Travis Chappell On Growing Up in a Cult, Getting Big Celebrities On His Show & Guestio DSH #187

But anyway, I grew up there and there was this church there that is really prominent in this kind of like cultish fundamentalist group.

And what's your advice to people that grow up in a very religious household, but they don't share the same beliefs as their parents?

The majority of the time, most people are just doing the best that they can with the information that they have.

All right, welcome to the digital social hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Travis Trappell.

How we doing?

Travis.

What on?

Hello,

fellow Vegas Local.

Yeah, man.

Yeah, I've been here for a minute.

Yeah, longer than us.

Oh, not you.

I've been here for a while.

Okay.

Yeah, I've been here for a minute.

How many years you've been here?

Just over five years now.

Okay.

Oh, over five years.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've been here longer.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good for you.

Yeah.

Where are you from originally?

California, LA.

Oh, same.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Nice.

So give people the rundown on your story for those that don't know you.

Sure, man.

I'll start with the top and you can dive in whenever or when wherever you want.

So I grew up in LA area, a town called Lancaster.

So it's like

Palmdale, Lancaster.

Lancaster.

ABC.

Yep.

Yep.

Not a great part of California to grow up in.

When I tell people I'm from like SoCal and LA, they have this picture of where I'm from.

And I'm like, well, no, no, no.

Let me let me show you an actual picture.

It's like Lancaster is not

it, you know?

But anyway, I grew up there.

And there was this church there that is really prominent in this kind of like cultish fundamentalist group.

And that was where I spent basically my entire life until I was like 21.

In the church?

Yeah.

So the church, when we started going there, I was like three.

And when we started going there, there was maybe a couple thousand members, 1,500 members.

It was already like a pretty sizable church.

By the time I left, there was almost 8,000 members in the church.

7,000 people.

Grew up in one church?

Yeah, it's pretty wild, especially because considering it was like this,

it's called IFB, Independent Fundamental Baptist.

So like we were like, we say cult-ish, what is cult-ish?

So I'll kind of explain it.

And part of the reason I call it, I don't say just a cult is just like, I feel bad when I watch people that were grew up on a commune in like the middle of New Mexico or something.

It's like, well, that to me feels like more like a cult.

Like we were still in regular society.

It's just that due to the nature of the fundamentalist group, there's a lot of the same stuff that's being used.

So

like in IFB, Independent Fundamental Baptists, we wouldn't associate or fellowship with Southern Baptists because they were too, like, too liberal for us.

You know what I mean?

So, is it two different beliefs?

Or is it all the same Bible?

It's the same Bible.

Southern Baptists will use different versions.

Independent Fundamental Baptists are KJV only, like King James Version only, and every other version is not the Bible.

So, like, if you're reading from an NIV or ESV or RSV or something like that, they'll just tell you, like, that's not even the Bible.

It's not even the same book.

Whereas Southern Baptists are a little bit more lenient and will, you know, let people read from this version or that version,

depending.

So, I basically went there for church.

Obviously, we had church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.

And then we had soul winning on Saturday, which means soul winning is basically just like go knock doors and invite people to come to church on Sunday.

And then they had a soul winning rally before we went out soul winning.

So like that was like a mini church service.

And then I went to the school that was on the church campus.

And the school that was on the campus was

private enrollment.

So you really grew up in the church.

No, like literally I was there.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

It's like

it was, it was it was private enrollment to school so only only members of the church could send their kids to the school so were you ever curious about like other high schools regular high schools or the out not at the time at the time not at the time because i at the time i just was like i i thought everything that i was being taught was so correct

that i was yeah totally normal and correct that everybody else was the weird ones you know what i mean

um so yeah i grew up there from I was basically there seven days a week, except for, you know, summers because we had Sunday morning, Sunday night church.

So Sunday morning church was like Sunday school and then big church, like regular church.

And then there was a break, and then we come back for Sunday night church.

And at Sunday night church, our pastor would always do two different sermons on Sunday night.

Wow.

So then we'd start school on Monday at the same campus.

We'd have chapel during the week, which is essentially just a school, a church service for the kids at the school.

And then I went to that school from kindergarten all the way through senior year of high school.

So were you a virgin until you were married?

Yep.

Yep.

So I graduated high school.

Yeah.

You're different.

Graduated high school.

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Then there was a Bible college on the campus.

Bible college on the campus?

Unaccredited Bible college on the campus that pumped out people for ministry.

