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- [00:00]
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. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the show. This episode is just me, you and the mic. These are just some things that I've learned along the way. I have through the years just written a lot of notes in my notes folder on my iPhone and it's been actually kind of cool rediscovering some of the things that I've written over the last almost decade now of being in this space. Because essentially what happened was I was a door to door sales guy. I wanted to not be that any longer. And the only way out that I could see was just access to information. It was knowledge. It was like, what is even out there? What do I really want to do? And for the first time in my life I really started diving deep into self education and learning. This was probably 2016 or so, listening to like Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar and things like that and then picking up some audiobooks for the first time and then listening to podcasts for the first time. And then that sort of led to, you know, Almost, I guess, 2016. This would be a decade now of now. I've read over 200 books all in, you know, in the non fiction space. I'm still, I'm not like a. I don't love the game of reading. So I've actually still to this day not read anything that's like a fiction, like a novel or anything like that. I don't know, just personal preference. But I have read now a ton of books and I take notes whenever I find something that I like, whether it's an a book, an article, a blog, a podcast, and then my own thoughts. All the things that I've sort of articulated myself and from the 1500 plus episodes that we've created on the podcast now. So these episodes are sort of my audio journal, I guess, of the things that I've learned along the way. So on this episode I wanted to go into some questions, some powerful questions that I found to be helpful that I asked myself from time to time because I strongly believe that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that you ask. If you are getting wrong answers, it might just mean that you're asking the wrong questions. And I said this one time on Facebook and I had a couple people that were like, oh, easy for you to say. Or like, privileged take or something like that. And ultimately, that's just bullshit. That's just that those people pretending like it's not a big deal or that I'm oversimplifying success, which might be true, but also, it's my also could be true that maybe that person's asking themselves the wrong questions and they've not ever experienced the power of reframing a question and then finding an answer to that question. And that can literally be the thing that switches your mindset and changes your life. Which is why I strongly believe that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that you can ask yourself. So a little while ago, I put together just this folder of a bunch of questions that I like to ask myself from time to time. So there's 25 of them in this document. We'll get through as many as we can on this episode. Maybe we'll do a part two or something to get through the rest of them, but we'll go ahead and jump right in. Here's the first one. First one is, when was the last time I risked embarrassment? At the beginning of my career, I felt like I did this all the time when I first started the podcast. Like, even just starting a podcast in general, I feel like it's more daunting even than starting other ventures because it, by definition, is a public activity. Like, the metric of success is determined by how public the podcast becomes, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So they're sort of like hand in hand. You can't just like, quietly build a podcast. You just kind of got to build the podcast and you got to make it public, and you have to build in public. And this was like the first big leap of faith that I had taken after deciding to not go down the path that I was originally going to go down, which was the ministry path. So I knew that there were a bunch of people who were making fun of me at the time, who were sort of preying on my downfall, who wanted me to not succeed, people who I saw that I had grown up with. I saw, like, actual text message conversations of them talking to other people I'd grown up with and talking shit about me. And none of those things felt good. And I knew in that time, like, man, this podcast is gonna be. Is gonna be a bummer if it doesn't work out, because I know that there's a bunch of people who are just hoping and praying it doesn't work out, which is A weird thing to do, by the way, like, stop interfering with other people's dreams. That's such a weir, weird headspace to be in it. And it literally just means that like th, those people are just never, those people don't have any dreams that they're working on, so they just want to, they just want to bring down anybody who has those dreams. It's the crabs in the boiling water illustration where you put crabs in the