Travis Makes Money

Eric joins Travis in studio for a spooky-season episode that starts as a horror-fan story and ends as a full financial breakdown. They recap a 12-hour night at Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights: the Psycho house, the Sinners and Evil Dead haunts, a hallway of grabbing hands, and the "content brain" guests who stopped every few feet to film. Then they add up every ticket, themed...

Kyle Mounts is the co-founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of Hero X Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in aerospace, defense, drones, AI, and frontier deep tech. With a background spanning finance, banking, entrepreneurship, and aviation operations, Kyle has built a career around identifying opportunities in emerging markets and helping businesses scale. Af...

Your story might be your most valuable business asset—and nobody else can replicate it. In this money mashup, Joanna brings together three conversations about finding your voice, becoming a better storyteller, and using your personal experiences to build something meaningful. You'll hear how one therapist discovered people would pay for his words, why Donald Miller believes great storytelling stil...

Producer Eric joins Travis in studio for a Halloween-season episode about the business of babysitting. They react to the backlash over Andy Cohen paying his young sitter $30 an hour to watch his two kids, check what babysitters actually charge in Los Angeles, and weigh in on a viral Reddit post about a sister-in-law who signed up a 15-year-old to watch seven kids for free during an adults-only par...

Peter Imburg is the founder of Elfster, one of the world's most widely used gift exchange platforms, with more than 40 million users worldwide. Since launching the platform in 2004, Peter has grown Elfster into a thriving social commerce business without raising a single dollar from outside investors. In this episode, he joins Travis to share how he acquired his first customers, built a powerful n...

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Airbnb helped disrupt the hotel industry by offering travelers unique places to stay and experiences they couldn’t find anywhere else. But as cleaning fees rise and hosts ask guests to handle more checkout chores, the customer experience is starting to suffer. In this episode, Travis Chappell and producer Eric break down Airbnb’s new cleaning policy, react to hosts defending their practices online...

Lieutenant Colonel Waldo Waldman, known as “The Wingman,” is a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, executive coach, combat-decorated F-16 fighter pilot, and bestselling author of Never Fly Solo. After flying 65 combat missions and overcoming his own battles with fear and claustrophobia, Waldo now helps leaders and organizations build trust, strengthen teamwork, and perform under pressure. His latest boo...

Money Mashups are back. In this episode, Travis Makes Money editor Joanna pulls the best moments from three guests who each built an audience long before it paid off. Hariharan Jayakumar spent almost ten years growing his YouTube channel, Logically Answered, to more than 900,000 subscribers, then put that reach and $750,000 of his own YouTube income into Silo Markets, a fintech platform that gives...

Airbnb disrupted the hotel industry by giving travelers unique places to stay, more space, and experiences they couldn’t get at a traditional hotel. But as cleaning fees and checkout chores pile up, more travelers are questioning whether Airbnb is worth it. In this episode, Travis Chappell and producer Eric react to viral videos of Airbnb hosts defending their cleaning policies, break down why som...

Chris Deaver is a leadership expert, culture architect, and co-founder of Bravecore. Having helped shape leadership and collaborative cultures at some of the world's most innovative companies, including Apple and Disney, Chris understands what it takes to build high-performing teams that drive meaningful growth. He's also the author of Brave Together, a book about the power of collaboration and bu...

Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry by offering travelers a more flexible, home-like alternative to hotels. But as hosts add cleaning fees, checkout chores, and confusing rules, are they losing sight of what made the platform successful in the first place? In this episode, Travis Chappell and producer Eric break down Airbnb’s changing policies around guest chores and why some hosts are pushi...

Kristen Hadeed believes authentic human leadership can change the world. She helps leaders and teams build cultures rooted in connection, courage, and humanity, and her work has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, TIME, and NBC Today. Her first book, Permission to Screw Up, has sold more than 50,000 copies worldwide. In this episode, Kristen shares how an accidental college cleaning business be...

