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.

Most founders are chasing a version of balance that doesn't exist. The neat fifty fifty split. The tidy symmetrical week. And that target is setting them up to feel like they're failing at something they were never meant to be doing in the first place.

In this episode Trevor uses the image of a heart rate machine to reframe what balance actually is. Why the extremes on both sides of centre are part of a healthy life rather than evidence of failure. And what actually holds balance together, especially for founders whose highs and lows are more extreme than most people's.

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.

Most hospitality founders would not describe themselves as bottlenecks. They'd describe themselves as hands on. Involved. Standard bearers. But if everything in the business has to pass through you before it can happen, the pattern is the pattern regardless of what you call it.

In this episode Trevor gives you ten specific signs you might be functioning as a bottleneck without knowing it, explains why the pattern reinforces itself so quickly, and shares one practical thing to do this week to start unwinding it.

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.

Last week Trevor went to the Propel Operational Excellence Conference in London. A room full of big brands, sharp operators, growth stories and multi site businesses. In this episode he shares his honest observations on what he took from the day, the ideas from Jamie Haziel and Chris Stagg that stayed with him, and the gap he noticed between where the industry conversation currently lives and where the reality lives on the ground.

Plus news of his own upcoming talk at the next Propel conference in October.

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.

You step in to cover a shift because the business needs it that day. Fair enough. Then next week the same gap appears and you cover it again. And within a month, without anyone actually deciding it, that shift has become part of your job.

This episode is about the difference between the founder who can move fluidly into and out of different roles and the founder who absorbs every gap and never gives any of it back. Why structure is not the enemy of flexibility but the condition for it. And what a balanced founder actually builds when the centre holds.

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.

In 2022, a plaque arrived in Trevor's bar telling him Ojo Rojo had placed at number 42 on the UK Top 50 Cocktail Bars list. A career highlight by any measure. He felt nothing. A year later he stood in a room in London as the same list counted down. The number called for Ojo Rojo was fifteen. This time, he felt everything.

In this episode Trevor tells the story of those two nights and the work that had to happen in between to make the difference possible. It's also the opening chapter of the book he's writing on founder first thinking.

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.

For most of human history connection to other people was our currency. As technology has moved forward, that connection has been diminishing. And now AI is here, and the assumption is that it can replace the people we used to ask.

In this episode Trevor talks about what AI can and cannot do for a founder, why lived experience still matters more than data, and why he believes the future of AI is not a world where human connection has been replaced but one where it's eventually been demanded back.

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.

Ojo Rojo has closed. After six weeks notice, the space Trevor built it in was reclaimed by the landlord and the doors shut for the final time.

This isn't an episode about a business failing, because it didn't fail. It's about what happens when something you built for over a decade ends on someone else's terms. What it does to your identity. And what you get to keep when the keys go back.

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.