Digital Social Hour - Travis Chappell On Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Big Celebrities On His Show & Guestio DSH #187

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

On today's episode of the Digital Social Hour, Travis Chappell goes into detail on growing up in a religious cult for many years, why he left religion & how he got Shaq, Paul Pierce and other big celebrities on his podcasting platform, Guestio. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: PolicyGenius: Your family deserves peace of mind. A life insurance policy through Policygenius can give it to them. Head to policygenius.com/DSH or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com/DSH. Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

But anyway, I grew up there and there was this church there that is really prominent in this kind of like cultish fundamentalist group. What's your advice to people that grow up in a very religious household, but they don't share the same beliefs as their parents? The majority of the time, most people are just doing the best that they can with the information that they have. All right. Welcome to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis. What up, what up?

And our guest today, Travis Chappell. How we doing, Travis? Whatgas local yeah man yeah i've been here for a minute yeah longer than us oh not you i've been here for a while okay yeah i've been here for a minute how many years you've been here uh just over five years now oh over five years yeah yeah i've been here longer okay yeah good for you yeah where are you from originally uh california la oh same yeah yeah yeah yeah so give people the rundown on your story for those that don't know you sure man um i'll start from top and you can dive in whenever or when wherever you want um so i grew up in l.a area um a town called lancaster so it's like oh yeah ponder lancaster abc yep yep um not a great part of california to grow up in it's been like when i tell people i'm from i'm from like socal and la they have this picture of where i'm from and i'm like well i don't know let me let me

show you an actual picture of what it's like lancaster is not is not it you know um but anyway i grew up there and uh there was this church there that is really prominent in this kind of like cultish uh fundamentalist group and that was where i spent basically my entire life until i was like 21. in the church yeah um so the church uh when we started going there i was was like three. And when we started going there, there was maybe a couple thousand members, 1,500 members. It was already like a pretty sizable church. That's a lot, yeah. By the time I left,

there was almost 8,000 members of the church, 7,000. One church? Yeah, it's pretty wild, especially because considering it was like this, it's called IFB, Independent Fundamental Baptist. Okay. So like we were, like we would not- So when you say cult-ish, what is cult-ish?

So I'll kind of explain it. And part of the reason I don't say just a cult is just like, I feel bad when I watch people that grew up on a commune in like the middle of New Mexico or something, it's like, well, that to me feels like more like a cult, like we were still in regular society. It's just that due to the nature of the fundamentalist group there's a lot of the same stuff that's being used so um so like in ifb independent fundamental baptist we wouldn't associate or fellowship with southern baptists because they were too

like too liberal for us you know what i mean so is it two different beliefs or is it all the same bible is it it's the same bible uh southern baptist will use different versions independent fundamental baptists are kjv only like king james version only and every other version is not the bible it's like if you're reading from an niv or esv or rsv or something like that they'll just tell you like that's not even the bible it's not even the same book whereas southern baptists are a little bit more lenient and will let people read from this version or that version. Okay. Depending.

So I basically went there for church, obviously. We had church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. And then we had soul winning on Saturday, which means soul winning is basically just like go knock doors and invite people to come to church on Sunday. And then they had a soul winning rally before we went out soul winning. So like that was

like a mini church service and then i went to the school that was on the church campus and the school that was on the campus was uh private enrollment so you really grew up in the church no like literally i was there yeah that's what i'm saying is like it's different it was it was it was private enrollment to school so only only members of the church could send their kids to the school. Wow. So we were curious about like other high schools, regular high schools or the outside world. Not at the time.

At the time. Not at the time. Cause at the time I just was like, I thought everything that I was being taught was so correct. Was normal. Yeah, totally normal and correct. That everybody else was the weird ones. You know what I mean?

Oh, okay. So yeah, I grew up there from, I was basically there seven days a week, except for summers, because we had Sunday morning, Sunday night church. So Sunday morning church was like Sunday school and then big church, like regular church. And then there was a break

and then we'd come back for Sunday night church. And then Sunday night church, our pastor would always do two different sermons on Sunday night. So then we'd start school on Monday at the same campus. We'd have chapel during the week, which is essentially just a school, a church service for the kids at the school. And then I went to that school from kindergarten all the way through senior year of high school. Wow. So were you a virgin until you

were married? Yep. Yep. So I graduated high school there. Wow, you're different. Graduated high school. Shout out to Policy Genius, today's sponsor. The holidays not only allow us to spend time with family, but they are a reminder of how important our responsibility is to protect them. That includes planning to secure their future. Life insurance is an easy way to give your family peace of mind, provides a safety net.

