Ali Kazem: thank you so much for ⁓ joining, wanting to have a chat with me, I appreciate that.
Trav Bell: No worries, Ali
Ali Kazem: It's been on mind since we ⁓ met briefly for the first time in the sauna in ⁓ Bali ⁓ Bambu. And super funny because ⁓ as ⁓ also mentioned that to you when we were in the sauna that I've kind of I've noticed you and also your partner walking around at Bambu at this, you know, the health club ⁓ because look so cool. ⁓ with the glasses as well and everything and I was thinking okay especially around the energy that you have I was thinking okay I would love to have a conversation with him and then we had that brief conversation and yeah there we go super dope man yeah man and we had that brief conversation in the sauna and then like yeah my gut feeling was just right about
Trav Bell: Yeah.
Ali Kazem: the fact that you seem like a super interesting person with ⁓ an even more interesting journey. And once I found that out, then it became very apparent to me that I really wanted to have like a bit more of proper sit down to understand more about your story, your journey, where you are now. ⁓ So super cool, that's a bit of a kudos, that energy that you guys give off.
Trav Bell: ⁓ that's really lovely. ⁓ yeah, it sounds a bit sus that ⁓ whoever this goes out to, you know, online, podcast, YouTube, social, wherever. ⁓ yeah, the fact that two guys met in a sauna to start things, you know, start the story off like like the in in that in the meeting in that place sounds a bit sus. But ⁓ there was a lot of other people in there. Actually that sounds worse, doesn't it? ⁓
Ali Kazem: Ha ha ha.
Trav Bell: But yeah, a at a health club, you know, Bambu is a health club. Give it some context for people that may not know. Bali Bambu is a is a gym and health club. So ⁓ yep, going I'll be going there tonight too. And ⁓ and thank you so much for that that compliment. And I put the glasses on just in case everyone's wondering what the hell he's talking about. ⁓ but actually they're keeping some sun off my eyes too, so I'm not gonna be squinting as much. ⁓ but no stoked to be stoked to be talking to you, man. Happy to ⁓ happy to be answering any questions you got.
Ali Kazem: Really cool man, I appreciate that. And it's probably a good idea for me to start off with also a bit of context. Thank you for sharing that context on this one. And I briefly told you what it is that I'm doing and just to add a bit more insights to that is right now I'm traveling around. I've been traveling since January and mainly been around Southeast Asia. And I've had a bunch of conversations with super super cool people with a lot of inspiring journeys and stories to tell and I've noticed that whenever I finish this conversation or halfway through the conversation I'm like I really wish that I recorded this because there's so much you know so many cool perspectives so much wisdom to be taken here and and to be shared as well with people who might not be as fortunate as as we are traveling around and and doing the things that we love and people who might be struggling with different challenges that we and all the people that I'm talking with are either overcoming or have overcome already and for them to share some perspectives that can bring forward and help those people would be such a privilege. So that's what I started doing. I decided, okay, let me try out and whenever I come across these people again, I'll start asking them if... if they want to have a bit more of a recorded conversation, basically where I just ask them about their story, they tell me about it and whenever I feel that something is a bit more interesting and my curious mind kind of ticks off, then I'd love to just kind of double click on that and try to understand that area a bit more and why things like that happened.
Trav Bell: Yeah, look it's it there's a couple of things there is ⁓ I think the way you do you are and and the person that I met, ⁓ it's pays to be curious. You know, in my time in Bali as travelling around the world, probably like yourself, I'm just re I'm a really curious person. And I I I I love finding out about people as well. You know, how did people arrive at Bali? You know, ⁓ are you a short timer or a long timer? ⁓ what do you do online to maintain this lifestyle? Because a lot of people have chosen to live here. They just don't come here by default. And a lot of people that of you know, like myself, have moved here. I you know, I think digital nomad is a an overused term now, but how do you how do people survive? How do people run online businesses? How do they you know sustain it? And And I think too, like especially when you get a little bit older, and I'm actually I I'm actually fifty-three tomorrow. So it's my birthday tomorrow. And ⁓ this is ⁓ getting wider and wider as we speak. I swear this is blonde hair, not grey hair, but anyway. ⁓ but you know, when you go through the ups and downs of life, whether it be in business, in life, with mental health, which we talked about.
Ali Kazem: ⁓ cool, congrats! Ha ha ha.
Trav Bell: ⁓ in and out of relationships and so and and you've come out with some scars. You've come you've come out hopefully not with hardened callus calluses. ⁓ I think it's a disservice if you don't share your wisdom. You know, I I think it's I and I I actually coach a lot of other thought leaders, you know, people who want to maybe put a book together. ⁓ do some coaching themselves. Or speak. You know, these are three modalities to get maybe your wisdom out there in the world. Maybe even it's a podcast like you're doing it, or it may be a retreat or something like or a membership or something like that. But it I think it's a disservice to humans, to the world. If you've gone through a bit of shit and you don't learn y you don't wonder number one, you've learned some lessons as a result of going through stuff. It's a disservice if you don't pay that forward.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: Because there's going to be a whole bunch of people that you just referred to that are out there that don't have access, even though information is free and there's lots of it, but it can be also overwhelming too. But I think, hey, ⁓ the world needs to hear what you've got to say. You know, the wor if you've been through some stuff, the world needs to hear your wisdom. How dare you how dare you trap it? Release it somehow. If you get paid for it, even better.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: But just go help someone with what you've learned because there's going to be someone probably around your help, your inner circle, your ecosystem that really needs to hear that wisdom today to help them go to the next level. Get out of, get through their breakdown before their breakthrough to reduce the cla, you know, the clarity, the can of the confusion before the clarity. And maybe my case, you know, helps people stop living by default and then lives by
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: They then live by intentional design.
Ali Kazem: ⁓ And that's a super good point here and helping to start moving into living by its intentional design because I recall you mentioning that what you also do is now you also mentioned with yourself that you you help other people with different topics and one of those topics in particular was ⁓ in relation to positive psychology that I remember you mentioned And that brought forward the question of asking you, how come you've gotten to that point of what you also refer to this, your mess becomes your message that I've actually, I've actually used that since and referred back to you. that because that's such a cool way of saying it, a way of putting it. that's, that made me curious about maybe you sharing your story. So what, what has happened to you in the past? How have you gotten to the point that you are?
Trav Bell: Exactly. Yeah, look, we're we're we're full of stories and the older you get, the more stories you collect. and I went through a you know, a a a pretty decent bout of depression, albeit mild compared to what I've heard since. You know, I wasn't about to commit suicide or do any harm to myself. I wasn't at that level. ⁓ but it was pretty hardcore as far as I I I was concerned. You know, I'm a pretty optimistic guy and to go to live with that kind of dark cloud over you for a a number of years, ⁓ yeah, you you it it it it affects everything in your life. there's a number of factors that led up to that. There's some business stuff, there's some legal stuff, there was some relationship, there's you know, getting burnt by friends as well. ⁓ and I had this, you know, kind of mental health perfect storm. happen for me and this is about 15 years ago by the way. Remember I'm 53, I've I've I've lived a little. But yeah, like that that helped me really go down before I came up. And going down meant meant really looking inward. And ⁓ instead of like the doctors wanted to put me on heavy antidepressants. The first 20 years I was in the personal fitness training industry. So, ⁓ a little backstory on that. For ⁓ I was the one of the first personal fitness trainers sort of running around Melbourne in Australia. And I founded and franchised a chain of personal training studios across Australia. So we had about 300 plus in ⁓ personal trainers working under my umbrella, my brand. ⁓ and you know, tens of thousands of clients were motivated by my personal trainers and Know they got results with my personal trainers over the span of 20 years. ⁓ but then I let, you know, trying to be friends with everyone, shouldn't be friends with everyone in business. I let some friends in and they burnt me and ripped me off, and it was that, and how I coped with it. I thought going to nightclubs and partying it away was ⁓ a really good idea. Apparently it's not. ⁓ but Yeah, it was a turning point when you turn up at your own at your own business with your own head office staff and you don't want to return a phone call, you don't want to return an email, you'd rather just sit on the couch and do nothing. ⁓ you don't want to get up in the ⁓ out of bed in the morning. ⁓ you're angry all the time. ⁓ And then the doctor goes, Hey, look, jump on these pills. And having personally trained, coached ⁓ a lot of people going through depression prior to that, where a lot of them were on the tablets and they were just sleepwalking through their life and you know, sort of numb to what they were going through. And to be honest, that's kind of like more of a band-aid over the top of what's going through. They're not the cause, they're just dealing with the effect, right? But for me, I said no to that and I went right into personal development at that point in time and learned about my own psychology. Why was I in the place that I was in? Had to do, you know, I guess a self-identity analysis, ⁓ how I was reacting to the world and how the you know, the world reacts to me, and how I'm training the world to treat me as I'm getting treated. I have to put that under the microscope. I had to rework my business. In fact, I closed down the whole business. I defranchised the whole thing. And that that was my And the the the crazy thing about that, and I was a full jock growing up and competitive ⁓ surfer and surf lifesaver and swimmer and ⁓ my whole d identity was as as a personal trainer, you know, one of the pioneers. And I turned ⁓ not turned my back on it, but I had to un you know, undo that to then you know, reimagine my ⁓ reimagine my life beyond that. I went through that was my full-on breakdown before breakthrough moment. And I was in one of these personal development kind of events. You know, I'm learning about positive psychology, which is really how to have more meaning, purpose, fulfillment and go to your strengths and gratitude in your life. And Just do more of that, bleed more of that into your work and into your life. Yeah, that's essentially positive psychology. and a friend of mine said I was in, you know, going to these seminars and hugging it out and high-fiving it with strangers on weekends, you know, all those sort of rah-rah seminars. And but the cool thing, it looked, it really meant something to me. It wasn't just a feel-good kind of exercise. It I was really at a point where I needed that information. I see I saw some speakers out there that were just really moved the needle for me. And a friend of mine said at the time. ⁓ Mate, you should do that. You know, you should you should go, you know, like you should speak about this stuff. Well and piss off, you know, like what what who the hell's gonna listen to me? And it was really turning point, it helped me sort of compartmentalize why I was going through what I was going through. And went, you know what, fuck it. I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna face the fear. And I wasn't a public speaker.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: That was my biggest fear. And as Jerry Seinfeld said, most people would rather be in the box than give the eulogy.
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm.
