00:00 - 00:22

Travis Brown: Well, I could definitely say that perfect is boring, right? So we're like, if I'm making a podcast, I could sit there all day and edit it to death and make it just a sterile, perfect thing. But that's boring. And I could try to make the perfect business or the perfect product or the perfect service. But you got to get dirty. You just have to like put stuff out there and see what's working and then optimize.

00:24 - 00:51

Intro: Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the IMCEO Podcast.

00:52 - 01:00

Gresham Harkless: Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the IMCEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Travis Brown, a PodX Travis. It's awesome to have

01:00 - 01:03

Travis Brown: you on the show. Hey Gresh, thanks for having me on. I'm really excited to be here with you today.

01:04 - 01:30

Gresham Harkless: No problem. Super excited to have you on as well. And you're doing so many phenomenal things. I wanted to read a little bit more about Travis so you can hear a little bit more about all those awesome things. And Travis is an entrepreneur and podcast producer. His goal is to help podcasters find their voice, grow their audience, and start their own podcast movement. He is helping the next generation of podcasters rise up and become the greatest communicators of this decade. He has also then invented a poddex, a tool for the starting out or pro podcaster to

01:30 - 01:40

Gresham Harkless: help grow their audience, have deeper connections and set themselves apart from all the other interview podcasts online. Travis, great to have you on. Are you ready to speak to the IM CEO community?

01:41 - 01:42

Travis Brown: Absolutely. Let's rock.

01:42 - 01:52

Gresham Harkless: Let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? Let's get started with all awesome work.

01:52 - 02:21

Travis Brown: Yeah, so I, I believe that, you know, entrepreneurs are sort of like programmed right out of the box, right. So when I was, you know, 8, I had the lemonade stand. And when I was 12, I started cutting the grass in my neighborhood and it's just something that I've always done. So I've started little businesses my entire life. Now this business is around podcasting and so At 1 point in my life, I was a professional musician. And so I learned audio. I learned how to record. I learned how to do all the microphone stuff. And then

02:22 - 02:46

Travis Brown: you get to this point as a musician where you either make it or you don't, right? And that's time to kind of stop Peter Panning and grow up. So I got a big boy job in an office and I would just go to this office every day. I would drive every day like an hour there, an hour back. And at some point I stumbled along podcasts and you know, it's great for people like you and me because we get to learn business tips and all these things. But I quickly realized not all podcasts sound that good,

02:46 - 03:11

Travis Brown: especially at the time. This is years ago. So it sort of dawned on me, like a light bulb went off over my head or whatever. And I was like, you know, I could probably help people make better sounding podcasts because I have all this audio background. So I just quickly pivoted and started a podcast. Like the best way to do anything and to learn anything is just to start. So I started my own podcast, started interviewing people doing that stuff. And I went to a mastermind, a group where I met a guy who knew about podcasting.

03:11 - 03:40

Travis Brown: And he said, I want to start a podcast. And I said, great, let me help you. Right. So we put out a plan, got him podcasting. He's got now to date, almost a million downloads. He has an HDTV show that we basically backtracked all the way to the podcast. So from there, it was just word of mouth, people kept asking me, Hey, can you help me with my podcast? Can you help me with my podcast? So I basically started an agency where I would help people have better audio with their podcast. And I pushed all my

03:40 - 04:11

Travis Brown: podcasting to the side because I was so busy helping other people. But it was great because it was a really big learning experience for me to, I've edited over 2,500 podcasts. So I really know what makes a good episode and a good interview. And from there, I'm always looking to put myself out of business or to find the next thing. And I just, I stumbled upon making courses. So I built a digital course on how to start a podcast because I thought it would be very helpful. And when I did that, I created a little deck

04:11 - 04:41

Travis Brown: of cards with interview questions so I could help the people that bought it expedite being a better interviewer quicker. And so when I launched my course, this is a big lesson here to don't ever make a course that no 1 has paid for or pre-ordered because nobody bought it. They just put it out and there's enough information everywhere where people just they weren't interested in buying it, but they kept emailing me saying, what are those cards you keep showing? So after about the fifth email, I said, okay, there's something here, I'm gonna test this. And so

04:41 - 04:46

Travis Brown: as an entrepreneur, I don't know if you, what do you think about the minimal viable product strategy?

04:46 - 04:55

Gresham Harkless: I love it, Eric Rosley and startup. Yeah, definitely putting as small an investment in the initial product and then evolving from there is huge.

