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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money by Choosing the Right Mountain to Climb with Lessons from Bryan Callen
00:13:47
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Commercial Announcer
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Travis
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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 another episode of the show. On this episode we're continuing along with our series about what I've learned from past guests of the show. And on this episode we're diving deep into my conversation with Brian Callan. If you don't know Brian, he is a stand up comedian. He's an actor. He's been in the game for quite some time. You may know him from movies like the Hangover. Probably the, probably the, probably the most well known one that he's been in is the Hangover. He's the, he's the, I think his name is Eddie in the movie. I could be completely wrong on that. But anyway, he's the guy who runs the wedding chapel in the Hangover. Really funny guy, great actor, funny standup comic. And now he's a podcaster and has a bunch of other things as well. So there's quite a few things that I took away from this episode. And here we go. Very first one, the infrastructure of family can sometimes times be a crutch. Brian made a point that kind of hit me sideways. Growing up with a strong support system sounds like a blessing and a lot of times it is. But can also let you avoid this sort of hard reckoning with yourself because he referenced his friend Joe Rogan's situation where his dad left when Joe was nine, which forced him to figure out really early that nobody was coming to save him. And Brian didn't have that forcing function. By his own admission, it let him sleepwalk through decades of decision chasing acting when standup was always his gift. Having people to fall back on can quietly delay the moment you fall forward on your own. And I, I would second this. I think that this is one of those like hard truths, unpopular opinions because having a good support system is a good thing. And if you're a parent, you should provide that for your kids. You should want that for your kids. But there's also sort of like this, this. The lesson should just be like, you should try to at least instill this lesson somehow in another form or fashion. Like I said, he's not suggesting that as a father, you should just abandon your family because that's going to be good for them. It's not what he's saying. He's just saying that if you do have all the support systems, then you have to figure out another way to make sure that you are not factoring in the fact that you have that as a real factor in your ability to make decisions, that you need to have this sense of self starterism, this sense of, look, nobody's coming to save you. Ultimate level of taking full responsibility for everything that happens in your life. Gotta have that. So however, you can engineer a way to make sure that you are able to make decisions from that point of view rather than from the perspective of like, ah, you know, I'll, I'll just keep putting it off because, you know, I have this. I can always, you know, go sleep on my mom's couch or whatever. Just don't, don't have it. Be a crutch. Figure out ways to engineer maybe periods of struggle in your own life through your own personal decisions. And not from a place of like, oh, I made a bunch of mistakes, now I'm struggling. But from a place of like, let me, let me purposefully put myself in situations that inherently cause me to transform into a better version of me. So number two, it took Brian until age 53 to admit that he hated acting. In his words, it's not a failure story, it's an honesty story. He spent 30 years grinding in a lane that looked right from the outside but felt wrong on the inside. The lesson's uncomfortable. You can be competent at something, even successful at something, and still be in the wrong room. The question isn't, am I good at this? It's does this make me feel alive? In stand up comedies where Brian said he feels most alive, everything else was just rehearsal. Everything else was the thing that he felt like he should be doing. And I talk about this a lot on my, on my shows, is that you want to make sure that you're climbing the right mountain. Not the mountain that culture told you to climb. Not the mountain that your mentor, your parent or your teacher told you, told you that you should be climbing. Climb the mountain that you want to climb because it's not a great scenario. To put like it's going to be work to climb the mountain. Either way, it's going to be a lot of struggle. There's going to be a lot of obstacles. And just because you're good at something does not mean that you owe it to yourself to climb that particular mountain if it's something that you don't want to climb. I did this in my own life with pivoting to podcasting from door to door sales. Like, I know I could be making more money in door to door than I'm making in podcasting. I know that. And sometimes it's difficult for me to swallow that pill. But I also know that I enjoy podcasting much more than I enjoyed going door to door. So just because I was good at it doesn't mean that I have to spend the rest of my life doing that thing. So don't wait till you're 53, don't wait till you're 63, don't wait till you're 73 to purposefully switch up the thing that you're doing. Because in pursuit of something that really lights you up and something that you'd be really, really happy to continue pursuing for the rest of your life even if you didn't get it. So that's really the punchline here, is that I'm just convinced that you will always gain more satisfaction, fulfill happiness, meaning in pursuit of the thing that you really want than the achievement of the thing that you don't want. So be as introspective as you can, ask yourself some questions, interrogate your decisions, and make sure that you're on the path that you are choosing for yourself, not a path that was chosen for you by somebody else. Number three. Consistency beats intensity. Near the end of the conversation, Brian dropped one of the cleanest lines of the whole episode, which is this. This episode of the show is brought to you by Chime. Chime is changing the way that people bank. They offer the most rewarding fee free banking that's built for you, not the 1% plus. Chime is rated five stars by USA Today for customer service. You get real human beings 24. 7. You're not just switching banks. You're upgrading to America's number one choice for banking with a Chime checking account. Get 5% cash back on a Chime card in your category of choice, like gas or groceries. Get savings that grow faster with their 3.75% APY, which is nine times higher than the national average. Plus, you get premium travel perks like airport lounge access and 247 travel concierge included with your Chime Card. You can even get up to $500 of your pay when you say with my pay. Plus they also have Spot Me which lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. My younger self would have absolutely benefited from this and I know it will benefit you as well. Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank. So join the millions who are already banking fee free today. Head to chime.com travis that's chime.com travis only takes a few minutes to sign up.