Trav Bell: So it was my number one fear, but I was in a place where I'm like, fuck it. If you know, like, if you're gonna do something, face the fear. That is the signpost. And as what you should do. So I faced my biggest fear. I put on a talk about a month later, I packaged in all the shit that I need. You know, I I've only been and I've never worked for anyone in my life, by the way. I've only owned my I've only owned my own businesses.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: ⁓ so take on all this sort of positive psychology stuff, all the the stuff I'd learned from this life coaching and neurolinguistic programming and all my entrepreneurial stuff, I put it into a talk. I was absolutely shitting myself. Again, this is about fifteen years ago. I put on this talk, I nearly had to pay the forty people to come to that talk.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm.
Trav Bell: ⁓ I got About halfway through and I I mentioned the fact that since I was eighteen, that I had this list to do before I die, actually written out. A little blue folder. No matter where I went, shared housing, sh you know, ⁓ under my bed was my written down list to do before I die. I surveyed the room at that point in time and said, How who else has got one of these lists to do before you die? No. No one. I was the only freak in the room. So, ⁓ I said, Well, why the f why the fuck do you get out of bed in the morning? Why do you want to earn more money? What's your that was always my North Star, my compass for my reason why for getting out of bed in the morning. And I really had to reflect on that when I was going through this depression. I said, Well, why why do you want to earn money? Why do you want to, you know, you know, create more time and be freer and ⁓ It fired up the audience. There was a pretty shit seminar up until that point. And then at the end of it. compared to what I do now. And one of the girls at the end at QA time, Joe, she goes, How's all this list to do before you die stuff? You're you're it's like a bucket list. You're you're like the bucket list guy.
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: And went ping, light bulb moment. I went home that night and registered the bucketlist guy dot com. And I sold off a bunch of businesses, I defranchised the rest of them and I went online doing what I do now years ago as the bucketlist guy.
Ali Kazem: That's amazing Travis, that's a super cool story already there. Thanks for sharing. While you were sharing the different parts and I feel like chapters in your story there were a few things that came to my mind that I wanted to ask you about. One of them, three things in particular. The first one was
Trav Bell: There you go.
Ali Kazem: I'll list them out and then we can kind of dive into it. I don't also don't forget the question. So the first one is related to you having gone through this journey of growing your business and getting to the point of, you know, plus 300 personal trainers and thousands of clients that are happy with the service that you're providing and helping their life and so on, especially working within this field of physical health and proving that that's such a meaning that can be such a meaningful job. And so the first question on this one is getting to that point where you've built something and then starting to experience the different tracks in your life kind of ⁓ impact you in a bad way of maybe as you said, introducing some people that you trusted in the past but then ended up having a consequence and a negative impact on your business and so on. Now it's becoming a long question but the question is here. What happened that made you become dissatisfied with that situation that you were in?
Trav Bell: What was the tipping point? We all set standards for ourselves, ⁓ whether it be in health, mindset, relationships. ⁓ and I don't know if you've and obviously when those standards aren't met, you get really disappointed. But I I I liken it to okay. So I liken it to have you ever traded foreign exchange?
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm.
Trav Bell: Okay. And you put in a stop loss. Yeah, you can place bets on the stock market and you put a stop loss in. That's like no more bets. You know, like you can't i it the platform won't take any more of your money because you've said no, do not take any more and more money if it goes from this point onwards down. We have a we have an inbuilt stop loss. in our health, our wealth, our relationships, in everything in business. Where we're like, okay, fuck, enough is enough. I'm bottomed out. And if I go past this, I I cannot handle it. And I think we've got to be more conscious of what those stop losses are. What is our what is our what will we no longer tolerate? So for me, I, you know, ran out of money. relationships suffered, health was starting to wane. ⁓ my mindset was frazzled, you know, like and I hit so many rock bottoms, my stop loss that it just went ping, ping, ping. It's like I I've got yeah, you can only go up from there. Otherwise I'm losing the house. I'm losing the you know, losing like root really losing the relationship. I'm
Ali Kazem: you
Trav Bell: I'll do something and I you know, I'll do something illegal. You know, I'll ⁓ yeah. And I nearly did. I nearly I yeah, it's it's a funny f little funny story. I knew some bikees back then.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And ⁓ one of them was ⁓ he did some massac like some sports massage, he was a massive guy. and he said, you know, at the time he goes, Trevor, if you need any favors, let me know. And I called in a favor. I was going to get a ⁓ one of these guys that was giving me hell ⁓ to just ⁓ have have my bikey friend just go and have a word to him. And his name's Sean, it'll be relevant now. And and Sean said, You sure? You sure on that on the night of that he was gonna go and, you know, ⁓ half a word to my friend that was fucking me around. And and s and she'll say, All right, well I'm leaving at six thirty. ⁓ and he didn't think it of it. He's always, you know, kind of done that kind of work.
Ali Kazem: word.
Trav Bell: six twenty nine I called Sean. I said, mate, I can't go with it. I can't do it. I'm he goes I I said, Ma I this is this is at my I can't do it. I I just I'm not that I'm not this guy and he said I I thought I was gonna get a phone call 'cause I know you're not this guy. You're not on the dark side with us. And ⁓
Ali Kazem: Yeah
Trav Bell: Well, you you sure it's on me. Like I'll go and you know, you don't know me anything, you know, like that. I said no, mate, call off call off the call off the squad. ⁓ handle it legally. And ⁓ and which I did. And that was like a hard i I get even uncomfortable talking about that, but ⁓ I don't know if I've even told that many people about that. But yeah, like it's ⁓ everyone's got a stop loss. A I a a lower standard if they oscillate to
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Okay.
Trav Bell: hit that rock bottom and then and then bottom out. And I think I think we've got to be more aware of what that is and then simply say no. Or, you know, simply say no at that point in time. So that was my that was my stop loss kind of moment. And then, you know, there's only one way f one way up from there is to start the rebuilding process. And there's many sleepless nights in there. There's many, you know, crying sessions, there's
Ali Kazem: Thank Hmm.
Trav Bell: less lots lots of raised heart rate. there's a lot of dark time. But like that that slow climb back brick by brick to just build that new persona and someone that won't tolerate that in the future. no matter how hardcore it might might seem, closing down a business, selling a house, ⁓ getting a new group of friends, you know, I I started cycling.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Hmm
Trav Bell: around that time as well, rather than, you know, crawling out at nightclubs at buddy seven, eight in the morning, if not longer. ⁓ I I started reading and hanging around different people. You know, like and so brick by brick we built it. I still love to have a good time, don't get me wrong, but ⁓ the sta I had to raise the standards on myself.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And I think, you know, I've ne I haven't stopped. You know, even coming to Bali, hanging out with new crew over here. Not not that the old crew was bad in any way, you know, back in Australia, but you gotta put yourself in different rooms. You've got to have different conversations. You gotta c ⁓ we all have control over the inputs that that come into our phones, come into our heads on a day to day basis. ⁓ My question to everyone is, is it helping or hindering?
Ali Kazem: That's such a good...
Trav Bell: If you wanna go badly enough, if you wanna change yourself badly enough, it's so fucking easy to do it, man. But we've got to get, you know, human humans are humans are pretty messed up where we need things to get bad before we see the before we bounce forward. Not bounce back, bounce forward. We need pain we need the a pain to get so much before we head towards pleasure.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Hmm. feel like that's such a good point that you're bringing out there Travis in terms of what you mentioned with kind of how I see the same way that I see it as well as you have in your life different tracks and there's only so much there's only so many tracks that can be unstable for your nervous system to really feel the effects of it so you have like you know it comes comes
Trav Bell: Yeah.
Ali Kazem: to expression in different ways. People have like this triangle of life and people have different methods of saying it, concepts, but essentially it's, if you look at your life and the way that you're living your life as different tracks where you have, you have yourself, you have your friends, your loved ones, families as well. You have your career and then you can click on those and you say, okay, yourself, you have your hobbies, your interests, your physical health, your mental health. all of these things, where you kind of, you lay out these different tracks, and then you also have your home, for example, and all of these different tracks constitute of the foundation that you need to live life and also progress and grow in life, And if you're living in a state where, let's say that,
Trav Bell: Mm.
Ali Kazem: You know, you might have a partner that you're really happy about, but your work is going shit. Then that's one, you know, that then you have some tracks that you're happy about. You're also taking care of your physical health and everything. And then you have the capacity to focus on your work going badly. And it's not that detrimental to your nervous system, right? But if you have both your work going badly, your relationship is not going really well. You might be looking for, you you don't have a base at home, for example. Your physical health you're not taking care of. Then all of a sudden you're being hit from so many different angles. And then you don't have to... Yeah, yeah.
Trav Bell: One normally affects the other too, yeah. One normally affects the other. There's normally a ripple effect in other areas of your life. But yeah, with that being said, the concept of work life balance is completely bullshit too, I reckon. No such thing, nothing ever balances. So if you've ever tried to grow a business or you're trying to grow your DJ career or or any career, you know, ⁓ or you're trying to make make money ⁓ for a certain reason or ⁓
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: God, if you're trying to get laid, you know, like ⁓ and and you know, get your dream girl or boy or whatever. Nothing ever balances. It's bullshit. ⁓ so get that concept out of our heads. Just do everything full on.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: Just do everything flat out. Overcommit in every area and put when you're younger, just put a ⁓ way more way more pressure on yourself. I I've got four stepkids. I've I've told ⁓ this. You know, that I've got two nineteen year olds, ⁓ a twenty five and a twenty-six year old. I might you're in the time of your life. Go try a heap of shit and go flat out, but don't give up at the first little speed bump. You know, just full on plow through it. And I don't think there's enough maybe there's enough d determination in people, persistence these days. People give up and they're and then ⁓ that didn't work. after it like fr after a week. Go like go test, measure, test, measure, test, measure, trial, error, trial, error. Build up that well that wealth of knowledge. And the sooner you try different things and just and different pursuits, and the harder you go, the the quicker you're gonna find out what's right for you and what's what's wrong for you.
Ali Kazem: Absolutely. And you're also such a good example of that. Because it takes me to one of the other points that I wanted to touch upon, which was you mentioning that You had this fear of your first speaking ⁓ Which is so interesting, because if you hadn't had that speaking experience, you wouldn't have had the conversation.
Trav Bell: Right?
Ali Kazem: breakthrough moment realization epiphany where you found out okay it's the bucket list guy and then you wouldn't have you know gone at least in this direction you know
Trav Bell: Fears are our signposts as to what we should do. Simple. It's whoever, the universe, whatever you want to call it, showing you the way of what you should do.
Ali Kazem: What? is that?
