[00:00:00] Trey Gowdy
How much of your life do you want to spend trying to get something that has proven to be elusive? And if it's proven to be elusive for a decade, I would say the odds are going to be elusive for 11 years and 12 years. So, what I would do is I would figure out why it has proven to be elusive. Why is that? What do I want to know:
INTRO:
What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Travis Makes Friends. Today I have the pleasure of making friends with Trey Gowdy. It’s Dr. Trey Gowdy from what I was listening to the other day. But you didn't tell many people about that, right? No, I yeah. The notion that you can get a doctorate in about 30 minutes has a lot of appeal to me. Most of my friends say about seven or nine years, so I forgot about that.
[00:01:28] Travis Chappell
I forgot about it. Just, one of the many accomplishments, just like pushed down the list comes,
[00:01:34] Trey Gowdy You know, Travis, if you live long enough, it is just your turn to get stuff so it's not like I really, what I tell people is I was as shocked as you were to hear that they were giving me a doctorate. That's what I tell my friends, I know how shocked you were. I was shocked too.
[00:01:52] Travis Chappell Yeah. Just not sure if they just addressed the envelope wrong.
[00:01:55] Trey GowdyI think literally when you get to be my age, they think, well, we've already given it to everyone deserving. Now we gotta start the list of people who aren't. And he's on that list.
[00:02:08] Travis Chappell Oh, that's perfect. Perfect. Fantastic way to start this interview. Trey.  I want to dive into some context here before we go heavy into the book. But before we do that, just a quick plug here. For those of you that are listening to but won't get a chance to listen to the full episode, before you do anything else, go pick up a copy of Trey's new book, Start, Stay, or Leave. I'm about a little bit over a third of the way into the id. It's been fantastic so far, and what I really love about this book, and like I said, we'll get more in-depth later, but what I love about it is that this tackles, one of the most important areas in life that I don't feel like there's not a ton of information or knowledge around it, which is also what I appreciate about you, your book, about asking questions to very, very important matters, asking good questions and making good decisions that will affect anybody no matter what it.They decide what to do with their life. So I'm excited to jump into that in my second year. And so if you're listening before you do anything else, go pick up a copy of his book, start, stay, or leave. But Trey, I want to jump back into the past here and get a little bit of an idea of how we got to where we are today. So paint a picture for us if you can. 11-year-old Trey Gowdy. Set the scene. What was your family life like? Where were you in the world and how did you know, your junior high, and high school years go for you?
[00:03:20] Trey Gowdy 11-year-old Trey was living with my father's doctor. He was a pediatrician, but he convinced us, Travis, that we were poor. I had the only poor doctor in the world for a father. My mom stayed at home. I have three sisters, so there were four of us and an 11-year-old Trey would be running around with his shirt off outdoors, which I would, now, my neighbors would call the cops if I did that. But I love sports. Sports was every I, would be outdoors from the moment I woke up until my mom made me come in and just,
[00:03:53] Travis Chappell in particular?
[00:03:54] Trey Gowdy Whatever one was in season. I love baseball, but you know, I mean, I got these images. My three sisters weren't all that into playing sports with me. Not all day long.  I would hit the ball; I would go get the ball and I would throw the ball back and try to hit the bat with it. So it's hard to play baseball by yourself.
[00:04:13] Travis Chappell I'm familiar. I'm familiar with that exact process. Yeah.
[00:04:17] Trey Gowdy basketball, my father. My father loves to talk about it. I think he didn't think I was very smart, and he probably was right.  I would be out there in the sleet playing basketball. I mean, I just, but you know, I'm, I'm not even, I'm, I'm not quite six feet tall. I'm deceptively slow, so I wasn't at any sport. I loved them, but I wasn't good. Enough to like, maybe could I have made the golf team back then? If I weren't working in the afternoons? Maybe. I mean, golf is about all I do now. And I'm okay with that. But just, my regret from that period is I viewed school as something to be endured and finished, and all the books that I was supposed to read in high school and college I did not read. I'm trying to read them now, but I didn't like kicking it academically until law school. And I just, you know, I tell kids your job right now is to learn. I mean, they, you don't have a mortgage, you don't have kids. You, your job is to learn. And I wish that I had taken my advice. That's my biggest regret from that period.
[00:05:23] Travis Chappell I was going through a few things before this interview and I realized we had a few things in common. Okay? So we both grew up in a Baptist church environment. You have a 30-year-old son who enjoys real estate and golf. I'm 30 and I enjoy real estate and golf. And then we both have the unfortunate condition of being cowboys. Which hasn't worked out basically since I've been alive. But for some reason, I still throw on the blue and silver, every season. And then now come to find out, we also, you know, played a lot of basketball and stuff like that in this, in the, you know, I didn't get much sleep where I was in Southern California, but white, the weather was, I was out playing basketball just cuz that was what was fun to do.But beyond that is basically where all commonality ceases to exist. because you went this very kind of traditional path with a, with having a dad as a doctor and went into law school and then, I mean, that's still pretty early to start taking education seriously. I think, you know, there's still a lot of people. don't take education seriously in their forties or something. And so I think you still were able to figure out pretty early on that, hey, maybe this, there's something to this learning thing. Like maybe the biggest thing that separates people, you know, separates where I want to be from where I am now is just the knowledge on how to get there.I should probably spend some time figuring that out. And then what I liked about what you did next, focusing on jobs that filled you up and then also allowed you to excel in the next phase of your life and your career. So can you talk about, in regards to, for, for young people and, if you can kind of answer? In, the context of both that young person making a decision and then potentially also the parent as they're thinking about how their kids are gonna work through this. What do you think of those early career moves, those early working experiences from delivering a newspaper at 14 to you saying you were working in a warehouse or something?But you didn't enjoy the work, but you enjoyed the people and you decided to do that cuz you liked the people and the relationships were important. Can you talk through like? What should people from 14 to 24 be looking for in their careers? Should they start working earlier? Should they be playing golf on the golf team and doing more kid stuff? What do we think about these types of things, both as a kid and as a parent?
