From Nurse to CEO: How Trent Carter Built 3 Clinics That Save Lives

Most entrepreneurs quit before they hit traction. Trent Carter shares the raw truth about building in healthcare, risking it all, and why scaling is less about strategy and more about grit.

📌What’s covered:

• The contrarian reason why having no MBA and no business background may actually give you an edge.
• How Trent went six weeks without a single client—and why most entrepreneurs would’ve quit too early.
• The mindset shift that made him go from provider to CEO (and what every founder gets wrong about delegation).
• The work ethic philosophy that beats startup capital, connections, or credentials.
• Why scaling fast is less about opportunity—and more about learning to walk the line between profit and public good.

Trent Carter is a board-certified addiction specialist and nurse practitioner with a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati. After witnessing the urgent need for comprehensive addiction treatment in New Mexico, he founded Renew Health, an innovative recovery center dedicated to saving lives and restoring futures through patient-centered care.

Under his leadership, Renew Health was awarded the “Best Drug and Alcohol Rehab Center in New Mexico.” Trent continues to positively impact his community by expanding access to life-saving treatment and developing new approaches to recovery.

Resource mentioned:

📚The Recovery Toolbelt: Discover Essential Strategies For Achieving and Sustaining Sobriety by Trent Carter 

🌐Learn more about Trent  at https://www.thetrentcarter.com/

🤝Connect with Trent at https://www.linkedin.com/in/trent-carter/

✨The 1:1 Founder Clarity Intensive. The Marketing Coaching Hour is designed for busy small business owners and entrepreneurs. Click here. ✨

 

💛 Thank you for listening in! 😀

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Transcript

[00:00:00] You only fail, you only lose when you stop, when you give up. If you go out and you try an avenue and it doesn't work, let's learn from it. Okay. Why did that not work? What can I do different? Was it my fault? Was it something in the economy? Was it just the landscape? What was it? It took me six weeks to have my first patient come through the door, and that was a very testing time because again, I'm working another job that's actually paying me.

And then I spent all this money, all this time, all this brain power, everything to open this clinic. The first week, nobody came. The second week, nobody came. The first month, nobody came. It took six weeks to get one person through the door. One person doesn't pay the bills, by the way. It took some time, but then it ramped up very quickly.

Persistence, grit. Grit is one of my favorite words. You've got to have grit. If you wanna be an entrepreneur, it does not matter what industry you're in. It's not all gonna be rainbows and butterflies. There's gonna be things that you've gotta work through and you just go over it, under it, around it, or pivot and go a different direction.

[00:01:00]

Priscilla: Welcome to The Entrepreneur's Kitchen. Today, I've got a very special guest for you. I have Trent Carter, and Trent is a board certified addiction specialist, a published author, healthcare entrepreneur.

The first thing that came to mind is what's the mission, if you can tell us about that.

Trent Carter: Absolutely. I'm excited to be able to have this conversation look plain and simple. The mission started. With just trying to help people, right? So I noticed that there was a gap in care for those that were struggling with addiction and substance abuse here in New Mexico.

So I wanted to take that on. I wanted to put it on my back, and I'm happy to say that we've put quite a dent in it. Now. We've made a pretty large impact here in our state.

Priscilla: , You're in the. Healthcare field. A lot of people are in the healthcare field, , but not everybody thinks about taking that next step to, okay, let me build something for this gap. , How did you know the entrepreneur [00:02:00] bucket hit you, or how did this all come to be?

Trent Carter: I think it comes down to mindset. It's all about mindset. I'd say that bug first hit me many years prior whenever I first went 10 99. Honestly, I don't like paying taxes if I don't have to. So it's not just how much money do you make, but it's how much money do you keep? Also. And so whenever I had that first year of 10 99 and I realized, Hey, I can write this off.

I can take advantage of this. Hey, what's an LLC? Let's form that and figure out and I really got excited from that. And it's become a passion of mine. I love holding onto the money that I make. And so I think that's really where it first started. And so naturally, whenever I realized, Hey, there's this gap in care.

There's no competition here because nobody's doing it right, and I can truly make an impact for the greater good. I can do something really positive here. All of those things just came together.

