← Travis Makes Money
Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money by Avoiding the Biggest Mistakes I Made as an Entrepreneur
00:25:10
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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, it's just me, you and the mic. We're just chilling. If you want to listen to a co hosted episode with my producer Eric, then go to the little episode that says co host. And if you want to listen to an interview with an entrepreneur, then go to the one that says interview. But then this is a solo show. It's just me, you and the mic. Over the last almost decade now of being in the online space, I've consumed, I don't even know, hundreds and hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours of podcast episodes, over 200 books, and then I've also released over 1500 episodes, interviewed a thousand plus inspiring people across business and books and comedy and philosophy, and you name it. So these solo shows are basically just my opportunity to spend some time with you and share some of the things that I have learned. And hopefully that is helpful for you. And today's episode is a little bit even more so that way because I'm going to talk about if I had to start over, what would I do differently? And I want to start with, we'll see what we can get to in this episode because this frankly might be a multiple episode type of a thing, but we're going to start with what I would stop doing immediately. I've wasted years of my life doing stuff that did not serve me. And in this episode I'm going to uncover what I would do differently if I were back in those positions. Now, before, before I say these things, I want to clarify. I mostly believe that regret is a useless state, a useless emotion. I suppose if it's an emotion, I don't, I don't find much use out of it. So I'm, I am very careful with the words that I use and I think regret is not a good one. I don't necessarily regret much because ultimately most of the time you're typically doing the best that you can do with the information that you have at that time. And regret is basically useless because. But once you learn from the mistake, it doesn't do anything good for you to keep stewing on something that puts you in a bad headspace and makes you believe in yourself less. So with that in mind, here are some things that I would do differently had if I were given another chance to be able to do it. First of all, comparing myself to others, some of these things I'm still working through. To be honest with you, Comparing myself to others is a big one. And I, when I, when I first started, it was easier to do that because I was pretty young. Meaning, like I first started my podcast. I think I was, I think I was 24 when I published the first episode of my podcast. And at that time it was more like, I'm the new kid on the block, right? Like I'm the young guy around. So most of the people that I was, quote, unquote, comparing myself to were in their 30s. And now that I'm in my 30s, that excuse is no longer welcomed. I'm not 24 anymore, so I'm judging myself maybe even more harshly now than I, than I was back then. But I fell into the trap way too early on, and it introduced unnecessary distraction in my life because I thought that this person's version of success was the better version of success, or this person's version of success was the better version of success. And so instead of doing the thing that I was doing, I was getting distracted by the things that other people were doing because I looked at them as being more immediately successful than I was. Therefore, they're doing something correctly, I'm doing something incorrectly, I should go do what they're doing. Which isn't necessarily a terrible thing to do, except for when you use as an excuse to trash your vehicle and go get a new one every time something, every time an obstacle comes up in the path, which is not optimal. So I was comparing myself way too much to other people, thinking about, like, you know, this person has more followers, or this person has, is making, is making more money, or this person figured this thing out that I couldn't figure out, and I would allow myself to fall into that trap too much. Now I am somebody who's not in the camp of forget what everybody says about you and do your thing and just be authentic to you. And it's like, I. Yes, yes, you. Those are, you know, a good thing. You know, comparison is the thief of joy. We've all heard that. And ultimately that those things are true. However, you can't just completely scrap the opinions of every single person in your life because we're inherently social creatures and we exist within a social hierarchy regardless if we want to recognize it or not. So you still need to have some level of self awareness. You still need to treat people well and have, you know, the respect of those around you and, and you know, to have admiration from those that you love and, and, and to have a love from those that you love. You know, like those things are completely unavoidable, but you know when you're doing it too much. And unfortunately, we do live in the age of social media, which is basically, you know, the highlight.