[00:07:33] Trey Gowdy Yeah. I probably over-corrected with my children, Travis. I don't recall making either one of my children work. It wasn't an option for me. My father said, if you want to spend money, you're going to work. And I mean, he loaned me the money to buy my motorized bike for my paper. But I had to pay him back. So it wasn't like he was giving me a capital expenditure. I missed, you know, I missed some things that I would have. It's hard to get up super early in high school and be awake. For class. That particular job choice was a mistake to get up at four o'clock in the morning cuz I didn't have the discipline to go to bed at nine or 10 like you're supposed to. So I'm going to school for four hours of sleep. That was not a genius move on my behalf. bagging groceries you learn a ton bagging grocery.You learn how people interact with cashiers and bag boys. I would position myself to take the groceries out for a Democrat state senator who wound up being a Democrat congresswoman. She wound up representing my area. I would position myself because I liked politics back then and I wanted to take her groceries out and talk to her.And she was so kind to me, even though she knew, you know, my dad was a Republican. I was super, super conservative. I'm asking her these questions about being a super conservative teenage kid, but she had all the patience in the world. So I saw how. Sometimes the richest people gave the smallest tips. The poorest people were the ones who put the most amount of money in a Salvation Army kettle. So I learned a ton. So what I would tell young people is, look, I mean, you ought to enjoy it. I mean, you're in your youth, you ought to find a job you like. If you like people, then yeah, you can work at Brewster's ice cream place.If you don't like people, you probably shouldn't be in retail, but you don't need to like reading a book to know that there was a life lesson here, though you mentioned the warehouse. It was probably the hardest job of all that I had. It was un-air conditioned. I mean, there were no windows, but I loved the guys that I worked with. They came from markedly different backgrounds than mine. Their father was not a doctor. They were, you know, college was maybe, maybe a distant dream, possibly, but it wasn't expected. And you just learn to get along with folks. You learn what you have in common, which usually is a lot more than you don't have in common.
[00:10:11] Travis Chappell Totally.
[00:10:13] Trey Gowdy The other thing I would tell people, Travis, is this, and I wish I could go back and tell. There are a thousand ways to get to where you think you want to get the notion that you have to go to this school. I mean, I used to have these kids that come to me and say, I have to go to Annapolis or West Point, or Harvard or Cornell because I want to do this, and I, I just have to. Okay. Well, those are really hard schools to get into. So you mean to tell me that you have to get into a super competitive school or the rest of your life is over? I mean, that's what you're, that's what I hear you tell but they believe it, So, I mean, I'll sit there and think, okay, well you don't even know where members of Congress went to school.You have no idea where they went to school. Some of them may not have gone to college, so don't tell me you can't get where you want to get. There are a thousand ways to get there, but you're never too young to be thinking about where it is you want to get to. Just don't think there's one way to do it. but you're never too young to be thinking. What do you want your brand to be? What do you want people to say about you? Think about you and whether it's true or not. Not just what people think about you, but is it true and you don't have some kind of a plan? I didn't have a plan in college.I kicked it in in law school because I didn't have a choice. I mean, I, I was, I was gonna get married. I, I had to have a job, and I thought I needed good grades to get the kind of job I wanted. So it was a fear of failure that motivated me. Fear of failure.
[00:11:38] Travis Chappell I want to dive in a little further on that, but before we do, I just to button up some of them, about your relationship with your dad. Looking back on it, it sounds like he was pretty tough, especially in terms of money and he seemed to be pretty frugal. I would assume he, you know, would invest probably and probably did pretty, pretty well for himself in life if he was a doctor. And was that frugal, in terms of your relationship with him, do you look at that as, as you know, negative, positive, neutral in terms of how difficult he was on you, cuz you didn't make your kids work?You, you, you did things a little bit differently, but it also obviously ended up working out for you. It gave you a strong work ethic and allowed you to excel in a lot of different areas, maybe other people might not have. Do you have any thoughts about that?