Priscilla: , okay, I see this gap. Let me build something. What's the mind? Because a lot of people are thinking, okay, healthcare, it's probably really complicated. There's probably a lot of regulation. You think of all the things, why you [00:03:00] should not go into that kind of a business.

.

Trent Carter: That's for anything, sure. In healthcare, of course, I am a nurse practitioner, so I have the clinician side of it, the medical provider side of it. So it was a little easier for me to start a clinic, because I could do it myself. But hey, I didn't have any. Business experience prior to this?

Look, I don't have an MBA, nobody in my family now, my father, my brother were hustlers. I always saw them working and having side jobs and side projects to try to bring in money. So I grew up seeing that. My father he worked for Delta Airlines. He did not have a business degree. He did not have a business of his own.

And so while I did have some exposure to it I think that sometimes you just gotta step out there. And I think that if you can prepare yourself, meaning. Education like this podcast alone, talking to maybe friends or family that have done it before or listening to someone that you look up to. Look, I like Grant Cardone.

I listen to Grant Cardone a lot too, and he's intense, but I [00:04:00] really like that. But learn from those people. Read books, listen to audio books, listen to podcasts, and gain as much knowledge and information as you can to where you're not completely blind walking into it, but at some point. You've gotta take a risk if you're wanting to achieve something greater than what you're currently doing.

If you're wanting to set yourself apart from your friend group and do something larger than that, risk is gonna come with that. And there's no guarantee, that's for sure. But this is where due diligence comes in beforehand.

Priscilla: I love Grand Cardone too. He's intense. But you know what? I'm like one of those people who's he's Uncle G, he's the uncle that built a business and came back and told people who didn't have an uncle who built a business how to do it. I'm a big fan of his as well, and the way he gives I think as you talked about mindset and being willing to take that risk.

You don't have a business background. You've educated yourself around that. But how do you switch? Now I'm thinking. What did you find surprising or what helped you? How do you make the switch from you are the provider to now you are the CEO [00:05:00] of the business? .

Trent Carter: So that can be tough because you start handing things off. You delegate, right? Or you build out your system and your infrastructure and your team. And look guys, for anybody who wants to scale, or anybody, even if you don't want to scale as far as the size of the company or the volume at which, you know, revenue, things like that.

But maybe you just wanna get some time back. Maybe you don't wanna be the guy or the girl that has to do everything, that has to answer every question. you're You're gonna have to hand some of it off. And when you do, that's when you truly see. Change. That's when you really see the company grow and just explode in size.

And that's really what it was for me too. So it took some time to get there and then I started to build that team out. And once I saw that, hey, they are competent. Hey, they can not only do it, but they can do it the way that I want, then that's when I could start to hand off task. And it wasn't a grand scale at first, it was little things and I see that they can handle it.

And look I think something else is, . [00:06:00] I don't know that you could ever expect someone to do it the way you're gonna do it, but if they could do it for me, it's 80%, 85% as good as what I think I can do. And if they can do that, I can hand that off knowing, Hey, it's gonna be a job well done. I could comfortably hand this off and now I've just freed my time up for whatever it may be.

If it's personal development, if it's business development, if it's to be with my family, if it's a little extra sleep, if it's a new business venture or. I am the CEO of the company, so vision, direction, growth, going out and networking and meeting people and learning new things on directions. We can take the company.

I can't do that if I'm seeing a hundred patients a week. There's just not enough time to do that.

Priscilla: That's so true. Do you have a moment that something struck you that this cannot go on the way it's going because of course you started and you're the provider. 

Trent Carter: There was a lot of those moments, there's only, again, so many hours in the day and for one person to take it and the patients were coming in, which is fantastic. It's what I needed. , We're trying to grow, obviously I'm doing a [00:07:00] lot of outreach. I'm doing a lot of marketing, I'm doing a lot of presentations.

I'm putting myself out there. I'm putting the company out there. Look, I have a Renew Health shirt on. I didn't even realize it until that wasn't planned, but I have on a company shirt right now, but I'm doing all these things right. And so something had to give. Either I couldn't take any more patients, which was not an option.

That was not gonna happen, or I've got to scale back on some of these other things I'm doing. You call it the extracurricular, but they weren't. It was part of the business growth, putting myself out there again, meeting, greeting, talking, presenting, and so I had to bring on another provider and at this point I'd already started building out the team, but it was very obvious.