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Travis
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Travis
Consistency is more important than hard work. Showing up daily, not grinding eight heroic hours and then collapsing. That's the secret. Just showing up every day and consistently putting in effort over a long period of time. If you, if you. I know I do this a lot, but I equate this to like a weight loss journey or a fitness goal because it's such a good example of it. If you want to lose 20 pounds, you can do it in a month. Like you technically can do it in a month. You just do the math, right? Like if it, if it takes an estimated, you know, 2,000 calorie deficit to lose a pound, then you do the math and figure out, okay, I got 20 pounds and that means I gotta, you know, 20 times 2000, that's 40,000 calorie deficit. So that over a 30 day time period is going to be 1200, you know, 1100, whatever the math is. Calorie a day deficit. If I want to lose £20 in a month. But by Lou, but by being in a freaking 12 or 1300 calorie deficit every day for a month, you're going to feel drained, you're going to feel lethargic, you're going to resent the idea of getting into shape because it's going to make you hate your life for a period of time. And then once the goal has been reached, you just immediately go right back into your old habits because now you've accomplished what you want to accomplish and before you know it, three, four months down the road, that £20 is right back onto your hips where it used to be. So it's, it's better to, if you have a goal of losing 20 pounds, it's better to set that over a, a six month time frame or a five month time frame when you can be in a healthy 3 to 500 calorie deficit over the same period. It might take 20 weeks, but you'll find that that will be more sustainable weight loss because it requires you to build better habits. And then you can't torture yourself for that duration of time. I mean, you can, but I don't recommend it. And like I said, when I was doing this, I just had, I had a negative relationship with weight loss because it made me feel like I couldn't enjoy my life and I couldn't enjoy anything. And I, and I, and I, and I had say no to the cookie or the ice cream or the beer during that Entire time. And so as soon as I reached the goal, as soon as the time limit was up, then it was like, oh, now I can have the cookies and I can have the beer, and I went overboard. The opposite direction. Then you end up on what we call the yo yo diet. You're up and down all the time, up and down all the time. And so if you want to build something that's more sustainable, the consistency beats the intensity every time. Number four, sports teach you how tough you're not. And that's the point. Brian Russell did kickboxing, trained boxing in his 50s. And he said something I, I think about from time to time. Sports are important, especially for young men, because you learn how tough you're not. And that's not a put down, that's just clarity. You find your real ceiling when something's actually testing you, not when you're just telling yourself a story in your own head. And you see this happen all the time. Especially online when people talk about, like, oh, I could beat that person up, or like, oh, I could, oh, you know, someone's watching an NFL game, like, I could have caught that or whatever. It's just. No, you couldn't have. No, you couldn't have because, like, you wouldn't even been downfield and you wouldn't have even put yourself in a position to be able to have caught that. And you wouldn't have been able to get past the cornerback, let alone put yourself in that position and be fast enough to get there. Like, you're 90 pounds overweight, bro. Like, you're, you're, you're, you know, elbow deep in a bag of party sized Doritos right now, talking about how you could have got that, it's ridiculous. So a lot of lessons that sports can teach you, and that's, that's just one of them. Number five, the rarest commodity are adventure and intimacy. And I like this one a lot, honestly. The adventure piece, specifically the intimacy piece too, I think for men, because that could be something that can be difficult to master. And I talked about this in my conversation with Garrett White where he talked about, like, intimacy in his mind as a man only meant sex. And so when people would bring up the word in other environments, it made him feel super uncomfortable. And then he realized that, like, that's not what that means, that that's a different definition of that word. And so the intimacy piece for sure. But then the adventure part I really like a lot because it implies that even if you have everything that you want, you're still required to make the journey in order to have the adventure of achieving the thing that you want. And the, the, the age old story about this is the Alchemist. The, the book the Alchemist because it's basically following this young kid who's trying to go out and, and you know, make his living and, and find his treasure, so to speak. And basically, spoiler alert. The. It takes you on this long journey of him following, going on this crazy path and crazy adv basically found out the treasure was hidden in his own backyard type of a thing. It was like he had it already but he had to go through the adventure to become the type of person who was capable of receiving the gift that was in his backyard the whole time. And so Brian's framework for friendship, specifically when it comes to this is just and really for a life worth living, comes down to adventure, intimacy, not comfort, not security, but these things. And he pointed out the, that one tends to create the other. Put yourself in hard, crazy situations with other people and the bond that forms between you guys in, in that setting is going to be actually real. It's going to be a real connection. Something that no polite, you know, dinner conversation or something that no networking event filled with name tags and business cards is going to ever be able to replicate for you. So they, you know, especially men, they connect with how much they laugh, how much they suffer, you know, the struggle, the work, being somewhere you don't want to be, but suffering together, actively choosing that with other people can create a really cool bond with, with some of that you're trying to become friends with. So if you haven't listened to the full episode, go listen to the entire episode with Brian Callan. It has a bunch of really good stuff in there, but also will definitely make you laugh from time to time. It's a really, really funny guy. He can't, he can't, he can't go. He can't sit through an hour long conversation and, and not fall back into his comedy roots at some point. So highly recommend going and checking out that episode with Brian. Thanks so much for tuning into this one. We'll catch you guys in the next one where we're talking about my conversation with Vicente Fox, who's the former president of Mexico. Lots of really good takeaways in that one. So tune into next. Catch you next time. Peace.
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