boiling water and one of them starts making its way out, the other crabs will literally pull that crab down back into the boiling water. That's that example said nobody, nobody that's doing better than you is going to criticize you for trying. It's only the people who are doing worse than you that they're, those are the ones that are going to criticize you for trying. And especially, especially, especially when it's people who know you for whatever reason, like people who grew up with you, people who, people who saw you cut around in school or, or people who saw you at your worst at a basketball game or something like that, you know, they, they just tend to, they, they tend to pray in their downfall a little bit more than strangers, which is again, a strange headspace to be in if you ask me. But I, I, my point is like, I did this all the time. It's like everything that I did was a risk of embarrassment because everything that I. Then recently I asked myself this question and it's one of the reasons that I ended up deciding to do this, like, big risk of a project that we're working on right now. Because the answer to that question was like, it's actually been quite some time since I've risked embarrassment, like a few years since I really did something that was like out of the ordinary, that was really challenging me, that did not feel like that was just basically an experiment of uncertainty that was like, I have no idea how this is going to work out, but I do feel some sort of a pull in this direction. And I think I just am supposed to do it. And I can't necessarily explain it. I can't write down on my spreadsheet exactly what the ROI is going to look like. I can't justify the expense to my fractional CFO who's asking me these questions, you know, that there's no reasonable reason why I should do it except for that. I asked myself that question and the answer was, it's been a long time. So why don't I, why don't I, why don't I change that? Why don't I fix that and put myself in this other position where I'm now again risking embarrassment. But if you're not willing to risk embarrassment, then you're probably not ever going to achieve anything outside of the ordinary. That's just the bottom line. All all good things are on the other side of your are on the outside of your comfort zone. All good things come from embracing uncertainty and embracing the risk of failure or embarrassment. So when was the last time I risked embarrassment? Next one that I wrote down, when was the last time I got something I wanted to which sort of go
- [06:49]
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- [06:52]
Travis
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Travis
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Travis
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- [09:53]
Travis
hand in hand when with when was the last time that I risked embarrassment? Because I found that the majority of times the biggest periods of growth in my life have come after I risked embarrassment or failure or rejection. Like I risked something really bad. But it led to me getting something that I wanted even if the outcome was different than the initial goal of the risk that I was taking. So example There was a mastermind group one time that I was in. I paid 15k for the first year. I didn't feel like it was super valuable. And then the next year they got me in for another 10k. I remember and I remember asking that. I remember at the time thinking like, I think this might be a mistake. Like, I don't know. I just don't want to like hurt any feelings here. All right, sure, I'll do it. I'll. I'll just renew. I'll do it for one more Year. And then I was sort of confirmed suspicions because I didn't feel like the. That they had delivered on the promises that they set forth in the group. And then when I looked back on it a couple years later, because at the time, it was like a big decision. Like, 10 grand was a lot of money for me at the time. And I. And I remember looking. Looking back on it a couple years later and looking at a couple, like, actual client deals that. That. That I had. That I had done, and I was like, oh, that. That money that I invested in that group, even though the thing that they promised to me wasn't the thing that I got from the group, because I showed up and I worked for it, I ended up making my money back and, you know, and then some on the back end because I was able to reframe the way that I was looking at it and look for the positives. So when was the last time that I got something that I wanted? If it's been a long period of time, maybe again, it's time to risk embar and shoot for the stars and get something that you really wanted. Because the cool thing about getting something that you wanted after taking a big risk is that it allows you to do it again the next time without as much fear attached to the out with. Without as much fear attached to the potential outcome. So once you take a big risk and then you experience a win from. From the risk, it's sort of like, oh, like you. You almost