04:56 - 05:23

Travis Brown: Yeah. So that's exactly what I did. I said, okay, before I run out, you know, business, people that start businesses, they do this 1 thing that drives me crazy. They'll run out and they'll buy a thousand business cards before they have any customers, right? So I told myself, don't buy the business cards. I pressed 10 decks, right? I called it pod decks and I said, okay, I pressed 10 decks and I made a little ad on my phone, showing the cards and put it on Instagram and just targeted podcasters and I sold out in like a

05:23 - 05:50

Travis Brown: minute. I was like, okay, that must've been a fluke cause I don't know how to do advertising and this is a new thing. And so I took that money and I pressed a hundred decks and then I sold out in a day and I was like, okay, now there's some work to be done. So really starting small, I think was a key to the success of not buying 10,000 of something that I didn't know people were gonna buy or, you know, this idea is a little bit of a blue ocean idea. So you have to be

05:50 - 06:28

Travis Brown: careful when your concept isn't something that already exists in the world. So that was, I think, that brings me to today, which I now have a mobile app version of Poddex and I've set Poddex all over the world. Thousands of podcasters are using them. So my advice really is 2 things here. 1, sometimes the thing you think is your big idea is not necessarily the end of the story. And you have to be able to pivot if you see an opportunity. And then second, just don't buy the business cards yet. Right? It's like, just build something

06:28 - 06:40

Travis Brown: small and then nurture it. Like we don't plant a tree and expect it to grow into a huge oak overnight, right? We plant the tree and we water it. And we said, you know, so take that concept into yourself while you're starting your next thing.

06:40 - 07:09

Gresham Harkless: Nice. That's so much value. I appreciate you for, for, for expanding upon that because you're absolutely right. And I think that's the beauty of the MVP is you get the opportunity to have the flexibility of pivoting without having that sunk costs fallacy or being stuck. And like, I spent so much time and energy are printing out so many business cards, as you said so well, that I don't want to pivot because I know this is gonna work, I'm gonna see it work. Sometimes you forget or miss the potential opportunities that are sometimes right next to what

07:09 - 07:24

Gresham Harkless: you're actually doing. So I absolutely love that. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. And so I know you touched a little bit upon like what you do and how you serve your clients. Could you tell us a little bit more about that and what you feel is kind of what I call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:24 - 07:56

Travis Brown: Yeah, absolutely. So my editing service is called Podcast Buddy. And what I do is I work with coaches and entrepreneurs and business people who want to have a podcast, but they're not necessarily maybe interested in spending time editing or learning audio. So, you know, the average podcast takes about an hour to record and about 3 hours to edit. So if you're a coach, let's say you're a business coach and you charge $400 an hour. Well, every podcast you do yourself, that's 4 hours. So you're basically losing at least $1,200 every time you edit your podcast. Right.

07:56 - 08:22

Travis Brown: So I basically compare it to this. I could do my own taxes, but it stresses me out. I don't really want to deal with it. I pay a premium to an accountant. He does it. He does it right. And I'm a happier person because I don't have to deal with it. So this is a similar situation. So when I started it, my idea was to make it as easy as possible for somebody to just do their fun part and then give me everything and I take care of the rest. So what we do is we have

08:22 - 08:51

Travis Brown: a little private portal. You just give us a link to your audio, tell us when you want it to go out, and we listen to it in real time, edit it, mix it, master it, so it sounds like broadcast ready. Then we have a team of show notes writers, they write notes, and then we actually schedule it in your host and archive everything for you in our shared folder so you have access to it anytime. So I've never run an ad for it. I've never done anything but word of mouth referrals. And I think there's something

08:51 - 09:19

Travis Brown: to that. Like if people are talking about a service that they really love and use, that's how you grow your business. Like I could run ads for it, but It's much more valuable to me to have people really love what they're getting. That's the best advertising you can ever get. Whether that's a podcast, we always hear, where have you heard about your last podcast from? Somebody told you, hey, you should check out this podcast. You didn't see an ad for it. So I think that's what gave it a little bit of success. And then, you know,

09:19 - 09:49

Travis Brown: we basically don't write checks we can't cash, right? So we don't miss deadlines and we produce the best possible product and we own our mistakes if there are mistakes. And I think that goes a long way as a business. A lot of people try to grow like huge right away and you really have to perfect the systems in place and those things in order to have a really great business that can scale. So I think that's what sort of sets me apart is that we don't outsource to the Philippines. There's a lot of podcast editors that

09:49 - 10:00

Travis Brown: are just sending someone else. We actually do it all ourselves. And there's something to be said for treating a podcast like art instead of just a car wash, If that makes sense.