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it may not offer enough protection. So check out Policy Genius. Your family deserves peace of mind. Head to policygenius.com slash DSH or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save that's policygenius.com then there was a a bible college right on the campus same bible college on the campus unaccredited bible college on the campus that pumped out people for ministry so there's like eight total majors that you could go major yeah so obviously i went there so did most of you guys go there um i would probably say like maybe half of the kids who graduated from high school would go there at least for a year. Because like, you know, Mormons do their two-year mission thing. In our culture, it was like they would use that as like a way to almost guilt or pressure you into making sure that you went to Bible college for at least a year.

So a lot of kids would come out and go to Bible college for a year, get there. They had a one-year Bible certificate that you would take there's a bible college i didn't know that yeah that's a whole thing i mean it seems like y'all had y'all own actual community like own ecosystem that's what i said like so people yeah i mean no wait you say eight thousand but in a community of like where we lived that's a massive church and especially for that particular denomination it was like it's easier for community churches to get that big because they're not they're not forcing these like crazy fundamentalist guidelines and rules down your throat you know they kind of just let you come on sunday morning they have drums and stuff like that on stage it feels like

in yours you're talking about yours no ours did not like we did not have drums we didn't have guitar like i didn't listen to real music until i was like in my 20s because it was all bad music so wow so did you marry the woman yeah yeah the woman you're with now you grew up with her yeah so we uh as we started dating when i was 16. okay um and then yeah so we both went to the bible college on the campus so literally from time i was three until 21 it was like there three to 21. Then I went to kindergarten all the way through senior year of college on the same campus. Wow. And then I married a semester before I graduated, which was actually, I was done with school. I graduated.

I finished in three and a half years. So I finished in December, got married in January, walked, got my degree in May. And then moved away. did you ever rebel was there a time that you were rebellious or you were so curious about everything or you questioned anything not when i was guards not when you were there but afterwards you kind of everything about my life is totally different now okay yes so you did rebel afterwards correct okay and how was that like why why was that yeah i uh i would say it was less rebelling as much as it was just a discovery process of who i was because like when i when i left there um basically like if you go to school there if you go to the ministry

school there and you don't go to ministry it's like it's really you know frowned upon it's like taboo and so when i was leaving i i was doing door-to-door sales in college to make extra money and i was getting offered these promotions stuff i was pretty good at it and so when i went to talk to my pastor who's like the head of everything like he's the president of the college he's the pastor and he's like one of the most looked up to and respected people in the entire ifb movement okay and so there's you know he's for lack of a better word, he's micro famous in that world. Like we talk about micro famous influencers.

He is one of them just for IFB pastors and people in that culture. So when I met with him, I didn't want to tell him that I wasn't going to go into ministry or that I didn't want to go into ministry, you know? So this pastor offers me a part time. He offered me like he basically just like come to our church. We want you here if you even if you even if you're just a layman or if you want to work part-time or if you want to work full-time we have something for every position that you would want we just want you to come you know be a part of our our church culture and that was up in fresno which is like three hours

north of lincoln yeah i know where fresno was so i basically uh was just like well this seems like the best opportunity that i can go do and then uh what ended up happening just so i could tell people i was going to ministry is i accepted the part-time position and then kept my full-time sales job selling solar um at the time and uh and so i never actually like worked in ministry because by the time that i got there i just like i had enough clarity within like three weeks to be like i'm ministry i don't think this is for me wow um and i just went went into sales what's your advice to people that grow up in a very religious household but they don't share the same beliefs as their parents and they're looking for other avenues it's tough dude um it's tough i my advice for people is is normally just to ask questions um and and recognize that the majority of the time most people are just doing the best that they can with the information that they have

and so i i try not to i try not to hold grudges or look back with any spite or hatred or feelings of anger toward like those types of things because i it, it limited me in a lot of capacities. So you did go through that phase at one point? Not, not really dude, honestly. Cause like there's a lot of great things, you know, life is what you choose to look at, you know, there there's, there's a lot of negatives to how I grew up, but there's a lot of positives to how I grew up.

