February 15, 2025 • 25 mins
In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, Brandon Amoroso interviews Travis Stephenson, a seasoned entrepreneur who shares his journey from being fired to building successful online businesses. Travis discusses his ideation process, the importance of solving personal problems, and how he leveraged referrals and cognitive biases in marketing. He also reflects on his recent travels and the lessons learned from his previous ventures, emphasizing the ease of starting a business today with modern technology and AI.
Here's What You'll Learn:
❗Travis's journey began after being fired from a job.
❗He learned the ropes of digital marketing by working with affiliate marketers.
❗Identifying personal problems can lead to successful business ideas.
❗Traveling with family can inspire new perspectives on work and life.
❗Cognitive biases play a crucial role in marketing effectiveness.
❗Referrals can significantly boost revenue for digital products.
❗Modern technology has made starting a business easier than ever.
❗AI is set to revolutionize business operations and marketing strategies.
❗Creating experiences for customers is key to driving sales.
❗Building a strong referral program can enhance customer engagement.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Entrepreneurship and Background
02:59 Ideation and Market Research for New Ventures
06:10 The Importance of Problem-Solving in Business
08:50 Embracing Change: Traveling and Business Growth
12:03 Lessons Learned from Previous Ventures
15:02 Marketing Strategies and Cognitive Biases
18:05 Leveraging Referrals for Business Growth
20:59 Technology and Tools for Modern Entrepreneurs
24:00 Conclusion and Future Aspirations
Travis Stephenson:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisstephensonofferatti/
Brandon Amoroso:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamoroso/
Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/
X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon
Scalis.ai - https://scalis.ai/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast
about using the Gen Z mindset togrow your business.
I'm Gen Z entrepreneur BrandonAmoroso, the former founder of
Electric and now the co-founderof Scaless, and today I'm
talking with Travis Stephenson,who's a serial entrepreneur who
has built and sold multipleonline businesses.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Thanks, man.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Appreciate it.
So before we dive into things,can you give everybody just a
quick background on yourself andyour entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, quick is tough.
I've been doing it for a while,going all the way back.
I was fired from my job as avirtual office assistant.
I was literally the guy thatlike, there was this company
where you could rent a bunch ofdifferent office spaces and use
it as a virtual office.
So if you're a lawyer but youlive in Miami and you were
coming to this town, you wouldhave an office and we'd have
(00:50):
somebody answer your phone andyou could have coffee.
And well, that was my job was toclean the Keurig machine and
wipe off the whiteboards, andthat was my my job, one of my
jobs.
After college.
I went job to job for a whileand had my business management
degree, had hopes for a wholebig future, and I got fired from
that job actually for being twominutes late.
(01:12):
I wasn't quote, unquote, I wasnot management material, which
was awesome.
Got fired from that job andthen I went played funny enough,
played poker online to pay myrent for a while and then took a
job from somebody who waslooking for a personal assistant
on Craigslist and they weremoving to town and, long story
(01:34):
short, they had a company thatwas in the digital marketing
space and so they were like,look, you're not right to be our
personal assistant, but youmight be good for this other
thing.
That taught me the ropes.
For two years I was workingwith affiliate marketers,
helping them find offers theycould promote, and, um, then I
just sort of took off on my own,started making my own stuff,
(01:55):
cause I also realized, like thisis what I hope everybody
realizes by 2025, hopefully, um,everybody realizes this that
almost everybody who has adigital product there's most of
them aren't doing anythingbetter than what you could do,
um, and so there's all thesepeople that are creating digital
products and they're making alot of money doing it, and most
(02:16):
people just think, oh, I couldnever do that.
I had the different mindset.
I was like I saw behind thescenes and I'm like I could
absolutely do this.
Look how easy this is for theseguys.
And that was 15 years ago,before all of these great
website building platforms andbefore everybody made it easy,
um, you know that that was quitea long time ago.
So, uh, then you know, justfast forward, I I've had a bunch
of different companies thatI've started little, mostly
(02:38):
little more offers thancompanies, um, that have done
really well, and I've been inthe digital space since then.
For eight years, I ran asoftware company called
Chatmatic which automatedFacebook and Instagram Messenger
.
We were like a very, very, youknow step cousin of ManyChat
basically, which everybody kindof is aware of, and sold that
(03:01):
company in 2022, kind of gotback to my roots in marketing
and I've been doing that sincethen.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Nice.
And when it comes to yourideation process for building
your next company, how does thattypically happen for you?
Does it come out of your youknow what's?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
funny, I have spent a ton of time.
So in August of 2022, when Isold my company, I spent three
straight months looking at themarket just to figure out what
is working.
What should I do?
Because everybody was asking meat the time like, hey, you're
an entrepreneur, you've beendoing this for a long time,
what's your next thing?
And I was like I don't know, itdoesn't just come to you, like
(03:37):
I think most people think itdoes.
So I started studying and oneof the things that I found was
fascinating that there's fiveplaces where really great ideas
come from, and it's one of thethings that I teach now and the
first one is paying attention toyour problems.
So, if you want to create abusiness, look at the stuff that
you have struggled with or thatyou are currently struggling
with, and figure out can Icreate a solution or did I
(03:59):
already create a solution?
And a great example would besleep.
Right now, a lot of people arehaving issues getting good and
quality enough sleep, and I, fora while, was one of them,
especially as an entrepreneur.
A lot of entrepreneurs sufferfrom this, like shutting the
mind off and um, I've used thislittle tracking device on my
wrist for seven years and I knowwhat my sleep is and I've
tracked it for a long time.
(04:20):
And, uh, I started getting alot more into it and I started
figuring out.
You know what I need to figureout how to get my sleep better,
because it'll make me feelbetter throughout the day.
My mental cognition is better.
I don't need supplements.
I'm good if I sleep well, andso I got to work figuring out
what can I do to make my sleepbetter, and now my sleep
performance on average is almostabout 100% every night, where
(04:41):
it used to be 75, 80.
