How to Get High Calibre Guests for your Podcast with Travis Chappelle

Welcome to Super Entrepreneurs Podcast. Today we have with us Travis Chappell. Travis is one of the top podcasters. His guest lineup is, is, is admirable. He also is the founder of guest, guest steel platform. If I incorrectly pronounce that, Travis will correct me, but it's a platform where, um, guests and, and can set up a profile and go on shows, you know, invite other guests on the show. Um, Travis, welcome to Super Entrepreneurs Podcast. Thank you for taking the time to, to meet with us and meet with the audience and myself and welcome. Thanks so much for having me, man. Yeah. Happy to be here. No, no problem. No problem. So tell me more about guest steel. Yeah. Guest steel is a software marketplace that connects podcast hosts, content hosts, like YouTube channels or blogs or newsletters or podcasts with expert guests to interview for their content. So, um, it has both sides of the marketplace in there. So if you're a guest and you're looking to get booked on shows, you can go pitch yourself on the shows or pay show hosts to bring you on, or if you're a show looking for guests, then you can go pay guests or pitch guests to be on your show. So you basically negotiate that right directly with the show. Yep. So usually, usually, you know, a lot of companies are out there, right? Like interview connection and there's some other ones. Um, you have to pay them a per episode. I think you have to buy a batch of 15 and pay upfront, you know, six, 7,000, whatever it is, and then they put you on a tour. What is that uniqueness between that? I know what it is, but I want you to kind of explain it. Yeah. The difference would be, cause we also do that. We have an agency that does the done tours as well. Um, the, the difference is like the software, you can just do it all yourself. Uh, and for much, much, much, much cheaper. So we have some people using the software that have booked 20, 30 podcast appearances for 97 bucks a month. Uh, and, uh, the, the core differentiator for us is that we like to pay show hosts. We think that people who built the audiences deserve to get a slice of the pie, uh, rather than like our agency taking all of it and paying them nothing. Yes. And that's, that's that little loophole, right? You know, these companies are out there, but they're not kind of sharing with the host, um, amount. So with this platform, you're able to negotiate directly, deal with the host and get payment directly on your platform. Correct. Yep, exactly. Yep. All you gotta do is set up a Stripe connect account, uh, which is free. Uh, you just set it up and then, uh, name your price. People will come in, they can pitch you and then you can reply back and you can accept them for free. You can respond for, uh, and say, Hey, pay our full booking rate, or you can respond with like some sort of a discounted booking rate, um, and kind of negotiate the price inside of the activity feed in the application. Yeah, this is definitely a need for it. And I'm, I'm, I'm grateful that you came up with the concept and you launched this. How long has it been out? Uh, so technically it's been lives since the beginning of 2021. Uh, we, for all of 2021, we're just making a ton of feedback or making a bunch of changes based on feedback and, uh, and things like that from our users. And so. Uh, uh, like it's been live since beginning of 2021, but really I feel like we've more been kind of go to market and launch mode at the beginning of 2022. It's really been like, it was a solid year, year and a half in product development before I felt comfortable with like actually going out and marketing it. Yeah, definitely. I'm going to set up an account. I just wanted to kind of discuss with you firsthand on the interview about it. Right. And then, you know, you obviously bring on some high caliber guests. Um, any, any kind of, uh, pointers or any kind of, uh, help they could provide audience how to gain, uh, that type of, uh, guests lineup. Yeah. I mean, the short answer is you pay for it, uh, which is one of the things guestio does. It's like a, it's like a cameo, you know, talent marketplace. You can get there and you can pay a guest to come on your show directly. Um, that's the easy way. It just costs money, right? Like you're going to, you're going to have some sort of cost and it's either going to cost you time or it's going to cost you money. Um, so if you have a bunch of money and not a bunch of time, then, you know, use the money. If you have a bunch of time, not a bunch of money, then use the time. And so when I first got started, I didn't have a bunch of money. So I used time and, uh, it took me a very long time to start getting some of these people booked on my show. Um, but, uh, what, what I started to notice was that the first one was the most difficult. The third one was a little bit less difficult. The seventh one was a little bit less difficult. The 12th one was a little bit less difficult. And then it got to the point where at some point it was just like almost anybody that I reached out to would just be a yes. Like almost like clockwork because