Insight with Chris Van Vliet - How To Make Money From Podcasting and Build Your Network With Travis Chappell

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

Travis Chappell is an entrepreneur and the host of the "Build Your Network" podcast. He joins Chris Van Vliet from his studio in Las Vegas to talk about how anyone can make money from their podcast, tips to book better guests, the secret to getting more downloads, how he has recorded almost 650 episodes of his show, how to bring value to everyone you interact with and much more! Submit your Blue Wire Hustle application here: http://bwhustle.com/join If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, my friends, welcome back to another audio adventure on Inside. I'm Chris Van Vlead, so pumped to have you along for the ride and so pumped to have Travis Chapel with us for a conversation that is just bursting with knowledge and information for anyone who's ever thought about starting a podcast or a YouTube channel or just thought about diving into that world of content creation in general. Travis is an entrepreneur and the host of the Build Your Network podcast, which now has almost 650 episodes, which is incredible because I know how much work we've put into the 226 episodes that we've done. But Travis is a master when it comes to building his network and also being able to monetize everything that he's created. So you'll want to take some notes here because there is so, so much.

value. You can find Travis online at Travischapel.com. He's also on social media at Travis Chapel. That's C-H-A-P-E-L-L. Super easy. You can find me. Of course, it's just my name at Chris Van V-A-N-V-L-E-T. Make sure to give his podcast, build your network, a follow or subscribe

wherever you're listening to this right now and make sure to subscribe to Insight if you haven't yet. And if you happen to be listening on Apple Podcasts, leave us a review like this one from Skillet Freak 88 who says amazing podcast. Chris's podcast is so amazing. He makes the podcast a regular conversation with his guests at all times. I'm always looking forward to listening to him every single week.

Well, thank you so much. I look forward to you being here every single week. And if you haven't yet, like Skillet Freak 88, if you haven't left a review, please take a second to leave a review on Apple Podcast. or iTunes, and I'm going to keep reading one out on every single episode. All right. Let's get to the good stuff here. Let's dive right in. Please welcome Travis Chapel. Travis, thank you so much for coming on. Hey, happy to be here, Chris. Thanks for having me. I'm always excited to talk about podcasting because it's something that a lot of people want to get into. And I always say the best thing about podcasting is anyone can do it. And the worst thing about

podcasting is anybody can do it. Same thing. Yep, that's right. And I always start off by asking someone that wants to start a podcast, why? Why do you want to start your podcast? So you've been super successful in podcasting, Travis. So I want to ask you that question. Why did you get into podcasting? I wanted to make money, which I quickly, quickly realized that unless you change your strategy up, podcasting is not the thing to make money doing. But I was kind of in a position of my life at the time where I was trying to figure out how to make money online. I just wanted to kind of build a lifestyle for me and my family that allowed me to be able to make money while I'm gone while I'm traveling and things like that. At the time, I wasn't in a position where I could do

those types of things. And so I was really just trying to figure out like, you look, I'm a millennial. So I sat down and I was like, as a millennial, if I want to do anything in business, I should probably figure out business online because my generation is kind of like continuing to move that way and push that way and innovate that way, there's got to be some way for me to figure out how to do this thing online, even though I had no experience or any connections to anybody that had experience at the time. I was just kind of like, I know that I got to figure it out somehow. So how do I do that? And I started listening to a bunch of podcasts. And the podcasts that I would listen to were obviously the top podcasts out there because I just went to,

you know, iTunes search podcasts and found some of those top shows. And when I found out how much money they were making as, you know, top podcasts, I was like, wow, I should be a podcaster. And then I started a show and realize that like, oh, you don't just zoom up to a million downloads a month and make, you know, $103,000 a month in sponsorships in 90 days. That's not how it works. So I had to kind of go back to the drawing board. So where do you begin? Because I think that's a big question a lot of people have is like, where do I start? I want to be a podcaster, but where do I start? Yeah, I think your question is a great place to start is why. What's your your goal. What's the ultimate goal of you starting a podcast? Do you have an existing business and

you're trying to bring more leads or traffic into that business? Do you have, do you just work a nine to five that you enjoy, but you know you don't want to do it forever? So you're going to start this podcasting thing on the side and maybe in five, six, seven years, you'll be able to quit that and do this full time. Like what's the goal? Is it just a talk, is it just a talk crap with your buddies in the garage once a week over a beer. There's so many different reasons to get into podcasting. I think you should be tried to, you should try to be as clear as you can. And, you know, clarity is constantly evolving. You should take, you know, stock once a month, once a week of, am I still wanting this goal? Is the goal is the thing that I started this new venture for,

still something that I have my eyes set on? And if it is, then, you know, keep moving down that path. But I think you just need, you need, first of all, clarity around like, what's the goal of what I'm trying to do here before you take any steps in any direction. And then after clarity, I think it's important to find your niche, find your topic, find your audience. Every other question from then on is like, you know, what should we name the show or what should the topic be or should we interview guests or should we do solo shows or should we, you know, all of the other questions are going to be ran through the filter of who are you creating this content for, which is why it's so important to niche down and be specific about the type of audience that you're

trying to create. Larger numbers doesn't necessarily always equate to larger bank accounts. You know what I mean? Like a lot of these niche shows, niche audiences, these shows will make a good amount of money because they have the exact avatar, the exact customer or client that some of these sponsors and advertisers are always looking for. And so, like, you might think that you're doing yourself a disservice if you're only talking to, you know, men in their 30s about dating, right? But then you have all these companies like keeps and manscaped and meundis that want to talk to men in their 30s concerned with dating. Like, so they're going to pay you a higher CPM on your sponsorships and your advertising because you have that

niche of an audience. So, and not to mention, it's going to be easier to grow if you niche your audience down. Like everybody I talked to you, bro, and I'm sure you've had, I'm sure you've had this happen to you. I have people talk to me about, I want to start a podcast and I'll asking about it. And they just, then they just kind of say, I just kind of want to be like Joe Rogan. I just want to like do a Joe Rogan. Have you ever had somebody say that to you? That is everybody, by the way. Literally every person. Like I just want to be like, I just want to talk about whatever with whoever and, you know, drink some whiskey with whoever I'm talking to. And it's like, first of all, hate to break it to you, but you're not that interesting. You know what I mean?

