It's our first core value.

It's the thing that I probably learned the most from my dad even even during his stage four terminal cancer this last six weeks. He walks into the cancer center yesterday. I checked him in to get his radiation. He has his cane, which he's needed sometimes because it's started to have a left side deficit from the brain tumor, just even from healthy to to walking with a cane in six weeks. And he walks in.

He's got a pep in his step. He sees the guy he's been seen in there every day. Picks up his cane. He's pointing at him. He's carrying his cane, twirling around.

He's swinging the cane like a baseball bat. And there, he's joking with people. He talks to the guy. He goes, you look you look better and better every single day, Mark. Mhmm.

It's like in the second, he's got a terminal illness going in to get his brain zapped from radiation. He's uplifting that guy sitting right there that's going through the same situation. Yeah. So that's that's where it's at. Yeah.

It's that.

Steve: What is, what's been the biggest regret in your career?

Trevor: Probably that I I didn't I didn't focus on building the people around me more intentionally sooner.

Steve: Mhmm.

Trevor: I focus on my personal growth, which is important all all the way up to a million especially. But once you really get closer to 3,000,000 and above, it's actually about building them. Mhmm. And I kept it about what do I need to do to do to grow and assumed everyone else is building themselves. Yeah.

So it's, you know, as Dan would say, build the people so people can build the business.

Steve: One of the best investments I made was, the very first time I hired a coach for the entire, you know, leadership team. I hired Larry Yatch, a former former Navy Seal. Yeah. And, man, the the accountability and communication with an organization

Trevor: Mhmm.

Steve: Rised dramatically.

Trevor: I bet. I bet.

Steve: Right? Like, the sun was shining on everything. There was nowhere left to hide.

Trevor: Could not eat anything. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Right? But, man, like, that was just one investment. And I look back, like, that's probably one of the best investments I made because, I saw Eric Burr made this, post. Right?

Everyone says they love their culture until accountability kicks in. Yep. Right?

Trevor: Yep. Exactly.

Steve: Or like they say, like, my like, what's your number one strength? Culture. What's your number one challenge? Accountability.

Trevor: Yep. It's Good. We're we're the same. So we that that's one of the thing our COO brought in is we're looking at our core values midyear, and she goes, there's just something missing here. And we all knew what it was.

There was no there was nothing around accountability and, like, actually getting stuff done. It was, like, positivity and and, you know, create amazing products, craft amazing experiences, which is all great. Like, we believe in all that. Mhmm. But there's that one part missing, which is a really important part, and that's what we got wrong for a few years.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, really, it wasn't until this year we've always talked about economy, but we've always, like, it's it's been discussed. But this is the first year where you said, like, if you can't hit this Yep. That's it. Mhmm.

You just can't be here. This is the first year we've done it. Well, before we were doing this, like, alright. How can I help you? We need more coaching with this or that.

And this Mhmm. And it's worked for a long time. It got us here.

Trevor: Mhmm. Yep.

Steve: But we're not gonna get where we wanna go

Trevor: Yeah.

Steve: If we're gonna keep letting people slip accountability.

Trevor: And and it does work when you have a smaller staff. Right? Because you can directly coach three, four, five, six, seven people.

Steve: Yeah.

Trevor: Once you get where you are now, it requires someone else who's able to coach them all or you've gotta elevate the person. Right. And it's hard. So, yeah, you it it's natural to to to have lower accountability or not the official things, you know, in the early days because you can work with them directly to help fix that. Yeah.

Steve: If I hear you say something on the call, right, real quick. Yep. Hey. Say this.

Trevor: Yep. Exactly.

Steve: Real fast.

Trevor: Yeah. And and and you're not having to look at the metrics as deeply because you're listening to it, and you can you can coach it.

Steve: But And we're in the same room.

Trevor: When you're not, then it's all about here's the goals, here's the outcomes we set, how are we doing towards that. Here's our goals versus the outcomes. What are you doing to get it back on track? And yeah.

