← Travis Makes Money
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- [00:01]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Reader
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- [00:26]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's mission to help you make more money. On this episode, we're continuing our compilation series pulling some of the best guests of the show from the first half of 2026. And Amanda is absolutely one of those people that fits that bill. She's the first guest we're featuring on episode full of creator author entrepreneurs, which is really niche but also really interesting. She's the co founder and president of Run for Something, an organization dedicated to recruiting and supporting young diverse leaders running for local office across the United States. Since launching in 2017, Run for Something has helped thousands of millennials and Gen C candidates step into leadership roles and reshape what local leadership looks like in America. And then she also wrote the book when we're in the Next Generation's Guide to Leadership and Run for Something, a real talk guide to fixing the system yourself. So a couple of different books. She has a ton of experience working on actual major presidential campaigns and then she put all that into books to help young people figure out how to run for local government where they can actually affect change on a local level, where it actually really matters. So Amanda's built something really cool with that organization. Next we have Mike Kim. Mike is a good friend of mine. I've been multiple events with him. I've spoken on his stage. We went to bachelor party together one time. So Mike's a really good friend. He wrote a book called you are the Brand and he sort of built a name for himself inside of the personal branding space over the last few years. Has a new book out about branding yourself in your career and how a personal brand helps you with a better career, not just an entre as an entrepreneur. And so Mike is, Mike is one of those guys that always just stays on the cutting Edge. He's always researching and always going after it.
- [02:19]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Reader
And the cool thing about Mike is
- [02:20]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
that like even in his to his own mission in this episode, he, he doesn't have an audience of 3 million followers, but he's been able to make, you know, millions of dollars in the online space over the last few years from having the small niche audience that he cares for and curates content for and adds value to so you don't have to have these massive audiences to make good money. Support yourself and build an amazing lifestyle while also helping a bunch of people inside of your space. And I love that about Mike's story. And then lastly, we have Aaron McGough, Aaron's award. An award winning filmmaker, content creator and career advice expert known online as the Internet's big sister. She her at advice with Aaron platform which has built a massive audience of Gen Z millennial professionals. She shares practical, no nonsense guidance on careers, communication, navigating the workplace, things like that. She also has a new book out as well and has amassed a following of millions of people online. The book Secret Language of Work is available now. So advice with Aaron, Amanda Littman and Mike Kim on this episode of the Travis Makes Money podcast. Please enjoy. What are and are there like qualifications for somebody to get started doing it or should everybody just start doing it even if they don't really have anything that they're working on?
- [03:37]
Mike Kim
In addition to that, I think it's, I'm bullish overall. I think it's easier than ever to start a personal brand. Whatever you mean by that, whatever a person means by that, I have my own definitions around it, but it's harder to stand out. Right. If I were leaving my corporate job today like I did 12 years ago, I would absolutely be working on the skills on building a platform, building an audience. You know, a lot of people say, I don't know what to sell. That doesn't matter. Build. When you don't know what to sell, you need to build an audience. Yeah, like that's a skill that you and I have figured out over these years. And could you imagine not having that skill? Like you and I can do whatever we want for the next decades of our lives because we have that skill. With AI coming in, I think that there are really only two paths forward. Like there's, there's, you know, you're, you're investing capital into things to, to generate wealth or it's distribution, which is podcasting, which is platforms, which is exposure. Eyeballs. I went through this little exercise at an AI workshop that my friend was running. He's really, really in this, like neck deep in the space and has been for like a decade. So this isn't just when ChatGPT came out. He goes, hey, the only way to think about this is to think about what your business would need for you to have it run for the next hundred years even if you weren't around. And I was like, all right, Japanese business plan type of thing, right? How what do we do? Right? But I'm like, all right, I'm a solopreneur. I don't know how to answer that. So let me start by going a hundred years back. So I go to 1926, bro, and I look up stuff. And this was shocking to me. There's two things that I found. Winnie the Pooh was published in 1926, and NBC, the network, was launched in 1926. And I'm like, there it is. Storytelling and distribution for the last hundred years. That Winnie the Pooh story, your kids already know it. It's just different mediums. Books, comic books, animation, whatever. And then NBC is still around, it's distribution. So when you are thinking about a personal brand, that's the only two things I'm looking at, storytelling and distribution. You gotta measure on both as much as possible. So if you're in that space right now, then yes, absolutely, you can also see the trends. Cause I know you and I are always paying attention to this stuff. All these company founders are going all in on their personal brand. They're using the capital that they have to invest in getting on these big podcasts and getting on these shows and investing on it like it is a legitimate business expense because it's opportunity. So, yeah, absolutely, that's what I see. Yeah.
