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My guest for Episode #324 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Trevor Schade. Trevor began his career as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with a strong background in coding and process improvement. He consulted on business efficiency and outsourcing before shifting into real estate in 2008. After earning his license, he quickly built a top-performing team of 26 agents with zero turnover over five years. By leveraging a virtual admin team in the Philippines and innovative automation, Trevor’s group generated over a million dollars in commissions.
In late 2023, Trevor stepped away from leading that large team to focus on investing, advising, and teaching. Today, he speaks on topics including negotiation, time freedom, and real estate strategy, and he has launched Life Wealth courses to help others pursue similar goals.
In this episode, Trevor shares his favorite mistake: jumping into a multi-level marketing business at age 19. The venture wasn’t financially successful, but it transformed his mindset. For the first time, Trevor developed a daily reading habit that exposed him to classics like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Those books gave him a foundation in psychology, leadership, and long-term thinking that continues to influence his work.
We also explore:
- How lessons from Nebraska football and martial arts shaped Trevor’s resilience
- What Lean Six Sigma taught him about efficiency, quality, and leadership
- Why he focused on psychological safety and belonging to keep his team intact
- How he used outsourcing and automation to scale without burnout
- The importance of setting trajectories instead of rigid goals in business and life
Trevor’s story is a reminder that sometimes the most unprofitable ventures provide the richest education — if we’re willing to learn from them.
Questions and Topics:
- What’s your favorite mistake?
- How did joining a multi-level marketing company at 19 shape your growth, even if it wasn’t financially successful?
- Did you ever think about leaving earlier, and was staying too long its own mistake?
- What lessons did you take from Nebraska football and sports about resilience and bouncing back?
- How did you first get into Lean Six Sigma and continuous improvement work?
- In what ways did Lean and coding skills help you scale your real estate business?
- What did you learn about leadership from running a 26-agent team with zero turnover?
- How did you create a culture of psychological safety and belonging for your team?
- Why do you emphasize inspiring people instead of “beating them over the head with metrics”?
- What role have outsourcing and automation played in your business success?
- You’ve said you set trajectories instead of rigid goals — what does that mean in practice?
- Looking back, how do you connect these mistakes and lessons to your current focus on investing, advising, and teaching?
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- Full transcript
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Introduction
Mark Graban: Hi, welcome to “My Favorite Mistake.” I'm your host, Mark Graban. Our guest today is Trevor Schade. His career began with maybe similar origins or work to what I and a lot of you do, as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. He also has a background in coding. He used to consult on business efficiency and outsourcing, but then he entered real estate in 2008, got his license, and quickly built a top-performing team of 26 agents with zero turnover. I think we'll end up talking about that today.
He scaled his business with a virtual admin team in the Philippines, helping generate over a million dollars in commissions. And then in late 2023, Trevor stepped away from running a large team to focus on investing and advising in different ways. So he now speaks on things including negotiation, time freedom, and real estate strategy. And he's launched Life Wealth Courses to help others do the same. So Trevor, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?
Trevor Schade: I'm doing well. Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to get into a few things with you.
Mark Graban: Yeah, I think there are a lot of topics and things that we are going to cover. I'm excited for the conversation, but let's jump right into the main question. I know you're prepared to answer. Trevor, what's your favorite mistake?
Trevor's Favorite Mistake: A Profitable (But Not Financially) Venture
Trevor Schade: Yeah, so I spent some time thinking about this, and it's a list. It's a whole list. So I'll get us started somewhere here, but just so the listeners know on the front end, it's completely exactly what you hear so many times over and over. The person that fails the most wins the most. You also failed the most.
So I'm like, man, I've done so many things that seemed like good ideas and seemed like right paths and right places to step. But really, if somebody wants a broad brushstroke, taking the first step should be all of our favorite mistakes, in a little bit. Like, just get in motion.
Specifically, my true story. One of the biggest, best mistakes that I made, when I was 19, I got involved in a multi-level marketing company. And up to that point, I had been very linear-thinking. I'd been writing computer code since fifth grade. I learned some coding languages, did the whole late nineties, self-taught HTML on all the little website designs, right? Yep.
So I did that, and I have an intuition of people, but I was and am very literal. And a little strangely oddball, rigid. And so when it comes to interpersonal sales or depth of connectivity and all of those things, that was not where I was at when I was 19. And so I got into multi-level marketing and I had some, I just had some good mentors that really pushed and promoted some books. And up to that point, I had bought every term paper. I had paid people to read books for me. What was it? Cliff's Notes. Remember Cliff's Notes? Oh yeah. That was my M.O.
