Entrepreneur Trenton Hughes has a super interesting background. He worked in corporate for a few years, escaped, worked in a startup, escaped, and finally decided to start his own business — one that helps other budding business owners start theirs. Now, his venture studio Unfounded Ventures invests in and incubates a myriad of startups.
Trent has also started a community of entrepreneurs called Tribe when he couldn’t find one himself. He is clearly one of those people with a mindset of, “If it doesn’t exist yet, I’ll build it.”
I had the opportunity to catch up with him and we dove into a lot of different topics. Why he chose to start a venture studio, his journey from corporate employee to entrepreneurship, and how he discovered what freedom means to him.
From Corporate to Venture Studio
You’ve likely heard of a venture capital firm but what about a venture studio? You can think of it like a VC firm that’s solely focused on creating new ventures. Trent describes it as a combination of starting and investing in companies under one umbrella portfolio company.
I had to ask: why start a venture studio instead of just starting another company?
Trent says that while he has started a few companies or at least co-founded them, he knows himself well enough to recognize that he likes the beginning stages best. He adds that he knew it would be a more efficient (and enjoyable) use of his time to help other businesses get going, and then help them bring in teams to run it.
Along with his years in corporate as a SaaS consultant, Trent had a few small ventures in college and also worked for a startup. These experiences taught him how to run a business and hire the right team to grow it. And, thanks to his time with the startup, he understood a lot of things that you can only learn the hard way.
One of those things is that burnout comes to those who don’t pay attention to their emotional and mental well-being.
Trent’s Version of Freedom
Looking back on his time at the startup, Trent says that he “went pretty hard on the business.” It eventually grew to the point of having close to a thousand employees. The pressure was on — he worked a lot of hours, was traveling a ton, and was not taking care of himself.
Trent adds that while they did bring in a CEO eventually, it was mostly him and his co-founder at the helm. He says that when he was leading that big of a team, he felt like he couldn’t be honest about the fact that he was young, inexperienced, and stressed out. He adds that he felt like he couldn’t share with his friends or family either, and ultimately kept a lot of it buried inside.
What resulted was not one but two trips to the hospital. The first time he thought he had food poisoning, but it turned out it was a panic attack — his nervous system was officially shot. He made some changes, but it wasn’t enough. He landed himself back in the hospital for an emergency appendectomy and then woke up with another panic attack.
At this point, he really needed to make a change. Trent had to recognize that he had been chasing money because he thought it meant freedom. Back then, he thought that if he went hard enough he would have the freedom to live the life he wanted to live.
Trent calls his time in the hospital his “rock bottom.” He got into therapy, read books, moved across the country, and spent more time in nature. He realized that freedom wasn’t about money. Rather, it was doing the things that truly mattered to him that he had been neglecting. He wanted to have fun, build a community, and above all, help others.
Since then, he has done just that. Instead of waiting until retirement, he builds activities that he loves into his day-to-day life, like surfing. He built his community through Tribe, and he helps out other entrepreneurs via his work at Unfounded.
Trent says that he has never been happier or more successful. His anxiety is “pretty much gone,” and he feels a lot more empowered. He doesn’t have a scarcity mindset anymore and is content with designing his version of a perfect life. Now, instead of letting work run his life, he fits it in where it makes sense with his new priorities: surfing and his family.
If he could give other entrepreneurs just one piece of advice, he says he would tell them how important speaking authentically is. He says that if he had had the confidence to speak out about his burnout, it probably wouldn’t have gotten so bad. One of Trent’s goals with his peer community Tribe is to give folks a space where they feel comfortable speaking about struggles — he believes his journey would have been a lot different if he had a space like that when he was starting.
Speak your truth, don’t be afraid to choose your own unique version of freedom, and don’t underestimate the value of community, and you could have the same success that Trent has.
Photo by Linus Nylund on Unsplash
This article was written by Neel from MaidThis Franchise, a remote-local franchise opportunity for people looking to escape the rat race and reach financial freedom. Learn more here.