- [06:22]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
You can't do anything if you don't first have attention. You know, best, best known beats best 100% of the time. So if nobody knows who you are, then nobody can buy your. And. And if you don't. And to your point earlier, if you don't know what you should be selling yet, then one of that was. That was the way that that was my blueprint at the beginning was basically like, I don't know at all what I should be selling. I don't know anything about online business or how to make money online. I'm just a. I was a.
- [06:48]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Reader
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- [07:17]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
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- [07:17]
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- [09:04]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Corridor Sales Guy. But I started building an audience around a topic that was interesting to me. Not a topic that I was extremely knowledgeable about that I was already an expert in. I was a 24 year old kid, never been to a business event in my life. But I started a show about professional networking. You know, it was like it wasn't, it wasn't about my expertise. It was just like I'm, I'm the captain of the ship and this is the destination that we're headed toward. And if you want to learn this alongside with me, then hop on board the ship and we're going to head in this direction together. And then what happens is, like, you build up that audience, regardless of the size of the audience. It could be 10 people. It could be 10 million people. Whatever it is, you have a group of people who you have invested a lot of time, energy, and attention into, have not asked for anything in return other than maybe, like, feedback on how you could potentially serve them better. And then all I did, bro, was like, jumped on, I don't know, 100, 150, 200 free phone calls with anybody who would be willing to jump on a call with me. Like, literally anybody. It was a call to action in my podcast. But I also, like, anytime I'm in a conversation with somebody on Facebook, that was a random conversation, like, anything like that. It was like, let's jump on a call. And then all I did was ask them the question of, like, what's the number one obstacle that you're coming up against within the context of the thing that I talk about the most, which was relationships? And then they tell you the thing they're struggling with, and then you build a product or service that solves the problem that they told you that they're struggling with. And who else are they going to trust to deliver that solution to the problem other than the person who had been following for the last six months completely for free? You know what I mean? Like, it's a blueprint that works.
- [10:40]
Mike Kim
It will always work. And for those who may think, like, it's too late for me, I'm too old. Like, I don't know. One of my favorite YouTube channels is this guy Dwayne, from a YouTube channel called Dry Creek Wrangler School.
- [10:52]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Yep.
- [10:52]
Mike Kim
Dude just sits out on his ranch, and I swear it's a one camera shoot. I think his wife runs the camera. And he just sits there over his breakfast and coffee. He's an older guy, and I feel like I'm talking to the grandfather I never had.
- [11:06]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Yeah.
- [11:06]
Mike Kim
Two million subs, Something like that. Yep. Just him being authentic. Yeah. Yeah. Dry Creek. Dry Creek. Dwayne. I always. That's it. But it's. I mean, I've seen so many channels like that, like, because then it feeds me down the algorithm. I see this lady who's retired, and she's like, you know, I think her channel's like, old and alone or something, but she's definitely not alone. She's got tens of thousands of people watching her videos and hundreds of thousands of subscribers. So imagine doing that and building towards that now. Like, it's harder to do it overnight. I mean, there was a window where you could do that more easily. But every time I talked, I was just at south by Southwest and I was sharing our Airbnb with as part of this creator house. And I met two of my housemates, were like, really big time LinkedIn influencers, like, hundreds of thousands of connections and insane brand deals. I was like, I got in the wrong line of work, man. Money they're making. And they're what? They're much younger than me. And, you know, they're around your age, but you started, so to me, you're old.
- [12:11]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
You started early, so.
