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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money by Building Relationships, Systems, and the Confidence to Reinvent Yourself
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So if you're listening to this one and you haven't listened to some of the other ones, just some of the people that we've been covering in this series are people like Josh Peck from the show Drake and Josh. We talked with about Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water, which has raised over a billion dollars for building water projects, sustainable water projects around the world. We talked about Jack Carr, former Navy SEAL and author of the Terminal List books book series, which got adapted into an Amazon prime series starring Chris Pr Michael Smoke at Higher Up Wellness on Social, who's built millions of followers across his platforms, talking about wellness and now communication. We talked about Joe Gatto, one of the impractical jokers. We talked about John Levy, who is a social psychologist, behavioral scientist, talking about a bunch of stuff when it comes to connecting with people. We talked to Randy Couture, the former UFC heavyweight champion and one of the stars of Expendables. We talked about Michelle Mace Curran, who is female fighter pilot, one of the only females to ever be a the leader of the Thunderbirds, which I thought was super cool. Jordan Harbinger, who's a top rated social psychology podcaster. John DeLoney, Dr. John DeLoney, excuse me, who's a Ramsey personality who focuses on relationships and anxiety and things like that. Donald Miller, who wrote the Building a Story brand, a best selling book, over a million copies sold globally. Really, really smart with branding and marketing and writing, to be honest. George Camel, another Ramsey personality. We talked about him. We talked about Drew Dunn, who's a comedian that toured with People like Dane Cook and takeaways from him. We talked about Gary Cusum, the founder of GameStop, and some of the things that he took away. He also was a CEO of Kinko's, which sold the FedEx for like $2.4 billion. He turned it, turned it around from negative $11 million in EBITDA when he took over as CEO to three years later selling it in a cash deal to FedEx for 2.4 billion. And so in this first batch of episodes, I thought it'd be interesting to basically talk about some of the things that were commonalities between all of these episodes, like some of the recurring themes that have come up in multiple of these conversations. So that's what this episode's about. Number one, the first theme that we've noticed in several of these conversations, access, comes from asking. Several conversations that I had point back to the same principle that relationships compound when people are willing to ask, willing to help, and then willing to stay generous without keeping score. Jack Carr's story about Jared Shaw, who is a somebody that was in the SEAL teams that he had helped a couple of decades earlier, and then when he wrote his first book, he had the manuscript and the. The galley version, which is essentially the PDF version of the book, before it actually gets published. And not even just PDF, you can get a hard copy too. And so Jared Shaw's good friend was Chris Pratt, and he gave it to Chris Pratt, and then Chris Pratt read the entire book and then optioned the book for a series on Amazon, Amazon prime, option the book and then sold it as a series to Amazon prime before the book was even published. It's pretty crazy. Gary Cusan's mentorship philosophy, John Levy's friendship mechanics, it. It all reinforces the same lesson, which is the best network is not a list of transactions. It's a life built around repeated generosity and proximity. This hits home for me because it's what I talk about all the time. And the first time I understood this principle on a deeper level was when I read the book Give and Take by Adam Grant, which I highly recommend, that basically talks about the three reciprocity styles, givers, takers, and matchers. And then he goes into, well, what do you think? Where do you think these people are in terms of reciprocity styles on the success ladder? And as you're reading it, of course, you kind of make the assumption that it's like, oh, well, based on the theme of this book, I'm assuming that givers are probably the ones that end up at the top and takers are probably the ones that ended up at the bottom. And what he points out in the book is that givers are actually at the top and the bottom of the success ladder. And then he gives a bunch of guidelines for how to make sure that you're a giver that remains at the top instead of a giver that's at the bottom, which essentially is like, switch up your reciprocity style when you realize that somebody's being a taker, don't be somebody's doormat, things like that. But the broader takeaway for me when I read that book was basically like giving is still the ultimate strategy when it comes to building good relationships. Just giving constantly without the expectation of receiving anything in return will always benefit you greater than anything else in your career. The second theme that kept coming up more and more was success costs more than most people suggest. So Josh Peck, Randy Couture, Michelle Curran, Scott Harrison, Joe Gatto each complicate the highlight reel. Basically they were saying like, the public win is never the full story. The private cost can include, include identity, loss, family strain, inability to celebrate, burnout, addiction, loneliness, starting over. It's not. They weren't giving this idea that they're just special and their life just has this up into the right trajectory and that they can't ever seem to fail. It was never that. It is never that. And spoiler alert, you're going to fail, you're going to embarrass yourself, you're going to make mistakes, but if you are so scared of doing those things that you remain on the sidelines and never put yourself in the game and that you can guarantee that you're never gonna win it. So in, in someone even like Josh Peck, who most people assume is just like, you know, well, you were on a hit show as a teenager, you must be doing pretty well still. And then he was basically breaking down like when I was on that show. Even in the height of that show and that show's popularity, which I was responsible for a lot of those views myself. The. He got paid like a modest six figure salary. Like not, not multiple six figures. It was I think a hundred thousand exactly, or barely over a hundred thousand. And a lot of people look at that and go like, oh, a hundred thousand dollars, a lot of money, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, yeah, but not for a show like that. Like you'd think people like that are making millions of dollars. He wasn't. And he doesn't continue to get checks from the show anymore. And so it was kind of a weird thing to have that much relevance in a lot of people's lives, to be that recognizable, that famous, but also be out of work and out of money. And then he was able to reinvent himself multiple times. And he went back and took acting classes again, which I thought was super cool. A really interesting part of the story, being like a famous child act. Tries now as an adult to go get roles in film and television. And then was told by people basically like, hey, that type of acting, that style of acting that you're used to on Nickelodeon is not going to cut it here. And so instead of just like complaining and whining and pointing the finger and being like, who do you know who you're talking to? I'm Josh Peck. Like, I was on a hit tv. Like, instead of doing all of that, he went back to acting