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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money by Mastering One Thing and Playing the Long Game - Lessons from my interview with Drew Dunn
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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 is up everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money Podcast where it's a mission to help you make more money. On this episode, it's just me, you and the mic and we are talking about things that I've learned from past guests of my shows. On this episode, I'm going over the conversation that had with Drew Dunn. Drew Dunn is a, a hilarious stand up comedian. In my opinion. He's one of the ones to keep an eye on. Like I think he'll, I think he's at the very, very, very beginning of his career, but he's still killing it even at that point. So plenty of takeaways that I have from this. Again, like if you haven't listened to Travis Makes Friends, I talk to, it's not just focused on one thing. I talk about a bunch of different things. But the main core theme that works its way into most conversations is friendship and self development. And so even when I'm talking to somebody who's a comedian, I'm very curious about the process of comedy and the writing and the, and the business side of it. So it ends up becoming like a well rounded conversation. It's just the comedians are just significantly more entertaining to speak to. Sometimes when you're talking to a bunch of business people who can tend to be kind of dry, it's nice to throw in a comedian every once in a while who's just entertaining and fun. So here are a few of my takeaways from my time with Drew. Number one, comedy and anything worth doing really is a marathon, not a sprint. And it's probably going to take longer than you think. Drew said it pretty plainly. Every opportunity that he's gotten came about two years later than he thought that he should have had that opportunity. That's not defeatism, that's a survival strategy. When you accept that the timeline is long. You stop making silly short term decisions that blow up the long term goal. So you stop taking, you know, the, the writing job that would have paid really well, but takes you off the road as a standup comic, where you start, start, you, you start chasing the, the viral moment, you know, you, you start chasing this other gig and, and you start, you start chasing a PODC YouTube channel, you start getting distracted by all these other things. And, and Drew's focus was one thing and one thing only, which was be good at stand up comedy. Everything else for him is a distraction. And so even though he's had multiple opportunities that have popped up along the way, he said no to them in an effort to say yes to the long term benefit of the thing that he's really trying to master, which is the art of stand up. Number two, pick one thing and great and get great at it. Which is sort of what we were just talking about Drew before. He was trying to do everything, you know, podcast, animation, voiceover, you know, sketch shows, gaming streams, and Kevin Hart's advice delivered bluntly to someone who walked up to him on a movie set, cut through all the noise, he said, pick one thing, go be great at that one thing. And then everything else will follow. So obviously, you know, Kevin Hart's been, got his hands in everything now at this point, he's got his own production company, he had the roast come out recently, and then he did the comedy competition show that just came out recently. He's got his own podcast, he's got the ice bath show that he does. He's producing movies, he's got a new movie coming out. Like, he's got his hands in so many things, but the very, very, very first thing that he did was get really good at stand up. And then that brought in more opportunities. So the people who spread themselves too thin too early rarely build the foundation that they need when the bigger spotlight eventually finds them. So you want to be as prepared as possible to take advantage of the opportun opportunity that you've always wanted to take advantage of. And if you're doing these six different things and then the opportunity at the thing that you really want to do comes along, you aren't prepped to take advantage, full advantage of that opportunity because you've been, you know, taking your time to work on these other things as well. And so pick the one thing, get really, really good at the one thing, and then everything else will get a little bit easier. Those opportunities will come about just maybe a little bit later. Number three, don't engage with the worst people on the Internet. Drew's take on comments sect is just very practical. There's no reason to ignore fans that are saying great things in order to argue with someone who's got like an anime profile picture and nothing to do all day. Like, there's, there's no reason to. To go argue with the people who are saying bad things and then skip over all the people who are saying the good things. So it changes your mood, changes nothing about the troll who's writing it. And it's just not a good use of the mental calories that you need for the actual work. Right? So he sets time limits, he turns off notifications and learn to just to the ones that are saying some good stuff. So he still wants to interact and engage with community. Because that's the one thing that I, that I push back against when people like you have to be at a certain caliber in order to be able to, quote, unquote, ignore the comments. Because I hear this all the time on like massive podcasts or from big name celebrities that are just like, I just don't look at the comments. You can't look at the comment section. Can't look at the comment section. Or don't look at the comment section or look at the comment section. Oh, that was a mistake, you know, and I see that happen all the time. But it's like if you're a beginner creator, you have to look at the comment section. Like, that is where people are telling you things that can be helpful for the next piece of content that you're going to create, whether it's something that's bad or good, whatever. Like, you can weed through some of it, but you gotta pay attention to the comment section when you're first getting started. It's just that some people should not be engaged with no matter what, because they're just there to be a dick. And the more you engage with them, the more they're just gonna continue being a dick. It's not gonna, you're not gonna change their mind. Nobody's mind's ever been changed from reply to a comment on a post. So don't engage with the worst people on the Internet. Number four, Jealousy is a signal, not a verdict. When someone else bl up like a new comedian, a new podcast, someone who seemingly came from nowhere, Drew's honest admission
