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Sponsor Voice - Travis
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.
Travis
What's going on, everybody?
Sponsor Voice - Travis
Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money
Travis
podcast, where it's our mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I'm talking to a new friend of mine, Scott Hutchison. For nearly four decades, Scott's been working at the intersection of behavioral science, leadership and organizational transformation, helping people unlock their potential, build stronger teams, and design ecosystems that are more adaptive, innovative, and competitive. His work spans classrooms and boardrooms. As a professor at Purdue, he teaches graduate courses in technology and engineering leadership. Outside the university, he's partnered with federal agencies, Fortune 100 companies, startups, foundations, and networks of change makers, collaborating with nearly 5,000 leaders from 147 different countries. So, Scott, what's up, man? Welcome to the show.
Scott Hutchison
Hey, Travis, thanks for having me.
Travis
You know, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. Scott. It seems like you might know a thing or two about this whole topic of making money, having worked with 5,000 people from 150 different countries and then you do it for a living at Purdue. So I appreciate the time.
Scott Hutchison
You bet. Hope I have a few things to share.
Travis
It sounds like it. I think so. So let's go ahead and dive into the beginning here of your story in particular. Tell me, Scott, the first time that you ever made a dollar that was exciting to you, that you were like, wow, I can't believe somebody just paid me to do that.
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, you know, for me it was as a 16 year old and, you know, I'd done the, you know, I'd done the mowing yards and stuff like that. Then I got an opportunity to write an article for a national magazine for teens. And they paid. They paid me for that.
Sponsor Voice - Travis
How did you think of that?
Scott Hutchison
As that was a different kind of dollar for me. Right. Any. Anybody can cook burgers or mow grass, the things that I was doing. But I got really excited that oh, this is something that is uniquely me. No one else could write the same sort of story as I did, and someone was going to pay me for it. And so that became part of how I earned a living from really that point onward. And that to me was I could create something, not just trade my muscles or, you know, my labor, but trade something unique for cash. So that was a really pivotal moment for me.
Travis
And you were about 16ish. Yeah, man. That's awesome, man. How did you figure that one out? Somebody tell you about it? You submitted writings, they reached out to you? How did that come about?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, it was a, it was a, A magazine that, that I had, had, had read in the past. And there was a solicitation for short story writers, in this case teen short story writers. And so I answered the, I answered the call and sent someplace.
Travis
You know, I, I have a, I have a bone to pick with the publication industry to this day, Scott, because I, I tried to get so many jokes and stories in the. What was it? The Reader's Digest.
Scott Hutchison
Yeah.
Travis
Sent those things out, you know, and there's a little like, laugh section or whatever. I would like, ask my grandpa for stories. I would, like go online and search for stuff. And because it said it would pay, it was something like 150 bucks or something, which to me at like 14 was like, wait, what people pay for this? It's crazy. Okay, so something that was uniquely you, which I think is really ultimately where this making money conversation actually gets interesting for anybody who's listening. Because as you stated before, anybody can. Anybody can get paid to do a task, assuming that task is easily trainable.
Scott Hutchison
Right.
Travis
But where you start earning more than you, like when you start earning so much that you go like, is this legal? Are they allowed to pay me this much? Like, that is usually some sort of a factor of multiple skill sets that you've stacked on top of one another over a long enough period of time that happen to also bring out this unique part of your personality. It's like, it's the thing that you can do that nobody else can do that ultimately ends up turning the tables in your favor. Right?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, exactly. Yep.
Travis
How do you find that is the question.
Scott Hutchison
So the way I have approached that and the way that I work with, with, with those leaders that you mentioned, including my students, is we focus less on making money, but creating value. And if you create value, well, you know, someone's going to pay you for it. So what, what my, both research and professional practice has focused on is really the, the biology of Behavior and the behavioral signals that an individual can send in order to sort of optimize value creation. And so what. What we have done is developed a set of frameworks and tools and learning experiences to help leaders do that more consistently and with greater payoff at the end.
Travis
Which is arguably, to me, one of the most valuable things that you can learn as an adult is that is just learning people. Because the bottom line is, regardless of any technological advances that have come in the last hundred years or the next hundred years, human evolution has not changed very much at all. We're still talking to the same person that was born in 1912, that was born in 2012. It's the same makeup, more or less. It's the same biology, it's the same psychology. Everything is the same. And so, like, you can go to school and learn, you know, something that's really tactical and practical, but then by the time you graduate, especially now at the rate at which things change, it could be completely obsolete before you even get out and have a chance to practice that thing. Whereas humans, man, like they, you know, we're pretty much the same as we were for quite some time.
