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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. Today on my solo show with you, time time with Travis. I don't know whatever we should call it where it's just me, you and the mic. We're talking a little bit about how to get an edge on everybody else. The slight edge that's going to get you to, to set yourself apart from the crowd. The good news about this is that it's very simple. The bad news about this is that it is not very easy to do. So it's very simple. Not super easy. But the bottom line is if you're willing to do the things that other people are not willing to do, then you can live a life that nobody else can live. So the, There's a couple of, a couple of things that I've noticed that are just like, not necessarily just like barriers to entry. They're just, they're just the things that you can separate yourself from the crowd in doing that most people are just not going to do. But they're so baseline simple that we don't think about them being, quote unquote, keys to success because it sounds too simple. It sounds too like, obvious, duh. So we tend to, we tend to undermine those things when we. Or undervalue those things rather than overvalue them. And in my experience, the people who overvalue these things are the ones who, given enough time, are the ones who actually are going to pull ahead of the crowd to a significant degree. So the very first one is show up, just showing up, just going to the places where you need to be and showing up where you need to show up is something that most people are not willing to do. And if I, if I think back about it, especially when it comes to the podcast or just making money online, building a, building a business online, which is really the goal when I got into this game because When I was doing door to door, it was like it checked off one of one or two of the boxes for me but didn't check off another one which was more important. So for me it was like I wanted, I wanted freedom at the time and the way that I defined freedom was time freedom, financial freedom and location freedom. Basically do what I want, when I want, with who I want. And door to door gave me a little bit of financial freedom because you can make pretty good money doing that. It gave me a little bit of time freedom because when I was doing door door anyway, we didn't, I wasn't in a summer program where we knocked 12 hours a day. We were year round knockers. So I probably go for somewhere between three to six hours a day knocking because frankly just time of day affected that the volume of people that were home. We found it was like, well, you could go an extra three hours, you know, from 8am to 11am but you're not really going to see that many people home during that timeframe in the middle of the week. And then you're wasting good pitches on non decision makers. And so we basically just optimize the window of opportunity to say like I have X amount of good pitches in me today before I start getting really sloppy and everything goes downhill. So I'm going to optimize at the time where I'm probably have the most, the highest likelihood of talking to an actual decision maker that I can actually sell to. So it gave me some, gave me some time freedom because I, you know, three to six hours a day is really not a crazy work schedule obviously. And it gave me some financial freedom because I was making decent, you know, making six figures as a 22, 23 year old is a, is a good amount. Turns out wasn't that much because I lived in California and I learned that the hard way once I did it. But some financial freedom, some time freedom, but zero location freedom. Meaning that like if I didn't, if, if, if I was gonna take a trip with my wife for a week and a half, I was gonna make $0 when I was gone. And that to me was like, okay, this is a problem. So I was starting the podcast and moving this direction because I wanted to figure out a way that I could potentially do all of these things without sacrificing any of the other ones. And one of them was the location freedom piece. So when I first started I knew nothing about making money online, I had nothing about running businesses. All I knew was how to sell. And so when I First got started, I just remember being willing to go wherever I needed to go and getting there, however I could possibly get there. And I had a conversation with a mentor of mine at the time, and I was basically asking him, like, hey, where should I go for all of the best, like, you know, podcasting trainings? Are there, podcast events? Where should I be going? What should I be doing? And he gave me a list of like two or three events, and he didn't even mention this last one until I dug a little bit deeper. I was like, cool, are you doing anything else? Are you speaking? Or else he was like, actually, I'm doing a podcasting conference out in Australia in, you know, four or five months from now. But he's like, I know that's, that's Australian, that's the other side of the world, so, you know, probably not gonna be able make that one work. And I was like, I'm there, done. You know, say, say less. You know, all they had to say was like, I'm going to Australia and I'm speaking at this thing and you, it probably would be good for you to go, but you know, it's in Australia, so might not work out. And I was like, yeah, we'll, we'll see, you know, so I immediately walked away from that. I got a ticket to that event, I booked a flight to Australia to go to it, and then took my wife with me, made a whole trip out of it, went to New Zealand and stuff. It was a really cool trip, but also it showed to this particular mentor of mine that I was willing to do whatever it took to see the