- [12:13]
Mike Kim
And they're like, yeah, how long have you been doing this? I'm like, over 10 years. They're like, you're still doing this? I was like, yeah, I'm gonna do this forever. And they were so blown away. They were so encouraged. They were, like, legitimately thought that it was dwindling down. I was like, no, you guys are set. Yeah, you guys are set. So just keep. Keep at it.
- [12:31]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Yeah, they're. At the end of the day, they're all excuses. I'm too late. You know, there's too many people. You know, there's not another. There's no. There's no. There's no more room for somebody to talk about this thing, bro. I think that all the time, even myself. And then I'll see somebody who started a podcast two years ago that blows mine out of the water in terms of traffic or subscribers or followers. And it's like, there's never, like, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is today. And it's the same thing in content. Yeah, of course. Like, would I have preferred to start building a YouTube channel in 2008 if I could go back and do that? Yeah, definitely. And would it have been easier to gain a subscriber count and following? Yeah, probably. But even then, like, even then, no, because now, like, at that time, the knowledge wasn't ubiquitous. You had to go learn. Like, you had to build everything from scratch. Even, like, starting a podcast. Back pre2012, there weren't just unlimited online resources. There weren't unlimited media host options. Like, you had to. You had to do real research to figure out how to, like, compress an mp3 file and tag it correctly and then upload it to this random site and then figure out how to distribute it to these other platforms. Like, the The. They. They had to do way more work. They were the pioneers. You know what I mean? So it's like, is it easier? I. I don't know. Because, like, even now with social, it's like, theoretically, again, 15 years ago, maybe it was easier to build on Instagram, or maybe eight years ago, it was maybe easier to build on TikTok, just in terms of, you know, supply and demand. However, now, the way the algorithms rank things, it's never been easier to start something from scratch and get virality and a ton of followers and a ton of traffic completely for free on a single video when you have 12 followers. That has never been easier, even compared to the beginning of any of these platforms. So it's like, if you keep telling yourself these stories, you'll keep buying into them as fact, when literally none of it is based in reality at all. You know, it's. There's never a bad time. But speaking of that, you actually have a new book as well. The Secret Language of Work. Tell me about the book writing process. How did you find it? What has gone into this project to date?
- [14:34]
Aaron McGough
Yeah, it's funny, I. I used to just, like, be a big reader early on in my career. I was a sponge. I would just read every professional development nonfiction book out there because I was just looking for answers. And there. There are some. There are a lot of good ones, you know, but I'd say like 95% of them could have been a blog post. And I always felt like they were kind of trying to change who I was, my personality, trying to, like, suppress my sense of humor or what made me unique or just trying to get me to sound like someone else. And it's. It's tough. So I wanted to write a book that was, first of all, extremely specific. There's no fluff. It's just like my content. It gets straight to the point. There are specific templates. It's very realistic. I give real world examples. But it's also a confidence booster. It makes you feel better about yourself when you're reading it, not worse, not like you're not enough. And I'm not trying to change anybody. I mean, people where they're at. If you're an introvert, that's fine. You can still be a powerful leader. If you say literally, that's fine. You can still be a powerful leader. You know, I think that people want to follow authentic people. And so I wrote a book that helps people become the most authentic and confident version of themselves in the professional space. I was first approached by Penguin My publisher four years ago, 4.5 years ago to write a book very early on in my advice at Theron Journey and I said no. I actually didn't respond to their email for a year because I'm a visual girl. Yeah, I just, I. Both my parents have written books so I've seen how much work goes into it and I'm not the type of person who half asses things. I never wanted to write a book just to have author on my headline. That's just not something that I've personally craved. I know other people do, you know, I'd much rather have an Oscar or something like that. However, I did get to the point where people were asking me so often for a book. They were just like, we want everything to be organized and consolidated and we're tired of like looking for your videos and going through all these different resources to find what we need. So I just thought how satisfying it could be to package up all of this, you know, IP that I've built into 10 beautifully, you know, laid out chapters and I could really sink my teeth into things that maybe are harder to explain visually. For example, like there's an entire chapter on like the art of written communication. Which is crazy because like most of our professional communication nowadays is written. It's through Slack and email and teams. So there was a big opportunity there for me to expand and just become helpful in a different medium. I also read the audiobook which was super fun cause I'm a big audiobook listener. So yeah, it took, it took a while for me to write. I really put a lot of effort into it. I really stressed out over it. I'm still stressing out over it. But I'm really proud of how it turned out. I think it's going to change, change people's lives.
