Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. On today's guest session, I have Mr. Travis Chappell. So Travis is a podcast consultant and professional connector. He is the founder of the Procast Media, which is a full stack podcast production company specialized in helping a busy entrepreneurs produce profitable podcasts.

And he's the host of two amazing shows, Build Your Network and World Class. So in addition to being featured in Entrepreneur, NASDAQ and ReadWrite, Travis has also been featured in Forbes as a top 10 podcast that will change your life along some names that people are probably familiar with, like Joe Rogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Tim Ferriss and people like that.

So in this episode, in this conversation, yes, he is a podcast guy and he is a connector. Build Your Network is really about relationships. But in this conversation, we end with talking about relationships and connections. And the build your network kind of model. But where we start is how he is opposite than me, where he grew up in a sales household.

He grew up selling at a young age and kept going with that. And so we talk about his journey, the lessons he learned a lot of things where he and I, at this point in our lives, we feel the same way about sales and selling and what sales people and what sales professionals should be doing as part of their process, even though we took two different journeys.

So this is a different approach. to the sales process coming from someone who started at a very young age and then ended up to where he is. So here it is. Enjoy this conversation between myself and Travis. Travis, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Travis: Jason, thanks so much for having me, man.

Happy to be here.

Jason: I am excited. I talked to a lot of different people on the show and a wide range coaches, consultants. You have a very interesting background that I love from a sales perspective. And then what you're doing now with some projects, I guess the place I wanted to start with is actually talking about the sales part.

When you grew up, some people like myself didn't grow up selling. Like I grew up in an anti sales household. That wasn't a thing for me. I'm not somebody who's been selling for a long time, but you on the other hand, that's a little bit different. You actually started your sales career pretty young, right?

Travis: Yeah, pretty young. I grew up in a real estate household. So was in a sales household. When I was a little kid, just had that entrepreneurial itch and started selling stuff to other kids at elementary school recess. Drop off lines and all that good stuff. And then started my first business when I was 16, 17, and we're doing landscaping and doing a bunch of manual labor for a while.

So yeah, just the desire to have money definitely has been in me for a long time.

Jason: Which again, I think is fascinating because there's some people let's say also the Gary V's of the world, where they tell their stories and they've been at sales for a long time. And then there's other people who didn't grow up that way.

So I think it's fascinating because I usually have the people who fell into sales accidentally on the show, that perspective, but to hear someone like you on the show, which is you started young, you grew up in a sales related household, then you hit it.

Travis: Yeah, honestly, man, we were, we was really just like selling religion was the thing that I did when I was a kid.

I grew up in a super strict small religious bubble type community. And I wouldn't describe it as saying a cult because it was technically a cult, but it definitely had some cultish tendencies and characteristics. And so that was a unique way to grow up from the time I was seven years old or whatever it was.

We were knocking on doors every Weekend inviting people to come to church and like trying to talk to people about religion and stuff like that So I just was something that I always did the interesting thing though is that a lot of people that I knew that I grew up with did the same thing and grew up The same way that I did and none of them do what I do So it is interesting to talk like the personality versus learned Discussion is definitely an interesting discussion because I feel like I was raised the same way A lot of other people were raised in that culture in that community Even my sister grew up in the same household that i'm in and we just went totally completely opposite ways with what we ended up doing so It is interesting for sure.

I just fell into doing selling when I was in college and stuck with it for a while. Cause that was just a core competency that I had.

Jason: Yeah. Which is that whole nature versus nurture kind of conversation. I know there's several studies out there where there's twins who were separated at birth and grew up in different households and what they have in common and then what's like completely different for them.

Is there anything that you still remember or you use longterm from those? seven, eight, nine year old days of knocking on doors and tagging along with the parents to get people to go to church.

Travis: Not really, except for the knowledge that I could knock on doors and be okay at the end of the day, I think just a lot of people don't do those types of things because they don't feel like The thought of doing it makes them too anxious to even try doing it If anything I can take away from the fact that I did it and it was okay you didn't melt when you made an ask yet That was actually probably one thing that I took away from that and that I used in sales Of course when I got into sales, I re learned the principal, but there was always like making an ask.

