Ep 29: Tell me about TED, Focus versus Balance and the best investment is in yourself - with guest Travis Chappell

Bio: Travis Chappell is a door to door salesman turned founder, investor, speaker, and podcaster. He is the founder and CEO of Guestio.com, the highest quality guest and show booking marketplace in the industry. He's also the co-host off the top ranked podcasts Build Your Network and Figuring It Out where he's interviewed people like Shaquille O'Neal, Rob Dyrdek, Grant Cardone, Josh Peck, Molly Bloom, Jasmine Star, John Maxwell, and hundreds of others. In addition to being a guest on top podcasts like Bigger Pockets, EOFire, and Born to Impact, Travis has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, and dozens of other media outlets. When he's not working on his dreams, Travis can be found at the golf course, or playing pick-up basketball, and at his home in Las Vegas with his high school sweetheart and two kids.

Background: 

Travis Chappell is a podcast consultant and professional connector. He is the creator and host of Build Your Network, a Top 25 Business podcast that is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs cultivate strategic and meaningful relationships. 

After years of podcasting and hundreds of interviews with some of the most influential and well respected entrepreneurs in the world, he found that he kept on getting the same question over and over. “How were you able to book the quality of guests you have on your platform?” Instead of just ignoring it, he decided to take action and build a solution to the problem. That solution is Guestio. He’s poured countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars into producing the highest quality platforms with the most value possible, and he’s passionate about helping others build their platforms as well.

Show Notes:  

Intro

00:00 – 01:50

What is on Travis Chappell’s mind

01:51 – 02:55 Travis Chappell: What's not on my mind recently has  been family. Family's been sick. So that's been top of mind. Kind of sleep. You know, if you've got little kids, you know that you're basically always sleep deprived. But especially when everybody in the house is sick. I'm lucky, my wife usually takes care of me when I'm sick. But also, she's more sick than I am today. running around doing everything, taking care of the kids, running the business, doing sales calls. And then my son got an ear infection in school, so I had to run and pick him up. And it's been a couple of days, bro. It's been a couple of days, but I'm looking forward to turning in a little bit earlier tonight than I did last night. I was up till like midnight working. And I might sit down with a beer here in an hour or two and kick it for the rest of the evening, shut my phone off.

After interviewing so many titans of industry, athletes, celebrities, providing Advice on Asking for Stories and Not Just Answers

02:56 – 06:52 Travis Chappell: Yeah, it's a good question, man. And frankly, when I started podcasting, I didn't even think that this was something that you had to do, it was the last thing on my mind. First thing on my mind was, Oh, I got to get a microphone, I got to get equipment, and I got to get a camera and I got to do this stuff. And what software do I use? How do I edit? All the stuff that come to find out is like inconsequential and not super important. And the one thing that I wasn't super worried about was like the thing that I should have been the most worried about, which was how do you interview somebody? And I as soon as I did my first like three or four interviews, I was like, I am really bad at this. And if I'm gonna keep doing this, I should probably make some sort of an effort to not be bad at it anymore. So,  I did kind of studying and learning as much as I could, although there's just not a lot of material out there about how to do this the right way. So one thing that I developed in terms of your specific question, how do you get more stories from people instead of how do you, instead of just getting some information or a short form answer, what I tell people is always remember your buddy Ted. And Ted stands for tell me about, explain to me how or describe for me. So most of the time when we're forming questions, our initial thought is to use interrogative words, that's kind of definition of a question, who, what, where, when, why, how. And typically when you ask those questions, it allows for not as contextual answer. It's going to prompt a shorter answer typically, usually more informational type of an answer. And sometimes that's what you want, facts tell stories sell stories, stories are the things that engage stories are the things that inspire that move people to take action that get people to knock over belief. Dominoes in their mind, which is really the thing that gets people to finally take action to believe it's possible for them. And story is really what helps do all of those things. And if you look at the best communicators in history, they all have that in common. They're great at telling stories. So when you're interviewing, especially if you're interviewing somebody who's not used to being interviewed a lot, then your goal is to try to get more stories from people. And then you can kind of punch in on certain things. Like you build this kind of zoomed out story view and then you can punch in on certain things and ask more kind of directed questions that are designed just to get a piece of information instead of elicit a story. I try to do that. Tell me about explaining what you describe for me. So that way, and a lot of times too I'll say set the scene for us. You want to kind of use these words that start immediately creating imagery in the guest's mind. So instead of saying, what was, instead of saying, you know, where'd you grow up? It's like set the scene for how you to set the scene, I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking the place that I grew up, I'm thinking the culture or the environment that I was in. I'm thinking socioeconomic background. I'm thinking about what my parents did for a living. The Bible school, right? Bible school stuff. Yeah, I'm thinking a lot more all encompassing than just kind of answering one direct question. So yeah, remember your buddy Ted, tell me about, explain to me, describe for me.