I can't handle all this. I simply, my bandwidth is met. I don't have any more capacity. And so when I did bring on that next provider and freed up some time to where I could focus on these other things pretty quickly, I had to bring on another provider and pretty quickly I had to bring on another provider.

And it's man, it took all this time to get to this point. And as soon as I could free the time up for these other things that I needed to [00:08:00] do that I'd become good at, and I was really excited to do, all of a sudden it's Hey. Okay. We've got all these patients coming in and it's just snowballing.

It's just growing exponentially.

Priscilla: I like that you said that. In the beginning, it can feel like all these things are like extracurricular things. That's how it feels for a lot of entrepreneurs where it's oh, if I, have to choose between serving a client and going out there and speaking about something and presenting,

a lot of people choose, okay, let me see the client. And I like that you made that connection for people who are listening. That once you are doing those things, that is what drives, the growth . 

Trent Carter: You're the business owner and you're the entrepreneur. So I got this one from Alex Hormozi, which I mean I think is just incredible. Also, I strongly encourage anybody to listen to him, follow him. He's got a few books that are out as well, but there is no nine to five.

You know that eight hours right there, there's five to 9:00 AM beforehand, and then there's the five to nine after. And so when you look at it that way, all of a sudden you have all this extra time for growth, right? Look, [00:09:00] you've gotta increase your personal skill sets too. There's so many skills that need to come along with it to be able to communicate, to be able to hold a conversation that sounds simple.

But when you're the person that's growing the company, that's gonna be the one out there doing that, it's so important you gotta have that confidence to be able to engage in conversation and then to have an educated conversation with whoever that person is, especially if you're trying to get some business from 'em or have 'em refer to you.

That's just one thing, but there's many things.

Priscilla: We follow the same people. I'm a big Alex Hormozi fan. I'm like looking forward to the new book that's coming out to those who are listening. Go on and check it out. He's got some amazing books that literally you study. They're not books to read. You study and you apply and you study and you apply and

Trent Carter: He's a business philosopher

Priscilla: you mentioned it. Yeah, he is like a business philosopher , audience, please check that out. , Okay, I've got a skill up. What are you thinking as the first skills for the person who's listening, who's okay I'm following. I'm wondering what did Trent do first or what did he focus on first?

There's lots of skills I need to acquire, , [00:10:00] where should I aim first? 

Trent Carter: You're gonna have to put in the work, okay? You're gonna have to look. You can outwork anybody. So if someone's got a leg up on you, let's say whatever it may be, they've got more financial backing or they've got an education that you don't have or something like that. Outwork 'em. Look, the harder you work, the less impossible it's going to become.

And I have faced many things that seem very daunting, and then you start getting into it and you're working and you start figuring things out, and things fall into place. You're like, huh? I can do this. It doesn't seem so bad after all. So I think first and foremost, you're gonna have to put in the work.

You just outwork somebody. If you can do that, you're gonna beat 95% of the people right off the bat right there. But then again, growing your skillset. And so I do think that it is reading these books. Find somebody that you admire, that you look up to somebody that's already accomplished. What you're trying to accomplish.

And then study 'em. How'd they do it?, What were their routines? What were their habits? Where were their failures? How did they learn? How did they respond to those [00:11:00] failures? And how can I learn from that failure so that I don't do that? And if you do that right there, again, it's gonna set you apart from so many people.

So increase your knowledge, increase your skillset. Put in the work, and then if you can just have this burning desire, almost obsessive right there. Again, there is no 40 hour work week. There's no nine to five. It might have to be a seven day a week thing, and it may be where you're waking up early before the rest of your family gets up so that you can put in the work before the sun even comes up, so that now you can be present.

Once your family wakes up, you have breakfast, and then guess what? Go to work. And even if it's after they go to bed, put the kids down, and then you spend the time with your spouse. And then once they fall asleep, maybe you're picking up that book and you're reading for another 30 or 45 minutes so that you're constantly learning and growing.

So with that said, reading too.. It can be a, paperback, it could be physical book or the audible. I'm a huge fan of audibles and podcast. You're constantly learning from people that have been there and done it, and you haven't yet. So in that [00:12:00] sense, , I don't know if they're smarter than you or not, but they've achieved what you haven't yet.