[00:12:19] Trey Gowdy Yeah. I would never have won my first race for a solicitor, for district attorney if it had not been for my father. My father to this day, he's still with us. My father, to this day, is one of the most popular people in my hometown. And I cannot tell you the number of people who voted for me because my father took care of their kids or their grandkids or something he did in the medical profession. We are very, very different when we play Trivial Pursuit.You have to put a stopwatch on my father. He's going to take 30 minutes to make sure that he has the right answer, even though he knew it the second you asked the question. It takes him a long time. I use the word glacial to describe it. It takes him forever. This is why, you know, I mean, now it's easy for me to do it. My dad didn't have a dad. I mean, his father was drunk. He is not just a drunk, but then drunk. So when you don't have a dad No, he, he, he moved to the upstate. He was in another part of South Carolina. Very small town. My dad grew up dirt poor. So you got a, you're trying to make it on your mom's salary.She was at school. and teachers didn't make anything back then either. And your father's a town drunk and he's working his way. My dad never graduated college. He didn't have the money to finish college. He took all the science of math he could and then went to medical school and back then you could do that. You can't now, but all he knew was work. So I'm sure he's sitting there thinking these kids in the yard making, you know, seasons and bees working chipping balls over the house. Even though I told him not to chip balls over the house, he's gonna break a window if he, you know, pulls up and hits one thing, I, I am sure that he sat there and thought, you know, God, why did you give me? This rebellious son who doesn't do any of what, and I'm sitting there thinking, why'd you give me a marine drill sergeant? For a father, it probably is what both of us needed. Even if, may not have been what he wanted. But no, my, but you know, people change and you have to allow them the freedom to change.You cannot confine, you know, I live in the same town I grew up in and it drives my wife nuts. When we see somebody and they go back and say, yeah, I remember when you were in the. You were 11 years old and you got kicked outta Sunday school, and my wife's sitting there thinking, okay, that was 40 years ago. He's been the district attorney. He was in Congress, I mean, can you not let him grow up?
[00:14:52] Travis Chappell There's nothing you could do to make up for that man.
[00:14:55] Trey Gowdy I was proud I got kicked out, so it doesn't bother me one bit. I hope they'll keep telling the story. I was happy.
[00:15:02] Travis Chappell Man, another thing in common, I broke a window in the front of my house. My parents were up to me, any time I broke. Anything, I always had to pay to fix it. So I'd be slaving away in the yard earning three or four bucks an hour. , working something to pay for that window for a little while. But yeah. Okay. It sounds like it was an overall fantastic experience.And you know, your dad is still, you know, learning and growing even all these years later, which is awesome. And it sounds like it's kind of a similar ship that you have with your kids. From what I've, from what I've heard or read before where they have something in common with you.In the fact that they're both attorneys, but in the way that they want to go throughout living the rest of their life. You maybe have some differing opinions or differing even viewpoints or perspectives, in that sense, how have you worked through those, I guess disagreements? With a kid. And I'm asking this from a place of selfishness cuz I got two kids and its stuff, when you leave the hospital, they don't give you the handbook to parenting. Oh. You know, it just feels like when you're walking out, it's kind of like they did, do they know that we took this baby with us? Like they saw us walk out with this baby. Right. You know, so I've now, selfishly, whenever I get the opportunity to sit down with somebody, raised kids, and done a seemingly successful job doing so. I like to ask questions about parenting. So if you could indulge me for a second and talk to me a little bit about how you've kind of, you know, had these more grown-up disagreements and grown-up solutions to the problems that you've experienced. You know, being a parent, having kids.
[00:16:29] Trey Gowdy Well, I write about both of these things in the book and to illustrate different points, my son, my wife and I were talking about this a couple of days ago. My son is a, really, really good golfer. And he was, really, really good his junior year of high school.And then he walks in and says, I don't wanna play golf my senior year. , my father would've made me play golf. His reason was he wanted to go to Stanford, which is a hard school to get into, and he wanted to concentrate on his academics. I mean, he was doing well, but he wanted to take every AP class he could take and put himself in a position to get into Stanford.That was his dream school. And he got in and we went out there and visited and walked around, and everything was fantastic until August before he was supposed to leave to go, and he changed his mind. Now I would've been on a plane to Palo. My father would've said, you know what? This is a really good opportunity.You're going, whether you want to or not, whether you know a soul or not, you're going, I took a different approach, Travis. I said you have earned the right to say no. I think you ought to go. But you've earned the right to say no. My daughter, Was fantastic in the theater. Fantastic, great little actress. I mean, that woman, that child can talk more than any human being I have ever met in my life. and she, no stage fright, nothing. And then she just decided she didn't want to do it anymore. And the way I grew up, you say you grew up Baptist. I grew up Baptist. They said, well, God gave you a gift. You have to use it.
[00:17:54] Travis Chappell Don't bury it. Yeah.
[00:17:55] Trey Gowdy And my response was, well then, he should have given me the desire because he didn't give me the desire. And, if he's God, then he can give me both. And he didn't. And so again, I won't be writing any parenting books. They turned out great. But, never. I tried to let them make their own decisions. I give 'em the best advice I can, I did not like being made to do things. Hmm. I resented it and I probably like underachieving to prove my point. I did make Abigail stay in the theater. Watson went up to another school, but life turned out just fine. They got where they wanted to get and they did it without me trying to live my life vicariously through them.
[00:18:36] Travis Chappell So transitioning now back into your career a little bit, you've had. The very prestigious career of what many would look at and call quote unquote successful. I'm curious, first of all, to hear what your definition of success would be. And then I have a couple of follow-up questions.
[00:18:53] Trey GowdyMy definition of success is whether people who know me best respect me. That's my definition. So that includes my wife, my sisters, and my childhood friends Senator Tim Scott, John Ratcliffe, and Kevin McCarthy. People that I am very, very close to if they. Say we respect him. I want to be remembered if I'm remembered at all. And that's a good point.
Hook 1
[00:19:19] Trey Gowdy The reality is, Travis, we're not gonna be remembered a whole lot after we're gone, except by maybe a few people. The question is, what will they remember? Those few people, what will they remember? And I want 'em to remember me as somebody who was fair. He was good in the courtroom and he cared about the victims of crime. He cared about people who could not fight. I don't care if anybody mentions Congress could care less. I'm glad to have a job at Fox, but nobody's gonna say he was a great television host. I mean, I can barely read the teleprompter. Nobody's going to say that, but I do want him to say he was fair and cared about people who could not fight back. For themselves. And if you say that, then I've been successful.