You met your wife? I have my wife there and she's awesome. And we got lucky that we made it through the whole transitioning out of that world together. It was definitely very tense during some times in there. Oh, so she transitioned out too? Correct. And she was after me.

So there was definitely some like rocky, moments, rough times during that. But now we've made it on the other side, like it's almost like trauma bonding, you know what I mean? because we went through so much together and we've known each other for so long so do you still do you are you into church now are you kind of just like no i haven't been in a few years so you're atheist now um no i wouldn't say a shot okay atheist to be fair you are not the only person that just immediately assumed that i've left and like atheist yeah devil worshiper um no i uh i i would not classify myself as atheist i would

just say that um my belief is that uh nobody knows okay everything's intrinsically unprovable including what science tells us you know like evolution all that stuff like well from what I can tell didn't they prove there is a soul though I mean who who proved it you know what I mean like yeah show me the evidence and you know what I mean like and even if even if that's the case that doesn't tell us anything about who gave us the soul where the soul goes what happens after we die like everything is speculation so what your beliefs is your belief right now is nobody knows correct yeah so like so what's the estimation that i can tell yeah is that most religion in my opinion again everything that i'm about to say is my opinion um

most religion is 80 to 90 percent bs whoa 10 to 20 percent correct wow so because they all teach the same stuff like if you look at like if you look at it like this core group of things like values right hey probably not good people probably should be kind to your fellow human beings probably should value love over hatred like probably should be accepting of people right you know like these core values and like tenets of faith and religion are all good and great things right and there's a lot of things to learn from every single religion right philosophically right right? The Bible is still a fantastic piece of literature, regardless of you believe it's the word of God or just a book.

But, but every religion has some things that are correct. And most religions agree on those things. Like I said, those universal kind of basic principles of love and kindness and, you know, those types of things. So when they start messing up are the 80 where they just start putting in rules right and the rules are largely based on religious context cultural context what part of the world the religion is in but um the history of that

religion the people came up with it yeah everybody might not agree on they're subjective and they're like I said they're they're all they're all intrinsically unprovable and most of the time when when mankind comes up with those types of things, it's usually to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. It's that we know these things to be true because we can observe them and see them in society,

but these things, we don't know anything about them. So in order, and we can't live without certainty. So in order to be certain, we make up all the things in between and then teach it from generation to generation as though those things are fact so let me ask you this question so since you've you know parted ways from the from the religion or church aspect has your life been any different in a sense is it good is it bad or it just normal? Or is that a belief in a sense of once you actually separate yourself and you believe in what you believe in, that your life will be in shambles or not as, you know, not as good as you want it to be? In your opinion, like what, what, has anything different, has anything changed or anything like that?

I mean, for, in my opinion, again, I think my life has significantly improved. However, I would say that I grew up, for, in my opinion, again, I think my life has significantly improved. However, I would say that I grew up, I grew up really fundamentalist. Like, it's not totally fair to compare

what I was used to as a church experience to, not even to where I am now, but to where the majority of church goers would be. You know what I'm saying?

Like, they didn't, when I tell people I went to church growing up, they're like, oh yeah, me too. Like, no, no, no, I went to church. i was injured yeah right it's like it's different you know yeah so like it's on it it's kind of unfair to use my anecdotal

experience to negate all of church and i'm not even saying i i rarely talk about this stuff i'm happy to talk about it and i'm fine with answering questions but i rarely talk about it because i don't want people to think that i'm trying to actively remove them from their religion or they'll get offended by your beliefs or it's just not it's not i i don't i i just do not care what you believe about it like it's just your belief is your belief okay and good for you if it makes you feel happier if it makes you feel connected to god or the universe and it provides a good moral and uh structure and and and value hierarchy for your life and for your kids and for your family.

More power to you. We live in America. You have freedom of religion and that's totally good. And I have no intention of removing anybody from their religion. This is just what I've found to believe for myself over the years.