Like Joe Rogan can do it because he's an interesting dude. And he had years of stand-up comedy practice that he did across the entire nation that helped him learn how to communicate with people and find interesting topics to talk about in an interesting way with a funny spin. And his friends are probably more interesting than your friends. Like your buddy that works at 7-Eleven and like, you know what I mean? Like plays pickup basketball at the park. and like those are the two activities that he does versus like Joe Rogan's buddy who did stand-up

comedy after three tours in Iraq and like now fights some professional MMA. You know what I mean? Like they're totally different types of things. Like you probably aren't going to be able to replicate Joe Rogan even if you were doing this 10 years ago. But that brings me back to my point about niching down is that the reason Joe Rogan was able to be successful is that when he started his show like 10, 12 years ago back when nobody had a podcast. When he started that show, it was wide open space. It was the Wild Wild West. It was wide open space for him to come in and be the show that talks about whatever he wants to talk about. Because his show exists, a slew of other shows tried to come in and replicate that same pattern and have not been successful doing it

because that's been done. And it's been done extremely well by somebody who's uniquely qualified to fit that role. So the odds of you being able to come in with your nobody knowing you, with your no experience talking in front of people without hosting a TV show like Fear Factor, without having interesting friends, like the odds of you actually getting in and making that niche something that you can be successful and profitable in are extremely, extremely low. You know what I mean? And so, again, that's why it comes back to the goal thing, because if your goal is just to hang out with your buddies and you don't care about listeners or downloads or sponsors or making money, great. I'm all for you. Like, that's the awesome thing about podcasting

is you don't have to try to become Joe Rogan. You don't have to try to make money doing it. But if you do, then you're going to have to niche down and find the audience you're talking to. Well, I also remind people all the time, like nobody was listening to episode 41 of the Joe Rogan experience. And also, nobody was listening to episode 241 of the Joe Rogan experience. Takes a lot of time to build what he's built. Yeah, right. Yeah. Now that he's on episode 13141, a lot of people listen, you know. But yeah, to your point, yeah, it takes a lot of time, a lot of experience. And for him in particular, he just happened to hit the perfect timing in a ripe market that

nobody else at the time was paying attention to. Like, he's really one of the only people that became, that was already like a celebrity-ish, you know, like C-list, B-list celebrity. Sure. That became an A-list celebrity because of his podcast. There's a bunch of A-list celebrities that have now started podcasts, right, that are, like, continuing to further their audiences, like Kevin Hart or Jack Shepherd. or smart list with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett.

But there's not a lot of people that did what Joe Rogan did. He came in as a C-list or B-lister, the guy that, like, you hear Joe Rogan before, and it's like, oh, is that the Fear Factor guy? Or, like, if you're a heavy UFC fan, which back then, like, UFC was nowhere near as big as it is now. Right. But even back then, when he was doing UFC commentating, like, nobody watched UFC back then. So he was, like, barely in the limelight at that point. And he just exploded in popularity and fame really became an A-Less celebrity just from his podcast.

So I think timing was a huge part of it for him as well. Yeah. And I don't want this to turn into an entire episode about Joe Rogan, although he's a fascinating case study. I think why he's been so successful is consistency. I don't think he cared about his numbers early on. He just kind of went, I'm hanging out with my friends. These are interesting conversations. I'm going to keep having them.

And if people want to listen, cool. Great. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I think for you, that's why your podcast has been so successful because you've been consistent. You've been putting out three episodes a week pretty much since you started. Consistency is everything, man.

The number one killer of shows and audiences is lack of consistency. The reason to start a show is to build no like and trust with your audience. And if they can't even trust you to release episodes consistently, like how are they going to trust you to do anything else for them? So we've, yeah, we've been releasing three episodes. We did it three episodes a week for three years. Then we moved up to four episodes a week. We're now actually at six episodes a week that we're releasing on the show. So consistency is super, super important. I tell people all the time, if you want to guarantee at least a certain

level of success in podcasting or YouTube or any form of content creation, consistent quality content over a long period of time. That's the answer. Consistent quality content over a long period of time. But the key there is long period of time because, I mean, you've seen the stats. We've all seen the stats that like so many people get. What is it like after 17 episodes, 85% of podcasters give up and you know. I think it's 11 if I'm not mistaken. If I'm not whatever it is. It's a very low number. And I think the problem is people, and you know this, put in so much time and effort into researching and recording and editing and publishing, all of that. And then they look at the numbers after six episodes and they go, oh my gosh, I have 20,

three downloads. This is a waste of time. Yeah, and two of them are my mom. Exactly. And then people just end up giving up. Yep. And to be fair, I totally understand that perspective. I almost did that myself. You know, like I was like 18 months in and three episodes a week, all interviews. Like that was a lot of content. And it wasn't what I was doing full time. At the time, you know, I was still working to pay the bills. So I totally understand that perspective. And if I hadn't made a real commitment to myself from the beginning that I was going to give it as certain length of time before I gave up on it, probably would have given up on it. Like, it makes sense to me why so many people quit. Because if you're not fully committed from

the beginning, it's really, really easy to throw in the towel when you're six months, eight months, to 14 months in. And it just seems like you're talking into a microphone. Literally nobody's hearing what you're saying. But it would be the equivalent of like going to the gym for three months and going, well, I don't look like the rock. I don't look like Arnold. Well, it's not for me. It doesn't work. Yeah. That's the part, that's the part where there's disparity, right? Because then you end up having two people in the crowd. Don't be the person who does that and then claims that it's impossible or doesn't work. That's the part that irritates me. It's like, you might get to that point and then just get this epic moment of clarity where you're like,

I don't even really enjoy doing this anymore. Why am I doing this again? What was the goal for, Like the goal was for me to make some extra side money. But actually, I've been doing the side money on this other thing that's doing better for me. And like, I enjoy this. I don't really enjoy that. It might be a big moment of clarity for you. Maybe that's why you give up on it, you know, and that's fine. But don't be the person that's like, oh, it doesn't work.