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This episode of the show is brought to you by Factor. Got big goals, but no time to cook? Factor makes healthy eating easy with fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs. So eat well without the planning or the cooking. Inside you will get quality functional ingredients, including lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole food ingredients and healthy fats. No refined sugars, no artificial sweeteners, no refined seed oils. Get that stuff outta here. Meals that actually fit your goals and your schedule. Healthier eating, calorie management, more protein, et cetera, et cetera. With over 1, 100 rotating weekly meals to keep things fresh and delicious through the winter, your options include High protein Calorie, smart Mediterranean diet, GOP1 support, and ready to Eat salads, plus the new Muscle Pro Collection Support, strength and recovery. And it's always fresh, it's never frozen, and it's ready in about two minutes. No prep, no stress, just delicious, nutritious food. So head over to factor meals.com TMM50OFF and use code TMM50OFF to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with Factor New subscribers only. Varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. This episode of the show is brought to you by Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard, it's terrifying. So much work goes into this thing.
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That you're not entirely sure it'll work.
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Out, and it can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust me, I know this. When I started my podcast, I wasn't even sure what I was doing, to.
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Be honest with you.
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What if nobody listens? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I'm embarrassed? You know, what if nobody buys stuff.
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That I put out there?
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Now I know that I was right in believing myself in launching this podcast and subsequent businesses that come along with it. Despite all the fears and hesitations. It also helps when you have a partner like Shopify on your side to help. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Magic Spoon to brands just getting started.
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You can get started with your own.
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This is people sharing the things that are happening in their life. That is awesome. Rarely are they sharing the things that are failures or mishaps. And it's not even from like a you I want to, I want to show you how awesome I am standpoint all the time. It's just more like those are the things you tend to share like regardless, right? You, if you're, if you're going through something personally, even if you're not posting about on social media, you, you have this huge win. You're going to go tell the people who are closest to you in your life because it's exciting and it's fun. It's like I want to share it with somebody. And so that's kind of where that desire comes from. It's not always this insidious, you know, thing that people make it out to be where it's just these people are trying to delude you into thinking that they're better than you and don't let them do it. It's not ne really. I don't, I don't really get that vibe from most. From, from at least some of these people. Maybe not most. I generally don't know the percentage obviously. But you know, some people are actively trying to create a chasm between where they are and where you are because they have something to sell you that's going to get you from where you are to where they are. So they, they want to build this picture that they've made it and they've attained something. And in those cases, I would just say recognize that a lot of that is just. There's a lot of Stuff out there that is just not true or it's not, it's not accurately represented. Like when you see these income claims and stuff, most of the time people are talking about top line revenue. They're not talking about all the expenses that they incurred along the way and they're not talking about that, the fact that they're still dead broke even though that this thing went really well for them. So be careful about those types of things. But you know, you can pull inspiration from the people who are inspirational to you without, without putting yourself into this. Like, man, this, this comparing mindset that just steals your joy, puts you into a negative mindset and then prevents you from tackling the, your day. So something I would, I would, I would try to stop sooner rather than later was comparing myself to too many people too quickly and then allowing that to influence how I was going about my day. Second thing, beating myself up for failures. This is probably another thing, if you ask my wife, that I still struggle with to this day because I, because I am so hyper aware of the volume of people that are actively taking a public role online and teaching or talking about stuff that they just have no experience in whatsoever. I've probably, I've probably been too careful on that front where, you know, I'll, I'll have something big happen that, that is a, all intensive purposes of failure, objectively, from all the, you know, metrics of success that you would measure it by. And I allow that to silence me for a period of time. I feel like I have to go to jail. You know, I feel like I have to go to purgatory to, to wait out the potential opinions of others before I jump back into the arena. Because I don't want people to be thinking like, oh, well, you know, what