And so all of a sudden, when I had somebody hand me a couple of books that were on how people think, how people make decisions, how people really interpret the world, now I could take this very analytical approach to relationships. And so I spent the next eight years doing this multi-level marketing business and growing, and states, and people.
Getting involved in that business from a true P&L, like how I've now learned in business to actually just put the business under pressure and see if it's profitable or not? It was not a profitable business. But I went eight years without ever once not reading before going to sleep. That was the line in the sand I drew. And some of you think that's impossible. Okay. Pull some parameters, and some of the listeners can go, “What about when you're traveling in some weird, obscure hotel or whatever, some business trip, something?” I made sure to read the menu. I made sure that I never broke the discipline of reading before bed. And in eight years, I didn't do that. And so then I made it through hundreds of books. And I understood psychology and preferences and that people aren't wrong, they just prefer different things. And so that was probably an incredibly monumental mistake because it wasn't a profitable business.
Mark Graban: So what I hear you saying is it just, was it not the best use of your time in terms of the most profitable, or, you're saying not profitable, but you decided, okay, it was time to find something more profitable.
Trevor Schade: Yeah. I guess I would call it, it was not a financially profitable business. So let's put that in there, because for my education, I got exposed to and got to learn from some of the greatest minds that have ever spoken and written books. I got to study, I mean, all the way to Dale Carnegie and How to Win Friends and Influence People. And I think I've read that seven or eight times now. And then in the real estate community, they call it the “Purple Bible,” and you've got Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
And endless books about teaching, about success, about mentality, about zoomed-out, long-term ways of thinking, and so incredibly, immeasurably profitable. But not financially. Financially, I didn't know what businesses were possible. I didn't know how to flip a house with absolutely zero of my own money. I had no idea how to analyze that, find that. I didn't know how to negotiate. I didn't know how to get people to do favors. All of that bending of the rules and getting preferential treatment, I learned that all from these books through that mistake of a business choice.
College, Football, and Leaving It All Behind
Mark Graban: So was, you mentioned starting that when you were a teenager. Did you go to college, or was that work and that reading your education?
Trevor Schade: Yeah. I went to college. I actually walked onto the Nebraska Huskers football team. Rush and defensive end. I'm, okay, six-five. I was 235 pounds and 9% body fat and crazy fast back then. And none of those stats are true to this day. But back then it was good news. And I was, again, it was probably that oddball thing about me. I couldn't understand that was a big deal.
And so here I was a walk-on redshirt freshman, and it was probably only two or three years later that someone goes, “Trevor, you're a math person. Okay. How many humans are on the sidelines during the game, like the football players?” and I gave a ballpark estimate and they said, “Okay, how many people are in the stands?” 80,000 or whatever it is. And they were like, “Would you do the ratio there, math person? Is it a big deal? Is that unique?” And I was like, “Oh, that is a very small crowd.”
I didn't understand what that would turn into with network and opportunities, partnerships, other people wanting to do business things together, other creatives in college that would then go, “Hey, why don't we start something together?” I just didn't understand the incredible value.
So to answer your question, I left college after a year and I left the football team. I walked away from everything. Because I started a multi-level marketing business and I had this life licked and I didn't need any of that formal academia, masses, typical education. Yeah. And I may still have some of those beliefs to this day that someone can learn the lessons and go through the business and you're going to get a different, and even possibly better, quote-unquote, education through the hard knocks of life and business and all of that. But you'll never be able to get that network, you'll never be able to link up with those people that also have equal ambitions and want to go places in life together. That's pretty unmatched, in my opinion.
The Alamo Bowl: A Small World Moment
Mark Graban: And that must be so powerful in the state of Nebraska. Nebraska football is such a dominant part of not just the sports landscape. Were you in the Big 10 or still in the Big 12 when you—
Trevor Schade: It was the 12. Yeah, it was back in 2000. Got to go to the Alamo Bowl. I know the listeners are dying to know, it's Solich. Second year. That was the year I played.
Mark Graban: Northwestern Wildcats.
Trevor Schade: Yeah, that's who it was.
Mark Graban: You crushed my team in that game. That was it. Yeah.
Trevor Schade: That's the one. I've got this cool jersey that has my name on the back and all the embroidered things and everybody, in all my companies, they're like, “Get that in one of those glass frames and hang it on our wall.” Yeah. And I'm like, I just, I don't know. I just never have. But yes, that is the truth.