Biggest project and challenge at the current moment

06:53 – 08:42 Travis Chappell: Biggest project and challenge at the current moment is trying to figure out how to use my time most efficiently. For a while I was just a creator, I was a podcaster and mostly what I did was reach out to guests and interview guests and do that over and over and over again. And then I started building the business side of, of the, of the business, which was focused on making money and revenue and employees. I really got head down in that and I got really far away from being a creator and my podcast stopped meaning a lot to me. The listenership was going down. I wasn't focused on stuff that was interesting to me anymore. I was saying yes to interviews I wouldn't have said yes to before. And it was being, it was creating out of a place of desperation instead of a place of inspiration. And, but I was focused on building the business and we started the, you know, this agency in 2022 and we did seven figures our first year and it was great except thing, I abandoned that podcasting thing which is the thing that really matters a lot to me. Now the big project for me is we brought in a president for the company, we're onboarding him this week to just somebody that's going to take a lot of the day to day off of my plate so that I can get back into that inspired creator mode because I think that's kind of where my unique skill set lines up in terms of like, what's the activity that I can do that note that I can't hire somebody else to do. And there's a few of them that are those activities. And so hopefully we're making the right decision. I guess, you know, ask me again in six months and we'll see.

Outside of his content and growing business, what Travis Chappell is currently celebrating 

08:43 – 09:34 Travis Chappell:Frankly, kind of the same answers before it. I'm celebrating bringing on somebody to take a lot of my work off my plate. I'm good at, like I said, I'm good at a few things and I'm not good at some other things.I am hoping this other guycan jump in and be good at the things that I'm not good at so that we can build a thriving business without, you know, beating my head against the wall or going insane

On current mental model or mindset that helps prioritize while balancing family with personal aspirations