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Chime.com disclosures First reaction was envy. But then he just asked himself a question or two. Like why does someone else why does someone else's success harm you? Answer is it doesn't. Why? Why? Why is someone else being successful threatening you? It doesn't. The people who are actually killing it aren't the ones complaining about who else is killing it. They're the ones calling that person up for a collaboration or seeing how they can work together or trying to help out with something that they can help out with. Jealousy is just information. Envy is just information. The emotion that you're is just information and it's information about where you are in your own head. It's not information about the other person. So there's no reason to get and this happens all the time, especially in the creator world, especially in the entertainment world, because in that world sometimes you just takes a little bit. It takes a little sprinkle of fairy dust is all it takes. It doesn't even have the person doesn't have to be that good. You know, it's a little sprinkle of fairy dust and then all of a sudden they're this like massive person or name in that industry. And if you've been working on it for twice the amount of time that they moved and they've been working on it, but you can. Those feelings can come up pretty quickly. That envy feeling, the feeling of jealousy. Just try to interrogate the feeling. You know what I mean? Like, you recognize that you start feeling envious and jealous. It's not a good feeling, by the way. It doesn't feel good to feel jealous or envious. But next time you feel like that because of somebody else's career, just ask yourself those questions like what good is it doing to me? What bad is it doing or good is it doing for them? Why am I so upset about this? It has nothing. Their success has nothing to do with me. And then. And I've grown a lot with this type of stuff before too, because even in podcasting, it's like, my podcasts do well, but I've not blown up like most, like a lot of other podcasters have. And there have been plenty of examples of people who've started podcasts long after I started my show who have done infinitely better than my show has done. And my first initial feelings were envy, jealousy, and just like, oh, screw that. That's crazy. That's dumb. They're not even that good. Why is it that they get all the attention, blah, blah, blah. And the question that I then started asking myself was, what do they know that I don't like? Not only what good does this do me? It doesn't do me any good to feel jealous about somebody else's success. But what do they know that I don't know? What's something that I can learn from them? Yeah, I've technically been podcasting longer, sure. But that doesn't mean I know everything. And clearly they figured something out that I haven't figured out yet. So why don't I just try to learn from them as much as I possibly can? And that's been really helpful for me. So jealousy is a signal. It's not a verdict. Number five, clarity comes from action, not the other way around. One of the most useful things that Drew and I talked about near the end of the conversation was a lot of people wait for clarity before they take action, before they move. But clarity only comes once you're in the water. You don't figure out where you're swimming before you jump in. You jump in, you pick a direction and adjust, and that's it. So the. The. The clarity comes from the action. It's not the other way around. And I think a lot of people get it the other way around most of the time. It's like you're waiting for this. This level of mental clarity that's just never gonna come unless you just take the first step. So take the first step and then adjust along the way. That's why they say all the time, success is a spiral staircase. You can only see the next step. And if you are waiting until you can see all the steps before you take the next step, then you're gonna be waiting for a really long time, because that's not how spiral staircases work. You can't. You can't see what the next step is. You just gotta take it. I love talking to Drew. We hung out recently in Vegas. Really really cool guy, family guy, and just dedicated to the craft of standup comedy. That's probably my biggest takeaway from this was, was just the, the relentless pursuit and focus on the one thing. It's like, again, he's done some podcasts and he's, he's done some writing for shows or whatever, but at the end of the day, he wants to be a, a professional touring standup comic. And he already is a professional touring stand up comic, meaning he gets paid to do that. But obviously he wants his stuff to get out there more, to be able to sell out bigger shows and bigger shows, bigger shows over the course of his career. And I think right now he's laid such an amazing foundation. He's got a couple hundred thousand followers now on Instagram. When I met him, I want to say maybe close to two years ago now, like a year and a half ago I met him, he was at like 60 something, maybe 70 something thousand followers on Instagram. So in the last year and a half or so, he's gone from that to almost 200,000. He's toured with Dane Cook as his opener. He crushes every comedy show that I go to that I see him at. And so I'm excited because, like, he's, he's put in all of the work to build such an amazing foundation that now at this point in his career, when that opportunity that he's been waiting for comes around, he will be very well poised to take full advantage of it. And I think that'll help propel him into the stratosphere with his career. So congrats to you, Drew, for all your hard work and your patience and your consistency. It has already paid off, I mean, massively for you. But I have a feeling that you're going to be one of those guys, like one of the guys in the next decade. So keep up the great work. And for those that are tuning in, thanks so much for tuning in and we'll catch you guys on the next episode. Peace.
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