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SOLO | Make Money by Turning Rejection and Embarrassment Into Your Greatest Advantage - Lessons from My Joe Gatto Interview
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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 another episode of the show. Today it is just me, you and the mic and we are continuing along our series of what I've learned. What I've learned from all the amazing guests that I've had on my show over the past almost nine years now. Pretty crazy, but I think over a thousand interviews I've done now doing the show. 1700, almost 1800 episodes. And so this series is basically me going back through and rediscovering some of the gold that we've gotten. What happens is like when you do this volume of content, when you're interviewing this many people, as I'm interviewing, it's always like, sort of like about the next one, it's always like, okay, well, who are we going to get next and what are we going to do next and who are we going to talk to next? And then it almost, it's almost bad in a way because then you, you don't get all of the mileage out of some of the amazing conversations that you have along the way. So this, this series has been a lot of fun for me because I've been able to go back through some of my own content with some of the people that I look up to still to this day. And I've been able to pull out some really, really cool stuff from it. So on this episode, we're talking about my conversation with Joe Gatto. Now, if you don't know Joe Gatto, just turn on your TV or go to a gym sometime because it seems like impractical jokers re are on all the time. Basically everywhere I go, whether I'm at the airport, I'm at the gym, I'm at a bar getting a beer. Like they're, they're just everywhere. So I can't get away from you, Joe. And this one was a really cool one for me because I, when I first started my podcast, I wrote down a list of like dream guests, people who I really wanted to get on my show at some point, but I had no idea how it was ever going to come to fruition. And the impractical jokers were four of the names that I wrote down. And now I've been able to have two of them on the show and both of them, frankly have become pretty good friends. Like Joe, I'm gonna go see him next week. We've gotten dinner and lunch a couple times, a couple coffees. Like, he's just a really cool, down to earth guy, very genuine, really helpful. And so this, these are some of the core takeaways that I took from our conversation. And if you're new to the show too, this is on Travis makes friends by the podcast that I do some of these longer form interviews with some of these people. And my intention is always to have some form of an educational spin around it. So even when I'm talking people like comedians or athletes or people who aren't necessarily in the self help, personal development, you know, world, still my goal to pull out some things while I talk to those people that can be applied to anybody's life. And so here are some of the lessons that I took away from my, my time with with Joe Gatto. Number one, you have to outlast the nose. Joe and the Joker spent a decade grinding before anything real happened. Three failed TV pilots, multiple attempts to get a movie made. He called it being an 18 year overn. So the people who make it aren't always the most talented ones. There aren't always the ones that make it when they're 19 years old or 21 years old and they just got this big opportunity and then all of a sudden Hollywood loved them. They're just the ones that are still standing when the door finally opens. And I related to this so much, obviously coming from a door to door sales background. This is something that I talk about and I teach all the time, which is the ability to overcome rejection. The ability to move from rejection to rejection without loss of enthusiasm is so highly underrate. And if there's any industry that, that might experience more rejection than a door to door sales guy, it might be Hollywood. Honestly, like the volume of auditions that you go on and then that I think it just feels, it has to feel more personal, you know, like when I'm knocking on somebody's door and they reject my thing or they, you know, tell me to, they Cuss me out, tell me to f off it. You know, you have to work on it a little bit to not take it personally at first. It still kind of hurts. It's obviously still people and you want to connect with people and you don't want them yelling at you. So you're still like going for some form of a connection, but it's less of a rejection of me as a person. Whereas I feel like auditioning for, for films or trying to get a TV show made. I feel like a lot of it's just like a full out, just rejection of you as a human being. Just like, yeah, you're just not good for this role. And so I, I empathize a lot with people who go through rejection in this context, because I have to imagine it's maybe even a little bit more painful than the rejection that I've experienced in my career, which is, which is significant. So you have to outlast the nose. Number two, turn embarrassment into a superpower. So I asked him this question about, you know, growing up and if he had always wanted to get into this world at some point. And he goes all the way back to this moment when he was a kid and he tripped. I think it was like a lot of his family was there. Packed Italian restaurant on Easter Sunday. He tripped, fell down. Everyone's staring at him. And instead of wanting to disappear or, you know, having his face turn red and burying his head and his, you know, his, his mom's chest