21st Century Entrepreneurship Trevor McGregor: Why busy founders can’t scale?
Trevor McGregor is a high-performance coach and CEO, and we spoke about why so many entrepreneurs feel burned out, misaligned, and trapped by the businesses they built. After “over 45,000 one to one coaching sessions,” Trevor has seen the same patterns repeat: founders hustling harder, short on time, and unsure what they’re even optimizing for anymore.
He breaks this down into five concrete blockers to scale: limiting beliefs, no clear strategic plan, missing systems, poor time management, and weak execution. Trevor explains why “most people spend more time planning their vacation than they do their business and their life,” and how reverse-engineering a clear short-, mid-, and long-term plan changes momentum. From there, he emphasizes building systems that support daily action, optimizing what to do, delegate, or drop, and taking “intelligent and inspired action” instead of reactive busyness.
We also talked about his core framework—the four S’s: state, story, standards, and strategy—and why mindset is the real lever behind results. Drawing from his work with Tony Robbins and clients like Joe Fairless, Trevor shows how owning your inner state and standards can unlock financial, time, and location freedom, all in service of impact and legacy. Listeners will leave with a clear picture of what actually drives scale—and what to fix first.
Key takeaways
- Burnout comes from hustling without clear goals or priorities.
- Identify and dismantle limiting beliefs before scaling.
- Create a strategic plan, then reverse-engineer daily actions.
- Systems and support make growth sustainable.
- Optimize time: do, delegate, or dump tasks.
- Execution requires intelligent and inspired action.