Mark Graban: Okay. I'm going to need a second to recover from that. It was something like 66 to 17. It was a butt-kicking. Did you get on the field in that game? Were they putting the walk-ons in or no?
Trevor Schade: No, they didn't even let us on the field because it was a travel game, but it was probably only like 25% of us or so got to even go on the travel and go down there. And I was one of 'em. I got to go down and get pummeled by the starting O-line for warmups. Yeah.
Mark Graban: Okay. So 25 years later I can say, good for you.
Trevor Schade: Good for you. How about that?
Mark Graban: That is… okay. Small world. Yes. I was there, I was one of those, maybe almost 60,000 people in the stands, 'cause I was in the marching band.
Trevor Schade: Oh.
Mark Graban: Yeah. Guy drummer. Not a football player, but yeah. So I'm sure you pay attention to what's happened in recent years. If the whole Name, Image, and Likeness approach was happening, you could have stayed in school and pursued business opportunities that really just weren't allowed for a student athlete, right?
Life's Challenges and a Stroke of Bad Luck
Trevor Schade: Yeah. Right now with what people can do, you can make your entire lifestyle by being an entertainment figure through sports. You can make unreal money and have all of these life choices. And yeah, at the time, there were the NCAA regulations that didn't allow it, but yeah, it was an incredible opportunity and I've got nothing but positive to say about it, other than, sure, I wish I would've just continued the remaining four years.
In fact, I almost went back. As I turned 32, 33, I went through an entire total life implosion. And during that, I went through a divorce. I had my real estate investments, I had bedbugs, and I started looking at financial bankruptcy. I got laid off from all of the careers and jobs that were in the business consulting world. I was 100% commission. In the divorce, I ended up with a custody battle. Like I had all of the, oh, a good close grandparent died in hospice. Like all of this all at once.
Gosh. And the stress and strain on my body caused a torn artery in my neck during a chiropractic adjustment. And I had a TIA stroke and half my body shut off, and that was finally the deciding factor that I wasn't going to go try to walk back on. I had already started P90X again and was diving back in. I was like, “I could just go play my last four eligible years.” And so I was entertaining it, but I just don't think anybody's ever going to sign off on someone, even that comes out of it unscathed, a TIA blown artery stroke victim, to go throw a college helmet back on.
Mark Graban: I had read recently about a young woman in her twenties who died from that same mishap during a chiropractic adjustment. Yep. I'm glad you've, it seems, fully recovered.
Trevor Schade: Yeah. Yep. Fully recovered. All good. Yep. And I'm still, I know there are some chiropractors listening to your show here, and I'm like, for the record, I'm still a huge fan of chiropractic, just so that everybody… like, the flexibility, it's like what you get from yoga, all kinds of goodness. Am I personally ever going to have my neck adjusted again? No, I don't think so. But everything else that leads up to it and the foundation and all of that, I'm still a huge proponent. And my chiropractic doctor, he is a great guy, and he came to the hospital and he was so concerned, and he's even more of a physical therapist. So for the record of the podcast here, we are not bashing anyone.
Learning to Set Trajectories, Not Just Goals
Mark Graban: To close the loop a little bit on that first phase of your work and the multi-level marketing company, were there times within those eight years where you thought of getting out of it? Was it a mistake sticking with it so long, or you got continued learning and continued foundation for what came next?
Trevor Schade: Yeah, that's a great question. So I would really adamantly say, and I think I saw this with some of my peers that were building these businesses alongside me, I think a lot of us stayed at it about two years too long. That was where we knew we were at the end and this was done and we should move on. But because we had integrated it into our whole life and all of our relationships and our credibility and our identity, and now our ego's on the line, it took two years to unravel and unweave that.
I really did keep learning the whole way through. It actually set up a new business principle that I now teach. I am not able to, quote-unquote, set goals properly and effectively. Many people are, I would say most are. So somebody hears, “You have to write your goals down. You have to speak them out loud. You've got to tell someone else so you have some accountability.” I would say absolutely 100%.
Now there's a small group that takes it too far, and we put the blinders on to such an extent that you will blow eight years of your life out of the water by running in the same direction. ‘Cause it takes hard work and focus and you can lock in so outrageously that you implement 100% of what you go to a conference and hear, when they're expecting you to take two items away, and then you run in this direction.