and trying to hide himself, instead of falling away from all of the awkwardness or the embarrassment, he stood up and said, ta da. And the room just lost it. Like everybody, he had everybody laughing and rolling and he realized he didn't have to carry embarrassment. He could just flip something that made people feel good. And that one reframe became the engine. Obviously, that turned into the, to his career. And you can see that if you've ever watched Impractical Jokers, which I highly recommend, it's a really good show just to turn on at night, enjoy with the family. But it is quite literally the, it's, it's, it's a, it's a baptism of embarrassment that is quite literally their entire tagline for the show is four lifelong friends competing to embarrass each other. And he had to get very comfortable with being embarrassed very early on in order to be able to, to have that superpower, which is now turned into a hit television show. So the true or turn embarrassment into superpower. And I think there's like an underlying lesson Here too, it. Because that moment of embarrassment is, is obvious. It's obvious when you trip in a restaurant packed full of people and everybody sees you fall in your face. It's obvious that that's sort of like an embarrassing moment. But there's other things that are less obvious. So, you know, you, you thinking about that, that business that you want to start, are you thinking about that YouTube channel or whatever it is that you want to do? You thinking about that and then thinking about failing, and then thinking about the people who are around you who'd poke fun at you for starting to post stuff on social or for starting a YouTube channel or podcast to begin with. And then, and then thinking about giving those people power. You're sort of manifesting a future version of embarrassment that does not yet exist and then hiding from it preeminently to save yourself from it happening. And so the sooner you can get more comfortable with embarrassment, the better off you're going to be. I think, I think that's one of the biggest killers of dreams is, in my opinion, it's not even necessarily the fear of failure. It's the fear of embarrassment. It's the fear of being embarrassed about the failure. So you're not like, if, if you could theoretically fail and nobody knew about it, you may not be scared to do it. The reason that you're scared to do it is, is because the failure is going to bring about a certain level of embarrassment, and that threatens your status and your amygdala, you know, stands up on all fours and starts injecting fear into your decision making. So turn embarrassment into a superpower. The sooner you get comfortable with just being willing to be embarrassed in front of other people, probably, probably the better off you're going to be. So turn embarrassment to superpower number three. The format of Impractical Jokers was never really a prank show. It was a friendship show. So the reason Impractical Jokers worked where so many other prank shows failed, because there's been no shortage of these things that have that have tried to pop up. And especially with the advent of YouTube, they're all over the place.
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But it was never about, it was never about humiliating strangers. It was never, it was never like that. That's sort of the problem that I have with some of these prank channels that you find is that you're pranking people who are not opting into the. And then the, the embarrassment is on the person that you're pranking rather than the person who's pulling the prank. And so what, what impractical jokers did is it was, they sort of flipped the script a little bit and it was not, it was not about, you know, him humiliating the stranger on the sidewalk. It was about the guys pranking each other, making each other look dumb or, or feel dumb or feel a certain level of embarrassment. The strangers just happened to witness it. The, the strangers is what, you know, fueled the emb level of, of the guys. And so anytime someone looked genuinely upset, they stopped. And then, you know, obviously for ethical reasons and legal reasons, they have to get consent to release the footage. And so, you know, sometimes they have blurred faces and other times they don't. But their goal was never to make a bunch of other people upset or humiliated or embarrassed. It was, their goal was to, to, to make each other embarrassed. And that's ultimately what, what made it work, I think, is this sort of this like this willing in constant self deprecating humor. And that, that line is what made it sustainable for them for, for over a decade now, 12, 13 seasons. And just got renewed for another one. Joe's been off, off the show. He left the show a couple years back, but it just got renewed for another one and now it's, you know, literally made the careers of those four guys and then a lot of the people who've worked on their sets over the years. So number four, presence is the most underrated parenting skill. Joe was pretty direct about this. There's no real balance between career and family, which I've also found this to be true in all, in all the people that I've talked to. It's sort of another common denominator. It's very, very rare for me to talk to somebody who genuinely believes in the concept of quote, unquote, work, life, balance. What there is is being fully present whenever you're there. So he said five fully present minutes of playing with your kids will be the best part of your kids day, and probably the best part of yours too, when you look back on it. So checking your phone during those minutes is, is