The Secret to Making Powerful Friends | Jordan Harbinger on Impact Theory

I think one of the the other key psychological concepts that people should focus on more is the idea that you can practice something deliberately. So, you have to deliberately practice the weaknesses and make them as strong as you can while also practicing your strengths and making those the top of your performance. Most people are too lazy to do that. They just want to practice everything or they don't want to even bother to figure out which piece is the most important. Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. Our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. All right, today's guest is a former Wall Street lawyer who gave it all up to pursue a life of meaning. Following his love for learning instead of chasing money, he co-founded a podcast and academy called The Art of Charm back in 2006, long before podcasting and online courses were a thing, and he methodically built it into a seven-figure business and one of the most dominant podcasts on iTunes. Before leaving to start something new, his interview show received more than 4 million downloads per month, and his new podcast, which he just started from scratch recently, has already received more than a million downloads in the first 3 weeks alone. And it's no surprise giving how hard this guy works and how damn interesting he is. He speaks five languages including Mandarin Chinese and Serbian. He used to run a business giving tours of North Korea. He's been kidnapped twice on two different continents, and in high school, he was an exchange student in the former Soviet stronghold of East Germany. His company and interests have led him to study some of the most successful people in the world, and from that, he's created a playbook on social dynamics that has made him one of the most sought-after speakers and coaches in the world. His work has been presented in Silicon Valley at mega companies such as Google, Apple, Twitter, and Square, and he's given talks on security, social engineering, and psychology at places such as Black Hat, DEF CON, and Harvard Business School. Additionally, Forbes named him one of the 50 best relationship builders anywhere, and Inc. Magazine paralleled him to one of the best interviewers in the modern era. So, please help me in welcoming the former phone hacker and now host of The Jordan Harbinger Show, Jordan Harbinger. I am stoked to have you on the show, dude. You are the master of introductions. I would If I didn't know who you were introducing, I would have been very excited to hear from that person. Yeah. They're going to be here today. Oh, good. Okay, I'll stick around then. What's crazy is how many weird things you've done. Yeah. Like the the North Korea that In my notes, I literally wrote, "What the fuck?" Like I had to go back and like listen to that again. I'm like, "He actually gave tours in North Korea?" How does one end up giving tours in North Korea? That's what my mom wanted to know, too. Uh so, of course, "Wait, how does that happen? Are you sure this is allowed?" A long time ago, when I was in law school, a friend of mine kept telling me about Turkmenistan and how weird this place was and how they had this crazy dictator that was renaming the calendar months and everything and built an ice palace in the middle of the desert and I thought, "What a weird guy." So, that's for sure interesting, but the thing I really want to know is what makes you when your friend goes, "Oh, there's an even crazier dictator." What makes you move towards that? That's a good question. I think anything that's really esoteric or forbidden was always appealing to me when I was a kid. So, you mentioned former phone hacker, totally great reference because that was me when I was a kid opening up those green boxes on the side of the road where you needed a special wrench to get it and I thought, "They don't want people to open this. You need a special wrench. I'm going to figure out how to open this." And I open it and there's all these little screws with wires attached to them. And I see the lineman with his little orange handset clipping alligator clips on there and I went and got one of those things and started to play with it in the green box and I was listening to people's phone calls when I was 13 and I thought, "This is something I'm not supposed to do that theoretically doesn't hurt anyone, so I like that." And now as an adult I realize that I still have that bit of code that says, "People kind of don't want you to do that." And I go, "Oh, well, in that case, it's more appealing." So, it's a little bit of a rebellious streak, but I'm more interested to learn why people are trying to keep something a secret than I am about breaking the rule itself, if that makes sense. Mhm, totally. So, this whole like lifeless ordinary thing, is that something that you cultivate intentionally? Like So, I know the story, you're a lawyer on Wall Street at the time of the collapse and so it there was a natural out if you wanted to take it. But I don't feel like you took it because there was a natural out. It would have been easy enough for you to do something that was still centered around law, but you don't. You start something that at the time would have been so beyond counterintuitive. Like in 2006, I'd listen to exactly zero podcasts. I don't even know if I'd ever heard the word