Lead Well

This is chapter five of a series where Trevor reads through the book he’s currently writing.

The book doesn’t have a name yet. What it does have is a story. From the version of Trevor before any of this started, through Central America, through jungle roads and hostel bars and a chance meeting that changed the shape of his life, and into building a business he had no idea how to run.

Chapter five takes us back onto the road. Belize. Guatemala. A two week Spanish course in Antigua. And eventually a small pontoon on a lake surrounded by volcanoes, where two people called Dave and Deedle ran a hostel, bar and dive centre. The weeks spent there, and a quiet act of generosity on the day he left, shaped the culture of everything he built afterwards.

The chapter is called Lake Atitlan.

This series releases before the book is finished. Listener feedback shapes what makes the final version.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you’d like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New chapter every fortnight. Regular episodes in between.

This is chapter four of a series where Trevor reads through the book he's currently writing.

The book doesn't have a name yet. What it does have is a story. From the version of Trevor before any of this started, through Central America, through jungle roads and hostel bars and a chance meeting that changed the shape of his life, and into building a business he had no idea how to run.

Chapter four is what happened after the concept for Ojo Rojo was born in a hostel bunk bed. A ranch in the Belizean jungle. Twenty two dogs. A moment of stillness in a field with a horse. An island off the coast of Belize where Siobhan flew out for her birthday. A thought on a balcony. And a venue in Bournemouth that two people on two different continents sent him a link to within twenty four hours of each other.

The chapter is called The iPad, The Hostel, The Girl.

This series releases before the book is finished. Listener feedback shapes what makes the final version.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New chapter every fortnight. Regular episodes in between.

Two weeks ago I spent ten days in silence. On day six, eating lunch, I caught my mind composing the sentence I'd use to describe the lunch to someone later, and realised I'd been doing that with everything for the better part of a decade.

This episode is about where that pattern came from, which turns out to be the worst years of running my business, and what it says about how long burnout actually lasts. The rehearsed conversations with staff and suppliers and people I owed money to. The constant scanning forward for what was coming. A mind doing exactly what it was built to do, and then never being told the emergency had ended.

It's also about why finding something like this years into recovery isn't a step backwards. You only find the next layer because you cleared the one before it.

If you've ever rehearsed a conversation that hadn't happened yet, over and over, this one is for you.

Originally recorded for The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

More at trevorhill.uk

This is chapter three of a series where Trevor reads through the book he's currently writing.

The book doesn't have a name yet. What it does have is a story. From the version of Trevor before any of this started, through Central America, through jungle roads and hostel bars and a chance meeting that changed the shape of his life, and into building a business he had no idea how to run.

Chapter three is what happened when he actually got on the plane. A one way ticket to Cancun. Kept only a guitar and comic books. First night in Playa del Carmen. Learning to dive three times a day. Siobhan starting to reach out from Bournemouth. The loneliness. And a realisation on a beach that has stayed with him ever since.

Wherever you are, there you shall be.

By the end of the chapter, in a hostel bunk bed on the wrong side of a border crossing, the concept for the business he would build for the next decade was born.

This series releases before the book is finished. Listener feedback shapes what makes the final version.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New chapter every fortnight. Regular episodes in between.

Most independent hospitality founders have plenty of systems. A rota system, an ordering system, a stock system. What they don't have is a business that works when they're not in it, because the thing holding all those systems together is them.This is the most complete episode I've recorded. Four pieces of work that move a founder from holding the business together personally to running a business that holds, with the actual tools inside each one. How to run a two week time audit and what to do with what it shows you. How to design a week in three layers rather than defaulting to whatever the business throws at you. Why the identity shift from being needed to having built something that holds is the thing that makes structure survive a busy month. And how to move decisions and standards off yourself permanently.Plus the reason the order matters, which is where almost every founder comes unstuck.This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.More at trevorhill.uk

This is chapter two of a series where Trevor reads through the book he's currently writing.

The book doesn't have a name yet. What it does have is a story. From the version of Trevor before any of this started, through Central America, through jungle roads and hostel bars and a chance meeting that changed the shape of his life, and into building a business he had no idea how to run.

Chapter two takes us back to 2012. Before hospitality. To a music events business in Bournemouth called Devils Music. A financial target that didn't get hit. A festival in the south of France. And a conversation at the bar with a stranger called Jason that started everything.

The chapter is called The Last Event.

This series releases before the book is finished. Listener feedback shapes what makes the final version.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New chapter every fortnight. Regular episodes in between.

There's a pattern most people never notice about themselves. The more you want something, the harder it seems to get. The tighter you hold on to an outcome, the further away it moves.

In this episode Trevor explains the law of detachment. Why the chase repels. What actually replaces the fear of failure when you finally learn to hold your ambition without gripping it. And what happened when the circumstances he had feared most for a decade actually arrived.

The failure isn't the thing not working. The failure is defining yourself by whether it worked.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New episodes every week. If this resonates, leave a review and share it with someone who needs it.

This is chapter one of a series where Trevor reads through the book he's currently writing.

The book doesn't have a name yet. What it does have is a story. From the version of Trevor before any of this started, through Central America, through jungle roads and hostel bars and a chance meeting that changed the shape of his life, and into building a business he had no idea how to run.

Chapter one opens with the UK Top 50 Cocktail Bars awards in London in 2022. A countdown from fifty. Ojo Rojo being called at number fifteen. And the rewind to the year before when the same list had placed them at number forty two and Trevor hadn't been able to feel it.

This series releases before the book is finished. Listener feedback shapes what makes the final version.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New chapter every fortnight. Regular episodes in between.

Six months from now you will either be exactly where you are right now, or you will be a version of yourself you would not currently recognise. That's the choice.

In this episode Trevor walks through the five principles that make the transformation possible. Drawing on ideas from James Clear's Atomic Habits, Cal Newport's Deep Work, Charles Duhigg's keystone habit concept, and Alex Hormozi's take on compound action. Plus a completely honest breakdown of what actually happens across the six months and why most people quit in week three when they shouldn't.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New episodes every week. If this resonates, leave a review and share it with someone who needs it.

A small pontoon on a lake in Guatemala. A hostel and bar built at the edge of it, only accessible by boat. And a group of strangers waiting on the pontoon to welcome Trevor in the moment he stepped off.

In this episode Trevor tells the story of La Iguana Perdida on Lake Atitlan, the two people who ran it, and the moment on a chicken bus leaving the lake that changed the way he understood everything he was about to go home and build. Every bit of what he later created at Ojo Rojo was downstream of what happened on that lake.

This episode was originally recorded for The Lead Well YouTube channel. If you'd like to watch as well as listen, search The Lead Well Channel on YouTube.

New episodes every week. If this resonates, leave a review and share it with someone who needs it.