And what I had to do is I had to stop setting goals and I had to start setting trajectories. And that's how my brain could do it, because what that required me to do is think like navigating an ocean. I could point in a trajectory and I could run blind and hard to the point that I had set, like the number of months that I had set in advance of how long I was going to give myself to run in that direction so that I can stop, decide if I need to adjust course, and then sprint hard in another trajectory. And so that's what came out of the second half of that multi-level marketing era was, ah, I had the blinders on, like you should and is required to redline at times. But I needed a measure point. I needed a time to stop, look around, pull the true P&Ls, be honest and ugly about the numbers, and make decisions so that I could put the blinders back on in a better direction.
From Sports to Business: Building Resiliency
Mark Graban: Earlier on, you said something to the effect of, “having the most failures leads to the most…” Did you use the word “success” or something similar?
Trevor Schade: Yeah, I did say success. Yeah, that's exactly right. And obviously with what odd perfection or odd intensity or odd success is, is defined by each person, but still definitely the word success. Yeah.
Mark Graban: Oddball, rigid. I did jot that one down. Yeah. Rigidly oddball. But, I wanted to ask, I think being able to view and live the idea that failures lead to success, the word resiliency comes to mind. And, I've loved having athletes on the show because they talk about the lessons learned from sports and, you must have been good at football in high school to even walk on at Nebraska. To what extent did playing football or other sports teach you this ability to bounce back?
Trevor Schade: I definitely think that's a complete and total, ingraining since childhood backdrop. For a while, I could just lock in and focus and push. The number of times in sports that I was… I was in martial arts growing up and we would sit in a horse stance. And you would get to find out what you were capable of and you got this new lesson and learning of, “Is your will stronger than your quads?”
And it was lessons like that. And then in football, when you were running more wind sprints and trucking, then you had all this heavy gear on and it was in the Midwest and 98 degrees out, plus heat index on two-a-days, and you're running and you can taste the iron in your own blood from your wheezing, and you just keep putting a foot in front of the other one anyway.
And I think it might be the best format that I've learned and have been experienced to, to really test and learn what you're capable of. There are probably some out there that are even more—you go into Navy SEAL training and things like that, and I bet that's the same thing, but on a whole ‘nother level and another gear. But yeah, I think the sports and the sports training and the team aspect of it too, because I think as humans, we will always quit on ourselves before we will quit on another person. Yeah. And so having a team that you're going to fail if you quit, I think that really teaches us, it taught me how to push beyond what I, in my own mind, was capable of.
Finding a Fit in Lean Six Sigma
Mark Graban: So then I'm curious how you got into Lean Six Sigma, and this is not the martial arts thing. Being a black belt.
Trevor Schade: Yeah. Yeah. Different Black Belt.
Mark Graban: How did you get into that? Because I think that is a discipline, Lean Six Sigma, that attracts people that are maybe oddball, rigid. Yeah. ‘Cause we're looking analytically. Yes, we're engaging people. I think it should be a team sport, this kind of workplace improvement. But you're looking at, you know, trying, reducing variations, standardizing things, improving things. I think you have to be a little bit oddball, rigid.
Trevor Schade: I do too. Yeah. I think most of the folks that I've met in the continuous improvement program that are in those sectors of either Agile or certainly Lean and Six Sigma the most, yeah, I think they're all a little oddball, rigid, and they need to be. Yeah.
So to define it loosely, for anyone listening that doesn't know, Lean is one process, a system of continuous improvement or process improvement that basically cuts away the fat, right? It makes everything more efficient and you can either have somewhere between eight and 11 types of waste. And so you just start eliminating them or you start automating them or fixing them, and all of a sudden things run really fast, really smooth without having to have a ton of resources.
Mark Graban: Okay. And I'm going to jump in and add, and better quality is part of that.
Trevor Schade: Absolutely. Goes standard. Yeah. More consistency. That's right. Okay. Then we cross into Six Sigma. So my certification is both of those together. But Six Sigma, so this is where you need a ton of data and you need to have more than 99% success. The example I use is, if you only successfully landed airplanes 99% of the time, that's not good enough.
Mark Graban: Nobody would fly.
Trevor Schade: No, that's not good enough. You need 99 point, and seven nines and a six after that in order for it to be good enough. And so that's what Six Sigma does, is it goes, “Okay, how's the process supposed to run? How often does it not run that way, one way or the other? And when it doesn't run the way it's supposed to, how far off is it?” And so that's Six Sigma. I have not been able to employ that with many companies and many people. Lean is typically where I live and breathe.
So anyway, so there are our definitions for what we're doing. But yeah, as I got into that, it was, since I'd been writing computer code, and while I was running a multi-level marketing business, I had some consulting gigs and jobs and companies, and I was at an insurance company for about nine years in various departments. And as I went through their different departments, I would work on databases and relational databases and data sets and queries and reports and reporting and all of those kind of tools for the business operations folks to pull information out of their system and make business decisions.