Trav Bell: The I'll say I'll I'll because the thing you resist will persist. and I say on the other side of your bucket list is a you that you don't know yet. So if you set a go a really lofty goal, ⁓ you set a new standard for yourself and you reach that standard, for instance, forgetting bucket lists for a moment, there's a whole you that that you didn't you don't even know yet. How dare you go through life and not discover and not get curious and discover who the fuck that is. You never give that advice to your kids. That'll do, mate. That'll do. Just just go to that level in in that area of your life. That'll do. Like no way. No way would you give that advice. Had I think the human experience is discovering your your potential before your time's up. Because I I've seen in in all the years that I've been doing what I do now, I've seen sh people completely change their life because they've unbelieved the story that they've led themselves to believe about themselves. They've unbelieved the story that their mates, their partner, their family, their society, their religion, or whoever has told them. They've just unbelieved the story. And the story is something you're that's made up. You've just taken, you know, to create a story, especially around identity, people take circumstances, situations, things that happened in their life, they've put it all together, put meaning around it, and then created a story as to why they can or cannot do something.
Ali Kazem: That's such a good point and it's interesting this topic, this aspect of fear. If you really dive into this and ask yourself the question properly and maybe even put whatever you want to achieve as if it's friend that wants to achieve it and you're having the conversation and wants to ⁓ out your friend, if you then ask yourself that question to your friend.
Trav Bell: You know.
Ali Kazem: ask that question to your friend of what's the worst that could happen. It's quite interesting because the fear is kind of putting into our minds that okay, it's a primal instinct for us because we were taught to survive and we don't have this super modern society and everything that we're navigating in. But honestly, what's the worst that can happen if you have this, go to this conference or if you... I don't know if you really want to pursue a different career direction or whatever it is. Compare to the potential that you can unlock of enriching your life if you do it in whatever way that might be, right? So yeah, such a good point.
Trav Bell: For instance, someone can be ⁓ abused as a child. I'm gonna go to extremes here. ⁓ someone can go through com like the most horrible abuse as a kid. and come out okay. They've used it to empower their life. Whereas someone can just get looked at funny and be fucked up for life. All comes down to the meaning you attach to the situation.
Ali Kazem: So what if someone... So you mentioned this aspect of identity, That you were also facing a point in life where you had to start detaching yourself from this identity that you built up over time for so long, this jock and so on. What... You did these different things and what, you know, for someone... How did you start putting meaning onto other things? parts of your life that made you grow.
Trav Bell: ⁓ one of the best accelerated learning techniques that you can do is is ⁓ modeling. You know, a and in NLP and neurolinguistic programming, it's pretty easy. ⁓ it's like what we do in sports. Find someone, find maybe one, two or three people that you wanna you you wanna be like. All right. Find maybe this quarter we're in c we're in Q2 now and people listening, watching this ⁓ might think, all right, well I wanna do this kind of business, I wanna do this kind of DJ career, I wanna do this kind of ⁓ whatever. All right, well how about this? Just as a novel idea, find just one person who's crushing it in that area. You know, who would say who would be the poster child for you.
Ali Kazem: Mm.
Trav Bell: And then find out everything, like go full professional stalker on them. Find out everything about them. Read their biographies. Subscribe to their channel. see who they hang out with, see what they how they interact with the world. ⁓ read how they started. ⁓ not how they are now but how they started. There's the there's the road to follow. But the the problem is in doing that we need to block out all the other noise. So that's why I say, okay, have three goals per quarter. What are they? and the problem is we've got too many goals, there's too much information. You go and throw in AI now and we're just completely overwhelmed with information. Where like where the fuck do I start? You know, I do twenty, twenty five hours of coaching founders over in the over in the United States every week. That's what I do here in Bali online. and they're all they're all facing exactly the same thing in this day and age is there's too much information. All the information's free. It's just I haven't got enough time in the day to watch it all, listen to it, or the podcast, or the YouTuber the this, or the blah blah blah. I thought, all right, well, pick one person who's crushing it and just do what they do. And then unsubscribe from all the other shit.
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Trav Bell: that d does not serve that goal or that or that thing that you're pursuing. That's it.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: The hardest thing is putting the blinkers on.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And and and deliberately unsubscribing, unfollowing in the news feed. So you try and get, I call it the E to E ratio, ⁓ and that's the education to entertainment ratio every single day. Make sure that the educational ratio is right up versus the entertainment ratio. Right? If you want something bad enough, guess what you should be doing every day? educating yourself on that thing and do it for a sprint do it for the quarter read all the books listen to all the podcasts what is that thing if you want to go all in on health identify one person who you'd like you know that you emulate in that in that arena if they've got a program that they're offering do it if they've got a retreat go do it if they've got books read them if they're a sub a podcast, subscribe, YouTube channel, watch everything. It'll take you ninety days to get through it. But wouldn't you you'll know everything about that person and that that field. after ninety days. It's a full compression session. But we can't concentrate like that.
Ali Kazem: That's such a good advice.
Trav Bell: I'm not telling you to do it for the rest of the year. I'm not telling for you to do it for the rest of your life. Just do it for a quarter. That's more palatable.
Ali Kazem: and regards yeah Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's such a good advice because what you're talking into is de-alienating something as well.
Trav Bell: So for instance, in this podcast in this chat, who do you emulate as a podcast host, for instance?
Ali Kazem: So who I'm following now is there's a few different ones of the big ones. So this is actually, this is a good question because that brings forward the point that I have on this to add the nuance to you because I follow some of the top podcasters like Chris Williamson, Jay Shetty, ⁓ the guy behind, exactly. And then...
Trav Bell: All right, let's go. I know them Yep. All right, Chris. All right, Chris. Just do what Chris does. Fuck everyone else.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Yeah.
Trav Bell: That's it.
Ali Kazem: And exactly. for sure that and the nuance that I want to add to that is. Now we're talking about podcast hosts and so on. It can also be in my case, can be for example, in DJing. When I started my DJ career, what I started doing, the first thing I did when I created my Instagram account was to go follow the top, top hard techno DJs in the world.
Trav Bell: Like who? Who's the first one?
Ali Kazem: So one guy, Nico Moreno, that I... Are you familiar with Hot Seq?
Trav Bell: Nico?
Ali Kazem: Nico Moreno?
Trav Bell: I'm gonna pretend I know but I don't. No. Anyway. So there's your role model.
Ali Kazem: Yeah, or actually restricted. Yeah. So the thing for me was when I started following these super top artists, for me, I started realizing that over time what it did to me was it didn't gave me enough motivation. It rather gave me like, it demotivated me because they were too far ahead in their journey compared to me.
Trav Bell: No, no. What did I say before? Go back to Chris's first podcasts. They are shit. He says they're shit. But that'll give you like if you go back, you're your your okay, so check this out. This statement has always lived with me. We are so busy. This is why we don't attack action. We are so busy comparing our behind the scenes footage with someone else's highlights reel.
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Don't you think then? So,
Trav Bell: So go back to the first sets, go back to the first podcast, go back to the first YouTubes, and you'll see a granny, shitty, shit audio, ⁓ small clubs. You'll see, you know, and if they haven't deleted them because they're ashamed of them, ⁓ hopefully they're there in the archives. ⁓ that'll make you feel better. But the thing is that they've laid the path.
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: And you can s you can you can skip. You can go, All right, that's when the mix you can see maybe in Chris's podcast like where he's jumped. Maybe you could take a similar trajectory without doing fifty podcasts in between. that's when he got two cameras in. ⁓ that's when he started getting a proper studio. That's when he stopped doing online. that's when he moved to Austin.
Ali Kazem: So what I'm thinking about here is, because that's a good point, what has also helped me is to, for example, in the hard techno scene is to follow some hard techno DJs that might be at like 10k followers on Instagram. They're not a worldwide artist status. but they're at a point where they're super successful. They're touring, but maybe just in a few different countries, they have good content and everything. So they're like, they are a bit closer. They're still far ahead of me, but they're still close enough for me to think I could achieve that realistically. What do you think about that now?
Trav Bell: No, no, no, no. No, you're building a ceiling for yourself. Go to the best go to the best in the business and just go through their trajectory and jump. Jump from, you know, like from from like gig to gig. You know what, like have a look at have a look at their early, early Instagram feed. Scroll right back. Have a look at when they started. ⁓ and j follow them. Right, you know.
Ali Kazem: Okay? Yeah. Huh.
Trav Bell: Because people don't do this. People haven't got the they haven't got the patience to do it.
Ali Kazem: Okay, so putting the ceiling for yourself, I see that. Interesting, Very interesting. Okay, so for you... Where are you now? What's your current situation compared to if you were to say, okay, now I've been doing this for 15 years and your journey to getting to the point where you are super happy with what you're doing.
Trav Bell: Yeah, man, I love what I do. And ⁓ you know, like I said, coming up to a birthday tomorrow I always get really deeply reflective. So this is really timely. ⁓
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: No man, if you hear me complain, punch me in the face. 'Cause I've got nothing to complain about. ⁓ we can always handle a little bit more money, but I'm I'm like I moved out of Australia and I sold everything. and I I come over to Bali with two bags and three surfboards. And ⁓ I I fully I I become a radical minimalist. and
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: literally I have hardly anything here. I love it. ⁓ even stripped back to how many surfboards I've got. I've just got one surfboard now. I'm looking at another that's another story. I wait for the swell to come up. But but man, ultimately it's i i it you know I've had the big houses, I I've got a nice villa here. ⁓ but I've had the big houses, I've had the Tesla and I've had the cars and da da da da da
Ali Kazem: Haha
Trav Bell: But, you know, it is what it is. Don't need it at the end of the day. And I just wanna film a life full of adventures and and and you know, doing doing work where it's you know meaningful work. You know, so there's coaching clients around the world that I'm coaching and there's speaking gigs that I'm doing. And ⁓ you know, things like this are ⁓ you know, I'm in I'm in great gratitude of doing that. Being able to, you know, hopefully there's someone on the receiving end that can learn something from, you know, the stuff that I've been through. I continue to learn from too.
Ali Kazem: That's really cool. Really cool, my man. I'm curious about one thing that is, that you say that you've been through this, this chapter where it's a bit more materialistic. ⁓ now I've gotten to the point where you're more clear on what's meaningful to you and what gives you a lot of energy, ⁓ gives you passion and everything. ⁓ It makes me think about another conversation that I had with a guy who's a bodyguard, he's an ex-military man, he's now a bodyguard and he's closely surrounded by very wealthy people where he sees that a lot of these wealthy people, ⁓ they have all the money in the world for them to buy a lot of stuff but they might not be super happy. And it's kind of like...
Trav Bell: I coach coach a lot of them.
Ali Kazem: Yeah?
Trav Bell: Yeah. Help them find their purpose.
Ali Kazem: So how would you recommend someone who is maybe on their way to some wealth or who thinks that wealth will help give them happiness or will give them happiness? What would you?
