← Travis Makes Money
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I was recently on whatnot the other day, just shopping around, looking frankly, because
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I was just blown away that this
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is something that people are doing with their time. And so I was like, I got
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to go see if this thing is real before I talk about it on the show.
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And so I'm browsing whatnot, looking around, finding things, and it's crazy to see the volume of people that are just
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having fun in the chat.
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They're watching people do live shopping. It's like, it's like, you know, QVC directly on your phone. It's something you need to try, I'm telling you. Not just buying, but the selling piece
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too, where these people are just starting
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up pop up shops and businesses, selling
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whatever product, finding their people, building community,
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getting repeat customers that come back to
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see your face as the seller.
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Not just a logo or a brand, anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist, people selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than on any other major marketplaces. And that's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers across whatnot. The number of sellers making over $1 million a year has now doubled. The consistency pays off for those sellers. It's not just side hustle, it's a real path to building something that lasts. Because whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app, they're not just browsing around, they're engaged, they're buying, they're coming back. You go live, show off your products
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in real time and turn what you
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love into real income. So search whatnot whnot in the app store, download it today and get started selling right away.
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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. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the show. On this episode, it's just me, you and the mic and we're continuing along our journey of working through some of the recurring themes that we've had here from past guests on the show. We've gotten almost 2,000 podcast episodes under the belt in the last nine years or so and had quite a few conversations. Some pretty interesting people along the way. So what I did is I had my, my research tool, my AI platform. Basically I transcribed a bunch of episodes, threw it out to it and said, find the things that are most common with all of these successful people. What are the things that people are talking about the most and put it into a document with some research, some data backed, interesting studies, as well as some history lessons and things like that. So this episode is about generosity. Generosity with no return address. It's the long game of building relationships. What is mean? What does this look like? I remember when I first got started, I. My show was called build you'd network. And I frankly kind of fell into that. It wasn't something that I thought about that much. It was basically just like, I want to start a podcast. I don't know what to start about. And the. The course that I was taking said, find a niche. So I was like, okay, let me go find a niche. And I looked for. I looked. I went to itunes, which it was itunes at the time, not Apple podcasts. And I searched for sales podcasts because I was a Donutor sales guy, figured I could talk about sales. Come to find out There was like 50 sales podcasts out there. So I was like, okay, well, that doesn't seem like a very blue ocean. Let me go look for another one. And so I said, well, what. What do I really attribute my ability to sell to, like, the, The. The. The way that I can. I can come into a new organization, I can become a top sales rep in the first, you know, 20 to 45 days somewhere in there. What do I attribute that to? And some of it sure is, is maybe natural ability, maybe had a natural inclination to being good at sales. But the thing. All I did was go find the top performer in the organization and spend as much time as humanly possible with him. That was really. That was really my mo. It's really not that difficult because if. If you're in a sales organization where people are making money, you know, it's possible for you to make money. You just gotta go find the people who are making the most money and then go, what are you doing? How can I listen to your pitch? Can you. Can you tell me what I'm doing incorrectly here? How do you overcome this objection? What's the tonality that you use here? What's the question that you ask when they say this? If you're constantly learning like that from the people who are doing the absolute best at that place, you can't help but get better over time. And then I'd realized too, it wasn't just in the context of learning the thing. It was also in the context of the complete business. So I didn't just spend time with them in the work environment. I also was like, let's go grab some beers, let's go hang out at my house or your house, let's go to this bar and play some pool or some foosball. And you just, when you get around those high performers, you kind of start realizing that the conversations that they have are a little bit