A Door-to-Door Sales Guy Turned Podcaster Travis Chappell #superentrepreneurs #shahiddurrani

[Music] welcome to super entrepreneurs podcast today we have with us travis chapel how are you chad what's up man thanks so much for having me on the show no awesome to have you my friend awesome to have you your sound quality is incredible hey i got i i can't take any credit man this is uh just some really awesome equipment that we were able to upgrade to finally so uh yeah it's all about that all about that uh smooth microphone sound you know so which podcast do you have so my show is called build your network uh it's all about how to build relationships with the people that you want to be like the most in life oh cool so i jumped jumped the gun there but can you introduce yourself and all the amazing things that you're involved in sure so i am basically just a door-to-door sales guy turned podcaster is like the easiest way to say it um there's a bunch of other stuff that happened in between and all amidst all of that stuff as you can imagine from an entrepreneur to entrepreneur that the shiny object syndrome and trying to you know discover the path all i really knew was that i didn't want to go the traditional path so it was just kind of like a bumpy road trying to figure out what i was going to be doing and uh the though i i started my career in door-to-door sales because i didn't know what else to do outside out of college i actually went to college for ministry so i got a double majored in bible and church ministries and got my bachelor's degree and then i realized when i was done it was a really really it was actually my junior year i did an internship at a church and just didn't enjoy it and i um on the weekdays so i interned with church on the weekends on the weekdays i was doing door-to-door sales out of outside of outside of school and i had my own my own sales team and it was going pretty well i was making some pretty good money and i was you know 19 20 years old and i would find myself on the weekends interning doing the thing that i was supposed to be doing for the rest of my life looking forward to getting back to school on monday so that i could go work at the place that i was supposed to be quitting in you know six months when i graduated college so that was the first time where i started to realize like uh maybe this isn't what i'm gonna do with the rest of my life and by the time i graduated i basically come to that decision completely but at that point i had a useless unaccredited bible degree and i don't know if you ever tried to get a job uh she had with a useless bible degree but it's basically the same as not having a degree at all so the only thing that i really knew how to do was door-to-door sales so i just kept doing it and it was the only thing that i knew that i could make good money if i gave you a 100 effort you know because i was like what am i what realistically what am i going to do go work for 35 000 a year out of college and just like be have to have some like dead end going nowhere type of job or career or something like that like that's not going to work out plus i hate people tell me what to do anyway yeah um so door-to-door was just kind of like well i know that if i do this i can make six figures and i can work on my own schedule and nobody tells me what to do or where to go or when i got to be there um and so that's that's what i ended up doing was uh was door-to-door sales for did that for four or five years if you include my time in college and then uh include the time that i did that uh while i was trying to get the podcast off the ground so after a while of doing door-to-door i just didn't i i knew i knew enough to look into the future and know that i didn't want to be doing it in another decade you know so uh at that point i was kind of back to square one because it was like well i'm not gonna do the thing that i went to college for and i'm not gonna do the thing that i have experience in so now i'm like starting from scratch and essentially whatever i decided to do next and uh podcasting ended up being ended up being that thing and so we started building network podcasts a few years back and now everything's kind of transitioned to our online businesses so we have our our podcast profit course and academy and our private coaching program and we have the podcast and we also have our podcasting software company as well sales is the highest paid profession so you did you did a great job to go into that what were you selling though door-to-door yeah so i started in college selling solar and then after college i sold alarms that was the one that i made six figures in for the first time ever was in alarm sales and then i ended up in water purification and then and then podcasting yeah so the podcasting what kind of guest you guys bring on like is it more based on like did you like counseling as well like kind of a counseling type of guest as well that you bring on for marriage and yeah so we focus mostly on uh on entrepreneurship and okay and like networking for the purpose of like building your inner circle understood people that are pushing you to be a better person and stuff like that uh so yeah we focus a lot more on the entrepreneurship type crowd but we talk you know networking's such a broad topic yeah you can talk to just about anybody that's successful has some done some level of networking in their life regardless of what industry they're and they may even call it networking you know what i mean like some people the business world's familiar with the term because it's talked about a lot but other worlds that you talk to they may not call it networking but they still do it you know it's just you know they just wouldn't call it that it was like oh i went to this party one time and i met this person was like yeah that's networking yeah just because you didn't go to like just because it doesn't say networking event on the top and like you have to have a thousand business cards and a name tag like