[00:19:57] Travis Chappell You have said across multiple interviews now, both in your, and then also in your book all over the place, that being a, being a federal prosecutor, being a prosecutor or state prosecutor then, the district attorney Was the best job that you ever had, or at least your maybe most favorite or most fulfilling, I think that gave you most meaning in life. Why was it that and nothing else that you did?
[00:20:19] Trey Gowdy Well, number one, I loved it. There is no feeling in the world like standing in front of 12 people that you don't know and persuading them. And I like persuasion. Politics right now is about ratifying what people already believe. You go find out what they believe and you repeat it back to 'em and they clap, and you don't need to be good to do that.Persuading is taking people who are told this person is presumed innocent and convincing them beyond a reasonable doubt and doing it fairly. I mean, they're rules in court and you gotta follow those rules. So it's a system where the. and the process, both matter and politics, the result is all that matters, you know? Okay, so I ran a negative ad that wasn't true, but I won. or so I took down a bunch of my opponent's yard signs and the dead of night. But I needed to because I must win. That's not the way the justice system works. You have to do it the right way. I was okay with it.And there's just a feeling you get, you know, I had a case, Travis, where, I mean, imagine these parents, their daughter had been dead a decade and no one had been arrested, no arrest, no prosecution. So after a decade, and you can see the grief etched on their faces, I mean, you're a parent. It's one thing to lose a child but to not know who and why.You could see the marks of grief on their face and be able after a decade to go into a courtroom and convict the person who did it. There's just a bond that develops between the survivors or the victims of crime and a sexual assault where you survive. But you are, you feel powerless and you're afraid and you're scared.  I wanted the last image that the young woman had was the man being led out in shackles and leg irons. That's the image I wanted. So she could say, you know what? He doesn't have the power. There's nothing in politics that compares to that.
[00:22:14] Travis Chappell Yeah. In your book, you talked about how being a prosecutor started. To kind of wear on you, or this is, I think being a federal prosecutor started to wear on you a little bit and you were trying to make the decision, it was kind of the beginnings of deciding to leave that, because you said over half of the cases that you tried were drug cases. Is that right? And that you were realizing that just the way that the laws were set up, that it was, it was all it was not comparable or not proportional. yes. Yes, yes. Thank you. It was not proportional to what the crime was. And you would have somebody who was in child pornography that would get six months more than somebody who had cocaine with intent to dis.Even though they had not committed any violent crimes, they had not been a part of any sort of, you know, negligible activities at that point, other than they had the possession of it with intent to distribute, but they were getting the same as these people who were committing atrocities. I guess my question would be, how did seeing that on the front line alter your ability to have empathy for others that grew up in a completely different way than the way that you grew up?
[00:23:21] Trey Gowdy Oh, I think people will tell you, particularly when I became a state da if you hurt someone, I was tough on you for economic crimes, which I consider drugs to be an economic crime. I did what I had to do, but I didn't put my foot into it. When you see someone, an elderly couple beaten to death. That is something to get animated and pour your heart and soul into. When you have a kid that grew up with nothing and he is selling marijuana or cocaine powder or cocaine base, that is an economic crime to me it is not a crime of violence. And I think there's a disparate way that I view those cases.And so when I was a federal prosecutor, I didn't do violent crime cases. I only did one, I did one murder case, and that's rare. Some carjackings, but not what you get in state court. But even then, you know, I get this guy life without parole for methamphetamine and Susan Smith, who drowned her two sons and whose husband I still run into in my hometown. Talk about the wow, the grief etched on someone's face. Still see. So she's eligible for parole. She drowned her two sons and she's eligible. And this meth dealer. And look, I'm not into meth. you shouldn't sell meth. I mean, period. To be clear. But there's no comparison, right? No. Between being a meth dealer and drowning your kids. So I needed to leave the federal system and then I had to leave the state system. I don't wanna ruin the end of the book for you by the way I live in the end. If you're wondering, I don't want you to flip through to the very end. I do live in the end, but not forever.I had to. it all together because you know what little bit of faith, I had left was just afraid. Just seeing active depravity after active depravity after malice, it just, I couldn't reconcile it, Travis, while I was here on Sunday mornings.
[00:25:16] Travis Chappell Yeah. It, it's, it's pretty wild too. Put that in, into perspective when you just try to go about regular life after that, and this is happening in, you know, post-2000 South Carolina in the United States, you know, it breaks you hard to think about what's happening in these other countries that have even more broken judicial systems than we do.  And yeah, it's happening, all over the planet. You've made multiple career transitions when you've come to these kinds of crossroads decisions, and there was one thing that you said in your book when you were making the transition from federal prosecutor to circuit solicitor, you're deciding whether or not to run and for some contact for those listening or watching this. It was an all odds stacked against your type of election where it was against an entrenched incumbent who had been elected several times, just switched to being a Republican from being a Democrat, had support from both sides of the aisle, had never lost an election, and you're just this new up and comer that's coming up.You can't start running with your current job as a federal prosecutor because there's a conflict of interest there. So you'd have to quit that without knowing whether or not you were going to win the election when all the odds said that you were going to lose the election. And then to top it all off, you're at a wedding and this person comes up to you who's the opposition who is with the opposition anyway, one of, one of the leaders of the campaign and starts talking crap at this wedding and saying like, hey, we like you.You're probably good for some other positions later on, but this is not the one you should probably give up on. Ultimately the pro of purpose and meaning outweighed all of the arguments for security, predictability, and familiarity. So the question that I have for you is, do you think for all people that purpose and meaning should outweigh most other values in the value hierarchy, even if they are prudent values like security and predictability? Or is it a situational thing?