Podcasts don't, you know, get audiences. And it's like, yeah, but it did for like three and a half months with 14 episodes. Like, what do you do expect was going to happen? So what was the thing that made your podcast really start to scale? Yes. I know there's something me and you can kind of relate on because we're talking about before we hit the record button. But that was my big thing from the beginning, man. I recently actually posted this on TikTok.

It was a Steve Martin quote and he said, be so good they can't ignore you. When I read that quote, it sounds so obvious. It's just like, oh, duh, you know, and you kind of move on. But at some point at the very beginning of my journey, I reread that quote somewhere. I wrote it up on the top of my whiteboard in my office. And I erase everything on my whiteboard, like once a week, you know, to start from a clean slate. That quote stayed there for like seven, eight months when I was first getting started because it just made complete sense to me. In a world saturated with content and people pulling you in every single different direction, it just made sense to me that if you were just that good, people wouldn't be able to help but give you some attention.

That's what you see with like Logan Paul, Jake Paul, and some of these characters that are seemingly unqualified to be as famous as they are. they just understand people and they're putting out the content to the right people. So those types of guys, they just get it. So for me at the time, I knew that the quality content wasn't going to come from me because I was brand spanking new to this entire world. And so it just made sense to me to just be like, all right, well, if I'm not going to be the one providing the content, you know, I'm in the business entrepreneurship space with my podcast.

And at the time, I was 24 years old. I had never had a business before. I had done a bunch of door-to-door sales and stuff, and I was entrepreneurial. I was always hustling something, selling something, like doing something. But I was not an entrepreneur. I did not start a business. I didn't have any of that stuff. So I knew like, hey, people are going to listen to this because of me.

They're going to listen to this because I'm going to go out and find the best quality people that I can find and ask them good questions and then report the information back to my audience. You know, you don't have to be the expert to get started, but you do have to get started to become an expert. So that was definitely the position that I took. And that was when my podcast started kind of picking up Steam was when it just became more undeniable when it was just like, I started getting asked to be on other people's podcasts who had really big podcasting audiences because they would look at my guest lineup and be like, wow, I mean, this guy has to be a certain

level of quality or he wouldn't have been able to connect with all of these people and have conversations with them and have them say good things about him. So yeah, sure, I'll bring this guy on my show. And then that kind of helped starting to build my show, gain some traction, got more people aware of what we were doing and kind of move forward from there. I mean, it's the idea of borrowed authority, like borrowed authority. Like you're basically going, I might not have this authority, but I have the ability to get these little nuggets out of other people, which then in term gives me some kind of authority. Yeah, it's the law of association, man.

It's a psychological principle. Even if you don't consciously think about it happening, it's subconsciously happening all the time. That's why the endorsement industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Yeah. Like literally, what are companies buying when they get LeBron James or John Sina or Shaquille O'Neal to endorse their product? They're buying one thing, but it's arguably the most important thing to any consumer buying

process. Yeah. Trust. Yeah. They're buying trust with their ideal audience. They know exactly who their ideal audience profile avatar is. So they go to that profile, that avatar, and they go, who does this person trust the most? Oh, it's John Cena.

All right, John Cena, we want you to endorse this product or this service. He endorsed a product or service, even if you've never heard of that product or service before, but you're a fan of John Cena and he comes out and says this stuff is the shit. Buy this stuff. You're going to automatically assign a certain level of trust that you have with John Cena to this product or to this service that he's saying is good quality. They're literally buying trust. And that's the same exact thing that happens when you go get these really top-level guests

to come onto your platform is you're borrowing. that trust, you're borrowing that credibility with your ideal audience, with your ideal avatar. And that's never proved to be a waste for me. So if guests are the most important thing that helped you grow your show, what did an early pitch look like, an early guest pitch look like for you? It was all over the place, man. I was just trying to figure out what worked. So what has worked?

Yeah. So we actually have like a five-step formula for getting people to say yes to come on my show and it was you know done through hundreds of reachouts lots of ignoring a lot of rejection you know but but eventually kind of got a pretty good idea of what it is so if you if you want I can kind of go through those a little bit absolutely yeah okay so so this is what we kind of figured out works for us is there's five-step uh formula for an effective reach out the first thing is lead with value so whenever we start reaching out to somebody we always lead with some sort of value so if I'm going to reach out to you Chris and ask you to come on my

show, I'm going to say something nice or kind of something about what you've been up to lately. The key with this is it cannot be disingenuous. You can't just use a blanket statement that you send to every single person and be like, hey, love what you're doing anyway. You know what I mean? Like it's so clearly obviously. You've been crushing it, man. Yeah, like a copy and paste thing that you're sending to everybody. So it's got to be something specific. Like, hey, I love you, you posted a clip recently of you interviewing, well, since I'm talking about him, John Cena, right? And I loved this one thing that you pulled out that talked about, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

You got to say something personal and specific to what they're doing, lead with value so that they understand that this person is actually, like, cares about bringing me on their show. It's not just a copy and pasted message to 150 people. So lead with value. Number two is give information. So you have to be able to answer the number one question that this person has in their head. If they're a busy person, if their time is in demand, if they have a lot of influence or affluence, they don't say yes to a lot of things. They have to guard their time.

It's, I mean, they understand that time is the most valuable asset. And if you've never been in a position like that, you might not understand that. But you have to empathize with them and see the world from their perspective if you're going to get a yes from them. And from their perspective, time is their most valuable asset. You know what I'm saying? So, so if you're going to ask for some of their time, then you have to give them enough information to be able to make a decision in the reach out that you're sending to them or else you just gave them homework. right? Like if you get reached out to and you have no idea of this person is, you have homework now. Is this person someone that's worth spending some of my time with? Do they have an audience at all?

