Founder's Story
Zero Debt, 100 Stores: The Truth About Scaling Nobody Talks About with Brian Treu | Ep. 188
Fri, 14 Mar 2025
Brian Treu, CEO and Founder of Intelvio. shares his remarkable journey from bypassing traditional education to building a thriving, debt-free enterprise in medical training. With his innovative “Miracle Hour” strategy, Brian reveals how early-morning focus transformed his daily grind from mere maintenance into breakthrough momentum. He discusses balancing a day job with entrepreneurial pursuits, overcoming fear, and the power of strategic delegation. Brian’s candid insights offer actionable lessons for entrepreneurs striving to scale sustainably and achieve long-term success.Key Discussion Points:The Spark of Entrepreneurship:Embracing an entrepreneurial spirit early on despite unconventional beginnings.Transitioning from a day job to fully committing to his business dream even after many years working both.The Miracle Hour Strategy:Leveraging uninterrupted early-morning productivity to drive growth.Shifting focus from maintenance tasks to creating real momentum.Overcoming Challenges:Balancing multiple roles while learning from failures.The critical importance of delegation and risk-taking in scaling.Takeaways:Structured routines and early-morning focus can fuel breakthrough growth.Resilience and strategic delegation are key to long-term success.Embrace change, overcome fear, and build momentum to scale your business.www.intelvio.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://www.avocadogreenmattress.com* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Chapter 1: How did Brian Treu start his entrepreneurial journey?
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 and why this industry?
Yeah, I was actually very similar to most entrepreneurs. I 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 a way to make an impact. I was super young. I'm fresh out of high school. 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 missing. And I have great veins, absolutely incredible veins. And I said, you know, 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, we're doing invasive procedures on individuals and there's no education.
Chapter 2: What inspired Brian to enter the medical training industry?
There's no formal education for it or structured training for it. There needs to be. And by February 3rd of 1993, I was two weeks short of my 18th birthday. 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.
Wow. 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?
I was actually super scared of needles. And so it was really hard for me to actually determine, hey, we're going to 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 for the first six or seven years. It was really like a working day job doing the 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 me. I was already fairly disciplined, but I learned a good business lesson that I essentially taught myself.
I didn't really get it from anyone else, but that was the maintenance versus momentum mentality. Okay. 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. You can talk about that if you want.
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 has 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 um so please i'd love to learn more about this lesson and then i would really love to learn about longevity
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Chapter 3: How did the Miracle Hour strategy help Brian scale his business?
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 research or 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 the eight to five, all I was doing was doing maintenance. 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'm figuring out a way to build momentum. But when? It 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 would be sitting at my desk at 4 a.m., and I would build all my momentum between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m.
And then I'd go in and spend some time with the kids, and I've got five kids. I 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'd go back to the office around 9 to 11, and then I'd do 11 to 1 at the gym, and then 1 to 5 working on maintenance, and then family stuff in the evening, and then 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 8 a.m. was the most priceless thing to me because no one interrupted me.
There wasn't emails coming in. I could focus on what's the plan? What's the Gantt chart look like for the growth? What does it look like for us to open three more campuses this year? How do I do that? I could look at leases in the morning when I didn't have people interrupting me. 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 gassed at the end of the day. It's a hard day. 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, I 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 have time where I built momentum and then I would do maintenance to balance of the day. And that was kind of the secret that I taught myself. Ironically, about a year ago, I stopped doing the 3.30 a.m.
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Chapter 4: How did Brian overcome fear and scale to 100 stores?
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 that were more debt. I've got to be in a financial, I've 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 at 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 just maintenance that didn't build productivity, didn't build any, 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 Oh, 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'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 got to go solve that problem.
A lot of the guests that we have on, they talk about transitional milestones and how they had to change in business going from $1 million to $10 million to $50 million to $100 million in revenue or one store to five stores to 50 stores or 1,000 employees. How was that for you when you went from, I'm sure, 10 stores to 100 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?
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Chapter 5: What changes were necessary for scaling from 10 to 80 locations?
Yeah, great question. And the singular answer to that is one thing, and that is I had to stop being scared. I did 80 locations before I sold to anybody. So I had 80 leases on my plate, which at $300,000 or $400,000 in lease would be $30,000, $40,000, $50,000,000 in potential debt that you're carrying on your shoulders 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 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 a 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 a lot of business owners and young entrepreneurs, they're scared, rightfully so.
But I was able to kind of encapsulate that fear and put it in bottle 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 a 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.
Man, fear has held me back in my life. 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 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 even externally, maybe with your family.
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 father and as a husband and as a CEO or 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 or 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.
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Chapter 6: How does Brian balance family life with entrepreneurship?
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 that you give enough time to your kids 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, uh, 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 you're giving the business the attention that it needs in order to succeed.
I imagine 32 years ago, nobody was talking about mental health or balance. 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 and what was the lesson?
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 did you get to this size and scale without carrying debt? I said, well, you make a lot of individual sacrifices.
You drive old cars, 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
Um, 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. Um, although fast, I mean, I think we grew to one year. I think our biggest year was 35 locations. We set up those three a month.
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