Scott Hutchison
Yeah. And I work a lot with scientists and engineers that want to create value. So I teach in an engineering management program where someone may have been an individual contributor, engineer, but now they're taking on larger roles. Sometimes it's a sales or an engineering sales role, or it's a team leader and eventually, you know, an executive level position. And what I find with especially technical people, engineers, scientists, technologists, is they lean into their technical expertise but don't have that understanding of basic human behavior. So what I do is I focus on kind of the neurochemicals behind making those kinds of connections with other people, helping them see a path forward in partnership with you so that you can together create shared value. Enough value for them to capture some and for you to capture some and plenty to plenty to go around, which
Travis
is ultimately the goal. Right. It's not ever a win lose situation. It's not a I win therefore you lose, or you win therefore I lose. It's how can we put our heads together, collaborate, and figure out a solution that works both for you and for us?
Scott Hutchison
Yes.
Travis
What are you seeing that people get wrong? Like oftentimes, like more. More often than not, I assume.
Sponsor Voice - Travis
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Travis
It seems to me anyway, and please correct me if I'm wrong because I'm absolutely not the expert in this space. It seems to me that when you work with as many people as you've worked with, there's usually like three to five core common problems that people are running, running up against. They might express themselves differently, obviously, industry by industry, trade by trade, but seemingly there's there's typically a few, like a handful of things that it's like, we can probably talk about these three to five Things because ultimately probably going to be the thing affecting you the most.
Scott Hutchison
Yeah. So, so let me give you a practical example. I worked with one team and they did cloud migration and cloud analytics stuff and their pitch. So I worked with their main sales team, so their chief revenue officer and actually their CEO, who also happened to be their chief cloud strategist. And they, their sales were million dollar plus sales. They worked in a very highly secure environments, finance and that sort of thing.
Travis
Yeah.
Scott Hutchison
And their impressions was. Or their, their pitch was, we can help you be successful in your cloud migration. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, but their, their primary client within an organization, the person that they typically did their work with would have been like the chief information officer.
Sponsor Voice - Travis
Okay.
Scott Hutchison
So what we help them understand is that the main motivation for that, that CIO is probably not to be successful. It is to not fail. Because it's really complex transformation initiatives, whether it's digital transformation or moving the cloud or whatever, they fail a lot. And the tenure of executives at that level, when they have a failure, whether it was their fault or not, they typically have to leave. They may find another job somewhere else, but the failure rate is pretty high and the retention rate is pretty low for, for those kinds of folks. So when we dialed in, the fact that, no, I can help make sure you don't fail, that's the main motivation. So what we help them understand is look, if they're facing a big transformation initiative or a big effort, and so much of that buck is landing on their desk. Right. They are often walking around with really high level of cortisol. They're just constantly under stress. So what we help them understand, the sales team understand is how do you even in that first sales call, how do you immediately lower cortisol? And you do that by spiking oxytocin. So coming in at a very personal kind of level and what I call leveraging the biodynamic channel of warmth. And we've identified three sort of biodynamic channels of warmth, competence and gravitas. And we teach our leaders. How do you sequence them and how do you. I think of them as like slider bars. If you've ever done any, you know, mixing of, of music, you don't need to dial them all up to 11 to borrow a Spinal Tap term.
Travis
Yeah.
Scott Hutchison
How do you determine, all right, in this situation which of those need needs to be dialed up? And in this example it is, man, I start with warmth. I help them say, you know what, I can provide you something of value in this Conversation that is going to reduce your stress. Some insight, you know, before you've ever even thought about signing a contract, I'm going to provide something of value that says, oh my gosh, that is a really good insight, I need more of that. And then it's much less friction for them to eventually sign on the, on the bottom line. So, and often we find that, especially in highly technical environments, we lead with our competence.
Travis
That's right.
Scott Hutchison
I'm a subject matter expert. Well, that's necessary. But in most situations, you start with warmth, you make that human connection and then you exercise your competence, you demonstrate your competence, and then that last channel of gravitas, I approach that a little bit differently than what most people might understand that word to be. It's not seriousness, it is a form of the word gravity. So how do you pull others into your orbit? Right? Not disrupting their inertia, but channeling their inertia so you can create shared value together. You can travel on a path together with them. So at the very basic level, we say start with warmth, then move to competence and then switch to gravitas. And that unlocks all kinds of opportunity to create shared value.
Travis
So, so gravitas, that would be more of like the, the authority piece to say that. Or, or, or am I, am I reading that wrong? Can you, can you talk about that?
