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Founder's Story
Zero Debt, 100 Stores: The Truth About Scaling Nobody Talks About with Brian Treu | Ep. 188
00:19:51
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- [00:00]
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- [01:19]
Host
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have Brian True and Brian, you are the CEO and founder of intelvio and you've had an incredible time scaling this company, this business. We're going to go into all that, we're going to dive into all things scalability and how other people can also replicate in their business the ability to grow as big as you have, which I know I'm sure there's been challenges, there's been amazing things along the way. So let's kick it off, Brian, with how did you get into this business.
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Co-Host
And why this industry?
- [01:55]
Brian True
Yeah, I was actually very similar to most entrepreneurs. Had a very entrepreneurial spirit about me. I didn't really want to go to school. College wasn't my thing. So I was looking for kind of an, kind of a way to make an impact. I was super young, fresh out of high school and, and I was at the doctor just getting normal after high school. Where am I going to go to college? Kind of check up and the girl who was drawing my blood was, was missing and I have great veins, absolutely incredible veins. And, and I said, you know, where'd you. I was joking. I said, well, where'd you go to school? And she said, well, there's no school for phlebotomy. And a light went off and I said if this we're putting in, we're doing invasive procedures on individuals and there's no education, there's no formal education for it or structured training for it. There needs to be. And by February 7th, February 3rd of 1993 was two weeks short of my 18th birthday. I hired. I got together with a guy named Jason Blood, and we started our first class, and he taught, and I did the business side until I got a little more experience. So that's kind of how things started.
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Co-Host
Wow.
- [02:47]
Host
So talk about finding a problem that you need to solve in the marketplace that you're not even in. Many people, I think, are only focused on, like, what they know. You found a major problem that needed to be solved in an industry that you weren't even in. That's amazing. So you figure this out, you find this partner, you get going, and then what?
- [03:07]
Brian True
Uh, I was actually super scared of needles. And so it was really hard for me to actually determine, hey, we gonna do this? And so he said, look, I'll do the business side. I said, I'll do the business side. You do the. You do the training side. So we did that for two or three months, maybe six months. And then we. And then we parted ways, and I. And then I just stayed with it, uh, for the first six or seven years, it was really like I was working day jobs, doing the full training thing at night, and it was kind of building steam. Building steam. And then maybe 10 or 11 years into it, my wife looked at me. She said, you know, you're making more at the side gig than you are at the day gig. Maybe you ought to quit the day gig and do more of the side gig. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. And so that's when I decided to really buckle down and start scaling. And it took a little bit of a shift in mentality for. For me, I was already fairly disciplined, but I. But I learned a good business lesson that I essentially taught myself. I don't. I didn't really get it from anyone else, but that was the maintenance versus momentum mentality. And that's when my. The interesting part about my business and my life story was the schedule that I maintained for. For a better part of 20, 25 years that got me to where I'm at today. We can talk about that if you want.
- [04:09]
Host
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's amazing. So you're working six or seven years in the business, and then also a job that's incredible. And then you realize that your income now is surpassed your job. It's better to go all in on the business, and then you come up with this lesson. I mean, the fact you've been in business for over 20 years is obviously not common. Right. Most businesses, you know, they die in that five, you know, two to five year time frame. So please, I love to learn more about this lesson and then I really love to learn about longevity.
