I’m joined by Travis Chappell from Build Your Network podcast where we look at how building your network is not only good for your business or career development but a massive part to building your personal brand.

Travis firmly believes that who you know is more important than what you know.

Get in touch with Travis here.

Keep in touch and send me your questions.

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You were listening to personal branding exposed with my favorite human Megan MacNeill. Each episode, we’ll explore a different area of personal branding and how you can build, maintain, and leverage off your own personal brand. Let’s put it together. Here’s Megan.

Guys I am ridiculously excited for today’s episode. I’ve got Travis Chappell. Now Travis has his own podcast as well, build your network. And he is all about who, you know, is more important than what you know. Now I personally think that there’s another level and it’s. Sam, who knows you, that’s more important, but Travis is going to chat to us about the importance of building your network, not only for, you know, your business or for your career development, but also for building your personal brand.

Hey Travis, how are you? I am doing fantastic. Megan, how’s it going with you? Yeah, I’m pretty good. Everything’s a little bit, uh, topsy turvy at the moment. Just a little bit. Yeah, yeah. A little bit, a little sketchy these days. Sure. But, uh, you know, just trying to find that silver lining. So you normally do quite a bit of traveling. How are you finding being, um, at home so much?

No, that’s a good question. Uh, pretty. Pretty interesting. Uh, I do travel a good amount and I feel like the traveling that I do always makes me grateful for being home, you know? And so now I’m starting to get a little stir crazy. Um, just with, you know, we have, we have our son and he’s almost a year old and he’s, he’s a little handful now and, um, we have two dogs and they’re both. Big dogs. And so, uh, they’re always a handful. Um, and then, and then the wife too. And so like, you know, I think, I think that we’re just kind of as humans supposed to be able to get out and, uh, get out of our routines and things. Uh, but you know, uh, it could be a lot worse. I’ll say that, you know, we’re, uh, we’re, we’re pretty, we’re pretty chilled. My wife and I are both pretty chill. So. You know, we just kind of do our own things. And, uh, she works a little bit from home as well, so we just kind of do our own things. And then my mom moved locally a few months ago. And so, um, if we like are really getting stir-crazy, we need to do something, we’ll go drop off our son with her and then leave the dogs at home and just drive around for a little bit and kind of get out a little bit. So, you know, like I said, Definitely could be better, but definitely could be worse. So yeah, I reckon we’re pretty lucky in the big scheme of things.

Exactly. Yep. So Travis, tell the audience exactly what it is that you do, what your niche is and why that’s, what it is. What’s the problem you solve.

Sure. So we are a full stack podcast production agency and then, um, I also do coaching consulting and have a couple of masterminds and run my own podcasts, obviously, things like that. Uh, but the main thing that we do is we help people build podcasts. So we help entrepreneurs that are maybe too busy or just don’t want to deal with the backend stuff. They don’t want to figure out the technical side. They don’t want to figure out how to edit and upload to a media host and publish and tag and write show notes and, um, you know, Worry about equipment. They don’t want to have to do any of that. They just want to show up and hit the record button. And that’s essentially what we do is we allow them to show up and hit the record button.

And then, um, on that I also offer like a, as a part of that service, we also do coaching and consulting in that because we want clients that are going to be successful and not just clients that have a podcast. Uh, so we, we, we kind of have a. A mixture of those two things kind of consulting and making sure that your idea is something that’s actually going to do well and stick and make you money. And then if it is, then we move forward and actually do all of the content creation for you from there. So, yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s the big thing that we have going on right now.

So it’s actually Travis’s fault that I have a podcast as well, because I started listening to build your own network. Oh, probably the end of 2019. Um, I was, uh, I was recommended I should listen to some podcasts and it took me a while to actually find one that I wanted to listen to. And I ended up binge listening to, to build your own network, which was pretty awesome. So through search or something? Yeah, I think I, it must’ve been some keywords that I and then I find one of your guests that way. And then I just went from there. So I’ve been dipping in and out. There’s like 300, plus it must be nearly 400, almost 400. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve been dipping in no particular order, just going back cause before, which has been pretty awesome. So that was the inspiration for me to start my podcast. So thank you, Travis.

