We were lucky to catch up with Travis Doodles recently and have shared our conversation below.

Travis, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

I was working a job making 6 figures as a videographer, but I was miserable. I was working for a guy as his personal videographer, but the content was pointless to me. He was very wealthy and showed me money doesn’t buy happiness. I was having a conversation with a friend, and said “man if I had his money, I would give it all away.” Helping people is what makes me happy.

I felt God checked me in that moment and said to me, “Well if you’re not giving it away now with the little you have, you’re not gonna give it away when you have millions.”

I always wanted to do ministry full time, and so I took the risk. I quit my job and felt called to start a non profit and give away as much money as possible before I die. It was a huge risk because I had an easy, secure, high paying job. I had no money coming in and I was giving away thousands a week from my savings to random strangers to make their day better.

Videos started exploding, going viral, and donations started coming in to fund the videos. Then I became a YouTube partner and started paying my bills from social media. From day one 100% of the donations go back out to the people, and we do not draw a salary from the non profit. Very different than most non profits. It started small by buying groceries for people, and then turned into buying people homes and getting homeless people off the streets permanently.

Fast forward, a year and 1/2 later. We went from zero to over 8 million followers across social media and have accumulated over 2 billion video views spreading love and kindness all over the world through social media.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I used to be a YouTuber back in 2012 and landed a reality show with MTV. I got burned bad by Hollywood so I quit and deleted all of my social media. I was gone offline for almost 10 years, dead to the internet. During those 10 years I grew a lot as a person and figured out what I wanted in life. I picked the camera back up and set out to do things different my second time around. God knew I was ready, and made up for the lost time off social media 100X more than I could ever imagine.

My favorite part about what I do is influencing the youth to spread love and have young people watching positive content instead the crazy stuff that’s out there these days. The ripple effect has started a movement of kindness to the generation coming up. And I love that I get to make videos for a living, and run a non profit that is impacting the world in a positive way.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My wife is my partner in this non profit. We met from the MTV show back in 2012. The show as very guy heavy because it was about my painting career and street art. The producer said you have to have a “girlfriend” for the story line. (reality tv is SOOOO fake) and so I asked this girl at my church who was also an artist, to be my fake tv girlfriend instead of MTV hiring an actress. She said yes for some reason.

We lost contact after the show, but a few months later reconnected, fell in love, and got married lol. I would have never gotten married unless it was for that “fake” relationship that later turned real.

We now have a muraled out warehouse since we both love art, for our headquarters building. There is nothing like it out there. So cool to do this life with her being an artist and wanting to do ministry full time as well.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Everyone loves positivity and wants to help people deep down. I have mastered story telling through video. So when you combined those 2 things, the internet starts watching and following along the journey to see the transformations of peoples’ lives. God gets all the glory at the end of the day. I do this for Him alone.

Also we stand out in the community to help people on another level. We now have a colorful ice cream truck for the non profit that only delivers free food to the community, and a headquarters that has murals everywhere, a barbershop for free haircuts (I used to barber as well), a podcast studio/film studio, arcade, event space, and cafe area.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.travisdoodles.com
• Instagram: @travisdoodles
• Facebook: @travisdoodles
• Twitter: @travisdoodles
• Youtube: @travisdoodles