So there's like eight total majors that you could go major.

So obviously I went there.

So did most of you guys go there?

I would probably say like maybe half of the kids who graduated from high school would go there at least for a year.

Cause like, you know how Mormons do do their two-year mission thing?

Yeah.

In our culture, it was like they would use that as a way to almost

guilt or pressure you into making sure that you went to Bible college for at least a year.

Okay.

So a lot of kids would come out and go to Bible college for a year, get there.

They had a one-year Bible certificate that you would take.

There's a Bible college.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

That's a whole thing.

I mean, it seemed like y'all had y'all's own actual community, like home ecosystem.

No, that's what I'm saying.

Like, so people.

Yeah, I mean, no, you say

8,000, I was going to say 8,000.

But in a community of like where we lived, that's a massive church.

And especially for that particular denomination, like it's easier for community churches to get that big because they're not, they're not forcing these like crazy fundamentalist guidelines and rules down your throat.

Interesting.

You know, they kind of just let you come on Sunday morning.

They have drums and stuff like that on stage.

It feels like

you're talking about yours.

No, ours did not.

Like, we did not have drums.

We didn't have guitar.

Like, I didn't listen to real music until I was like in my 20s because it was all bad music.

So,

so did you marry the woman?

Yeah, yeah.

The woman you're with now, you grew up with her.

Yeah, so we

started dating when I was 16.

Okay.

And then, yeah, so we both went to the Bible college on the campus.

So literally from the time I was three until 21, it was like there.

Three to 21.

Then I went to kindergarten all the way through senior year of college on the same campus.

Wow.

And then got married before, a semester before I graduated,

which was actually, I was done with school.

I graduated.

I finished in three and a half years.

So I finished in December, got married in January, walked, got my degree in May,

and then

did you ever rebel?

Was there a time that you were rebellious or you were so curious about everything or you questioned anything?

Not when you were there, but afterwards, you kind of everything about my life is totally different now.

Okay.

Yes.

So you did rebel afterwards.

Correct.

Okay.

And how was that?

Like, why, why was that?

Yeah, I

would say it was less rebelling as much as it was just a discovery process of who I was.

Cause like when I when I left there,

basically like if you go to school there, if you go to the ministry school there and you don't go to ministry, it's like, it's really, you know, frowned upon.

It's like taboo.

And so when I was leaving,

I was doing door-to-door sales in college to make extra money.

And I was getting offered these promotion stuff.

I was pretty good at it.

And so when I went to talk to my pastor, who's like the head of everything there, like he's the president of the college and he's the pastor and he's like one of the most looked up to and respected people in the entire IFP movement.

And so there's, you know, he's, for lack of a better word, he's micro famous in that world.

Like we're talking about micro famous influencers.

He is one of them.

Got it.

Just for IFP pastors and people in that culture.

So when I met with him, I didn't want to tell him that I wasn't going to go into ministry or that I didn't want to go into ministry, you know?

So this pastor offers me a part-time, he offered me like, he basically just like, come to our church.

We want you here

even if you're just a layman or if you want to work part-time or if you want to work full-time, we have something for every position that you would want we just want you to come you know be a part of our our church culture and that was up in fresno um which is like three hours north of lancaster yeah i know where fresno is so i basically uh was just like well this seems like the best opportunity that i can go do and then uh what ended up happening just so i can tell people i was going to ministry is i accepted the part-time position and then kept my full-time sales job selling solar at the time.

And

so I never actually like worked in ministry because by the time that I got there, I just like, I had enough clarity within like three weeks to be like, I'm ministry.

I don't think this is for me.

Wow.

And I just went went into sales.

What's your advice to people that grow up in a very religious household, but they don't share the same beliefs as their parents and they're looking for other avenues?

It's tough, dude.

It's tough.

My advice for people is normally just to ask questions

and

recognize that the majority of the time, most people are just doing the best that they can with the information that they have.

And so I try not to, I try not to hold grudges or look back with any spite or hatred or feelings of anger toward those types of things because I feel like it limited me in a lot of capacities.

So you did go through that phase at one point?

Not really, dude.

Honestly, because like...

There's a lot of great things.

You know, life is what you choose to look at.

You know, there's, there's a lot of negatives to how I grew up, but there's a lot of positives to how I I grew up.

You met your wife?

I met my wife there, and she's awesome.

And we got lucky that we made it through the whole transitioning out of that world together.

And it was definitely very tense during some of that.