Yeah, I love that. So your podcasts though, the one that I go into, you’ve got two now that I’m aware of the, um, build your network and the world class, um, podcast. The, so obviously that’s all around networking. This one here is about personal branding. So I just want the audience to get to know Travis a little bit more. I obviously have got to know you a bit from listening to your podcast and being part of your mastermind and your, your Facebook group and stuff. But let’s say let’s get to, let’s let them. Listeners find out more about you. So Travis, where are you most likely to be found online?

Um, most likely be found online, probably Instagram. Um, probably is where I spend the majority of months of Instagram or my Facebook group would be probably the two places that I spend the most time online. I would put out content, obviously the podcasts we release three times a week. So, you know, that’s kind of a given, uh, besides, besides the podcast. And then we are actually starting, we started the new show recently in hopes that it would be like a YouTube show that we repurpose and have as a podcast uh world-class. Um, we obviously have taken a step back from production just because all of our interviews got postponed or rescheduled or canceled with all the craziness going on right now. So we’re kind of like digging into the, build your network archives and finding some of our top interview, our top video interviews from build your network and kind of rereleasing them on world-class. Um, so we released a lot on YouTube. We spend some time on YouTube, spend some time, obviously with podcasting, but in terms of like the platforms where like you’ll most likely to connect with me, uh, would be probably Instagram. And then my Facebook group. And his Facebook group is awesome by the way, guys, I’ve had a lot of value from a lot of really great people on there.

Thank you so much. So Travis, when we’re not in lockdown down, where are we most likely to find you out of the house? I wouldn’t about, that’s a good question. Do you mean this in terms of like at different events within my industry? Or do you mean like, just like around where I live. Where are you like to hang out? Where is your go to place? Yeah. Um, I spend basically most of my time, either at the gym or at my house. So I work from home basically most of the time anyway. So I’m either traveling, gone in a different country, different state, different city. Or when I’m actually at home, I spend a lot of my time actually at home just because I travel so much. So when I’m home, I like to be home. So it’s kind of interesting, cause I don’t really go out to a ton of places in Vegas, especially because especially now that we have our son, uh, we just don’t, we don’t really like go out and we don’t, you know, hit the party scene or the night scene or anything like that very often. Um, so when I’m home, I’m usually like home home, you know what I mean?

And um, I. Definitely go to the gym every day. So that’s been a huge bummer to all the gyms are closed down. That’s kind of like my way to get out of the house first thing in the morning. Um, and, uh, and even sometimes I’ll even work a little bit at the gym and things, but, um, yeah, for the most part, yeah. I spend my day at the gym and then I come home and get work done, or I’m traveling, which is, you know, pretty decent amount of the time. I typically take three to five trips per month minimum. Um, and, and those will obviously vary on the length of the trip and how far I go away from home. But. Yeah, we’ve traveled a good amount. So when I’m home, I don’t like to go out and get out of the house more. I like to stay home, stay home. You know.

That totally blows my mind because I’m obviously Scottish from the Highlands middle of nowhere. And I live in Paris, Western Australia, again, pretty isolated middle of nowhere. So when I think of Vegas, I think of partying. I think of the hangover. I don’t think of a family man, staying in, going to the gym in the morning.

Yeah, it’s funny, right? Yeah. If you, if you, if you, uh, if you’re a Vegas local, then you know that, you know, we don’t really ever do the strip. You know, we just kind of things operate as normal. You know, people are like, Oh, I don’t know how you live in Vegas. It’s like, well, I don’t really ever do Vegas stuff. You know? Like the only time I do Vegas stuff is if I have friends in town and they want to go to the strip or something, you know? So like we went, we’ve lived here for over two years and we went to our first Vegas show ever, like. Two weeks ago or like three weeks ago, like right before all this COVID stuff started happening. We went to our first Vegas show ever after living here for over two years. So yeah, we definitely don’t get up. We don’t get out a lot in act in our own city, uh, ironically, which is, which is kind of funny.

Oh, it’s crazy. The perceptions, because before I came to Australia, I thought it was basically just home and away. Yeah. All right. Sure. If you were to eat the same meal for the rest of your life, what would that meal be?