09:38 – 15:26 Travis Chappell: Yeah, I'm constantly trying to figure that out. I think balance is a myth. I don't think that you can achieve balance. I think work-life balance is a myth. If you shoot for that, you'll never attain either one. And this is kind of a trap I fell into recently that I'm again trying to figure my way out of. Which is if you shoot for work-life balance, typically what's going to happen? is when you're not working, you're going to feel guilty for not working when you're with your family. When you're working, you're going to feel guilty that you're not with your family. Neither one of those are good because you should be focused on the task at hand and you should be doing the thing that you're doing to its fullest extent. I think that you have to schedule things in your calendar like time with kids, time with family, or I don't sacrifice my dinner time, I don't sacrifice my date night with my wife every week. There's certain things that I just don't compromise on. But to think that it's going to be balanced while you're in the middle of building something that's bigger than you is just ludicrous. It might work for somebody that has a job and they get off at 4 p.m. and they have vacation days and sick days and holidays and all these other things and they still get paid no matter what happens and they do their job well. You might be having a different conversation right now. But if you're like me husting, trying to get ahead and you're trying to build something that's bigger than yourself, work-life balance is, I mean, it's a pipe dream, in my opinion. I don't think it's possible. To me, it's like going on the ebbs and flows and trying to read how you should be right now and being willing to accept what those results are in that moment. It's more like riding waves constantly trying to find this balance that's impossible to uphold. It's like when you're on, when you're on one in business, stay on one and stay focused and hold the line because it's not always going to be like that. And then it's like, okay, I've been on this wave for a little while. It's time to go into shore and spend some time with my family. But when I'm with my family, I'm there and I'm with my family and I'm not thinking about the 38 things that I didn't do in my business yet. Then when I'm in my business, I’m in my business and I'm not worried about, did my son pack his lunch properly or whatever. Focus is the problem. You know, it's not a, it's not a balance problem. It's a focus problem. If you can focus on strategic directed work in your business and stuff like that, you shouldn't have to work 16 hour weeks to build something cool, especially if you hire the right team, have enough capital or have partners or something like that. Like you should be able to build something really great. It's just that you're not focused on the right activities. So that's when you have these people that are running around, their businesses is not growing, it's actually dying and they're working 12 hour days. They never see their family. Everything's unbalanced and they're not reaping any reward. It's just probably due to a lack of focus and a belief that balance is possible. And in my opinion, I just don't think that it is.

What the first 60 minutes of each day look like for Travis

15:27 – 17:40 Travis Chappell: Typically the gym time. I'm typically out of bed and then going to the gym. If I'm out of bed before the rest of my family, then I go to the gym with myself. If I'm out of bed, you know, if my kids wake me up, then it's usually me and the wife getting the kids ready for school and taking them to school and then we go to the gym together. But usually the first thing I do is either take my kids to school or go to the gym. Then, I usually sit down with my journal and prioritize my meetings, like look at my meetings for the day, make sure I'm ready for those and then write out some things I'm grateful for and then write out my priorities for the day. So I subscribe as much as I can to the kind of the one thing method, Gary Keller, Jay Papasan wrote a book called The One Thing and I'm a big believer in that. Like what's the one thing that I can accomplish today that by doing that one thing it makes all other things easier to do. So I try to write out, hey, what's the one main thing that if I accomplish zero other things today, it still is a productive day if I get this one thing done. And then what are the two kind of sub things? So it's really like, what's my three main things? And then I have like a list of other things that I can do if I have time to get to them. But at least at that point, you know your tracking and those three things should be things that go along with your longer term goals. You should have your three year vision, you got your one year goals, break down like what do we need to accomplish each quarter to get to that that annual goal? What do we need to accomplish this year to get to that three year goal? And then that breaks down into the day. What do I need to accomplish today in order to be on track to accomplish this thing for the quarter in order to be on track to accomplish this thing for the year in order to be on track to accomplish this thing for three years? So if you can break it down that much, then you really should only have like these core problems that you're trying to focus on. If you have three or four hours of dedicated focused work, the majority of like your actual rock moving and needle moving productivity for the day instead of being in there for 16 hours because you're checking Instagram every 20 minutes.