- [04:43]
Brian True
So 32 years now, February, this last year was 32 years that we've had the operation, albeit, you know, you really count about 20 of those years as a solid actual business because it wasn't really making as much money when I was kind of double dipping. The nice thing was that I was actually working in the day jobs, as in clinical researcher, in medical jobs. So I was using my skill set every day on the job, which was nice. The lesson that I taught myself was I worked in the business. So when I finally quit the day job and went to work just in the business, what I found was that just at 8 to 5, all I was doing was doing maintenance. It wasn't, the business wasn't growing, I couldn't scale, I couldn't find time to scale. I was just answering phone calls, returning emails, printing certificates, making curriculums, putting kits together and then showing up at night to train and then coming home the next day and repeating the process. And one day I was just sitting there, I thought I've got to figure out a way to build, build, build momentum. But when there was a big question of when do you build momentum? And that was when I started with my work schedule and it was really, really odd. Historically I've always loved to sleep, but I kind of shifted my focus and I stopped sleeping as much. So I would go to bed around 10, 10:30 and I would get up at 3:30 in the morning and I'd be sitting at my desk at 4am and I would build all my momentum between 4am and 8am and then I'd go in and spend some time with the kids. And I've got, I've got five kids, had five before 30 years old, so I had a bunch of kids. And so I'd do all the kids stuff and then I go back to the office around 9 to 11 and then I do 11 to 1 at the gym and then 1 to 5 working on maintenance and then family stuff in the evening and I'd go back and do a couple hours of work in the evening or teach in the evening. But that uninterrupted quiet time between 4 and 8am was the most priceless thing to me because no one interrupted me. There wasn't emails coming in. I didn't, I could focus on what's the plan, what's the Gantt chart look like for the growth, what's The. What's. What does it look like for us to open three more campuses this year? How do I do that? Uh, I could look at leases in the morning when I didn't have people interrupting me. I could look at. I could. I could shop for properties. I could. I could do all the things that required me to build momentum in the business as opposed to just doing maintenance all day long. And I think that's where a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck, is they go to work all day and they're like. They're gassed at the end of the day, and they're like, man, it was a hard day. Ooh, I'm spent. And then you go, well, did you build any momentum or was it all just maintenance? And most guys will tell you, just kind of did maintenance today. I just kind of solved problems and put out fires. But I don't really feel like I built momentum. And that was my thing. I had to. I had to have time where I built momentum, and then I would do maintenance the balance of the day. And that was kind of the secret that I taught myself. Ironically, about a year ago, I stopped doing the 3:30am thing. I was. About two years ago now. I sold half the company to private equity. And the early, early morning thing was kind of. It kind of burned me out. And I was in a financial position to not have to put in that time. And I could delegate to others, and I had employees that would build them, that I could give the. Give the story and the narrative to about what I wanted in the vision, and they could go get up early and build the momentum for me.
- [07:27]
Host
No, that.
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Co-Host
That's amazing.
- [07:29]
Host
So when it.
- [07:30]
Co-Host
When you.
- [07:31]
Host
Because I think some people might hear momentum, and that might mean something different to them. So what did momentum mean to you?
- [07:39]
Brian True
Momentum is just the ability to make sure that the business is making progress forward. If you have a goal, like I had a goal to open 150 campuses in 50 states, and I think I had six or eight at the time. And so I'm like, okay, well, how do I get to 10 by the end of the year? And that momentum was, okay, well, I've got to be. I've got to get myself in a financial position to sign, to be able to take on more debt or sign leases which were more debt. I've got to be in a financial. I got to be in a position to understand marketing better. I've got to be SB at a better SEO. I've got to be better my pay per click. I've got to evaluate the market do comparable market analysis during the daytime. It was, hey, there's an instructor with a fight, or this person locked out of the building, or this person forgot their book, or it was all the, it was all just maintenance. That wasn't, didn't build productivity, didn't build any, it wasn't really producing anything. The momentum was all the stuff that allowed me, gave me the time to do things uninterrupted, that actually built the business one location on the next. And I think, you know, now we have, there's a few behind the scenes that are about to launch. I think we're 110, 115 locations in 40 states. And so that's kind of where that, that's really, for me, the momentum was uninterrupted time to do things and activities and behaviors that allowed the business to grow as opposed to helping people with their, you know, their keys got locked in their car out in the parking lot. Now I gotta go solve that problem.
- [08:48]
Host
So we, a lot of the, the guests that we have on, they talk about transitional milestones and how they had to change in business going from a million to 10 million to 50 million to 100 million in revenue or one store to five stores to 50 stores or a thousand employees. How was that for you when you had some, you know, when you went From I'm sure, 10 stores to a hundred stores, you had to make some significant changes or maybe milestones of employees or revenue as well. What was maybe looking back, some sort of milestone that happened where you had to completely change maybe what you were doing because it was so different.
