Lead Well

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...

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 no...

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...

Most hospitality founders know the feeling. The week that ends in exhaustion with nothing real having moved. The full diary and the empty progress. In this episode Trevor talks honestly about the pattern of filling the day with motion as a substitute for the work that actually matters. The post office run, the floor shift, the doing that displaces the leading. And how to build a north star that gi...

Most hospitality founders know they're running on empty. They just don't know specifically what's draining them. In this episode Trevor walks through the Energy Leak Tracker and the Time Audit Tool, the two practical tools he uses with every founder in the first phase of working together, and explains exactly how to use them to find where your energy and time are actually going. This e...

Most of the advice aimed at hospitality founders is about the team. How to build culture, nurture staff, and get the best out of the people around you. None of it is wrong. But almost none of it is aimed at the person who has to implement it. In this episode Trevor makes the case that the coaching and consultancy industry aimed at hospitality has been giving the right advice in the wrong order. An...

On holiday Trevor read two paragraphs in a book that named something he'd been living for years without a word for it. The pattern of making himself agreeable rather than present. Of leaving rooms feeling accepted but never quite remembered. In this episode he talks about where that pattern comes from, what it does to your confidence and your leadership over time, and what it feels like when y...

This isn't a recovery story. It's a practical leadership conversation about the version of self medication that doesn't look like a problem. The functioning version. The one where you're showing up, the business is running, and if you're being honest with yourself, you were actually pretty good at it. In this episode Trevor talks about what that pattern does to your mornings, y...

At thirty two, a man Trevor had just met at a bar in France told him to come to Mexico. Within three months he'd closed his businesses, sold almost everything he owned, and bought a one way ticket with no return date. In this episode Trevor tells the full story of the Mexico decision, including Jason, the person who shaped who he became while he was there, and the three things that period taug...

Most hospitality founders know they need a life outside the business. The problem isn't knowledge. It's permission. The actual, felt permission to close the laptop and be somewhere else without the guilt following you there. In this episode Trevor talks about where that guilt comes from, what it quietly does to your capacity for joy over time, and what actually shifted when he finally star...

The venues reopened. The covers came back. The press moved on. But the founders who kept those businesses alive through Covid weren't the same people who had closed them. And almost nobody talked about that. In this episode Trevor shares what that period actually did to him personally, what he's seen in the founders he works with since, and why the psychological cost of Covid on hospitalit...

Most hospitality leaders don't burn out dramatically. They burn out slowly, in the ordinary texture of the day. Wired at night and flat in the morning. Losing the things that used to restore them. Doing the job and looking fine while feeling hollowed out behind it. In this episode Trevor talks about what running on empty actually does to a person over time, why the hospitality industry makes t...