That's the person I wanna learn from,

And then try to surround yourself with those people. So here's another one. I think it's good to strive. To become the smartest person in the room, but then once you do, you better find a new room. If you're stuck in a room or you're the smartest person in the room, you are not in the right room because now you're limiting your growth.

I don't necessarily wanna be the dumbest person, but I dang sure don't wanna be the smartest person because I wanna surround myself with people that I'm trying to strive. That I look up to. I wanna strive to be like them or achieve what they've achieved. And I'm not saying to ditch your friends, that's not what I mean.

I'm just talking your close circle of influence that you've got around you. I think it's really important.

Priscilla: sometimes you think you work hard, but until you get close to other people and that work hard is defined by what they do, then you realize, oh my goodness, I can actually do more. So it's great when you hear how other people are doing it. 'cause then you can put a [00:13:00] definition to those words , that is correct, and that helps you

Is there's something that you found super surprising.

Trent Carter: Super surprising. Let's see. I can fall back on that quote that I said earlier about the harder you work, the less impossible it becomes. It does not matter how daunting the task is. I'm telling you, it's achievable if you put in the work. And again, what is the work and also work smarter, not harder, right?

Don't be working just to say that you're working because sometimes you're just wasting energy. You're burning fuel for no reason. What's another quote? I'm trying to think of this one here. Don't overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself, meaning what your abilities are, what you're able to achieve.

Look, I've. Put myself there before there's no way I can do this by myself. I need to bring these guys in to help me out. And then come to find out, I ended up doing all the work anyways, and it was a waste of time. And then I gave them ownership for absolutely no reason. So I own more companies than just Renew Health.

It's just amazing and remarkable what you can [00:14:00] achieve. Once you start putting forth the action and then you start to learn about whatever that industry is or what your role's gonna be in there, and then all of a sudden it's just not that daunting. I'm telling you, it's not that hard once you get going with it and. Also if it's too easy right off the bat, then you didn't set your sites high enough. So that's back to Grant Cardone of 10 x, right? What are you trying to achieve? Okay, now 10 x it. Oh my gosh, I don't know if I can do that. Cool. Then fall short. But now you still four Xed what your original goal was.

I'd rather come up four times I think that's a great mindset to have too.

Priscilla: You scaled your two clinics in under two years. I think you mentioned a bit of how that kind of happened. The more you put yourself out there, the more things just.

It drove itself. It needed to happen. But I'll let you speak to that.

Trent Carter: Yeah, so it's actually three clinics. So I think, look, if you're wanting to start a business, if you're wanting to start a service something that's gonna give you monetary value, that's gonna give you revenue, find something that's missing, [00:15:00] right? If you can solve a problem, if there's a void in whatever it is, and you can solve that problem.

Then obviously you're gonna get paid for it. , Which is not always just about the money. I think if you can do something great in the meantime, provide a service that truly does change lives and something that matters to you, something that's easy to get ahold of, then you're gonna have a lot more motivation to put in those extra hours, whatever that may be.

And so for me I care about people. Which is why I became a nurse and then went back to school and became a nurse practitioner. I like to see people do better, people feel better, and then I myself have never struggled with substance abuse or addiction, but that's what I've chosen to specialize in because it's just remarkable how quickly they can make a change and turn around.

So that's on the clinical side and the personal side, the feel good side of it. On the business side over here, there's a massive need. Look nationwide, we're just seeing these crazy, worldwide, but we're just seeing these crazy rates of addiction and overdose and substance abuse. And so I [00:16:00] thought how can I fix that?

How can I make a change? And it was that simple. And so I think that can be for anybody in any industry, Hey, I don't know. Look, lawn care, right? If you're seeing in your neighborhood that everybody's lawn's grown up like, huh. I know how to mow a yard. Clearly they're not staying on top of it.

Does that mean that there's nobody doing it in this area or whoever's doing it is overwhelmed and they can't keep up? Spend about 10 minutes making some phone calls and Googling and you can find that answer and then the next step, go knock on their door, right? Ask the people what's going on and you can hear it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

And then if everything aligns, hey, go start that business. And maybe you've gotta mow some lawns yourself right off the bat. But then once that revenue starts coming in, what do we do? You hire somebody else so they can do it for you and free up your time. And now you've got fairly passive revenue coming in, and you can scale that business or you can go work on the next thing.

