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We're listening to the Travis Makes Money Podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com.
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What's going on everybody?
Welcome back to the show.
This episode is just me, you, and the mic.
There's just some things that I've learned along the way.
I have, through the years, just written a lot of notes in my notes folder on my iPhone.
And it's been actually kind of cool rediscovering some of the things that I've written over the
last almost decade now of being in this space.
Because essentially what happened was I was a door-to-door sales guy.
I wanted to not be that any longer.
And the only way out that I could see was just access to information.
It was knowledge.
It was like, what is even out there?
What do I really want to do?
And for the first time in my life, I really started diving deep into self-education and
learning.
This was probably 2016 or so, listening to like Jim Rohn and Zig-Ziggler and things
like that.
And then picking up some audio books for the first time and then listening to podcasts
for the first time.
And then that's sort of led to, you know, almost, I guess, 2016.
This would be a decade now of, now I've read over 200 books all in, you know, in the non-fiction
space.
I'm still, I'm not like, I don't love the game of reading.
So I've actually still to this day, not read anything that's like a novel or anything
like that.
I don't know, just personal preference.
But I have read now a ton of books and I take notes whenever I find something that I
like, whether it's a book, an article, a blog, a podcast.
And then my own thoughts, all the things that I've sort of articulated myself in from
the 1500 plus episodes that we've created on the podcast now.
So these episodes are sort of my audio journal, I guess, of the things that I've learned along
the way.
So on this episode, I wanted to go into some questions, some powerful questions that
I found to be helpful that I asked myself from time to time because I strongly believe
that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that you ask.
If you are getting wrong answers, it might just mean that you're asking the wrong questions.
I said this one time on Facebook and I had a couple of people that were like, oh, easy
for you to say or like privilege, take or something like that.
And ultimately, that's just bullshit.
That's just that those people pretending like it's not a big deal or that I'm oversimplifying
success, which might be true.
But also, it might also could be true that maybe that person's asked themselves the wrong
questions and they've not ever experienced the power of reframing a question and then
finding an answer to that question and that can literally be the thing that switches your
mindset and changes your life, which is why I strongly believe that the quality of your
life is determined by the quality of the questions that you can ask yourself.
So a little while ago, I put together just this folder of a bunch of questions that I like
to ask myself from time to time.
So there's 25 of them in this document.
Well, we'll get through as many as we can on this episode, maybe we'll do a part two
or something to get through the rest of them, but we'll go ahead and jump right in.
Here's the first one.
First one is, when was the last time I risked embarrassment?
At the beginning of my career, I felt like I did this all the time when I first started
the podcast.
Even just starting a podcast in general, I feel like it's more daunting even than starting
other ventures because it, by definition, is a public activity.
The metric of success is determined by how public the podcast becomes, I guess, is what
I'm trying to say.
So they're sort of hand in hand.
You can't just quietly build a podcast.
You just kind of got to build the podcast and you got to make a public and you have to
build in public.
And this was like the first big leap of faith that I'd taken out after deciding to not go
down the path that I was originally going to go down, which was the ministry path.
So I knew that there were a bunch of people who were making fun of me at the time who were
sort of praying on my downfall, who wanted me to not succeed people who I saw that I'd
grown up with.
I saw, like, actual text message conversations of them talking to other people I'd grown
up with and talking shit about me.
And none of those things felt good.
But I knew in that time, like, man, this podcast is going to be a bummer if it doesn't
work out because I know that there's a bunch of people who are just hoping and praying.
It doesn't work out, which is a weird thing to do.
By the way, like, stop interfering with other people's dreams.
That's such a weird, weird headspace to be in it.
And it literally just means that, like, those people are just never, those people don't
have any dreams that they're working on.
So they just want to, they just want to bring down anybody who has those dreams.
That's the crabs in the boiling water illustration where you put crabs in the boiling water and
one of them starts making its way out.
The other crabs will literally pull that crab down back into the boiling water.
That's that example.
It's that nobody, nobody that's doing better than you is going to criticize you for trying.