- [16:59]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
For somebody listening who wants to take some of the things you've talked about, turn it into, you know, more income for themselves this year. What are a couple of the, let's say low hanging fruit areas that they should be focusing in on first?
- [17:14]
Aaron McGough
Yeah, low hanging fruit. Well, I, I think the first thing that comes to mind when you ask that is it's all about your mindset. You have to think about your salary as the floor. Your salary is not the ceiling of what you can make in a year. It's the floor. It's the, it's the base amount you're going to get paid. We are in a side gig economy, we're in a side hustle economy, we're in a side quest economy. And I know that a lot of people don't have hours after work. They come home to kids or they just work crazy hours, and they. They don't have the capacity for that. But for the listeners, you know, who are listening right now, who, who do have a desire to do something extra or to bet on themselves, I truly do not believe there's ever been a better time to go to your own thing. I don't think people fully understand. I think AI is both overrated in the short term and underrated in the long term. And there is an incredible opportunity right now that if you are a creative person who has a solution and you want to go vibe, code it and test it out, you're not technical. This is the best opportunity ever to go do that. Don't do what everybody else is doing. Don't stand. Don't sell sand in the Sahara. Don't do dropshipping, don't do all those, you know, things on YouTube. Figure out what you're uniquely good at and do that.
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Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Yeah, because the bottom line is like, the struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. And you're much more likely to push through struggle when it's something that's meaningful to you or something that you actually care about, rather than something that's just like somebody preached an opportunity to you enough times, you're like, well, I may as well try this out. You know, then that. That's where you get the, what I call the opportunity hoppers. You know, I mean, the person who, like, 10 years ago, they were a Facebook ads expert, and then they became a website builder expert, and then they became a crypto expert and a forex expert. Now they're an AI expert. Just like your opportunity hopping. You're going from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, thinking that the vehicle is the problem, when in reality it's actually just the focus on the vehicle that's the problem. And so pick something that's more aligned with who you feel yourself to be. You'll probably end up sticking it out long term, which is where the majority of the rewards are to be reaped anyway.
- [19:16]
Aaron McGough
Right, Exactly. That's. That's great advice. Follow your talents, not your passion, too. I mean, I think you should definitely be passionate about what you're doing, but it. It helps if you're actually good at it too.
- [19:25]
Mike Kim
Yeah.
- [19:26]
Amanda Littman
And the way that you do that is through authenticity. Authenticity is the building block of trust, and trust is the building block of community. Especially in a moment, we are seeing sort of artificiality or slop all over the place. Authenticity is what breaks through.
- [19:42]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Yeah. In a world of AI slop, the only thing that breaks through is authenticity and community.
- [19:47]
Amanda Littman
Exactly.
- [19:48]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Amanda, I'm curious about your book writing experience. I know you've done a bunch of stuff, obviously prestigious university that you came from, working on political campaigns. In terms of the things that you've done in your career, where would you place writing in terms of fulfillment and or difficulty?
- [20:05]
Amanda Littman
It is my favorite thing to do. And it is also the thing that is, if not the hardest, to make time for, like, the most satisfying. So I wrote. I've written two books. The first one I wrote back in 2017. It's a guide on running for office. And it was. I wrote it like in a fugue state. Like, I wrote it like four months, and it came out that October, and I barely remember doing it, but it was very fun because it was just like, here's all the things I know in my head out on paper. My newer book, when we're in Charge, I wrote a very hard period of life. It came after the birth of my first daughter. I was sort of like, trying to refind what I had to say in that sort of postpartum fog, trying to think, what was my voice? What is the new thing I have to talk about after. At that point, it was seven or eight years or something. And I realized over the. Over the course of really thinking through this fellowship I got, which gave me some accountability to understand, like, the things that I was seeing different leaders do in politics. I was also experiencing myself as an executive. My peers were experiencing it at their companies, and I was hearing it and seeing it in, like, online content all the time of, what did it mean to be a millennial boss or a Gen Z boss? Very different than the boomers. So the process of writing that book, ultimately throughout 2024, I had a one year old. I was running a company, a political organization, at a very hard time to be a professional Democrat. I got pregnant, which really gives you a hard deadline for when you have to turn in a book. Book must come before baby. And my company was going through some hard times. So it was just. It was a rough year internally.