[00:27:06] Trey Gowdy I think you have to know yourself. And if you're super, super risk averse, then quitting your job to run against an entrenched incumbent is hard. It's hard. And as I wrote in the book, I was gonna drop out after that, after my friend said, who's now our friend? We ran a poll.  You're losing 80-20. Even after all the consequences of that decision, I'd already. Had a job. I didn't wanna fail. So I know myself and I have a moral fear of failure. I don't care if you say I was successful. That doesn't motivate me.What I don't want you to say, is as he was a failure. So here I was gonna fail spectacularly in front of my hometown, and I needed a voice in my life to talk some sense into me, which we all need. So there have been other times when I could have done something or you know, there were other opportunities I could have run for things when I was in politics. I mean, you can, you can run for governor, you can run for speaker of the house. It was an opening while I was there and one of me. Close friends were gonna get it and he didn't get it. We had to talk Paul Ryan into it. He didn't want to do it. You have to know yourself. So I'm really big in this book. I do get it, it's wrong to lie to people, but I get why we do it. We want people to think that we're smarter than we are, faster, way less, or whatever. I get it. I do not lie to ourselves. At this point, security probably, you know, once you can check that box, once you can say, look, I'm not gonna starve to death.My wife's not gonna starve to death. My kids are not gonna starve to death. You check that box, it liberates you. But if you can't check that box and its a, you know, the other, my paradigm is what's the worst thing that can happen? That's the way I make decisions. So if the worst thing that can happen, is I cannot meet the needs and responsibilities I've agreed to meet, then I probably should not do it.  But if the worst thing that can happen, is I maybe get embarrassed because I come up on the short end of a vote,
[00:29:06] Travis Chappell Then you get a job at a private law firm that pays handsomely. Has your failure
[00:29:11] Trey Gowdy And I don't have to run again. And I'm probably wealthier because it pays a lot better than being in public service. I had an old Sunday school teacher who used to tell me not to go through life saying what I wish I had done. And I had that voice. I used to walk on the golf course, not play him, but I live right beside it, walking, making up my mind whether or not to leave a job that I like to run for district attorney.And it was a hard decision and I'd always say, you know what? I just, can't beat him, I shouldn't do it. And I would hear his voice. saying, do not go through life saying what you wish you had done. Yeah. And I didn't wanna be sitting at the nursing home, you know, telling nurses war stories, boring them to death about the time I almost ran for office.
[00:29:53] Travis Chappell Yep. Yeah, I love that perspective, it's what's driven me in a lot of the bigger decisions that I've made. The rocking chair test. If you're on your rocking chair at 95 years old and you're coming down to the last, you know, couple of years, will I regret not having given this shot? I fear that's so much more than failing at that thing because there's nothing, I can do about it at that point.And at that point, all the people who would've laughed at me or mocked at mocked me or talked about me behind my back or whatever, they were gone outta my life 40 years ago. So why am I gonna make the decision? Because of them. When I'm the one that's gonna sit in the rocking chair and reflect on my life, and it's only gonna be people closest to me that it affects
[00:30:34] Trey Gowdy You raised an amazing point there.  Who are the voices that we let speak into our lives? I mean, social media, it's so much worse for my kid's generation than it was, maybe somebody scratches something on a bathroom wall at my high school. right. But. , but it's so much worse now. All these voices like defining success or setting expectations for our lives, even people that don't know us, pick your advisors carefully but also be careful whom you let speak into that definition.You use the word. When you were on the rocking chair you failed, and I would say, Travis, you get to define what failure is. I mean, Jesus Christ lost a vote to a guy named Barabbas. He lost; the crowd had a choice. You can pick Jesus, or you can pick a notorious murderer, and they picked Barabbas.
[00:31:26] Travis Chappell Yeah. Mistakes were pretty high. Yeah. For that, for that choice.
