B (5:21)

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.

A (5:28)

That you're not entirely sure it'll work out.

B (5:30)

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 be honest with you. What if nobody listens? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I'm embarrassed? You know, what if nobody buys stuff.

A (5:42)

That I put out there?

B (5:43)

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.

A (5:50)

It also helps when you have a.

B (5:51)

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A (8:17)

Hosts to host their own daily segments of the show. Something about following the markets or something about conversations with marketers or something about operations. Like we we could dive further into each individual siloed topic of the money discussion to where we have like a personal finance expert that only talks about personal finance and I talk about entrepreneurship and then we have another expert that comes on. So then it's like okay, so what would be what would I need to pay them in order for it to make sense for them to create content for me rather than create content for themselves. And then does that make sen with the increase in sponsorship revenue to be able to hire that person? So like, my, my point is to say, like, I'm. This is not necessarily something we're going to be doing. My point is to say that even when you think that you're tapped out, you might be able to go a little bit further. You just got to do the extra. The thought exercise of like, if it were possible, what would it take rather than just assuming that it's impossible to get more gold out of this mine. So that would be. The first thing would be podcasting. Second thing that I would do that I would double down on would be events. I, I bought into this lie early on that just because I had an Internet based business that it wasn' quote unquote real business. So I had seen some success early on with these like Mastermind groups and stuff that I was running and eventually took a big swing. I basically spent all the money in my bank account to put on this live event in Vegas at the end of 2019. So think with me on the timeline here. First big, first live event, end of 2019, we have a Mastermind group for sale at that event. And the event ended up, we ended up making about 180,000 after a couple refunds. So like 200. 180 to 200,000 is what we made on the event because before the event started, I paid everything back that I paid to put on the event through ticket sales and sponsorships. So we're able to start day one of the event at a break even. So everything that we made from, you know, the Mastermind was essentially not necessarily profit because we had to pay to put on events for, for fulfillment of the group. But ultimately it was, it was Delta. It was money that we could use to grow the business and keep doing this. So when that happened, I was like, oh great. That that worked really well. And it was the first time we've ever done that. We're only gonna get better at this. Let's start doing quarterly or bi annual events and then we'll sell into the Mastermind from those. We'll do quarterly events for the Mastermind and then we'll have this events business. And I was like, great, let's do it. But again, think of the timeline with me. I was selling a mastermind called Cool People Co Places. The entire premise was that we don't do, you know, stuffy hotel ballrooms. We're going to Cool Places like, we took the group to Breckenridge at a resort out there and went skiing and snowboarding. And then we took a group to Costa Rica, and we took a group to Bali. We took a group to Thailand. Even our live event that we did was at topgolf in Vegas, rather than being in a hotel ballroom. So that was sort of like the. The goal was to get a bunch of people in a room and take them out of their normal everyday milieu, put them in a random situation and have room for actual real connection. And so 2020 rolls around, we do our first fulfillment event for the Mastermind. We sold. And then Covid hits. And I immediately had to cancel the second trip on the schedule, which was a trip to Costa Rica, literally, because international travel was. Travel was prohibited, and a lot of people that were doing the events at that time moved to virtual events. I didn't feel like that was something that we could do because it was almost something that we were preaching against. It was like the whole purpose was to go to a cool place together with a bunch of other people. That was like, the entire reason for the event's existence. So when that got shut down, I went right. I had deluded myself into thinking that that wasn't a real business anyway, so we can let go of that. And then I started this software company called Gestio, and I was sort of putting all my eggs in that basket. And I neglected to bring back the events portion of the business, even when Covid restrictions were light and people could start traveling again. And I left a lot of money on that table because of. Because I did not double down on the thing that already worked. It was like, here I am bashing my head against the wall, trying to figure out this new world of building software, which I'm not an engineer. I don't know how to write a line of code to save my life. And now I'm running a software company. It's like, I had to. It was baptism by fire over here because I had to learn everything about that space rather than leaning into some of the skills that I already built, which is like presenting from stage, being able to sell to people, putting on cool experiences, connecting people together. Like, a lot of those things were skill sets that I already had, which is maybe one reason why it worked. I don't know, young Travis. Maybe that's an indicator that you were onto something. And I abandoned it. I abandoned it too quickly at the first sign of an obstacle, rather than sticking with that thing, and probably, again, left a lot of Money on the table. So I would, I would double down on the things that were working for me at that time. And those were some of the things that were working for me. And there was, there was another thing we were doing podcast, podcast courses and education and stuff. And now in retrospect, it's easier for me to pick apart that business because I didn't know what I was doing at the time. It was like I heard people sell courses on webinars. So let's start a course business. We'll teach people how to podcast. We'll create this really cool course. I put everything that I learned about podcasting into this like 95 lesson 4 module premium course. Started selling on webinars and we scaled the webinar up to like, we're spending 50,000amonth on ads. Which isn't crazy for, you know, for some people listening to this, they, you know, spend that every two days. But for me at the time, and for a lot of people, 50,000amonth in ads is like the dream, is like the goal. You know what I mean? Because it's not just a matter of making the money. It's also a matter of having the excuse to spend money on buying, buying impressions and getting more people to be aware that you exist. Which is how I looked at it. And at the time it was like we were, we were spending 50,000, but we were making like 47,000 or 52,000. And I didn't have a ton of money in my bank account to bankroll the weeks where we were losing money on the live webinar. And so it was very anxious time. And in my mind, again, I started telling myself, well, this just isn't working. You know, there's too many obstacles here. When in reality, again now from an experienced business person, I can look back at that and go like, oh, well, there's just no backend. That's the only, that was the only problem with that business.