- [09:27]
Brian True
Yeah, great question. And the singular answer to that is one thing, and that is I had to stop being scared. I had, when I did 80 locations before I sold to anybody. So I had 80 leases on my plate, which at 3 or $400,000 in lease would be 30, 40, $50 million in potential debt that you're carrying on your shoulders if this, if it doesn't work out with personal guarantees on every single one of them. And so to get to that point from 10 to 80, I had to completely dismiss all the fear and, and, and walk away from all things that scared me about, about growing the business. And most of it was just fear of failure. So changing your attitude from, from, from, hey, I, I, I want to grow, but I don't know how I want to grow, but I'm scared to grow too. I don't care what happens. I've seen, I've seen 10 work, and as soon as I get 15 to work, I'm going to go for 25. It's just 25 work, I'm going to go For 40, et cetera. So you just, it's just your, your, your shift has got to be the fear. And, and a lot of business owners and, and young entrepreneurs, they're scared, rightfully so. But I was able to, to kind of encapsulate that fear and put it in, bottle it and put it onto the side of the desk every single day and go. I'm building enough stuff by way of momentum and I'm doing stuff maintenance wise that I can actually become, that I can actually do great things when it comes to the business and grow it without that fear involved.
- [10:42]
Co-Host
Man, fear has held me back in my life.
- [10:44]
Host
That's one of the one things that I am totally working on. And I could see that, you know, you open up one restaurant and you have the fear that if you open another one, it's going to be the same or another one, another one. But it sounds like something you did very differently. And by the way, personal guarantee scares me. I have a fear around that. But something you did differently is that you, it sounds like you started setting yourself up for the future instead of waiting till you had 80 and then making the change. It sounds like you had to do a lot of change. What were some internal changes that you had to do or maybe even external. So maybe in your family. I know you talked about some of the times, but I imagine there were some changes that had either been made internally or, or even externally, maybe with your family.
- [11:29]
Brian True
Yeah, yeah. Having a lot of young kids was tough and so it was really a balancing act. Right. My dad would always tell me, you got to take time to sharpen the saw. And I would just work and grind through work and then not have as much time for the kids. But you don't become as productive as a, as a father and as a husband and as an, as a, as a, as a CEO or a founder of a company. Unless you have a lot of balance in your life. I've heard that lesson taught many, many times by a lot of successful entrepreneurs with the lesson of balance, of, hey, take time for family, take time for your kids, take time for your wife, take time for yourself. The mental health portion of this is very, very important as well. I think that's a, that's a, that's a lesson that I'm not scared to share, which is lots of, lots of closet crying sessions. I mean, just like scared to death, just like looking at my wife. Like, are we doing this, like, what happens? Like, oh, Christmas time comes and none of the classrooms are full and we still have leases due and can we have Christmas with 40 locations? You know, there's a lot of those where it's just the fear and the, and the scare. So yeah, you got to take time to balance your life out and make sure you give enough time to your K and your wife and your, and your, and your business and things like that. But a balance is, is, is key. And, and one philosophy that I've always stuck with my whole life, and it's a philosophy of a lot of Utah people follow, which is no success in life makes up for failure in the home. And so you really want to make sure that your children are good people, your wife's in a good place, your relationship's in a good spot, and that, and that you're, you're giving the, the business the attention that it needs in order to succeed.
- [12:50]
Host
I imagine 32 years ago, nobody was talking about mental health or balanced. Those weren't even things that we even thought were. Or burnout. Like these are phrases that nobody thought was a need, which maybe that was an issue. Maybe we should have been thinking about that 30 years ago as a society. I'm curious on challenges that you've been through and what you learned from that. Was there maybe one challenge that stands out?
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Co-Host
And what was the lesson?