podcast. I don't think people listening today really understand. Like it didn't really exist back then. No. So, how did you Why did you get into that? Right. So, in college I had to outwork everyone, which is easy cuz in college everyone's drinking, partying. So, I outworked everyone. That was my competitive advantage. But then I got to Wall Street and everyone was really hard working and really smart and I thought, "Okay, we can all work 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. How do I make myself smarter in a time frame that's short enough for me not to get fired?" Cuz I had hardcore imposter syndrome. Whereas like they're going to figure out I don't belong here. I'm going to get fired and I'm going to be out of luck and I have all this debt from law school. So, I decided to work on this sort of secret third path, which well, actually, I wanted to work from home so that nobody could see how much I didn't belong at this Wall Street firm. There was a partner that always worked from home. And eventually I caught up with him and I said, "Hey, you're never in the office. Do you just work from home a lot?" And he actually explained, "Well, sometimes, but I usually get business. I generate the business for the firm by creating and maintaining relationships." And that was really interesting to me. So, I asked him how that was done and he explained, "Look, I'm friends with these people and they throw us deals and I I don't even worry about my billable hours. I just bring in deals and get commission based on that." So, I dedicated my life to learning how to create and maintain relationships because that was my only hope. That was my secret third path. Not outwork everyone. I was already working as hard as I could. Not try to make myself smarter in some way. You're dealing with real natural talent and and hard work with some of these other people that were at my level. But, nobody was thinking about networking and relationships. We all thought, "Well, we stay here long enough, we put our time in, dot dot dot, senior associate or partner, country club, network." That's how that worked in my head at age 25. That's not how that works. You build that network the entire time deliberately, ideally, and then you have those relationships that are valued enough to make you a partner or get you to the top of the law game or any game. So, I decided to focus on that thinking, "If I work on this, I'll probably have 5 years before any of my colleagues even think about this as a skill set." And that time advantage will allow me to master the networking and relationship development skill set that I need to not get fired, maybe make partner, stay at the top of the game. So, I focused on that skill set. And that was what we were talking about at bars and at meetings and things like that. And other people wanted to learn these skills, too, because they started noticing some of the rewards that were coming from it. I would never wait in line at a bar. I would never pay for any food or drinks when I went out. I always seem to know everyone. Uh I was with different friends all the time. So, bartenders, doormen, everybody knew who I was, and that was appealing to younger guys, and girls for that matter, back in college, but it was really useful in the working world. So, when I finally started to teach these skills on the side, I was having the same conversation every night, six nights a week, cuz I was going out trying to work on these skills, and I started burning those conversations to CDs. And eventually, a friend of mine said, "You know, you might not have to carry a pocket full of crappy burned-at-home CDs if we can figure out how to distribute these MP3 files in another way." There was no way to do that back then. And then we found out about podcasting. And at the time, there were 800 shows in iTunes. There are about 350, 400,000 now. And that's what we did. We started uploading our conversations to a server and listing them in iTunes. And the first couple days, we had 24 downloads, and a couple of them were from South Africa, and that's when the light bulb went off that there's something here that nobody's really paying attention to. If I can have a conversation with my friend in his basement or living room, and that can go to South Africa an hour later, and someone can email us and say, "Hey, I tried this, and it worked." We have a new concept here. Remember, YouTube did not exist. I think it was like Video Wiz or something, right? So, it was like this small niche nerd community of people that knew about podcasting, and that's what we started building from there. And we just thought, "This isn't a business, it's a hobby." We went on with our lives, and then one day we checked our numbers months and months or years later, and we went, "This is a real snowball. There's really an audience here. Now, was that when you were still at the law firm or Yes. Yeah, I was working at the law firm and then uh actually sort of moonlighting because a couple friends of mine said, "Hey, I I'm doing this show on SiriusXM Satellite Radio a couple blocks from your office. I don't want to drive up and make it because there's too much traffic. Can you just do my slot on the show as a guest?" So, I show up to SiriusXM Satellite Radio and I go, "Hey, I'm here to talk about someone else's book." And I get up there and they're like, "You didn't write the book?" No. "Well, we