success that I wanted to see. And then he was more willing at that point to open more doors of opportunity to me. And this was actually the way that I was able to stop doing door to door full time and go into online business world full time. And I took a significant pay cut, to be fair. But the way that I was able to get my first, like, batch of coaching clients was that he was really well known in the podcasting space, but he didn't do one on one coaching anymore because he got paid too much from sponsorships and other stuff. It just didn't make sense for him to do one on one coaching. So whenever he got inquiries inbound about, like, hey, can you coach me on starting a podcast? He would refer. Refer those people out to other podcast coaches that he knew would do a good job. And I knew that because when I reached out to him about one on one coaching, he referred me to another guy who I Ended up hiring. And so I went to him basically, and this was after the Australia thing. And I said, you know, I had gotten one coaching client before through just my podcast. And I was like, I think I want to do, do some more podcast coaching. And so I sent him this like, brief email that was like, here are the reasons why you should send that referral business to me first instead of anybody else that you're sending referral business to currently and just outline them for them. Was like, first of all, you know, I'm a good salesperson, so I'll probably convert more of the people you send over to me, which means more affiliate income for you. And then, and then also like, you know that I'm somebody that's willing to do whatever it takes to be successful and you know that I'm gonna be relentless about getting them the results and it's gonna look good on you after you send the referrals my way anyway. And then he was like, okay, cool, this is what I, this is what I've been charging people. And he was charging 50% commissions on, on one, on one coaching that he was sending to other people at the time. And I was like, that's crazy to me, first of all, because like, all you're doing is sending an email and you get 50% of the entire. Which gave me really great insight into, wow, if I can solve the traffic problem, then I can make good money. Because these people are willing to pay him 50% of like this. They're doing a 12 week coaching program, one on one, where they're giving 12 hours of their time and all this other stuff, and they're gonna pay him 50% for the email intro. Crazy. So I actually negotiated it down so I convinced him to send me the business first of all, and then I convinced him to do it for 30% instead of 50%. But I also just wrapped that into the cost of the coach. So I charged more than any of the other people that were that, that, that he was previously sending referrals to. But he would still make the same amount of money that he was making with those other people because I just increased my pricing so that my 30% would match their 50% and he would feel more confident that I would close more of those people, therefore he would make more money. And then the people who were paying more money would probably get better results, therefore they'd be happier and then happier with him for sending me the referrals. So that relationship ended up being like the way that I was able to leave the Door to door sales world full time because he started sending me referrals and able to build this coaching business that at the time it was, it wasn't much, was paying me like four or five thousand dollars a month or something like that. And I was used to making, you know, 15k plus doing door to door. But it was enough for me to be able to be like, okay, this, if I, if I eliminate a bunch of these sort of lifestyle expenses, then I can live off of, you know, 4,000, 5,000 bucks a month and then, and then I can take all of my time and attention and focus on this career path moving forward. But my point is to say that none of that stuff would have happened. He would not have trusted me to do any of those things. He wouldn't have trusted me to care of the people he was sending my way if I didn't show up, if I didn't prove that I was somebody who was worth risking reputation on. And he saw that I was willing to travel halfway around the world to go to this event, turns out built a good relationship with the founder of that event. The next year they did that event again in Australia and I was one of the speakers. So they actually flew me out to Australia to speak there. And that was where I built some great relationships with podcasters and creators that I still have to this day, who at the time, time I would have looked at as like, wow, these are great gets. And then all of a sudden I'm hanging out with them at the speaker retreat right after the conference, where it's just like seven to eight of us in these like, villas on the water in Gold Coast, Australia, hanging out with people who were like legends to me. And I was able to actually build friendships and relationships with those people. But again, that wouldn't have happened if I didn't show up previously. Then that led to me keynoting at Podfest in front of 1200 people because I had been. I had built this resume of speaking at podcasting events and delivering for those cr. So showing up is one of the things that's just like, you just got to show up. And I didn't know at the time, like, obviously a trip to Australia is not cheap and I was paying everything out of my pocket and I didn't have a ton of money to be paying all that stuff, but I was like, I don't care. I'll figure it out. I'll find a way to make it worth it and I'm just going to get out there and show up and showing up is just half the battle, because our culture