Scott Hutchison
That's the definition that most of us are aware of. Gravitas. We think of, we think of, of gravity. And Sir Isaac Newton, you know, used the term to describe the law of gravity that he had discovered. But before that, it went all the way back to the Greeks where it was used to describe a person. And the definition that I use is the gravitational pull in the planetary system. So it's not pulling an asteroid into us. Right? It is how we at some point as Earth attracted our moon and now it spins around us. So gravity is just enough of a pull to bring people into our orbit and channel their initial inertia. So you connect with warmth, you contribute with competence, and then you create shared value with that gravitas.
Travis
Do you find that there are certain, like, you know, it's something like a technical space. Are there certain industries that tend to over, over compensate for one thing versus another thing? Like I would assume this technical type of a thing would be, like you said, heavy competence, not a lot of warmth. But there might be another scenario where there's heavy warmth, but there's no display of competence and there's no trust that can be formed. Right?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, that's right. And in this same example, what we found is that they could have a sales team of two. One who warmth comes first for them and then that warmth.
Sponsor Voice - Travis
Sorry to cut you off.
Travis
Warmth. This would be sort of like the EQ of the situation, the emotional intelligence.
Scott Hutchison
Read others emotions. You can react in real time to those emotions. You can pick up cues that their cortisol is high and you can turn on that warmth to lower it just enough. Because you can't make rational decisions when cortisol is high. I mean, we've all experienced that, but we've also probably experienced that we have someone in our life who can talk us off the ledge. You know, for many of us, it's our life partner. Right. My wife does that for me all the time. So cortisol can't be high at the same time. Oxytocin is high. So what? That particular partner in that two person sales team is just really good at lowering the stress, creating a welcoming environment, and then they kind of orchestrate the entire conversation. They turn to that chief cloud strategist when it's time for the competence and then they can something of value at a strategic level in this case. So yeah, we can all get better at dialing those things up and down ourselves. But when we surround ourselves with people that, oh man, I lead with competence, that's probably never going to change. You lead with warmth, that's probably not going to change. But together we're like this dynamic duo. And what we find over time is we learn from one another and those behaviors that are associated with one that might be our secondary or our tertiary, we can get better at it.
Travis
Sure.
Scott Hutchison
So we can become more dynamic in the way in which we read those signals and send those signals ourselves.
Travis
What about pre conversation? So before we've made it to the point where we're on the call, the interaction, the meeting, the coffee, whatever it is, before we've made it to that point, what can we do internally? From Mark.
Sponsor Voice - Travis
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Travis
travis Getting perspective, branding, messaging, those types of things to maybe try to tackle some of these things before we even get to that point.
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, those are the framework that I'm describing. That notion of warmth, competence and gravitas, it, it is pretty universal and it can be used to structure both your, your marketing materials, the way in which you have written communication. So, you know, so how, how are you going to tee things up in a, in a, even in an email or the copy that you're going to use or the, the assets that you're going to use? I've also worked a lot with philanthropic leaders who raise big money for research hospitals and that sort of thing. And if you pay attention to philanthropic appeals, whether it is, you know, you're watching the commercial that's asking you to give money to St. Jude's or whatever, they use those same tactics. Yeah, they pull on your heartstrings, but then they convince you that your money will be well used. We have the competence, if you will, to help, you know, help kids, you know, deal with diseases or whatever the focus of their work is. And, and we can enter into this together. So that's where the gravitas comes in. So whether it's your, your, your marketing campaign or whether it's the way in which you show up on that sales call, it's kind of the same set of dynamics. And what we've identified are 18 behaviors. I call them really biomarkers because they really are biological behaviors that land first biologically with the receiver. And those align 6, 6 and 6 within one competence and gravitas. So we have all kinds of diagnostics that you can sort of assess yourself, how am I doing on consistently sending these 18 signals? And then that gives you a sense of what I really lean into is warmth, my thing is competence, my thing. And then how can I get better at consistently sending all those signals?
Travis
Can you tell me a couple of those signals? Just walk me through A couple of them. So we understand exactly what I'm talking about.
Scott Hutchison
So some of them are not going to sound like brain surgery. So let's start with warmth. One of the biomarkers is. They are. Someone is. Is warm. We think of them as warm. If they are other oriented, they're other oriented. So their focus is on you. It's not on what can you do for me?
Travis
Yeah. What's in it for me?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, yeah. Who are you and how can I help you get to what you need, you know, what you need to have? So someone who is other oriented. And then we give our leaders that we work with. What are the outward signals that you are other oriented. Right. So how do you. You may feel it inside, but it's not. Others aren't reading that out of you. So that's a very simple one. We move over to gravitas, for instance, and that is one of those biomarkers is related to. Handles disagreement with diplomacy, whether you are in the business of peacemaking or whether you are in the business of working with a client that might be disappointed with your service and maybe for a good reason. How do you handle that with diplomacy? What does diplomacy look like? So those are just two of the. Of the 18 we've identified.