And so I solved my own problem,and now I realize, as a digital
entrepreneur, I could create aproduct out of that by helping
other people do the exact samething that I did, but they don't
have to trial and error it,they can just do what I did.
And so paying attention to yourown problems is number one,
paying attention to shifts inthe marketplace.
(05:02):
So if there's obviously AI iscoming out now, what kind of
opportunity can you jump in inAI?
That's a big one.
Then another one would be payattention to your curiosities.
So anything that you like,anything that you're interested
in, kind of go down that rabbithole.
I think, as adults, a lot ofpeople are taught to stifle
their imagination.
(05:22):
It's like, hey, yeah, don't gotoo crazy thinking that you're
going to do this.
You know it's.
Um, you're not pretending thatyou're going to win the lottery,
but you do have to let yourselfpretend like, hey, you know,
I've always thought about thiswould be really cool.
I wonder what I could do inthat instance, like, how could I
make something out of this?
Allow yourself to do that, notjust to go oh, that's stupid,
I'll never do it.
Um, and then another big one isto um, brainstorm with friends.
(05:47):
So, find friends that you canbounce ideas off of.
And, sadly, if you don't haveany friends, I would tell you
this little piece of advice Um,number one if you have friends
that you can't bounce businessideas off of, they're probably
the wrong friends.
If you're actually going to gointo the entrepreneurial space,
the people that don't that, thatdon't agree that you should be
pursuing things, they're nevergoing to have good things to say
(06:09):
about your ideas.
What you need is somebody elsewho's also seen the light.
And and so, number one getbetter friends.
But number two uh, chat, gptand these AI agents are really
great for this as well.
You can bounce ideas off ofthem and, um, just feed them
everything you know about atopic and see like, hey, how
could I create a product out ofthis?
Um, but those are like the fourmajor ways that I always tell
(06:32):
everybody is like look at yourown problems, talk to friends
and people that you know.
Uh, pay attention tocuriosities, look at what's
shifting in the market.
Um, those four out of the five,those are the ones that seem to
be where most of mine come from, because that's where Chapmatic
came from for me.
I was looking at the shift inthe market and I was paying
attention to a curiosity.
A lot of my other productsdigital products have all come
(06:56):
from problems that I've solvedfor myself.
I was like, hey, I wanted tobuild I'm trying to look at some
of these awards here and whatthey were.
So there's a product up herethat I was able to take my
messenger automation company,and I grew a great agency where
I was helping e-commercecompanies leverage messenger
automations to make more sales,and so we actually taught that
(07:19):
to other people.
So now I was able to do itmyself.
That was based on a problemthat I had how do you start an
agency, right, how do you startan agency?
How do you get clients, how doyou get them results?
And so I took that mechanismand I solved it for other people
and sold that and I think thoseare great ways to start
businesses is just look in thoseareas.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, I mean.
To your point about a chat GPT.
I mean even being able tocreate individual GPTs,
uploading a bunch of informationto them, like training them
over time.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's a hundred percent, it's definitely that's
the first piece of advice I givealmost all of my members when
they come into any of ourprograms is create an AI brain
that will be able to think foryou, organize data for you.
You should journal into it Likeit's.
It should be a place where allof your thoughts, All this stuff
(08:09):
that I'm telling you how do Iuse it for something, and it
will give you some good ideas.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, what are you really excited about this year
and beyond?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Sort of.
I mean definitely new stuffthat I'm working on.
So two years ago I started abrand new digital product
teaching people like aneducational product, and it did
really well.
We were doing a hundredthousand plus months.
I sold my house and my wife andI kind of woke up this morning,
one of the mornings, and we'relike, man, we're, we're in this
(08:41):
routine.
So I have two kids and we're inthis routine of waking up every
morning breakfast, run out thedoor 20 minutes to school.
Then you got to pick them up attwo, 30, whatever, and we were
like, well, we're about to dothis for 18 years, basically.
So are we ready to like committhat?
This is the?
We're just doing that now?
And we were like you know what?
(09:02):
I run my business, I can run itfrom anywhere.
Let's sell the house and let'stravel, let's do the whole
digital no man thing for real.
And uh, we found a travelingschool, a world traveling school
program.
Uh, it was called boundlesslife, and they had um, a
location in um, portugal, andthey had another location that
we wanted to go to in Bali.
So we went three months inPortugal, we went to Dubai and
(09:23):
Singapore on the way, and thenwe went to, uh, marrakesh, and
we got to go to Bali and Tokyoand spend a bunch of time in
Kauai, and so we just spent 18,19 ish months traveling.
Um, literally last month, wegot into our our new house that
had been remodeled.
So, um, for this year, I'mactually kind of excited to just
(09:44):
buckle in on business and notdo all the craziness of like
traveling with kids and flyingacross the world and all of that
, which is, I mean, I mean, it'ssuper exciting.
Don't get me wrong, it wasamazing.
But, um, I'm excited to likefocus on more stuff that lights
me up versus stuff that you knowit's really easy as an
entrepreneur, and the reason Isold my previous software
company was because it's so easyto get into a rut of like just
(10:07):
doing what you have to do to getby and you don't love it, you
don't enjoy it, and so it'sactually, you know, in a lot of
ways, you're working harder thanyou would at a job.
There's no guaranteed paycheck,there's significantly more
stress, so I don't really thinkthat that's like what everybody
will should want to do.
So what I've kind of reallyfocused my energy and effort on
(10:28):
since August of 2022 is let medo stuff that I really like and
even my previous product thatdid really well.
I shut it down, cold Turkey,about three months ago and I'm
going to do more of what I focus, what I actually really enjoy.
So that product was great, itwas making good money, but it
wasn't firing me up.
I wasn't excited about itanymore.
The people that I was helping Ididn't really feel aligned with
(10:50):
that anymore.
Um, so I was like you know what?
I'm going to go into this newthing.
So the thing I'm kind ofexcited about long-winded answer
is I have been kind ofself-writing my own book with
nobody's help.