don't have a guest. What can you talk about?" Body language, persuasion, influence, networking. They said, "Great, you're on in 7 minutes. Go down that hallway. See you later." And we went down the hall, sat in, did the did the show, and they said, "You guys did a decent job. Have you done this before?" Well, we have this thing called a podcast. And the station manager just happened to be listening to that episode of the show and he started listening to our podcast. And when I emailed him 2 weeks later, he goes, "I love this thing you're doing in your basement. If only you actually had a studio and weren't just talking with a furnace next to you and like noises." So, he gave us our own show on SiriusXM Satellite Radio just to see if we could do it. And that's how the show really started to to launch. And when did you start thinking about it as a business because I can't think of anything sort of less likely to turn into a business when you're peeling out of your law career than that? Yeah, that's a good question. The business hobby shift started to happen not because we went, "All right, there's an audience here. We got to monetize it." That's what people do now that are smart and think ahead. We were not those people. What we had was a bunch of free content on the podcast and people started writing in and saying, "Hey, you know, I'm having trouble applying some of this stuff. Can I call you? And I thought, this is a great way to not have any free time ever. So, I said, sure, but I'm going to have to charge for it because I don't want to just do free coaching all the time. So, this guy said, great. I'm going to give you two grand. Uh can you give me like 20 hours of coaching for that or 10? And I said, sure, no problem. What do you do for a living? And he said, I'm a mortgage banker. I really want to teach this stuff to my team. So, he just kept keeping us on retainer. And I thought, there's real money here. And then him and another friend were doing this phone coaching with me during the summer at law school. And another guy said, I just want to come and and see you do this stuff. And I said, sure, fine. He goes, why don't I give you like five grand and I'll stay with you for a week? And I thought, that's creepy. Right? That's a little creepy. You want to live with me for a week? And he goes, look, I'm a normal guy. We can talk on the phone for a while so that you know that I'm not a weirdo, but I know that if I learn from you in person, I will figure this stuff out. And I thought, that's probably a good way to learn this stuff. So, that was our first client. He flew in, lived with us for a week, basically paid the rent on our Manhattan apartment for a minute, and he just ended up being our first training client. And that was when we went, well, wait a second. If people are willing to do this and there's more than one, this could be a business. Where the business was driven by the demand for the service and the coaching and the knowledge. It was not, okay, we're going to be life coaches and we're going to figure out this curriculum and then start cramming it in people's face. It was the opposite. It was, here's all this free stuff. If you can use it, cool. And that became the foundation of the business. You said growing up that you were painfully shy. Yes. Did you use tactics and techniques to get out of that? And is that sort of what becomes your teaching? Or how did you get out of that? Great question. Yes, I definitely used tactics and techniques to get out of that. And in the beginning you feel like you're faking it, right? You feel like all this body language stuff, you're just sort of going through the motions and to an extent you are. But once people start treating you differently because you're open, positive, confident, or at least that's your first impression, you start to realize, oh, I'm I'm not being rejected by people at first glance, you know, I'm I'm sitting up and I've got a smile on my face and I feel good about what I'm doing and you start getting attention from people that normally you would think, oh, I I didn't realize this woman wanted to date me or this person wanted to hang out. You You really don't have your self-esteem matching up with the way people are perceiving you. And so there's one way to sort of fix that, right? And that's you get pulled in one direction. So if you think you're really great, but people treat you poorly, your self-esteem drops, right? And you eventually meet that expectation. But if your self-esteem is sort of shaky like mine was and you're painfully shy, but people start treating you like you're upright, confident, positive, friendly, outgoing, you get pulled in that direction instead. And that became a core concept of what I was teaching because I realized, wait a minute, I don't like fake it till you make it, but in some respects this really worked for me because I wasn't lying to anybody. I was just acting a little bit more confident than I was and then people went, oh, he's comfortable and fun and friendly and I grew into that. So I had a core level identity shift into who I was and sure enough people treated me in that way and I started to become that way because I realized I had nothing to lose. So and nothing to fear more importantly. So yeah, I really used those techniques at first and they were very robotic and then eventually I realized I can take off the scaffolding