Building a Show, Not Just a Podcast: The Evolution of Travis Makes Friends

hey what's going on everybody welcome back to another episode of the Travis makes Friends Podcast it's uh today's gonna be a pretty quick one uh it's basically just me and you sitting here to talk about what the future of the show is going to look like as most of you know the show used to be called build your network and that was for like 800 episodes in five years and uh at the beginning of 2023 we rebranded the show into Travis makes friends and we went with a different format one that we haven't done in a long time which is just purely interviews and uh basically over the last few months we just decided you know what we like the other the format that we used to do on build a network back in the day which uh is why we wanted to record this episode because starting in June that's what we're going to be doing moving forward again and I wanted to sincerely apologize for those of you who were following along enough to know that we missed I think a full week of releases which is not characteristic for us at all we've done almost nine almost 900 episodes in the last five or six years and we do not miss unless we're purposefully missing for a specific reason and we come and tell you that we're going to be missing so this was one of the I think the only time to my knowledge uh that we just ghosted and didn't release episodes for a week so I sincerely apologize please forgive us for doing that uh but uh we will not be doing that again moving forward unless again I come and say hey we probably won't release next week because of this specific reason uh that being said just to give you a quick breakdown on what to expect moving forward it's based off of a principle that we've been really operating on recently and something we've been helping our coaching clients with and different people that come to us for podcasting advice which is in a world where podcasting is really saturated where can where people are continuing to make more and more and more and more shows we've really decided in our content that it can't you can't just do what everybody else is doing so uh the advice we've been giving to our clients is don't just start a podcast build a show build us something interesting that people are actually going to want to listen to so instead of like copying Joe Rogan think about how can I kind of combine you know Joe Rogan and Jimmy Fallon or Ellen DeGeneres or like one of these you know uh talk shows that they have segments and they have a band and they have music and they have q a and they have games and they have this and that and it does not have to be that polished okay that's why I say think of it like a hybrid because you know we don't have we don't have commercial breaks every three minutes where we have to hold attention from One commercial break to the next commercial break there's a lot of positive things about the format of podcasting that makes it in my opinion a better consumption platform for the average consumer than watching you know mainstream television however that does not mean that you just have an excuse this is what this is what I see most people do is that since they're running a business or doing something else their podcast isn't the main thing that they do uh even if they have a job or nine to five or something uh they just they phone it in on the podcast content all the time and then they complain about the fact that Their audience isn't growing and it's like well you're phoning in the content and and they get this kind of inflated ego about how much information well you know I well I just know this much about whatever real estate investing so people should just be willing to follow me it's like no no you have to think about it in terms of people who are actually in the media business so I go back to what my uh one of a friend of mine and mentor of mine Jordan Harbinger said to me a long time ago which is every minute of the listener's time is earned so when you're thinking about your audience that's tuning in to you when they could be doing any number of things if they're watching you on YouTube they could be watching literally anything else and not just anything else that's on YouTube which is a wide variety and huge library of things they could be watching anything that's on Netflix Amazon Prime Hulu Disney plus Apple TV plus like they could be consuming content from anything anywhere they could be playing a video game like it's not just your direct competitors you have to think about it's all the indirect competitors you have to think about because you're vying for attention as is every other brand on the planet okay so you can't just think that your listener is going to listen because you're that awesome you have to treat it with respect with the respect that it deserves and and and think through the idea that every minute of a listener's time or the viewer's time is earned so when you're putting your podcast together start thinking about it in terms of a show in terms of segments what can we do to make this more interesting what are some uh better questions we can ask can we throw in a uh a lightning round or can we throw in some deep questions can we throw in uh something that's like a unique angle or or a new segment or add another episode into our weekly lineup where we do something different than what we used to do that holds and captures our audience's attention as long as it goes in with with your ideal core message your ideal and core values and is consumable by your ideal audience then you should be thinking about ways to install those types of things so that's essentially