doesn't mean that you're that you're not networking but uh so yeah that's mostly what we talked about on the show that's the type of guest we talked to well that's awesome and for you mentioned something about a coaching and online core it's a course on yeah so we have our podcast profit academy and uh so that's our online self-study course and training program where we teach entrepreneurs how to build profitable podcasts um so that's that's the the core of what we do there and then for any of those entrepreneurs that are like above that you know 10k a month part we we kind of move them into our private coaching program because that's more built for uh for people that are already seeing big numbers in their business and now they just want to add a podcast to to that to that plan so the academy and the kind of mastermind some of the lower ticket stuff is just kind of like people that are just getting started getting their feet wet they want to build something but they don't know exactly what yet they need some clarity some some you know defining moments and things like that and then the coaching program is more for the established entrepreneurs that just want to start building an online presence with a personal brand through podcasting and this course it it actually teaches them how to monetize the podcast as well correct yes sir that's kind of like that's really our biggest differentiation point because a lot of people online teach out a podcast i know we teach people how to make money podcasting which is a lot more rare yeah that's what i'm asking because almost everyone i met they have the program to help you find your niche and your business set up equipment all that kind of stuff but when it comes to monetization it's very vague um so how much focus is there on on the monetization portion a lot of focus but it really depends on the person that's in there uh you know we recommend a different plan of action for different people with different goals you know what i mean so it's very much custom tailored to the person that's jumping in where it's like hey you need to focus on this part i know monetize monetization is your goal right now but you need to focus on these two things first before we worry about monetization or somebody could come in and be like man you should have been monetizing six months ago let's get you started right now you know what i mean so we kind of work with a right a wide range a wide variety of people um in that in that context but there's a lot of work that we do based around the monetization aspect of podcasting and that's good that is customized right like it's not just hey here's a login credential yeah go ahead you know you actually talk to the person you actually talk to the client find out their needs okay exactly so what was the what was the biggest surprise that you have had in this journey entrepreneurship [Music] biggest surprise um i mean i'll tell you this one just because it's kind of top of mind for me sure um biggest surprise uh recently has been how much of entrepreneurship is not knowable until action is taken from the outside in it looks to be not that way right like from the outside in you give really high value to your ideas about what could be a successful business but once you jump into one of those ideas and start trying to actually implement it you start understanding why there's so few successful entrepreneurs like people who started businesses that are actually going well and still going well you know i think the stat is sadly over half of businesses will go out of business in within five years or within three years or something like that it's a high you know percentage that your business won't make it and uh and i think that's largely one of the reasons to do with it because like people just think like well i have this idea so let's go act on this idea and if people don't take advantage of it then we just keep pushing this one idea even though we're meeting a ton of resistance and we're not getting people to take advantage of it and it seems like it's growing really slowly and we're not doing anything that's actually making a difference like but they still hold on to the idea you know what i mean so one of the biggest surprises for me has just been like it's not really about the idea it's about the execution on the idea and it's about iterating the idea until you find people that are willing to actually pay you for that idea and then trying to take that idea to scale you know what i mean there's just a lot more testing and a lot more experimentation that has to be done in entrepreneurship before you find you know the thing that's going to take off and i think people just don't think it's going to be that much work you know what i mean it's kind of like oh i have this idea so let's go sell it and it's like okay great how did that go you know what i mean like did it did it work if it worked then you might have gotten lucky and got the right idea with the right audience and the right offer and the right messaging you might have gotten all that right the first time but odds are you probably didn't get it right the first time and you're gonna have to do some testing you're gonna have to do some iterating you have to implement it you're gonna have to do some experimenting you have to do some you know uh some some conversations with some ideal clients you're gonna have to do like there's so much more work that goes into it i think it just surprises people and they view it as a failure right like they they they chalk it up as a tally mark in the failure column way too soon like my point is they don't understand that that's not a failure it's literally just part of the success process is part of the design exactly like you've got to test you've got to implement you've got to iterate like you you implement something you test it and then you make some some alterations to it and then you do that process again i think people do that and then they do it once or twice and then it's like well we tried