we just built up such strong credibility. The key is like, you need to be able to get people to make a decision without having to do additional research or ask additional probing questions around whether or not they should be a guest on your show. So people, um, if like, if they get to the stage where they're asking you what your downloads are, then you messed up your original reach out. Most people don't really care. Like the, the metric is not really downloads for busy people. The metric is, are you going to waste my time? So if you can answer that question before they even ask the question by providing enough upfront credibility and awareness, then they don't have to go do a Google search. They don't have to have their assistant follow up and ask about download numbers. They don't have to worry about anything else. All they do is just say yes at that point. Uh, so it makes it a lot easier to, to go get those people on your show. If you can have like a foundation of credibility from the get go. Um, which is why I usually recommend to people to use guestio for like your first three to five big name guests that you can leverage in your cold reach outs. Like you don't have to always pay guestio for a constant flow of guests, but if you use, if you use it for your first three to five big names, then you can leverage those big names in your cold reach out strategies and get more people to say yes, a lot easier than you would have if you're starting from scratch and you don't have anybody. Yeah, no. Excellent. Because it's, it's giving them answering all the objections beforehand, right? Like we're through a, a media kit and that kind of information. That's what we do as well. Uh, we've been blessed so far. Um, we didn't pay for any guests, uh, just for one. Um, but other than that, we did not, uh, has been pure organic back and forth follow-ups, you know, because these guys are busy too, but we definitely, uh, there's a, there's a few people in your lineup that I would love to have on the show, so definitely I'm sure they're on guestio already. Um, and that's my, my, I would love to, to join that, that platform. It was really exciting when I saw that, what you did, because, um, uh, there's this, this industry is growing, right? Like it's, it's like if you're in business and you don't have a podcast, so you're not coming in front of the camera or your voice speaking to people and sharing your knowledge, you know, nowadays people are, are, are striving for that connection, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. That you, I think you're setting yourself up for failure if you're not creating content, especially if you have like an online business, right? Like if you're like a local chiropractor, maybe it's not as important for you, but, uh, but yeah, if you, if you sell online, you can sell in any state and ship anywhere, or you are selling SAS or info products or, you know, where you don't have a high, you know, cost of goods sold, uh, then, then, and you're not creating content, I think that I think you're doing yourself a disservice. And I think you're going to make, I think you're going to make future prospecting just as difficult as current prospecting, whereas when you have content that's out there working for you, it becomes easier over time because that attention compounds. Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. You know, I was very camera shy before and stuff, but then after I started noticing, I got so addicted to it, meeting people, I love meeting people. But it's different when you're on camera and like being recorded. So that was a, was a turning point. You had to kind of fight it. There's a lot of mindset stuff involved in this, right? In your journey. Um, have you worked on your mindset or were you always like, you were always on fire, uh, trying to get to, to your goals? No, absolutely. It worked on my mindset. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know if anybody's born with like the correct mindset from the beginning. I think that obviously if you grow up in, uh, abundance or affluence, then it's easier for you to visualize. Yeah. Right. Like, cause you've experienced it to a certain extent, but if you grow up in a normal household, like most of us, like you, you, you're used to just seeing most people not really have much and you're used to not seeing anybody do extremely well. And like, like you're used to being like the level of success that you're looking at is, whoa, that person makes six figures. Wow. That's crazy. You know what I mean? And, and so if, if your mindset is six figures, there's a lot of money, then seven figures is an impossible amount of money. You know what I mean? Like you have to work on your mindset if you want to be able to evolve into somebody that you never had any examples of, of, you know, seeing or interacting with when you grew up, uh, because you don't even really realize what's possible or how it's possible or what the steps are to get there. You know, I always thought it was growing up. I always, I always thought, you know, it's possible to become a millionaire, but only if you get extremely