
Loading summary
A
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, you're not behind, you're just early. That is the topic of today's show. I am your host, Travis Chappell. This is one of our solo shows here on the Travis Makes Money podcast where we talk mainly just, just me, you, just me and you and the mic, of course. But today we're talking about you're not behind, you're just early. This is a message that I've needed to hear a couple of times throughout my life. Because if you are anything like me and you are somebody who wants more out of life, then you can tend to get into this trap that says that you're behind that, you know, because you can find like four examples of people on the Internet who are better off than you, means that you're just a failure and you're just really bad at what you do, you know, and you may as well, you may as well throw in the towel now because it's going to be a long journey of failing ahead of you. And I've definitely felt like that several times throughout my career. But you're not, you're not behind. You're just early. And what I've noticed as a couple of things about this, which of course we're going to talk about, but really what I've noticed here is that especially if you want to do like big things with your life, you're going to have to make a bunch of sacrifices at the beginning. And those sacrifices can basically make it seem like you are not progressing. That's what makes it difficult is the lack of progression. It's like you, you're doing all the work, you're, you're making all the sacrifices. You know, you're putting in late nights, you're working, quote, unquote, working overtime without getting paid for it. You know, you're working your, your 9 to 5 and then you're working from 8pm to midnight working on what you really want to be working on. Maybe you're doing it a coffee shop or you're leaving your family to go to a Denny's and sit down. I don't know why Denny's for me has been like a productivity place. Probably stems from the fact that like when I was in college, I wasn't much of a, much of a. I wasn't a partier at all because I was in Bible college and literally get kicked out. If you got caught drinking or smoking or gambling or cussing or any of those things, having sex, they'd kick you off for any of those things. So I wasn't, I wasn't a partier at all in college. And so Denny's was like the place that we'd go hang out. It was also the place where I got the majority of my studying done. Cause I, I like being like. When I'm studying or, or, or working on something, I like being in a place that has bus rather than if it's like midnight and I'm sitting at my kitchen table and the house is dark and it's. And it's come and it's too late, nobody's up, nothing's happening. I am way more tempted to go lay down and go to sleep. Whereas at a Denny's, people are there and walking around and busy. And yeah, half of them are homeless and the other half are drunk and recovering from the club there's. That went to. But it's a good place. So anyway, you might find yourself in a Denny's at midnight working on a side project or maybe learning a new skill, right? Like taking an online course and trying to learn how to run Facebook ads or something like that. And during that time period, it feels bad because you're making all of the sacrifices and you're not seeing any of the results. And so this is why it feels like you're behind. Because you look at other people who are your age, maybe other people that you graduated school with, whether that's high school or college, and maybe they just, they just, you know, you. You have one friend who just went out and got a job and they just started working and they are making 60, $70,000 a year, and they use their free cash flow to go buy toys. They got a brand new truck and they got this boat that they just bought, or they have whatever, a motorcycle or a dirt bike or something like that. And you start. They start upgrading the new house that they just bought and all this other stuff. And you start looking at that and you go, well, I'm still, you know, living with three roommates and just trying to dump all the money that I make back into myself so that I can learn how to make more money. And you, you. And like, I'm still driving this piece of crap car and I can't eat at the restaurants they're eating at. And you just start getting really down on yourself, man. You start feeling like, well, I'm not, I'm not going anywhere. Why is this? You know, I'm the one that's like pursuing this other version of success and, but I'm the one who's not getting any of it. And that can, that can feel really bad. And I, like I said, trust me, I've been there where I've, you know, even when I first started making some money in door to door when I was, when I was younger, in my like early 20s, I had, even during college it's like I had friends who would, who were buying, you know, brand new Mustangs and stuff like that and I was driving an old beat up truck with 200000 miles on it and I really wanted to go get a nice car, but I just wouldn't allow myself to do it. But I saved up and bought my first house.
B
Your next chapter in health care starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors and learn about our associate degree in nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit Carrington.