We'll see how it ends up comingout, but it's basically a book
of all my most importantjourneys, so the things that
I've learned about in thebuilding of a business.
(11:11):
So it's called the experienceengine, which is this idea that
you can create these experiencesIf you want somebody to buy
from you, if you want somebodyto give you money.
The key to all of it is getthem to experience something,
because that's when they'regoing to make the decision to
buy, whatever it is.
So it's kind of excitingbecause they always say that the
(11:32):
physiological effects ofexciting are the same as nervous
, right Like, your palms aresweaty, get cold sweats, heart
race.
So I don't know if it's excitedor if I'm nervous, but to go
down this pursuit of trying tosell this book and build a
company off of that by teachingthese things that you're never
(11:53):
qualified to do it, you justhave to decide that you're going
to do it and so, um, that'skind of what I'm excited about
is going into a niche where Iget to work with entrepreneurs,
people who are, you know, doingbig things, and kind of help
them achieve that same thing.
So we'll see, I'm excited ornervous, I don't know yet.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
What would you say like the biggest learning
lessons that you've taken fromthe previous businesses that
you'll, you know, definitelytake in and apply to this new
one that you're that you'restarting?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Uh well, so the number, so it's.
It's, there's like categories,right, there's like running and
operating a business, and thenthere's also marketing and
selling that business.
Then there's individual things,like you know how I'm running
Facebook ads versus this, but,um, there's something really
cool that I was kind of justwriting about, which is what's
on my mind, and it's this topicof um.
(12:38):
I read in a report not long agofrom Google about these six
cognitive biases and they testedit and this was this was cool
and anybody in the marketingspace can appreciate this.
They tested these six cognitivebiases, which are things like
social proof, having a list ofdetails of what the product is.
As a shopper, if we see thesethings, we're more likely to buy
(13:00):
.
And they did these massivetests across thousands of
different transactions and theyfound they did this test on
shampoo, which was amazing andit kind of dictates the whole
thing.
They had one shampoo that wasbrand A and they introduced that
to a shopper and 100% of theshoppers bought shampoo A
because it was the only one thatwas offered.
Then they offered a secondshampoo to another batch of
(13:20):
shoppers and that second brandthat nobody knew about got 25%
of the sales and the originalshampoo still stayed with 75%,
which is good.
That means the first shampoohas good staying power, right,
it had a good brand.
People knew of it.
It was hard to get somebody tochange.
Google then added these sixcognitive biases to the second
(13:42):
brand of shampoo and that secondbrand got 90% of the sales and
the first brand only kept 10.
So one of the really coolconcepts was I was reading that
study and then I went backthrough all of my marketing and
I realized, like all the thingsthat I've done that are
successful, a lot of them werefollowing these six cognitive
biases that you know are thatshould be present in pretty much
(14:03):
everybody's marketing.
And since I am more, I guessyou'd say, in the marketing side
, like, I'm not like thebusiness coach.
I'm not going to teach you howto grow a hundred million dollar
business.
I'm a marketer.
That's what I've been good at.
I'm good at getting eyeballs,getting attention, uh, and
turning that attention intotransactions.
Um yeah, if you want to learnhow to run a 20 person sales
(14:23):
team, I'm not the guy.
And so it was just reallyinteresting to me to read this
study and go man, there are waysthat we can hack winning in our
industry, get sales over brandsthat have more authority over
you, brands that people wouldnormally choose over you 100% of
(14:46):
the time.
By adding social proof, byadding scarcity effects, by
adding a list of what is on eachsales, what the benefits are,
we can actually reverse engineergetting more market share.
And I think by teaching peoplehow to do that, how to make your
experience engine full of thesemoments, right Like, can you
have?
Can you implement any of theseideas into your ads?
(15:09):
Can you implement any of theseideas into follow-up emails?
Can you implement any of theseideas into your content?
By doing that, you're you'rereally cultivating an experience
for the end user which thengets them to relate to you and
then to buy from you.
So I would definitely saybiggest sort of learning
experience is um a.
You're closer to massivenumbers than you think.
(15:30):
When I launched my last programtwo years ago, I did not expect
it to do.
It did $6 million in a yearwhile I was traveling the world.
I did not expect that when Iset out Um but B, to just like
line up and pay attention to thethings that we now know
actually work and then just workon introducing those.
(15:50):
Get a bare minimum viableproduct.
Get that out to market, provethat there's some leg room in
this product and then work onimproving it over time.
Add the little details as youkeep going through.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
When it comes to you mentioned the explosive growth
that you had of that productthat you launched.
What are usually the mainlevers that you're pulling to
get that top of funnel into the?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I believe there's three different what I call.
So I call the entire thing theexperience engine right, and I
believe that there are threefuel types that I know about or
that I pay attention to, andthat is obviously content.
The other one would be money orads in this case, and then the
other one is referrals.
I think the most interestingone that nobody pays attention
(16:37):
to is referrals.
I have a great stat line.
When I was running my offer, wedid around $6 million in about a
12 to 14 month period I don'tknow the exact dates, but in
that timeframe we generatedabout $1.3 million in revenue
specifically from affiliates.
And now here's what'sinteresting I only invited one
affiliate I think it was oneaffiliate, it might've been two
(17:00):
One affiliate who was not acustomer to promote my offer.
What I did was I invited everycustomer to become an affiliate
and many of them did, and what Ifound actually was, out of
19,000 customers, 500 of thembecame affiliates active
affiliates, which means theydrove at least 10 clicks to our
offer.
So there was a lot of them thatsigned up, never did anything,
(17:23):
but 500 actually drovemeaningful clicks.
And what's amazing is I hadthis digital product that was
teaching people something Oneaffiliate promoted and got,
let's say, a hundred sales.
Out of those hundred sales,five of those people would also
become affiliates and they wouldget five to a hundred sales.
And it started this like chainof wow I'm getting sales without
(17:43):
having to do anything.
It started this like chain ofwow I'm getting sales without
having to do anything.