Oh, so she transitioned out too.

Correct.

And she was after me.

So there was definitely some rocky, you know,

rough times, you know.

during that.

But no, we've made it on the other side.

Like, it's almost like trauma bonding, you know what I mean?

Because we went through so much together and we've known each other for so long.

So do you still, do you, are you into church now?

Are you kind of just like no, no, I haven't been in a few years.

So, you're an atheist now?

Um, no, I wouldn't say atheist,

okay, atheist,

my bad.

I jumped, I jumped the goddamn to be fair.

You are not the only person that just immediately assumed that I left and came in as like atheist,

devil worshiper.

Um,

no, I, uh,

I, I, I would not classify myself as atheist, I would just say that, um, my belief is that nobody knows.

Everything's intrinsically unprovable, including what science tells us, you know, like evolution, all that stuff.

Like,

from what I can tell.

Didn't they prove there is a soul, though?

I mean, who?

Who proved it?

You know what I mean?

Like,

show me the evidence and, you know what I mean?

And even if, even if that's...

the case, that doesn't tell us anything about who gave us the soul, where the soul goes, what happens after we die.

Like everything is speculative.

So

what your beliefs is, your belief right now is nobody knows.

Correct.

Yeah.

So like the best estimation that I can tell is that most religion, in my opinion, again, everything that I'm about to say is my opinion.

Most religion is 80 to 90%

BS and 10 to 20%

correct.

Wow.

So, because they all teach the same stuff.

Like if you look at like, if you look at it, like, this core group of things, like values, right?

Hey, probably not good people, probably should be kind to your fellow human beings, probably should value love over hatred, like, probably should be accepting of people.

You know, like these core values and like tenets of faith and religion are all good and great things.

And there's a lot of things to learn from every single religion, right?

Philosophically, right?

Right.

The Bible is still a fantastic piece of literature, regardless if you believe it's the word of God or just a book.

But every religion has some things that are correct, and most religions agree on those things.

Like I said, those universal kind of basic principles of love and kindness and

those types of things.

So when they start messing up are the 80% where they just start putting in rules.

And the rules are largely based on religious context, cultural context, what part of the world the religion is in,

the history of that religion.

And those are subjective rules.

Everybody might not agree on them.

They're subjective.

And they're, like I said,

they're all intrinsically unprovable.

And most of the time when mankind comes up with those types of things, it's usually to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown.

It's that we know these things to be true because we can observe them and see them in society.

But these things, we don't know anything about them.

So in order,

we can't live without certainty.

So in order to be certain, we make up all the things in between and then teach it from generation to generation as though those things are fact.

So let me ask you this question

so since you've you know parted ways from the from the religion or church aspect has your life been any different in the sense is it good is it bad or is it just normal or is that a belief in the sense of once you actually separate yourself and you believe in what you believe in that your life will be in shambles or not as you know not not as good as you want it to be in your opinion like what what has anything different channel has anything changed or anything like that i mean for in my opinion again i think my life has significantly improved

however i would say that i grew up i grew up really fundamentalist like it's not totally fair to compare what i was used to as a church experience to not even to where i am now but to where the majority of churchgoers

would be right you know what i'm saying like they didn't when i when i tell people i went to church growing up they're like oh yeah me too

i went to church yeah i was in church yeah right it's like it's different.

So like,

it's kind of unfair to use my anecdotal experience to negate all of church.

And I'm not even saying,

I rarely talk about this stuff.

I'm happy to talk about it, and I'm fine with answering questions, but I rarely talk about it because I don't want people to think that I'm trying to actively remove them from their religion.

Or they'll get offended by your beliefs.

No, it's just not.

I just do not care what you believe about it.

It's just your belief is your belief.

And good for you.

If it makes you feel happier, if it makes you feel connected to God or the universe and it provides a good moral and structure and value hierarchy for your life and for your kids and for your family, more power to you.

We live in America.

You have freedom of religion, and that's totally good.

Gotcha.

And I have no intention of removing anybody from their religion.

This is just what I found to believe for myself over the years.

That makes sense.

And I think.

Yeah, I think

I've done a lot of thinking about it, and I've done a lot of studying about it.

You know, I mean, people would probably argue with him and be so mad that he's saying the stuff that he's saying because they want him to believe what they believe.

That's the biggest problem that.

You deal with that a lot, I'm sure.