Man, I gotta go. I gotta go with a steak and mashed potatoes and, uh, some sort of vegetable, either Brussels sprouts or like, uh, asparagus or something like that. That’s, that’s kind of like my. That’s that’s I don’t think I’d be able to live without that meal like that. So it’s so good. Like a good steak though. It has to be a good steak. So from like, it’s gotta be like a certain level of steak in order to qualify as like, it can’t be like a Chili’s steak, you know what I mean? It’s going to be like, but yeah, if I could, if I could eat that forever, I’ll need it forever. And lots of Brussels sprouts. Love that. Yeah. You gotta have some greens in there. You gotta throw some greens in for sure.

And what’s your favorite book? Favorite book? A man. There’s. So there’s just too many to really nail one down. How about this? Give me like a, more of a category and I’ll, and I’ll give you an answer. Okay. And I don’t, I don’t read fiction by the way, just to throw that out there. So don’t say fiction cause I don’t read fiction. Well, what’s the best business advice book that you’ve read. Business advice, um, in terms of like the ins and outs and practicality of running a business, I would say profit first is a really good book.

Um, in terms of like mindset, you got to go with the classics, like think and grow rich, rich dad, poor dad, how to win friends and influence people, stuff like that. Um, money, mindset books were, were a big part of my journey when I first started just to kind of. Take all the wiring that exists from growing up and, uh, the perspectives and contexts that exist from growing up and rewire that to be, uh, have a healthier relationship with money. Um, I think that’s really important to anybody, uh, whether you’re going to be an entrepreneur or not. And so a couple of books in that space would be, uh, secrets of the millionaire mind by Tiara, Becker. Um, you need more money by Matt Manero. Um, so yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of books for you, so. Um, there, that’ll give you some, some good reading for a while. Oh, also the one thing by Gary Keller. That’s a really good business book.

Okay. My list just got massive. No, that’s the one thing I found being part of your mastermind with our accountability group. I feel that every week everyone’s like, you’ve got to read this book. You’ve got to read that book. It’s just books, books, books, which is fantastic. Cause I love reading, but I have got a list, like a really long list right now.

That’s yeah, that’s the way it should be. Right. That’s the way it should be. So if your friends and family were to describe you in one word, what would that word be? Um, prob I mean, probably a probably emotionless, um, uh, just, just cause they would probably take a wise crack at me if it were my friends and family, but, um, yeah, that, that would probably be something to describe me. Cause I’m a fairly even keeled. Individual. I don’t have like, you know, crazy high highs and super low lows and just like a rollercoaster, emotional type of a person I’m, I’m kind of right in the middle. They’re pretty, I think chill might be another word possibly that people might use to describe me. And I’ve even had some people describe me that way in like a negative context where like, uh, like, you know, I had this one guy called me, said, said I was too cool for school or something like that. And was just like, okay, sure. Whatever. I’m not like. I’m not trying to portray that. That’s just who I am. You know, like I don’t, I don’t know how to, you know, sorry that offends you. I guess I don’t really understand the question you’re that, you know what I mean? The reason for that statement, but yeah, I would probably say something like that. Um, even keeled, you know, um, that would probably be a word that my family would use to describe me.

That’s a good word. And finally, what word do you overuse? Hmm, I mean, a word that I wish, I wouldn’t say as much as like. I very much have that like California and curse of saying like a lot. So that’s one thing that a little. It’s one of the things that annoys me when I listen back to my own interviews is I say the word like a lot. And so I constantly try to focus on not saying the word like, and I wish that I would not have gotten started with that bad habit or else I wouldn’t have to like work on, you know, just set it right there. While I’m talking about not saying it. I said it. So yeah, trying to work on, uh, being more purposeful in my speech and not saying the word, like too much.

I totally thought that that was a generational thing because I feel like everyone says like, Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. It could be generational. Um, my, my wife is like the queen of the word, like, so, uh, I think that it’s even more difficult for me cause obviously who, the people that you’re around and, you know, really, uh, affect the way that you talk or like the phrases that you pick up on or the words that you use. And my wife, my wife uses the word like. More than anybody else that I know. So I think, I think in my own head, I don’t say it nearly as often as she does. So I Pat myself on the back for that. But, but, uh, but in reality I do say it pretty frequently. Just lot in comparison to how often she says. Awesome.

All right, Travis let’s chat about the networking side of things, because I’m really interested in that for building your personal brand. Cause I, I think, well, you’re, um, your slogan on your show as you believe, um, Who you know, is more important than what, you know, whereas I kind of believe that what you know, and who, you know, go hand in hand and then it’s, who knows you, that actually gives you the opportunity and takes you to the next level. So I’m really interested in that, um, networking piece. How do you see that fitting into building your personal brand? Yeah, it was literally everything in my personal brand.