school and took acting classes so that he could get better at the craft. And then ended up, when we were talking to him, landed a role in Oppenheimer, the massive Christopher. Christopher Nolan film that broke a bunch of records. So I thought that was really interesting. And he had his creator. His creator career, which he still has to this day. And I'm constantly impressed by the type of stuff that he puts out. He's actually just a really funny, really talented guy. And he's made the most of it in both of those manners. Now he's got his podcast, he wrote his book, he's done a couple acting roles, but really, really cool reinvention of himself, even though it threatened his identity. The next one, Systems beat motivation. Michael Smoke talked about this with health. George Camel talked about this with money. I mentioned something, I think, on both of those shows about how often those two things coincide and interact with each other, that systems beat motivation. Essentially, there's a quote from James Clear in his book Atomic Habits that is something along the lines of, you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your habits. This episode of the show is brought to you by AG1. Guys, summer is here. It's finally come, and I know things are gonna slip a little bit. I know summer is kind of that. That time, and that's okay to a certain extent. But there's one easy thing that takes 30 seconds and covers your bases no matter what the season throws at you. One scoop of AG1 plus 8 ounces of water every morning. AG1 is a daily health drink with a multivitamin pre and probiotics, superfoods and antioxidants. 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So if you're budgeting for your calories for the day based on whether you want to gain or lose weight, or if you're budgeting for your finances based on if you want to invest more, save more, whatever the systems that you build are going to be most effective for those things. Randy Couture talked about this with his Goal Map Execute system. Donald Miller's story structure the way that he helps people and businesses, even the nsa, put together a story structure and strategy for their business. Drew Dunn's long road career philosophy all point to the same truth. The people who keep winning usually have repeatable systems and they just stay in the game long enough. They say no to all the distractions. They focus on this one path relentlessly for an extended period of time. They're not just more inspired, they just have a better operating system. Next one Reinvention requires an environment change. This is probably one of my favorite ones because I talk about this all the time. So it hit home with me, Scott Harrison, when he was talking about leaving the nightclub world, so talk about a change of pace. He went from being in his words, I think he said top six or top eight nightclub promoters in all of New York City, which is obviously one of the most competitive markets for stuff like that. Like he was at the top of that world and experienced everything that life could have to offer to him as a 28 year old. The cars and the money and the model girlfriends and the yacht vacations and all that kind of stuff. And then when he decided to leave, because at the time, you know, he's drinking a lot, he's smoking cigarettes, he's doing drugs. When he decided to that he needed a change in his life, he didn't just pick an adjacent field that would have been comfortable for him, he, he applied for a bunch of non profits. None of them were hiring. So there was one that he could volunteer, but he also had to pay the money. So it was even less than volunteering because he had pay 500 bucks a month to basically go on this. I mean, just to say it the way that it is, it was a medical cruise, essentially. It was, it was a former cruise ship that this charity turned into a ship with a bunch of hospital beds and they, they sailed, they took the ship all the way to Liberia in Africa, which was war torn at the time. And a bunch of doctors gave up their free time, their vacation time to go perform free medical procedures for people who needed them in that region. And so he was on that medical ship and he talked about basically like, yeah, it was really. It's really difficult to light up a cigarette when you're in a ship full of doctors. You know, it's really difficult to drink alcohol when there's no alcohol available. It's really difficult to do drugs when nobody has drugs to do. And so in when he decided to make a change in his life, he changed everything about his environment. And that's what ultimately made it impossible for him to fail, which I think is a really good question, like, what environment can I create for myself, myself that would make it impossible for me to fail? What level of effort do I need to put into this venture that would make it impossible to fail? So I thought that was a really, really cool one. Jack Carr talked about this when he got out of the SEAL teams. He talked about purposefully leaving Coronado because he saw too many seals that like, just got continually sucked back into that culture. And he wanted a clean break so that he could start working on his career as an author. And so he intentionally left Coronado and moved to Utah so he could have a break in that environment and craft a new environment that was built to help him become the person he wanted to be. Josh Peck talked about this when he stripping away the old actor identity. Joe Gatto talked about this and rebuilding his career after leaving the impractical jokers. New chapters just often require new environments. You rarely become a new person while living inside of every single cue that you had from your past life. So if you need a lifestyle change, then you probably also need an environment change. Because here's the thing, it's not like you can't do it. It's not like you can't become a different version of yourself in the old environment. It's just that it's way more difficult to do it and it's already difficult enough. Like it's already difficult enough to change yourself into a different person. So why not make it easier on yourself by just crafting a better environment? That's built to make sure that you become the version of yourself that you really want to become next. Confidence is built through reps, not affirmations. Michelle Curran, Randy Couture, Drew Dunn, Joe Gatto, Jordan Harbinger all show different versions versions of confidence as earned exposure. It's building a bank of evidence that you are who you say you are, that you can perform to the level that you are saying that you can perform. You do the scary thing, you take the risk, you survive it, and then you collect evidence along the way. And that evidence allows you to believe that you can do it again, even if it's in a field that's not even the same field that you were in before. It's just the fact that you had the evidence that, hey, I figured it out over here. I think I can figure it out over here. I just got to put in the same reps that I did when I was doing this other thing. So it's not, you know, confidence isn't just a thought that you install. It's not a belief that you can magically, you know, delude yourself into adopting. It is just the receipt that you earn from multiplied effort over time. So, so many really good takeaways from the this first batch of episodes. And if you did not listen to any of the individual episodes, I highly recommend to go check those out. The full length episodes. Obviously you can listen to on Travis Makes Friends podc, but that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task. Unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into Sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com specialoffer.