Trav Bell: I think I think happiness is the thing that we think we're chasing. I dare say it's fulfillment though. And let's interchange those words. What is happiness? Happiness for me ⁓ fleeting emotion. You can be having the worst day of your life, put on a new pair of jeans or an old pair of jeans and find twenty bucks and go, Hey, I'm having a happy I'm having a good time. That's a happy moment. ⁓ or you eat chocolate or you know, and it's like, ⁓ happy moment. But it's a shit day. Fulfilment is a different thing, longer lasting happiness. If you want it's got more, you full of more meaning, more gratitude. ⁓ but I don't answer the question for them. As a coach, you don't impose your model of the world and what and your definitions of what success, fulfill fulfilment, happiness, whatever the word is, you don't impose your definition. What does fulfillment mean to you? If you were living in fulfillment, what is that? Map that out for me. Let's unpack it. That's what I'd ask a client. And let's say whatever comes out of their mouth is their version of ten out of ten for fulfillment. Where are you now? Fuck trap. I'm at a I'm at a three. Hmm. How come? Right. How long have you been like that for? Long time. Have you had enough? Yep. You wanna do something about it? Yeah. How fired up are you to do something about it? Like go from a three to a ten? Fucking fired up. I am sick and tired of being fucking sick and tired. Rock and roll, let's go.
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: Let's go. Let's find what it what that is. Let's go get it. And the thing is with coaching, you know, like people can try and get there themselves and go ups and downs, and that might take years and years and years. All coaching does go, what does fulfillment look like in twelve months? ⁓ you know, what is what is what does your life look like in twelve months? what do you want it to look like in twelve months? You know, you can do this to try and get there or coaching just like str you know, you just go there without the ups and downs.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Hmm.
Trav Bell: Having that accountability partner that applies objectivity to your life rather than being subjective like you are right now, help you see the forest from the trees, helps you, you know, navigate the ups and downs on the journey to get there. ⁓ you know, applies tough love when when needed, but at the end of the day, you straight line it in a in a shorter period of time. But you're gonna wanna change. Psychology will say that if you self-elect.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: What that means is if you book yourself in to a psychologist or a counselor, a coach or something like that, actually if you pay for that privilege as well, you pay for that service as well out of your own pocket versus your boss or your girlfriend or your wife or boyfriend, you know, saying you should, you need to, you must, you have to go and see this guy to get yourself out of this situation.
Ali Kazem: Mm.
Trav Bell: You're already saying to them, get fucked, I'm not gonna do it. But I'll go anyway because you told me to. Wh what do you think the buy-in differences are between that person and that person? Which one is gonna get results quicker? The person that was kind of putting a headlock to go, or the person self selected, paid some you know, paid some pain money, some hurt money.
Ali Kazem: you Hmm.
Trav Bell: To rock up and do it. Guarantee. It's they say it's fifty percent of the problem solved already.
Ali Kazem: What if we're dealing with a person who feels, who has a super strong gut feeling that they want to move in one direction but they have so much fear or shame, guilt that is holding them back from acting on it.
Trav Bell: ⁓ There'll come a time in the future when you'll wanna really ⁓ scratch that itch and change. You're probably not there yet. Otherwise you would have done it.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: The pain is not painful enough for you to change. You haven't hit rock bottom yet. You need to be sleeping under a bridge first. I don't know what it is. I don't know what that level of pain is for people. That's when they go that beyond that that stop loss. Or it's you know, sick and tired of being sick and tired. If you're you're doing the same old, same old for for years and expecting a different result and wondering why I'm not getting anywhere, well, you know, only you can have that realization.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's a really good point. I remember I used to be driven a lot by fear. Or I used to be very much held back by fear. Feeling shameful and so on. Yeah.
Trav Bell: We all are playing. We all are. That's our system in our brains designed to keep us safe so we keep being a reproducing human ⁓ the
Ali Kazem: Yeah, absolutely. I remember what helped me.
Trav Bell: out there don't speak in public don't put yourself on social media don't ask that chick if she wants to date don't ⁓ don't get yourself into a new friend group you know ⁓ don't go after that other promotion don't open that business ⁓ my god don't buy that thing you know don't invest there ⁓ don't don't don't don't don't that's all designed to keep us safe
Ali Kazem: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I remember what helped me start to address, like confront that fear was doing something that wasn't too kind of detrimental on me. It didn't trigger too much fear that it was too uncomfortable for me, but it was just enough. for me to confront what I was dealing with. I knew that I had some form of fear, something that would trigger me here, but I could still, I could navigate in that space a bit. So that could be, for example, let's say it would be a fear of seeing an attractive person and wanting to ask them for their number, right? And that could be super, that could be too much maybe. Then the first step could be just be in the same space as them. just stand next to them, for example. And then a step after that could be just strike up any conversation. Do you know if you just say one thing to them, then you've been successful with it. And then it's like slowly in incremental steps, then before you even know it, then you'll be at least comfortable enough. You might still have that fear in you, but you'll be at least comfortable enough to then ask for the number.
Trav Bell: And having met you a bunch of times, man, you're not a creep. You got this. ⁓ and you're a nice guy. And and like but
Ali Kazem: Yeah. ⁓
Trav Bell: Why die wondering? What if? What if, what if, what if? And I've I like I said before, and the fears are the signposts as to what you should do. The fears are the signposts. The uncomfortableness is exactly the signal that you need.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. I'm conscious that we are hitting almost an hour mark. I could love to continue, but I want to be respectful of your time.
Trav Bell: Yeah. Yeah, gonna do round round two some other time. All good.
Ali Kazem: ⁓ I have maybe one last question. ⁓ could be super cool because Now we've talked a bit about like different topics. We talked about identity. We talked about fear. We touch upon a lot of different topics that are very like they go across a lot of the conversations that I'm having and what I see in people having these transition phases that they also face. One thing that we've kind of indirectly talked a bit about was this topic of self-worth. And it's topic that I find becoming the underlying key success factor almost in seeking that fulfillment in your life. The higher the self worth you achieve, ⁓ the greater you be to yourself. So I'm curious to hear two things. I'm curious to hear how your level of self-worth has progressed throughout your journey and how you see someone or how you would recommend someone else to start working on increasing their own self-worth.
Trav Bell: Easy, go get social proof. What do I mean? Okay, example. Speaking, shitting myself. ⁓ my god, I've done my first event, now I'm the back of this guy. All right, now I've got to start putting myself out there. ⁓ who do you you know, on one shoulder. The fear, the one that wants to keep me safe. Who do you think you are? You're not fucking Tony Robbins, mate. You know, like like just you know, y you've seen all these speakers, they've got something you'll never have. ⁓ who the fuck is gonna listen to you? It's not like you've got this great story. You y you just what been through a tough time and like like who cares? Boo hoo. Get on with it. versus Trav, you've had a history of helping a lot of people one-on-one. If you if if you then go one-to-many and not just talk about health, but talk about life and mindset. These things that really light you up even more than physical health. ⁓ and mental health now that you've been through like How rewarding would it be going one to many rather than one on one? How many more people can you help? Shitloads. A coach said to me way back then is even though you've got the f the this guy on this shoulder saying, Who do you think you are? You're not worthy. ⁓ that's always going to be there. It's still a here, it's still here today. It's really quiet. Why? Is because my coach said to me, which I want to pay forward, is just go help, go help a small crew.
Ali Kazem: Thank
Trav Bell: Go help a small crowd. Go help one person. Go help another. Go help another with it with what you know. Before you know, what will happen is you'll help enough people get the results that they want. And their adulation, not their round of applause, but their thanks, their gratitude for you helping being in their life and helping them will be so overwhelming you won't be able it you won't be able to. Not pay attention to it. It'll make so much noise on the outside that it'll quieten down the inner voice on the inside. The s the the voice of doubt on the inside. Go get social proof that your thing helps people. Go get proof, prove to yourself that you can actually help people.
Ali Kazem: you
Trav Bell: Don't try and fill stadiums like Tony. Go just go help people. And that I did. Before you know it, a group of three people, group of five people, group of ten, group of twenty, right up to I've spoken to a a a group of three thousand people. ⁓ next minute you've got people coming back, DMing you, emailing you, getting referrals for other gigs and and coaching clients and book sales and a TED talk and all the rest of it comes out of it. I was like, God damn it. I don't wanna believe it, but I kinda have to 'cause the evidence is it's too much.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And then your self-worth, you don't have to wait until that day, but you know, your self-worth builds and builds and builds over time. And that's why I can I can sit right here, right across from anyone that I come across and look them square in the eye and have all the confidence of the world that I know I can get people to the next level in their life. I just know. And that's not an arrogant statement or anything like that. I just know as a coach and and doing all the psychology stuff that I've done. And I I can help people live better lives. I just know. But all the confidence in the world. So I've got too much freaking I've got fifteen years and the twenty years before that of social proof that proves me I'm right. And not from an arrogant point of view. And if I can't, I'll do any everything in my fucking power make it happen.
Ali Kazem: Absolutely. Yeah, super super good point. Really cool
Trav Bell: That's the self-worth thing. That's probably the easiest the easiest easiest, most practical thing. You know, like who am I to be a world, you know, rock star DJ, if that's one of your goals? Cool. Go and get self you go and get proof. Go and get proof. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Ask for the gigs. Ask for the t ask for the referrals. Get the video. Put it up online. Who gives a fuck?
Ali Kazem: Yes, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Trav Bell: Go get it.
Ali Kazem: So this is. Yeah, man. Yeah, it makes me ask another question actually that I've been thinking about. Because personally what I'm working on doing is I'm building this, now having these conversations with people and building this profile where I can share all of this wisdom, the perspectives that you've also shared the past hour as well. ⁓ And I'm hoping that I can start helping people. the same way that you help people as well, just within my own...
Trav Bell: I can tell. You're an educ you're an educator, you want to pay this sort of stuff forward and and that's that's the reality. That's how we all start. Is there's this educator, there's this teacher coach within you that that can't help themselves.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Hmm.
Trav Bell: You know and and you want to pay these lessons forward just like I do and and you know, good you know, good on you. And and like so w why not blow it up?
Ali Kazem: ⁓ yeah. Thank you so much Trav. I really really appreciate you having taken the time sharing your knowledge and wisdom, sharing your journey. What a super super cool inspiring story that's brought you to where you are now ⁓ with a lot of wisdom as well, a lot of really really cool perspectives.
Trav Bell: Cool bro. Thanks a lot for having me on, ⁓ Ali. It was great to great to hang out.
Ali Kazem: I really it. Of course man. Alright brother.