It's only the people who are doing worse than you that they're, those are the ones that
are going to criticize you for trying.
And especially, especially, especially one is people who know you for whatever reason,
like people who grew up with you, people who, people who saw you cut around in school or
people who saw you at your worst at a basketball game or something like that, you know, they,
they just tend to, they tend to bring your downfall a little bit more than strangers,
which is, again, a strange headspace to be in, if you ask me.
But I, my point is, like, I did this all the time.
It was like, everything that I did was a risk of embarrassment because everything that
I was doing was brand new.
And then recently I asked myself this question and it's one of the reasons that I ended
up deciding to do this, like, big risk of a project that we're working on right now.
Because the answer to that question was like, it's actually been quite some time since
I've risked embarrassment, like a few years since I really did something that was like
out of the ordinary that was really challenging me that did not feel like I, that was just
basically an experiment of uncertainty that was like, I have no idea how this is going
to work out.
But I do feel some sort of a pull in this direction and I think I just am supposed to
do it.
And I can't necessarily explain it.
I can't write down on my spreadsheet exactly what the ROI is going to look like.
I can't justify the expense to my fractional CFO who's asking me these questions, you
know, that there's no reasonable reason why I should do it except for that.
I asked myself that question and the answer was, it's been a long time.
So why don't I, why don't I, why don't I change that?
Why don't I fix that and put myself in this other position where I'm now again risking
embarrassment.
But if you're not willing to risk embarrassment, then you're probably not ever going to
achieve anything outside of the ordinary as just the bottom line.
All good things are on the other side of your, are on the outside of your comfort zone.
All good things come from embracing uncertainty and embracing the risk of failure or embarrassment.
So when was the last time I risked embarrassment?
Next one that I wrote down, when was the last time I got something I wanted, which sort
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It was hand in hand when it was the last time that I risked embarrassment because I found
that the majority of the times the biggest periods of growth in my life have come after
I risked embarrassment or failure or rejection.
I risked something really bad, but it led to me getting something that I wanted.
Even if the outcome was different than the initial goal of the risk that I was taking.
Example, there was a mastermind group one time that I was in, I paid 15K for the first
year.
I didn't feel like it was super valuable.
The next year, they got me in for another 10K.
I remember asking that at the time thinking, I think this might be a mistake.
I don't know.
I don't want to hurt any feelings here.
I'll just renew it one more year.
I was confirmed suspicions because I didn't feel like they had delivered on the promises
that they set forth in the group.
When I looked back on it a couple of years later because of the time, it was like a big
decision.
10 grams was a lot of money for me at the time.
I remember looking back on it a couple of years later and then looking at a couple like
actual client deals that I had done and I was like, oh, that money that I invested in
that group, even though the thing that they promised to me wasn't the thing that I got
from the group, because I showed up and I worked for it, I ended up making my money back.
Then some on the back end because I was able to reframe the way that I was looking at
it and look for the positives.
One was the last time that I got something that I wanted.
If it's been a long period of time, maybe again, it's time to risk embarrassment and
shoot for the stars and get something that you really wanted because the cool thing about
getting something that you wanted after taking a big risk is that it allows you to do it
again the next time without as much fear attached to the potential outcome.
Once you take a big risk and then you experience a win from the risk, it's sort of like, oh,
you almost unlock a superpower because most people are so fearful to take this risk at
all that they just don't ever do it.
They're still waiting for that.
The cross and their fingers for the perfect time that this is finally going to make sense.
Spoiler alert, perfect time is never coming.
It's never going to come.
You just got to make the decision.
If you know that it's something that you want to tackle, but the sooner you can make
those decisions, the sooner you can make the money back for the risk that you took or
make the time back for the risk that you took or make whatever back for whatever risk
that you're looking at.
Then the more likely it is that you'll be able to jump back at bat and actually connect
with the ball this time.
Maybe you don't hit a grand slam, but maybe you get on base.
Maybe you hit a single.
Maybe you hit a ground rule double.