- [13:17]
Brian True
Good question. There's been a lot of challenges along the way, financial challenges mostly. We chose very early on to never go into debt. And so outside of the money that we owed on leases over time, we chose to never borrow money. I could have expanded a lot faster, but never taking on it and never taking on debt was something that was very, very challenging. So basically bootstrapping the entire business up until we sold to private equity, and then even short time after that, private equity hadn't taken on any debt for us. We were a debt free organization. And a lot of people were like, well, how'd you get to this size and scale without carrying debt? And I said, well, you make a lot of individual sacrifices. You drive old cars and you. And you live in your old same home that you lived in forever. And you make a lot of those sacrifices that make the business successful. But that was probably the biggest challenge was wanting to take on debt, having the ability to take on debt, having. Making enough money to service debt, but not taking on the debt. Because the growth, the growth trajectory was nice and measured, although fast. I mean, I think we grew to think we grew one year. I think our biggest year was 35 locations. We set up those three a month. We were expanding rapidly. Yeah, just, just a very measured approach to the, to the growth and expansion was important for us, but it was very challenging because you gotta now save up for the next location. Well, I need fifty or a hundred thousand dollars to do that. So now I'm, I'm taking the profit from these classrooms and pouring into the next ones. And then you gotta measure those on a timeline, on a Gantt chart. Because if you get too many, too much expansion going on late in the year, then you go into your, your week, your dip months, you have a big dip in the winter months when it comes to education training. November, December, January, because people are thinking about other. So you got to make sure that your, your approvals from the states come at the right time. You really want them to come right in spring. But sometimes it strings out you didn't get the bond you needed or the bonding requirements were too great, or you didn't have the net worth requirement. There's a lot of challenges from a state licensing perspective. And really to this day there's nobody who's done what we've done as far as the volume and quantity of state licenses. You know, operating in 40 plus states, you know, the 110 or so locations is very complicated. We've got a licensing department that is a very, very important department to our company. And so yeah, that's, that was a big challenge, was expanding without, without, you know, borrowing money.
- [15:22]
Host
I mean that's amazing. I think most people have the mindset of I need to go raise funds before I start versus I need to get started. And slow, when you, when you say the word slow to, to somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur in business, I think many times they want to go super fast, which as you and I know, it's not most of the time a reality. And you've really proven that you can make it happen. You've done all this stuff, you've had success, sold half the private equity grown really first in your industry. Maybe one of the only people to even do what you've done. What's next for you in terms of a milestone that you want to hit in the future?
- [16:05]
Brian True
Yeah, the next big milestone is taking what we've built in the allied healthcare field as far as phlebotomy is concerned. We're now offering medical, we're now offering pharmacy technician classes. I think we're licensed in 32 states to do that now. Medical assisting is on the next, on the horizon and that'll go very quickly. So now it's just scaling what we build, right? We built the infrastructure, we built the foundation. Now it's just time to scale out the different programs. So medical assisting, pharmacy technician, phlebotomy. On top of that we'll do dental assisting, which you're going to jump into the EMT market. We're so good at the brick and mortar slash hybrid training program style of training that we feel like we'll be very successful in those five medical modalities. Build it for two or three more years and then, and then we'll have another, another liquidity event with the private equity group and at that point onto the next venture. No idea what that is, but my wife tells me it'll be something even though I want to kind of retire. But I think there'll be something else in the works.
- [16:56]
Co-Host
Get an entrepreneur really ever retire?
- [16:58]
Host
I'm not really sure. It seems like people retire for a year and then they have a new idea, a new problem to solve. Plus your tremendous amount of experience that you have, I'm sure makes it things much easier in the future if you could, if you could share maybe one more lesson, one more tip, a strategy, something else that you really love to share with people when it comes to business.