Even if they don't have an audience, are they a quality person? Have they talked to other people that I know? Like how can you answer that question is really the question? How can I answer the question? Am I going to waste my time to this person in this one reach out without taking a bunch of space? So I give a little bit information on myself. My name's Travis. I want a top ready business podcast called Build Your Network. work, but then I'll always hyperlink, either my name or the show to information on my website or where they can read on. What's the worst thing to do here, and where a lot of people mess up on this part, and I did this at the beginning, which is why I know that people mess up with it, is they do way too much information in that information piece. I'll be like, my name is Travis, and I've been watching your show since I was three years old. At one time when my dad was on the

couch and I was eating cereal on a Saturday. You know what I'm saying? Like they go into this, this like 750 word essay of information about themselves, that that person just, when there's, when there's a thousand emails in your inbox and you're just trying to go through and clear a lot of them, you're not going to read all of that text. So I keep a lot of white space. I don't put paragraphs and paragraphs. I keep it like two, maybe, maybe three lines per paragraph, a lot of white space. And I keep the message short suite to the point. So if you're going to give information, my name is Travis, I host Topshow, I'll build a network. We talk about this. and then move on. But hyperlink somewhere else where if they're like, oh, who is this Travis guy?

They can click on a link and they can go read on my website and they can read about me for days if they want to. They can listen to hundreds of episodes of my content if they want to. Or they can just keep reading the email and not click the hyperlink at all. So hyperlink to more information, I guess is what I'm saying. Lead with value, give information. Number three is build your meaningful request. And so we say this just because not everybody goes to our trainings has a podcast or uses the request for a podcast appearance. But for the sake of this conversation,

your meaningful request is going to be asking to be on your podcast, in which case, you go to number four, which is offer credibility. And so this is the part that I think really answers that question for people of are you gonna waste my time without having them worry about what your downloads are or how big your audience is

or how long you've been podcasting or whatever. And that is, I always list out a list of names of people that I know that they know like or trust or recognize in some context or capacity that I've already had on the show or done business with and others in some other context. So I'll literally go to like their Instagram or their social media and see who they follow that I know and I'll put them into that message. And obviously at the beginning, I didn't have that and neither will you if you're listening

and you're starting from scratch. So what I did at the beginning is I reached out, cold reach out to a ton of people and I finally got one or two like pretty well-known people to say yes and then I started using them and instead of saying I've interviewed them I would say so far I have yeses from this person and this person and this person. That's good. And then and then try to get them to piggyback on on the credibility from those people. And then the request is which I insert a little bit right after the credibility is I would love to add you to this lineup. Please reply with some times or click here to use my calendar link and get this on the schedule. And then the last thing is I always finish off with a thanks in advance,

just because it opens up a subconscious psychological loop when you say, when you thank somebody in advance for something they haven't done yet, it makes them want to do it a little bit. And so I usually say something like, I know you're super busy. So thank you in advance for taking the time to respond. I don't take it for granted. And then, you know, cheers, Travis. And so I always try to keep that that whole message, all those five points, as short as I can. Like, do you keep it less to 100 words, do that. If you can keep it less to 50 words, do that. Treat it like a tweet. You know what I mean? If you have a tweet and it's a little bit too long, you got to go out. You have to edit out that part. And, oh, I can get my point across by saying this

or I can get my point across by saying this. I don't have to have this block of text here. Do that with your reach out messages. And you'll see a higher response rate as well. But those are some of the few things that we've tried to do to get a better response rate from people who reached out to. There is so much value there. And anybody that's listening to this right that's trying to book guests needs to like rewind this and write down all that stuff because everything you said there is so, so good. And I know, Travis, I'm sure you've got lots of emails because I know I have where you get an email where the value is coming from the person, like the value is from the person who's asking, hey, I have this podcast, would love for you to be a guest. And it's like,

what's in it for me then? Yeah, exactly. And it needs to be presented. What is in it for your guests? Yes. You have to, you have to think about their perspective. You have to put yourself in their body for a second and think about why would this person give me the time of day? If there's three dozen other shows that reached out to them this week and asked the same thing, why are they going to say yes to me? And if you don't have a good answer to that question, then that's a problem. And you to find a better answer for that question. Well, I like that you've given people the chance to kind of cut the line and you've created your app guestio,

which is basically like, you want some top guests in your show? Great. Here's access to them through this app guestio. Yeah, yeah. So it's very similar. We call it Cameo for booking interviews, essentially. So instead of buying a 30-second, happy birthday shout-out from somebody on Cameo, you can go buy a 30-minute podcast interview with them, or a clubhouse session with them, or an Instagram live conversation with them. You can buy interviews basically with well-known people to bring more credibility, authority, traffic into whatever content that you're creating. which is, we're pretty proud of it, man. We actually launched this new feature this past week,

which I'm super stoked for because we'll be able to really bring on some higher, higher quality people who maybe don't have time to dedicate an hour to a clubhouse room or 30 minutes to a podcast interview or, you know, a YouTube interview or whatever. And so we created something that we're calling a mini view, which were trademarked. And it's basically the ability to, like, you can go to Gastio on your, your app on your phone. And then you can, and you can do it on the web app, obviously,

as well on your desktop. But you can take out your phone and pay, like, per question, up to 10 questions in a mini view. So you can submit five, six, seven questions to somebody. And then, like on your phone, on video or audio, or written, or all three, like you can just do, the way that it's set up right now is that you write the question out in case there's confusion in the way that you say it. But then you also want to pull up the video just so you have the video footage there. And then that guest comes in and answers those questions. But for somebody that, like I said, this, you know, like a Kevin O'Leary or Mark Cuban or someone like that, who they're worth billions of dollars and they have a ton of demands on their time, they're always

doing, they're always moving. They're always going somewhere. I mean, they'd have to charge like $15,000, $25,000 to make it worth their time to sit down in front of a computer and do a 30-minute podcast interview if you don't have an audience. So somebody like that can do a of you though because they can pull up their phone whenever they're you know in a in a transition or in a middle of a situation and can answer a couple quick questions for you and then you can get out instead of paying 25 grand you might only pay two grand or 1500 bucks and now you've interviewed interviewed them for your content channels which increases like I said like we

talked about your own no like and trust with your audience your own authority your own credibility gives you the ability to find have a familiar face to put out in your organic channels on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok where those videos have a chance of getting picked up and seen and watched by a lot more people because they recognize the face on there, which brings more traffic into your show and helps you be able to do what you do best. So we're super stoked about that mini view option. I think it'll be a cool thing once we can kind of educate people on exactly what it is

and how easy it is to do it. I think that'll end up being one of our biggest selling features. Congratulations on this app, by the way. And if anyone wants to check it out, it's just the word guest with I.O. at the end, right? guestio.com. Yeah, guestio.com. I think when someone's getting into podcast and you've got two things that are working in your favor, you've either got time or you've got money that can really help you kind of fuel the fire here. I think a lot of people will go, well, I don't want to spend any money on this. I mean, I don't want to lose money on this thing. I don't even know if it's going to work. So they just keep putting time into it.