because I'd become the person who I had been trying to be because you're not adding a veneer of falsity to you. You're not telling fake stories or acting cool or something like that. You're really just being more confident and just for a few moments while people make that first impression of you, they start to treat you differently and you start to act into that. And it happens naturally. You don't have to force it. I love the concept that you have about every time you walk through a doorway, the doorway concept. And what I love about it is that basically all of this stuff can be practiced and once you practice it then it becomes natural. And there's this quote from Bruce Lee which I've always loved which is um I kick until I don't think kick, I just kick. So, what is the doorway principle and why is it so powerful? Okay. Um The doorway drill is really potent because what this does is it fixes body language in a way that creates a different kind of first impression. So, essentially we're making people more confident with a pack of post-it notes. So, the way that this works is we know our first impressions are made non-verbally. And if you don't believe me, if you're not sure if this is true, what you need to do is go walk down the street, walk to a through a mall, and your mind will be making these little judgments about someone. Tall person, scary person, cute person, small child, and fun person. You're making these judgments subconsciously all the time. This is evolved behavior. It doesn't mean you're prejudiced or something like that. This is just what your brain does. But what that means is that your first impression is made non-verbally. Those people don't have to talk or tell you something clever or tell you something scary for you to make that judgment about them. You just feel it. So, the doorway drill is potent because if we walk through a doorway which we do hundreds of times a week, dozens and dozens of times a day, even if you're just seated in your office, if we reset our body language, our non-verbal communication to create a positive first impression, then we don't have to think about it much anymore. Because the problem is if you say, all right, sit up straight, have upright, open, confident, positive body language, then I go into a meeting or a networking event and the first thing that happens is I reset to my defaults, computer mode, right? Because I'm not thinking about it anymore. It's a conscious shift in my body language that I will lose control of. So, we have to delegate or relegate that set of non-verbals to a subconscious process. And the way to do that is to practice it. And the way to practice it is to remember to practice it. And the way to remember to practice it is to do it every time you walk through a doorway. So, whenever you walk through a doorway, stand up straight, shoulders back, chest up, chin up, smile on your face. And you don't have to superman it. You'll look you'll look awkward and fake. But if you just have open, upright, confident, positive body language every time you walk through that door, you will start to do this habitually. The problem is we tell you this, and the first thing you do is you walk through a door and you forget it instantly because you learned it on Impact Theory along with a million other things, and it goes right out the window. So, take a pack of Post-it notes, these little tiny ones. You don't have to write anything on it. Stick them up at eye level in the door frame or in the doorway of your office, your home, wherever you can get away with it. And when you see that, you're going to go, "Why is there a Post-it Oh, right. Doorway drill. Upright, open, positive, confident body language." Now, that over time, weeks, months, whatever it takes, you will start to do that every time you walk through a doorway. The beautiful part of this is our first impressions are often made as soon as people see us, and as soon as they see us is usually when we walk into a room through a doorway. So, every time, if we're resetting our body language every time we walk through a doorway, we're creating a positive non-verbal first impression every time we enter a room, and then we don't have to think about it anymore. So, we can stay present in conversations, we can get through what we need to get through on a conversational agenda if we have one, we can network and meet people and have it look natural, and we don't have to think, "All right. Oh, shoot. You were slouching. Stand up straight. Oh, crap. What was Tom saying? I forgot. Oh, no. Now he knows that I'm lost. Wait a second. I'm slouching again." That's what we're trying to avoid. We just want to make sure our nonverbal first impression is good. When people start treating us differently because of that first impression, then we start to act differently and we start to become essentially a different more confident person because of the way that other people treat us. Because the way other people treat us informs the way we feel about ourselves. And then we don't have to fake it anymore. We don't have to try hard. We don't have to put on airs, you know, respect me. We don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to do that. Now, you've said one of the hallmarks of the Jordan Harbinger Show is takeaways, act- actionable items that people can do and actually implement in their lives. What are some other psychological principles