And what's amazing is I did.
I broke it all down and just byoffering an affiliate program, I
made $600,000 in net revenueand earnings in my pocket from
them promoting my stuff in oneyear and I think that's probably
one of the most overlookedthings is like look, you're
creating a product.
People that buy it are going tolike it.
(18:05):
You can not only offer them anincentive to get this free by
telling other people, but ifthey like it, they're going to
talk about it anyways, so youmight as well give them a link
where they can make money off it.
And that was definitely a hugeI would say a huge lever that I
pulled.
That made a lot of thingspossible, because if you don't
(18:25):
just offer the ability for themto promote, then they won't, in
which case you lose all thatrevenue.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, but your product has to be good and
people have to like it.
I think I've seen so manystores where there's a referral
program or whatever.
Maybe they don't get adoptionbecause this is not Well, a lot
of people's referral programsare also trash Like.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Let's be real, if your referral program is 5% off
my next shopping experience, I'mnot going to go out of my way
to tell anybody anything.
But if your referral program isfor every person that you send,
if they buy something from me,I'll give you 50% of what they
buy, um in in revenue.
Well, that's going to open somedoors.
Now, physical companies can'treally do that as much Digital
(19:06):
products can.
We can offer way more marginbecause we don't have any ad
cost when somebody is promotingfor us.
So our normal ad cost is 30% atleast.
Maybe sometimes, as you startto scale, 50, 60, 70% of the
front end value.
Well, if it's an affiliate, Ican give 70% because I'm still
making 20% after my merchantfees, merchant fees and all the
(19:29):
other stuff.
So, yeah, I think having a goodreferral program is definitely
a key.
But then also I learned thisfrom when I still had a job.
This was back when I was 21, 22.
The guy that I was working forhe had me selling tracking
services to real estate agentsand I never sold anything.
But because I wasn't sellinganything, he wasn't making money
(19:53):
off of me.
So he actually signed me up foran MLM called prepaid legal,
which is like a MLM for legalservices, and one of the things
that stuck out to me was duringthat time when he signed me up
for that.
He said something that I'llnever forget and he basically
said look, if you're benefitingfrom this, don't you think
you're going to your mom and dadwould benefit from it, don't
(20:14):
you think you're?
You know, it was kind of thatwarm market pitch where it's
like you know your mom and dadprobably need a will.
Why don't you introduce them tothis?
They're going to love it andthen they're going to get
benefit out of it.
And I think about that all thetime.
When I'm building products nowis like if my product is good
and my product is going tobenefit people, there's a really
good chance it's going to helpother people.
And this goes out to like let'smake it simple, right?
(20:36):
I've been getting into sourdoughbread lately.
Let's say that you made acourse about making sourdough
bread.
If I have friends come over tomy house and I give them a piece
of my sourdough bread and theyask me where did you start
learning how to do this?
I could easily refer the coursethat I took that taught me how
to do that.
If I don't have a link to do it, I'm probably just going to say
, oh, some random course.
(20:57):
But if I have a link that'sgoing to pay me 50%, I'm going
to tell everybody, even if I'mnot the best at making sourdough
.
I'm going to tell them because,like, yeah, I did learn a lot
from this.
This was great.
So that digital market, I think, opens up a lot of opportunity
for that.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
What sort of like technology you know stacks are
using now versus you know whenyou, when you first got started.
How much easier has that madethis process for you.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
When I when I first got started.
You're talking 15 years ago.
When I first got started, I washaving to use WordPress to
build websites and, in fact, myvery first product this was
before ClickFunnels and all theamazing platforms.
I use a version of GoHighLevel.
Now that's our own calledWealth Reconnect.
Very first product I paid 1500bucks to a guy out of Pakistan
(21:42):
and he made a five page templatebuilder for WordPress that
would allow you to build nameand email opt-in forms.
That's all it did.
So for 60 bucks you could buythis and we would install it on
your website and it gave youlike this drag not a drag and
drop, but like a very easy tochange opt-in page for WordPress
(22:04):
Cause we all had to do that.
That was back when you had toupload files to the SMTPs and
servers and all this Um.
So now it's significantlyeasier.
I tell people all the timethere's definitely more
businesses out there, so there'smore competition, but it's way
easier to start a business nowthan it ever was.
I would go back to eight yearsago.
(22:27):
Things really ramped up andit's just been getting easier
and easier.
Implementation of AI my stackinvolves you can always look at
your tech stack by looking atyour browser tabs right, I have
my marketing CRM software, Ihave my community group platform
, which is all built into thesame thing, and AI, and that's
(22:50):
pretty much most of what I'musing.
I've got a couple of othersoftwares here and there that
aren't primary to my mission.
I've got a couple of othersoftwares here and there that
aren't primary to my mission,but they're important, they do
good work for me and I like them, but they're not part of what I
would call my primary stack.
It's like I want one thingwhere I can do all my pages
email marketing, one sort of CRMtype system, and then the
(23:11):
handful of other little detailshere and there, but AI and the
CRM are the two big ones.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
I'm really excited to see how far AI can take it when
it comes to some of theseautonomous agents, and I feel
like we're just sort ofscratching the surface of what
we'll be able to do 100%.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I've been seeing some stuff lately about AI and AI
agents and some of theautomation capabilities that
these things have, and it'sphenomenal.
I mean, the world is going tolook so different every year
until we hit some sort ofterminal velocity where
everything is easier.
But yeah, I think AI and the AIagent world is going to be a
(23:51):
huge boom this year.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing
all of your insights, but beforewe hop, can you let people know
where they can connect with youonline or learn more?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
yeah, my, my most active platform is instagram.
I'm the travis stevensons-t-e-p-h-e-n-s-o-n on instagram
.
Um, I'm most active there.
I talk most about what I'mdoing on my projects.
I am pushing out some effort onmy youtube channel to try to
try to give the world sometransparency and what it looks
like to build a digital business.
That'll be coming through soon,but, yeah, those places.