is Travis doing talking about this and that. I know, I know that, you know, behind closed doors, I know that that last thing that he did didn't do well. Therefore, you know, he shouldn't be thinking about those things. So it's sort of like a combination of these two things. Comparing myself to others or caring what people think and then beating myself up too much for, for the failures. It's like, look, if you are going to attempt to do anything big, anything extraordinary, anything out of the mediocre sense, the, the, the, the mediocre playing field that everybody's playing on for the most part. If you're gonna try to do anything outside of that, you're going to run up against obstacles and you're going to fail and you're probably going to fail more times than you succeed. But the good news is that ultimately you have one success that can make up for all of those failures in a very short period of time. You just have to continue stepping up to the plate. And for some. Some. Some. You know, probably if you combine it all, from the last 12 years that I've been in my adult life, I. I would say at least a couple of years that I just completely wasted. I wasted a couple of years just completely by beating myself up too much when I was coming off of a failure, because, again, I felt like I had to bench myself. I felt like I was. I was the coach. And if I didn't bench myself and I didn't. I didn't pay for my crime of failing, then I would not. I would not feel good about the next thing that I tried to throw out there, because I would think because all these other people are looking at me going like, well, what are you doing? Why. Why are you doing that? And it's the. The logic doesn't really make any sense, because ultimately there's two paths. You have a big failure, and it smacks you in the face. And then from that point on, you just play small for the rest of your life. You're just like, all right, I try to be an entrepr. Tried to take a big swing. I struck out. Now I'm just going to go back to the bench. I'm going to put myself back in the dugout, and I'm just going to sit there, and I'm going to just. I'm just going to not play the game, because if I play the game, I struck out. And I don't like the feeling of striking out. And I don't like that if I step back up the bat, everybody's going to be like, he just struck out. What is he doing back on the. On. On. On the plate? You know, get him back in the dugout. So I. So that's. That. That's the first path. The second path is just to move on and keep stepping up to the plate. Only one of those two paths ultimately gets you what you want or has the potential to get you what you want. And it's stepping back up to the plate. So the question then becomes, how long do you have to put yourself in purgatory? How long do you have to sit on the bench before you allow yourself to play the game again? And. And ultimately it's like, look, lick your wounds. Sure. Learn from the failure. Sure. Take the time. Take a. Take a few days. Take a Couple weeks, whatever. Just like write down all the things that you learned, like fully try to pull out all the lessons that you distill and then, and then apply to the next thing, but stop allowing this thing to govern the next decade of your life. And a friend of mine who did this, who, like, he had quit his job to start an online business and then this big, you know, disaster happened culturally that prevented him from being able to do it. And he's still, to this day, this was like eight years ago that this happened. To this day he still points that and goes like, oh, it could have been, could have been cool, but this thing had to happen. So, you know, not ever going to be able to do that again. And it was like, bro, that was, that was eight years ago. How long are you going to allow that to prevent you from trying again, from stepping back up to the plate? And I would see myself looking at that person and pointing the finger and being like, that's dumb, don't do that. And then in the background I'm doing the same thing. So yeah, I stopped beating myself up for my failures too much. It's like, look, you gotta learn from your failures or else why fail, right? So like, that's the whole idea of the concept of you either win or you learn. There is no failure. You're. If you fail to learn, then you're setting yourself up to fail again. And that's obviously objectively bad. So learn what you can, glean what you can, but step back up to the plate, man. You do not have to bench yourself and punish yourself because you had some sort of a failure and that failure happened to be a public failure. So I would stop beating myself up for my failures too much. Next thing is, this one's oddly specific just to my particular case. I would stop avoiding marketing. Marketing. When I first got into this game, I was, I was a sales guy. I was a door to door sales guy. So the sales part I embraced and it was like, that was ultimately what allowed me to get off the doors and build the online business full time, was that I at least knew that I could sell. So I had a very limited number of prospects from people who came in from the podcast or me doing guest appearances and other podcasts at the time. But I had a high chance of closing those people into something because I just knew how to sell. But I prevented myself from taking on the, the, the skill set of learning marketing because I was telling myself at the time, like, I'm not getting into this, become a marketer. I don't I don't want to be an online marketer. I don't want to learn about funnels and copy and sales pages and webinars and all this other stuff. I don't want to learn about conversion rates and all that. I just want to be a podcaster and I'll sell some products and services when people come into my show. And I avoided