Trav Bell: No worries, Ali
Ali Kazem: It's been on mind since we ⁓ met briefly for the first time in the sauna in ⁓ Bali ⁓ Bambu. And super funny because ⁓ as ⁓ also mentioned that to you when we were in the sauna that I've kind of I've noticed you and also your partner walking around at Bambu at this, you know, the health club ⁓ because look so cool. ⁓ with the glasses as well and everything and I was thinking okay especially around the energy that you have I was thinking okay I would love to have a conversation with him and then we had that brief conversation and yeah there we go super dope man yeah man and we had that brief conversation in the sauna and then like yeah my gut feeling was just right about
Trav Bell: Yeah.
Ali Kazem: the fact that you seem like a super interesting person with ⁓ an even more interesting journey. And once I found that out, then it became very apparent to me that I really wanted to have like a bit more of proper sit down to understand more about your story, your journey, where you are now. ⁓ So super cool, that's a bit of a kudos, that energy that you guys give off.
Trav Bell: ⁓ that's really lovely. ⁓ yeah, it sounds a bit sus that ⁓ whoever this goes out to, you know, online, podcast, YouTube, social, wherever. ⁓ yeah, the fact that two guys met in a sauna to start things, you know, start the story off like like the in in that in the meeting in that place sounds a bit sus. But ⁓ there was a lot of other people in there. Actually that sounds worse, doesn't it? ⁓
Ali Kazem: Ha ha ha.
Trav Bell: But yeah, a at a health club, you know, Bambu is a health club. Give it some context for people that may not know. Bali Bambu is a is a gym and health club. So ⁓ yep, going I'll be going there tonight too. And ⁓ and thank you so much for that that compliment. And I put the glasses on just in case everyone's wondering what the hell he's talking about. ⁓ but actually they're keeping some sun off my eyes too, so I'm not gonna be squinting as much. ⁓ but no stoked to be stoked to be talking to you, man. Happy to ⁓ happy to be answering any questions you got.
Ali Kazem: Really cool man, I appreciate that. And it's probably a good idea for me to start off with also a bit of context. Thank you for sharing that context on this one. And I briefly told you what it is that I'm doing and just to add a bit more insights to that is right now I'm traveling around. I've been traveling since January and mainly been around Southeast Asia. And I've had a bunch of conversations with super super cool people with a lot of inspiring journeys and stories to tell and I've noticed that whenever I finish this conversation or halfway through the conversation I'm like I really wish that I recorded this because there's so much you know so many cool perspectives so much wisdom to be taken here and and to be shared as well with people who might not be as fortunate as as we are traveling around and and doing the things that we love and people who might be struggling with different challenges that we and all the people that I'm talking with are either overcoming or have overcome already and for them to share some perspectives that can bring forward and help those people would be such a privilege. So that's what I started doing. I decided, okay, let me try out and whenever I come across these people again, I'll start asking them if... if they want to have a bit more of a recorded conversation, basically where I just ask them about their story, they tell me about it and whenever I feel that something is a bit more interesting and my curious mind kind of ticks off, then I'd love to just kind of double click on that and try to understand that area a bit more and why things like that happened.
Trav Bell: Yeah, look it's it there's a couple of things there is ⁓ I think the way you do you are and and the person that I met, ⁓ it's pays to be curious. You know, in my time in Bali as travelling around the world, probably like yourself, I'm just re I'm a really curious person. And I I I I love finding out about people as well. You know, how did people arrive at Bali? You know, ⁓ are you a short timer or a long timer? ⁓ what do you do online to maintain this lifestyle? Because a lot of people have chosen to live here. They just don't come here by default. And a lot of people that of you know, like myself, have moved here. I you know, I think digital nomad is a an overused term now, but how do you how do people survive? How do people run online businesses? How do they you know sustain it? And And I think too, like especially when you get a little bit older, and I'm actually I I'm actually fifty-three tomorrow. So it's my birthday tomorrow. And ⁓ this is ⁓ getting wider and wider as we speak. I swear this is blonde hair, not grey hair, but anyway. ⁓ but you know, when you go through the ups and downs of life, whether it be in business, in life, with mental health, which we talked about.
Ali Kazem: ⁓ cool, congrats! Ha ha ha.
Trav Bell: ⁓ in and out of relationships and so and and you've come out with some scars. You've come you've come out hopefully not with hardened callus calluses. ⁓ I think it's a disservice if you don't share your wisdom. You know, I I think it's I and I I actually coach a lot of other thought leaders, you know, people who want to maybe put a book together. ⁓ do some coaching themselves. Or speak. You know, these are three modalities to get maybe your wisdom out there in the world. Maybe even it's a podcast like you're doing it, or it may be a retreat or something like or a membership or something like that. But it I think it's a disservice to humans, to the world. If you've gone through a bit of shit and you don't learn y you don't wonder number one, you've learned some lessons as a result of going through stuff. It's a disservice if you don't pay that forward.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: Because there's going to be a whole bunch of people that you just referred to that are out there that don't have access, even though information is free and there's lots of it, but it can be also overwhelming too. But I think, hey, ⁓ the world needs to hear what you've got to say. You know, the wor if you've been through some stuff, the world needs to hear your wisdom. How dare you how dare you trap it? Release it somehow. If you get paid for it, even better.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: But just go help someone with what you've learned because there's going to be someone probably around your help, your inner circle, your ecosystem that really needs to hear that wisdom today to help them go to the next level. Get out of, get through their breakdown before their breakthrough to reduce the cla, you know, the clarity, the can of the confusion before the clarity. And maybe my case, you know, helps people stop living by default and then lives by
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: They then live by intentional design.
Ali Kazem: ⁓ And that's a super good point here and helping to start moving into living by its intentional design because I recall you mentioning that what you also do is now you also mentioned with yourself that you you help other people with different topics and one of those topics in particular was ⁓ in relation to positive psychology that I remember you mentioned And that brought forward the question of asking you, how come you've gotten to that point of what you also refer to this, your mess becomes your message that I've actually, I've actually used that since and referred back to you. that because that's such a cool way of saying it, a way of putting it. that's, that made me curious about maybe you sharing your story. So what, what has happened to you in the past? How have you gotten to the point that you are?
Trav Bell: Exactly. Yeah, look, we're we're we're full of stories and the older you get, the more stories you collect. and I went through a you know, a a a pretty decent bout of depression, albeit mild compared to what I've heard since. You know, I wasn't about to commit suicide or do any harm to myself. I wasn't at that level. ⁓ but it was pretty hardcore as far as I I I was concerned. You know, I'm a pretty optimistic guy and to go to live with that kind of dark cloud over you for a a number of years, ⁓ yeah, you you it it it it affects everything in your life. there's a number of factors that led up to that. There's some business stuff, there's some legal stuff, there was some relationship, there's you know, getting burnt by friends as well. ⁓ and I had this, you know, kind of mental health perfect storm. happen for me and this is about 15 years ago by the way. Remember I'm 53, I've I've I've lived a little. But yeah, like that that helped me really go down before I came up. And going down meant meant really looking inward. And ⁓ instead of like the doctors wanted to put me on heavy antidepressants. The first 20 years I was in the personal fitness training industry. So, ⁓ a little backstory on that. For ⁓ I was the one of the first personal fitness trainers sort of running around Melbourne in Australia. And I founded and franchised a chain of personal training studios across Australia. So we had about 300 plus in ⁓ personal trainers working under my umbrella, my brand. ⁓ and you know, tens of thousands of clients were motivated by my personal trainers and Know they got results with my personal trainers over the span of 20 years. ⁓ but then I let, you know, trying to be friends with everyone, shouldn't be friends with everyone in business. I let some friends in and they burnt me and ripped me off, and it was that, and how I coped with it. I thought going to nightclubs and partying it away was ⁓ a really good idea. Apparently it's not. ⁓ but Yeah, it was a turning point when you turn up at your own at your own business with your own head office staff and you don't want to return a phone call, you don't want to return an email, you'd rather just sit on the couch and do nothing. ⁓ you don't want to get up in the ⁓ out of bed in the morning. ⁓ you're angry all the time. ⁓ And then the doctor goes, Hey, look, jump on these pills. And having personally trained, coached ⁓ a lot of people going through depression prior to that, where a lot of them were on the tablets and they were just sleepwalking through their life and you know, sort of numb to what they were going through. And to be honest, that's kind of like more of a band-aid over the top of what's going through. They're not the cause, they're just dealing with the effect, right? But for me, I said no to that and I went right into personal development at that point in time and learned about my own psychology. Why was I in the place that I was in? Had to do, you know, I guess a self-identity analysis, ⁓ how I was reacting to the world and how the you know, the world reacts to me, and how I'm training the world to treat me as I'm getting treated. I have to put that under the microscope. I had to rework my business. In fact, I closed down the whole business. I defranchised the whole thing. And that that was my And the the the crazy thing about that, and I was a full jock growing up and competitive ⁓ surfer and surf lifesaver and swimmer and ⁓ my whole d identity was as as a personal trainer, you know, one of the pioneers. And I turned ⁓ not turned my back on it, but I had to un you know, undo that to then you know, reimagine my ⁓ reimagine my life beyond that. I went through that was my full-on breakdown before breakthrough moment. And I was in one of these personal development kind of events. You know, I'm learning about positive psychology, which is really how to have more meaning, purpose, fulfillment and go to your strengths and gratitude in your life. And Just do more of that, bleed more of that into your work and into your life. Yeah, that's essentially positive psychology. and a friend of mine said I was in, you know, going to these seminars and hugging it out and high-fiving it with strangers on weekends, you know, all those sort of rah-rah seminars. And but the cool thing, it looked, it really meant something to me. It wasn't just a feel-good kind of exercise. It I was really at a point where I needed that information. I see I saw some speakers out there that were just really moved the needle for me. And a friend of mine said at the time. ⁓ Mate, you should do that. You know, you should you should go, you know, like you should speak about this stuff. Well and piss off, you know, like what what who the hell's gonna listen to me? And it was really turning point, it helped me sort of compartmentalize why I was going through what I was going through. And went, you know what, fuck it. I'm gonna yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna face the fear. And I wasn't a public speaker.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: That was my biggest fear. And as Jerry Seinfeld said, most people would rather be in the box than give the eulogy.
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm.
Trav Bell: So it was my number one fear, but I was in a place where I'm like, fuck it. If you know, like, if you're gonna do something, face the fear. That is the signpost. And as what you should do. So I faced my biggest fear. I put on a talk about a month later, I packaged in all the shit that I need. You know, I I've only been and I've never worked for anyone in my life, by the way. I've only owned my I've only owned my own businesses.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: ⁓ so take on all this sort of positive psychology stuff, all the the stuff I'd learned from this life coaching and neurolinguistic programming and all my entrepreneurial stuff, I put it into a talk. I was absolutely shitting myself. Again, this is about fifteen years ago. I put on this talk, I nearly had to pay the forty people to come to that talk.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm.