unlock a superpower because most people are so fearful to take this risk at all that they just don't ever do it. They're still waiting for that, the crossing their finger, the perfect time that this is finally going to make sense. And spoiler alert, perfect time's never coming. It's never going to come. You just got to make the decision if you know that it's something that you want to tackle. But the sooner you can make those decisions, the sooner you can make the money back for the risk that you took or make the time back for the risk that you took or make the whatever back for whatever risk that you're looking at. And then the more likely it is that you'll be able to jump back at bat and actually connect with the ball this time. And maybe you don't hit a grand slam, but maybe you get on base, maybe you hit a single, maybe you hit a ground rule double. You know what I mean? Like, you. You just got to jump back up the B. And the first time you experience getting something that you wanted after taking a big risk, man, that's. That's a huge deposit into your confidence bank. So when was the last time I got something I wanted? Next one. It happened now. What? It happened now. What? This is as it relates to circumstances in life. I found this to be a useful frame because too many of us, and I'm lumping myself into this group because it's easy to fall into this, easy to fall prey to this. Too many times a circumstance occurs, an event happens in our life, and we want to immediately start pointing the finger. We want to start focusing the blame outwards. And it feels better to engage in the whining, it feels better to engage in the complaining. It feels better to not take personal responsibility for moving forward because it's easier, frankly. It's the lazy way out. Complaining about the situation that you're in is the lazy way out because there's there, because it doesn't require any additional action, because you feel like you can justify your lack of success in that area because of these things that happened. So a more useful frame, what I found is to say it happened now. What. And what it does is it allows you to sort of pull yourself out of your own body and view the event that occurred from as objective as a viewpoint as you possibly can view it from. Now, obviously you're never going to be fully objective. Nobody on this planet actually experiences the world the way that it is. We only experience it through our lenses through which we view the world. So it's impossible to be 100% completely objective. But you can do your best to pull yourself up out of your body, view the situation from an objective standpoint, and then find a solution or a path forward. It's sort of like the question of, like, if this happened to this other person and they were coming to me for advice, what would I tell them? Probably, probably the advice that you're going to give to that person might be the advice that you might want to follow yourself. And the advice that you're going to give to that person is probably not. Well, you know what you should do? You should just sit and complain about it and sulk about it for the next decade of your life. You should just sit there and point the finger and then just be unhappy, depressed, unsuccessful, and a burden on those around you for the next 15 years. Because that thing happened that was unfair. Because, like, that's the thing is that life happens and not every bad thing that, you know, quote unquote, bad thing that happens in our life is a direct result of actions that We've taken. Sometimes things just happen. But. But the mental state that you're in, when you're just going to sit and sulk and whine and complain about it, is not conducive toward moving forward at all. And it's only going to shift your neural pathways to a state of complaining more often. So if you allow yourself to get to a state of complaining more often than not, then your brain treats it as a habit to get into that state faster. So the next time some event happens, you're much more likely to go see the negative in it rather than to go to the alternate, the alternative path, which is to see the positive and take responsibility and move forward. So the frame. It happened. Now what? It's a question that I ask myself sometimes, and it allows me to kind of sit there and remove the fault from the equation, like, doesn't really matter at the end of the day. And, you know, minus the lessons that I can take from it, it doesn't matter whose fault it was that it happened. The bottom line is it happened. The situation is. It just. It just is. It's a fact that it just happened. And now it is. So now what? What do I do now? Yeah, you can acknowledge that you got dealt a shitty hand. You can acknowledge that this thing happened that shouldn't have happened, and it's unfair, and the world is unjust and unfair. You can acknowledge all of those things. And you know what? Give yourself a day.
- [16:16]
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- [17:00]
Travis
You see everyone face consequences. It's intoxicating.