everything it's a failure now you know when you read about some of the most successful companies out there a lot of them are just huge pivots away from the original thing that they were originally intended to do even you know look at something like instagram i forget the exact original um idea for instagram but it wasn't a social media picture sharing site that wasn't the original idea for instagram that was a pivot that they did with their user base after getting after getting real customer data and and feedback and it obviously worked out pretty well for them you know so i think i just think people give up too soon yeah because not because they're quitters it's just because they don't realize that that's literally just part of the game it's literally part of the process you have to do it it's not even an option like i said you might get lucky but do you really want to base the future of your success and your family on luck probably not you know what i mean like you want to do what's repeatable duplicatable if you're going to take the risk to start a business and put in the work to start a business um you know that that's a lot that goes into it so stick with it and test a little bit more and iterate a little bit more and eventually you're gonna find you know you're gonna twist the puzzle piece around until it fits and you're gonna push it down and it's gonna like oh oh you know like we got something here you know but that takes most of the time takes a lot longer than i think what people think it's going to take and i heard this term before it's like you know failure is a success tax you know it's just a stepping stone so you have to i went through it you know i i've i had the shiny object syndrome as well um and and plus you didn't have the mindset for and you keep jumping on these ideas and yeah trying to work and you're foundationally not right and you're trying to go far you're trying to go in you're trying to like make it happen but inside you have a different feeling or thoughts or belief system yeah and then they experience that failure they get really afraid and then they go back to comfort zone go back to employment but yeah it's the best is to kind of keep working and like you said yep yep 100 percent man i couldn't agree more yeah how about this uh the journey in the podcast world especially during the pandemic have you noticed uh um increase in your business like have you noticed like any kind of difference you know not really like we we shifted our business a lot though so it's kind of i don't know if we can give a great answer to that question meaning that at the end of 2019 we looked completely different than we looked at the end of 2020. so we just shifted a lot of things in our business so i i don't know if i if i would be the best person to measure demand in that context but um you know to answer your question i think a lot of people started podcasts during covid just because they finally had a little bit of extra time to do things like this software company because of covid you know just like hey we had like 12 trips on the calendar and they're all cancelled now so yeah what do we do with this extra time you know yeah um but so so you you started the show because of cove yeah i'm a covet pivot child um i had to take major major pivots like my entire my entire world shifted uh in from march last year like completely uh and this is one of the products this show um but yeah like it's definitely it depends on what industry you're in what kind of business you're in it affected some in a good way some in a bad way some in the middle right right so a lot of places i know pivot is throwing out so much that word but yeah it is what it is right yes a lot of people had to pivot right the podcast was the number one you're right i remember back then it was like all about podcasts like everybody was talking about podcasts yeah it's something that i think i think we're still going to see a ton of uplifting podcasts man like it's it's still in its infancy compared to every other platform very small clubhouse clubhouse has been around for a year and it already has like 12 times the user base of podcasters incredible you know what i mean so i just think podcast is still at the beginning it's just the barrier to entry is a little bit higher than for these other platforms because you can't just like create an account and be like you know what i mean it takes takes takes like educating right like a lot of people jump into it they make a lot of mistakes you know they they don't have a format they don't have an idea uh they don't get the coaching they don't get the help right it's so critical anything that anybody jumps into it's so important to spend the money on someone that's already been there like i can't say that enough yep going into podcasts you know talk to travis right i completely agree with you except for i'm going to make one adjustment to what you said chad yeah yeah which is uh don't spend the money invest the money oh yes good point and i know that i know that's what you meant by saying yes away from that yeah but i do i do i do try to keep the garbage to get people to shift their mindset because that's what it is and people they chalk it up too much as an expense where they look at it's like man a thousand dollars for a course i don't know if i can do that but you're paying 750 bucks a month for your truck payment yeah no you know what i mean like what's more important to you like having a truck that doesn't make you money or creating an online business that could potentially let you live the life of your dreams and make you a lot of money like it doesn't like you if you look at it as an expense then you compare it to other expenses you know like well i look at all the things i could buy for a thousand bucks you know i could buy that gaming system or i could get a new phone or i can buy that computer or all those other things and it's like sure you can do all that but it's not going to make you money no you know what i mean like