that you think people are unaware of that have that real actionable core? Great. So, yeah, one thing I like to do on the show, every show has worksheets so that people can sort of fill out what they've learned because I believe that revision and review I mean, look, I'm a nerd like many, many people who are listening or watching. I spent way too much time in school, so I I like to review these things. But I will tell you, I think one of the the other key psychological concepts that people should focus on more is not just nonverbal persuasion or communication and things like this, but the idea that you can practice something deliberately. So, you have to deliberately practice the weaknesses and make them as strong as you can while also practicing your strengths and making those the top of your performance. Most people are too lazy to do that. They just want to practice everything or they don't want to even bother to figure out which piece is the most important. I'm super fanatical about that and I think that that's something that people really overlook is in this debate about you know, do I focus on my strengths or do I focus on my weaknesses? And hearing you talk and and having done all the research, one thing that I will say you have an extraordinary ability to learn, regardless of what the topic is. And I find that very interesting. Walk me through like, how have you learned five languages? And not easy languages like Serbian and Mandarin Chinese, like that's insane. So, how do you like, what is that process? So, I'm a big fan of immersion. What's funny is people go, "Oh, you must have a knack for languages. I'm not good at languages." And so, a question I will always ask people who think that they're not good at something is how they know that they're not good at it. And usually the answer has to do with the environment that they learn in or the setup their learning process and very rarely with their actual talents. So, people will say, "Oh, I'm not good at languages." How do you know? Well, I took French in high school and I didn't do well. Well, I took French in high school and French was my worst subject. Every language I took in middle school and high school was terrible. I took languages in college a little bit and I was much better at it, but I'll tell you, I got really good at languages because when I was a senior in high school, I moved to Germany as an exchange student and I got placed in East Germany where they didn't speak English very well and they learned Russian growing up instead of English. So, I was surrounded by German the whole time and I thought, "I'm in trouble." I was told everybody kind of speaks English and I could get by and I knew I was going to have to learn some German, but I had no idea that it was going to be the basis for me making friends at all, getting by at all. So, I started to realize that German was really hard, surprise. And I took some German classes and I learned a little tiny bit and not much. And my host parents started to get worried cuz I wasn't really talking. And then one day, my host father took me out for a beer and he goes, "Look, you got to learn German because no one can relate to you and you're not getting along with other people because they just see you as this weird robotic American guy." And then we had another beer and I said, "I just feel lonely and homesick and all this stuff." And he goes, "But German's not that hard. We can teach you." And then he started teaching me a little here and there. And this is 3 or 4 months in. And then I had another beer, and suddenly I could speak German. And he went, "Wait a minute. You can speak a lot more German than you let on." And I just realized at that moment while I was afraid of making mistakes, I didn't know how much I knew. And that since I'd been immersed in the language for so long, I actually understood a lot more than I thought. So at that moment I realized, "I can learn this. I just need a different type of learning environment. I don't learn well by memorizing a verb table that a French teacher gave me and said quiz on Friday. I learn well by watching TV, hanging out with a bunch of kids my own age, and having them yell things at each other, and I hear that over and over, and I remember that." That's actually how humans learn language in general. And I realized immersion is the way to do it. Study with a coach. Study with a teacher. Do not try to self-teach. A lot of people self-teach. It can be great, but you really learn best with a coach for anything at all. I have interview and broadcast coaches that teach us on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I hire And if you can't find a coach, find a coach anyway. You know, find someone on CNN and tweet at them and say, "Can I hire you to teach me interview skills?" Someone will eventually respond to you. And that's how I find these types of people. So I'll immerse myself in something to the point where I can't really get any higher on my own, and then I will find a coach generally to take me to the next level. And even that's a mistake, honestly. Some of that is ego. I recommend finding a coach as early as you can. You should find a coach before you try to do anything, because otherwise you're just unlearning bad habits that you've self-taught. I want to go back to some of the things that you just said, which is really, really interesting to basically stalk somebody