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Travis
Plus a week. Give yourself a month. Give yourself five hours or five minutes, depending on the severity of the situation. Give yourself some time to acknowledge that. But ultimately, how much time is too much time? I see people who are still blaming Covid for their lack of success. It was like, that was six years ago now. That was literally six years ago. How much longer are you going to continue to blame Covid for all the bad things in your life when that happened that long ago? Like, is it next month? Is it next year? Is it in five years? Is it in 10 years? At some point, it just is a thing that happened. And you have to ask yourself the question, now what. What do I do moving forward? How do I take any lessons that I could possibly take from this? If I had any fault in making this happen, but if I had zero fault to make this happen, how can I still find whatever silver lining that I possibly can and then say, now what? What do I do now in order to ensure that maybe I don't put myself in that type of position again? What do I do now to ensure that maybe I hedge my bets better next time? Or what do I. What, like, how. What is the next step? How can I actually forward away from this thing? If you ask yourself that, I think you'll find a lot more use out of that question rather than just sitting and whining, complaining about everything all the time. This next one, no bullshit, what would it take? I like this one a lot in terms of thinking of things that you generally categorize in your mind as impossible, because that's the main thing that's preventing you from going after those quote unquote impossible goals, those dreams, those. Those things where you're like, man, it'd be awesome if I could do this, but, you know, that's just impossible. I have no idea what that would even look like. How do we even get started doing that? What does that even mean? You know, like, you immediately start finding all of the reasons why you can't do it. So the frame of no bullshit, what would it take? Allows you to then think about or reverse engineer, if it were possible, how could I make it happen? And that is a much more useful frame because now you've trained your brain to start looking for all the things that are possibilities, that the outcomes that you could potentially have some influence. And so instead of. Instead of thinking about, instead of thinking about, you know, all the reasons why it's not going to work, you start thinking about, well, how could it work? And then you might find that the answer to that question is more work than you're willing to put into in order to achieve that outcome. And then you can make A decision on whether or not you want to continue down that path. Right? So for me, direct translation and practicality for my business was getting good guests on my show. Initially it was like, man, I would love to interview, you know, Shaquille o' Neal or the Impractical Jokers or this, this comedian or this famous entrepreneur or this New York Times best best selling author. I'd love to interview these people. And when I first got started in the space and I wrote these names down on a piece of paper, it was almost laughable because I was just a 24 year old door to door sales guy, never had a podcast, never didn't know anything about the online world at all. And then I was writing these names out on the list and I was just like, how the hell am I going to get, am I going to get in contact with Shaquille o', Neal, this childhood hero of mine? Like, this is impossible. How would this even work? But then, then once you go, no bullshit, what would it take? You can kind of sit there and go, okay, if this person has a pulse, if they have a, if they are alive today, it is possible to get in contact with them. The question is how? And then the second question is, am I willing to put in the work to get that person? And sometimes the answer to that question has been no. Sometimes it's like, man, it'd be great to have so and so on my podcast. And I started asking myself, well, how would I get in contact with that person? It's like, well, I know this person who happens to know that person. But you know, I don't have that much social, much relationship capital with this person that I know who knows that person. And frankly, that person is not worth spending some social capital with this person in order to get an introduction to them. So maybe I'll shoot a DM cold email or something like that, but if it doesn't pan out, not a big deal. But then there's other people where it was like, absolutely, it's worth using a little bit of social capital with this person to ask for an introduction to this person, because I really, really want to have a conversation with that person on the podcast. So using the frame, no bullshit, what would it take? You know what I mean? Is, is a really good frame to start thinking about because it allows you to start thinking in terms of. And then again, you can formulate a plan to either attack that goal with some ferocity with some, with some, with some umph, or adjust the path and say, ah, you know, it is, it is potentially possible by doing these three different options. But I'm not really willing to do all of the work required to do all of those different options. So maybe I'm not going to go down that path. And like, that's, that's how it is for me in terms of, you know, being a billionaire or something like that. It's ironic because I run a show called Travis makes money, but I have no intention of becoming a multi billionaire because I know, like, I've done the work to think through the process of what it takes to create a billion dollars worth of enterprise value. And in my mind, it's like, I frankly am not willing to give up all the time that it would take to do that when I could use that time to spend with my kids or my family. It, like, that is, it is not a, it is not a worthy enough goal for me to sacrifice these other things. Like the trade off to me is not worth it. So now I can decide, okay, well, what is worth it and how can I attack that thing? So, no bullshit, what would it take? And I figured we'd. We'd take a while to get through, get through some of these. So we've only gotten through four of them. There's 25. So. Catch us on the next episode. We'll walk into a couple of the other questions that I like to ask myself from time to time. Powerful questions that will help you live a better life. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace out.
- [22:38]
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- [22:42]
Travis
And let go of whatever you're carrying
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Travis
And breathe.
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Stassi Schroeder
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- [23:06]
Travis
1-800-contacts.