That was something that we were taught when we were knocking doors to try to get people to come to church. It was always making an ask, like whether it's like we get into serious conversations, man. It's super weird looking back now because it'd be so weird if some 13 year old kid knocked on my door and asked me like where I was going to spend eternity.

But that's the kind of stuff that I was asking fully grown adult. So I learned how to be like unabashed. Unashamedly selling the product that I had to sell, which at the time was religion. And at least if it wasn't like that question, it was at least a, would you come to church with me question. There was always an ask.

And I always had the ask that kind of learned that from a pretty young age, that there always had to be an ask, not just like a generic conversation around where you were talking or what you were talking about.

Jason: Yeah. You weren't knocking on doors. You weren't going through that process just to make friends or.

Have a conversation long enough where somebody wanted whatever you had without you having to ask for it.

Travis: Yeah, it was definitely like, okay, let's get to the point where you bring them to church or you talk to them about Jesus or whatever it was. You know what I mean? But yeah, they, they train that to everybody that went out.

We called it soul winning. So every Saturday we had Saturday morning soul winning. And we'd go out in the community and knock on doors for a couple of hours and then go get like a slushie or something and go home.

Jason: Hey, it's Jason here. We'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to change the way you view your selling role and become a sales professional?

Do you have a team that is hungry for new ways to improve and grow? If so, I have various coaching and consulting programs available. That might be great tools to help you achieve your goals. To learn more about the ways we can work together and to book your free sales, power call, go to Jason cutter. com.

Now let's get back to the episode. And I think what's interesting about that point, there's a couple of them is that. There's a lot of people in sales who I use the term order taker where they're in a sales role. They're having conversations. They're either afraid to ask. They don't know how to ask.

They're afraid of being that manipulator shark that people don't like because maybe they had bad experiences growing up or as a customer. And so they just shy away from it. And that's the part of the sales process. Otherwise you're just taking orders. And it's about doing that properly. Yep, 100 percent man.

And what's really interesting is that in all my experience of leading teams and seeing salespeople, some of the most successful ones, especially from a phone sales perspective, spent time knocking on doors in some capacity in sales. And if you can knock on doors and you can get doors slammed in your face or people to threaten you face to face, I know people who have guns pulled on them face in person knocking on doors.

You go into any other sales role other than that, and it's easy.

Travis: Yeah, it's definitely anchors that emotion at a different place when you are used to selling that way. So in college, that's when I started in door to door and did that for six, seven years after that. So when I got into what I do now, you're totally right, man.

Like it's so much easier to do what I do now, to sell the things that I'd sell now than it was to knock on doors. But that definitely wouldn't trade that experience for anything. It was very useful time.

Jason: No, I think that's valuable. I don't know if I would make that a requirement for salespeople to do when they start out, but there's something very fundamental that helps you learn some skills, how to be tenacious, how to not give up if you want to be successful in it.

And then also relative.

Travis: Yeah. And I like that it teaches you how to be resourceful, almost like lead generator as well. It makes you way more grateful for leads that come in. It gives you a lot more empathy for like where the lead came from. You know what I mean? If you spend time on both sides of the equation, a lot of salespeople that I've interacted with that never had to do what I did, like they just get leads that populate into their CRM every day.

And then they whine and complain about the leads all day long and how horrible they are and how it's not their fault that they're not closing. Like those are the people I just want to like shake them and just be like. Do you realize the gold that you're being given every single day? It's your job to make the most of this now.

Stop whining, stop making excuses, and start closing some deals. You know what I mean? Because I woke up every day being 100 percent commissioned. No salary, no guarantee, no nothing. And I had to go out every day, on doors, generate leads, and close them in the same day. And sign the contract and get it installed before they laid their head on the pillow that night.

And every day I had to go out and redo that process. So it definitely gave me an appreciation for marketing and lead generation and what it means to generate quality leads because I had to do all sides of the equation.

Jason: And I will tell you once again, from my experience, the people who spent time knocking on doors, when you hand that person a lead, they are so grateful and thankful, right?