kind of the the reason behind what we're doing is to put in some more variety in the show continue to add value to people who are listening and help every person who gives us the time of day to make themselves a better person because that's really the the whole the whole name of the game for us is you know self-help without all the so our our goal is always for anybody to listen to the show to have some sort of entertainment factor to be glad that they're tuning in that put a smile on their face make them feel something but also to motivate you all that are listening to become a better version of yourself because that is my goal in life to become a better version of myself and I think that if you can become the best version of yourself then you can live the best version of life that's available to you and so it becomes a really worthy Pursuit so everything that we do is for that purpose so essentially what we're doing going forward is instead of doing two interviews a week Monday Thursday we're going to be doing is releasing one interview every Monday it's our full length you know hour plus long conversations that we have with some incredible people that I am making friends with and then we have our Wednesday episodes which is what's what's called our midweek mashup and this is where we basically find a topic you know like whatever writing a book or uh leadership or motivation or mindset or real estate or whatever we've found one topic and then we go back to our archives and find some of the best people that we've interviewed around that topic and we clip you know five to 20 minutes of that interview and put it in the episode along with three or four other heavy-hitting big names that can speak intelligently about that topic so we've gotten a lot of really great feedback on those episodes we used to release them so we're going to get back to doing that and then on Friday we are going to do what we call Freestyle Friday which is essentially a solo show my producer Eric will jump on the mic with me we'll do some q a we have a hot take we do some kind of trending topics discuss things that are happening in the world as it relates to making yourself a better version of yourself try to throw in some entertainment some comedy value in there at least to some extent and then essentially you kind of do what we want that's why we call it Freestyle Friday so it gives us the ability to be flexible within the framework of helping people become the best version of themselves and so we'll have the interviews on Monday we'll have the midweek mashups on Wednesday and we'll have the freestyle Fridays on Friday so going forward that's what you can expect from us we're releasing three days a week Monday Wednesday Friday every single week both on the podcast Travis makes Friends Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and on our YouTube channel which is at Travis makes friends so if you are not currently subscribed to the YouTube channel please go do that we we're really new to YouTube and this is like one of one of our biggest regrets as creators is that we didn't jump on the YouTube train a few years ago even when we we are only doing Zoom interviews there was a mental barrier for me that I wanted them to all be in person so that's why we waited until January of this year to really start pushing our YouTube channel but in retrospect it was a foolish decision we could have still gained a lot of traffic on there with the podcast but anyway that's neither here nor there what's done is done we're releasing on there now so if I I know that there's a lot most of our Audience by a long shot comes from our audio side because that's we've been focusing on for the past six years so if you're listening to this head over to YouTube subscribe on our YouTube channel because you can now actually listen I don't know if you guys knew this on YouTube music you can listen to podcasts for free like you can on Spotify and stuff like that now so it's pretty cool what they've done with their their podcast playlist specifically so go check us out on YouTube give us a follow subscribe over there and now you know what to expect from us moving forward every Monday interview every Wednesday of mashup every Friday of Freestyle Friday solo episode coming at you guys all around the topic of how to make yourself a better version of you and uh and then the vehicle through which we do that typically is through connecting with people people who are already the better version that you are trying to become because if you get around the right people you can become the best version of yourself much easier so that's what's happening with the show again thank you for your patience with us as we kind of navigated this uh this big format change and uh moving forward we will not be missing any more episodes so Monday Wednesday Friday every single week obviously you can check out all the rest of our content and our Clips on Instagram on LinkedIn on Facebook on Tick Tock I think we're even posted on Pinterest vertical video uh we're on like Rumble basically anywhere that you can post we're probably there and we're probably posting content so you can follow us over there but the two main places will be the podcast and the YouTube channel so that is it for today's episode and the call to action the last thing to think about is how can you make your content more like a show don't just post to post and check it off of your list think about the fact that every minute of your listener or viewers time is earned so how can you earn that attention that's it for this episode of Travis makes friends we'll catch you guys on the next one peace out