lucky. Like you have to like invent angry birds or Facebook in order to become a millionaire, or you got to invent this new gadget or you got to, like, I always thought of the breathe right strip guy that, that, that, that, uh, you know, he was an inventor and that was his first thing that ever took off is he invented the breathe right strip that you put on your nose and like opens your nostrils, allows you to breathe better or whatever. But that one thing made him a ton of money or the guy that invented the pool noodle made millions of dollars on selling the essentially a floating piece of styrofoam that you put in your pool. You know, I always thought it kind of had to be that way. I didn't, I didn't think that it was, I didn't think that it was just like a duplicatable repeatable process. If you're willing to put in work time, effort, energy, and invest into yourself and your knowledge and your connections, like you, I didn't view it as like a duplicatable roadmap, like a blueprint that you could get there. I thought you just had to get kind of lucky. And so I do a lot of work around my mindset, around like what was possible for me and, uh, and if it was possible for me and reframing my mind to believe that, that it was possible before it happened. And that's, that's a lot of work to do when you're starting from, from not really seeing much of that, you know, growing up. Yeah, I can relate to that. Like for me, there were those infomercials, uh, late night, you know, I would. I always wanted to be in business. Right. So I would see these guys on, on delegates and these things, and I would say, wow, how did they come up with this? Oh, I got to invent something. I got to invent something. Inventing is the only way. And you're right. You know, once you reprogram your inner world, your exterior starts translating into that programming. It's just so beautiful how the process works. And there's so many people that are struggling with this. I actually had a call earlier. Um, she was, uh, she, she booked an appointment with me, like to, to set up a, a, a, something, a business, but she was so out of it, like the mindset, everything was like, no, you know, I'm not, I'm not feeling it. I try to help say I'm not, I don't want to, I don't want to do anything. Like I just, just give me a week. I just don't. So this kind of stuff is so common right now outside that, that it feels that if in our position, for example, all we want to do is we're trying to find a ways to serve these people and bring that awareness, right. And, and a podcast and creating this kind of podcast, a networking podcast, you get in front of more people, get their attention and sharing that to the masses where they can also find solutions within, right. Totally. Yeah. It's, it allows, I think the great thing about podcasting is it allows people. Access to those conversations that they would have never had before, where that was what it was for me when I started listening to podcasts, it was, it was hearing stories of people who had been where I was and had gone where I wanted to go, even though they started where I was or even worse than I was, you know, people who like just crazy stories. And then, and then when I started my podcast and started interviewing a bunch of people, it was the same thing. You do interviews, people who have this crazy story of like dumpster diving and homeless and you know, they're, they're immigrants that don't even speak the language they're pulling out their shirts from the dumpster cause they can't afford to buy a new one. And like, then they're running a hundred million dollar business within like 15, 15, 20 years of that. And it's like, Oh, interesting. So like you do have the ability to create change in your life. If you're willing to put in the work to make it happen, you don't have to accept what you were given. You can create more, which is, which is obviously all, all in your mind. It's the battles, you know, started and won in your mind. Yes. Can you share one of your, your worst failures and one of your best wins? I mean, there's so many failures, dude. It's not even, yeah, it's just like a something memorable in that game. Yeah. Um, probably one of them was the first time we ever did a, um, so on the side of kind of some of the stuff that we do, um, we do a little bit of real estate investing with my parents and the first deal that we ever did that was out of state in a market that we're unfamiliar with. We jumped in, took action, bought it. And, uh, we didn't have the right Intel. We, we ran the numbers by two or three different agents, but they just must not have known this like particular subdivision very well. And so when we flipped the property, we thought the, we thought the, the ARV, the after repair value would have been closer to like 400,000. And then after we put in all the work in the property, it ended up being at like 330,000. So like literally our entire profit that we had built in was completely eroded. And we had to, we had to turn it into a rental property because we didn't want to offload it and lose 30 grand. Cause we had put like 75,000 on the renovation. And, uh, so we