[00:31:30] Trey Gowdy He wound up dying, but it didn't fail. So losing and failing to me are two different things. And I would argue failing is not venturing. It is not trying. [00:31:42] Travis Chappell Yeah. You said that in your book when you said that that was kind of the last kind of exclamation point on that whole section was basically like, even if I lost, it would've still been a win for me because a real loss would've been never trying. There's a lyric from a song that I wrote on my phone. I had it saved with a picture of my son when he was firstborn that said My only failure in life is never having tried, or something like that, or, the biggest failure in life is never trying. And it just kind of stuck with me. To this day, and, I liked how, how you put that in your book.And so I wanted to ask one, one question on that as well. Because there's one part where you said the desire, there's a big desire to make the pain end. And when, because you were, you were just, you were remarking how insane it was for you to have put months and months of thought into this decision.To run and then how this one three-minute conversation with your opposition was enough to make you go, you know what? He's right. I should stop. And it was minutes later that you had come to that conclusion and how crazy it is. In retrospect, when you're looking back on it to be like, what was I thinking of?Like what I was, I was that, you know, whatever, weak or scared or fearful that I was willing to quit after I just spent nine months coming up with this decision and I felt good about it, and I looked at the worst-case scenario. It turns out it wasn't that bad. You know, like I already did all of this work, and then this one person says one thing, one time and it just makes me go, ah, we'll quit.We'll throw in the towel, but you said that there's this massive desire to make the pain end and then the desire to avoid pain before it comes is also just as big. And I thought that was just a succinct way to put that because it does sound like anybody listening to this would be like, oh, that's funny that we should, you know, scoff at that, or whatever.But everybody listening to this has also made that same decision where you put all this time and effort and you do this thing, and the first sign. Potential failure or maybe failure just becoming more of a reality than you originally thought. And you're, you're done. You're giving up. So the question that I want to ask you is more related to the opposite side of that because I do think that there's also this sunk cost fallacy that we have to take into consideration sometimes.You continue doing something because you've put nine months of work into it, or three years of work into it, or 18, whatever years of work into it when it is healthy to let it go. So my question is more like how do you reconcile the polarity of those two things when you know this is the right thing, but you're letting other people get in your head? And you should keep doing it, versus like, well, I've been doing this for 12 years, so it would be dumb to quit now even though I don't feel like this is the right move for me. How do you deal with those?
[00:34:20] Trey Gowdy It is so hard, Travis, to balance intuition and emotion, which would include pain. and logic and, I cannot imagine trying and trying and trying to do something. I mean, think about a woman or a man that has been struggling on all these mini tours and you know, they're a stroke away or they're two strokes away from qualifying and they want to get their tour card and. All of the sacrifices, their family and they're living in hotels and they just can't let it go.I mean, Tom Brady speaking of can't Let it Go. I mean, you could argue he came back for one too many years. Logic and knowing what you want that final scene to look like. I mean, how much of you? We got one shot at this, one, crack at it. Hook 2
[00:35:09] Trey Gowdy How much of your life do you want to spend trying to get something that has proven to be elusive? And if it's proven to be elusive for a decade, I would say the odds are going to be elusive for 11 years and 12 years. So, what I would do is I would figure out why it has proven to be elusive. Why is that? What I want to know is, is it because you didn't have the capital? The people that know about your product love it, but you don't have the capital.Okay. That's one thing, is it? This technology caught up with you and it's just, it's, it's just not there anymore. It's like a fax machine, you know? People just don't use them anymore. So I'm big on logic. I mean, I don't like pain. The logic, I think, is what drives our decisions. I don't mean to exclude joy and happiness and all that. Let it pick the music. You like music. I like music. Let it pick the music for your life. But logic has got to set the course or you're probably not gonna like where you're going.
[00:36:11] Travis Chappell Yeah, I like the way that you are. In the book, you said Consult your emotions and intuition as you approach decisions logically. I thought that was a proven way to put it, cuz you know, there are a lot of people that would say to only subscribe to what your logic is telling you. But then you don't get kinda what you're saying before. You know, you're writing out the pros and cons list. You don't realize it's like, oh, well there's, there are 12 cons and there are six pros.This one pro on this list significantly outweighs all of the cons because it's what I want and it is part of that picture at the end. I don't care if the odds are against me. I don't care if it's gonna take me longer than I think. I don't care what happens in the meantime. That's just what I want and I don't know how to not want that anymore, but I don't feel a piece about what I'm currently doing.And it allows you the ability to also, as you said, your emotions, consult your gut, your intuition, but also be able to justify or maybe rationalize or prove logically that, you know, this is something that I've thought about. It's not purely emotional or based on my gut.
[00:37:12] Trey Gowdy It's a balancing act. I probably undervalue emotion. I don't wanna say I'm a stoic, but I like to think logically and you should want a prosecutor, by the way, to think logically. I, I'm not, there's a book called Blink. I'm sure. I read it. It made a lot of sense that our initial instinct is often correct. I know a lot of people go with their gut instinct. It's gotta be a combination of 'em, and you have to know what your weakness is. If people who are prone to making rash impulses buy, they do not need to give emotion, they don't need to put it in the front seat of the car. Yeah, they need to. It can ride, but it doesn't need to be in the front.
[00:37:47] Travis Chappell Yeah, yeah. You can ride on the roof,
[00:37:49] Trey Gowdy Logic, setting the course, and then the other stuff to make the trip enjoyable is the way I look at it.
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[00:37:56] Travis Chappell If you were to narrow down, you know, like I said, you've written some, several books and a couple on some of the biggest topics that I think are super undervalued. Like making decisions and asking questions. If there were, you know, two, three life skills that were, you know, kind of along those lines that you could label as like, these three life skills are very important, no matter. The path you're taking is what career you want. If you don't want a career, if you're raising kids, or if you're not raising kids, these three skills sets or practices will, if you can learn them, they will help you and serve you no matter what. What would you say those three things are?
[00:38:29] Trey Gowdy The ability to use questions to move people. Which is why I writing a whole book on it. We are wired to want to tell people what we believe. I believe X, therefore, sits there and listens to me. And sometimes it works, but people are selfish and they like to talk to themselves, so move them by letting them talk. But your question has gotta ask a question. I do a podcast and one of the questions. What question would you ask a group of Christians who were contemplating whether or not to adopt or sponsor a neglected child? Did you get one question to ask I thought that was a great exercise.What question Now? Not what comment, but what question? And so my question is, do you believe what Jesus had to say? And if you do, then go look at what he said about children. But can you make your point? with questions and then self-awareness. I am huge in self-awareness. I mean, you, Travis, I was never going to be a basketball player.It was in the DNA. I mean, it doesn't matter how much I loved it, it was never gonna happen. So, you know, I can go to all the camps in the world. I could bankrupt my parents by sending me to basketball Camp. It was never going to happen.