You know what I mean?
You just got to jump back up the bat and the first time you experience getting something
that you wanted after taking a big risk, man, that's a huge deposit into your confidence
bank.
When was the last time I got something I wanted?
Next one.
It happened now what?
It happened now what?
This is as it relates to circumstances in life.
I found this to be a useful frame because too many of us, and I'm lumping myself into
this group because it's easy to fall into this, easy to fall prey to this, too many times
a circumstance occurs.
An event happens in our life and we want to immediately start pointing the finger.
We want to start focusing the blame outwards and it feels better to engage in the
whining.
It feels better to engage in the complaining.
It feels better to not take personal responsibility for moving forward because it's easier.
Frankly, it's just the lazy way out.
Complaining about the situation that you're in is the lazy way out because it doesn't require
any additional action because you feel like you can justify your lack of success in that
area because of these things that happen.
A more useful frame, what I found is to say, it happened now what?
What it does is it allows you to pull yourself out of your own body and a view the event
that occurred from as objective as a viewpoint as you possibly can view it from.
Now, obviously, you're never going to be fully objective.
Nobody on this planet actually experiences the world the way that it is.
We only experience it through our lenses through which we view the world.
It's impossible to be 100% completely objective, but you can do your best to pull yourself
out of your body, view the situation from an objective standpoint, and then find a solution
or a path forward.
It's sort of like the question of like, if this happened to this other person and they
were coming to me for advice, what would I tell them?
Probably the advice that you're going to give to that person might be the advice that
you might want to follow yourself.
The advice that you're going to give to that person is probably not what you should do.
You should just sit and complain about it and soak about it for the next decade of your
life.
Just sit there and point the finger and then just be unhappy, depressed, unsuccessful,
and a burden on those around you for the next 15 years because that thing happened that
was unfair.
That's the thing.
Life happens, and not every bad thing that, quote unquote, bad thing that happens in
our life is a direct result of actions that we've taken.
Sometimes things just happen, but the mental state that you're in when you're just going
to sit and soak and whine and complain about it is not conducive toward moving forward
at all.
It's only going to shift your neural pathways to a state of complaining more often.
If you allow yourself to get to a state of complaining more often than not, then your
brain treats it as a habit to get into that state faster.
The next time some event happens, you're much more likely to go see the negative in it
rather than to go to the alternative.
The alternative path, which is to see the positive and take responsibility and move forward.
The frame, it happened now what?
It's a question that I ask myself sometimes.
It allows me to sit there and remove the fault from the equation.
It doesn't really matter at the end of the day.
The lessons that I can take from it, it doesn't matter whose fault it was that it happened.
The bottom line is it happened.
The situation is.
It just is.
It's a fact that it just happened and now it is.
Now what?
What do I do now?
Yeah, you can acknowledge that you got dealt the shitty hand.
You can acknowledge that this thing happened that shouldn't have happened and it's unfair
and the world is unjust and unfair.
You can acknowledge all of those things and you know what?
Give yourself a day.
Give yourself a day.
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For week, give yourself a month, give yourself five hours or five minutes depending on
the severity of the situation.
Give yourself some time to acknowledge that, but ultimately, how much time is too much
time.
I see people who are still blaming COVID for their lack of success.
I was like, yeah, I was six years ago now, I was literally six years ago.
How much longer are you going to continue to blame COVID for all the bad things in your
life when that happened that long ago?
Is it next month?
Is it next year?
Is it in five years?
Is it in 10 years?
At some point, it just is a thing that happened and you have to ask yourself the question,
now what?
What do I do moving forward?
How do I take any lessons that I could possibly take from this if I had any fault in making
this happen?
But if I had zero fault to make this happen, how can I still find whatever silver lining
that I possibly can and then say, now what?
What do I do now in order to ensure that maybe I don't put myself in that type of position
again?
What do I do now to ensure that maybe I hedge my bets better next time or what is the next
step?
How can I actually take action and move forward away from this thing?
