This week’s guest is Tim Meuchel. Tim is the creator, bestselling author, and podcast host of The 10 Factor. Like so many successful entrepreneurs that you’ve heard me talk to here on the show, Tim failed his way to success. In 2008, he lost over $300,000 after resigning from a twelve-year corporate management career to pursue his side business full-time. His business grew exponentially, but one bad deal left Tim’s company almost bankrupt. Tapping into emergency funds, he fought back and restructured; resulting in a new profit producing model requiring less than 40% of the effort. Tim then reverse engineered his process, validated it with top entrepreneurs, and created a 10-Month Roadmap – The 10 Factor, that he now uses as the success blueprint to help others engineer their business around their ideal lifestyle, all of this while he gives back extensively to support the fight against Prostate Cancer.   Where to Find Tim: Check out his book and podcast via the 10 Factor website. On Instagram @TimMeuchel   Show Notes: [3:00] minute: What was life like for you growing up and what were the beliefs around money and success that were instilled in you as a child? Middle class, tight knit family, very stable.  Engineering was first love and work post college.  [4:45] minute: Was entrepreneurship always in your mind or did it come about at some point? Watched his Dad lose his job as the number two person at his company. His pivot was to start his own business, and that was one of many seeds planted for Tim that entrepreneurship had its benefits. [7:00] minute: There’s a comfort that comes with managing your own destiny that comes with entrepreneurship would you agree with that? You get to create the lifestyle you want for you and your family, and that is what’s important. [8:30] minute: You leave a 12 year career to pursue your side business, tell me what that was and about the time when you almost lost it? Left because of extended travel that kept him away from his soon-to-be-wife, and because he knew he wanted to make the equivalent of two salaries so his soon-to-be-wife could stay at home for future children’s early life. Once he went full-time with his own contracting company it exploded. The business then started to eb and flow with what he could do on his own. One bad deal left the company nearly bankrupt. This is what led to sit down and create 10 Factor. [14:30] minute: What was your headspace like at this time, were you able to stay positive while you sat down to figure this all out or did you get into any bad places with that? Avoided any dark places because he knew he had already built something really fast and that gave him confidence that he could do it again. Worked backwards to reverse engineer what he needed to be doing to make the exact amount in the exact time he wanted. [16:45] minute: What so often kills businesses is too much opportunity, which is not what you expect going in, and it sounds like that is a large part of what you do now is help entrepreneurs figure out what opportunities are the right ones? Going to one thing and being the best at it, there are enough people that need that one thing that you can be wildly successful doing just that.  Having the “right of refusal” and having control of your time.  [21:00] minute: What is that first step, how do you in a practical sense get clear on what to be focused on? If your business is still around and profitable, you are closer than you think, just need some fine-tuning.  A good coach would have gotten him to where he is so much faster, and now he has a coach year-round.