now is so engineered to make everybody not show up. Like we are in a indoor epidemic. We. We get pushed into our phones, we get pushed into Netflix, we get pushed into the comfort of being at home. And so that's why I say it's not easy to show up, because sometimes you don't want to. And I totally get that. Especially now that I have kids. It makes it a little bit more difficult because there's. There's. It feels like there's real risk here because I. I'm taking time away from my kids to go to this thing that I don't know is going to pan out. But that's why I say it's advice is simple. It's not easy, but you just got to show up. And showing up sometimes is half the battle. If you can just get to the places where things are happening, usually more opportunity is going to come your way. So showing up's the first thing. Second thing, do what you say you're gonna do. Again, sounds super, super easy, but it's not really easy. It is just very simple. You just do what you say you're going to do. And it matters, by the way, that you do this with everybody, including yourself. Which is why I stopped, like, you know, a long time ago. It was just easy for me to be like, yeah, I'll do that. I'll go there. I'll do this, I'll do that. And then I started realizing that there were stakes when I mentioned that I was gonna do something for somebody, and then I didn't do it. I realized that there was stakes attached to that. So I just stopped. I stopped over committing myself to things, and I only committed myself to things that I knew 100% I was going to be able to follow through with. And then when I did follow through with them, it's looked at as like, oh, wow, you actually did the thing that you said you were going to do. It's like, oh, wow. Mind blowing. I suppose. Like, that's. That's crazy that I actually did the thing that I said I was going to do, which is not crazy. That's just what we should be doing. We just don't do. And then you get into the trap of only showing up and doing the things that you said you were gonna do for other people and not doing that thing for yourself. And that's probably the number one thing that you can do to damage your confidence the most, is to tell yourself that you're gonna do something. You tell yourself that you're gonna show up to this thing or tell yourself you're gonna take this action or, or, or build this relationship or whatever and then you don't do that thing. Now you're just creating reasons to distrust yourself, which is going to come out in your relationship with other people and negatively affect your confidence in a tremendous way. So do what you say. You're I again, story time. I had this when I, back when I was right before I was making the transition to be full time podcasting, I had this door to door water purification sales team and I remember telling them that we were going to build this, you know, big door to door, you know, crew and we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, turn this into a multi seven figure type of thing. And I was casting this vision and then I felt this internal struggle, this internal pull because I really wanted to be doing stuff online, I really wanted to be doing the podcast, I really wanted money doing that. I just didn't know how to do it at the time. And then I allowed myself to fall into the trap of not doing what I said I was going to do for them and then it ended up blowing up in my face. Surprise, surprise. I didn't do what I said I was going to do. To support those people to the degree that I told them that I would support them and then eventually ended up with this big blow up. Burnt bridges on relationships and, and then ended up being something that was like a big realization for me to say that like, look, you, you can, you can say all the right things, but if you don't follow up those things with the correct action, the action of what you said that you would do, then ultimately it's going to lead to spite in the relationships and eventually there's going to be a big blow up which exact. Which is exactly what ended up happening. Whereas had I just at that time admitted to myself and to that team what I was feeling and thinking inside of my head, the dissonance that I was feeling between pursuing this path versus pursuing this path. And I would have just said, okay, look guys, I, I've set up this opportunity, I want you guys to be successful. I just can't be as big of a part as I really thought I was going to be at the beginning. However, instead of this compensation plan where I get paid this much, you get paid this much, I'm going to completely change that up. I'm going to give you the reins and allow you to go do whatever you'd like to do within this world. And I'm going to pursue this thing. Had I just done that two, three months earlier, probably none of that stuff would have happened. Probably would have still had great leaderships, all those people, and would have set myself up to make more money during that timeframe, which would have been really helpful when I was making that transition to being an online, to doing the online business when I did it. So there was a lot of other factors in that, in those relationships. Obviously there was sort of both ways type of a thing, things they did, things I did. But ultimately me being the leader, I should have taken the responsibility from the get go and set it up, structured something completely differently instead of implying that this was the action I was going to take and then taking completely different actions that showed them I was disinterested in their success, which ultimately burned the bridges and blew up in my face. So do what you say you're going to do. Even if you didn't tell anybody about it