Priscilla: How do you walk the line, in healthcare and then commerce, for public good and for [00:17:00] profit and combining those, I think sometimes that's a mental hurdle for a lot of people. Like I said, mindset thinking, how do you think about it?

Trent Carter: For me I feel like I do a lot of good, meaning. We change people's lives, we truly save people's lives. And so do I make a profit off of that personally? Of course I do. It's a business. You have to, and I spent a lot of time and a lot of money going to school, and I have a family, I have a wife, I have two young children, and , I have to put food on the table, right?

And so whenever I started the clinic, the very first one, it. At first, it ate up a lot of resources, meaning capital for me. Look, I did not have any patients whenever I opened this practice. I didn't go out and compile a wait list or anything like that where it's okay guys, hey, the door's open.

Come on. And they just come flooding through. It took me six weeks to have my first patient come through the door, and that was a very testing time because. Again, I'm working another job that's actually paying me, and then I spent all this money, all this time, all this [00:18:00] brain power, everything to open this clinic, and the first week nobody came.

The second week, nobody came. The first month, nobody came. It took six weeks to get one person through the door. One person doesn't pay the bills, by the way. It took some time, but then it ramped up very quickly. So anyways, back to your question. How do I walk that line? Because I know the service that I'm offering.

It's a good thing and I think it's something that anybody can get behind because look, when you see somebody whose life is ruined or in turmoil or whatever's going on, and you can completely turn that around, or someone that's overdosing weekly, and look, I've had so many patients come in like that, and you literally save their life and now they're able to be productive.

They can hold a job. They can support their children and their spouse and be productive in society, let's say. It's pretty hard to not wanna support that.

Priscilla: Absolutely. I agree with you and it's such great work that you're doing and needed worldwide. . I applaud you for the work that you're doing and the [00:19:00] contribution that you're making. It's very exciting to hear about, you talked about the time where you've built this thing and you put your everything in it and six weeks later, there's only one person what is going on between the one week and the six weeks.

'cause I think a lot of people at the point were like, what do I do? This is the point where you lose your mind with. How much you've put into it at that point, and I'm thinking, what was the thing that happened from zero to one to multiple?

Trent Carter: Mindset,

Persistence. Never gave up, never doubted myself. Now, did I have those thoughts or it's oh man, is it, of course I did, but I never let 'em set in and maybe it was. Unrealistic confidence that I had. I just knew what I was doing was going to work, and I told myself, I'm not gonna give it a choice.

I'm gonna make it work. And I even told some of my friends and close, like influencers and, not advisors, but people that I bounce things off of. I said that, and they're like you can't necessarily do that. I'm like, oh [00:20:00] yeah, I am. I'm gonna make this thing work. And that I think, comes down to your mindset and putting in the work again.

Smarter, not harder, right? Not work. Just to be saying, Hey I'm out there trying. What I'm doing is I'm making connections. I'm networking throughout the community, I'm finding resources that are gonna refer to me. I'm finding a way that I can support them and make it better for them to where I'm not just asking something from them, but in fact it's, Hey, so , these people are coming in and maybe they're being disruptive to your work or something.

Or maybe. Hey, you employ some folks that are struggling with substance abuse because you're one of the few businesses that will take a felon. They've been incarcerated and they get released, and it's incredible that you're giving 'em a job. I can help make sure that they can maintain that job, that they're not gonna relapse.

And in fact, now you're gonna be short on employees or staff here in a few weeks because these two guys dropped off, right? And so now it's synergistic. It's not me just asking something from them. I'm providing them with something as well. And so again, I think mindset, hard work [00:21:00] out there, putting in the work, not giving up.

Look, you only fail, you only lose. When you stop, when you give up, if you go out and you try an avenue and it doesn't work, let's learn from that. Okay, why did that not work? What can I do different? Was it my fault? Was it something in the economy? Was it just the landscape that, what was it?

Let's learn from that. Tweak it, and now try to do better. And maybe it's a little better, but that fails too. Cool. We'll just pivot again and we'll learn from that. And it's like the story of the light bulb, right? How many times did it fail until it worked? 10,000 or something like that? It never failed.