C (14:24)

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A (14:48)

Like the fact that we were acquiring customers for almost break even. And you know, some months we'd lose five grand, ten grand or whatever, but some months we'd make three grand. Five grand, whatever. The fact that we were acquiring customers at almost a profit or barely having to go into a hole to acquire those customers is a brilliant business model. The only thing that we were lacking was the ability to have a higher lifetime value because there was no up, there was no step on the ladder for them to go up to once they bought the course. It was like we were trying to build a course business rather than thinking from a holistic perspective of what does this business look like. Well, probably after that, some people want more hand holding through the course. They don't just want to go through all the course material on their own. So there's probably a group coaching program that we could have sold for three to five thousand dollars somewhere in there. And then some people want us to do their entire podcast production for them. They don't want to have to think about it or go through all the steps and everything, jump through all the hoops. So we have a now we have like a done for you thing. So now we have a do it yourself. We have it done with you. We have it done for you. And now we have the workings of a great business because we were bringing in, you know, say we made 50,000 on course sales. Well, that's 50 paying customers. Well, those 50 paying customers, probably five to 10 of them would have enjoyed some group coaching and one to five of them would have enjoyed us producing their shows for them, which would have resulted in another 60, $70,000 in revenue. That was mostly be profit. And again, instead of doubling down on it, I pulled back on it when we started the software company. Cause I was like, well that's not a real business anyway, so we can abandon that. So there's been multiple times career where I just, I abandoned things too early because there were obstacles rather than, rather than, and, and some of it was just ignorance. I didn't realize at the time that it was working like, like now. Now if, again, if I'm looking at that business, I'm like, it's working. What are you talking about? Like, yeah, you, you lost eight grand last month, but that's eight grand. You can make that back in one high ticket done for you, you know, big experience type of a client. And then you can, and then every person after that's just profit. Like, what are you talking about? This is a business that's working. But at the time I didn't, I didn't realize it, I didn't recognize it. I was, I was ignorant to the idea that it was too many obstacles in my path to be able to continue to make it work. So instead of trying to do that, I fell back and, and, and changed my course again, rather than just doubling down on the things that were already working for me. So there's been several times that I've done this, and it sounds so simple, but stop. Stop avoiding the things that are working, man. Just double down on the things that are working. So for me, it was the podcast events selling from stage. You know, the concept of learning while I was earning all of those things were things that were massively important to me, and I probably did not double down enough. So hopefully that's helpful for you. If you're tuning in right now, please feel free to always tag me. Post something on Instagram. Let me know that you're tuning in at Travis Chapel on Instagram to post a story. I'll always reshare it and we'll start a conversation over there. But I appreciate you for tuning in. That's it for this episode of the show. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.