On in there they offered a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification. And as I went through that in-house, I realized there's another layer and then I could have the full certification. I found an institute outside and pursued it and did it. So now I could have the education and the tools at my disposal and I employ a lot of what I learned, even in my own businesses.
Inspiring People vs. Beating Them with Metrics
Mark Graban: I was going to ask you that.
Trevor Schade: Yeah. I really do. I outsource to the Philippines and to India and to anywhere. And I've now learned, I've put kids through college in these countries and I had no idea. And I've seen pictures and they're like, “I couldn't afford to pay people to go through college, but I can now, since I've connected with you.” And so that's been really great. And all of my systems… Now I'm a programmer, so I use automation tools like Zapier and API Nation and I have all these funnels and flows and things that happen and it really grew from, sure, coding brain into the Lean Six Sigma teachings and methodologies into, I blended all of that backwards into the multi-level marketing, psychology teaching.
And I realized if I am able to inspire people, I don't have to have reports and I don't have to have, holding them accountable to certain KPIs or key performance indicators. And I didn't have to be as hard. I keep some of those, but I was able to reduce 90% of those because we have all been neurotic at one point in our life about some class, some project, some paper that… it's midnight. We've already exceeded expectations. We've already hit all of the requirements of what we've got to turn into some professor or teacher, and you were still trucking because we're excited about it and we're going nuts until 3:00 AM and we have this amazing, incredible thing, even a science project back in grade school.
And so I thought if I apply that to business, I have all of this knowledge and I think it's worth implementing. And I do. Then that culture creation and how do you get people to just want to outperform themselves and be excited, enthusiastic, and inspired? And all of a sudden, as a business owner, runner, manager, you take the workload off of your own and you take the pressure off the relationship.
Mark Graban: When we had talked previously, you talked about, being a leader and inspiring people instead of beating people over the head with metrics.
The Power of Belonging: A Zero-Turnover Team
Trevor Schade: That's it. That's the difference. Yeah, when it comes to… so I ran a team of 26 real estate agents within our brokerage. I'm not the broker, but I basically set up a mini brokerage inside of it and had all of my systems and support and automations and all of that. When it came to the folks joining the team, the thing I wanted to focus on first and foremost was a feeling and a sense of belonging. And I wanted people to understand that they had a place and they were welcome and wanted to be here.
And so all of that's that softer stuff. That's that atmosphere design, the feel and sound of the conversations. A feedback loop is one of the things that I was taught in Lean and Six Sigma, so I needed it to be so safe that people could speak in front of other people or directly to me. Yeah. Yeah. And that is missed so much. And so as I built that in the real estate sales team, we could really get some momentum.
One of my favorite mistakes that went incredibly well was as I set this team up. We were a team of myself and five, six agents or so, and we were in our first year and a half. None of them hit their sales goals 'cause they were with me for the first calendar year while I was building all the systems. I found myself with no lines of credit available, plus $108,000 in credit card debt. Winter months are pretty rough in the Midwest for real estate sales. And it was February of 2017, I believe it was, maybe '18.
I said, “Guys, hey, your sales incentive program of me paying for your team trip—where I'm going to pay for whatever percentage of your sales goal you hit—I'm just going to pay for that. I just appreciate you all being with me, and I think you would've hit your goals if I would've had the system set up.” So an ultimate accountability. Not asked for, not needed, none of them would've left. It was all going to be fine.
And I said, “So what I'm going to do is pay for all of you to come to an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. Airfare. If you want to bring your spouse, you pay for that. But I got you. I got everything and we're going to go do this.” And we got there, and I didn't realize this, but that became the glue and the reason that everybody became friends and bonded and connected. I had one dinner that everybody was required to come to together while we were down there for five days. Everything else was at their own leisure. Enjoy their vacation.
When we came back, that became like the OG crew and it turned into, from the day we started that company to five years later, we went from zero agents to 26 agents with absolutely zero turnover. Nobody didn't renew their license. Nobody switched teams, nobody switched brokerages. None of our support staff left. Nobody ever did because we would do these really incredible things together that were just real and authentic and bonding and fun.
So that was certainly one of my largest accidents that I did, really. And it turned into that culture creation. And I got to see how that played into less work for me. Less retraining and less replacing, which I knew was the biggest use of my time. And I'm the highest hourly rate person, right? My earning ability time is worth the most. So we definitely don't want me retraining anybody. And so anyway, that created the culture and the bond.