Three Things Travis Chappell is grateful for

17:41 – 20:48 Travis Chappell: Health, I mean, I'm lucky that me and my family have maintained good health for the most part. And then I'm thankful that I have a business that allows me to decide when I want to spend time with my family and when I don't. Freedom is a huge value of mine. If you would have told me a few years ago when I was knocking doors in the heat of the day to make money I would make a salary from my own company that I built that I can work anywhere in the world and still accomplish. I think I'd be pretty happy about it. Yeah. So let's say freedom. And then the last thing would be all the other things we take for granted. That's one of the ones I try to look for. I'm trying to come up with one and trying to give you ones that like aren't the obvious ones like my family, my kids, my wife, like those are all obviously very important. The last thing I would say is like I try to like often contemplate the things that I take for granted and really position myself to be really grateful just the ability to walk the ability to speak clearly to think to see to hear to taste to smell You know things that a lot of us take for granted every day that not everybody in the world has and try to really meditate on some of those things. I like, my buddy Brad Lea  talks about this a lot. He talks about how, how bad do you want $10 million? How grateful would you be tomorrow if you woke up and there's $10 million in your bank account more than there is right now? Right, very grateful. Yeah, pretty great day, right? Well, what if I said, okay, I'll do that for you, Martin you $10 million, but in exchange, you don't wake up. Do you take this as the answer, right? It's not as an easy answer, right? You have to think about it. Well, yeah. If you're dead, it doesn't matter. All of a sudden, you don't want the $10 million. You would rather wake up tomorrow than have $10 million in your bank account and not wake up tomorrow. Right? So why don't we wake up every day with that attitude that I can't believe I woke up. This is better than $10 million. Another day to live life. How awesome is that? We don't wake up like that. We think about all the problems that we have. We're thinking about how anxious we are. We're thinking about this thing, that thing, this stress, that stress, this problem, that problem, instead of waking up and realizing that we have the greatest gift, which is another day. I try as much as I can to put myself in that mindset because it often sets the tone for Everything, the rest of the day, your relationships, the opportunities that come and go, the problems that you have. Everything's viewed in this light of being grateful rather than this light of being anxious or spiteful.

 After interviewing a growing list of entrepreneurs, athletes, celebrities, authors, and titans of industry…the one specific piece of advice and lesson learned that hit Travis like a lightning bolt (SPOILER: It’s from Shaquille O’Neal)

21:30 – 25:10 Travis Chappell: There's been a lot because there's been a lot of different like topics and niches and different things that we've covered on the show. But I'll steal Shaq's answer because I thought his was pretty all encompassing and really generic. Cause I asked him the question basically, hey, if you could make a video and you knew that video would go viral enough that everybody in the world would see it, what would the message be on the video? And he said something along the lines of have respect for other people. And that really is like a core and a big value of mine in terms of how you treat other people is that I didn't see a lot of that growing up in the really kind of polarized culture I grew up in where there was just this acceptance and respect for fellow human being regardless of background or religion or whatever else. And so I think that probably is potentially why it's that way for me. But what happens is in society, especially with the way the media is, you have these really polar opposite sides, the left and the right, that are completely polar opposite. And then society tries to put you in one of those buckets of people where you fall somewhere in between the polar right and the left. But because we're taught to think in categories and identity and buckets, you hear somebody votes for this person or they go to this type of church or they don't go to church or you hear something about somebody and your immediate reaction is to judge and to cast hate or to spread lies or gossip or make jokes instead of having respect for your fellow human being. Try to have a little bit of empathy for where somebody else might be coming from. Hey, maybe they were raised differently. Hey, maybe they grew up in a different spot. Maybe those things happen to them. I'm not here to speak for other people. I'm here to speak for myself and to respect other people. So I really liked that was the piece of advice that he gave because I thought if there were one message for the world to adopt, I think that would be one of the chief ones because we're not ever going to agree on everything, but if we can respect each other…that's kind of the secret to continuing to work together and find synergy, look for commonalities, find the things that we can connect on rather than look for the things that we don't want to connect on and hate each other for it. So I like that message a lot. And it would probably be one that be very similar to the message that I would like to get out to more people.

The ’AHA’ moment for Travis and when he realized his true calling, BIG WINS, and Turning Points