That makes sense. And I think, yeah, I think, I've done a lot of thinking about it and I've done a lot of studying about it. know i mean people would probably argue with him and be so mad that he's saying the stuff that he's saying because they want him to believe what they believe that's the that's the biggest problem that you deal with that a lot i'm sure it's the biggest problem that i have man is like i just as soon as you start telling me that i'm wrong that just starts getting into this conversation

of like i first of all we can't have the conversation unless the other party is willing to admit that they could be wrong right which is the first step that most people in any sort of at least dogmatic religion will not even take they will not take that first step toward you right yeah they will not admit that there's an inkling of a single like minute percentage of a chance yeah that you could be wrong or allow themselves to even understand your angle and your point of view that's what i'm saying they won't even give you that because they know they're right right which are nobody knows that yeah that's kind of my whole foundational principle at the beginning of this conversation is like nobody 100 knows if they're telling you they're 100 no it's because the religion doesn't work if you're not 100 because that's that was always the question it's like if you're

not 100 for sure that you're going to heaven then you're not going to heaven right and it was like well how can you be 100 for sure that you're going to a place that you don't even know exists right like oh oh how can you exist okay take you tell me i'm not show me yeah show me where i have like take me there like we'll walk through the streets of gold together and then maybe i'll work on it you know what i mean but like we're assuming that based on this like 2 000 year old text that a bunch of people wrote a long time ago like we have no idea if that is true now that doesn't mean that you shouldn't live your life in a way that helps make sure that you have the things that you believe will are there waiting

for you but that doesn't mean that i'm wrong right you know what i mean yeah it just is like uh so if you're if you're not willing to at least be like yeah i could be wrong then i don't i don't i don't ever get into the conversation because it's not a conversation because i know that because i've been there yeah i was that guy that would that would try to have conversations with people. But it was never it was never to listen and like understand where they were coming from and gain empathy and insight into their life and see the world through their eyes. It was never for that. It was always listening until I could convince them that they were wrong. Right.

And I'm just not willing to get in those conversations with those people because there's nowhere to go. What do you think your life would have been like had you been raised normal? I don't know. Were you like a reckless kid or you always like kind of straight in? Like the reason I was so bought in before is like I'm pretty much kind of,

I'm just all in on whatever I do. You know what I'm saying? So I think I- You ever play sports? Did have football, football, basketball? I played a lot of basketball. Okay, okay. Yeah, I played a lot of basketball.

He's nice, man man he's good yeah um yeah i just uh whatever i did i just i just basketball was my thing until i uh uh was in college and i started on door-to-door sales so i was on the basketball team in col again this is like a small christian college we played some d3 schools in socal like um some of the sky at conference yeah um whittier and laverne and some of those some of those schools but um uh when i got in college like i told you guys kind of jokingly before i was like oh i can't play basketball with these people and i'm not gonna have a career basketball after this and i was started making good money selling so i started taking my focus away from basketball and put it on sales and business at that point where were you selling

solar solar started in solar yep did door-to-door for like five six years solar um alarms water purification um and then started my podcast oh yeah I want to dive into that you started one of the most successful business podcasts in the world you had on guys like Shaq Paul Pierce uh Chris Hansen yeah how were you able to scale to that level? Time, a lot of time and reps. Because when I was starting, I was starting from scratch. I essentially was coming out of this Bible college world with no real life skills. Well, actually, I take that back.

There was a big life skill that I had, which was communication. Because I was speaking in front of people since I was like 12 years old. I'm doing preaching contests and singing and competitions and speeches and all this other stuff which i don't think i would have had nearly that amount if i had grown up normal right um so that was an advantage but there was a lot of like it didn't it didn't help me get a job as my point it's like you're not going to walk into a place and be like, here's my unaccredited church ministries degree. Right. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. So, um, I just did sales cause I could make real money, you know? Cause I, I was like, oh, I can make six figures at 22 knocking doors instead of going and

sitting in a crappy office, working for somebody I don't respect and making $24,000 a year. Right. Um, and I did it in 20 hour work weeks, you know? So I was like, this is sweet. Yeah. It's just that I knew that I didn't want to do it forever and i figured that making money online was probably the move because i like to travel and i wanted more freedom and flexibility in my schedule i want to be able to make money when i'm gone and so um so the podcast was just kind of like my