10:01 - 10:13

Gresham Harkless: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:13 - 10:48

Travis Brown: Oh, so 1 thing that I've really been focused on lately is documenting every single thing that I do during a task. So if I'm making a podcast or if I'm making a YouTube video or if I'm uploading a new product to my store, every single step, you know, like I know it, but if something happened to me, would somebody else be able to jump in and keep this going? So my idea here is, is basically like, you can either create yourself a job, Like when we build these businesses, a lot of times what happens is we

10:48 - 11:13

Travis Brown: create a job for ourselves. And the best way to not create yourself a job and create a business is to create something that other people can do without you. So I've just been really focused on documenting everything I do, like literally step by step. Like I drag the file from this folder to this folder and it sounds silly But you can test this on a couple people like you go to Starbucks and say hey I'll buy you a cup of coffee if you read this and tell me if you can figure out how to do this

11:13 - 11:25

Travis Brown: right and you can see And that's the best way where you can build a team. And everybody wants to scale. Well, the first thing you have to do to scale is get rid of yourself as the bottleneck in your business.

11:25 - 11:40

Gresham Harkless: So I want to ask you now of what I call a CEO nugget. So This could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It could be around podcasting or something around business, but what would you either tell a client or maybe if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:40 - 12:03

Travis Brown: Ooh, well, I could definitely say that perfect is boring. So if I'm making a podcast, I could sit there all day and edit it to death and make it just a sterile, perfect thing. But that's boring. And I could try to make the perfect business or the perfect product or the perfect service. But you got to get dirty. You just have to like put stuff out there and see what's working and then optimize.

12:04 - 12:13

Gresham Harkless: I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Travis, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:15 - 12:50

Travis Brown: CEO is like the biggest Trojan horse word in the world, right? Because a CEO is, you're sort of oftentimes doing everything, right? But I think CEO to me is really more about like vision and implementation. So I know like, I know where I wanna go, but I don't always know how to get there. And I think that, I think CEOs figure out how to connect the dots, right? And a lot of people give up. They're just like, I have this idea for this product, but I have no idea where to start. Whereas CEO is like, I'm

12:50 - 13:13

Travis Brown: gonna figure it out or I'm gonna find the right person to figure out. It's not always the how, it's sometimes the who, right? So by having vision and being able to find the who, I think those are 2 things that CEOs, you know, probably have to do the most is see where you're going and figure out who's gonna help you get there. If I could encapsulate that into some type of like sentence.

13:13 - 13:13

Intro: Does that

13:13 - 13:37

Gresham Harkless: make sense? That was a sentence. No, I think that was perfect because I think that's a lot of times what it is, you know, in business and entrepreneurship, especially as a startup CEO or startup founder, whatever, you know, title we might use. Sometimes you have to get out the duct tape and put it together for the time being and grow into that as we talked about, you know, enjoying the journey. And I think so many times when you have a vision and you're not sure how to get it there, we want to evolve into what we

13:37 - 14:05

Gresham Harkless: want that to be, what that final product is. And a lot of times we may never reach whatever that product is, that final destination is, but the journey is really what we should take hold of and really enjoy along the process. So Travis, truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you, find out about pod decks and

14:05 - 14:06

Gresham Harkless: all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:06 - 14:37

Travis Brown: Sure. So, you know, my mission in life is to help as many people as I can find their voice, grow their audience and start up their own podcast revolution, right? And I believe that everybody should be able to share their stories and grow their audience and business through podcasting. So if you are podcasting already, keep going. But if you haven't started yet, this is the time. There's no perfect time to do anything and I want to help you start. So there's a couple ways that I can help you start. First of all, I've got this episode

14:37 - 15:07

Travis Brown: deck. It's 50 unique podcast starting prompts. So if you've ever stared at a blank piece of paper or weren't sure what you're going to talk about, you can go to free.poddecks.com and I will send you this deck for free. All I ask is that you cover the shipping for me and you'll have a year's worth of podcast ideas. Or you can download the Poddex mobile app on Apple or Android. And there's another deck of episode ideas that will get you started. But whatever you do, podcasting is really still in its infancy. There's a million podcasts, but

15:07 - 15:29

Travis Brown: there's 600 million YouTube channels. Well, 1 day there's going to be 600 million podcasts. And by starting now, What we talked about, me and Gresh talked about earlier was building these libraries of content, you can build that now as opposed to later. So just put your stories out there, share your value and you should absolutely start a podcast.

15:30 - 15:54

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Travis, truly appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too for everybody to find out about all the awesome things you're doing. And as you said, you know, if you are podcasting, you know, keep going. If you're not podcasting, get going. And I love that you provide so many opportunities and ways by which people can find their voice and showcase their stories and their skills and all the awesome things that you're doing. So I truly appreciate you, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal

15:54 - 15:55

Gresham Harkless: rest of the day.

15:56 - 16:24

Outro: Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.