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- [00:00]
Travis Chaplin
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 everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show Today. This is our solo show. Just me, you and the mic. We're talking about something that is really important to me, something that I. It took me maybe a little bit too long to learn, but I am lucky that I was in the right rooms at the right age to learn this sooner than. And maybe a lot of people learn this in life. And that is why time is the most valuable asset that we have. And ultimately why time is more important than money. The first context I remember hearing this concept was obviously in a sales pitch.
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Because that's what I do and that's.
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Where I'm from, is sales, sales, sales. And it was the first time I was, I was in a room where something was being pitched like live from stage. It was a one to many pitching thing. And they talked about this, this idea of time being greater than money. And I started thinking about that in terms of my own personal values. And at its face value, I think most people would agree like that most people are like, yeah, time is money and you know, time is really important. But then you look at the actions that they take and their actions would scream at you that money is actually more important to them than. And that's probably the way that a lot of people are living right now. And especially if you're listening to this, you know, I, I might have said time is more important than morning, the money. And you go, oh yeah, totally. And then you might just move on to the next episode and not listen to this one. But I would encourage you to listen to this because there's a couple of things we're gonna talk about that maybe you haven't thought about yet in this episode as to why time actually is more important than money and how you can sort of measure whether or not you actually agree with that from your actions. And the first time that I really internalize this was the first time that I made a significant investment into myself. This was the reframe that I needed to convince myself that investing into me was probably the number one thing that I could do. And to this day, it's the most boring advice. But it is also the advice that rings true, which is that if you don't have a lot of money to invest, then probably the best thing that you can invest in is yourself. It's the only investment that always has a return. And there's absolutely no cap to that return. Every time you invest into yourself, it's a bet on you that you're going to be able to figure it out. Every time you invest into yourself, you learn more. Every time you invest yourself, you gain more access, more relationships. So the first time I did this, there was a coaching group. Not really a group, actually. It was a one on one coach. And it was when I was starting my podcast. And the time basically was just like completely green to everything online. Never made a dollar online before. And I was taking this free podcasting course, and in that course, the guy putting it on was like, yeah, you know, when I first started my show, I hired a coach. And I was like, hired a coach for what? Why? You know, and then started realizing all the opportunities that this person gained from having that coach, all the answers that they, that they got that they didn't have to go through themselves to figure out. The coach just allowed them to shortcut the line to be able to figure out these things faster and save them a ton of time. And at the time, I had never spent more than, you know, 15 bucks in education, meaning like I would buy a book or an audiobook, and that was the most I'd ever done. And then all of a sudden, now I'm looking at spending money for this podcast coach. I think it was like four or five grand for two, three months of podcast coaching or something, which is pretty cheap, much cheaper than my coaching is now. But at the time, it was very expensive for me. Cause I'd never put any money into something like that before. And I immediately had this scarcity mindset around it. Like, man, I feel like I could probably just figure this out on my own. I'm taking this free podcasting course, there's videos online, I'm good. But I ultimately ended up deciding to hire the coach. And it was sort of a gateway drug for me into figuring out that, wow, all of these things that I never thought of, how much time would it have taken me to figure these things out? And it enabled me to make money on my podcast much faster than I would have been able to do had I just tried to figure it out by myself. And there's one thing in particular I remember this coach telling me. It was back when Stitcher was the thing. I don't know if you guys remember Stitcher, but that was one of the best podcasting apps outside of Apple podcasts, which at the time was just itunes and Stitcher had come out because it was like, well, we need to get podcasts to Android users. And my coach had reached out to the team at Stitcher and basically said, I'm watching this new podcast, blah, blah, blah. And because he had taken the time to make it actually a good podcast, Stitcher featured him on their front page of discovery for podcasting. And he soared up to 10, 15,000 downloads an episode, immediately was able to start sponsor, getting sponsors and podcast advertising coming through. And within a year he was able to do full time podcasting and he did podcast coaching as well. So there were some other parts to his business, but ultimately he was a full time podcaster, which is what I wanted to do. And I remember doing that at the very beginning. There was this company called Castbox and it was sort of another alternative player. And I reached out to them and did something in exchange. I think I. I think I basically just said, hey, if you feature me on your top charts or whatever, or feature me on your, you know, featured section on the front page of your app, I will give you a bunch of free advertising space on my show. So I basically was just like, I'm doing any advertisers, have any sponsors, don't have a big enough audience right now, but I will basically just give you, you know, in the