Travis
And is this largely then, a factor of mastering communication, both from the words that you say, but also the tonality with which you say them, the body language that you present, the facial expression that you have. Is it sort of like mastering these types of things, depending on which of these 18 levers you're trying to pull more?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, that's a big part of it. I come from a quite an unusual background, considering where I've ended up. But as an undergraduate, I studied theater. And, you know, most people have heard of Stanislavski, you know, method acting, where you just. And Stanislavski said, if you feel it inside, it'll just spill out as a character. Well, there was a contemporary of his named Meyerhold, also a Russian theater guy, who talked about. No, no, no, Stanislavski. You've got it wrong. It's the outside in. So he talked about the biomechanics of theater. And so we've translated that into kind of the biomechanics of leadership and the biomechanics of sales. So Myerhold said that each of us as human beings are two people. We're the conceiver of the idea, and then we're the executor of the idea. So I may have, you know, a great strategic mind, for instance, but no one can see how I think. So I have to align both what, what's in my head and what others are picking up on. So we talk about behavioral signals. You need to be aware of your behavioral signals. So these 18 all come with what does that look like? What does that sound like? What does that look like in practice? And help sales leaders and other leaders kind of master those. And I think of it really as, it's biohacking sales. It is biohacking leadership. It's understanding the biological biology. Experimenting like a good biohacker would use. Use data like the analytics that we have developed and then see what, see what works. See what works.
Travis
So almost. Almost like becoming the character that you would presume would have in this situation, the warmth that you're trying to emulate or the competence that you're trying to emulate or the gravitas you're trying to emulate.
Scott Hutchison
Yeah. And, and it is a, for some of us, it's a bit of a fake it till you make it, you know, like one of those channels. And the, the behaviors that are associated with them just, just come more naturally to us. It's something that is embedded in our DNA or established early. Others are harder. I, for me, I think I led with gravitas. I just had this ability as a, even, even as a high schooler, you know, I wasn't part of any one clique. Every, every clique thought I was a part of theirs. And, and I could bring student body together to lobby for change and that sort of thing. Warmth was more difficult for me. But by gosh, when I started having serious relationships that were leading to marriage or whatever, I had to figure out what warmth sort of looked like because my wife of 40 years would not be my wife if I hadn't figured out, oh, she not only needs me to solve problems, you know, with my competence, or figure out our path together as a couple with my gravitas, I need to really figure out how. What does warmth look like? How do I, how do I be other oriented? How do I become a really good listener? Right. How do I be. How do I be thoughtful in ways that are meaningful to her? So these are all learned behaviors and it's how. It's how we learn everything. We watch other people, you know, it's how we learn to talk. We listen to mom and dad form words and then we started forming words. And it's how we become really great at our jobs too. We see little nuggets of other people and say, gosh, that was really effective. It really Worked for me. How would that look if I behaved in that way? So sometimes it starts with a bit of imitation, but then we need to sort of make it our own. Our own authentic way of expressing these things.
Travis
That was always my advice to salespeople, came from a background of door to door sales. I did a bunch of door to door in my early 20s and led teams and recruited and trained sales reps and stuff. And that was. That was always my biggest piece of advice, was basically like, go find the top performer in whatever sales organization you're coming into and do your best impression of them until you've learned it so well that you can then allow the pieces of your personality to shine through and start making it your own. The problem that I ran into with salespeople was that they wanted to make it their own. Day one, they'd be like, oh, that doesn't feel authentic to me. And it's like, okay, but for now, let's just do what works, because we know this works. So why don't we just mirror as much as we can what works, and then do that at a high volume for an extended period of time? And then once you get, like, the fundamentals down now you can sort of finesse now you can sort of play with it and throw this other thing in there. Pull this personal story out of your back pocket that you've been holding onto for a while, right?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I. I think I borrowed other people's stories at first and pretended they were mine.
Travis
Same.
Scott Hutchison
Or, you know, maybe I would say, hey, Travis is a great sales person and I've seen this. Right.
Travis
Yeah. I'd refer to other people's stories before I had stories of my own, you know?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden you wake up and like, holy cow, I'm. I'm now the guy with all the. All the stories. I've got the gray hair and whiskers to prove it.
Travis
Well, Scott, I appreciate you taking the time, and I know you're a very busy guy, so I do not take that for granted. Where can people go to get more from you and what you guys are working on?