this is not an expense this is investing into yourself into your learning your continued knowledge your future yeah exactly no i agree 100 thank you for clarifying that because i'm in that world too like i i mentor people and i i use that word spend and i shouldn't be because it is investing um and i spent a lot of money on on that part of me like to make myself better you know if i need to speak better i'll get us you know a speaking coach right if i need to get better in selling i'll get you know what i mean so it's always you need that help you need to invest in yourself continuous i'm using that word to get it again so it becomes part of me now right yeah and and it's so true man like what you're saying because the question is can you figure it out yourself and the answer is of course you can you can definitely figure it out yourself but then it comes back to how long you want to be doing this yeah how long do you want to be trying to figure it out i want it i don't want that i can exactly exactly because it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what our most important asset in life is our most important asset in life is not our money money is by definition a replenishable asset so your medium of transfer exactly yeah your time's the only thing that's that's inherently valuable it's the only thing that is by definition in scarce supply so if you can trade something that's replenishable for something that's not replenishable why wouldn't you do it you know that you know what i'm saying so like if you can shave off two years from your learning curve because you bought a thousand dollar course or paid 10 grand to be in somebody's coaching program and you can learn from all of their mistakes that they've made over the last five years of gathering information and you provide access to all of that in two three months look at all the time that you're saving like that's that's why i buy into these things because like i want to save time like i i i i it's it's being urgent but patient you know i mean like i always tell people like be patient but be urgent you know or be urgent but be patient it's like you're always playing the long game with urgency you know what i mean so like i want to get to the end you know i want to get to the result but also you still have to think about the long game urgency with a with a with a calm mind you know that's the key you have a state of urgency you're always feeling that urgency but you're doing in a calm manner and a commenter is investing in these things because if you look at if you study all the successes out there the big component of who they are is who who they spend who they invested with like who they actually hired to help them like anybody you look at in research there's like lineup of coaching that they went through to get to that place and are probably still going through for sure what i mean yeah for sure yeah i couldn't even imagine um i did it though by the way like i'm i'm not i'm in my 40s so i did all that like i did before i would just say i could do everything um i'm i'm like my come from a family of business i can do anything and i had this you know conscious thought that i was able to do anything and i would just go at it i was just jumping different industries i probably did business almost all energy i just would go i would just try it you know and do it but then you know obviously minor belief system wasn't aligned and then also i didn't get help you know first of all i didn't really know that something like this was out there even back then yeah i didn't even know that i could go hire someone to teach me to do something quicker like that's you know like if i had that back then it would be totally different right now so yeah right [Music] so we always like to ask our guests what's their inner superpower that got them to this point that's a good question man um influence or persuasion in some way you know like i would chalk it up to sales but i don't i don't know if sales is completely all-encompassing because a lot of it's been like the network that i've been able to build which i think is a lot of communication and understanding social psychology at least on a really basic level to some extent so i would say something about communication and and the people that i've been able to to connect with is really is really a lot of it so i mean the end goal is the the end answer is the people that i connected with is is why uh is i think in my um you know one of the biggest assets that i have um and i think that that was able to be done through trying to learn how to communicate with people more effectively so that's like the inner superpowers relationships and that's funny that as your super power is your business like yeah you connected it you know that's the thing is like i i didn't i didn't choose a networking podcast because i was a great communicator and a great networker i chose it because i wanted to become that i never even been to a networking event in my life before i started build your network i just knew that networking and building better relationships with key people would be something that i valued in my life and i should probably put some time and energy into learning how to do it better and what better way to do it what better way to learn something than to than to help teach it you know what i mean so when i first started my show man i didn't do any solo shows ever i did only interviews because it was my goal to interview people who were good at the thing that i wanted to get good at and ask them questions about how they got good at it you know that's great well travis has been amazing amazing talking to you about all the amazing things you're doing and i hope that i wish you all the success and you know the the the help that you could provide people to create a business and to create something out of nothing and you can guide them is incredible so um you know i wish you best of luck i appreciate your head thanks so much for having me on the show [Music] super