(24:23):
And then I have a newsletterpaidcreatorscom or it's
paidcreatorsbeehivecom, but youcan find paid creators
newsletter.
You can Google that and find it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I think I've seen that before in like the boost
marketplace.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yep, yeah, cause we have a pretty large newsletter
of job seekers.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Okay, yeah, we, we do .
We have about 80,000, 60,000subscribers right now in the
like sort of entrepreneurialspace and we get a lot of
different offers and whatnotfrom there.
I love beehive, it's great.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah, I mean it's so much better than what existed
before it.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I mean, yeah, that's crazy yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, Well, again, thank you for coming on.
I'll make sure to include, uh,all those links in the show
notes that people can reach out.
Uh, but again thanks for comingon for everybody listening.
As always, this is Brandon.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast
about using the Gen Z mindset togrow your business.
I'm Gen Z entrepreneur BrandonAmoroso, the former founder of
Electric and now the co-founderof Scaless, and today I'm
talking with Travis Stephenson,who's a serial entrepreneur who
has built and sold multipleonline businesses.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Thanks, man.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Appreciate it.
So before we dive into things,can you give everybody just a
quick background on yourself andyour entrepreneurial journey?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, quick is tough.
I've been doing it for a while,going all the way back.
I was fired from my job as avirtual office assistant.
I was literally the guy thatlike, there was this company
where you could rent a bunch ofdifferent office spaces and use
it as a virtual office.
So if you're a lawyer but youlive in Miami and you were
coming to this town, you wouldhave an office and we'd have
(00:50):
somebody answer your phone andyou could have coffee.
And well, that was my job was toclean the Keurig machine and
wipe off the whiteboards, andthat was my my job, one of my
jobs.
After college.
I went job to job for a whileand had my business management
degree, had hopes for a wholebig future, and I got fired from
that job actually for being twominutes late.
(01:12):
I wasn't quote, unquote, I wasnot management material, which
was awesome.
Got fired from that job andthen I went played funny enough,
played poker online to pay myrent for a while and then took a
job from somebody who waslooking for a personal assistant
on Craigslist and they weremoving to town and, long story
(01:34):
short, they had a company thatwas in the digital marketing
space and so they were like,look, you're not right to be our
personal assistant, but youmight be good for this other
thing.
That taught me the ropes.
For two years I was workingwith affiliate marketers,
helping them find offers theycould promote, and, um, then I
just sort of took off on my own,started making my own stuff,
(01:55):
cause I also realized, like thisis what I hope everybody
realizes by 2025, hopefully, um,everybody realizes this that
almost everybody who has adigital product there's most of
them aren't doing anythingbetter than what you could do,
um, and so there's all thesepeople that are creating digital
products and they're making alot of money doing it, and most
(02:16):
people just think, oh, I couldnever do that.
I had the different mindset.
I was like I saw behind thescenes and I'm like I could
absolutely do this.
Look how easy this is for theseguys.
And that was 15 years ago,before all of these great
website building platforms andbefore everybody made it easy,
um, you know that that was quitea long time ago.
So, uh, then you know, justfast forward, I I've had a bunch
of different companies thatI've started little, mostly
(02:38):
little more offers thancompanies, um, that have done
really well, and I've been inthe digital space since then.
For eight years, I ran asoftware company called
Chatmatic which automatedFacebook and Instagram Messenger
.
We were like a very, very, youknow step cousin of ManyChat
basically, which everybody kindof is aware of, and sold that
(03:01):
company in 2022, kind of gotback to my roots in marketing
and I've been doing that sincethen.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Nice.
And when it comes to yourideation process for building
your next company, how does thattypically happen for you?
Does it come out of your youknow what's?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
funny, I have spent a ton of time.
So in August of 2022, when Isold my company, I spent three
straight months looking at themarket just to figure out what
is working.
What should I do?
Because everybody was asking meat the time like, hey, you're
an entrepreneur, you've beendoing this for a long time,
what's your next thing?
And I was like I don't know, itdoesn't just come to you, like
(03:37):
I think most people think itdoes.
So I started studying and oneof the things that I found was
fascinating that there's fiveplaces where really great ideas
come from, and it's one of thethings that I teach now and the
first one is paying attention toyour problems.
So, if you want to create abusiness, look at the stuff that
you have struggled with or thatyou are currently struggling
with, and figure out can Icreate a solution or did I
(03:59):
already create a solution?
And a great example would besleep.
Right now, a lot of people arehaving issues getting good and
quality enough sleep, and I, fora while, was one of them,
especially as an entrepreneur.
A lot of entrepreneurs sufferfrom this, like shutting the
mind off and um, I've used thislittle tracking device on my
wrist for seven years and I knowwhat my sleep is and I've
tracked it for a long time.
(04:20):
And, uh, I started getting alot more into it and I started
figuring out.
You know what I need to figureout how to get my sleep better,
because it'll make me feelbetter throughout the day.
My mental cognition is better.
I don't need supplements.
I'm good if I sleep well, andso I got to work figuring out
what can I do to make my sleepbetter, and now my sleep
performance on average is almostabout 100% every night, where
(04:41):
it used to be 75, 80.
And so I solved my own problem,and now I realize, as a digital
entrepreneur, I could create aproduct out of that by helping
other people do the exact samething that I did, but they don't
have to trial and error it,they can just do what I did.
And so paying attention to yourown problems is number one,
paying attention to shifts inthe marketplace.
(05:02):
So if there's obviously AI iscoming out now, what kind of
opportunity can you jump in inAI?
That's a big one.
Then another one would be payattention to your curiosities.
So anything that you like,anything that you're interested
in, kind of go down that rabbithole.
I think, as adults, a lot ofpeople are taught to stifle
their imagination.
(05:22):
It's like, hey, yeah, don't gotoo crazy thinking that you're
going to do this.
You know it's.
Um, you're not pretending thatyou're going to win the lottery,
but you do have to let yourselfpretend like, hey, you know,
I've always thought about thiswould be really cool.