25:10 – 27:54 Travis Chappell: Not really, man. I just wanted to do it. And then I would put in the reps to do it and went through the pain of doing it. I think I just had a higher pain tolerance because I knew I wanted it. So even during the times where it sucked and where a lot of people give up, I just didn't because I knew that I wanted it. There's a lot of value there, there's a lot of merit there because I don't think that I'm uniquely talented compared to other people. I think that I was just willing to put in a lot of reps to try to make it happen because I wanted the results so bad. I think when I got Grant Cardone on the show, that was kind of a big one for me because he was somebody that I'd listened to for a while and he was a bigger name. He's a lot bigger now than he was then, but he was still a pretty big name in the space at the time. I think it was my first ever in-person interview, which was a different dynamic than I was used to, but it was in person at his studio in Miami and that was a big vote of confidence for me because it just kind of, it took somebody that I previously thought was unattainable and conditioned me to think that he was attainable. So it kind of went into the rest of my kind of dream guest list and was like, all right, well, if I got him, who else can I get? You know what I mean? Like who else am I currently looking at that I think is impossible that might just be a DM or cold email or introduction away from me? That was a big one for me, man. It was like I said, along the way, you're just looking for more notches in the confidence belt. The more than you can build that up and have evidence to point at, it's not a matter of like how many affirmations you say in the mirror. It's a matter of having so much evidence that you're good at this thing, that you have an unshakable confidence that it's something that you're pretty good at and that’s how guest interviewing and reach out became for me.

Not in terms of the actual stock market, what Travis considers his best and most fulfilling investment

27:55 – 33:17 Travis Chappell: The thing I've invested the most in is me. For sure. I think people look at investing wrong most of the time because they're never willing to invest in themselves. They have an unrealistic expectation of what other investments are going to bring to them. It's like, well, how do you know that this is a good deal? You've never looked at another real estate deal. You never looked at another angel investment. You never looked at another, you know, name it. How do you know it's a good deal? Well, this other person told me well, how much do you trust them? Better trust them a lot because you're talking about putting your first $25,000 into an investment that you know nothing about. That's why I think my best investments always been in myself because it's the one investment that will always pay dividends. If I make myself a better version of myself, then that version of me is more capable than the previous version of me. Which means that if you're investing into something, you're buying the fish. If you're investing into yourself, you're learning how to fish. To expand old adage about teach a man to fish, give a man a fish for a day he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish he’ll eat for the rest of his life. It's kind of how I look at it. It's like, if you invest in yourself, you're learning skills and those skills can return at a much, much higher, like disproportionate ROI than even the best real estate investment will do. So it's like, yeah, could I put that 400 grand into real estate and currently right now be working out better for me? The answer is yes. Yeah, it would be. It would be performing better. My net worth would currently be higher than it is right now if I had put that 400 grand in real estate and I'd be getting like a monthly return from it and all that stuff. But I believe and you can fact check me in a decade. I believe that in a decade from now, my thirties will be my earning years where I'm set up to make it happen that way because I've invested $400,000 in myself in the last four or five years in my late 20s. So if this version of me is capable of build, if my 29-year-old self could go build a million dollar company in eight months, then what can my 39-year-old self do? Does that make sense? It's like the return is so outsized. It's not linear. It's not put 400 grand in, get 500 grand back like it would be real estate. Even if again, even if it's a great real estate deal, it's like put 400 grand in five years, it appreciates you get cashflow. It's like I put 400 grand in and I got 800 grand back. You know, it's still pretty linear. It's a matter of like that 400 grand that I've invested could lead to one business partnership that turns in a 40 million dollar company where it's like, like that's my point is like you want to invest in things that have the potential to bring outsize returns. And you are always the best person to do that with because you are your biggest outsize return. If you create a connection or you craft a skillset that's so valuable, your ability to earn skyrockets, which gives you the ability to mess up on investments and still be able to go out and make more money. That's why people don’t feel confident about investments. The reason people don't like writing checks on investments is because they don't know how long it's going to take them to get another 25 grand built up in their savings account…or 100 grand or 50 grand or 500 grand or whatever the amount is. It's like, well, I don't want to put money in that real estate deal, or I want to put money in that other deal, or I don't want to buy that franchise, or I don't want to do that, name the investment because it took me 12 years to save up this first $150,000. So if I lose this 150,000, I can't afford to wait another 12 years before I get it back. It's like, well, if you were investing yourself the whole time, then you realize you let go over $120,000. But if you have the confidence that you're like, oh, well, I can replace that in my bank account in the next eight months because I have this skill set that I now have that I didn't have eight years ago, then you're a lot more likely to make, then you're a lot more able to spread your investments across different things and learn more about how to invest properly and take more losses, but be okay with it and then have bigger wins eventually. It's just like to me, the only way it makes sense to not invest a large amount of money in yourself is if you literally don't care about building wealth. To me, it's like if you want to build wealth and that's the game that you're after, then you should be your number one priority for investments before anything else, especially if you have less than 50 grand in the bank.