And maybe there are 50 episodes in, 150 episodes in and it's not really growing. I like that you weren't afraid to invest money into this to kind of jumpstart that a little bit. Yeah, for me, man, it was just a, that's why, that's why I say you got to get clear on your goals. You know, for me when I started, it was just, it was like a burn the ships type of a deal where it was just, I'm going to do this. I don't know how long or what it'll take or how I'm going to figure it out, but this is like a big goal of mine. And I just got laser focused on that goal. And it's kind of counterintuitive a little bit in some cases because if I would have like put as much effort and time into building a business or something like that with high margins and things, I probably

would have made a lot more money in the last few years. But I wasn't interested in that. I was really focused on the podcast and I didn't really know exactly what like I said, what was going to happen or how was going to happen. But I knew that I didn't know a bunch of stuff about it. So I started investing into myself like crazy, started investing in coaches. masterminds, events, conferences. I mean, I was gone all the time, was flying, investing in hotels. And, man, I had a, I pulled out this credit card, bro.

It was like, I think it was a Chase Freedom or something like that. And it was, you know, zero percent interest for 18 months or whatever. So I pulled out a credit card. I had a $42,000 limit on that card. And I put everything for my podcast, the podcast I was starting on that card. Within about eight months, it was full. $42,000 full on this credit card. But I paid it off before the 0% interest period kicked in from money that I made from my new podcast business that I started.

But that was how all in I was, though. You know what I mean? Like it was very much the point where it wasn't like an option to do something different. It was just kind of like this is what I'm going to do. So when there's true freedom in real commitment. You know, commitment is to most people the opposite of freedom. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like when you commit to something, it's like, oh, I don't want to commit because I don't have the freedom to choose. It's like, yeah, but if you do commit and you commit fully, you also, like, the lack of freedom to choose is freedom in and of itself because you don't have a choice. You know what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Like, I know it kind of seems counterintuitive, but like when you fully commit to something like that, there's no option to give up.

There's no option to stop creating content. There's no option to stop trying to interpret. interview these people. There's no option to not do these things. Like you're, if you're that committed to doing it, you just keep figuring out new ways. When you run into an obstacle, like I have plenty of times, countless times, you know, like you figure out a way around the obstacle or through the obstacle or over the obstacle. Like you figure it out some way because you know that the option of quitting is not even on the table. So the only other option is forward. How do we figure out how to move forward? You know, so that, like, there's true freedom in real commitment

like that. What would you say has been the biggest obstacle that you've come across in your podcasting journey? Growth, probably. Yeah, growth was a big thing for a long time, man. It was just so slow. It was like a snail. It's just like just trying to watch grass grow. It's just like, oh, it doesn't seem like anything's happening here. There's nothing going on. Why? Why isn't this working, you know, it's just, it seems so counterintuitive to all the information that I was getting. But, but again, I just was like, I'm going to figure it out eventually. I just don't know how or when or where, but it'll start to pick up some steam at some point, you know, but I think, yeah, growing, growing the audience is a major obstacle for a long time. Well, the biggest problem with podcasting is

discoverability. Like, people can get famous on TikTok or right now, IG Reels, or especially YouTube, because of those suggested videos and because of the explore section. That doesn't exist in podcasting. Really the only way to discover your podcast or my podcast is like word of mouth or literally typing in the name of the show. Yeah, 100% man, which is kind of one of the crappy things about podcasting. Yeah. Because again, if I had to put that much effort into a YouTube channel, my YouTube channel

would probably be even better than my podcast is right now. But I just like the podcasting medium so much that that was just the channel for me. But at the same time, though, a lot of innovation and stuff is coming into the industry. We're like barely out of the Wild Wild West phase of podcasting. Like within the last like year and a half to two years is probably where we've been like coming out of that, where we're coming more into mainstream podcasting. And you're seeing that all the time with these giant tech companies making huge investments in the space. I just read this morning that Spotify picked up, call her daddy and bought exclusive rights to that show for $60 million.

You know, they had Joe Rogan for a hundred million plus dollar contract. They bought Gimlet, which is a podcast studio a couple years ago for four or five hundred million dollars. They bought Anchor for several hundred million dollars. You know, Amazon just bought Wondery, which is kind of like Gimlet, has another podcast creation studio that Amazon just bought. Barstall Sports is like a half a billion dollar content creation company now. There's just so many big moves that are happening.

is announcing their own podcast discovery marketplace, which I think is going to do wonders for the podcasting industry as a whole in terms of like podcasters themselves being able to have their shows discovered. But also in creating more podcast listeners, there's still only like three or 400 million podcast listeners. Comparatively to other platforms, that's that's a small amount. You know what I mean? Like there's two billion active users on YouTube. There's two billion Facebook users. So when you take two billion Facebook users, a bunch of people who maybe before had no idea how to even go find a podcast or listen to it or press play. And you're putting that in their Facebook app that they're in three dozen times a day.