I wonder what I could do inthat instance, like, how could I
make something out of this?
Allow yourself to do that, notjust to go oh, that's stupid,
I'll never do it.
Um, and then another big one isto um, brainstorm with friends.
(05:47):
So, find friends that you canbounce ideas off of.
And, sadly, if you don't haveany friends, I would tell you
this little piece of advice Um,number one if you have friends
that you can't bounce businessideas off of, they're probably
the wrong friends.
If you're actually going to gointo the entrepreneurial space,
the people that don't that, thatdon't agree that you should be
pursuing things, they're nevergoing to have good things to say
(06:09):
about your ideas.
What you need is somebody elsewho's also seen the light.
And and so, number one getbetter friends.
But number two uh, chat, gptand these AI agents are really
great for this as well.
You can bounce ideas off ofthem and, um, just feed them
everything you know about atopic and see like, hey, how
could I create a product out ofthis?
Um, but those are like the fourmajor ways that I always tell
(06:32):
everybody is like look at yourown problems, talk to friends
and people that you know.
Uh, pay attention tocuriosities, look at what's
shifting in the market.
Um, those four out of the five,those are the ones that seem to
be where most of mine come from, because that's where Chapmatic
came from for me.
I was looking at the shift inthe market and I was paying
attention to a curiosity.
A lot of my other productsdigital products have all come
(06:56):
from problems that I've solvedfor myself.
I was like, hey, I wanted tobuild I'm trying to look at some
of these awards here and whatthey were.
So there's a product up herethat I was able to take my
messenger automation company,and I grew a great agency where
I was helping e-commercecompanies leverage messenger
automations to make more sales,and so we actually taught that
(07:19):
to other people.
So now I was able to do itmyself.
That was based on a problemthat I had how do you start an
agency, right, how do you startan agency?
How do you get clients, how doyou get them results?
And so I took that mechanismand I solved it for other people
and sold that and I think thoseare great ways to start
businesses is just look in thoseareas.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, I mean.
To your point about a chat GPT.
I mean even being able tocreate individual GPTs,
uploading a bunch of informationto them, like training them
over time.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's a hundred percent, it's definitely that's
the first piece of advice I givealmost all of my members when
they come into any of ourprograms is create an AI brain
that will be able to think foryou, organize data for you.
You should journal into it Likeit's.
It should be a place where allof your thoughts, All this stuff
(08:09):
that I'm telling you how do Iuse it for something, and it
will give you some good ideas.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, what are you really excited about this year
and beyond?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Sort of.
I mean definitely new stuffthat I'm working on.
So two years ago I started abrand new digital product
teaching people like aneducational product, and it did
really well.
We were doing a hundredthousand plus months.
I sold my house and my wife andI kind of woke up this morning,
one of the mornings, and we'relike, man, we're, we're in this
(08:41):
routine.
So I have two kids and we're inthis routine of waking up every
morning breakfast, run out thedoor 20 minutes to school.
Then you got to pick them up attwo, 30, whatever, and we were
like, well, we're about to dothis for 18 years, basically.
So are we ready to like committhat?
This is the?
We're just doing that now?
And we were like you know what?
(09:02):
I run my business, I can run itfrom anywhere.
Let's sell the house and let'stravel, let's do the whole
digital no man thing for real.
And uh, we found a travelingschool, a world traveling school
program.
Uh, it was called boundlesslife, and they had um, a
location in um, portugal, andthey had another location that
we wanted to go to in Bali.
So we went three months inPortugal, we went to Dubai and
(09:23):
Singapore on the way, and thenwe went to, uh, marrakesh, and
we got to go to Bali and Tokyoand spend a bunch of time in
Kauai, and so we just spent 18,19 ish months traveling.
Um, literally last month, wegot into our our new house that
had been remodeled.
So, um, for this year, I'mactually kind of excited to just
(09:44):
buckle in on business and notdo all the craziness of like
traveling with kids and flyingacross the world and all of that
, which is, I mean, I mean, it'ssuper exciting.
Don't get me wrong, it wasamazing.
But, um, I'm excited to likefocus on more stuff that lights
me up versus stuff that you knowit's really easy as an
entrepreneur, and the reason Isold my previous software
company was because it's so easyto get into a rut of like just
(10:07):
doing what you have to do to getby and you don't love it, you
don't enjoy it, and so it'sactually, you know, in a lot of
ways, you're working harder thanyou would at a job.
There's no guaranteed paycheck,there's significantly more
stress, so I don't really thinkthat that's like what everybody
will should want to do.
So what I've kind of reallyfocused my energy and effort on
(10:28):
since August of 2022 is let medo stuff that I really like and
even my previous product thatdid really well.
I shut it down, cold Turkey,about three months ago and I'm
going to do more of what I focus, what I actually really enjoy.
So that product was great, itwas making good money, but it
wasn't firing me up.
I wasn't excited about itanymore.
The people that I was helping Ididn't really feel aligned with
(10:50):
that anymore.
Um, so I was like you know what?
I'm going to go into this newthing.
So the thing I'm kind ofexcited about long-winded answer
is I have been kind ofself-writing my own book with
nobody's help.
We'll see how it ends up comingout, but it's basically a book
of all my most importantjourneys, so the things that
I've learned about in thebuilding of a business.
(11:11):
So it's called the experienceengine, which is this idea that
you can create these experiencesIf you want somebody to buy
from you, if you want somebodyto give you money.
The key to all of it is getthem to experience something,
because that's when they'regoing to make the decision to
buy, whatever it is.
So it's kind of excitingbecause they always say that the
(11:32):
physiological effects ofexciting are the same as nervous
, right Like, your palms aresweaty, get cold sweats, heart
race.
So I don't know if it's excitedor if I'm nervous, but to go
down this pursuit of trying tosell this book and build a
company off of that by teachingthese things that you're never
(11:53):
qualified to do it, you justhave to decide that you're going
to do it and so, um, that'skind of what I'm excited about
is going into a niche where Iget to work with entrepreneurs,
people who are, you know, doingbig things, and kind of help
them achieve that same thing.