He just found out ways that it wouldn't work. 10,000. 10,000, isn't that the number? And then all of a sudden we're all using the light bulb.

Priscilla: Yeah he knew that he was onto something and for that reason he couldn't give up. So I think that mindset that you talk about, we often, put the mindset thing aside a little bit, but that's the most important part

Trent Carter: Yeah. Persistence, grit. Grit is one of my favorite words. You've got to have grit if you wanna be an entrepreneur. If you [00:22:00] wanna be a business owner. Look, I'll be honest, things are going pretty good for our company right now, but there's still things I have to navigate. There's things that are relatively, up and down and problems that we're faced.

And, the passing of the big, beautiful bill over here is gonna be some hurdles for us that Trump just passed and, hey, that's okay. We just need to get ahead of it. We need to navigate. Maybe we've gotta pivot a couple things and figure out how to do this thing, but it's just part of the landscape.

It's gonna happen. It does not matter what industry you're in. It's not all gonna be rainbows and butterflies. There's gonna be things that you've gotta work through and you just go over it, under it, around it, or pivot and go a different direction. 

Priscilla: what does your day look like now? I think you're now fully on the CEO side of things. What does your day look like?

Trent Carter: I don't have to wake up quite as early as I used to, which is nice. I used to wake up at four 30 in the morning to go to the gym. Now I wake up around 6 30, 6 15, get up. That's before my family does. I like to get up, get a cup of coffee. Maybe do some reading or even read the news, what's going on in the [00:23:00] world, what's going on, local, statewide, national, worldwide.

And I subscribe to different services to where I can get that in five or 10 minutes, something like that where I can get the hit pretty quick. Family starts to get up if I take my kids to school, , drop them off every, which, it's summertime right now, but during the school year, I try to, every single day and then I go to the gym because to me it's very important, but that's a win.

I start my day out with a win. I get to start my day with my family, take my kids to school, which is incredible. And then go to the gym and no matter what happens that day how bad the day can be, I've accomplished something great already to start my day and it just sets the day up for success if the day gets thrown off and I don't get to do those things right now.

It's almost like the rest of the day it's hard to really get on track. Anyways, get back home, get cleaned up, and then I usually get to work. And so it may be, I have a lot of meetings if it's getting the teams going. I recently did publish my first book, so now I'm doing a lot more podcasting these days, which just like what you and I are [00:24:00] doing, and I really like that.

It may be getting out in the community if I've got to go meet with the mayor or something and take him to lunch let's see. , We do a ton of marketing and although it was very uncomfortable for me at first to be the face of all this, I realized that. People need to see a face. And if you're gonna be the guy that starts the company that makes all the decisions, it's a lot easier to have it flow through you.

And so there's a lot of community engagement or last week I went and shot a four segment series for the news here in New Mexico and Albuquerque. Let's see. I try to wind down around two 30. Because I also like to pick my kids up when I can. And even if I don't get to pick 'em up, then they're still home around three o'clock.

And I do my best to be there when they come walking through the door. 'cause I wanna see the kids. I want to be involved and we talk about the day and whatnot. Everything there. And if there's something that I need to wrap up before practice and dance and all that [00:25:00] rolls around. Then I'm back to work on that again.

It may be phone calls, it may be meetings, it may be emails. It may need to do something in front of the computer. Kids are extremely active, so usually the evenings are revolved around them for practice or recitals, whatever that may be. We always have dinner together as a family, and then

my wife and I, put the kids down and then we'll each put one down and then we'll flip flop to where we get time with both of them, and then it's time to be a husband. It's time that my wife and I get together that's uninterrupted and either try to go to bed or I'll read. I work on self-development, personal development, and I like to do that through reading in the evening once my wife falls asleep.

Now, there's always things that happen that come up, but I don't like blank spaces on my calendar. I think that's another Grant Cardone thing. My calendar is color coordinated according to what I've got going on and what company or what it is that's happening, and I fill it up.

It's boom, and I have found. Especially now that I work from home a lot more than what I used to. It's easy to get distracted. [00:26:00] It's easy to not wanna do things. It's easy to put things off. So I schedule time for that. I schedule personal development time. I schedule time to get caught up on emails.