different, the way that they speak is a little bit different. And you start picking up on context clues and habits and behaviors and things that are consistent with that group of high performing people. So I said, okay, well if my MO has always been to go, quote, unquote, network with the person that's doing the best at the company, then why don't I start a show about networking? So I go to back to itunes and I search networking podcasts and couldn't find a single one. So that was all of the thought that went into, like, I know how to start a podcast on networking. I went ahead and just on the nose called it what it was and I said, okay, build your network. That's what we're going to talk about here. But the kind of funny thing about this, this is that I had never done any networking in my life. Like, it was only in the context of learning from somebody at my own company who's like that. It doesn't really take much networking to do that. You just shake hands with them during a company meeting. Like, it's not, it's not, you know, rocket science. And so when I started having this, this networking conversation, it started meaning a lot to me because when I was coming out of the culture I grew up in, I was sort of starting from, I mean, I was legitimately, literally starting from scratch in terms of my professional network. I didn't know anybody, didn't have any relationships or friendships with anybod, anybody who is doing anything in business, nothing in podcasting, nothing. Like nobody in this world at all. Starting completely from scratch. So it kind of became like this personal discovery journey where I was asking people about networking because I wanted to know their answers so that I could implement what they were talking about so I could see those results happen in my life. And then I just happened to be like the captain of the ship and kind of put people in the boat. I was the captain. We're at the same place. I'm not already at the destination waiting for you guys to come here. Like, like some people are right. If you think you have that expert style creator who, they've already done the thing, they've exited the company and now they're, they're on the shore and they're calling over to you to say like come this way or you know, they're on the opposite end of the riverbank and they know which stones to step on that are good footing. And if you step on that stone, you're probably going to slip and be drenched in water. But if you step on that stone, that's a little bit more of a sure footing there. So there's that version and then there's a version that I was which is just the captain of the ship. I'm just the person who is like, all right, we're going in this direction. We're going to all talk about networking relationships and that's what we're going to do here. So if you want to learn alongside of me, then jump in the boat. Let's go for a journey. And so build you'd network kind of became this personal study. And one of the first interviews that I had on that show, I was talking to this guy. He was really well read. He was, I think he had a PhD in Organizational Leadership or something like that. And I started talking to him about this and I asked for book recommendations and he was like, oh, have you read Give and Take by Adam Grant? And I was like, no, I've never heard of it. He was like, oh, well that is the chief networking book. Like you have to read that immediately. And I was very grateful for that at the time. But it also pointed out as this glaring gap in my mind where I was like, if I'm going to be talking about networking all the time, I should probably know what's going on inside of this space. Like I should probably be familiar with these, these bestselling books and the best material out there on this stuff. So I read this book Give and Take and this is the first time I was introduced to this idea of generosity with no return address, about playing the long game in relationships. Because he goes through the three reciprocity styles in that book. Givers, takers, match. In my mind I'd always kind of categorize myself as a taker or excuse me, Freudian slip I guess I categorize myself as a matcher. Does that made sense to me? It was like, you give a little, I give a little. You give a little, I give a little. But the problem with that is that there's always an imaginary scoreboard and people don't always care about the scoreboard and they shouldn't, neither should you. But if you're constantly coming up with these silent non verbal contracts in your mind and then other people don't live up to the end of that contract, then you start getting pissy, then you start getting annoyed, then you start burning bridges with relationships and that person's sitting over there thinking, well, I wonder what happened with Travis. Like I thought we had a, like a good relationship, but now like you won't answer my emails, what's going on? And it's because I did something for them in hopes they would do something for me. And then when they didn't do that particular thing for me, I go, well, I'm never going to help you again. You get upset, you get frustrated, and now you have a fracture in an otherwise great relationship. And so if you're going to engage in generosity and giving, then you have to do it without the expectation of receiving anything in return. And so in the book he outlines givers, takers, matchers and he talks about the success ladder and he says there's a section of the book where he talk where he sort of poses the question of where do you think people end up on the success ladder? And in my mind like when I first read it and when this guy asked me who was on my show talking about this book when he asked me that question and I was like, well, I'm assuming with the context of this particular book that givers probably end up on the top and takers probably end up on the bottom. And he said no. What was really interesting about the research that they did during this book, which is one thing I love about Adam Grant. He what he provides to you is nothing but research and stories and data and evidence. It's not just him anecdotally talking about his life, although I would also read that book to be fair, if he did one of those because I think