[00:39:43] Travis Chappell You're gonna end up 34 years old playing. Turkey or something
[00:39:48] Trey Gowdy I'm not even good enough to do that. I'd have to play in, I don't know, Somalia or a country where there's like a real threat to the basketball court.
[00:39:57] Travis Chappell Yeah, on the dirt basketball courts. Yes. They're uphill.
[00:40:00] Trey Gowdy Yes. And that was only so they could have their token American. So self-awareness, I am big on that. I. The other thing I would tell folks is to be super, super cautious. Who your advisors are. And, and whether and how much credence you give to your detractors. I see these people paralyzed. by the comments of folks who don't know anything about them and why you and I would care what people who don't know us think about us. I just find it vexing. People do care.They sit there and go through their social media, and I'm not on social media, so maybe that helps. But I can tell you I cannot be the dumbest person in the world unless you know everybody. And so when I read or used to read, Gowdy is the dumbest person on the face of the earth. How do you know that? Unless you know everybody, but I'm also not the smartest guy in the world.
[00:40:55] Travis Chappell Yeah. It's so clearly not true like it's so clearly inaccurate, but it is hard to just kind of let it go, right?
[00:41:02] Trey Gowdy It is. Unless you master the art of knowing yourself enough to know I'm neither the smartest nor the dumbest. I just, I'm not either. And more importantly, I'm trying to get smarter. I'm reading, I'm trying to learn, I'm asking questions to empower you is a skill set. I think people ought to have. Knowing yourself, there's no reason not to. And then being careful. Whom we let speak into our life positively and negatively or three life skills.
[00:41:35] Travis Chappell You know, what's interesting about all three of those is that the root of all of them is just asking questions, right? I mean, even finding out which people to listen to, or especially which mentors to get advice from or people to spend time with is asking them. Good question.Even after you've already questioned whether or not they should be in your life, then it's a matter of how I ask them questions that feed your life and help me improve. And then self-awareness is just a game of asking yourself questions, right? How else do you become self-aware?It's just continuous cross-examination of your own. Thoughts, desires, actions, and everything else are how you become self-aware, right? All of it comes down to asking good questions. This is one thing I've been studying a lot lately, which is what led me to pick up a copy of your first book before I pick up a copy of the book we're talking about here. Start there. Leave and. It was because I've been exploring a lot of ideas. I teach a lot in the podcasting space. We do a lot with companies and, and entrepreneurs and we help them build podcasts as an arm of their, you know, marketing division and stuff like that. And I tell everybody I work with, to start an interview show.Don't ever just, just do a solo show because. For a multitude of reasons. But one of the reasons that I've given is that it will flex your muscle of asking good questions, and there's almost no other skillset that's more important, especially when it comes to your ability to communicate, to persuade people of something, to examine yourself and become more self-aware. There's almost no skill that's more valuable than asking good questions and learning. How to achieve things through those questions?
[00:43:11] Trey Gowdy And here's what I would tell you, Travis, you have a podcast where you ask questions, but you decide which ones to ask. So in reality, you are controlling the content. You're just not controlling the vehicle for the content. you could have asked anything you wanted from the book, but there were certain things you wanted to ask. You didn't ask. Why did you dedicate it to whomever you dedicated it to? You didn't ask how long it took you to write the book. You throw your questions and did control the conversation. But in the end, I'm gonna leave thinking, you know what? Gosh, he sure did let me talk a lot. He must be a great guy. And that's what people think.
[00:43:50] Travis Chappell Oh, what a great conversation we had. I'll talk 99% of the time. That was great. We should do that again. Oh, that's so true. That's so true. It just helps in every situation, man. It's the one skill I didn't know I needed before I started. and the one skill that was the most difficult and most worth it to develop over the long haul. It saved me in so many situations where you're in an awkward conversation with somebody that just kind of got thrust on you or you're talking to somebody who is maybe a hero of yours or somebody who is a potential mentor you want to get to know better. It can be the difference between having a second interaction with that person or having that be the only interaction is just the ability to ask a decent question and then actually do something about it too. Right? Is like the second half of that. It's like you can't just ask questions, you also gotta do something at some point.
[00:44:38] Trey Gowdy Can I prove your point for you about talking to famous people? that. I, if you had said, okay, Gowdy, you can meet anybody in the world. Who do you wanna meet? I would say, I wanna meet Bono. I wanna meet Paul Houston, the lead singer of you two. And so I got a chance to meet him.And so what do you do? You sit there and you know, tell him about yourself. You asked some stupid questions. So I decided I met. I said, I gotta ask you, what led you to write a song about Judas Iscariot? 45 minutes later. His staff is saying, wow bono, we do have to leave. We are late to go.And the guy. So, you know, he is one of the most famous people in the world. I mean, you would sit there and think, you know, I'll indulge this member of Congress for a second. But you know, I mean, guy, he is so country, I can't even understand his idea. But you ask him, I guarantee you no one, I mean, they may ask.You know, why'd you write this song? But he wrote a song about Judas Iscariot I mean, that's not like a super popular person to write a song about. Right. He loved that question. And then he got to talk about what he wanted to talk about. And I got to listen, I got to talk to Bono Yeah. For 45 minutes.