Where Travis gets his confidence from

33:18 – 36:39 Travis Chappell: Podcasting stuff I think it's just a repetition thing. I've done over 800 episodes of my show, but I've also been a guest on four or 500 other shows. So it's just been like almost, you know, 1500 of these things at this point. Yeah. This is 30 for me. But hey, 30 is better than most. Yeah. 30 is better than most. I think I got a fair amount of communication speaking confidence pretty young because I was teaching and speaking and doing public speaking from the time that I was 12 all the way through college. By the time I graduated college, I'd probably spoken in front of people close to a hundred times, I would guess maybe 50 to 75 or something like that. It's just like I spoke more from age 12 to age 20 than most people will speak in their life. Doing door to door sales will increase your confidence because you talk to a bunch of different people from a bunch of different walks of life communicate with them effectively convinced them to buy thing. It's kind of a cutting your teeth way of learning how to communicate. So if you can kind of combine all of that stuff, then I think it kind of goes into that. And then like I said before, it just comes from the fact that I know that I've done the reps and of the things that I know about, I'm confident that I can add value with the things that I know about because I've put in the work and I have evidence that stacks up that helps me, that I can point back to and draw confidence from. It's just a matter of keeping your confidence bank account more full than it is empty. It's just like any other bank account. It's like if you have more withdrawals than you got deposits in your confidence, then you're in a rough spot. But if you got more deposits than you have withdrawals, then you're probably in a pretty good spot. There's a lot of ways to deposit in your confidence bank. Probably the number one way is to always keep the promises you make to yourself. Some quote recently that was like the most difficult person to earn respect with is you for yourself because most people don't have confidence in situations because they don't even trust themselves or don't have an impeccable word even to themselves. They say they are going to whatever, get up at this time. They say they're going to read this book. They say they're going to work out. They say they're going to change this thing any of the stuff that they say that they're going to do. So that subconsciously creates this distrust and a poor relationship with you. So if you're trying to go into a job interview, you're trying to sell something to somebody, you're trying to portray confidence in some sort of situation, you don't even have confidence that you even trust yourself. How can you portray confidence in somebody else? So confidence comes from this inner peace with you that you are who you say you are and if other people don’t see that, then it doesn't bother you because you know who you are. So in a sense, like, I'm not bothered by everybody else's thoughts of me because I know me, because I know what I do behind closed doors, because I know that I show up because I know that I do what I say I'm going to do. So you can carry that confidence in when you know that you're doing the stuff that most people aren't doing when they're by themselves and if you are getting reps it makes for a strong confidence bank account.