until you get them to agree to be your coach. Sure. What does that process look like? And And I want to put it in context of when Forbes magazine says that you're one of the best relationship builders anywhere. Like dude, I will I will just tell everybody right now how true this is. Out of nowhere he reaches out to me and was just like, "Hey, been watching your show. I think it's fantastic. Let me know how I can help." Did I do that? That's Yes. I'm glad I followed my own advice. I was like, "Whoa, like Jordan Harbinger like just reached out to me. This is crazy." And you were like, "Oh, I think this person be a good guest, this person." And we're like, "Dude, we've been trying to get them, we can't get them." And you were like, "Oh, let me make an intro." And then all of a sudden like like this huge cascade of guests coming on, me getting on other people's podcast. It was huge and I have said uh privately a thousand times and this is the god's honest truth, dude. Nobody outside of this company has had a bigger impact on this company than you. Really? From wow. From out of nowhere and your whole thing about, you know, give without any expectation of anything in return. You've never asked me for anything ever. Um I was just totally totally blown away. So, leveraging like that ability to reach out in a a pretty smooth way, like how do cuz I know people watching this right now, they reach out really clumsily. Oh, yeah. So, how can they reach out in an intelligent fashion to get a hold of somebody that could really be a meaningful mentor, teacher, whatever and actually get a yes? Yeah, this is a a topic that's very near and dear to my heart as well because I do remember reaching out to you. I I didn't I'm glad to hear I was that impactful and and helpful. That's always nice to hear. Um what people do wrong when they reach out is they go, all right. Uh hey Tom, love your show. You should have me on it cuz I have a new book and you're like, oh one of these, right? I mean, you must get that a hundred times a day. I know you do because I do all the time and I don't usually mind that but it it doesn't work nearly as well as a friend reaching out and saying, "Hey, I'm launching a book in a few months. Would love to do the show. Also, here's a bunch of other things happening." The reason this is important is most people don't build these relationships before they need them. And these are the same people that would they obviously have a spare tire in the trunk of their car so if they get a flat on the highway, they're taken care of. But if they want to build a relationship, they're not thinking about digging that well before they're thirsty. So, they're only looking at what help they need when they need it. And that is a huge mistake. You have to dig the well before you're thirsty and you have to give without the attachment to getting something in return. So, when people want to reach out, stop thinking about what's in it for you. Start thinking about only what's in it for other people. And if you don't worry about what's in it for you, you will find opportunities that come later down the line. And to sort of illustrate this, when I moved to LA, I had a toothache and it started to get more and more painful and it it really was starting to just dig into my brain. I couldn't think. I didn't have a car. I moved from New York. This is pre-Uber. I didn't have dental insurance cuz I was 27 and you know, who cares about your teeth, right? You think about those later. I'll get new ones. And so, I started to desperately call dentists and they were like, "Oh, look. I don't take new patients or I I I can see you in a week. Go to the ER if you have a toothache." And I'm thinking, "A week? I I haven't slept. You know, this thing is killing me." So, I posted on Facebook and obviously, I didn't have my privacy settings set correctly because of random stranger filled in the comment and said, "My aunt's a dentist near you. Do you want me to give her a call?" And I said, "Sure. Yeah." So, I went to his aunt the next morning before they officially opened, got that thing drilled the hell out, got it filled. She didn't overcharge me. I send this guy a message, "Thank you so much." He goes, "No problem, man. I I don't know what you do. I heard you have some show that my friend likes, but I'm glad you got your tooth taken care of." And I said, "Let me know if there's anything I can do." He said, "Well, I'm a graphic designer, but I'm working at a cafe right now as a barista. I would love to just not make another cup of coffee again." And I said, "Well, I don't have any work for you, but I'll keep my ear to the ground." He said, "Whatever you can do. No problem. I don't expect you to give me a job." Four days later, another entrepreneur friend of mine, she writes me and says, "My web guys are blowing it. I keep firing them. Who can create good branding for me?" I said, "I've never worked with this guy, but here's a portfolio. He's a nice person. That's really all I can say." That guy got a full-time job, as far as I know, still works there years later designing websites and templates and themes and branding for this woman's company because he helped me find a dentist on Facebook. So, if he'd been thinking, "How do I get a job?" he would never have made that introduction to a dentist because there the connection, the nexus is unclear. The opportunity lied over the