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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money by Niching Down: Lessons on Passion, Consistency, and Building an Audience - Lessons from my Brendan Schaub interview
00:14:30
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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 going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show where it is just me, you and the mic. We are continuing along with our series of talking about some of the lessons and takeaways that I've gotten from the amazing guests that have been on the show. It was one of those things recently where I was looking back through the catalog for some reason I forget exactly why I was looking back through like some of the guests and even I was sort of shocked. I was like, oh yeah, I totally forgot I had that person. That was such a great conversation. I started reading through some of the notes and was like there's so much gold here that like I recorded it once four years ago and then released it and then haven't done anything with it since. And so it was like, well, why don't I just do a big series where I just go through a bunch of past episodes, write out some of the stuff that I've taken away from those episodes and then share with you guys. So we are continuing along with that series right now on this and this episode is going to be about my conversation Conversation with Brendan Schaub. Brendan is a was a UFC fighter turned stand up comic and now podcaster. I think he recently sold a like a car show or something. So he's constantly reinventing himself in in the creator economy in that world and found a lot of value in this conversation. And frankly he's somebody online who gets like so much hate that I don't understand which is, it's just weird and wild to me because there's so. Because all the people who are like casting all this hate have done zero things in their life and they're like oh, but his UFC time like wasn't the great and like he's not that funny of a standup comic or whatever and it's like oh okay but like, what are you doing? Where's this hate coming from? I don't understand it. So anyway, I enjoyed my time with Brendan. I think he's doing some cool things and I like to see him, like I said, continuously reinvent himself. So let's go ahead and jump in here with number one. Number one, never start something just for the money. Start something because you do it for free. And Brendan was talking about this with their, with his podcast the Fighter and the Kid, which he hosts with Brian Callan, which they did for three to four years without, without making a dime. He didn't do stand up comedy for money. He didn't launch his whiskey brand chasing a Conor McGregor thing. He did it because he loves whiskey. Every single thing that he's built has been organic. And that's not an accident. That's, it's literally the foundation that he's built it on. And if the money were gone tomorrow, he'd still show up and do it. And that's a great indicator that you're doing something correct. And especially when it comes to creating things like a podcast or a YouTube channel or stuff for social, it should be around something that you enjoy, at least to some degree. That's not to imply that it's never going to feel like work. And I think I've talked about this before, but even when I do these solo shows, like we do solo shows on the show, we do co hosted episodes with my producer, I do interviews. The solo shows are the hardest ones for me to do because it's just me sitting down in front of a camera, talking by myself to nobody, it seem, seems like anyway, and so it's not. And I'm not saying that like you're, you're going to just enjoy work every day. Like there's going to be things that you don't like about it. But the thing is, I would still do a podcast even if the podcast weren't making me the money that it's making me right now. And I did do it for several years before it did. So when you, when you, especially if you're like looking at something creative or you're looking at a side hustle or something like that. If you can do, if, if it's something that you would do for free that you could potentially turn into something that you can make money off of, I think that's a really interesting place to play in. You also want to run through a couple of other things. Like, first of all, do I enjoy it, like when I do it for free, but also Am I good at it? And then also, is it something that people are looking for? If you can mar those three things, that's probably the best version of that. Because just because you like doing something doesn't mean that you're good at it, and it doesn't mean that people want it. You know what I mean? So that's obviously going to be more difficult to monetize. If you're. Even if you're doing something that you enjoy and you're really good at it but nobody wants it, then, you know, you're sort of like, okay, well, you're sort of guaranteeing that you're never going to make many make any money on it, which, again, isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could just be a hobby. But if you like the idea of it potentially paying you one day, then, like, try to, you know, marry something in those three worlds. Like, what do people, like, want? What am I going to at? What do I enjoy? Like, what's the Venn diagram? What's the thing in the middle there? List out a few things that's probably an indicator that it's something that you should pursue. And by the way, this is also why he stopped doing standup comedy. Didn't enjoy it that much. Found that he, you know, it was a more long, like, a longer, more difficult process than I think he figured that it was when he first got into it. And so he cut that out of his life and he doesn't do standup comedy anymore. He does the podcast and then. But then he did something else recently. Like I said, he started this, like, car show thing, and he loves cars and he loves buying cool cars and then, you know, modifying those cars. And so now he's doing this car thing, and it's like, well, that's another thing that started from something that he just cared about and his whiskey brand. It didn't start because he wanted to make Conor, Conor McGregor money. He started because he likes drinking whiskey. So let's start a whiskey brand. Just some really good stuff in there, I think. Number two, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to do it. This sort of plays into the first one that we talked about. Brennan was ranked top 10 in the UFC. He was knocking out guys he used to watch that were, like, his heroes. He was on the biggest stage in combat sports, but he was miserable. He said. He said, this just isn't what I want to do with my life. And most people would write that out forever. He didn't. He walked and there's again, a lot of, really a lot of gold in here. Just because you're good at something does not mean you have to do that thing. And I experienced this personally in the sales world. I was pretty good at sales. But I had this sort of come to Jesus moment where I realized like, I don't want to be doing this forever. Not to say that it's a bad thing, not to vilify the entire industry or to say that like, oh, you're dumb if you want to be in door to door for the rest of your life. In fact, it's actually the opposite for me. I wish that I could have kept doing that thing because I frankly, I would have made a lot more money doing door to door sales than I have in podcasting. But I just, I enjoy podcasting more than I enjoy doing door to door sales. So I just was like, just because you're Just because I was good at that thing does not mean that I have to continually do that thing. And I really enjoyed that. That, that was something that he also took away from his time in the ufc. Number three Put yourself in the hardest rooms, not the easiest rooms. This is a lesson that he learned in fighting that translated directly to doing standup.