And like now they can go in there. And I'm sure because Facebook is the master of social media, right? I'm sure they're going to be showing you suggested podcasts based on pages you like or pages that you follow that have a podcast. Here's their show. Subscribe now. You know what I mean? So it's going to be really interesting to see what Facebook bringing podcasts into their app does for the podcast industry in general. because when listenership goes from 400 million to 1.5 billion, I want to be one of the shows that already exists during that one billion more adopters phase

because people have a tendency to stick with shows that they start listening to. You know what I'm saying? Like if you started listening to podcasts with this one or two shows, those two shows are probably going to stay in your lineup for a long time. People almost like wear it like a badge of honor like, oh, you listen to armchair expert too? Right. And it's, you know, I always make the joke that it's like that scene in Stepbrothers.

like, did we just become best friends? Yeah. And but podcasting so much more than like, like if I tell you, I like watching Shark Tank, you go, oh, yeah, cool, yeah, there's been some cool pitches recently. But there's something about podcasting. Maybe it's because it's, it's like a one to one medium, very much like radio. Exactly. It's so intimate, man.

Yeah. It's so intimate. Like you feel, you feel like you know the people, you know. Yeah. There's no other form of content that allows you to just sit there and listen to somebody else's conversation for three hours. You know what I mean? Three hours. You're just sitting there. Like, there's people that, there's people that probably feel like Joe Rogan or Dax Shepard or any of these people with long form, you know, interview content shows. They probably feel like they're literal

best friends. You know what I mean? They probably spent more time with those people than their actual friends. So like that, that type of, that type of consumption, man, is it's unheard of. So I think that, I think the podcast thing is that way, especially too, because like you can't see which friends follow, which shows and all that kind of stuff, which is, again, why I'm excited about Facebook coming into the space. I think they'll do some of that stuff. But, you know, if you're watching YouTube videos, you can go through and look at all the comments or see that your friends are commenting or they're sharing that video on Facebook or whatever. If it's a podcast, there's no way to know. So like, when you find out somebody else listens to a show that you

listen to, it's like, oh, sweet. Like, we have something majorly in common. And then you have inside jokes between you and that person that are inside jokes of the show. that you listen to, you know what I mean? It's just, it's a cool space, man. It's a cool space. I mean, the idea of podcasting, I mean, if you break it down to what it is at its core, especially with an interview show, it's if Joe Rogan and Elon Musk were sitting next to you at a restaurant and you get to eavesdrop on their conversation for three hours, you're right. That doesn't exist anywhere else. Yeah, literally. I mean, you're lucky if somebody watches your Instagram video for like more than 10 seconds. Yeah. I mean, like,

Count that as a win if they watch for more than 10 seconds because they're probably just scrolling by to the next video. But with podcast listeners, 80% of podcast listeners say they listen to most or all of an episode once they hit the play button. 80% of listeners say to listen to all or most of the episode when they hit the play button. That's unprecedented, man. Like when you have an hour-long interview or hour and a half long episode, and 80% of your listeners are going to tune in for all or most. of that episode, name another content platform that gives you that type of intimacy and that amount of just sheer time spent with an audience. You know, there's, there's not. Well, I'm going to go back

to, like, I studied communication studies. That was my major in college. And Marshall McLuhan would say the medium is the message. And it's so true that like the podcasting medium allows for stuff like you to listen for three hours. Because if I sent you a YouTube video and said, Travis, you need to check out this video. You would click on and go, this thing's three hours long. You're crazy. Of course, I'm not going to watch this thing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I have done now a podcast episodes though. People send me a podcast episode. It's just like, oh, let me queue that up for my next road trip or whatever. You know what I mean? Like you can like the, I just, I like the medium so much more. Or the idea of like, okay, I'll listen to this on my commute to work. Then I'll

listen a little bit more on my commute from work. Maybe I'll finish the episode as I'm making. dinner that night. Or at the gym or like doing anything else that I'm doing because that's what podcasting allows you to do. You have an earbud in and you can do everything else in your day. You know what I mean? Like I'll go for walks and just have podcasts in, you know, I'll go for a jog or I'll go to the gym or I'm driving in my car.

Like it's just on, you know, all the time in the background. I've listened to podcasts all the time of the gym and when I tell this to some of my friends they're like, but like how? How do you get motivated to like lift the weights? I'm like, well, I don't know. I feel like I'm doing two things at once now. I'm lifting weights and like being healthy and being fit. And also like learning something at the same time.

Getting a brain workout at the same time as your biceps, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. The only thing I will say on that is that I stopped listening to comedy podcasts at the gym. Because one time I was like, I must have been like Tom'siger or something, but I was in like the middle of a rep. And he said something hilarious.

And I started laughing. And like the weight started going the opposite of the way that I wanted. of the weight to go. I was like, I probably shouldn't, I probably shouldn't like in the middle of a heavy set be listening to something that somebody's going to say something hilarious. So I stopped listening to a comedy podcast at the gym, but. Probably a smart move. Yeah. At the core of all of this, is it possible, Travis, to make money as a podcaster in 2021? 100%. 100%. It's all about that long term. What are your goals and how are you going to get there? And if you can do that, if you can bite the bullet, like I'm in the belief that everybody in

2021 should have a side hustle. If you're working a job, I'm just believe so ardently that you should have a side hustle, especially if your job doesn't fulfill you, if there's not an aspect to it that you're passionate about or fulfilled with, you should have a side hustle project that has the potential to make money that's just an outlet that's fun, that's creative, that allows you to, do something different and use your free time a little bit more wisely. And a podcast is a really great way to start a side hustle because it's a lot of fun. You know, like you get to pick a topic that you care about.

You don't have to do it about like you don't have to pick something for the sake of popularity if that's, you know, if that's what you're thinking that you have to do, you don't have to do that. You can just pick something that you're passionate about. You know, you can talk about basketball. You can talk about martial arts. You can talk about comedy. You can talk about entertainment. You can talk about politics.

You can talk about whatever you want to talk about with whoever you want to talk about that with. And then just do it for you got to commit to consistency if you have any chance of making it happen. But it's 100% possible if you are willing to put in the work over a long extended period of time. And that's why I say pick something that you're passionate about because, you know, like if you're going to be talking about it for three years, you better be passionate about it. Because episode 65 isn't like if you're doing something. just for the sake of listeners, then episode 65, when you still have no listeners, it's really easy to quit. You know, that's why it's got to be something you care about. But there's so many people, man, that starts something. So I'll give you an example. There's a podcast. I think the podcast is called the Walker Stockers,

but it's basically, it started as a podcast about the Walking Dead. It happened a few years ago. They started this podcast. And it was just a fan podcast about the Walking Dead. And they would just do episodes on the Walking Dead. bro, it turned into a convention that hundreds of thousands of people have gone to in person. I think it's called Walker-StalkerCon. And you can Google this. You can look this up. Walker-Stocker-Con, I think, is what it's called.