It's the biggest problem that I have, man, is like, I just,

as soon as you start telling me that I'm wrong, that just starts getting into this conversation of like,

first of all, we can't have the conversation unless the other party is willing to admit that they could be wrong.

Which is the first step that most people in any sort of at least dogmatic religion will not even take.

They will not take that first step toward you.

They will not admit that there's an inkling of a single like

minute percentage of a chance that you could be wrong.

They don't fail to even understand your angle and your point of view.

That's what I'm saying.

They won't even give you that.

Because they know they're right.

Right.

Which

nobody knows that.

Yeah, I was going to say that's what that's kind of my whole foundational principle at the beginning of this conversation is like nobody 100% knows.

If they're telling you they're 100% no, it's because the religion doesn't work if you're not 100%.

Because that's, that was always the question.

It's like, if you're not 100% for sure that you're going to heaven, then you're not going to heaven.

Right.

And it was like, well, how can you be 100% for sure that you're going to a place that you don't even know exists?

Right.

Oh, heaven exists.

Okay.

Tell me I'm not.

Show me.

Yeah.

Show me where, like, tell, take me there.

Like, we'll walk through the streets of gold together and then maybe I'll work on it.

You know what I mean?

But like, we're assuming that based on this like 2,000-year-old text that a bunch of people wrote a long time ago, like we have no idea if that is true.

Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't live your life in a way that helps make sure that you have the things that you believe are there waiting for you, but that doesn't mean that I'm wrong.

You know what I mean?

It just is like a, so if you're, if you're not willing to at least be like, yeah, I could be wrong, then I don't, I, I don't, I don't ever get into the conversation because it's not a conversation because I know that because I've been there.

Yeah.

I was that guy that would, that would try to have conversations with people, but it was never, it was never to listen listen and like understand where they were coming from and gain empathy and insight into their life and see the world through their eyes it was never for that it was always listening until i could convince them that they were wrong right and i'm just not willing to get in those conversations with those people because there's nowhere to go what do you think your life would have been like had you been raised normal i don't know were you like a reckless kid or you always like kind of straight up like

the reason i was so bought in before is like i'm pretty much kind of i'm i'm just all in on whatever i do okay you know what i'm saying so ever played sports?

They have football

basketball.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Nice, man.

Oh yeah, it's good.

Yeah, I just,

whatever I did, I just, I just, basketball was my thing until I

was in college and I started on door door sales.

So I was on the basketball team in college.

Again, this is like a small Christian college.

We played some D3 schools in SoCal, like some of the Skyact Conference, Whittier and Laverne, and some of those

schools.

But

when I got in college, like I told you guys kind of jokingly before i was like oh i can't play basketball with these people and i'm not gonna have a career in basketball after this and i was started making good money selling so i started taking my focus away from basketball and put it onto sales and business at that point where were you selling solar yeah solar started in solar yep did door-to-door for like five six years solar um alarms water purification

um and then started my started my podcast Oh, yeah, I want to dive into that.

You started one of the most successful business podcasts in the world.

You had on guys like Shaq, Paul Pierce, Chris Hansen.

How were you able to scale it to that level?

Time, a lot of time and reps.

Because, you know, when I was starting, I was starting from scratch.

I essentially was coming out of this Bible college world with no real life skills.

Well, actually, I take that back.

There was a big life skill that I had, which was communication

because I was speaking in front of people since I was like 12 years old.

I'm doing preaching contests and singing and competitions and speeches and all this other stuff, which I don't think I would have had nearly that amount if I had grown up normal.

So that was an advantage, but there was a lot of other, like it didn't, it didn't help me get a job is my point.

It's like, you're not going to walk into a place and be like, here's my unaccredited church ministries degree.

Right.

You know,

yeah.

So

I just did sales because

I could make real money.

You know, because I was like, oh, I can make six figures at 22 knocking doors instead of going and sitting in a crappy office working for somebody I don't respect and making $24,000 a year.

And I did it in 20-hour work weeks, you know, so I was like, this is sweet.

It's just that I knew that I didn't want to do it forever.

And I figured that making money online was probably the move because I like to travel and I wanted more freedom and flexibility in my schedule, want to be able to make money when I'm gone.

And so

the podcast was just kind of like my

foray into learning how to make money in any other way than the way that I already knew how to make money, which was door-to-door sales.

So I started the podcast without any intention or knowledge about,

not maybe not intention, but definitely not knowledge.

I didn't have any knowledge about how to turn it into money or how to make a business out of it or what I was even doing.