Trav Bell: ⁓ I got About halfway through and I I mentioned the fact that since I was eighteen, that I had this list to do before I die, actually written out. A little blue folder. No matter where I went, shared housing, sh you know, ⁓ under my bed was my written down list to do before I die. I surveyed the room at that point in time and said, How who else has got one of these lists to do before you die? No. No one. I was the only freak in the room. So, ⁓ I said, Well, why the f why the fuck do you get out of bed in the morning? Why do you want to earn more money? What's your that was always my North Star, my compass for my reason why for getting out of bed in the morning. And I really had to reflect on that when I was going through this depression. I said, Well, why why do you want to earn money? Why do you want to, you know, you know, create more time and be freer and ⁓ It fired up the audience. There was a pretty shit seminar up until that point. And then at the end of it. compared to what I do now. And one of the girls at the end at QA time, Joe, she goes, How's all this list to do before you die stuff? You're you're it's like a bucket list. You're you're like the bucket list guy.
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: And went ping, light bulb moment. I went home that night and registered the bucketlist guy dot com. And I sold off a bunch of businesses, I defranchised the rest of them and I went online doing what I do now years ago as the bucketlist guy.
Ali Kazem: That's amazing Travis, that's a super cool story already there. Thanks for sharing. While you were sharing the different parts and I feel like chapters in your story there were a few things that came to my mind that I wanted to ask you about. One of them, three things in particular. The first one was
Trav Bell: There you go.
Ali Kazem: I'll list them out and then we can kind of dive into it. I don't also don't forget the question. So the first one is related to you having gone through this journey of growing your business and getting to the point of, you know, plus 300 personal trainers and thousands of clients that are happy with the service that you're providing and helping their life and so on, especially working within this field of physical health and proving that that's such a meaning that can be such a meaningful job. And so the first question on this one is getting to that point where you've built something and then starting to experience the different tracks in your life kind of ⁓ impact you in a bad way of maybe as you said, introducing some people that you trusted in the past but then ended up having a consequence and a negative impact on your business and so on. Now it's becoming a long question but the question is here. What happened that made you become dissatisfied with that situation that you were in?
Trav Bell: What was the tipping point? We all set standards for ourselves, ⁓ whether it be in health, mindset, relationships. ⁓ and I don't know if you've and obviously when those standards aren't met, you get really disappointed. But I I I liken it to okay. So I liken it to have you ever traded foreign exchange?
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm.
Trav Bell: Okay. And you put in a stop loss. Yeah, you can place bets on the stock market and you put a stop loss in. That's like no more bets. You know, like you can't i it the platform won't take any more of your money because you've said no, do not take any more and more money if it goes from this point onwards down. We have a we have an inbuilt stop loss. in our health, our wealth, our relationships, in everything in business. Where we're like, okay, fuck, enough is enough. I'm bottomed out. And if I go past this, I I cannot handle it. And I think we've got to be more conscious of what those stop losses are. What is our what is our what will we no longer tolerate? So for me, I, you know, ran out of money. relationships suffered, health was starting to wane. ⁓ my mindset was frazzled, you know, like and I hit so many rock bottoms, my stop loss that it just went ping, ping, ping. It's like I I've got yeah, you can only go up from there. Otherwise I'm losing the house. I'm losing the you know, losing like root really losing the relationship. I'm
Ali Kazem: you
Trav Bell: I'll do something and I you know, I'll do something illegal. You know, I'll ⁓ yeah. And I nearly did. I nearly I yeah, it's it's a funny f little funny story. I knew some bikees back then.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And ⁓ one of them was ⁓ he did some massac like some sports massage, he was a massive guy. and he said, you know, at the time he goes, Trevor, if you need any favors, let me know. And I called in a favor. I was going to get a ⁓ one of these guys that was giving me hell ⁓ to just ⁓ have have my bikey friend just go and have a word to him. And his name's Sean, it'll be relevant now. And and Sean said, You sure? You sure on that on the night of that he was gonna go and, you know, ⁓ half a word to my friend that was fucking me around. And and s and she'll say, All right, well I'm leaving at six thirty. ⁓ and he didn't think it of it. He's always, you know, kind of done that kind of work.
Ali Kazem: word.
Trav Bell: six twenty nine I called Sean. I said, mate, I can't go with it. I can't do it. I'm he goes I I said, Ma I this is this is at my I can't do it. I I just I'm not that I'm not this guy and he said I I thought I was gonna get a phone call 'cause I know you're not this guy. You're not on the dark side with us. And ⁓
Ali Kazem: Yeah
Trav Bell: Well, you you sure it's on me. Like I'll go and you know, you don't know me anything, you know, like that. I said no, mate, call off call off the call off the squad. ⁓ handle it legally. And ⁓ and which I did. And that was like a hard i I get even uncomfortable talking about that, but ⁓ I don't know if I've even told that many people about that. But yeah, like it's ⁓ everyone's got a stop loss. A I a a lower standard if they oscillate to
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Okay.
Trav Bell: hit that rock bottom and then and then bottom out. And I think I think we've got to be more aware of what that is and then simply say no. Or, you know, simply say no at that point in time. So that was my that was my stop loss kind of moment. And then, you know, there's only one way f one way up from there is to start the rebuilding process. And there's many sleepless nights in there. There's many, you know, crying sessions, there's
Ali Kazem: Thank Hmm.
Trav Bell: less lots lots of raised heart rate. there's a lot of dark time. But like that that slow climb back brick by brick to just build that new persona and someone that won't tolerate that in the future. no matter how hardcore it might might seem, closing down a business, selling a house, ⁓ getting a new group of friends, you know, I I started cycling.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Hmm
Trav Bell: around that time as well, rather than, you know, crawling out at nightclubs at buddy seven, eight in the morning, if not longer. ⁓ I I started reading and hanging around different people. You know, like and so brick by brick we built it. I still love to have a good time, don't get me wrong, but ⁓ the sta I had to raise the standards on myself.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And I think, you know, I've ne I haven't stopped. You know, even coming to Bali, hanging out with new crew over here. Not not that the old crew was bad in any way, you know, back in Australia, but you gotta put yourself in different rooms. You've got to have different conversations. You gotta c ⁓ we all have control over the inputs that that come into our phones, come into our heads on a day to day basis. ⁓ My question to everyone is, is it helping or hindering?
Ali Kazem: That's such a good...
Trav Bell: If you wanna go badly enough, if you wanna change yourself badly enough, it's so fucking easy to do it, man. But we've got to get, you know, human humans are humans are pretty messed up where we need things to get bad before we see the before we bounce forward. Not bounce back, bounce forward. We need pain we need the a pain to get so much before we head towards pleasure.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Hmm. feel like that's such a good point that you're bringing out there Travis in terms of what you mentioned with kind of how I see the same way that I see it as well as you have in your life different tracks and there's only so much there's only so many tracks that can be unstable for your nervous system to really feel the effects of it so you have like you know it comes comes
Trav Bell: Yeah.
Ali Kazem: to expression in different ways. People have like this triangle of life and people have different methods of saying it, concepts, but essentially it's, if you look at your life and the way that you're living your life as different tracks where you have, you have yourself, you have your friends, your loved ones, families as well. You have your career and then you can click on those and you say, okay, yourself, you have your hobbies, your interests, your physical health, your mental health. all of these things, where you kind of, you lay out these different tracks, and then you also have your home, for example, and all of these different tracks constitute of the foundation that you need to live life and also progress and grow in life, And if you're living in a state where, let's say that,
Trav Bell: Mm.
Ali Kazem: You know, you might have a partner that you're really happy about, but your work is going shit. Then that's one, you know, that then you have some tracks that you're happy about. You're also taking care of your physical health and everything. And then you have the capacity to focus on your work going badly. And it's not that detrimental to your nervous system, right? But if you have both your work going badly, your relationship is not going really well. You might be looking for, you you don't have a base at home, for example. Your physical health you're not taking care of. Then all of a sudden you're being hit from so many different angles. And then you don't have to... Yeah, yeah.
Trav Bell: One normally affects the other too, yeah. One normally affects the other. There's normally a ripple effect in other areas of your life. But yeah, with that being said, the concept of work life balance is completely bullshit too, I reckon. No such thing, nothing ever balances. So if you've ever tried to grow a business or you're trying to grow your DJ career or or any career, you know, ⁓ or you're trying to make make money ⁓ for a certain reason or ⁓
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: God, if you're trying to get laid, you know, like ⁓ and and you know, get your dream girl or boy or whatever. Nothing ever balances. It's bullshit. ⁓ so get that concept out of our heads. Just do everything full on.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: Just do everything flat out. Overcommit in every area and put when you're younger, just put a ⁓ way more way more pressure on yourself. I I've got four stepkids. I've I've told ⁓ this. You know, that I've got two nineteen year olds, ⁓ a twenty five and a twenty-six year old. I might you're in the time of your life. Go try a heap of shit and go flat out, but don't give up at the first little speed bump. You know, just full on plow through it. And I don't think there's enough maybe there's enough d determination in people, persistence these days. People give up and they're and then ⁓ that didn't work. after it like fr after a week. Go like go test, measure, test, measure, test, measure, trial, error, trial, error. Build up that well that wealth of knowledge. And the sooner you try different things and just and different pursuits, and the harder you go, the the quicker you're gonna find out what's right for you and what's what's wrong for you.
Ali Kazem: Absolutely. And you're also such a good example of that. Because it takes me to one of the other points that I wanted to touch upon, which was you mentioning that You had this fear of your first speaking ⁓ Which is so interesting, because if you hadn't had that speaking experience, you wouldn't have had the conversation.
Trav Bell: Right?
Ali Kazem: breakthrough moment realization epiphany where you found out okay it's the bucket list guy and then you wouldn't have you know gone at least in this direction you know
Trav Bell: Fears are our signposts as to what we should do. Simple. It's whoever, the universe, whatever you want to call it, showing you the way of what you should do.
Ali Kazem: What? is that?