And they have like all the entire cast of the show that comes to their conferences. So now these guys that started this podcast from their garage talking about The Walking Dead are sitting down with the stars of the show in front of. tens of thousands of people asking them questions about filming and film schedules. They're getting insider information and access to all these stuff. What I'm saying is like when you talk about stuff, you just never know what can happen. Is that the typical results? No, of course not. But

you still have fun while you're doing it. Another friend of mine started a YouTube channel about Legos with his son. It turned into like a really big YouTube channel about Legos. And now they have a Lego convention where they have a bunch of people come in and they get sponsored by these giant sponsors and they have, again, tens of thousands of people show up for this Lego event where they build Legos together. A friend of mine started a Pokemon channel recently with his kids just as a way to spend more time with his kids. It has 10 million views on YouTube now already. Like, you just never know, man. And that's why I love these things as side hustles because, you know, if it takes off, great. If not, you're having a great time talking about something you care about with people that you love.

And it's just a cool way, a cool way to potentially make some money. Yeah, passion is the secret sauce of life. And if you're passionate about what you're doing, whatever that side hustle is, whether it's a podcast or a YouTube channel or a clothing company or whatever, if you're passionate, you're enjoying it every single day. And I love that you keep keying in on your goals being specific. I always say vague goals, get vague results. So specific goals get specific results. Would you say it's important if someone is in this space of podcasting to set a budget aside and go, all right, I'm going to spend this much on possibly getting guests, maybe spending some money on guestio or flying my. myself somewhere to do an in-person interview with someone. Is it important to set that money aside? If your goal is to make money on a podcast or content channel of some sort, yes, it is important

to have money set aside for a budget. You're starting a business. You know what I mean? I tell you all the time, if you treat your podcast like a hobby, it'll pay you like a hobby. If you treat it like a business, it'll pay you like a business. And businesses need capital. Businesses need money to survive. And so, again, that's why it comes so, so down to you to getting clear on your goals because, you know, somebody might be like, oh, well, you know, like, I don't really care if it does. If it does in the future, that'd be awesome. But like, that's definitely not the goal. Okay, great. Then don't spend money in anything. But understand that it probably won't go anywhere. And it probably won't make you money if you're going to leave it up to chance. But if you want to

make money doing this, then you got to have some sort of a budget for, for higher quality guests to increase credibility and authority, even for ads to send people directly to your show or getting yourself booked onto other shows in your space. The first thing that I would do is outsource your editing so that you can get that off your plate and focus on creating quality content, better relationships, the things that move the needle for your business. But yeah, I mean, if you really want it to pay you like a business, then you have to treat it like a business, which a lot of times requires financial investment, not just time investment. And that's why I think my show did a little bit better.

I always looked at it. When I was first getting started, I looked at it as like, look, I'm starting a business right here. If I were going to start a McDonald's, I would need about a million dollars a little bit more than that in capital to be able to secure a single McDonald's franchise. On top of that, now I have a lease on a building. I have insurance. I have employees, payroll costs. I have all these other expenses that are associated with it. And the most that I'm going to make on an annual basis with a McDonald's franchise in profit is what?

70K, 80K. I could be off on that, even if it's 120K, right? Like, that's the most that you're going to be able to make. If you want to expand and scale and make more money, you got to go open more McDonald's franchises, which requires a lot more capital out of pocket. It's specific to a certain location. It's tied to a certain location. It's tied to the success of a food brand.

There's so many other things that are out of your control. Whereas for me, when I looked at it with starting a podcast, it was like, even if I dropped, even if I fill up this whole credit card at $42,000 of investing into this, this business has unlimited potential to make me as much money as I care to push it to make. And I can do it from anywhere in the world. I get to have conversations with people that are awesome that I get to add to my network and communicate with moving forward.

forward. You know, I get to learn about a topic that I'm interested in on a weekly basis. I get to build an audience of fans that want to buy stuff from me or hear what I have to say or care about what I'm doing or putting out. Like there's just, there were just so many pluses that outweighed that it was just like, man, 40 grand compared in comparison to starting this like million dollars. And I know that that's different, right? Like McDonald's is a real asset. You could sell the business. There's some other things to consider there. But my ultimate point is and saying that if you really want to make money doing a podcast, you got to look at it through the lens of being a business owner

and make decisions based on that. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you should go buy $5,000 worth of recording equipment. It doesn't mean that you're justified to go make some fun purchase on a brand new IMac or something like that because it's for the business or whatever. Like I'm talking about investing into real things that are going to end up paying you money at some point in the future,

which for me was a lot of it for me was investing back into my, And I recommend a lot of people start with investing into yourself because you're your number one asset anyway. If you lose everything tomorrow, your knowledge and connections don't go away. You know, so like invest into yourself, into your knowledge, into your connections, your network. And then you take those lessons into each venture that you're going down and the podcast is one of them. I love the story of how you got an interview with Grant Cardone, who is someone who's been a guest on my show.

You basically reached out to him and said, hey, man, I'm going to be in my. Miami, it'd be great to come by. And he said, sure, let's do it. And then you booked a fight to Miami. And that was like seven months after I reached out the first time, which totally got ignored. But that goes back to the credibility piece from what I told you, our reach out message kind of became. Yeah. Because the first time I reached out to him, I was just an eager, ambitious, you know, beginner podcaster with no real traction or a show or anything. So he totally ignored me at the time. So I made it kind of my mission to almost infiltrate. his network and ended up interviewing like I want to say it was close to 10 people

that I knew that he knew and like liked trusted like they spoke on his stage they did business together in some context and then when I reached out to him the second time same exact reach out as the first time except for that I listed all the people that I already had on and finished it off with his own wife Elena who had already come on the show and then said you know, I'll be in Miami next week. And he's like, yeah, come through and see us, you know, text my assistant basically. And then, and then, yeah, then I booked my flight after that. I love that. Who would you say has been, it might be difficult to answer this, but who's been

your favorite interview or maybe a few of them? Yeah, it's tough, man. It's like picking between your kids, you know, a lot of them, a lot of them will like mean something to me because of some other thing or some of them were just like, I wanted to talk to that person for a long time. a cool one. Because he was somebody that I listened to a bunch when I was first getting started. Tom Bill You was a big one for me because I just respect the hell out of him. And his wife, Lisa, I just think that they're amazing. It's so many things.