did as a rental for like a year, year and a half, like in retrospect, obviously we wish we would have kept it longer because we would have made a profit. Like it's probably selling for over 400 K now, um, in that particular market. But like when COVID hit, nobody knew what was happening. And so we were like, we, it's an out of state property. It's going to be difficult to go visit it. Like there's just so many unknowns that we were just like, Hey, we can sell it now and only lose like five grand or 10 grand, you know? And you know, we, we don't know what's happening in the market. It could collapse. So we, we got rid of it and we ended up losing, I don't know. I want to say we lost like five to 10,000 bucks a piece, me and our, and my, and my parents on that deal. And it was one of the only deals we ever lost money on. Uh, but, uh, but yeah, it was, it was definitely, uh, it was definitely a failure and it was, it was a bummer at the time because we thought that we were going to make so much money on it. Yeah. Um, and like, like I said, if we would have kept it now, we probably, probably would have made a healthy profit on it, but you know, can't predict the future. Yeah. So wise decision, whatever happened happened and is great. It could have been a lot worse, right? So it's great that, that, yeah. So what, what was the one thing that you took from that, um, as a learning, because failures are just basically, uh, you know, success tax, right? Like we just, you have to go pay it and then we get to some place. What did you get gained from it? exposed to where you don't know. Uh, because like I, I am not a full-time real estate investor. So if we're going to do deals in areas where, so like my dad is in a, is a real estate agents where I grew up in Southern California. So any deal he brings to the table in his market, I'm always okay with putting money in those deals. Cause I know that he knows that market backwards in front and he's been doing it for 20 years over there. And, uh, he's been an agent over there for 20 years. So like when we find a deal in that market, let's do a deal. But if, unless I'm going to put more time, effort and energy into learning a new market, then I'm not going to invest my money in those other markets, unless it's with somebody that knows that market really well. So that was, that was one of those, one of those takeaways for sure. Like I don't have to be the expert if I have some extra money and I want to make some money in real estate, I can just go give it to somebody, a friend of mine who does a bunch of stuff in real estate, which is more of our, our kind of our MO now is like save up some money, write a check to somebody else who does real estate full-time, and then kind of reap some of the benefits. They take some of the profits, but then I don't have to go learn all the numbers and, and, uh, take the majority of the risk on myself. Yeah, no wise learning from there. Um, what about your best win? Um, probably one of like my best wins was my first ever six figure month. And it was, it was, it was one of those mind stretching moments where, you know, in your mind that it, again, we talked about mindset when you know, in your mind that it's possible, you have, I had plenty at that point, I had been at enough masterminds to have plenty of friends who were doing six figure months. I had never done one. And you start to question whether or not it's possible for you, but I just kept thinking like big risks over and over again that most people probably wouldn't have. Like, so we threw a live event. This was in, at the end of 2019, never thrown a live event before we threw a live event. And, uh, we were, we were paying a lot more money than most people would be paying for live events at the level that we were at. So like most people are just going to like rent out a hotel ballroom, get some like nasty chicken in the lunch lines. And like, you did it right. It's seven grand out the door and they're done for like the full event. We decided to do our event at top golf. And so we rented out the entire meeting space at top golf. They brought in good food. We rented out all of the golf bays during like a two hour lunch. So people could network and play golf during lunch. We ended up spending 40 grand on the event where we probably could have spent, like I said, seven or eight. Um, but we, we made like 38 on ticket sales and sponsorships leading up to the event. So by the time we started the event, we were almost breakeven. And then I sold from stage, which is the first time I ever sold from stage. So obviously all of it was just like, I think this is what we can do. I have no idea if it's going to work, but I think this is what we can do. So spent the 40 grand ended up making 38 back by the time we started the event and then, uh, and then sold a $12,000 mastermind and we filled it up with 200 and something thousand dollars in that weekend. Um, we ended up refunding like three people afterwards that got cold feet. And so we ended up probably around like 150 or so for the, for the, for the weekend or whatever in revenue. And it was the first time where I was like, Holy ----, it worked. You know what I mean? Like the thing, like I, I put like, I did the work, I invested in myself. I learned from the right mentors. I mitigated my risk as much as possible, but I still took the big risk in paying this amount of money. Like when I was dropping 40 K in an event, we probably had like 75 K in my operating account. Like it was a pretty big risk to put that much money down. Um, so to see that it was like, Oh, Oh, it really, it really worked. It like did the thing that it was supposed to do that we planned for it to do. Um, it was a big like deposit in the confidence bank to be like, okay, let's like go try to do this again. You know? Amazing round of applause. You deserve it, my friend. That's awesome. I love hearing these stories by the way. Like it just, it's so incredible, you know, like every individual has their own little journey, little stories. Right. So it's, it's really nice to get that, bring that out to the surface so other people can hear and learn from it. Right. And that step that you took made a huge difference in your inner world. Like you said, like the confidence level, it just changes everything. Right. Um, what was your, what was your takeaway from there from that big win? That's if you want to get to the next level, you have to act like the next level before you get there. Uh, which, which was a, a big, a big learning for me because everybody wants to get to the next level. Like if you talk to people, you know, it's like, yeah, I want to make, I want to like a hundred thousand a year, a quarter million a year, a half a million a year, a million a year, whatever level you're at now, like level up a little bit. But then when you explain to them some sort of a roadmap to get there, that's when they start being like, well, I don't know. Or, you know, right now it's not a good time. And excuses start to proliferate. And what I realized at an event like that, like I said, was that if, if I wanted to be somebody that was making a million dollars a year that had a like seven figure business, then I had to start thinking like a seven figure business owner, even though I wasn't making seven figures a year yet. That's it. Dropping 40 K on an event when I didn't necessarily have the budget to be able to do that. Like I barely had the budget, but I didn't know, I didn't know that I was going to sell ticket enough tickets and sponsorships to pay it off before we got to the event. I didn't know that when I was putting the money out for it. You know what I mean? Like I didn't know how many people were going to buy from stage or anybody. I didn't know if anybody was going to buy it from stage. I didn't know any of that stuff. That was all unknowns. So dropping 40 grand when I only had like 70 in my account or whatever it was, I don't remember the exact number, um, was a massive risk for me. But I was trying to think of it as like, if I were running a seven figure business, would 40 grand be a lot? And that answer was no, it wouldn't be. So I have to be able to make the decision of the level that I'm trying to get on. If I want to get to that level, because you can't just act the same way that you're acting now and expect for it to achieve different results. It's just going to keep achieving the same results that you've always been achieving. The only way to get better results is to do better things or different things and be willing to take the risks of somebody who's at the level above you. And, uh, and that's something that, you know, kind of taken away into multiple aspects of my life now, like in this mastermind that I'm in now actually happened to be wearing a shirt with the logo on it. Um, a hundred million mastermind is, Oh yes, I heard of them. Yeah. It's a, uh, it was a hundred thousand dollar mastermind. When I bought into that mastermind, it was one of those moments again where it was like, this is a lot of money for me for a, for a mastermind. Um, a hundred thousand dollars for a single mastermind. Like that's, that's, that's stretching it by like double what I ever thought I would pay for a mastermind. And, but I started thinking about it and I was like, the people in this, in this group are people that are doing seven, eight and a lot of them, nine figures. It's called the a hundred million because all of the instructors that get up in front of you have done a hundred million plus in revenue and views and sales, whatever. So I was like, if I get around those people, those people look at a hundred grand, like it's nothing. Right. So I want to in the future be able to look at a hundred grand, like it's nothing, but I have to begin at some point treating it like it's not that big of a deal. If I lose it, if I invest the money and I lose a hundred grand, I have to reframe my mind to think about that. It's not about the money. It's about the time that I save. I can go regenerate the money. Money is replenishable. It is a regenerative asset. You can go get more of it. If you lose some of it time, you can't. So if I can invest a hundred grand to save myself two, three, four, five years of a learning curve, two, three, four, five years of relationship