CO-HOST | Make Money by Meeting Your Heroes
In this episode of Travis Makes Money, we’re sharing a clip from Travis Chappell’s appearance on the Vegas Voices podcast, where he breaks down how he has landed interviews with high-profile guests like Shaquille O’Neal, John Maxwell, Michael Hyatt, Grant Cardone, and Rob Dyrdek—even before his podcast had a massive audience. Travis explains why consistent outreach, starting with attainable guests, and building credibility within a specific industry can open doors to people you never thought would say yes. He also shares how treating a small audience like a massive one helped him build a better podcast, and how listening to his audience ultimately led him from sponsorships to profitable products and services.
On this episode we talk about:
Why sending a high volume of outreach is one of the keys to landing podcast guests
How starting with more attainable guests can create momentum and credibility
Why staying within one industry when reaching out can make it easier to land increasingly influential guests
The real question high-profile guests are asking before agreeing to an interview
How Travis landed Shaquille O’Neal despite having a relatively small podcast audience
Why you should treat an audience of one, three, or 100 people with the same level of attention as an audience of 100,000
How podcasts compete for attention with everything from other shows to music and streaming services
Why Travis initially expected sponsorships to be the primary way he would monetize his podcast
How audience growth led him to develop products and services instead
The power of using audience conversations as market research
How Travis made his first $200 from a product he hadn’t even created yet
How a $1,000 mastermind became an early profitable offer
Why continually asking your audience what they want can lead to better products, services, and revenue
Top 3 Takeaways
You don’t need a massive audience to get influential people’s attention.
Travis explains that audience size is only one factor. The bigger question is whether the person believes spending their time with you will be worthwhile. Building credibility, creating a valuable experience, and demonstrating that you can make the conversation worthwhile can matter just as much.Treat your smallest audience like your biggest audience.
Travis shares a mindset he adopted early on: one person listening is better than zero. If you create a great product for the people who are actually paying attention instead of obsessing over the people who aren’t, you give yourself a better foundation for growth.Let your audience tell you what to sell.
Instead of starting with a product and trying to convince people to buy it, Travis built an audience around networking and relationships, talked directly with more than 100 listeners, identified their recurring problems, and created offers around those needs. His products and services evolved as he learned more about what his audience actually wanted.
Notable Quotes
- “It’s just the belief that if I send enough of these, somebody will say yes.”
- “The question that you have to answer for them is not, ‘How big is my audience?’ It’s, ‘Are you going to waste time by spending that time with me on my show?’”
- “If you don’t treat the audience at that size the way that you would treat your audience if 100,000 people were listening, then you’re never going to get to the 100,000 people.”
- “You build an audience and then you ask that audience what they want.”
- “What are people consistently asking me for that I can build a product or service that helps solve those problems?”
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