They have just a lot of different buckets of life well organized. And I have just got to give them props and respect for doing that. And Molly Bloom was a big one for me. I really enjoyed that conversation. That was again, one of those ones that meant a lot to me because it took me like six, almost seven months of persistent reach out and getting rejected and ignored to in order to be able to make that one happen and it finally was able to make it happen. And now she's been just a total sweetheart. We're, you know, actual friends at this point. I've, you know, helped her get on booked

on a bunch of other top shows of people that I know and gotten her, you know, to a couple speaking gigs and stuff from people that I know. And it's just been a cool friendship now. So that was a really big one for me. And there's just so Matt Barnes is a cool one. I'm a huge MBA fan. So I watched him growing up playing with Kobe and all these other people that I watched back in the day. And so it was really cool to be able to sit down with him and and chop it up for a little bit about basketball, about now his post basketball career, investing in stuff and things like that. So now there's so many, there's so many other ones that I that I have loved. But those are just a few off the top of my head. I mean, those are some great names.

And anybody that's listening to this right now can go find those interviews on your podcast, build your network, wherever they're listening to this right now. Just a few more things before we wrap this up. Where is the best place for people to connect with you? Yeah. In terms of social, probably Instagram or TikTok, we're doing a lot on TikTok. Like literally in the last like 30 to 60 days, we never even touched it before. But, you know, just started putting out some content over there.

So TikTok is a good place. Instagram. It's good place. I'm at Travis Chapel on Instagram. I think I'm Travis C. Chapel on TikTok because Traubble's Chapples already taken by the time I got over there. And then my website, travischaple.com, is a good place in case you can't find any of that stuff. And then if you're listening to this right now and you enjoy these types of interview conversations and you enjoy listening to podcasts that are a lot of interviews, then you'll probably really enjoy my show.

Right now it's called Build Your Network, but I do have to say that we're having, we have a couple big changes coming to the podcast, our content, the YouTube channel, the brand in the next couple of months. So head on over there, subscribe so you don't miss. So you don't miss what's coming out here in the near future. So you can just go to any podcast app that you're on, search, build your network, and pop it up and hit that subscribe button and reach out. Say you heard about me here with Chris. I'd love to say what's up and chat. Love it.

I lead with gratitude every single day and I end every interview talking about it as well. So, Travis, what are three things in your life that you're grateful for right now? I am grateful for a supportive family. My wife right now, she works full time as well. And so she does like events and sponsorships planning for this big e-commerce company. So she's down in Mexico at a resort right now with this event and the retreat that she planned. So I'm here at the house by myself with the kids. And I have a two-year-old and a six-month-old.

And if you ever tried to get anything done while you have a two-year-old, year old and six-month-old. It's pretty much impossible. So, but I say that to say that it's just been really supportive environment. We have our nanny that comes over in the mornings and allows me to break away for interviews like this. And then my mom comes over in the afternoons to help out a little bit in the afternoon so I can go still hit the gym while my wife's gone. And so I'm really just thankful for a supportive family that that is looking at all the things that me and my wife are doing and willing to step in and help out and be there. The other thing that I would say, is I got to give a big shout to my kids because, I mean, they make life interesting and they

are my biggest motivation to do everything that I do. Sometimes I look at what I do, man. I'm just like, man, it would be so much easier if I just had a job. Life would be so much easier if I could just like get a job. But for whatever reason, I don't. I think there's that have that entrepreneurial itch, I guess, that I can't quite scratch ever. So having having the kids was a really big. like re-motivation for me to have a real reason why I decide to live the life that I live and why I decide to do what I do. So that's been huge. And then the last thing is I would say I'm thankful for the small things in life. I'm thankful for my, you know, morning cup of coffee. The smell of coffee in the morning I'm thankful for. I try to really put myself in those types of

states to be thankful for a small thing. I journal every morning and write down a few things that I'm grateful for every morning. And that's one of the things that I try to do is like something macro big about life and that things are going well or something big about life that happened recently that I can be grateful for. But also the small things like, you know, the weather outside or a cup of coffee or, you know, the sound of a bird tweeting or something like that. You know what I mean? Just these small things that we just so often take for granted that we shouldn't take for granted. So I'm a big believer in putting yourself in a grateful state because you can't be, you can't be upset at the same time as you're grateful. You can't be spiteful the same time you're grateful. It can't be envious the same time

you're grateful. And we have so many things to be thankful for. We have so many blessings in this world. And it's it's a shame that so many of us live in the constant state of thinking about what we we don't have rather than thinking about all the amazing things that we do have. So I appreciate that question. That is a great way to end it. Thank you for bringing so much value and thank you for bringing so much of your knowledge. And again, people can check out guestio and they can find your podcast, build your network wherever they're listening to this. Thank you so much, man. Of course, bro. Well, there we go. So much knowledge being dropped by Travis. A huge thank you to him for joining us. And a huge thank you to you for being on this ride. If you're a podcast,

or someone who's been thinking about starting a podcast, I hope you learned a ton from this. I know I did. And I'll be applying a lot of this to insight over the next few weeks and months. And I'm sure you'll be noticing it. You can find Travis online at Travischapel.com. On social media, he's just at Travis Chapel.

You can find me at Chris Van Fleet. And in the words of Steve Martin, I love this quote. Travis said this is his favorite quote. So we'll leave you with this. be so good that they can't ignore you. Be great. Be grateful, my friends. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight.

The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock? I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987.

Hammer Alley. Ever heard of then? To Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.