- [21:25]
Mike Kim
Yeah.
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Amanda Littman
I found that the writing process was so delightful and, like, so in solitary. In many ways, it was just me and my thoughts. Like, it's hard, but it was so fulfilling that actually my 2026 resolution is I'm working on a novel just because it's fun to, like, have a creative. Good for you to, like, sink your teeth into.
- [21:44]
Mike Kim
Yeah.
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Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
You know that's, like, probably the thing that I think will be most detrimental in terms of AI coming out. And, like, especially generative AI.
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Amanda Littman
Yeah.
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Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
Because I've had that thought experiment before where, you know, immediately when AI came out, professors and teachers everywhere were like, great. How are we gonna. How are we gonna solve for this now? You know what I mean? Because before, it was like, okay, you copy and pasted the Wikipedia page for your biography that you wrote. Like, yeah, this is not. This is not gonna fly. This is called plagiarism. And then generative AI came out, comes out. It's like, how do we even categorize this? It's like, technically it's not, but it kind of is, but it's not your work. And I was like. My initial thought was sort of like this, you know, but if that technology exists, is it necessary for everybody to learn this skill? Like, you know? You know what I'm saying? Like, writing became less valuable when typing became the thing to do, if that makes sense. I, like, sorry, just let me finish this thought. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. But then the biggest detriment that I've found is that writing, to me, is basically just a tool that allows me to think more clearly. And that skill, I don't think, is ever worth getting rid of, if that makes sense like it is. It is a process through which you can develop your own thoughts more carefully and clearly so you can arrive at better conclusions, you can ask better questions, so you can live a better life. And I think that is probably the thing that's most detrimental in terms of, you know, what it. What it's going to mean for the next generation. But, yeah, go, go. Go ahead. Sorry to cut you off.
- [23:12]
Amanda Littman
Well, you nailed it exactly. I don't know about you, but when I write something, you know, I write a lot about beds. I write a lot of pieces. I have a substack. I do. I'm writing, like, thousands and thousands of words a week. I write to figure out what I think. Often when I write the first draft, the final paragraph is the thing that becomes the introduction, because I've written my way into understanding my actual thesis, and then I have to sort of reconfigure it, realizing that about my own process and also understanding that the act of writing is how I clarify the thinking. Yeah. So, like, why would I use AI to replace my brain? I like this muscle. I've spent a lot of time building this muscle. I don't want to weaken this. There's certainly many tools that can make like, you know, some research, interview, transcription totally easier with AI. But the act of writing is how you think. And if you miss that muscle and you don't build that muscle, the brain route will become quite literal.
- [24:03]
Travis (Host of Travis Makes Money Podcast)
That's right. Yeah. It will literally atrophy. Yeah. Because you're not using the muscle anymore. The thing that I've found it's useful for is that I'll write something and then I'll throw it into a. There's a ChatGPT extension, I think it's called Creative Writing Coach or something. And I'll throw that in there and then ask for feedback on the thing that I just wrote. And I found that to be like, fairly valuable because it's. It's like a thought partner in coming to the conclusion that I want to come to. But, like, anytime I try to get something done quickly and I have AI do it, I just never feel good about the finished product. It doesn't feel like me. Doesn't feel like. It doesn't feel like I earned the final product. You know what I mean? Which I think was probably. Is probably something that people are going to come up against in terms of personal fulfillment, happiness and overall meaning and contribution to the world is if you don't feel like you're actually contributing, then I think that that's probably a bad thing for your mental health overall, anyway, so.
- [24:54]
Amanda Littman
Well, when I get emails from folks that are so clearly written by AI, I'm like, why did you waste my time with this? It feels disrespectful.