intro of all my episodes, I'll tell everybody to listen to my show on Castbox. And that one relationship was probably responsible for more growth in my show than any other single thing that I had done up to that point, because they featured me on the, on the front page. But I also got a relationship with the people who bought ads at that company, and I've been able to spend good money with them to put me in front of more users. And I would not have known, I would not have thought of that as a potential path forward had I not had a coach, had I not had somebody that was like, this is what I did, and this was really helpful for me. And that allowed me to shortcut the line significantly. So then I jumped into this mastermind group and it was this. Now, instead of four grand for three months, this was 6,500 bucks for two days. And it was in Puerto Rico, so I had to fly all the way. So, like, the whole weekend probably cost me 8,000, 8,500 bucks with flights and everything and stay and all that. And then plus the 6,500 bucks for this actual training. But then the person who's putting on that training had a bunch of inbound leads for podcast coaching. And I worked out a deal with him to where it was like, hey, I know you send referrals out to different podcast coaches cause you don't do the one on one coaching anymore. Can you send some of them to me? And so that was actually how I was able to go full time with the podcast sooner rather than later was cause I was able to get some coaching clients that were direct referrals from this person who I was able to build a strong relationship with because I went to his house and got training from him in two days and paid him 6,500 bucks for it. And that ultimately led me to be able to stop being a door to door sales guy, go full time online. Now I wasn't making crazy money. It was like, you know, three, four thousand bucks a month or something. I downsized my life wildly. We moved out of this big house that we were in, split an apartment with my brother in law. Our total rent and utilities was 550 bucks a month. So it enabled me to basically step out of door to door where I was making six figures and move into this new world of online business where I could put my full focus onto this thing. And again, I would not have been able to have that relationship had I not been willing to invest into myself to be able to shortcut the the time that it takes to learn some of these things and shortcut the time that it takes to build some of these relationships. Because this particular, you know, mentor of mine was somebody who was sought after especially at that time, somebody who everybody wanted some of this person's time. And so the easiest way to make sure that you get somebody's time whose values, their time at a really high level is to just pay for it and then you can get in front of that person. Now it doesn't mean that that relationship will always be the way that it worked out for me because sometimes you just don't get along with people. So you don't get 100% hit rate on the on the this episode of.
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We got a dining room table, recently, shipped it right to the house. Really, really easy to make the entire process super smooth. And in fact, the thing that we got most recently from Wayfair was a organization little closet right when you walk in the house for shoes. 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 Wayfair recently. They even have a 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.
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Travis Chaplin
Know the alchemy of friendship and relationships just from paying somebody, but it does.
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Give you the opportunity.
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It does give you the ability to get your foot in the door and differentiate yourself from the thousands of other people who are just sending them cold emails and asking for stuff. So I Now I'm, you know, 10, 11 grand in on coaching and, and you know, group coaching, masterminds type of thing and then just kept doing it. Now I'm probably over $400,000 or somewhere in there in the last seven or eight years just investing into coaching, into masterminds, into relationships, into knowled knowledge, into competence, into skill sets. And the return has been phenomenal. And, and by the way, I was doing that, I invested over 400000 into all those different things while I was driving the same crappy 2015 Camry that I bought for 20k before I did all of this stuff. So I was actively taking money out of my own account that I could have spent on a car or clothes or fancy vacations. And I put it directly back into me because if you can and make yourself your most valuable asset, then that's how you can go earn more money. So I learned this fairly early on and I'm very grateful to have learned that lesson that time is more valuable than money. Because ultimately money, like what is money? Money is simply the means of exchange. That's it. It's a means of exchange. It's just a standardized way for us to exchange things. Because if you go back pre money, people just traded stuff. You know, it's like, hey, you have that thing that I want, I have this thing that you want. I'll give you some corn, you give me this whatever saddle for my horse. And then money came along, standardized means of exchange. And then people started pursuing money as if money was the end goal. When money is not the end goal because money is only as valuable as what you can exchange it for. And if you're going to exchange money, then the best use of exchanging that money typically is going to be something that will either make you more money, meaning like an investment that returns money to you or something that gives you back time. And that is the ultimate use of money in my opinion, is to be able to buy back your time. And so there's, there's several reasons why I think time is more valuable than money. And we've already kind of talked about a couple of them in my story. But I'll kind of hit on these really quick. First reason is that it's the only asset in life that's non renewable. You could, I, I could have dropped this 400k on all of this stuff that I've mentioned in, in few years and zero of it could