They're not in the cold. They're not in the hot. Some people are knocking on doors in places where the seasons are just rough on all extremes. Because I've also seen what you're talking about, which is the people literally with their feet up waiting for new leads, complaining about what they've got and pointing the finger at marketing versus appreciating it.

Travis: Yep. And then marketing pointing the finger at them and saying you should be selling. We're generating the leads. And it's just this big. If people just had that attitude of gratefulness. That's why I like what door did for me. Cause it put me in that attitude of gratefulness. When I have leads on my calendar that came in through automated things that I'm doing in marketing, it's just you know what, that beats the hell out of going out right now and 108 degrees and knocking on doors.

Jason: And I think that's a good life lesson too, right? Obviously it's a sales related podcast, but talking about life in general, that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned at this point in my life is that everything is relative and you can appreciate where you're at now. If you look back at those tough times, if you've ever gone through.

Really hard times where life has punched you in the face and knocked you down and you had to get up and it's what I'm going through right now isn't that hard. It's not as tough as I've seen before and not saying it's not bad, but just like you've survived other things. And it's it's not that bad.

Travis: Yeah. And really, it's just understanding that if you can never master or learn the art of being grateful and thankful for life in the times that are not good. Yeah. Then you are subjecting yourself knowingly and willingly to a life of a roller coaster, because that is literally what life is. It's full of ups and it's full of downs.

And if you kept riding the roller coaster, instead of trying to be that steady person throughout all of it, like I said, you are willingly and knowingly subjecting yourself to whatever life has to throw at you. I don't think the people who enjoy their lives go throughout life living it like that. I think the people who enjoy their lives are the ones who learn how to be grateful for the good times and learn how to be grateful for the bad times and in the bad times because it's just part of how it goes.

It's part of the journey. And is it ideal sometimes? No, but like you grow. through the struggles more than you'll ever grow when you're not struggling like the discomfort is what forces you to grow and turn you into a better person and make you a better person on the other side of something and if you can't ever learn to cope with that and you just retreat and retreat into whatever it might be even if it's like an escape like alcohol or smoking weed or Whatever other types of things, if you can't deal with those problems, then they're never going to go away.

And you're only waiting for the awesome part of life, which most of the time won't even come until you figure out how to get through the struggles and come out on the other end without being totally beat up and ready to quit. So yeah, I think that's definitely a lesson to take throughout life is if you can't be happy, you can't be fulfilled.

You can't be grateful during the times that aren't going to super according to plan then. You may as well just write out a statement right now, just get out a piece of paper and write out a statement that says, I will never be 100 percent happy being at peace. And if you're okay with that, cool, learn how to live life, go throughout the rest of your life riding the roller coaster.

But if you look at that statement and you're not willing to write it out because you're like, wow, I'm giving up ultimate control over my own happiness and fulfillment in life, then you should probably start figuring out how to be grateful and happy during the struggles and the bad times too, because that's part of the prescription of life, man.

Jason: I love it. I'm so glad that you covered that. Obviously it's a sales related podcast. That's totally life lesson. And what I'll say is that also totally applies in sales as well. For anyone listening, who's in sales also is your sales career will be ups and downs. You go through slumps constantly. There will be a bad week or a bad month or a bad quarter.

And can you pull yourself out of it? Or are you just going to ignore it, put your head in the sand and just wait for the good leads to start coming in? Or can you embrace it, recognize it because it happens and then tweak whatever needs to be tweaked to get you back in the game.

Travis: Take responsibility, get proactive and decide that it's up to you.

Not up to whatever life throws at you.

Jason: All right. That's it for my first part of the conversation with Travis. As you can tell, we're just going to keep rolling. We're going to talk about sales throughout this. We'll get to relationship and network in part three. Make sure to subscribe so you can get every single episode and that you can keep up with this conversation and all the other ones that I have with amazing guests like Travis.

If you want to find out more information about how to reach Travis, the best thing to do is go to cutter consulting group. com slash podcast. You can find his information there as well as the show notes, and I'm going to leave you like I always do keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.