Got on the mic and just started.

Yeah, I was just like, I just want to have good conversations with interesting people in entrepreneurship.

I didn't know any millionaires at the time.

I didn't know any successful people at the time.

So I was just like, this seems like a good way to go meet those people and like learn directly from them and get a glimpse into a bunch of different industries or business models and types of things and just kind of see like what's out there.

So when did you actually start building traction?

When did you realize like, okay, I got something?

Probably like year two, year three.

Most people would have stopped by then.

Most

of the 90% of podcasts never make it to episode 10.

Wow.

90%.

There's over 4 million indexed podcasts now and less than 300,000 are active.

Wow.

For that exact reason, because it's hard even it takes a long time, especially when you're starting from scratch.

It's like

your model is better.

Like go make a lot of money first and then start a podcast because you can put production into it.

You can bring in good guests.

You already have a good network.

It's like,

yeah, there's something.

Yeah, I'm glad I waited.

You got wisdom.

You can actually relate to your guests.

Sure.

Yeah.

But at the beginning, it wasn't like that for me at all.

It was just like I was interviewing three people a week for two years before I gained any real traction.

Wow.

So

300 interviews, you know?

Just emailing?

Yeah, email, Instagram DMs, going to events, conferences, joining masterminds.

And that's why you started Guestio, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I started Guestio because people, like the number one question I got was, how did you get so-and-so on your show?

Right.

And so Guestio kind of came out of that.

It's a great idea, man.

He connects guests with podcast hosts.

Oh, and Inspire.

And vice versa.

Almost like an agency in a way.

Yeah.

So we have the software side that it's kind of like a do-it-yourself version.

You can go on there, create an account, pitch people back and forth.

And then we have an agency side as well where we do all the work for you.

Yeah, that's fine.

So normal people can get celebrities on their podcast.

That's the gist.

That's nice.

If you have the money anyway.

That's the hope I'm

sure.

Which is another reason to start a show with money.

But yeah, so it took a while.

I started kind of realizing it when people just kind of kept asking me for stuff.

And that was the first version of the business.

Like that's the way I, the way that I stopped doing door-to-door sales was doing like podcast coaching and masterminds.

That's just what people started asking of me.

Yeah.

And I was like,

I'm not super smart, but I know that if people are asking me all these questions all the time, it probably means that there's a demand here.

Yeah, yeah.

I should probably fulfill that demand.

I remember meeting you at the moment.

I might as well start being super smart.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, yeah.

I was really impressed with your podcast at the time.

Yeah, it's so funny, man.

I think I was talking to my wife, somebody the other day.

I joined that mastermind and I was looking back.

I think we're going to try to use that intro video for something, you know, because they sent us the videos of introducing ourselves that first night.

The Bruce Buffer intro?

Yeah, the Bruce Buffer.

What mastermind was it?

Hundred Million Mastermind.

Fleischman's Mastermind.

Who?

Fleischman, Dan Fleischman.

Oh, okay, yeah, Dan.

Yeah, and

it wasn't even the Bruce Buffer one.

It was like where we were what we said before Bruce Buffer.

Oh, okay.

And I was like, this is unusable.

Because I didn't even have like a business.

Mind stuff.

I was like, oh, I think I got up and said something like, I'm a podcaster.

And it was like, that was all I joined the group with.

It was like, I have a podcast and like, I sometimes coach.

You know what I mean?

It paid honestly.

But it it did pay off.

Sometimes that's enough.

You know,

you put yourself in the industry and you master it.

Right.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Travis, it's been a pleasure.

Any closing comments where people can find you?

No, dude.

Appreciate you having me.

If you want to connect more, Travis Schappell on Instagram at Travis Chappelle.

Sorry for taking up this whole time talking about religion and

no, it was interesting.

I mean, yeah, I think that was different.

get a different perspective and different understanding of your upbringing and you know what what it's like growing up in a cult in a way, cult-ish, cultish, cult-ish, yeah, that's I can't, I can't bring myself, yeah, I have too much empathy for the people that grew up on like

different though being old when they were nine and like that.

It's just like, oh, okay, there's levels to it.

Yeah, well,

it's like I had it, I had it pretty nice.

Yeah, wait,

you can follow me on Instagram at the creator, it'll pop up around like somewhere in here.

We always change up a spot,

they'll know how to do it.

All right, Sean Kelly, digital social hour.

I'll see you guys next week.

Peace.

Peace.