the loss. And that's ultimately what I've found too is like, wherever your feet are, do your best to be there. And that's my rub with working from home. I'm recording this from my home studio right now. My kids are downstairs with, with, with my mom, actually. And that's been probably the most difficult part of working from home is that it becomes more difficult to draw that line and separate it because I'm almost constantly working, but I'm also constantly at home and I'm around my kids a lot. And so I've tried my best, and I know that I failed at this more often than I care to admit, but I try my best at this point too. Like, if I'm with the kids, my phone's not on me, it's somewhere else. And I'm not doing things on my phone. And if I'm doing something on my phone, I try my best to at least explain it to them. Just to say, like, hey, give me a few minutes. I need to respond to a couple of emails. Emails, and you do a little bit of work and then we will play, then we will do this thing. And that's been really helpful for me because if you're a parent and you are an entrepreneur or have a career or whatever, you. You are constantly pulled between those two things. And I felt this overwhelming guilt when I was working on my business and then not with my kids because I felt like I should be with my kids. And then when I was the opposite, I felt this overwhelming guilt that I should be working on my business versus spending time with the family. And it was, it was always like this constant pull to be doing the other. And so when I, when I embraced the principle of just wherever you're where, wherever you are, be there, I think that was what was ultimately really, really helpful. Healthy for me and helpful for me. Just like, if I'm working, I am working. If I'm with my kids, I'm with my kids. And I try my best to not mesh those two worlds together. And again, I know I have a lot of work to do. On that. And it's something that I constantly have to try to check myself with, but it is. Presence is the most underrated parenting skill. Number five, go back to your roots when identity cracks. So when he left Impractical Jokers, which is a show he co created and poured a decade of his life into with millions of fans across the globe, he sat alone in an apartment for the first time in his life at 46 years old. And he described it as a feeling of being, quote, unquote, covered in rocks. So his way through it was moving one rock at a time. So get clear on who you are without the thing that you used to draw your identity from. Figure out what still lights you up, and then rebuild from there. So for him, comedy will the root. Performing was the root, going all the way back to that story that I told you about a little bit ago. And so stand up was sort of the next branch. And now he's a touring standup comic, and he wrote a children's book, and he's working on a lot of other cool projects. So go back to your roots when your identity cracks. So there's a few of my favorite lessons from my conversation with Joe. You have to outlast the no's. Turn embarrassment into a superpower. If you're going to build a show, don't build one. Build one that's more based on the like, do something that's different versus doing what everybody else does. Presence is the most underrated parenting skill. And then go back to your roots when your identity gets cracked. So Joe came on the show. Honestly, I didn't know what to expect. I knew the show, I knew the bits, but I didn't really know who Joe was. But what surprised me the most was just how this. This really high level of emotional intelligence sits underneath comedy. So he spent, you know, his entire life making people laugh. But what actually drives him isn't just the laugh. It's what the laugh does for someone who's having a rough day. And that's. That's a different motivation. You can feel it in the way that he talks about his fans to his fans, the way he interacts with people. And then that. That embarrassment story. Really, really love that embarrassment story. He could have internalized it, could have let it become a wound, turn it into trauma, but instead, he turned it into a tool. And then he spent the rest of his career handing that to other people, gifting it to the audience, who is constantly engaging in the stuff that they were putting out. And then the. And then the presence thing, you know, he's. He's. He's been through quite a bit at this point, but through it all, what he kept returning to was just be where you are and, and not where you were, you know, a second ago. Not where you were when you felt like you were crushing it in life. Not where you like not allowing the past to govern the present. Not where you wish you were. Not what the future looks like. Where you are right here, right now in five minutes, fully. And it beats a half hour, you know, where you're just check out and not actually fully present with the people that you love. So go check out all the things that Joe is working on. He's somebody who I look up to a lot and respect a lot. And he will. He will make you laugh as well. If you never watched Impractical Jokers, you're, you know, do your. Do yourself a favor. I think it's on. I think the entire show is on hbo. Max, I want to say. So go check out Impractical Jokers if you haven't yet. It's hilarious. It's a great family watch because there's a lot of really good stuff there, but it's pretty clean, clean comedy. So that's it for this episode of the show. Remember to leave every relationship better than you found it. We'll catch you guys in the next episode. Peace.
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