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Don't avoid the guys who give you problems in sparring, you know, and that's exactly who you should be working with when you're sparring. Like, like get into the difficult rooms and in, in, in comedy that meant, you know, when he was, when he was pursuing standup, it meant following some of the biggest names in comedy. Following the Joey Diaz's Tom Seguros, the Burt Kreisler, the Joe Rogan. Like most young comics want, you know, a cupcake spot, like where they're going up, you know, after somebody bombs so that they can save the crowd, and the crowd is more likely to laugh at what they're saying or something. So he wanted that. He wanted that bad spot. He wanted to have to go up after some killer who had the audience rolling just so it would make it more difficult on himself. So put yourself, yourself in the hardest rooms, not the easiest rooms. Again, really great advice for anything that you're trying to do. It's not about becoming the biggest fish in the small pond. It's about trying to pursue the bigger ponds and then getting yourself around the big fish in those ponds. And then even if you never are the big fish in that pond, you can still get a lot bigger than you would be had you stayed in the small pond and were the biggest fish there. So if you. If you constantly find yourself in rooms where you're the smartest person, then it means that you are doing something wrong. You want to be in rooms where you're the dumbest person in the room and willing to say it proudly willing to proclaim, like, I am. Hey, I am the dumbest person in this room. Like, this is this. I love putting myself in environments. Now. I. I think maybe for a little bit of time, I maybe did that a little bit too much because I. It almost started affecting my confidence level because I was constantly in rooms where I felt like I didn't deserve to be in. And every once in a while, it was good for me to, like, be in a room where I was the guy that everybody was asking questions to, because it was. It was like, oh, I have figured out a couple of things. Okay, I do have some value to offer here. And so I almost went a little bit too far with it sometimes. But I don't think that that's the problem for most people. I'll say that. Number three, or, excuse me, number four, treat your podcast like you work for espn. I loved this advice, especially as a podcaster. This is what I've told people from day one. Treat your podcast like a hobby. It pays you like a hobby. Treat it like a business will pay you like a business at some point. And so this is. This was exactly the mentality that he brought into the Fighter. And the kid Brendan was uncompromising about with his partner and co host Brian Cowan from day one. Show comes out at the same time every single week, no exceptions. If it drops, you know, maybe Tuesday or Thursday, and then this week we didn't do anything and then didn't get it. At this time, the people just don't take you seriously. So professionalism, consistency are what separate the people who build audiences from the ones who don't. And, and, and I like that he compared it to working at espn, because this is the same thing that I tell a bunch of podcasters is like, you want there to be the lowest possible amount of drop off between somebody's experience going in for like a broadcast journalism interview at a news station and coming on your podcast. You want it to be the, the, you want it to be as, as professional as you can possibly make it so that the, their experience makes them feel like they're actually being interviewed by a professional in the space and not just by some random person who decided to start a podcast one day. So treat your show like you're working for espn. Like we have a schedule of programming that we are going to stick to for a certain duration of time, any adjustments, and we're going to do that every single week, or every single month, or every single day, whatever that programming schedule is. And we're going to do that without exception, even if it means that I gotta stay up really, really late trying to crank out one more episode because we weren't able to stay on top of it. You know, even if that means batching episodes and recording eight of them in a single day to make sure you're ahead of your calendar, whatever it is, just make sure that if you're going to jump into this space, treat it the same way that you would that if you were, if you were working for FOX or CNN or ESPN or whatever. Number five niche down the conversion rate beats the download count every single time. This is something that we were both kind of speaking into because I brought up a friend of mine, Harry, who does a vertical farming podcast, who got essentially no download. I mean, it's like three to five hundred downloads an episode, something like that, something really, really minimal that most people would look at and go like, oh, what a waste of time. But he sold over $70,000 of Season 2 sponsorships before Season 2 dropped because of how niche and hyper specific his audience was. It's a vertical farming podcast. Like who? Like there is such a unique specific audience that anybody and everybody who tuned in, they were very much interested in learning more about vertical farming. And he got flown to Dubai to like speak at a vertical farming conference, which I didn't even know existed, but there's conferences and events for everything. And then he was like, when he showed up there, he was like, bro, it was so weird. I was like, I was literally celebrity there. Like, everybody that was at that conference listened to my show. Which also speaks to why so many advertisers were willing to pay him far, far outside of the range of what normal, quote unquote, normal CPM advertising rates would be in the podcasting industry. They paid him a lot more than that because he built such a unique and niche show concept with, with this particular set of buyers. And those advertisers still have to spend money on ads like they're still trying to get those companies are still trying to get in front of their ideal audience. It's just that it' difficult to to find vertical farming enthusiasts on Facebook than it is to find them on a podcast that's about vertical farming. So Brendan spoke into this a little bit as well. You know, if you're, if you're that vertical farming equipment company, you'd rather own that audience of 500 hyper relevant listeners than try to, you know, sponsor a show like Rogan or something like that that's got millions and millions of listeners. But then you're not speaking to anybody who actually wants to buy your stuff. So the niche show wins in, especially when it comes to like monetizing your audience. It wins all the time on cpm, especially because every listener is the right listener. And advertisers are willing to pay a higher CPM for the conversions than they are for just the attention sometimes. So niche down because the conversion rates will always beat the download count in terms of your ability to turn your show into revenue. So had a really good time with this conversation with Brendan. Go check out the full episode with him. But these are a few of my key takeaways from it. Thanks so much for tuning in. Catch you guys on the next episode. Peace.
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