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but the surprising finding was that givers were both at the top and the bottom of the success ladder. And so then the, you know, there's a whole section of the book that basically helps you figure out if you're a giver that's going to end up on the bottom or going to end up on the top. And, and so, you know, not to give away the entire book because I think it's worth a read, but essentially it's basically saying when you realize somebody's a taker, you need to change your reciprocity style. You can't be overly generous to people who are takers who are going to zap your energy and take all the time. So you have to sometimes cut people off. You have to make some tough decisions and that can be tough as a giver. But me being somebody who categorized myself as a matcher, I just started going like, okay, well, this makes sense. I see the data, I see the proof, and that feels better anyway. Just being a generous person and offering help when you can and giving value when you can to those who need it feels better in general and it actually works better long term. So that's what this episode is a little bit about. The most significant professional breaks in this guest library didn't come from networking events or told outreach. They came from unconditional acts of generosity over and over again, sometimes years before any of them really materialized. So there's this common thread that keeps coming up. The givers just have, have genuinely forgotten that they were owed anything. They, they didn't, they didn't think about it. They were just being helpful. They were giving, they're being generous, they're doing what they're supposed to do. And then a decade later, or sometimes more, something comes back to them from this initial thing that they, I haven't even thought of in years. So this is one study from or one story from my conversation with Jack Carr, who wrote the Terminal List. Chris Pratt starred in the Terminalist series. He optioned the book rights and turned it into a script that got bought by Amazon Prime. And Jack was talking about this because this introduction to Chris Pratt came from somebody that he was in the SEAL teams with. So he's a Navy SEAL for 20 years, and there was somebody coming up underneath him who he had helped with something, and he didn't even really remember exactly what the scenario was. He was just like, I helped Jared, and I never expect anything to come from that thing. I just helped them and kind of forgot about it. And he said, that's the whole reason that it works. Giving without the expectation of receiving anything, return. That's the whole reason that it works, is that you're not doing it for hoping that someday it's going to come back to you. You just do it to be helpful. And so when he wrote his first book, the Terminal List, in this, like, eight book series, he. The very first page, when he was thinking about optioning the rights, he was already thinking in terms of like, I want this to be turned into a feature film or something like that, and ended up getting turned into a series instead of a. But either way, he wanted it. He wanted to see it on the big screen. And that was one of his goals when he started writing it. So after he wrote the first page, he wrote the names of the people that he wanted involved in the film project. First name, he wrote down Chris Pratt. He's like, I think Chris Pratt could play this role amazingly well. So he had. He had his eyes set on the prize from day one. I want. I want this to be Chris Pratt. Well, turns out he writes the whole manuscript for the book. It's getting published. And before the book is released, this guy that he helped a long time ago in the SEAL teams, Jared, he came to him and said, basically, hey, I wanted to see if I could have your permission to give this manuscript to a friend of mine. And Jack was kind of like, oh, okay, sure. I mean, I guess if you trust him, who's the friend? And he goes, it's Chris Pratt. And so Jack is like, yeah, please, yes, give him the manuscript. Let him read it. So Chris Pratt reads it and then options the book before it was even published. So he options. Essentially, what that means is he bought the rights to turn it into something in film and television. Then they wrote a script, and guess what director they bring on board. The exact director that. That Jack Carr had written in his notes, along with Chris Pratt's name, Antoine Fuqua, who came in and directed the Terminal List. So he thought about it, talked about it, had no idea how it was going to come together, and then all of a Sudden, this connection from somebody a decade before who he completely forgot about, came out of the woodworks and said, hey, let me put this in front of Chris Pratt. And then, you know, the rest is history. Now I think they're coming out with season three of the terminal list on Amazon prime this fall, which I'm very much looking forward to because I'm a big fan. Okay, next, this comes from John Levy, who's a behavioral scientist and relationship expert, for lack of a better term. He said networking events don't work. They're just not the mechanic by which people actually connect. People related networking. In a study, people related networking to the desire to wash their hands. They felt dirty afterwards. And so his whole point was trying to craft an environment where people can build actual relationships based on real connection and a generosity attitude. Because