building and networking to get around all these people and learn all these things from these people. If I can invest this money to get all of that time back, it seems like it would be a good investment. And even if it goes South, I have to start framing my mind to think about a hundred grand, not being that much money. If it's something that helped me achieve the goal that I had in my mind from the start. And that was difficult to do. I'm not sitting here pretending like, I was just like, Oh, let's do it. It took me like four months to make the decision and like lost a little bit of sleep over it because it was so much money. And I had a little anxiety and butterflies in my stomach and all that stuff. But like at the end of the day, everything good in my life has always been on the other side of something uncomfortable. Yeah. If you are only ever going to stick in that comfort zone, then you can't achieve anything outside of what you're currently capable of achieving, which isn't that much. It's all mindset, right? When you elevated, when you're coming from that place that you already have it and you make decisions from that place, you're taking actions from that place. Everything that you're operating as is from that place. So you start seeing the results from that place. I would love to know my next question would be, is that, um, who were your mentors? You'd mentioned so many mentors, two or three of them. Yeah. Uh, one of the first ones was, uh, John Lee Dumas, uh, from, uh, his podcast is entrepreneur on fire. Um, so when I, like, I'm a big believer in finding mentors that do the thing that you really want to do, rather than just like generic mentors that do generic things that like, if you're trying to tackle a certain thing, go find somebody who does that thing. And they do it at an excellent level. So when I started podcasting, I was like, John, they do miss makes over a million a year directly from his podcast, which there's not many people that can say that, like just in sponsorships, he'll make a million a year, just directly from his podcast. Then you add in like affiliate revenue, some other things, like he does extremely well. And 95% of his revenue ties in directly to his podcast, which is, is very rare. It's over a million downloads a month, interviewed all the people I wanted to interview. And so I was like, this is the guy. So he kind of became my first mentor. Um, and, uh, and frankly, he's been a mentor kind of ever since. And he's now, he's an investor and partner in my software company, which is kind of a cool, um, like full circle. Uh, but then a couple other ones would be like Dan Fleishman, uh, who's the, one of the co-founders of the a hundred million group. Um, I look up to Dan for a lot of different things, especially for, um, uh, investing and, uh, how to spend your time and things like that. Um, and then, uh, and I mean, so many others along the way, Joel, Joel Marion, the other co-founder is, is, uh, is, uh, is another person I look up to a lot, a friend of mine, Sharon Srivatsa, sold a three and a half billion dollar real estate company. And now is, uh, in, uh, uh, partner at a hedge fund, somebody I look up to a lot of friend, Sam Ellis, who was a CTO at a growing software company. That's, uh, one of my mentors with my software company. Um, there's so many people that I turn to for, for advice. That's great. You know, without mentorship, it's such a tough journey, you know, and that's the key finding what someone is doing really well, that you want pay them because it's their right. They deserve it. They need, you gotta pay for it. Yeah. Deserve it. They did it. Give them what they're asking for, you know, like give them what they need and transfer that knowledge, get their guidance, get to that place. I don't know what will happen. I don't know if I would be where I am without men like mentors is, is, is everything, everything. So grateful. Yeah. It's a shortcut, especially time. Like you said, you know, as time is limited, right. You want to invest and bring that time more in our favor. I do appreciate your time, Travis. Thank you so much for coming on the show. If you have any kind of final words for the audience that you would like to share, please go ahead. Yeah, sure. Um, we'd love to connect with anybody. Uh, thanks for checking us, checking the show out. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Uh, thanks for anybody who spent the time with us. We're still with us at the end of this. Uh, we'd love to connect with you guys and help out wherever I can. Just travischappell.com C H A P P E L L. Head over there. I'll find my social links, email, everything like that over on my website. So travischappell.com reach out and we'll chat. Awesome. Yeah. You, uh, Travis, you definitely seem like someone has a open door policy and is great to have you on the show. I'm hoping anybody in the audience that's looking for guidance, Travis is your guy. Um, get in touch with him. And again, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me on our show here. And, um, I wish you all the best for the future. Appreciate it, man. Thanks so much for having me.