For me personally, networking was the foundation. It was almost the building material that I use to build my brand. I would not have been able to build my brand as quickly as I did had I not had the networking piece attached to it because what, what, the way that I looked at it was I wanted to use a lot of association in my favor to my advantage, which. Basically meant that I needed to go connect with the top people in the space that existed, because I knew that if I were, if I was able to rub shoulders with the top people in my space and I could control the way that people were initially introduced to me, which was through somebody like that and their platform or on my website with me and a picture of them with me, then that’s going to be able to control the perception through which people view me. And perception is reality.

The bottom line and all, all a brand is what people feel about you or think about you when your name is mentioned, that’s your personal brand. And so for me, it was my goal from the beginning to always connect with people on a higher level than I was so that people would perceive me automatically to be on that high level. And at least to some extent, right. You’re you, maybe not, you, you may not assume that I am on the same level, but you assume that I am of a certain level. In order to be able to connect and hold conversations with people who are absolutely crushing the game. And so my entire personal brand was built off of the back of connections and networking. And I would have nothing like nowhere near the brand that I have, the presence that I have now, if it weren’t for my, uh, Uh, my ability to reach out to people who are just on a level that was totally crushing it, comparatively to where I was, and actually be able to connect with them and, and share a platform with them, whether that be as an actual stage in person at an event at a speaking event, or if that’s on a virtual stage, like what we’re doing right now on a podcast.

Yeah. I think that law of attraction stuff is massive because whenever I do LinkedIn training, I’m always trying to get clients to clean up their connections. A lot of people will just accept everyone in anyone, but I kind of take it back to like playground school, ground rules, where as soon as you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd, people associate you with. I don’t whether you’re actually like them or not. So if I get a request and you’ve got a whole lot of friends or connections on LinkedIn that I don’t like trust or value, I don’t know, like, or trust or value you and I don’t even know you yet.

So I think that whole association thing is massive. Yeah, it’s something that’s programmed, it’s wired in our brains. It’s not something that we choose to do and that was something that I picked up on pretty early, because I would use that as a measuring tool to see if other people were people I wanted to do business with. Like when I was looking at somebody’s brand, I wanted to see. Hey, who is this person connected to? Or if I’m looking at a book that I’m going to pick up, I want to see who wrote the forward and who wrote the endorsements on the back. If I’ve ever, if I’ve never heard of the author, but I flip the back cover and it’s like, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin and, and Tim Ferriss writing endorsements for the book, then I’m probably going to pick up the book because those are all names that I know like, and trust already, even though I may not know the author, I’m automatically assuming that he’s of a certain level or else you wouldn’t be able to connect with and get endorsements from people like that. Yeah, completely.

So you I’m obviously at the start of your career, start it in the networking side of things. You are going knocking on doors of like pretty big people. Um, how were you doing that? How were you getting into them? You know, that’s a good question. Um, a lot of times it was paying to play at the beginning. I would pay to get in front of people, like join their mastermind or buy their product or service and join their Facebook group and be an active member. I would do whatever I could to, to, to be top of mind for those people. Uh, but in terms of like the practicality on the tools that I would use Instagram, DMS was like a secret weapon for me. Um, I. I still use it to this day. And I think that it’s an underused uh, uh, platform and sure do a lot of people like, well, I’d never hear back from a lot of people and yeah. People ignore me. And did people say no? Yeah, definitely. But I also got access to people that I would’ve never had access to whose emails I wouldn’t have been able to guess. You know, um, that, that I got direct access to on an Instagram DM, and it just happened to work out.

So I’m just very much somebody that’s just like, you know what, put as many lines in the water as you can do it professionally and do it personally. Don’t like, don’t make your message bland and don’t make it a mass message, but put a ton of light on the wall, put a ton of lines in the water and a customizable way for each individual person. And you’re bound to get results from that.

Yeah. Back to that authenticity stuff that we love. Yes. I was, can you talk a bit more about a mastermind and what it is because before listening to your show and joining your mastermind, I’d never heard of it before. And I’m pretty sure that a lot of my audience will have no clue what we’re talking about when we’re talking about a mastermind.