If you ask yourself that, I think you'll find a lot more use out of that question rather
than just sitting and whining and playing with everything all the time.
This next one, no bullshit.
What would it take?
I like this one a lot in terms of thinking of things that you generally categorize in
your mind as impossible because that's the main thing that's preventing you from going
after those quote unquote, impossible goals, those dreams, those things where you're like,
man, it'd be awesome if I could do this, but you know, that's just impossible.
I have no idea what that would even look like.
How do I even get started doing that?
What does that even mean?
You know, like you immediately start finding all of the reasons why you can't do it.
So the frame of no bullshit, what would it take, allows you to then think about or reverse
engineer, if it were possible, how could I make it happen?
And that is a much more useful frame because now you've trained your brain to start looking
for all the things that are possibilities that the outcomes that you could potentially
have some influence over.
And so instead of thinking about, instead of thinking about all the reasons why it's
not going to work, you start thinking about, well, how could it work?
And then you might find that the answer to that question is more work than you're willing
to put into in order to achieve that outcome.
And then you can make a decision on whether or not you want to continue done that path.
Right.
So for me, direct translation and practicality from my business was getting good guests
on my show.
Initially, it was like, man, I would love to interview, you know, Shaquille O'Neal or
the impractical jokers or this, this comedian or this famous entrepreneur or this New York
times best selling author.
I'd love to interview these people.
When I first got started in the space and I wrote these names down on a piece of paper,
it was almost laughable as I was just a 24 year old door to door sales guy, never had
a podcast, never didn't know anything about the online world at all.
And then I was writing these names on a list and I was just like, how the hell am I going
to get in contact with Shaquille O'Neal?
Because this childhood hero of mine, like, this is impossible.
How would this even work?
But then once you, once you go no bullshit, what would it take?
You can kind of sit there and go, okay, if this person has a pulse, if they have a,
if they are alive today, it is possible to get in contact with them.
The question is how, and then the second question is, and am I willing to put in the work
to get that person?
And sometimes the answer to that question has been no.
Sometimes it's like, man, it'd be great to have so and so on my podcast and I start asking
myself, well, how would I get in contact with that person?
It's like, well, I know this person who happens to know that person, but, you know, I don't
have that much social capital, much relationship capital with this person that I know, who
knows that person?
And frankly, that person is not worth spending some social capital with this person in order
to get an introduction to them.
So maybe I'll shoot a DM, cold email or something like that, but if it doesn't pan out, not
a big deal.
But then there's other people where it was like, absolutely, it's worth using a little
bit of social capital with this person to ask for an introduction to this person, because
I really, really want to have a conversation with that person on the podcast.
So using the frame, no bullshit, what would it take?
You know, I mean, this is a really good frame to start thinking about because it allows
you to start thinking in terms of what is possible.
And then again, you can formulate a plan to either attack that goal with some ferocity,
with some, with some, with some umph, or adjust the path and say, you know, it is, it is
potentially possible by doing these three different options, but I'm not really willing
to do all of the work required to do all of those different options.
So maybe I'm not going to go down that path.
And like, that's how it is for me in terms of, you know, being a billionaire or something
like that.
It's erotic because I run a show called Travis Makes Money, but I have no intention
of becoming a multi billionaire because I know, like, I've done the work to think through
the process of what it takes to create a billion dollars worth of enterprise value.
And in my mind, it's like, I frankly am not willing to give up all the time that it would
take to do that when I could use that time to spend with my kids or my family.
It's like that is, it is not a, it is not a worthy enough goal for me to sacrifice these
other things.
Like, the trade off to me is not worth it.
So now I can decide, okay, well, what is worth it?
And how can I attack that thing?
So no bullshit, what would it take?
And I figured we'd, we would take a while to get through some of these.
So we've only gotten through four of them.
There's 25.
So catch us on the next episode.
We'll walk into a couple of the other questions that I like to ask myself from time to time.
Powerful questions that will help you live a better life.
Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode.
Catch you guys on the next one.
Peace out.
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Travis Makes Money