- [17:24]
Brian True
Good question. Fear's a big one. We talked about that a little bit. Getting over your fear of just a fear of failure. Right? Nobody wants to be judged for failing. I mean, I think that's the biggest thing. Fear for me was more like financial fear. Like what if my family goes bankrupt and I've got a house full of five kids and we've got nowhere to go? So fear is a big one to get over. I think emotion is probably the second biggest lesson that I would teach people. I've been involved with a lot of people in the, in the world of business and there's a, there's, there's definitely a time and a place for it to be very, very emotional and strong. Strong about your feelings when it comes to business, but it's generally not with your employees or the partners or the people who've got an investment in yet. Unless, unless there's, you know, an incredible case where you feel like you need to be very emotional about something and have passionate about it. But I. But communicating with the content. Communicating is one of the things that I teach my employees and my staff and that's just. Listen, I don't need all the emotions behind why you're upset. I just need the content so we can make really good educated decisions. So Communicating Without Emotion Like I said, there's in the world of business and entrepreneurialism, there's definitely a lot of emotion, but it doesn't necessarily have to be there on a daily basis. So communicating with content is very important and keeping your emotions in check. Hey, if you got a problem, walk away for 15 or 20 minutes or half an hour until the next day. You'll be surprised how much better you'll handle the situation if you just take a deep breath and and and leave.
- [18:38]
Host
Yeah, no, that's been amazing that I had to do that yesterday, by the way. Obviously there's a lot of stuff happening in the news right now. You know, markets are crazy. I had to walk away for 15 minutes.
- [18:49]
Co-Host
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- [22:30]
Host
Because I felt like my whole world was being consumed with the news and all the things that are happening and reading and what if, what if this happens with my business now? It could be impacted. So that might be the best thing that most business people do because it's hard not to be reactive. You're doing great in business and then all of a sudden you get that email or that message where like your whole world just feels like everything is collapsing and it's hard not to be emotional and to be reactive in that moment. But I really like the walk away from 15 minutes because everything does change when you kind of take a deep breath and walk away. But Brian, this has been really amazing. I'm super inspired today. So many sound bites that people are going to walk away with. But if, if they want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more information about the company, how can they do so yeah, you.
- [23:18]
Brian True
Can reach out to intelvio. Go through intelvio.com my staff's there. I'd be happy to share my email or phone number in the link if you so. So choose at the end of the thing. But yeah, I love the. I'm a real big fan of helping young entrepreneurs. I speak. I've spoken a couple times with the BYU Entrepreneurial A class and, and, and I love mentoring younger kids and in tough spots that they're in with making business decisions when they're young. Predominantly love helping them not give away their equity. Please stop giving away giant chunks of your equity as a startup known as your idea and your money, but love to help the younger generation kind of determine where they're going and how they're navigating things. And yes, I'd love to love to reach out and help people wherever I can.
- [23:54]
Co-Host
There you go.
- [23:55]
Host
That's your, that's your one lesson right there. Stop giving away all your equity. By the way, Utah is one of my favorite states. It's one of the most beautiful states, I think, overall, in terms of outdoor activities. But Brian, this has been really great having you today.
- [24:11]
Co-Host
Super. I took a lot away.
- [24:13]
Host
There's a lot of things. That's why I like to get to. I love to talk to people like yourself because I learned. And as you're talking, I'm even thinking like, okay, you know what? I need to do this, this, and this because I need to. I need to get my momentum. So thank you so much for joining us today. I'm super appreciative of your time and I can't wait for you to come back in a few years from now. Tell us how things are going then and whatever your next venture is. But Brian, thanks for joining us today on Founders Story.
- [24:40]
Brian True
Sounds good. Thanks for having me. Yeah, sure thing.
- [24:48]
Advertiser
Hey, you sold that car yet?
- [24:50]
Brian True
Yeah, sold it to Carvana.
- [24:52]
Advertiser
Oh, I thought you were selling to that guy.
- [24:54]
Brian True
The guy who wanted to pay me in foreign currency, no interest over 36 months. Yeah, no. Carvana gave me an offer in minutes, picked it up and paid me on the spot. It was so convenient. Just like that. Yeah. No hassle? None.
- [25:09]
Advertiser
That is super convenient. Sell your car to Carvana and swap. Hassle for convenience. Pickup fees may apply. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites with indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com podkatz13 just go to Indeed.com podkatz13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.