A
Edu. Edu Sci which I made like 40 grand on that I ended up putting into another house that I basically broke even on. But anyway, I was learning, I was, I was actively trying to make myself better. And during that time there's just going to be an extended period of time where you're gonna have to do all the work and get none of the results. And the, the problem is that you don't realize that progress is like compound interest. The majority of the growth happens at the end of the. So if you take someone like Alex Ramosi for example, talks about this pretty famously in his book $100 million offers, where he had done seven, eight different businesses, including his gyms that he had built and then sold. And then he had the gym licensing model and then they were doing gym flipping and then his business partner stole his money and then he ran out of cash and he couldn't pay his employees or salespeople. And then for a day they started selling personal training clients for, for Layla and then by the end of that day basically started the gym launch model and then by the end of that year had $2,003,000,000 liquid cash in the bank. After a decade of pursuing entrepreneurship, it's like the majority of the growth is going to come at the tail end of this thing. You just got to stay in the game. That's the people. You cannot win the game if you don't keep playing. There's this invisible mid middle to success because when you first get started, it's fun, it's novel, it lights up that part of your brain that's a bunch of words that I can't pronounce because I'm not a neuroscientist. But there's a literal part of your brain that lights up when you experience something novel, something new. And when you're first jumping into a venture or new activity, it's like, well, you're gung ho and excited and, you know, stoked to be pursuing this new venture. But as soon as that wears off, now you're in the invisible middle. You're in the messy middle because you haven't made it to the light at the end of the tunnel. You haven't made it to the big payday or the epic results or, you know, fill in the blank for whatever, you know, the, the million subscribers on the YouTube channel. Whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, you haven't made it there yet. But you're also way past the beginning, lovey dovey butterfly stage too. So now you find yourself doing something that maybe doesn't light you up anymore, and you aren't getting any of the results. And you're still going to Denny's at midnight to work on the project, and you see your friends driving their dream cars and getting toys and going to Hawaii and spending every free dollar they have on luxuries and experiences and stuff while you're sitting there investing money in yourself. Look, I understand probably better than most this particular problem because I, I just, I, I trusted the process so much, and I believed in the process so much. That is just like, it just made sense to me that if I prioritize investing in myself that I will eventually become a force to be reckoned with. That it, that, that it would. It, I, I, I'd invest so much in myself that it would be unreasonable that I would not be successful because I am consistently making myself that much better of a person. That, that was not necessarily a better person, just like more capable of, of reaching the goals that I, that I had for myself. So when I first started the podcast, it was like, man, if I could make, you know, 5,000 bucks a month doing this, that would be awesome, you know, And I was like, that was, that was a really cool thought to me and pursued the podcast. It's been over eight years that I've been running this show. And in that eight years, I experienced a lot of ups and downs. We started businesses, we lost businesses, we made money, we lost money. And I also invested over $400,000 directly into myself. So I'm driving, you know, used crap, I mean, crappy, not actually crappy, like I wasn't afraid they were going to fall apart, but used vehicles with, you know, hundreds, thousands of miles on them. And at the same time I'm investing a hundred thousand dollars into this Mastermind group or $25,000 into this, you know, two day weekend retreat with other entrepreneurs to learn from. It's like I'm making these huge, massive investments into myself while at the same time it's like, oh, I got some, you know, I got these cars and we can't take that trip because, you know, we don't have enough money to, to go do that thing that we really want to do. But I am going to drop 50 grand on this coach. You know what I mean? It was so. It's such a, it's such a weird thing to hold those, those truths simultaneously where it's like I technically could afford to do some of these things, but I would also rather put them into this thing because it just makes more sense to me to just make myself better at earning income. And then last year, and this sort of, is the whole point of this episode, which is that you should just, you should be expecting others to outpace you because they're going to short term gain, because they're not pursuing the same path that you're pursuing. So you can't allow that to deter you from your path. And it's also another reason why it's important to go get around a bunch of other people who also value investing in themselves, who also are, are, you know, have really big goals or have similar goals to the ones that you have for your life because it sort of normalizes the behavior that you're engaged in, which is by definition for broader society, abnormal. So if you go get around those people, you're more likely to keep up with it rather than being around all the other people who are spending the money on all the stuff that you really want to have, but are forcing yourself to be disciplined enough to not spend the money on those things. But yeah, so, you know, 400 grand on myself, driving crappy cars, not, you know, not flying first class or anything that I really wanted to do. And then what happens is over time is progress is like compound interest like we talked about, right? So Most of the growth comes, comes later and sort of all at the same time, but it appears overnight. Right? So from 2017 to 2024 we, to be fair, we weren't really focused on sponsorship income, but we probably made, I don't know, a hundred grand total of like podcast sponsorship income in those six, seven years. And then 2025 it was like 300 something thousand. It was like in one year we made more than we made in the previous six, seven years combined on podcast sponsorship revenue. And now this year will be another record breaking year. And, and probably, frankly this year will probably be more than last year plus the other years com. You know, the majority of the growth is going to come later. Just understand progress works like a com, like compound interest. You know, at the beginning it feels