Sure. So a mastermind by my definition is basically just a group of likeminded individuals that meet on a regular basis for the purpose of collaboration, um, uh, uh, accountability. Help guidance conversation. It’s just a way to a way to be around people who think the way that you think on a consistent basis. And. And that’s the biggest advantage of being in those groups is that a lot of times, especially as entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, the way that we think and the way that we structure our lives is different than the way that most people do it. And it’s not their fault. It’s not our fault. It’s not anybody these fault. It’s just the way the things are. And you’re probably in the minority, if you’re in that entrepreneurial mindset and you probably have a lot of friends who don’t understand the way that you think. And so when you’re thinking, when you’re talking to a friend about like, you know, increasing prices on a new offer that you have and going from charging $1,500 to charging $12,000. You know, your friend with their limited mindset and limited experience of business is going to be like, well, that’s crazy expensive. Whereas you might talk to somebody in your mastermind group that has been, you know, selling this $25,000 offer and looks at you and goes 12 K. You should probably sell that for more like 18 or 19, maybe even 20,000. You know what I mean? Like it’s just getting around a group of people who understand what it’s like to think, the way that you do and can empathize with the decisions that you have to make on a daily basis. The fact that you may have employees to think about the fact that like everybody in your life depends on you.

You know, th there’s just, there’s just so many things that you have in common with people that you join a mastermind group for that you just, aren’t going to be able to find a lot of times naturally happen in your immediate circles, just from growing up or from, you know, your friend groups or family. So it’s so important to foster those connections on purpose so that you can get it. Like I had two mastermind calls today. We had the one for the inner circle and we have one for my. My high ticket mastermind, the cool people mastermind. Um, And it was just a breath of fresh air with all the negativity and crazy stuff that’s happening in the world.

All of us were able to hop on calls back to back with, for me back to back. And I got to chat with a bunch of people who are doing cool stuff in their businesses, and it gave me, um, more of a recharge on my batteries to go out and get after it and, and continue, you know, doing the things that I think I should be doing versus. Listening to other people who were just sitting down and binge watching Netflix all day long because they don’t go to their job. You know what I mean? So there there’s, there’s just a big difference between getting around the people that are in a mastermind and especially in a mastermind group, that’s paid for you are automatically weeding out a bunch of people who don’t take their personal development seriously enough to be able to pay for a group like that. And so when you jump into a group that you actually have to pay for. You’re jumping into a group of people who are all, who are also willing to pay, to get around people that are on a higher level, and that are going to push them to be a better version of themselves.

So, um, that’s why I say that pay to play thing. Like when you pay, you pay attention and you know, if you only are in free groups, then you’re going to be around a bunch of people. The quality of those groups is going to be free quality, right? So if you get in pay group, the quality of the group is going to be paid quality, which is automatically going to be a higher quality person that’s in that group. Yeah, completely. I think that’s going to be a struggle for the next few months, at least maybe a little bit longer for a lot of people that have had online courses and have been in that space already, because there are so many free courses now that it’s so hard for anyone who’s actually charging to compete, whether it’s mastermind courses in a thing. Right.

Yep. Totally. Right. So that’s going to be a little bit difficult. So hopefully if you’re in a good mastermind, they’ll be able to work through that with you. Sure. Yes, definitely. Excellent. Thanks so much, Travis, for your time. Um, can you just tell everyone where they can find you what’s your handles? Sure. So you can just go to Travis chappell.com. It’s probably the easiest, cause you can find all my social over there. So that’s Travis Chappell, C H A P P E L L. So two Ps two, L’s their traps, chapel.com. You can find all my social stuff and get links to my podcast and YouTube channel, all that stuff. And if you just want to listen to the podcast or watch the YouTube channel, um, then just go to travchappell.com/show, and it’ll pull up several ways to listen or watch the show. And I highly recommend listening to it. And I’ll also put the, um, the links down in the show notes as well. For those of you who like to look at show notes. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much, Travis.

Hey guys, if you haven’t already, you need to check out Travis’s podcast. It is fantastic. Honestly, some of the speakers say I’m the guests that he has on there are really awesome. So if you enjoyed this episode, Please check out another episode and I would love if you could leave me a review or a rating somewhere on social media, on whatever platform you’re listening to the podcast. That would mean a lot to me. Thank you so much. And get in touch with me. .