have panned out and I can go generate another 400k. That by itself is remarkable. Think about what that means for you. That the 400k that if I put that into myself, if I didn't get anything out of it, I can go make another 400k. Now it's even easier because the 400k worked for me in this particular scenario. And by the way, not all of it did, not all of it was exactly, not all of it worked the exact way that it was intended to work, but it still worked. And then now it's way easier for me to go generate another 400k than it was back before I started investing at these huge levels into myself. So money is, is renewable. You can make more of it. If you lose all your money, if you go bankrupt, you can build it back. And there's no limit to the volume of stories of people who've done this time and time and time and time again throughout their lives. People who built up 100 million and then lost it all and then built up 200 million and then lost it all and then built up a billion. And then the, the, the, the, the very definition of money is that it is, it is a renewable resource. There is more of it. There's Abundance of it. They print more of it every day. You can go get more of it. Time is absolutely not renewable. So the thought exercise that's fun is basically to say, okay, if you were 90 years old and you hit the lottery and you got a $1.5 billion jackpot, you would give up every single penny of that just to be 20 again. Again, that's it. If you have any qualms about what I'm saying right now, just ask yourself that question. You're 90, you get a billion dollars. Would you trade every single penny just to be 20 again? Answer yes, absolutely. And Warren Buffett said the same thing. You know, somebody who's invested his way to becoming one of the richest guys in the world, one of the most successful investors of all time, maybe the goat of investing, him and his partner Charlie Munger are potentially the goats of that world. And even they at in their mid-90s would say, yeah, I'd give up every single penny that I have just to go back and again, because time is the only thing that is non renewable. Second thing is that the only reason that money is perceived as valuable is because it operates on a timeline. That's the only reason that like money, money is valuable because of time, not the other way around. Time is not valuable because of money. So the very, the very concept of money having value stems from the fact that time is by definition limited. If, if time while is just completely unlimited, then money would matter then, then more than time at that point because time would not be a factor. So the very reason that money has any value whatsoever is because it exists within the, the, the, the framework of a time like an expiration date that one day all of us are going to be done. We don't have any more time. So that is what creates the urgency to go make money so that you can get the money and exchange it it for time. So you can use that time to do the third reason, which is it's what defines a good life. The third reason, the time is more viable money. It's because it's what defines a good life. The way that you like, show me somebody who spent their time doing something that they love, spent their time with the people that they love, and I'll show you somebody who's probably happy, fulfilled, lived life, mostly regret free. Show me somebody who used all of their time in pursuit of money and I bet you anything you're going to have a lot of those regrets. That's why the, you know the most the regrets of the dying. One of the Top regrets of the dying is just I spent my time improperly. I wish I would have spent more time with the people that I love. I wish I would have spent more time traveling or going experiencing what life has to offer rather than and getting trapped in the rat race. And your, your time, the way that you use your time will by definition create the life that you want. Life is only made up by the way that we use our time. So if you are not, and which is why I encourage people to make as much money as you can as quickly as you can so that you can buy back more of your time and then give you more of an optionality to be able to pursue the things that are more valuable to you that make your life richer and fuller based on the use of your time. So if you are only ever actively pursuing money, but not actively pursuing to exchange that money for more time, then I think that you're playing the wrong game. And that's why we sign off every episode of this show with remember that money only solves your money problems. But it's easier to solve the rest of problems with money in the bank. Because my thing is like if you take the time that you have when you have excess time, but you don't have excess money and you discipline yourself for a short period of time, five years, 10 years, somewhere in there, there to outwork everybody else and to outsmart everybody else. So it's not, it's not a. It's not just a work harder thing. There's plenty of people who work a hundred hours a week are still dead broke. And it's not just a work smarter thing because there's a bunch of people who work smart but are really lazy and they don't ever get excess money either. But it's working smarter and harder for five to ten years you do that, then you can sort of have this optionality to be able to live your life however you want to live your life. Because the goal is not to be able to retire on the beach and sip my ties all day. The goal is to be able to give yourself the option to pursue the things that are meaningful and valuable to you so that you can create a life that is full of you, using your time, doing the things that mean the most to you, spending your time with the people who matter the most to you. And that is what's going to make a rich and happy and fulfilled life. So three reasons. Time is more valuable than money. If you are in. If you are disagreeing with me, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Travischaplin over on Instagram. Shoot me a dm. Be happy to talk about this more with you, but time is more valuable than money. Convince me I'm wrong, and I'll buy you a steak dinner. But I just don't think you're gonna be able to convince me. So that's it for today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.