except for yourself. If you don't do the things that you tell yourself you're going to do, it's going to affect the way that you show up in the world. Can't help it. So number one, show up. Number two, do what you say you're gonna do. And then number three, probably potentially most importantly on this list, get prolifically comfortable with boring consistency. Another thing that people are not willing to do is do the boring stuff that works and do it day in and day out, even when everybody else is not doing it, doing those things anymore, or even when you're not seeing the immediate results of those actions. The first few months of doing something like this are objectively going to be the most difficult, so simple example. I use this illustration a lot because it's most, it's, it's easiest for me to, to recollect and give an example. But like real estate agents, your real estate agent, your lender, you're, you're independent, you know, in this sort of financial services space, whether it's real estate or insurance or whatever, you know that there's an activity that you could put in your calendar every single day that would lead to the most business for you and for your team or for your company or whatever. And that activity is marketing. It's lead gen. Whether it's cold calling cold, DMs, door knocking. You know, if you have money, you could spend money on advertising or whatever, but most people getting started in that field are doing it because they want to make money and they don't have any money. So if you're if you don't have that, then you, the only other option is to use your time. It's going to take time or money. A lot of times it's going to take both. But if you don't have money, it's going to take time of time. It's going to take money. So if you don't have money, you're going to have to take the time to go generate these leads. So the one activity that none of the other agents in your office are going to be willing to do that if you do it, you will see success is cold calling. Is doing. Doing this activity that is. Feels painful. Especially if you've never done any sales before, you've never done any cold calling before. It can feel very difficult for those first three, four, five months of doing that thing because you're not going to be good at it. You're still going to have all of the experience of being rejected and you're not going to have anything show for it. And even if you do have something to show for it, especially in a field like that, you don't get paid on that deal for like 12 weeks later on. So you're doing all of this work and not seeing any of the results. And it feels like you're wasting time doing an activity that you hate doing. But I promise you that if you stick in doing that thing long enough, the results will come after a long enough time of actually doing that thing. So if you get, if you just get predictably comfortable with just those boring activities and you do that over a long enough period of time, those activities will compound. You're going to get better. You're going to get better at those cold calls. It's going to hurt less when you get rejected. And then that first paycheck hits the bank account, you go, oh, that actually kind of worked. And then you look around after doing that for one year and it's like, well, I had the best first year of any other rookie in the office. And you do that for a second year and it's like, oh, I'm making six figures now. You do that for the, the fifth year, sixth year, eighth year. Now we're talking about the separation between, you know, being one of the 1% in your industry versus being the bottom 80% or I guess even bottom 99%. Because especially in those fields, 80, 20 rule doesn't even, doesn't even apply. It's more like a 95, 5. Like the majority of the people who are making all the money and doing the most production is the top, you know, 1 to 5% of those people in those fields. And the only way to put yourself in those fields is to do all the work that nobody else is willing to, to do. Because everybody else is going to go to the luncheons, then they're going to go to the mixers, and they're going to go to the, to the, you know, team referral network meetings. When in reality, if they just spent the first three hours of the day making cold calls, the results that they have would be far beyond the results of anybody else in that, in that office or in that field or that in that industry. So show up, do what you say you're going to do, and get really comfortable with the boring consistency, the monotony of whatever it is that you're trying to be successful in. And so these are three things that, that anybody can do. It does not matter what your background is, how many degrees you have, how rich your parents are, none of that matters. Every single person listening can show up, do what they say they're going to do, and get comfortable being boringly being, being consistently boring. You can do all of those three things. And if you do those three things for a long enough period of time, you will notice that like the, the competition will, will just be further and further and further in the rear view mirror because they're not willing to do any of these things for any length of time. So show up, do what you say you're going to do, get predictably, be comfortable with boring consistency, and you're probably going to see some success come in your life in the next few years. So that's it for today's episode. Appreciate you for tuning in. Shoot me an email or something if you got any questions, comments, concerns, topics we can talk about here on the show. I look forward to hearing from you over there, but thanks for tuning in this episode. We'll catch you in the next one. Peace.