Trav Bell: The I'll say I'll I'll because the thing you resist will persist. and I say on the other side of your bucket list is a you that you don't know yet. So if you set a go a really lofty goal, ⁓ you set a new standard for yourself and you reach that standard, for instance, forgetting bucket lists for a moment, there's a whole you that that you didn't you don't even know yet. How dare you go through life and not discover and not get curious and discover who the fuck that is. You never give that advice to your kids. That'll do, mate. That'll do. Just just go to that level in in that area of your life. That'll do. Like no way. No way would you give that advice. Had I think the human experience is discovering your your potential before your time's up. Because I I've seen in in all the years that I've been doing what I do now, I've seen sh people completely change their life because they've unbelieved the story that they've led themselves to believe about themselves. They've unbelieved the story that their mates, their partner, their family, their society, their religion, or whoever has told them. They've just unbelieved the story. And the story is something you're that's made up. You've just taken, you know, to create a story, especially around identity, people take circumstances, situations, things that happened in their life, they've put it all together, put meaning around it, and then created a story as to why they can or cannot do something.
Ali Kazem: That's such a good point and it's interesting this topic, this aspect of fear. If you really dive into this and ask yourself the question properly and maybe even put whatever you want to achieve as if it's friend that wants to achieve it and you're having the conversation and wants to ⁓ out your friend, if you then ask yourself that question to your friend.
Trav Bell: You know.
Ali Kazem: ask that question to your friend of what's the worst that could happen. It's quite interesting because the fear is kind of putting into our minds that okay, it's a primal instinct for us because we were taught to survive and we don't have this super modern society and everything that we're navigating in. But honestly, what's the worst that can happen if you have this, go to this conference or if you... I don't know if you really want to pursue a different career direction or whatever it is. Compare to the potential that you can unlock of enriching your life if you do it in whatever way that might be, right? So yeah, such a good point.
Trav Bell: For instance, someone can be ⁓ abused as a child. I'm gonna go to extremes here. ⁓ someone can go through com like the most horrible abuse as a kid. and come out okay. They've used it to empower their life. Whereas someone can just get looked at funny and be fucked up for life. All comes down to the meaning you attach to the situation.
Ali Kazem: So what if someone... So you mentioned this aspect of identity, That you were also facing a point in life where you had to start detaching yourself from this identity that you built up over time for so long, this jock and so on. What... You did these different things and what, you know, for someone... How did you start putting meaning onto other things? parts of your life that made you grow.
Trav Bell: ⁓ one of the best accelerated learning techniques that you can do is is ⁓ modeling. You know, a and in NLP and neurolinguistic programming, it's pretty easy. ⁓ it's like what we do in sports. Find someone, find maybe one, two or three people that you wanna you you wanna be like. All right. Find maybe this quarter we're in c we're in Q2 now and people listening, watching this ⁓ might think, all right, well I wanna do this kind of business, I wanna do this kind of DJ career, I wanna do this kind of ⁓ whatever. All right, well how about this? Just as a novel idea, find just one person who's crushing it in that area. You know, who would say who would be the poster child for you.
Ali Kazem: Mm.
Trav Bell: And then find out everything, like go full professional stalker on them. Find out everything about them. Read their biographies. Subscribe to their channel. see who they hang out with, see what they how they interact with the world. ⁓ read how they started. ⁓ not how they are now but how they started. There's the there's the road to follow. But the the problem is in doing that we need to block out all the other noise. So that's why I say, okay, have three goals per quarter. What are they? and the problem is we've got too many goals, there's too much information. You go and throw in AI now and we're just completely overwhelmed with information. Where like where the fuck do I start? You know, I do twenty, twenty five hours of coaching founders over in the over in the United States every week. That's what I do here in Bali online. and they're all they're all facing exactly the same thing in this day and age is there's too much information. All the information's free. It's just I haven't got enough time in the day to watch it all, listen to it, or the podcast, or the YouTuber the this, or the blah blah blah. I thought, all right, well, pick one person who's crushing it and just do what they do. And then unsubscribe from all the other shit.
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Trav Bell: that d does not serve that goal or that or that thing that you're pursuing. That's it.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: The hardest thing is putting the blinkers on.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And and and deliberately unsubscribing, unfollowing in the news feed. So you try and get, I call it the E to E ratio, ⁓ and that's the education to entertainment ratio every single day. Make sure that the educational ratio is right up versus the entertainment ratio. Right? If you want something bad enough, guess what you should be doing every day? educating yourself on that thing and do it for a sprint do it for the quarter read all the books listen to all the podcasts what is that thing if you want to go all in on health identify one person who you'd like you know that you emulate in that in that arena if they've got a program that they're offering do it if they've got a retreat go do it if they've got books read them if they're a sub a podcast, subscribe, YouTube channel, watch everything. It'll take you ninety days to get through it. But wouldn't you you'll know everything about that person and that that field. after ninety days. It's a full compression session. But we can't concentrate like that.
Ali Kazem: That's such a good advice.
Trav Bell: I'm not telling you to do it for the rest of the year. I'm not telling for you to do it for the rest of your life. Just do it for a quarter. That's more palatable.
Ali Kazem: and regards yeah Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's such a good advice because what you're talking into is de-alienating something as well.
Trav Bell: So for instance, in this podcast in this chat, who do you emulate as a podcast host, for instance?
Ali Kazem: So who I'm following now is there's a few different ones of the big ones. So this is actually, this is a good question because that brings forward the point that I have on this to add the nuance to you because I follow some of the top podcasters like Chris Williamson, Jay Shetty, ⁓ the guy behind, exactly. And then...
Trav Bell: All right, let's go. I know them Yep. All right, Chris. All right, Chris. Just do what Chris does. Fuck everyone else.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Yeah.
Trav Bell: That's it.
Ali Kazem: And exactly. for sure that and the nuance that I want to add to that is. Now we're talking about podcast hosts and so on. It can also be in my case, can be for example, in DJing. When I started my DJ career, what I started doing, the first thing I did when I created my Instagram account was to go follow the top, top hard techno DJs in the world.
Trav Bell: Like who? Who's the first one?
Ali Kazem: So one guy, Nico Moreno, that I... Are you familiar with Hot Seq?
Trav Bell: Nico?
Ali Kazem: Nico Moreno?
Trav Bell: I'm gonna pretend I know but I don't. No. Anyway. So there's your role model.
Ali Kazem: Yeah, or actually restricted. Yeah. So the thing for me was when I started following these super top artists, for me, I started realizing that over time what it did to me was it didn't gave me enough motivation. It rather gave me like, it demotivated me because they were too far ahead in their journey compared to me.
Trav Bell: No, no. What did I say before? Go back to Chris's first podcasts. They are shit. He says they're shit. But that'll give you like if you go back, you're your your okay, so check this out. This statement has always lived with me. We are so busy. This is why we don't attack action. We are so busy comparing our behind the scenes footage with someone else's highlights reel.
Ali Kazem: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Don't you think then? So,
Trav Bell: So go back to the first sets, go back to the first podcast, go back to the first YouTubes, and you'll see a granny, shitty, shit audio, ⁓ small clubs. You'll see, you know, and if they haven't deleted them because they're ashamed of them, ⁓ hopefully they're there in the archives. ⁓ that'll make you feel better. But the thing is that they've laid the path.
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: And you can s you can you can skip. You can go, All right, that's when the mix you can see maybe in Chris's podcast like where he's jumped. Maybe you could take a similar trajectory without doing fifty podcasts in between. that's when he got two cameras in. ⁓ that's when he started getting a proper studio. That's when he stopped doing online. that's when he moved to Austin.
Ali Kazem: So what I'm thinking about here is, because that's a good point, what has also helped me is to, for example, in the hard techno scene is to follow some hard techno DJs that might be at like 10k followers on Instagram. They're not a worldwide artist status. but they're at a point where they're super successful. They're touring, but maybe just in a few different countries, they have good content and everything. So they're like, they are a bit closer. They're still far ahead of me, but they're still close enough for me to think I could achieve that realistically. What do you think about that now?
Trav Bell: No, no, no, no. No, you're building a ceiling for yourself. Go to the best go to the best in the business and just go through their trajectory and jump. Jump from, you know, like from from like gig to gig. You know what, like have a look at have a look at their early, early Instagram feed. Scroll right back. Have a look at when they started. ⁓ and j follow them. Right, you know.
Ali Kazem: Okay? Yeah. Huh.
Trav Bell: Because people don't do this. People haven't got the they haven't got the patience to do it.
Ali Kazem: Okay, so putting the ceiling for yourself, I see that. Interesting, Very interesting. Okay, so for you... Where are you now? What's your current situation compared to if you were to say, okay, now I've been doing this for 15 years and your journey to getting to the point where you are super happy with what you're doing.
Trav Bell: Yeah, man, I love what I do. And ⁓ you know, like I said, coming up to a birthday tomorrow I always get really deeply reflective. So this is really timely. ⁓
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: No man, if you hear me complain, punch me in the face. 'Cause I've got nothing to complain about. ⁓ we can always handle a little bit more money, but I'm I'm like I moved out of Australia and I sold everything. and I I come over to Bali with two bags and three surfboards. And ⁓ I I fully I I become a radical minimalist. and
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: literally I have hardly anything here. I love it. ⁓ even stripped back to how many surfboards I've got. I've just got one surfboard now. I'm looking at another that's another story. I wait for the swell to come up. But but man, ultimately it's i i it you know I've had the big houses, I I've got a nice villa here. ⁓ but I've had the big houses, I've had the Tesla and I've had the cars and da da da da da
Ali Kazem: Haha
Trav Bell: But, you know, it is what it is. Don't need it at the end of the day. And I just wanna film a life full of adventures and and and you know, doing doing work where it's you know meaningful work. You know, so there's coaching clients around the world that I'm coaching and there's speaking gigs that I'm doing. And ⁓ you know, things like this are ⁓ you know, I'm in I'm in great gratitude of doing that. Being able to, you know, hopefully there's someone on the receiving end that can learn something from, you know, the stuff that I've been through. I continue to learn from too.
Ali Kazem: That's really cool. Really cool, my man. I'm curious about one thing that is, that you say that you've been through this, this chapter where it's a bit more materialistic. ⁓ now I've gotten to the point where you're more clear on what's meaningful to you and what gives you a lot of energy, ⁓ gives you passion and everything. ⁓ It makes me think about another conversation that I had with a guy who's a bodyguard, he's an ex-military man, he's now a bodyguard and he's closely surrounded by very wealthy people where he sees that a lot of these wealthy people, ⁓ they have all the money in the world for them to buy a lot of stuff but they might not be super happy. And it's kind of like...
Trav Bell: I coach coach a lot of them.
Ali Kazem: Yeah?
Trav Bell: Yeah. Help them find their purpose.
Ali Kazem: So how would you recommend someone who is maybe on their way to some wealth or who thinks that wealth will help give them happiness or will give them happiness? What would you?