Scott Hutchison
Yeah. So if you get the spelling of my name right, which I should put you on your screen somewhere, you can just do scotthutcheson.com or you can Google Scott Hutcheson. And there's me and some property developer in Canada that come up. So I'm the non Canadian.
Travis
The non Canadian. Yeah, the guy at the Purdue University Professor. Yeah, Scott Hutchison. That's H u T T H E S O N not Hutchinson Hutcheson H u T H E S o n Scott hutchison.com go check out some of the stuff that Scott's been working on. Scott, again, thank you so much for taking the time. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got money in the bank. So let's start there. Here on the Traps Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.
Sponsor Voice - TikTok
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Host: Travis Chappell
Guest: Scott Hutcheson, Professor at Purdue University
Date: April 2, 2026
In this engaging episode, Travis Chappell sits down with Scott Hutcheson, a behavioral scientist and leadership expert, to discuss the dynamism of creating value by mastering human behavior and how that directly relates to making more money. Drawing from Scott's extensive career across academia, Fortune 100 consulting, and international leadership training, the conversation delves into the frameworks, practical examples, and psychological insights that help individuals and organizations unlock their earning potential—not by frugality, but by learning how to offer unique value in a rapidly changing world.
“Then I got an opportunity to write an article for a national magazine for teens. And they paid. They paid me for that. … I could create something, not just trade my muscles or, you know, my labor, but trade something unique for cash.”
— Scott ([02:02])
“When you start earning so much that you go like, is this legal? … That is usually some sort of a factor of multiple skill sets that you've stacked on top of one another over a long enough period of time that happen to also bring out this unique part of your personality.”
— Travis ([04:14])
“If you create value, well, you know, someone's going to pay you for it. … We focus on the biology of behavior and the behavioral signals that optimize value creation.”
— Scott ([04:45])
“Human evolution has not changed very much at all. … Humans, man, like they, you know, we're pretty much the same as we were for quite some time.”
— Travis ([05:39])
“They lean into their technical expertise but don't have that understanding of basic human behavior.”
— Scott ([06:25])
“How can we put our heads together, collaborate, and figure out a solution that works both for you and for us?”
— Travis ([07:25])
“...so you can create shared value together. You can travel on a path together with them.”
— Scott ([17:30])
Practical Sales Example (Cloud Migration Team)
“The main motivation for that CIO is probably not to be successful. It is to not fail... So what we help them understand is how do you even in that first sales call, how do you immediately lower cortisol? And you do that by spiking oxytocin.”
— Scott ([13:47])
“Think of them as like slider bars ... you don't need to dial them all up to 11.”
— Scott ([15:45])
Industry Overcompensation
“Yeah, that's right. … Together we're like this dynamic duo.”
— Scott ([18:44])
Applying Warmth, Competence, Gravitas to Brand & Written Communication
“The framework ... is pretty universal and it can be used to structure both your marketing materials, … your written communication.”
— Scott ([24:23])
The 18 Biomarkers
“One of the biomarkers … is someone is warm if they are other oriented … How do you handle [disagreement] with diplomacy?”
— Scott ([26:26])
Inside-Out vs. Outside-In
“We talk about the biomechanics of leadership and the biomechanics of sales. … I may have a great strategic mind ... but no one can see how I think. So I have to align both what's in my head and what others are picking up on.”
— Scott ([28:09])
“I think of it really as, it's biohacking sales. It is biohacking leadership. It's understanding the biological biology. Experimenting like a good biohacker would.”
— Scott ([29:48])
“I borrowed other people's stories at first and pretended they were mine. ... And then all of a sudden you wake up and like, holy cow, I'm now the guy with all the stories. I've got the gray hair and whiskers to prove it.”
— Scott ([32:58])
“[You want to] trade something unique for cash. That was a really pivotal moment for me.”
— Scott ([02:21])
“Human evolution has not changed very much at all. We're still talking to the same person that was born in 1912, that was born in 2012.”
— Travis ([05:39])
“So what we help them understand, the sales team understand is, how do you even in that first sales call, immediately lower cortisol? And you do that by spiking oxytocin.”
— Scott ([14:10])
“It's how we learn everything. We watch other people ... and then we started forming words. And it’s how we become really great at our jobs too.”
— Scott ([31:15])
“It's not ever a win-lose situation. ... It's how can we collaborate and figure out a solution that works both for you and for us?”
— Travis ([07:25])
Final Thought:
“Money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you've got money in the bank. So let's start there.”
— Travis ([33:48])
For more insights and practical strategies, listen to the full conversation on Travis Makes Money.