horizon. But, since he was helping without the attachment or expectation of anything in return, he ended up finding an opportunity through me that I didn't know about and that he didn't know about. But, you won't find those unless you are constantly reaching out, digging the well before you're thirsty, and giving without that expectation of anything in return. And last but not least, people keep score now, and this is bad. Do not keep score. And what I mean by that is if you interview someone and then you help them you drive them to the airport, they don't owe you anything. But, people in our heads, we create these covert contracts. And the reason they're called covert contracts is because it exists in my head, but it doesn't exist in yours. So, we've got this weird agreement where I drive you to the airport, and then I pick you up, and I drive you again, and I pick you up, and you're like, "Hey, Jordan's such a good friend. He's always got you know, he's always got time for me. He wakes up early so he doesn't mind driving me to the airport for my super early flights. And in my head I go, "One day I'm going to make Tom have me on his show and I'm going to sell my magical weight loss formula." And then one day I pitched this to you and you go, "Uh not totally a fit for what we're doing here at Impact Theory. I'll help you in other ways if I can." And then in my head I go, "You son of a bitch." Right, I'm mad at you now because you broke the deal that I created in my head. You broke the con- the contract, the covert contract. So, I'm starting to be passive-aggressive. I'm angry with you. I can't change my behavior even if it's a little subconscious. I'm a little bit colder towards you and our friendship gradually dies. Why did this happen? You didn't do anything wrong. I created an agreement in my head where you started to owe me something and you didn't reciprocate and that made me angry. People do this. We do this subconsciously. We think other people owe us. If someone creates opportunities for you, you introduce them to a bunch of people, you help them out a lot, that's it. There's no agreement to reciprocate. Now, if someone helps you, you should reciprocate where you can. If someone doesn't reciprocate towards you though, do not keep score because you are poisoning all of the relationships that you start because you don't know how that person might be able to help you in the future. You don't want to create a bad reputation for yourself and you will spend years thinking this person they're a one-sided friend. They're not a friend. This person didn't do this thing for me and years later down the line, you just have no idea what could have been because you're poisoning all of your own relationships. So, the rules are dig the well before you're thirsty. Give without the expectation or attachment of getting anything in return and do not keep score. And if you do those three things as a matter of habit throughout the next rest of your life in fact, you will have so much opportunity coming into your life. You won't have you won't know what to do with yourself. Yeah, I really hope people listen to that and and your life right now is such a reflection of that. As you're reinventing yourself and your brand, it's been incredible. And I want to talk about that reinvention. You've been crazy like raw and real and vulnerable about it. Um So, I I'm not so interested in the like what happened at the company to necessitate the the reinvention, but how do you conceptualize it? How do you face those fears? So, when I left The Art of Charm and suddenly found myself what I thought was out in the cold, I actually was in a a better position than I thought because I had actually been following my own advice. Dig the well before you're thirsty. Give without the expectation of anything in return. So, when I left The Art of Charm, I actually took the vast majority of the team with me. Not in some Jerry Maguire moment, but in a in a different type of situation. Everyone always goes, "Jerry Maguire?" Not quite. Um unless Rene Zellweger is my producer Jason who doesn't exactly fit fit that mold. Um But, I left and I went, "Okay, guys and girls, what are we going to do right now?" And the answer from the team unanimously was rebuild. We already know what we want to do. We just have to start over. And I thought, "Easy for you to say. I've been doing the other show for 11 years. I built this business over 11 years. Now I've got to start over. This is terrible. What do I do?" And so, I had a couple of choices early on. One was don't tell anyone what happened. Make sure that your pride and ego are intact and try to do this with your team or by yourself, and it's going to take five plus years cuz now I know what I'm doing. It won't take 11 years. Maybe it'll take a mere half decade. The other option was you've built a network over 11 years. You've got a lot of friends. You've got a lot of people that want to support you. Spread the message about what happened, not in a look what happened to me, it's so sad kind of way, but in a here's my little predicament right now. What can what ideas would you have? And most of the people that I'd reached out to who have any sort of platform or anything were like, I want to help you get back on your feet with the Jordan Harbinger Show. What can we do to make this happen? And so, I reached out to dozens and dozens of people that I