Trav Bell: I think I think happiness is the thing that we think we're chasing. I dare say it's fulfillment though. And let's interchange those words. What is happiness? Happiness for me ⁓ fleeting emotion. You can be having the worst day of your life, put on a new pair of jeans or an old pair of jeans and find twenty bucks and go, Hey, I'm having a happy I'm having a good time. That's a happy moment. ⁓ or you eat chocolate or you know, and it's like, ⁓ happy moment. But it's a shit day. Fulfilment is a different thing, longer lasting happiness. If you want it's got more, you full of more meaning, more gratitude. ⁓ but I don't answer the question for them. As a coach, you don't impose your model of the world and what and your definitions of what success, fulfill fulfilment, happiness, whatever the word is, you don't impose your definition. What does fulfillment mean to you? If you were living in fulfillment, what is that? Map that out for me. Let's unpack it. That's what I'd ask a client. And let's say whatever comes out of their mouth is their version of ten out of ten for fulfillment. Where are you now? Fuck trap. I'm at a I'm at a three. Hmm. How come? Right. How long have you been like that for? Long time. Have you had enough? Yep. You wanna do something about it? Yeah. How fired up are you to do something about it? Like go from a three to a ten? Fucking fired up. I am sick and tired of being fucking sick and tired. Rock and roll, let's go.
Ali Kazem: Yeah.
Trav Bell: Let's go. Let's find what it what that is. Let's go get it. And the thing is with coaching, you know, like people can try and get there themselves and go ups and downs, and that might take years and years and years. All coaching does go, what does fulfillment look like in twelve months? ⁓ you know, what is what is what does your life look like in twelve months? what do you want it to look like in twelve months? You know, you can do this to try and get there or coaching just like str you know, you just go there without the ups and downs.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Hmm.
Trav Bell: Having that accountability partner that applies objectivity to your life rather than being subjective like you are right now, help you see the forest from the trees, helps you, you know, navigate the ups and downs on the journey to get there. ⁓ you know, applies tough love when when needed, but at the end of the day, you straight line it in a in a shorter period of time. But you're gonna wanna change. Psychology will say that if you self-elect.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: What that means is if you book yourself in to a psychologist or a counselor, a coach or something like that, actually if you pay for that privilege as well, you pay for that service as well out of your own pocket versus your boss or your girlfriend or your wife or boyfriend, you know, saying you should, you need to, you must, you have to go and see this guy to get yourself out of this situation.
Ali Kazem: Mm.
Trav Bell: You're already saying to them, get fucked, I'm not gonna do it. But I'll go anyway because you told me to. Wh what do you think the buy-in differences are between that person and that person? Which one is gonna get results quicker? The person that was kind of putting a headlock to go, or the person self selected, paid some you know, paid some pain money, some hurt money.
Ali Kazem: you Hmm.
Trav Bell: To rock up and do it. Guarantee. It's they say it's fifty percent of the problem solved already.
Ali Kazem: What if we're dealing with a person who feels, who has a super strong gut feeling that they want to move in one direction but they have so much fear or shame, guilt that is holding them back from acting on it.
Trav Bell: ⁓ There'll come a time in the future when you'll wanna really ⁓ scratch that itch and change. You're probably not there yet. Otherwise you would have done it.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: The pain is not painful enough for you to change. You haven't hit rock bottom yet. You need to be sleeping under a bridge first. I don't know what it is. I don't know what that level of pain is for people. That's when they go that beyond that that stop loss. Or it's you know, sick and tired of being sick and tired. If you're you're doing the same old, same old for for years and expecting a different result and wondering why I'm not getting anywhere, well, you know, only you can have that realization.
Ali Kazem: Hmm. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's a really good point. I remember I used to be driven a lot by fear. Or I used to be very much held back by fear. Feeling shameful and so on. Yeah.
Trav Bell: We all are playing. We all are. That's our system in our brains designed to keep us safe so we keep being a reproducing human ⁓ the
Ali Kazem: Yeah, absolutely. I remember what helped me.
Trav Bell: out there don't speak in public don't put yourself on social media don't ask that chick if she wants to date don't ⁓ don't get yourself into a new friend group you know ⁓ don't go after that other promotion don't open that business ⁓ my god don't buy that thing you know don't invest there ⁓ don't don't don't don't don't that's all designed to keep us safe
Ali Kazem: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I remember what helped me start to address, like confront that fear was doing something that wasn't too kind of detrimental on me. It didn't trigger too much fear that it was too uncomfortable for me, but it was just enough. for me to confront what I was dealing with. I knew that I had some form of fear, something that would trigger me here, but I could still, I could navigate in that space a bit. So that could be, for example, let's say it would be a fear of seeing an attractive person and wanting to ask them for their number, right? And that could be super, that could be too much maybe. Then the first step could be just be in the same space as them. just stand next to them, for example. And then a step after that could be just strike up any conversation. Do you know if you just say one thing to them, then you've been successful with it. And then it's like slowly in incremental steps, then before you even know it, then you'll be at least comfortable enough. You might still have that fear in you, but you'll be at least comfortable enough to then ask for the number.
Trav Bell: And having met you a bunch of times, man, you're not a creep. You got this. ⁓ and you're a nice guy. And and like but
Ali Kazem: Yeah. ⁓
Trav Bell: Why die wondering? What if? What if, what if, what if? And I've I like I said before, and the fears are the signposts as to what you should do. The fears are the signposts. The uncomfortableness is exactly the signal that you need.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. I'm conscious that we are hitting almost an hour mark. I could love to continue, but I want to be respectful of your time.
Trav Bell: Yeah. Yeah, gonna do round round two some other time. All good.
Ali Kazem: ⁓ I have maybe one last question. ⁓ could be super cool because Now we've talked a bit about like different topics. We talked about identity. We talked about fear. We touch upon a lot of different topics that are very like they go across a lot of the conversations that I'm having and what I see in people having these transition phases that they also face. One thing that we've kind of indirectly talked a bit about was this topic of self-worth. And it's topic that I find becoming the underlying key success factor almost in seeking that fulfillment in your life. The higher the self worth you achieve, ⁓ the greater you be to yourself. So I'm curious to hear two things. I'm curious to hear how your level of self-worth has progressed throughout your journey and how you see someone or how you would recommend someone else to start working on increasing their own self-worth.
Trav Bell: Easy, go get social proof. What do I mean? Okay, example. Speaking, shitting myself. ⁓ my god, I've done my first event, now I'm the back of this guy. All right, now I've got to start putting myself out there. ⁓ who do you you know, on one shoulder. The fear, the one that wants to keep me safe. Who do you think you are? You're not fucking Tony Robbins, mate. You know, like like just you know, y you've seen all these speakers, they've got something you'll never have. ⁓ who the fuck is gonna listen to you? It's not like you've got this great story. You y you just what been through a tough time and like like who cares? Boo hoo. Get on with it. versus Trav, you've had a history of helping a lot of people one-on-one. If you if if you then go one-to-many and not just talk about health, but talk about life and mindset. These things that really light you up even more than physical health. ⁓ and mental health now that you've been through like How rewarding would it be going one to many rather than one on one? How many more people can you help? Shitloads. A coach said to me way back then is even though you've got the f the this guy on this shoulder saying, Who do you think you are? You're not worthy. ⁓ that's always going to be there. It's still a here, it's still here today. It's really quiet. Why? Is because my coach said to me, which I want to pay forward, is just go help, go help a small crew.
Ali Kazem: Thank
Trav Bell: Go help a small crowd. Go help one person. Go help another. Go help another with it with what you know. Before you know, what will happen is you'll help enough people get the results that they want. And their adulation, not their round of applause, but their thanks, their gratitude for you helping being in their life and helping them will be so overwhelming you won't be able it you won't be able to. Not pay attention to it. It'll make so much noise on the outside that it'll quieten down the inner voice on the inside. The s the the voice of doubt on the inside. Go get social proof that your thing helps people. Go get proof, prove to yourself that you can actually help people.
Ali Kazem: you
Trav Bell: Don't try and fill stadiums like Tony. Go just go help people. And that I did. Before you know it, a group of three people, group of five people, group of ten, group of twenty, right up to I've spoken to a a a group of three thousand people. ⁓ next minute you've got people coming back, DMing you, emailing you, getting referrals for other gigs and and coaching clients and book sales and a TED talk and all the rest of it comes out of it. I was like, God damn it. I don't wanna believe it, but I kinda have to 'cause the evidence is it's too much.
Ali Kazem: Hmm.
Trav Bell: And then your self-worth, you don't have to wait until that day, but you know, your self-worth builds and builds and builds over time. And that's why I can I can sit right here, right across from anyone that I come across and look them square in the eye and have all the confidence of the world that I know I can get people to the next level in their life. I just know. And that's not an arrogant statement or anything like that. I just know as a coach and and doing all the psychology stuff that I've done. And I I can help people live better lives. I just know. But all the confidence in the world. So I've got too much freaking I've got fifteen years and the twenty years before that of social proof that proves me I'm right. And not from an arrogant point of view. And if I can't, I'll do any everything in my fucking power make it happen.
Ali Kazem: Absolutely. Yeah, super super good point. Really cool
Trav Bell: That's the self-worth thing. That's probably the easiest the easiest easiest, most practical thing. You know, like who am I to be a world, you know, rock star DJ, if that's one of your goals? Cool. Go and get self you go and get proof. Go and get proof. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Ask for the gigs. Ask for the t ask for the referrals. Get the video. Put it up online. Who gives a fuck?
Ali Kazem: Yes, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Trav Bell: Go get it.
Ali Kazem: So this is. Yeah, man. Yeah, it makes me ask another question actually that I've been thinking about. Because personally what I'm working on doing is I'm building this, now having these conversations with people and building this profile where I can share all of this wisdom, the perspectives that you've also shared the past hour as well. ⁓ And I'm hoping that I can start helping people. the same way that you help people as well, just within my own...
Trav Bell: I can tell. You're an educ you're an educator, you want to pay this sort of stuff forward and and that's that's the reality. That's how we all start. Is there's this educator, there's this teacher coach within you that that can't help themselves.
Ali Kazem: Yeah. Hmm.
Trav Bell: You know and and you want to pay these lessons forward just like I do and and you know, good you know, good on you. And and like so w why not blow it up?
Ali Kazem: ⁓ yeah. Thank you so much Trav. I really really appreciate you having taken the time sharing your knowledge and wisdom, sharing your journey. What a super super cool inspiring story that's brought you to where you are now ⁓ with a lot of wisdom as well, a lot of really really cool perspectives.
Trav Bell: Cool bro. Thanks a lot for having me on, ⁓ Ali. It was great to great to hang out.
Ali Kazem: I really it. Of course man. Alright brother.