here's the thing, networking events do work, just not for the reason that you think they work. Okay? So to push back on this a little bit, the people who treat networking events like it's an in person cold calling opportunity, they will get results from that. Okay, you shake enough hands, you'll make some money, right? The more hands you shake, the more money you make. It's pretty simple. It's a numbers game, but it doesn't bring you real relationships. So in my experience, what I see what happens in those, in those environments is that people go to these network events. They're the taker, right? They're the networking ned where they just throw in business cards at people moving on to the next person barfing out an elevator pitch. It's the person you hate to see coming at the networking event because you know they're just going to talk your ear off. They're not going to ask one question about you. They're not going to listen to anything that you do. They're only there to see what's in it for themselves. And like I said, will it work? To a certain extent, sure. But it's not the environment to be doing this type of a thing in. Cold calling has its place. Get a, get a list and cold call the list. You know what I mean? Like go. Go door to door. If yes, go business to business. But if you're in a networking event and the purpose is to meet people, then your goal should not be to grab business from every person that you possibly can and then move on to the next group. Because you're just going to burn and turn relationships. And so if you're constantly burning and turning relationships, you'll have to continue doing that hamster wheel of sh. More hands in order to continue to getting more business. Whereas the person who comes in with that long term generosity mentality and starts building relationships with people, they might have a few referral partners that keep them busy all year long that come from these initial relationships. So it's not that they don't work, it's just that the people who work them don't do, don't do it the right way. And they're typically not the place that you're going to find real connection and valuable relationships moving forward. So try to find events around you and if you don't have any me start one. It's a good indicator that you can start one. Some of the best networking advice out there is to host something. Host a podcast, host an event, host a meetup, be the host, be the person, be, be a, be a aggregator of connections. And you'll be thought about whenever the people that you connected continue to connect, because that will inevitably happen. But if you can be the commonality between those two people, it forces people to be at that event, be like, oh well, how'd you hear about Travis? How'd you hear about this event? You've ever done anything with them before? Like you become the sort of like the common thread by which people start connect. And that is a big value add for yourself as well. And it's based on this entire idea of just generosity. Throwing an event, inviting out a bunch of cool people and letting what happens happen. Then the last person on this one was Grant Cardone. And I, I use this phrase probably more often than I care to admit because it was just really simple and succinct. But we were talking about relationships and networking when I was, when I had Grant on my show back in like 2018 and he said flow power to power give. Don't try to get something. Flow power to power was a, was a really interesting way to think about it because it sort of reframes the connection as, as like this, this movement. It's like a, it's like a, a flow of energy. So what he means by flow power to power and, and I like that the way that he phrased it too, because it doesn't just imply that it's money, it doesn't just reply that it's relationships. It's not saying that it's a single asset. It's just flow power to power. Find people who are powerful, who are valuable, who are the most esteemed inside of the community that you're trying to make a name for, figure out ways to add Value to those people flow power to power. So when I first got started, it looks a lot different than it does now. Now I've been able to build a robust network and have some really great people and relationships. Now I can add more value by a 5 minute intro email than I could 10 years ago by volunteering 3 days of my time. Which, by the way, is exactly what I did 10 years ago when I started in this space. Before I even had my podcast, I paid to go to a mastermind group. And then the person at the Mastermind, like in my head, as soon as I paid for it, because it was the most I ever invest myself at that point, it was like 6,500 bucks for a weekend Mastermind, which may as well been a hundred grand for me at that time. And I, as soon as I paid, I was like, man, I better get a lot of value from this. And then because I had been studying networking to start my show, I was like, nope, that's the wrong attitude. It's the wrong mentality. Let me change that. It's how do I give value here? How do I show up to this event, connect with the person who's putting this on, who's really good at the thing I'm trying to get good at, and figure out ways to continue being in that person's circle because they're the ones who have the power in this space. And so when I got down there, I realized, oh, this person is going to. They're speaking at another event, they have books that they want to sell at the event. And they asked me if I could stop by the booth and coach their intern that they had working the booth on how to sell more of their books because they knew. They found out that I had a door to door sales background and I sold at home shows and events and things. And so I was like, hey, I'll just work the booth for you. So I had already bought a ticket to go to this event, but instead of attending