So we'll see, I'm excited ornervous, I don't know yet.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
What would you say like the biggest learning
lessons that you've taken fromthe previous businesses that
you'll, you know, definitelytake in and apply to this new
one that you're that you'restarting?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Uh well, so the number, so it's.
It's, there's like categories,right, there's like running and
operating a business, and thenthere's also marketing and
selling that business.
Then there's individual things,like you know how I'm running
Facebook ads versus this, but,um, there's something really
cool that I was kind of justwriting about, which is what's
on my mind, and it's this topicof um.
(12:38):
I read in a report not long agofrom Google about these six
cognitive biases and they testedit and this was this was cool
and anybody in the marketingspace can appreciate this.
They tested these six cognitivebiases, which are things like
social proof, having a list ofdetails of what the product is.
As a shopper, if we see thesethings, we're more likely to buy
(13:00):
.
And they did these massivetests across thousands of
different transactions and theyfound they did this test on
shampoo, which was amazing andit kind of dictates the whole
thing.
They had one shampoo that wasbrand A and they introduced that
to a shopper and 100% of theshoppers bought shampoo A
because it was the only one thatwas offered.
Then they offered a secondshampoo to another batch of
(13:20):
shoppers and that second brandthat nobody knew about got 25%
of the sales and the originalshampoo still stayed with 75%,
which is good.
That means the first shampoohas good staying power, right,
it had a good brand.
People knew of it.
It was hard to get somebody tochange.
Google then added these sixcognitive biases to the second
(13:42):
brand of shampoo and that secondbrand got 90% of the sales and
the first brand only kept 10.
So one of the really coolconcepts was I was reading that
study and then I went backthrough all of my marketing and
I realized, like all the thingsthat I've done that are
successful, a lot of them werefollowing these six cognitive
biases that you know are thatshould be present in pretty much
(14:03):
everybody's marketing.
And since I am more, I guessyou'd say, in the marketing side
, like, I'm not like thebusiness coach.
I'm not going to teach you howto grow a hundred million dollar
business.
I'm a marketer.
That's what I've been good at.
I'm good at getting eyeballs,getting attention, uh, and
turning that attention intotransactions.
Um yeah, if you want to learnhow to run a 20 person sales
(14:23):
team, I'm not the guy.
And so it was just reallyinteresting to me to read this
study and go man, there are waysthat we can hack winning in our
industry, get sales over brandsthat have more authority over
you, brands that people wouldnormally choose over you 100% of
(14:46):
the time.
By adding social proof, byadding scarcity effects, by
adding a list of what is on eachsales, what the benefits are,
we can actually reverse engineergetting more market share.
And I think by teaching peoplehow to do that, how to make your
experience engine full of thesemoments, right Like, can you
have?
Can you implement any of theseideas into your ads?
(15:09):
Can you implement any of theseideas into follow-up emails?
Can you implement any of theseideas into your content?
By doing that, you're you'rereally cultivating an experience
for the end user which thengets them to relate to you and
then to buy from you.
So I would definitely saybiggest sort of learning
experience is um a.
You're closer to massivenumbers than you think.
(15:30):
When I launched my last programtwo years ago, I did not expect
it to do.
It did $6 million in a yearwhile I was traveling the world.
I did not expect that when Iset out Um but B, to just like
line up and pay attention to thethings that we now know
actually work and then just workon introducing those.
(15:50):
Get a bare minimum viableproduct.
Get that out to market, provethat there's some leg room in
this product and then work onimproving it over time.
Add the little details as youkeep going through.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
When it comes to you mentioned the explosive growth
that you had of that productthat you launched.
What are usually the mainlevers that you're pulling to
get that top of funnel into the?
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I believe there's three different what I call.
So I call the entire thing theexperience engine right, and I
believe that there are threefuel types that I know about or
that I pay attention to, andthat is obviously content.
The other one would be money orads in this case, and then the
other one is referrals.
I think the most interestingone that nobody pays attention
(16:37):
to is referrals.
I have a great stat line.
When I was running my offer, wedid around $6 million in about a
12 to 14 month period I don'tknow the exact dates, but in
that timeframe we generatedabout $1.3 million in revenue
specifically from affiliates.
And now here's what'sinteresting I only invited one
affiliate I think it was oneaffiliate, it might've been two
(17:00):
One affiliate who was not acustomer to promote my offer.
What I did was I invited everycustomer to become an affiliate
and many of them did, and what Ifound actually was, out of
19,000 customers, 500 of thembecame affiliates active
affiliates, which means theydrove at least 10 clicks to our
offer.
So there was a lot of them thatsigned up, never did anything,
(17:23):
but 500 actually drovemeaningful clicks.
And what's amazing is I hadthis digital product that was
teaching people something Oneaffiliate promoted and got,
let's say, a hundred sales.
Out of those hundred sales,five of those people would also
become affiliates and they wouldget five to a hundred sales.
And it started this like chainof wow I'm getting sales without
(17:43):
having to do anything.
It started this like chain ofwow I'm getting sales without
having to do anything.
And what's amazing is I did.
I broke it all down and just byoffering an affiliate program, I
made $600,000 in net revenueand earnings in my pocket from
them promoting my stuff in oneyear and I think that's probably
one of the most overlookedthings is like look, you're
creating a product.
People that buy it are going tolike it.
(18:05):
You can not only offer them anincentive to get this free by
telling other people, but ifthey like it, they're going to
talk about it anyways, so youmight as well give them a link
where they can make money off it.
And that was definitely a hugeI would say a huge lever that I
pulled.
That made a lot of thingspossible, because if you don't
(18:25):
just offer the ability for themto promote, then they won't, in
which case you lose all thatrevenue.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, but your product has to be good and
people have to like it.
I think I've seen so manystores where there's a referral
program or whatever.