, If it's something that I've put off for a week or so, I'll see, hey, I'm not doing that and I really don't want to do it. I've been putting it off. So we're literally gonna book that 15 minutes in a blank space that's on my calendar to where I can get it done. And that way things. Don't get put off, or at least the important things don't get put off.

I think something else that's important is you can't make everything a priority. If you prioritize everything, then nothing's a priority, so I do like to, at the end of my day. Plan my next day to, whenever I wake up, let's say Tuesday morning, Monday night, I already know what I'm gonna do on Tuesday. I'm not just facing the day blank.

I know what I need to do. I know what needs to be accomplished. I know what's on my calendar. I know what I'm facing for the day, so that if I do in fact need to get up earlier or something like that. My day doesn't get thrown off that way. I still get up, I still go to the gym. I still have my me time to do what I like to do in the morning before the [00:27:00]family wakes up.

So I think that's really important. And then at the end of the week, I do actually reflect back on that. How'd that go? What did I not get done? What do I need to do? What does next week look like? So it's almost like a daily and a weekly thing that I'm looking at planning and then reflect on. Oh.

Priscilla: I love how you've integrated all of your life the family time, the time with your wife, , the work time together. I think that's really important as people build their businesses. And I actually did not know that you have a book out, so please tell us about the book you have out

Trent Carter: Got it right here. The Recovery Tool Belt. It came out a few weeks ago, three, three and a half weeks ago. So this book is written. To help the individual that's struggling with substance abuse, a loved one where they themselves are not struggling, but they have someone that's near and dear to them that's struggling.

Look, even if you don't struggle, you don't know anybody's struggling, but you're seeing it in the community. You're watching it on the news, you're hearing about it 'cause it's very prevalent worldwide and you want to better educate [00:28:00] yourself. This book is for you. It's a very easy read. It was written that way very intentionally.

There's no medical jargon or big words or complicated scenarios. It's very straightforward. It's got humor in it because again, it does no good if you can't get through it because it's such a dry read. And so the book is meant to change lives, to save lives. It's, if you wanna call it self-development, but it's written for the addict.

It's real world application. Things that I have seen work thousands of times personally with my patients. Look, if it's something that didn't work and practice, if it's something that I didn't see work time and time again consistently, it didn't make it to the book. And so if somebody can read the book and they can walk away with one thing.

It's a win, or hey, you could walk away with, I don't know, 30 things. So it's called the recovery tool belt. 'cause that's all it is. I'm giving you tools, and this is something that I say to my patients like, Hey, I'm just giving you the tools, whether that's newfound information, knowledge, medication, resources, guidance, [00:29:00] whatever it may be.

But it's on you to actually use them. It's on you to implement that and put that into practice. So same thing for the book. I'm giving you better tools to use, but it's on you to implement it.

Priscilla: Thank you for that. We all know someone who struggles or we are people who struggle and it's one of those things we try to avoid talking about. Grateful for you for riding the recovery tool belt. Now, I wonder, what is it that you wish every family knew?

Who's facing the situation where they have someone who's an addict and okay, how do we get them into recovery? What do you wish they all knew?

Trent Carter: So I wish that every family knew. Look, it's not too late. I don't care if they've gone to rehab 10 times. It is not too late. You cannot give up on that person continue to support them. Now that being said, I'm all for, you've gotta set those healthy boundaries for the individual, right? Because you don't want to enable them and you don't wanna be taken advantage of.

And it may [00:30:00] feel like they've used and abused you and they've burnt bridges, and it's almost like it's a lost case that they're just helpless. But I'm telling you, I have seen it time and time. Again, someone can make that turnaround, and it may be, there's so many factors that go into it. It may be that they've tried that before.

Maybe they didn't connect with whoever that medical provider was or that facility, or whatever it may have been, to where now they go to a different place and they do in fact connect. And that connection is so important when someone's trying to get through recovery. It may be that, I don't know, maybe they were younger and they didn't have a whole lot of things that held them accountable or that they found valuable, which could be children, a job, anything.

Whereas now they do, and so they've got those valuable things that can help pull them out of that. Because when you do have children or somebody or something or someone that's counting on you, it's easier to pull through and those, just a couple of examples, but stick with them, [00:31:00] show them. You are going to support them.