Steve: Yeah. Fun stuff. Oh, man. What is the, single greatest lesson you learned along the way?

Trevor: I'll I'll go back to go back to the energy, part of it that yeah. I I think my my life personal life and business life changed when I flipped from optimizing for productivity and money to energy. Mhmm. I can see when I'm older, 60, 70, 80 years old, I'm not gonna be thinking about optimizing for productivity or money. It's like, I wanna get energy so I can live, and not just, you know, survive.

So, yep, shifting from to energy.

Steve: Gotcha. So I want you to think about, some last thoughts, you wanna leave the listeners with. Guys, I hope you guys got a ton of value. We talked about a whole bunch of different things. Right?

Like, we're talking about marketing, leadership, entrepreneurship, failures.

Trevor: Yeah. Right? Took you guys on a journey.

Steve: Yeah. We talked about a lot of different things. So, guys, if this was valuable for you guys today, please hit that subscribe button. Give us a five star review on iTunes, Spotify, and so on because the more people we reach, the more people we can help going back to. If we can show everyone else how to make more money along the way Yep.

It helps everybody.

Trevor: Yep. Yeah. 100%.

Steve: So please help us if you guys get value today. Last thoughts you'd like to leave everybody with.

Trevor: Dude, I I I think I think the biggest thing I'll I'll kinda give three little things here. Number one, know the path. Right? Once you have identified that there's a path with the things breaking at threes and tens and the pain lines, then you know what you're gonna be going up against. You know to recognize that pain or those trials as a growth opportunity.

Now there's an opportunity to run away. Okay? So know the path. Second part, I'll I'll piggyback off of that. James one, in in the Bible, I'd research I I memorized that whole thing two years ago.

And I love it so much because it's got this one part in it where it says count all trials as joy, my brothers. And then it talks about, the trials are gonna make you steadfast. The trials are gonna make you stronger, and making make you perfect and complete rocking and nothing. So shift every pain point you're having right now, y'all. The challenge with the the employees or, that, you know, you can't get the deals done or whatever is to go, okay.

I just haven't learned something. And this is this is God, like, putting this thing on me that I need to learn something here. So what what am I gonna learn? This is done for me, not to me. So shifting the way you're framing things.

And I think the third thing, man, is, like, the more that we can step in and uplift people around us, I'll go back to being a being a beacon of positivity and possibility. If you can uplift people around you, no matter what business you're doing, you're gonna have people who wanna work for you, who wanna follow you, who wanna be customers of yours, who look up to you. And just really, guys, focus on being of service to other people, uplifting and encouraging as much as you possibly can. And I can guarantee your life is gonna be way better than I was trying to get yours and, you beat that person or keeping up with the Jones. Just like, no.

How do I serve that person?

Steve: Right.

Trevor: Yeah. Just give. Yep. And that goes back to one of my stories at the very beginning. The first paid client I ever got was I I said I'm a stop and get trying to get mine.

I'm just gonna give to them. Right. And then they offered me money after that. Absolutely. Yeah.

Perfect.

Steve: How can someone get a hold of you?

Trevor: Yep. Pro probably best is is Instagram, or my website. So IG is just trevor dot mach. That's m a u c h. I answer all my all my DMs over there, so follow me over there.

I'd be pumped to see you guys over there. And then my podcast. So the CarrotCast. So carrotcast.com. Every Thursday is the episode I do.

Mhmm. And Tuesday, Brady on my team runs those. But every Thursday, it's on my cell phone here. I'm driving home, and I call it the truck talks. And it's just this conversation right here.

It's, like, literally, what's going on in my mind, in my in my world right then, and how can the audience learn from that? Yeah. It's all these entrepreneurship lessons, mindset lessons, things like that. So carrot cast, if you guys like this entrepreneurship talk.

Steve: That's awesome. Thank you so much.

Trevor: Cool. Appreciate it, man. Thank you.

Steve: Thank you. Guys watching. See you guys later.

Trevor: Thank you.

Steve: Steve train.