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SOLO | Make Money by Building Trust, Communicating Clearly, and Owning Your Platform - Lessons from my Chris Hansen interview
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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
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what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show. On this episode, it's just me, you and the mic just hanging out, talking, talking about some things that I've learned from some of the people that have been on this podcast throughout the, throughout the years. And on this episode, we are talking about Chris Hansen. If you don't know Chris Hansen now, I feel like everybody knows who Chris Hansen is.
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I mean, it's, he's, he's the guy
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responsible for To Catch a Predator. And it's funny because this was one of those interviews that sort of came across my desk. I wasn't necessarily pursuing it, but then I met somebody who knew the guy and it was just like, oh, that would be crazy. That would be really interesting. So I had my producer, Eric co host this episode because he has a show that's all about abuse and things like that. It's a true crime podcast called Preacher Boys that exposes abuse, abuse within the clergy. And so I had him co host that episode because I thought it'd be really relevant for both his audience and my audience. And we spent a little bit of time kind of going back and forth and had a great time with Chris. Honestly, like, he was super down to earth, really nice guy. He talked a little bit before, he talked a little bit after. Very, very welcoming, easy to talk to, had a great time with them. So here are a few of my lessons and takeaways from my conversation with Chris Hansen.
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Number one, the best education isn't always in a classroom.
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And I would argue it's most the time not in a classroom. Chris spent summers hauling drywall alongside guys from the inner city before he ever walked into a newsroom. And he said flat out that experience gave him an education that Michigan State couldn't give him, gave him empathy, respect, hard work, the ability to communicate and understand people from all walks of life. The, the, the guys who become truly great communication and investigators in his line, they're not just book smart, they have been shoulder to shoulder with the full range of human experience. And I would argue that the, that
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it's even the people who are more
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book smart, they tend because of how much time, energy, effort and work and a lot of times money they've put
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into becoming book smart.
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They far overvalue book smarts in terms of your ability to be successful in life and they far undervalue the EQ in the situation. And this is basically what Chris is talking about, that his time doing construction with all these different people before he was, you know, quote unquote book smart or classically trained, I suppose that was, that was a much better training ground for what he ultimately chose to do with his career and his TV show and everything else that he's been working on. And highly, highly recommend following that advice. And not to say that you should,
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it's not to say that you have
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to pick one or the other. By the way, obviously, like there's several examples of people who got a PhD, but then they also, you know, were doing telemarketing while they were in college or whatever. It's like, do something that's going to, I always tell like younger people, do something that's going to get you a high volume of contact with a bunch of different people very quickly. For me, that was door to door. For some people it might be telemarketing, other people it might be service industry, like waitstaff somewhere or retail or something like that. Do something that just puts you in front of a bunch of different people so that you learn how to communicate with people, to de. Escalate conflict, to persuade, to lead, to communicate better both written and verbally. Do something that gives you some sort of a high volume interaction with lots of different people from lots of different cultures, backgrounds, perspectives, contexts, everything like that. It's highly, highly, highly, highly valuable skill. And I would argue even more valuable in the age of AI number two.
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If you can't figure out how to
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talk about something, be so direct that it shocks people into action. When NBC executives said they didn't know how to promote To Catch Predator, Chris told them the bluntest possible version of what the show was about. And it cut through every ounce of institutional hesitation in the room. It wasn't pretty, but it was effective. Sometimes the right move is to strip all the polish off and say the thing that nobody else is willing to say. And this is also follows a lot of the advice that I've heard even
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from people in the television industry.
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I've had a few people on the show who like pitch shows or producers for a living. And this was sort of their core takeaway. One of my buddies, Brant Penvidic, wrote a book called the Three Minute Rule and has done a lot of consulting on pitches for major companies with a guy named Oren Claf, who wrote the book Pitch Anything. And that was his book, the Three Minute Rule. The whole premise is basically like if you can't say the entire concept in. If you can't pitch the entire concept in three minutes, then it's. It's too long, it's too complicated. You have to simplify it. So he comes up with like a sentence, like a simple sentence that, that explains the entire premise of the show that he's pitching. And then his entire pitch lasts for three minutes so he's not coming in with like this crazy, you know, deck and all this other merch and like the. They're not over, over IND on the complicated process of pitching. They're just like core concept. Do you like this? Yes or no? And then they move forward. And Brandt was responsible for Extreme Makeover, Weight Loss Edition, Bar Rescue, a bunch of other really popular reality TV shows, and they all started with that three minute pitch. How do we get this across in the most simple terms possible? And in Chris Hansen's perspective, the bluntest version possible for something like To Catch Predator was ultimately the thing that helped move this along in the the executive offices of the NBC decision makers. Number three, Education and awareness are more powerful than enforcement alone for crimes with no demand reduction. So Chris has spent 20 years on this because he understands a structural truth. You can't.