that skill for far too long and it probably cost me more money than I can count because I have sort of changed my opinion on this is that I believe that marketing is a more valuable monetary skill set than sales is because of the nature that. It's because of the fact that it's a one to many activity rather than a one on one activity. And obviously sales can exist in a one to many fashion like webinars or selling from stage or something like that. But ultimately I still view that as sort of a form of marketing. It's. It's because it's more. You'll get better results by presenting well executed copy than you will by performing. Performing salesmanship in front of a group of people. So I, I look at that as almost like the, the one to many selling as a combination of a marketing and sales activity. It's not necessarily like the being in the, you know, belly to belly in the trenches of, of being a salesperson. So I, I avoided that. I avoided building that, building that skill set for too long because I, I don't know, I was worried about what other people would think of me. I was worried that I was going to be the next Internet marketing douchebag that people made fun of and, and that I was, you know, I. The bottom line is like I'm not that person. So regardless if I learned the skill, I was gonna become that person anyway. But I allowed myself to think that I was gonna become that person and I avoided building that skill for, for far too long. And if I would have embraced that early on, like I said, I don't even know what the delta is in what I've earned versus what I could have earned. But I assume it's pretty high number Just, just in relation to the fact that the platforms were so young when I started. It was like a thing like Facebook ads was. Was, you know, only a few years old at that point back in whatever, 2017, 2018. So yeah, it was dumb. It was dumb. Shouldn't have done that. Stop. Stop. I guess the lesson for you though, if you're listening, is stop avoiding the thing that you are avoiding. If you, if you know that something Is like the unlock. If you know that there's a skill that's the barrier between where you are now and where you want to be. Just do the work to learn the skill and you will not regret that. So comparing myself to others, beating myself up for my failures, avoiding learning, marketing, not taking my health seriously, this was, this was a big one. And frankly I just didn't really think about it because I was always athletic growing up and I played a bunch of sports and I was always in good shape. But I didn't realize that I was only in good shape because I was super active. So going from college basketball, where we had basketball practice every night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday from 9pm to 11pm and I'm not the type of person that likes to eat a lot before I work out, so I would always eat a really light dinner. And I was in school full time time as well. So, you know, up for classes. My first class I think was at 7:00am every day, so or 7 or 7:30, something like that. So I'd you know, skip breakfast for the most part. I'd maybe grab like bring a sandwich so I could eat between periods or something like that and then eat a, eat a decent sized lunch and then light dinner and then do two hours of basically straight up cardio which is all basketball is. And then I went from that to getting married and then coming off of an injury. My sophomore year ended up getting surgery, my junior year got married, my senior year stopped playing basketball. I still went to the gym and did some weight training and stuff but ultimately I again the volume activity was so significantly less than it was. This episode of the show is brought to you by Wayfair. Look guys, the new year is here. 2026 is upon us. Get back into an at home routine that you love, love and elevate your space with Wayfair. From bedding and mattresses to storage solutions for every room in the house, Wayfair is your one stop shop. 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Because I don't know about you other parents listening to this right now, but one of, one of the things that drives me most crazy is just shoes spread across the whole floor. Just little, just little tripping minds, things that you can step on and fall on top of. And so we got this shoe organizer. So we have one place that all the shoes go. And now when the kids walk in the house, they know exactly where to put their shoes. So we got that from Wafer recently. They even have a trip treadmill that goes under your desk and stuff, which is probably going to be my next purchase. So get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home before. And I started eating more and, and it was the first time I ever lived on my own. So I got married, moved out of my parents house, moved in with my wife obviously. And then it was like, like, ooh, I'm the person who decides what gets bought at the grocery store now. What a wild concept. So all of a sudden we have six boxes of junk cereal in the cabinet because I'm a sucker for good cereal. And then it's like, oh, it's hey, it's 11, you know, or it's 9:30pm And I'm kind of hungry. Let's go to In N Out Burger. Because you can do that now because I'm an adult and I can do what I want. And I was sort of in this like, you know, rebellious phase when it came to what I ate. So I was eating like I was competing to get. And then I was not exercising to the same degree that I was eating. So in a, I don't know, 12 to 18 month period, I gained 50 pounds, something like that. And I was 250 pounds back in 2016, I believe. And the only thing that made me realize that I'd gained that much weight is I had to buy a pair of 38 pants, 38 waist. And I was a 32 in college. So when the 36s didn't fit me and I had to buy a 38, I was, was