CEO & Founder Seth Bacon’s story of creating a $20M life critical business
Seth Bacon shares how he was able to turn downward spiral in his career as a firefighter into a catapult that inspired him to start a business in the medical logistics and transportation industry.
Three key juicy bits from this week’s episode:
- Knowing which product or service to focus the business on
- Finding partners and early employees for your startup
- Brian Smith’s four-step process to bouncing forward amid adverse times
In this episode we discuss:
00:59 An introduction to Seth Bacon
- Trinity Air Medical [01:22]
- What most people don’t know about Seth [01:54]
02:57 Why Seth moved into the transplant industry
- Considerations to know how to hone in your business’s focus [5:24]
- How emotion slows down decision-making [6:51]
10:54 Systematizing an industry that deals with life-threatening scenarios like patient or organ transplant
12:27 Seth’s career as a full-time firefighter before Trinity
- Why Seth decided to to start his own business [14:02]
- Why Seth was asked to leave his job [15:36]
- Why Seth looked to entrepreneurship instead of looking for another company [19:44]
23:33 How working as a paramedic inspired Trinity
25:08 Finally starting the business
- Disrupting the medical air service industry [27:24]
- Marketing the business [29:48]
33:38 Persevering in the face of endless “no”s in the beginning
35:21 Knowing which advice to walk away from an interaction with
36:28 Hiring the first few employees
40:18 When Trinity began to transport organs
41:09 Trinity’s size, market share, and revenue so far
41:45 Seth’s vision for Trinity
44:52 Seth’s parting advice
Links Mentioned:
Quotes
- You have to be able to listen to your customers and shift and pivot and understand that there’s an evolution to a business. Otherwise, you miss that evolution, that wave.
- When you’re handed adversity—when life changes and pivots right in front of your face, how you respond to it and handle it is what makes the big difference.
- The only way we can improve and get better is if we try our best to be open and communicate and to be vulnerable.
- More important than the idea is the execution. Better than bad action is inaction.
- Those moments in our lives that are very dark, very difficult, and very stressful are the same moments that cause us to do something, take action.