The Psychology of Leadership and Individual Strengths
Trevor Schade: So to get everybody bonded, that was the inspiration component. Now I could have the metrics and I did have a dashboard that showed everybody their sales so that everybody could play the competing game with the TV that was in the office in the room. And it was fun. And I'm not even competitive, which is odd for all of my background, but I do not have… My sister runs a Gallup Strengths coaching business in Dallas, and competition is one of those strengths, super low on me. I don't like the game of competing. I always think someone with soft heartstrings always loses.
And I had metrics that were visual and fun and enjoyable. And I would ask people when they came to me about, “I'm not happy with my sales.” Now we would go through it. What I would do different… I think this worked great up to about eight agents and right there, I needed to now have more of a prime real estate company. That would be more of a, “Hey, we are profitable, we're sought after. We are what people are at home begging to find because we were honest and real and authentic, but also so skilled in negotiating for them than the skills that they didn't have.”
We needed to make sure that everybody that is part of what we are and who we are… We were the Exclusive Listings Group and we needed to be the Exclusive Listings Group. And I didn't make that shift and pivot. I didn't even realize that I should have until we were over 20 agents big. And then I got that lesson learned through there that to say, “Hey, your stats and your sales, one metric, your sales, your closings are not what they need to be for the brand that we are. Do you got this under control?” And from there they start telling me which metrics and which reports we need to dive into and talk about. I didn't have to just beat them over the head with the metrics and with the stats. “And how many calls did you make?” Because now everybody lies in the meeting.
Working to the Top of Your Ability (And Outsourcing the Rest)
Mark Graban: Yeah. And you connecting things back to lean lean is not only about outsourcing, but there's the, I think there's principle around, automating routine work that might be boring, yeah. And then we can focus on work that's more creative, more fulfilling. Yeah. That's I think, in line with lean principles. But I think there's always also this key principle and, the work I do in healthcare, we apply it as well of letting people work to the top of their ability or their license.
Trevor Schade: Yes, I absolutely agree. I actually have an incredibly like relevant story today, this day. 10 minutes before we jumped on together, I finished writing an offer on a flip property for my 16-year-old son, his very first. Wow. And he won't do any of the work himself. He is able to analyze and find properties. He's able to call me his agent and ask me to write offers and show him the house. He is able to then hire people that are either handyman or licensed electricians or whoever he needs to go pull the permits. He doesn't need to go learn how to pull the permits. Sure. Hire people that do.
And like you said, not because of a snob or not because of anything like that. The tool that I was taught in the Lean Six Sigma was a swim lane diagram. One of my favorites, if someone will just take the time to throw ink on paper, on a horizontal sheet of paper and just draw the lanes of who all's in the mix.
Yes. The way you said it was just… it's speaking to me. Yeah. You have someone perform at the top of what they're able to do. Somebody that is a lesser hourly rate because they don't carry an RN certification will have that person do it. And now that task is a cheaper task because the cheaper labor is doing it.
And an exercise that I recommend everybody do is to calculate their own potential earning hourly rate. If they could get out of their own way. And if all of the distractions of life could get outta their own way and they could take their full-time salary that they're making, or what is their business genuinely not crazy not wish and dream, but what is their business capable of making this year and what they're able to keep? And then divide it by how many hours should you be working?
That will turn out a pretty surprising hourly rate number, and I recommend everybody writing that number down for themselves. And anytime there's a task that needs done I'm not opposed to learning it and doing it once or twice, especially because one of my tricks is to do it once and record the training video and put it on Vimeo. So now I endlessly got to teach how I, I teach my thought process. I'm literally doing it one time. And then from there you always look at that number of your potential hourly rate number, and if anything isn't worth your time and worthy of your time, then go find someone that would be stoked about doing it for their hourly rate.
Conclusion
Mark Graban: Delegate it, outsource it. Yeah. And you're saying in some cases now with the internet, we can offshore things and create opportunities for people elsewhere. I love that Trevor. We are oddball birds of a feather.
Trevor Schade: Oddball rigid. That was invented here today, everyone. Yeah.
Mark Graban: thank you for not rubbing that game in my face too much.
Trevor Schade: Oh, of course. Gracious. Yeah, no problem.
Mark Graban: Our guest has been Trevor Schade. If you want to learn more about him and his work his Life Wealth Courses, there are links in the show notes of course. Trevor, this has been really nice. Thank you for being here.
Trevor Schade: Likewise. Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me on. This has been a great time. Yeah.