Advice for handling pressure when expectations continue to rise

36:40 – 40:10 Travis Chappell: That's a good question, man. I mean, I kind of struggle with that myself and frankly, most of the time, it's the expectations that I put on me, rather than the expectations that other people put on me. So I'm finding ways to deal with the pressure. Now for a while, it was kind of overwhelming. Probably year, year and a half ago, if you asked me that question, I would have been like, I don't know. But now it's just a matter of asking myself the question. Whenever I get into a situation where I feel overwhelmed, I ask myself the question, what do I want? I try to re-center myself and regain clarity. Because if you find yourself overwhelmed and you don't truly want the thing that you're attacking, then the prudent answer at that point might be to pivot or change or do something different. That's not always the answer though. You convince yourself that's the answer because you want to give up so bad. But it's not always the answer. But sometimes it is the answer. So for me, it was like when I got to that point, it was asking myself the question, what do I want? And at the end of the day, I was like, this is still what I want. I still want to build a big company. Because I started feeling pressure when it was mainly just me and one or two other people on my team. And we were doing seven figures of revenue in the first eight months of the year when we started Oh my gosh, the work is piling up. I don't know how to run, you know, a multi seven-figure organization. What do I do here? And, you know, again, you either retreat and give up and go back to your thermostat setting at what you were before and just be like, you know what? I'm cool with a multi six-figure business and a podcast. And if that were the answer for me, that would have been an acceptable answer. Very much, I'm very much conscious of self-awareness. I understand that like, I'm not one of those people that says that everybody should have to go become a billionaire or whatever, or want to become a billionaire. If you like your lifestyle business and you can make 120 grand a year working for yourself, making a half million dollars, you got an assistant or two and that works out for you, then do your thing. But when I asked myself that question, I had clarity around the fact that like, no, I wanna build something that's at least an eight figure business. So the option of leave or quit or give up or pivot or change was not there. The only other option was acknowledgement that pressure will always exist in this environment and if this is not for me that I should get out now. But if it is for me, then I have to find ways to deal with that pressure and unplug and talk to other people about how they deal with that pressure. Go get around other top high performers and figure out how to deal with it. Give myself an out, go play some golf, spend time with my kids, watch a movie, prioritize things that maybe were vices before like TV or something like that. But it makes me unplug or have a beer with my friends instead of like avoiding alcohol at all costs. It's like, what are the things that I can do to relax and kind of make myself go, you know what, it's okay. Everything's gonna be okay. You multiply it out over enough time. Everything's gonna work out. Just doesn't feel like it right now. But if you're in it to win it, you only have another option. It's that or go get a job. And that wasn't an option for me.

A historical figure Travis most identifies with

40:11 – 40:39 Travis Chappell: Not really in terms of  somebody who I’m like, But people I look up to would be like Marcus Aurelius. Winston Churchill. Teddy Roosevelt. Leonardo Da Vinci.

Billboard message for everyone to see and read

40:40 - Travis Chappell: Something around empathy. That's why I like my show, because I like to pull story out of people. Like you mentioned, Nicole, who's now, for all intents and purposes, she's a sex worker. She's like an independent porn creator on OnlyFans. And then after that, I'll bring on a former congressman. And then after that, I'll bring on an author. And then after that, I'll bring on a psychologist. And then after that, I'll bring on an athlete. My goal is that somebody listens to some episode of my show and initially thinks they're not going to like somebody and then hear something about their background or story and goes like, you know what, I don't agree with how they ended up or what their choices that they made, but I at least understand more about how they got there. That to me is a win. That's the goal is to just have more empathy for your fellow human beings. I think if the world had more empathy, we'd have so much less polarity, less fighting, Less hate, less of the isms, you know We have so much less of any of all of that If we will just try to have a little bit of a little bit of empathy for each other background where they came from trying to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. I think all those are very valuable exercises when it comes to building relationships and having respect for your fellow human being.

 More info about the guest:

Website: https://travischappell.com/

Check out his podcast Travis Makes Friends – available on all podcast platforms. 

 Books and People mentioned:

Chris Van Vliet

Book – The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

Brad Lea

Shaquille O’Neal

Nikole Mitchell

Grant Cardone

Marcus Aurelius

Winston Churchill

Teddy Roosevelt

Leonardo Da Vinci

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Helping People Take Control of their lives & Hack Success with CIA Intelligence Officer, Decorated Military Combat Veteran and Fortune 10 Corporate Advisor Andrew Bustamante: https://passingthetorch.buzzsprout.com/1946508/10533881-ep-24-top-secret-helping-people-take-control-of-their-lives-hack-success-like-a-former-cia-super-spy-with-andrew-bustamante

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Quote:

“Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.”.

- Tim Ferriss