like why am I putting this thousand bucks into this money market account or this, as you know, the s and P500, it's not doing anything for me. And you wake up in 30 years and it's like, oh well now this is 4x what I've contributed over the last 30 years. It's sort of the same thing here. So just know that success is slow until it's sudden. That's why everybody is so obsessed with the idea of the overnight success. But I have interviewed enough people on this show, probably close to a thousand at this point, if not more than a thousand, to know that every time, not every time, almost every single time, without exception, there's a couple exceptions, but almost every time there it was not an overnight success, it was a ten year overnight success. Like the most exaggerated example I can think of on this is someone like Matt Rife. Matt Rife is somebody who is the perfect example of the 10 year overnight success. The dude was hustling in clubs from the time that he was like. I had Dane Cook on my show and Dane talks about how Matt came to see him when he was a teenager and talked to him and stuff. And then, and Dane basically was just like, well anytime, like next time you're out in LA with your parents, as long as your parents okay with it, you know, you can perform at this place or this club, I'm doing whatever. So for 10 years, from like 15, 16 years old to 25, 26 years old, he's working at clubs, he's doing the, the standup hustle. He's driving around from place to place and not making enough to barely making enough to survive essentially to the degree where he almost literally quit stand up. He was just like, if I can't make something work in the next year or two, I'm just gonna go back home and start doing this other thing because clearly this is not going to be a path that works out for me. And then he posted one Tick Tock video and it blew up. And then it blew up the rest of his Tick Tock videos. And then he was the highest paid comedian I believe of 20, 25 to like 25, $30 million. Selling out are youngest person, I believe youngest comic ever to sell out Madison Square Garden. And then obviously he's become the Matt Rife of today. Well that the success kind of happened overnight but it was a result of putting in the work for over a decade. It's just that the success finally caught up to the work that he was putting in. You know, it's like as people finally got exposed to who he was but if he were not good, you know what I mean? So like if maybe, Maybe that one TikTok video blows up but then people go check out the rest of his content and none of it's good. They're not going to stick around, you know. So he had to continue being good and he's had to continue being good and, and he, that's what he's done. He's been able to now make this extraordinary career out of something that a lot of people will never be able to figure out. But it came the the success.
C
This episode is brought to you by indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead use Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C. According to INDEED data, Sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
D
We heard you nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won. But maybe you should have asked for more. Say hello to the hot honey snack wrap. Now you've really go to McDonald's and get it while you can.
A
Came in the last two years of doing that thing when he did it basically under the radar with nobody know knowing who he was for 10 years. So you are not behind, you're just early. Try to keep that in mind. Try to go get around other people who also have that mindset because I know it's difficult sometimes it's really difficult to, to look around and see that others this, this is I think especially true in your twenties. But you can look around and see others are just outpacing you, man. It's just like, ah, well, they, but they got the promotion and they got this other thing going and they got their, their cars and their trucks and their dirt bikes and their boats and they got all this stuff and it seems like they're progressing and they're moving forward and they got the new house and they've made all these upgrades to the house and it looks nice and it feels nice and I'm still in this apartment with four roommates and I drive this car. And you, you. It, it feels bad internally because you're not seeing any of the results that are tied to all of the work and sacrifice that you're putting. Promise you. I promise you. It's, it's coming. It's around the corner. Okay. Just stay in the game. You're not behind, you're just early. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
Host: Travis Chappell
Date: February 20, 2026
In this solo episode, Travis Chappell tackles a pervasive mindset challenge: the feeling that you’re falling behind in life or in your financial journey. Drawing deeply from his own experiences and the stories of guests he’s interviewed, Travis reframes this anxiety as a byproduct of being early on your path—not behind. He emphasizes that real success often comes only after a lengthy period of invisible effort, sacrifice, and compound growth, and provides encouragement and practical reflections for listeners who may feel discouraged about their progress.
On Comparison:
“You can find like four examples of people on the Internet who are better off than you… and you may as well throw in the towel now because it’s gonna be a long journey of failing ahead of you. But you’re not, you’re not behind. You’re just early.” (01:18) – Travis Chappell
On Investing in Yourself:
“It just made sense to me that if I prioritize investing in myself that I will eventually become a force to be reckoned with… it would be unreasonable that I would not be successful.” (08:05) – Travis Chappell
On Progress:
“Just know that success is slow until it’s sudden. That’s why everybody is so obsessed with the idea of the overnight success.” (11:51) – Travis Chappell
Matt Rife Example:
“Matt Rife is somebody who is the perfect example of the 10-year overnight success…” (12:51) – Travis Chappell
On Staying the Course:
“You cannot win the game if you don’t keep playing.” (06:33) – Travis Chappell
On the Payoff: “I promise you. It’s coming. It’s around the corner. Okay. Just stay in the game. You’re not behind, you’re just early.” (15:30) – Travis Chappell
Warm, direct, personal, empathetic, and motivational—Travis blends personal vulnerability with pragmatic optimism, encouraging listeners to keep faith in themselves and the value of long-term self-investment.
You’re not falling behind—your progress may simply not be visible yet. If you’re making sacrifices, investing in yourself, and staying consistent, you’re exactly where you need to be. The payoff comes later, often suddenly and “overnight,” but only for those who persist. Find community, normalize your path, keep going. You are not behind. You’re just early.