[00:45:48] Travis Chappell Right. It worked out. It worked out.
[00:45:50] Trey Gowdy Oh my God. The most charismatic guy I've ever taught in my life.
[00:45:54] Travis Chappell I have to imagine. I'm actually, they just completed. Either completed or it will be completed soon. Construction on this sphere. In Vegas, it's like a brand new venue that's out here on the strip and state-of-the-art, like they bought this tar-like audio targeting company from Denmark or something.That they used to use it to tell people on certain platforms at their train station, like the time that the train was coming. So it is like direct audio. So in this. Big sphere, they'll have people sitting there that can listen to the same thing but in different languages cuz they can sing Oh my, to different seats. The screen is the, like, biggest, brightest whatever in the world. And the first performance to welcome it to the world is, u2 live here in Vegas.
[00:46:38] Trey Gowdy So the greatest rock band of all time. Of course
[00:46:41] Travis Chappell Might be a good excuse to get out to Las Vegas this summer sometime, Trey.
[00:46:45] Trey Gowdy It might be, I wound up meeting him not meeting him three times. I wound up being around him three times. And the ability to ask a question, a thoughtful question that you've never been asked before. Here he is one of the most famous people in the world, but he is still a guy. He's still a person. And so how do you do it? Ask something that gets him fired up.
[00:47:06] Travis Chappell Something that he hasn't been asked by the four, you know, 4,000 interviews that he's done in the last five years.
[00:47:13] Trey Gowdy Hey, what's the song about? Oh, he's, he's answering that a hundred million times, but he has never been asked. Why'd you write a song about Judas being scary?
[00:47:22] Travis Chappell Yeah. There is a clip that went viral of Joaquin Phoenix. We were when he was doing his tour after he filmed Joker. and he is chewing this reporter out for asking just the most basic question. He's been on tour promoting this film for like seven months.And the question he asked him is something like, where did you get the inspiration too? Do this performance or whatever. And he was like, basic, I, I forget exactly what he said it was, it was more or less along the lines of, you know, I've been touring for seven months. Like, you didn't think anybody else has asked that question before, like, come up with something different.And he was kind of a jerk about it which is I think hand in hand with his personality. But also, you know, when you're not touring that much, you are probably really tired and irritable and it probably would be irritating to get the same question from professionals in their field for the 300th time in the last six months. And it just kind of reached this boiling point with him.
[00:48:16] Trey Gowdy Although I would argue Joaquin Phoenix may have started that tour, a little irritable, I, on the other hand, would've said, you know what? I'm glad you died in Gladiator and the interview is over. I'm glad he killed you and Gladiator. And I'm glad that your sister rebuffed all of your advances and we're done
[00:48:36] Travis Chappell Yeah. Can I give 'em one of these things? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:48:38] Trey Gowdy A slow down. Yeah.
[00:48:41] Travis Chappell Oh, man. Yeah. That's kinda how I felt watching but the point as an interviewer did stick with me. And I try to make sure that when I, you know, approach an interview, especially when people get interviewed all the time, that there's, you gotta just.Try to come up with things that maybe they haven't been asked before or from a different perspective that maybe that or don't let them gloss over certain things that maybe other people have let them gloss over. So, man, I've enjoyed this time trade. It seemed like it, I can always tell that, you know, it's going at least decently well when the hour flies by.  So, I know we're coming up here at last. The last couple of minutes starts, stay, or leave. If you're listening to this episode, please go pick up a copy of this book. I'm telling you; you will enjoy it. I've been going through the audiobook version, which is read by Trey. It seems like I can only do audiobooks that are read by the author anymore. Because it just seems more genuine and they're more enthusiastic about it when they're reading it. So please go pick up a copy of that. I promise it will make a difference to you. Making decisions is one of the most difficult things that we have to do in life, especially as entrepreneurs and CEOs.You know, that's your main job is to make good decisions and to make fast, decisive decisions with, with all the myriad of responsibilities that you have. As the CEO or the leader of a company. So start, stay, or leave. Go pick up a copy of that book right now. Trey, before we take off here, is there anything else that you would like to leave the audience with before we say goodbye?
[00:49:58] Trey Gowdy Yeah. My goal is for you to have a southern accent after you have to listen to me read that book on audio. I want you to use the word y'all a lot, and I want you to add six or seven syllables to other words that you use. I cannot imagine listening to me try to pronounce some of the words, I, that's one thing I learned, Travis. I know how to spell the word. I know what the word means, but I've been dogged. If I could pronounce some of them.
[00:50:27] Travis Chappell Well, hey, you're, you're in luck because all my dad's side of the family is from North Carolina. So I, you know, go ahead. No, no translator is needed for me. No translator needed d.
[00:50:35] Trey Gowdy Good. Thank God, I appreciate you having me on. It's been great, and I wish you all the best and every decision. That you have to make, especially the important decision of being a parent, which is the most real legacy you will ever leave in your kids.
[00:50:50] Travis Chappell Yes sir. Hey, I appreciate you coming to the show, Trey. It was a lot of fun for me. One more time. Go pick up a copy of Start, stay, or Leave You. Not. Regret it. Spend a lot of fun. Thanks so much for joining me, Trey.
[00:50:59] Trey Gowdy You too. Take care of yourself.