There are times where people expect us to become someone we don’t want to be, and choosing between meeting other people’s expectations and doing the thing that makes us happy can really be challenging. But what does it take for us to really be going after our dreams?
For today’s episode, we’ll be getting a load from Travis Chappell, founder and host of Build Your Network Podcast, on his journey to becoming a part of the Top 100 full-time podcasters, as he stepped away from an established path he was on since he was young.
Travis is a podcasting consultant, real estate investor, and professional connector. He talks about building genuine and long-lasting relationships in his Build Your Network Podcast, which is considered one of the Top 25 Business podcasts in the online space.
Here’s What You Missed
Going out of your comfort zone
- “So my junior year or sophomore year, a buddy of mine started knocking doors, going door to door, selling solar. I saw a couple of paychecks that he had made and it was just kind of piqued my interest.” (09:08)
- “Within about three months, I was running my own team.” (09:40)
- “I enjoyed the sales and business side way more than I enjoyed what I was doing at the church.” (10:58)
- “The first couple people that I told shut it down immediately. So I just felt like I couldn’t really talk to many people about it.” (12:05)
- “For the first time ever, a person in the position of authority in ministry told me that he didn’t care if I came to his church as a layman, which is basically just a member of the church, or if I was there in a part time position or a full time position, he just wanted me there.” (12:59)
- “It was a really lonely time, because I was just in my head thinking about that all the time, but I didn’t feel like I could talk to anybody about it because they would just shut it down, which multiple people did.” (14:42)
Figuring out want you want to do in life
- “Counter-intuitively, at the end of my first year doing six figures, that was when I realized I didn’t want to do door to door anymore.” (20:31)
- “I’ve always kind of had that entrepreneurial itch, like I was the kid that brought stuff to school in elementary to sell the other kids, started landscaping business before my senior year in high school, was mowing lawns and putting in sod jobs the summer before my senior year with a friend of mine.” (22:43)
- “I had zero experience in the online space, like never podcasted, never blogged, never did anything like that. But I figured like, hey, somebody figured it out. I’m sure I could figure it out.” (23:31)
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Monetizing your Brand
- “It was never a linear, like step by step process to me.” (27:11)
- “I think that’s a problem with most people is that they don’t want to start a show until they know what the monetization point is going to be.” (27:48)
- “It’s a let me start building this while I’m making money doing this other thing. As long as I can add a lot of value to people, like I’m going to start building some sort of an audience and then all I have to do is spend time with them, get to know them, ask what their problems are and build solutions to those problems.” (28:47)
Niching down your Podcast
- “I knew by consuming some of these free resources that I had to niche down, I had to find an avatar, find a person to serve and find a topic to talk about.” (29:36)
- “What else can I talk about? So I looked back at it as like, what’s the other reason? Why did I make six figures last year at 22? So, first off, it’s sales, like sales ability. Sure. But what got me to that point? And the answer to me was the fact that I got around my mentor, who at the time was making really good money doing door to door.” (30:24)
Acquiring wisdom from other people
- “Anytime there was an opportunity to hang out with them, I was there because I wanted to learn and soak up as much as I could.” (31:27)
- “The teachability and learning from somebody who’d been there, done that, walked through it before me, and then duplicating exactly what he had done. Kind of making it my own, throwing my own personality in there and my own trainings and other things that I’ve learned.” (31:27)
Building Relationships
- “What I did have, I think, is just my sales ability and my perseverance. Like, maybe you can’t take my persistent attitude away from me.” (33:08)
- “If I can get people who are good, that are recognizable, that a lot of people know then other people who are good, who are recognizable, that a lot of people know, are going to look at me as being more credible. It just made sense to me from the beginning.” (33:21)
Podcast Launching
- “I didn’t have that pre-launch strategy. I launched in, got as many reviews and ratings and all that stuff as I possibly could, and I jumped onto the top charts within the first week of launch or so. But it didn’t do much for my download numbers, honestly. It was a really disappointing thing to me cause I thought that was it. I made it to the top charts, like I’m going to get a ton of downloads now, and then it just didn’t follow. Then I had to kind of go back to the drawing board and start over.” (37:46)
- “My first point of monetization was a small group mastermind.” (39:10)
Why start podcasting
- “If I didn’t have a podcast, I don’t think I’d be doing that as much because I wouldn’t feel morally obligated to bring a certain level of value to my listeners, if I didn’t have any listeners.” (44:22)
- “It keeps you accountable to learning and growing. It helps you build your network in your industry or your space, your niche with the top people that are out there, and increases your credibility and authority. So why not?” (44:32)
- “The more time you spend with somebody, the more they feel they get to know you and podcasting is the number one platform for long form content consumption.” (45:37)
- “A very intimate platform that helps you to build a deep relationship fast with people, in kind of an automated way where you’re just putting out content. It’s evergreen. It lives there.” (46:15)
Trust building
- “It makes the sales process so much easier when you have people that are getting on the phone that already trusts you.” (46:44)
- “The number one thing that you need to work with on people is getting them to trust you.” (46:52)
- “If they trusted you and it was a good deal and you were being honest and everything was good to go with it, why wouldn’t they buy from you?” (47:11)
Overcoming the imposter syndrome
- “The bottomline is, you’re just going to keep sucking unless you just do it more. So you have to take action.” (49:13)
- “…none of us were qualified to do any of this. The only thing that made us qualified as doing it. That’s the only thing that’s going to qualify you is doing the thing. (49:24)
- “The more that you do it, the more reps that you put in, the more confident that you’re going to be in your ability, because the better that you’re going to get, that’s how you kind of shut down that imposition.” (49:32)
- “…all you have to do is ask yourself, like Tom Bilyeu and Lisa Bilyeu, a thing where they say, “Hey, no bullshit. What would it take?” (50:04)
- “You can’t be a billionaire and not put in the work to become a billionaire.” (50:31)
- “Do I want this enough to commit to it for the long haul, regardless of what the short term immediate results are? And if the answer’s yes, then you got to just do it and trust that it’s going to work out in the end.” (50:48)
Quotes and Advice from our host and guest:
- “Everybody has things that they wish were different, but also probably have some things that they’re grateful for, and it’s no different for me.” – Travis (03:58)
- “If you don’t feel like you should be here full time, we don’t want you here full time. You need to do what you feel like you need to do. If you took the position, all you’d be doing was not doing as good of a job because you don’t want to do it and you’d be taking it from somebody who could do a better job than you.” – Pastor from Travis’ church (16:09)
- “If you already have a seven figure business or a six figure business, and you want to start a podcast because you want to increase revenue, then you have to have a plan built in. So have monetization built in on the back end, which is part of what I do now is help people do that. But if you’re wanting to be a full time podcaster and you have zero experience in the online space, the only way to do it is to get started right now, when you don’t have any clarity around what’s going to happen. And that was exactly what I did.” – Travis (28:00)
- “I wasn’t there to reinvent the wheel. I was there to duplicate a process that worked.” (31:48)
- “That money that I invested into that was a commitment to my future success. It was a commitment to like, “I’m doing this until it succeeds,” not “I’m doing this if it succeeds.” – Travis (35:11)
- “I took a lot of things from John, but the biggest thing that I took away from that time in Puerto Rico was spending time with my audience. It’s the ask method. You create quality, consistent content. You spend time with the people that are willing to listen to it and consume it. And then you build products and services that take care of the problems that those people have.” (38:48)