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disclosures this episode of the show is brought to you by Whatnot. You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on Whatnot is exploding right now. I've watched the shows firsthand. I've seen Whatnot climb to the top of the App Store and I've actually looked at the seller earnings. We're talking small, medium and multimillion dol all seeing real growth over on Whatnot. So if you're selling online or out of a storefront, full time, side hustle, whatever, you already know the challenge. You're hoping that people are just going to find you and walk in. Well, Whatnot flips that on Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you got, ask questions and then they buy. And then they keep coming back. It is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies. Sellers are building real estate thriving businesses. And anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist, people selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than any other major marketplaces. And that's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. Whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app. They're not just browsing, they're engaged buying. And they're coming back. You go live, you show off products in real time and turn what you love and into real income. So download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search whatnot wh a t n o t Whatnot in the app store
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and start scoring amazing deals, arrest your way out of the problem. There's no supply side solution when the demand is rooted in human behavior, unfortunately. So the only long term lever is teaching people, especially kids and parents of kids, how predators think, how grooming works, what warning signs to look for for. It's not anything that's not like a, you know, a TV gimmick. It's, it's a public health strategy ultimately. And if you. And this is the world that we live in and it's only getting more accessible for people to hide behind a wall of a character they've invented online and then coax your kids into things that are objectively horrible and terrible. And there's, it's just, it's continuing happen, it's continuing to happen at really high rates. So the defense ultimately is just education, knowledge and being a proactive parent. This was one of those like bummer ones to go through because like you ultimately want to believe in humanity and society that we're going to get better and this is not going to be an issue, but you know, something that we don't have full control over in the meantime. So in the meantime, it's your responsibility as a parent to make sure that your kids are educated around these types of things.
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Number four, owning your own platform gives
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you speed and mission alignment that corporate media never will. So Chris now has his own network of shows called True Blue, which he described going from years of just like pitching cycles and you know, just dealing with corporate media bs, you know, development meetings, network politics, you know, calling his partner on Monday and then having a crew filming on Thursday. The work that matters most doesn't always survive the corporate filter in his experience. And he views the work that he's doing as really measurable and impactful and helpful for a lot of people. So he didn't, he hated that he had to spend more time in the corporate BS stuff than in the actual work that he enjoyed doing. And so he just got really serious about it and eventually just built his own container, built his own home for all of his stuff to live on, which has now become the True Blue network. And he has multiple concepts that he's just developing out over there and doesn't have any more gatekeepers in the way that are preventing him from doing the things that he genuinely believes to be helpful and things that he really wants to do. Number five, there's a clear line between journalism and vigilantism. And it matters. Chris is careful and deliberate about this. He works with local Law enforcement uses proper investigative protocols and makes cases that actually hold up in court. The amateur vigilante crews that jump out of bushes and film 10 second videos often do more harm than good, unfortunately, because suspects just walk free because the evidence is now tainted. So doing the right thing the wrong way can actually make outcomes worse, not better. And it's unfortunate to see this because there's a lot of people who are literally only doing it for the views. They, they genuinely, they don't care about any other stuff. They're just doing it to try to get good social media clips. They're trying to do it to get a, to get a boost on their live stream. They're, they're, they're doing it because they know it's something that most people are going to get behind. Most people are going to share, most people are going to view and ultimately go like, oh yeah, good for you, go get them. They're not doing it because for the right reasons, like what Chris is doing. So there's been a major rise in this recently from, from people who are just kind of like self policing others. And they saw this one, it was actually in Louis Theroux's documentary Inside the Manosphere, with one of the people that was there where he was actually there, where they had coaxed this predator, you know, out of his cave and then just rolled up on him and just beat the crap out of him on his live stream again, just because he knows he's going to get a bunch of views and people are going to join the live and be like, oh
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my gosh, that was crazy.
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And then the clips that they can farm from that are going to be, you know, shared thousands of times and it's going to be viewed millions of times. It's going to help him sell more of his dog financial product that he had on the back end. And that stuff is just gross to me because first of all, that's not how justice works. Like, you don't, you don't, you don't get to decide. You know, like that's the thing about Chris is that he builds a bank of evidence, hands it over to law enforcement and then says, do your job. Like here, prosecutor, here's a bunch of evidence. Now you can go arrest this really bad person and take them off the streets versus these other ones where it's just like, we think that you might be a predator. So now I'm just going to beat the crap. Like that's just, it's, it's gross and it does not help the problem at all. It only helps the person who's filming the video because they know it's going to get a lot of views. So, you know, just, even if, even if you're doing something for the right reasons, just try to examine the way that you're going about doing it regardless of if you know you're doing something as serious as what Chris Hansen does or you're doing something as light as helping people with their social media content, whatever it is. Just like do things for the right reasons. Yes. But also try to make sure that you're actually getting the outcomes that you're really wanting to get and not just, you know, clip farming and rage baiting people online. So anyway, Chris Hansen's been doing this for decades and decades. The only thing that strikes me most about him is that he never let the weight of it make him numb. He never let the platform make him rep reckless either. So he, you know, found a way to build this, this filter without losing the discipline, the ethics that made the work worth trusting him in the first place, which is, I think, very rare. And, and you know, obviously why he's been able to do this for as long as he's been able to do it. So check out the full episode with Chris Hansen. My producer Eric asked a lot of really great questions because this is a lot of the work that he does in his podcast as well. And so I think it's definitely worth listening to it' and it's one of Our most viewed YouTube videos just organically actually. So lots of people want to hear from Chris, apparently. Maybe we should get him on the show again. Anyway, that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
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