like, oh, it's catching up to me. I'm doing Something wrong. And it took me the better part of a decade, like the better part of my 20s, to figure out a lifestyle and a routine that I could sink into that allowed me to be able to live the life that I wanted to live and enjoy the things that I wanted to enjoy, while also not letting my health go crazy and out of control. And it obviously affects your. It affected my confidence, it affected my energy levels, it affected my, my excitement to tackle the day. Day. There's so many things that come from just letting yourself go and being out of shape that I didn't realize until I got back in shape. Even simple, simple stuff like, oh, I forgot my phone upstairs. I can just run up the stairs and grab it now, unless I did like a heavy leg day or something and my legs are super sore, but, well, I can do that and it's fine. Whereas before it'd be like, man, I'm out of breath going up the stairs, I'm out of breath putting my socks on or whatever. It's like there's so many things that you just take for granted when you're in good shape and good health that you don't realize when, when you let your health go. So I wish I would have in my, in my twenties, taken my health and, and to be fair, toward the end of my twenties, I did. But, you know, the first, so far, the first three years of my 30s, I've been in better shape than I was almost my entire 20s. So I wish I would take my health a little bit more seriously. Next thing. Again, this is sort of specific to me, but apply it to you if you can. I sold investments when things got tight and I, again, I probably lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in net selling things too quickly because I was making a transition. Like I was, I was, I was wanting to open an office for my first door to door company, or I was moving to another city and starting a new venture, or I was stopping door to door and moving into online business anytime there was like a squeeze on my finances. It was like we would have, we. We had a, we would have a house that we had that was a rental. And it was like, all right, well, let's just sell that so we can get an influx of cash. And that way I can, you know, focus all my energy on this, this thing instead of having to like, be on this treadmill of hustle in my mind where I know I got to go out and make more money because the bills are due and we're running out of money and that comfort cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars because I, I, I sold off at least three houses that I should have never, let's say two. I sold off at least two houses that I should not have ever sold because things were getting tight and I was worried about having to hold on to this asset during a downturn and that the rent was barely more than what my mortgage was. And I was like, I gotta pay for property taxes out of pocket. And it was all these things I was telling myself when they would have been completely solved if I just went and hustled for three or four months and filled up my bank account through extra work rather than cashing out on an investment that I had. And again, if I, if I would have held on to those two or three properties, all of it drives me crazy. I haven't looked at Zillow in a long time because I hate, I hate this activity. But if you look at Zillow, at the houses that I sold, each one of them is more than six figures in equity that I let go of because I sold it way too early. And, and ultimately even the one there was one in particular was, or actually two of them in particular, where the rent barely covered the mortgage payment. And it was like, oh, I got anxiety about it because, again, I had to come out of pocket if there was a. And I was like, well, what happens if the, the air conditioning unit goes out? Or what happens if I got to get a new roof and fire? I got to pay for all that stuff out of Pocke? Doesn't make much sense. And then, and then you go check the rental prices of those same homes, and it's like, even then, my mortgage would have been the same and rent has gone up by like 40% in that area. I would be cash flowing on that deal, and it would have a couple hundred thousand in equity. It was just dumb and I should not have done it. So this last time, when I was making a big transition in my career and I sold off a company and I was moving to a new income stream that I was sort of developing again from scratch, and I had the option of pulling out money from an investment, a couple of different investments that I had that I could have pulled cash from, I said, I'm not touching those. I'm just. For like four months, I'm just gonna put my head down, bust my ass, work extra hours, take this side thing, do this other consulting thing, put more money here, do this thing over here, and then out hustle my need for money rather than take the easy way out and cash out on an investment that that is sitting earning money for me. So this last time I felt much better about it. But that did not come without its painful, painful equity lessons along the way. So yeah, I figured this might turn into a couple different episodes. So on this one we talk about here's some things that I would stop doing immediately. Comparing myself to others, beating myself up for my failures, not taking my health seriously. Avoiding learning the skill that I knew I needed to learn, which was marketing and then selling selling my investments off when things got too tight. Next episode we'll talk about what I would double down on, what I what I worried about that ultimately didn't matter and then things that I did that actually moved the needle that I wish I would have done more of. So we'll talk more about those things in a coming in an upcoming episode. But that's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.