In this episode, Travis Chappell sits down with producer Eric for a candid conversation about nepotism, privilege, and the pressure to prove yourself on your own merits. From Sylvester Stallone casting his daughter in Tulsa King to Travis choosing door-to-door sales over following his father's footsteps in real estate, they explore when connections can be an advantage, why talent and hard work sti...

Jiaming Ju is a licensed, second-generation traditional Chinese medicine practitioner specializing in men's health, autoimmune conditions, and mental health. Raised in her family's Chinese medicine clinic in northeastern China, she inherited her father's traditional herbal formulas after spending a decade working as an economist and leading major think tanks focused on health economics and aging....

In this clip from the Shane Sams Podcast, Travis Chappell shares how he used podcasting, conferences, and intentional networking to rebuild his circle of friends and create meaningful relationships with successful entrepreneurs. Travis explains why adult male friendships are essential, how a podcast can open doors to people you never thought you could reach, and why showing up in the right rooms i...

Lindsay Crouse is a journalist and 15-year veteran of The New York Times, where her Emmy-nominated work on women’s sports helped change policies across the industry, including bringing maternity protections to athletes at Nike. She also commissioned the Times’ first Academy Award-winning film. Now, with her first book, The Case for Quitting, Lindsay challenges the idea that perseverance is always...

In this snippet from his conversation on the Shane Sams Podcast, Travis Chappell opens up about how interviewing more than 1,000 people has shaped his perspective on success, ambition, and what it really takes to reach the top. Travis discusses why some high achievers sacrifice more than others, how becoming a father changed the way he evaluates business goals, and why chasing someone else's versi...

Calum Marsh is a writer, reporter, and editor covering arts, culture, and sports, with work featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, GQ, and other leading publications. He is the author of The Glass Box, a narrative nonfiction book exploring the rise and fall of CrossFit and its controversial founder, Greg Glassman. Drawing on years of research and his own experience as a Cros...

In this special episode, Travis Chappell joins the Closers Network Podcast to break down the skills that separate good salespeople from great closers. Drawing from his experience in door-to-door sales, entrepreneurship, and building relationships with influential people, Travis explains why trust is the foundation of every transaction. He shares practical strategies for using empathy, asking bette...

Mercer Carlin and Christen Bavero are leadership development experts who help businesses achieve better results by investing in their people. Mercer was a founding partner of Transact, which grew from five employees into a billion-dollar business, where she oversaw more than 1,100 insurance salespeople across four sites and helped build a strong company culture. Christen brings 25 years of experie...

On this episode, producer Eric shares a clip from Travis Chappell's appearance on the Closers Network podcast. Travis grew up in a fundamentalist Christian community in Southern California and earned a ministry degree. Then he found out he loved door-to-door sales and made six figures selling solar in his early twenties. In 2017 he moved into podcasting. Since then he has coached, consulted, and r...

Michael Rangel is the founder of Novo, a modern banking platform designed for small and independent businesses. After seven years in finance, Michael saw firsthand how traditional banking made managing money unnecessarily complicated for small business owners. Since launching Novo in 2016, he has helped build a platform serving more than 250,000 small businesses across all 50 states. In this episo...

In this special episode of the Travis Makes Money Podcast, producer Eric pulls a conversation from Travis Chappell’s appearance on the Monetizing Your Message Podcast. Travis shares how he built a podcast business generating nearly a quarter-million dollars in sponsorship revenue, landed interviews with people like Shaquille O’Neal, and learned to turn a small, engaged audience into a thriving bus...

Danial Jiwani is a writer, speaker, and investor focused on wealth creation, decision-making, and resilience. He's the author of The 52 Laws of Wealth and Buffett's Two-Step Stock Market Strategy, with five self-published books selling more than 80,000 copies worldwide. In this episode, Danial shares how his passion for investing began as a teenager, why he chose self-publishing over traditional p...