foray into learning how to make money in any other way than the way that i already knew how to make money which was door-to-door sales right um so i started the podcast without any intention or knowledge about not maybe not intention but definitely not knowledge uh i didn't have any knowledge about how to turn it into money or how to make a business out of it or yeah what i was even doing yeah even got on the mic yeah i was just like i just want to uh have good conversations with interesting people in entrepreneurship i didn't know any millionaires at the time i didn't know any successful people at the time so i was just like this seems like a good way to go meet those people and like learn directly from them and and get a glimpse into a bunch of different

industries or business models and types of things and just kind of see like what what's out there so when did you actually start building traction when did you realize like okay i got something uh probably like year two year three um it was a while stop by then oh most people do three years 90 of podcasts never make it to episode 10. wow 90 there's over 4 million indexed podcasts now and less than 300 000 are active wow yeah um for that exact reason because it's hard it takes a long time especially when you're starting from scratch you know it's like uh the your model is better like go make a lot of money first and then start a podcast yeah because you can put production into it you can bring in good guests you already have a good network. Yeah. There's,

there's something. I'm glad I waited. Yeah. Yeah. You got wisdom. You can actually really relate to your guests. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But at the beginning, it wasn't like that for me at all. It was just like, I was interviewing three people a week for two years before I gained any real traction. Wow.

Um, so that's 300 interviews, you know, just emailing. Um, yeah. Email, Instagram, DMS, going to events, conferences, joining masterminds. And that's why hundred interviews you know just emailing um yeah email instagram dms

going to events conferences joining masterminds and that's why you started guestio right yeah yeah i started guestio because people like the number one question i got was how did you get so and so on your show right and so guestio kind of kind of came out of that it's a great idea man he connects guests with podcast hosts oh that's fire and vice versa almost like an agency in a way yeah so we have the software side that it's kind of like a do-it-yourself version you can go next guests with podcast hosts oh that's fire and vice versa almost like an agency in a way yeah so we have the software side that it's kind of like a do-it-yourself version you can go on there create an account pitch people back and forth yeah um and then we have an agency side as well where we do all the work for you yeah that's right so normal people can get celebrities

on their podcast that's right yeah that's the gist if you have the money anyway yeah yeah yeah for sure um which is another reason to start a show with money but yeah so it took took a while um i started kind of realizing it when people just kind of kept asking me for stuff and that was the first version of the business like the way i the way that i stopped doing door-to-door sales was doing like podcast coaching and masterminds right it's just what people started asking of me yeah i was like i'm i'm not super smart but i know that if people are asking me all these questions all the time it probably means that there's a demand here yeah i should

probably fulfill that right i remember meeting you at the most we'll start being super smart that's right yeah yeah i was really impressed with your podcast at the time yeah it's so funny man um i think i was talking to my wife or somebody the other day i joined that mastermind and i was looking back um i think we're gonna we're going to try to use that intro video for something. Because they sent us the videos of introducing ourselves that first night. The Bruce Buffer intro? Yeah, the Bruce Buffer one. What mastermind was it?

100 Million Mastermind. Fleishman's Mastermind. Henry who? Fleishman. Dan Fleishman. Oh, okay. Yeah, Dan. Yeah.

And it wasn't even the Bruce Buffer one. It was what we said before Bruce Buffer. Oh, okay. And I was like, this is unusable. Because I didn't even have like a business at the time. I was like, oh, I think I got up and said something like, I'm a podcaster. And it was like, that was all I joined a group with. It was like, I have a podcast and like I sometimes coach.

You know what I mean? It paid off though. It did pay off. Sometimes that's enough. You know, you put yourself in the industry and you master it. Right. Absolutely. Travis, it's been a a pleasure any closing comments where people can find you um no dude uh uh appreciate you having me if you want to connect more travis chapel on instagram at travis chapel um sorry for taking up this whole time talking about religion and no it was interesting i mean yeah i think that was different you know i mean get a different

perspective and different understanding of your upbringing and you know what what it's like growing up in a cult in a way cultish cultish is yeah i can't i can't bring myself yeah i have too much empathy for the people that grew up on my god it's different though being when they were nine like that it's just like oh yeah there's levels too yeah well it's like i had it i had it pretty nice yeah wait uh you can follow me on instagram at the creator it'll pop up around like somewhere in here they always change up the spot they'll know how to do all right sean kelly digital social hour i'll see you guys next week peace peace