Maybe they don't get adoptionbecause this is not Well, a lot
of people's referral programsare also trash Like.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Let's be real, if your referral program is 5% off
my next shopping experience, I'mnot going to go out of my way
to tell anybody anything.
But if your referral program isfor every person that you send,
if they buy something from me,I'll give you 50% of what they
buy, um in in revenue.
Well, that's going to open somedoors.
Now, physical companies can'treally do that as much Digital
(19:06):
products can.
We can offer way more marginbecause we don't have any ad
cost when somebody is promotingfor us.
So our normal ad cost is 30% atleast.
Maybe sometimes, as you startto scale, 50, 60, 70% of the
front end value.
Well, if it's an affiliate, Ican give 70% because I'm still
making 20% after my merchantfees, merchant fees and all the
(19:29):
other stuff.
So, yeah, I think having a goodreferral program is definitely
a key.
But then also I learned thisfrom when I still had a job.
This was back when I was 21, 22.
The guy that I was working forhe had me selling tracking
services to real estate agentsand I never sold anything.
But because I wasn't sellinganything, he wasn't making money
(19:53):
off of me.
So he actually signed me up foran MLM called prepaid legal,
which is like a MLM for legalservices, and one of the things
that stuck out to me was duringthat time when he signed me up
for that.
He said something that I'llnever forget and he basically
said look, if you're benefitingfrom this, don't you think
you're going to your mom and dadwould benefit from it, don't
(20:14):
you think you're?
You know, it was kind of thatwarm market pitch where it's
like you know your mom and dadprobably need a will.
Why don't you introduce them tothis?
They're going to love it andthen they're going to get
benefit out of it.
And I think about that all thetime.
When I'm building products nowis like if my product is good
and my product is going tobenefit people, there's a really
good chance it's going to helpother people.
And this goes out to like let'smake it simple, right?
(20:36):
I've been getting into sourdoughbread lately.
Let's say that you made acourse about making sourdough
bread.
If I have friends come over tomy house and I give them a piece
of my sourdough bread and theyask me where did you start
learning how to do this?
I could easily refer the coursethat I took that taught me how
to do that.
If I don't have a link to do it, I'm probably just going to say
, oh, some random course.
(20:57):
But if I have a link that'sgoing to pay me 50%, I'm going
to tell everybody, even if I'mnot the best at making sourdough
.
I'm going to tell them because,like, yeah, I did learn a lot
from this.
This was great.
So that digital market, I think, opens up a lot of opportunity
for that.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
What sort of like technology you know stacks are
using now versus you know whenyou, when you first got started.
How much easier has that madethis process for you.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
When I when I first got started.
You're talking 15 years ago.
When I first got started, I washaving to use WordPress to
build websites and, in fact, myvery first product this was
before ClickFunnels and all theamazing platforms.
I use a version of GoHighLevel.
Now that's our own calledWealth Reconnect.
Very first product I paid 1500bucks to a guy out of Pakistan
(21:42):
and he made a five page templatebuilder for WordPress that
would allow you to build nameand email opt-in forms.
That's all it did.
So for 60 bucks you could buythis and we would install it on
your website and it gave youlike this drag not a drag and
drop, but like a very easy tochange opt-in page for WordPress
(22:04):
Cause we all had to do that.
That was back when you had toupload files to the SMTPs and
servers and all this Um.
So now it's significantlyeasier.
I tell people all the timethere's definitely more
businesses out there, so there'smore competition, but it's way
easier to start a business nowthan it ever was.
I would go back to eight yearsago.
(22:27):
Things really ramped up andit's just been getting easier
and easier.
Implementation of AI my stackinvolves you can always look at
your tech stack by looking atyour browser tabs right, I have
my marketing CRM software, Ihave my community group platform
, which is all built into thesame thing, and AI, and that's
(22:50):
pretty much most of what I'musing.
I've got a couple of othersoftwares here and there that
aren't primary to my mission.
I've got a couple of othersoftwares here and there that
aren't primary to my mission,but they're important, they do
good work for me and I like them, but they're not part of what I
would call my primary stack.
It's like I want one thingwhere I can do all my pages
email marketing, one sort of CRMtype system, and then the
(23:11):
handful of other little detailshere and there, but AI and the
CRM are the two big ones.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
I'm really excited to see how far AI can take it when
it comes to some of theseautonomous agents, and I feel
like we're just sort ofscratching the surface of what
we'll be able to do 100%.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I've been seeing some stuff lately about AI and AI
agents and some of theautomation capabilities that
these things have, and it'sphenomenal.
I mean, the world is going tolook so different every year
until we hit some sort ofterminal velocity where
everything is easier.
But yeah, I think AI and the AIagent world is going to be a
(23:51):
huge boom this year.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing
all of your insights, but beforewe hop, can you let people know
where they can connect with youonline or learn more?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
yeah, my, my most active platform is instagram.
I'm the travis stevensons-t-e-p-h-e-n-s-o-n on instagram
.
Um, I'm most active there.
I talk most about what I'mdoing on my projects.
I am pushing out some effort onmy youtube channel to try to
try to give the world sometransparency and what it looks
like to build a digital business.
That'll be coming through soon,but, yeah, those places.
(24:23):
And then I have a newsletterpaidcreatorscom or it's
paidcreatorsbeehivecom, but youcan find paid creators
newsletter.
You can Google that and find it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I think I've seen that before in like the boost
marketplace.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yep, yeah, cause we have a pretty large newsletter
of job seekers.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Okay, yeah, we, we do .
We have about 80,000, 60,000subscribers right now in the
like sort of entrepreneurialspace and we get a lot of
different offers and whatnotfrom there.
I love beehive, it's great.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Yeah, I mean it's so much better than what existed
before it.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I mean, yeah, that's crazy yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, Well, again, thank you for coming on.
I'll make sure to include, uh,all those links in the show
notes that people can reach out.
Uh, but again thanks for comingon for everybody listening.
As always, this is Brandon.
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