the event, I ended up just working his booth basically the entire time selling books for him. Did I get paid for that? Nope. It was complete volunteering of my time. No commissions, no hourly wages, nothing. I just volunteered my time to show up at an event and for eight hours a day, three days in a row, I stood in an event booth and I sold books. But because I did that, he was willing to do a lot more things for me. He ended up inviting me to another event a couple months down the road, which I would not have heard about, nor would I have attended. If he did not invite me to go to it, to sell books at that event, and that event met a bunch of other people. I joined this other mastermind, which got me to talk to these other people, which eventually led to this thing, which led to that thing. It was just like I, I, it took me three days of eight hours a day volunteering my time to add some value. But I figured out a way to do it. I figured out a way to, to, to flow some power to power. And, and without even thinking about what it was going to look like for me, like, I didn't have a deal worked out, I was like, if I come do this for you, you owe me. Three intros to interesting people for podcast guests. It wasn't like that at all. It was just like, I'll go do this. Well, I'll figure it out along the way. You know what I mean? And then was willing to ask for a couple of things after that, and he was more than happy to give me the things that I asked for. He ended up becoming a friend. He invested six figures in a company of mine. We've been to bachelor parties and things like that together. And it turned into an actual, like, relationship, a real friendship, because I didn't go into it thinking, like, what can I get? What can I get when I get what can I get? Even though I was the one paying for it, I still reframed it in my mind as, what can I give? How can I add value here? So flow power to power, give without expecting anything in return. Or as Gary Vee says, it always be the one to add at least 50% percent, 51% of the value in every relationship. So the data favors bridging connections built over time, not transactional access. Across career research, bridging social capital consistently outperforms bonding capital. So bridging social capital would be like cross group ties consist. Bonding capital would be tight in group ties. So bridging social capital consistently outperforms bonding capital for advanced advancement. So Granovetter did a study on this. Granovetter's foundational strength of weak ties finding showed that 83% of job seekers found positions through infrequent acquaintances rather than close friends. So not only did they not find it on job boards, but they didn't find it through people who they were close to. They found it through an infrequent acquaintance. These, these, these weak ties is what they called it. So the worthwhile caveat here is that social capital converts unevenly across different classes of people. So generosity is necessary. But it's also not guaranteed. Now the data says it's not guaranteed. What I've seen is that it is guaranteed, just not from the particular thing that you think that it was going to be. Right? So like you, you, you might be willing to whatever, coach this person for free or make an introduction to this person in your mind. You're like, oh well, they have all these other connections that I would really like to have. And then two months later you reach out for a connection with them and they go, ah, maybe not right now, it's not a good time. Or I don' know them that well. And it sort of stops there. Okay. That immediate reciprocation from the person that you helped is not guaranteed, nor should it be guaranteed, nor should you think that it's guaranteed. But constantly over giving and being generous to multiple people all the time will come back in your career at some point. It has no option to, or it has no option to, to not to do that. It's, it's going to come like that. The way that I like to phrase it is basically, basically it's never bad to have a bunch of great people conspiring for your good. It's never bad. And the more people you're overly generous with without the expectation of receiving anything in return, the more likely that something in the future is going to happen because of the generosity that you're giving over the period of time that you're giving it in. So here's a quick story from Andrew Carnegie as well. He was a teenage worker in Pittsburgh. He was given a free Saturday access to Colonel James Anderson's 400 volume private library. He later credited that single act of generosity and ultimately funded 2,509 public libraries as repayment to the next generation of workers. One man's no strings gift cascaded into the education of millions. Something that Colonel James Anderson probably didn't give a second thought to. Just like, oh yeah, let's let this kid come in and read, you know what I mean? And then he ended up funding 2,500 public libraries as a result of the access to knowledge that he gained inside of that scenario. So this, this is, this is the theme that I has probably been most recurring on this show over the length of time that I've had. It is just that if you just make yourself a giver, if that's the only thing that you do by listening to this show is change your reciprocity style and focus on being a giver as much as possible. Again, read, give and take. Because it gives you some good guard rails to make sure that you're a giver that ends up on the top instead of a giver that ends up on the bottom. I think that's really important. So read that book for those guardrails. But ultimately, it's never a bad strategy to just be overly generous to people who deserve it. So that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys next time.
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Peace.