A lot of times look saying, Hey look, I'm here for you. I'm ready when you are. I love you, right? I want to support you. Whenever you're ready and whenever that time comes, that's gonna go so much further than hearing a lecture. They don't wanna be lectured. They know they don't need to be lectured. They need to know , that you're there to support them whenever that time comes.

Priscilla: Thank you for that. Trent, what are you excited about personally and as you look out into the marketplace, what's exciting you right now?

Trent Carter: There's so much to excite you. Look, it doesn't matter what's going on. There's always potential for growth. What excites me is what the future may hold, and I don't know exactly what that may be, but I do know that I work on myself again. Professionally, personally as a father, as a husband, as a friend, as a business owner, an entrepreneur, as a clinician, I work on myself every single day, and I think you're limitless when you do that.

Look, when I first went to school to become a nurse [00:32:00] practitioner, I didn't know what in the world I wanted to do with it, honestly. But I did know that. Getting this new skillset, having this, license to practice medicine, things like that would make me more valuable and I knew that would open doors.

Now while I was in school, I was hoping I could halfway figure that out. But I did not know, even once I graduated, I did not know I was gonna open, renew Health and solely focus on substance abuse and mental health. But I knew that. Getting through school, getting the license, getting the education, getting the experience was just gonna make me more valuable.

So I think that if you have that approach in life, there's only one direction to go, right? There's always gonna be setbacks, but there's only one direction to go. What's getting me excited? Look, I can tell you I did invest in XRP. I guess crypto's getting me excited, but I also invest in a lot of things.

I'm not telling everybody to go out and start getting crypto, but there's a lot of talk about stable coins and being backed and whatnot. I don't know. You threw it on me. I wasn't ready for that question, but I would say rather than that, [00:33:00] look, just invest in yourself. That's the number one thing you can do.

Invest in yourself. Take care of yourself. Be proud of yourself. I strongly encourage exercise. If we can be physically fit, we're gonna be clear cognitively, we're gonna think clear, we're gonna be more confident in whatever situation we're trying to approach. And then if you can become more educated, if you can gain new knowledge.

New skills. Either strengthen the skills that you have or acquire new skills. Again, it's just gonna make you a more valuable person. And so when you do, in fact, hey, you know what? I've been thinking about this business idea. Now I'm finally ready. You're gonna be better equipped to go tackle that and kick its ass.

Honestly, you're just gonna be ready to take on the world.

Priscilla: Trent. If you talk about crypto with me, wouldn't need another two hours. 'cause I could go down that rabbit hole too.

Trent Carter: Okay?

Priscilla: Thank you so much. To the audience, please check out the Recovery Tool Belt Trent's book. Please read it. Or you can give it to a community or someone you know , that would help them to begin to have these conversations and begin to. [00:34:00] Face this thing that we're facing globally as a society.

. Are you active online or somewhere people can learn more about you?

Trent Carter: Absolutely. So on my website the trent carter.com. I post a weekly blog, but if you sign up, there's also a newsletter too.

And then on social, the Trent Carter, we've got Instagram, we've got Facebook. I'm gonna come out with a TikTok and do YouTube shorts. Very informative stuff. I post daily LinkedIn as well. If you wanna follow on the more professional side, it's just Trent Carter on LinkedIn. We're very active.

Constantly posting, and if you're interested in the medical side of things and the addiction side of things, you can follow Renew health. It's Renew Health, NM as in New Mexico, renew Health, nm again, posting daily. The website there is just renew health.com. There's tons of information that's free that we're putting out there.

Look, guys, I talk about mindset. I talk about business and entrepreneurship. I talk about healthcare and I talk about addiction and, there's so much that goes into that, and I love to talk about those things and break 'em down. I'm actually working on my own [00:35:00] podcast, beyond Limits. I don't know when it's gonna be out this year, for sure.

Relatively soon. And we're gonna talk about all these things. And just like yourself, I'll have a bunch of amazing guests on there.

Priscilla: Thank you so much. It's the trent carter.com Trent. Thank you so much and to speak about innovation in healthcare, which is what you're doing. I think it's great for our audience , to begin to think about that and to learn about that, and to share this message. So thank you so much for your time and expertise.

Trent Carter: Thank you so much for having me on here. It was a lot of fun.