knew would I'll I'll be honest. At first it was like if people start rejecting me, I'm going to feel pretty damn bad about this, right? It's going to take it's going to knock me down even further. So, I picked people like yourself that I knew wouldn't be like, you're dead to me, click, right? So, I found a bunch of people that I considered real friends and I reached out to those people, yourself included, and I went, here's what's going on. And you've been through similar stuff, too. And so, you empathized, of course, but also you were in a great position to say like, actually would love to make this conversation happen. And so, once the initial first few people had said, let's do this, my confidence was bolstered, I had a lot of great mentorship from people on my network like Norm Pattis, who owns Podcast One, said, don't skip a beat, do your own show, forget about the past, just get back on your feet. But if you've got a strong network around you, you're good. No, it's incredible. I love that. Um you you said that it's not just because Jordan's an incredible interviewer, but I'll say that is part of the equation. And how do you think about the very notion of going into a crowded arena or whatever, having to start over? How do you think about being great? How are you approaching your interviews? Sure. So, the one thing that I know that you and I do, probably more than other interviewers, at least the ones I've spoken to, is we do more homework than anyone. Whenever I interview somebody, I always look for the Tom Bilyeu interview because I know that you read the book, you looked at all the videos, you had people make sure that they weren't on #metoo somewhere, right? Like you did all the homework for that person and I know that your interview is going to be really good and I too will read the book, watch the videos, and do everything and I know that we're going to be able to pull these things out. But, the question is that it's a crowded arena, how are we going to be great? Well, if I'm doing exactly what you're doing, then are either of us great or am I just copying you? So, what what I will do is I will always outwork the next guy and I will do my own I'll put my own angle on everything just like you do with this. Like you've got this incredible production, you've got these incredible interviews, they're always enthusiastic, they're always inspirational, your crew around you is is second to none. What me and my team do is strive for similar quality, except I will always go for, let's say, practicals and so I'll put my own like unique spin on that. You've talked pretty openly about some of the anxiety that you've gone through in rebooting the show and the uncertainty financially that comes with building the business from scratch. What techniques have you used to actually overcome the anxiety? I would love to say, "Oh, yeah, I had all this anxiety and then I started using this app and meditating and everything was fine." That is not what happened. Not at all. What happened was, yeah, it was I went from, "All right, we've got this nice multi seven-figure business, the show is really great, it's got this huge audience" to "Okay, how are we going to figure out what to do?" Luckily, I am a saver, I plan well financially, and I I think that that is underrated because when you have no debt, when you have a backup set up 6 months or a year of finances, even if you have to downgrade your lifestyle a little bit, the level of freedom that you have is enormous. Because when I started asking friends what to do, they went, "Oh man, you need to get income. You need to do all and there's a list of projects they came up with that are all distractions from rebuilding the Jordan Harbinger Show into what it needs to be. It's like, you got to go on a speaking tour and you need to write a product and you need to start selling ebooks online and you need to do do do." That would have been fine. I would have had to do that if I were going broke in a month. But I wasn't, because I had planned for an inevitable situation such as this. So instead, I'm able to spend the next year and change focusing on what's really going to matter in 5 years and not trying to figure out how to keep the lights on and keep people paid and keep myself in with a roof over my head. So, I think it's really important to make sure that you It sounds cliche as I suppose again, but if you dig the well before you're thirsty financially, you'll be okay later as well. If you just assume everything is going to work out or that you can figure out how to get income when you need it cuz many of us are crafty and smart, that's fine, but I don't want to spend time trying to make short-term money when I have a long-term goal. So, first of all, plan ahead. If you find yourself unable to do so because you're in the situation now and you did not plan ahead, okay, all is not lost. What I would say is the anxiety that I had, that I still have sometimes, you have to zoom out far enough on the timeline and that sort of cures all. And here's what I mean by that. Perspective I guess is what people would call it. What I've been doing is zooming out far enough on the timeline and thinking, "Okay, is this going to matter in a week?" Maybe. Is it going to matter in a month? Probably not. It's hard to take comfort in that when that week you feel crushed that in a year you're going to feel better. But if you put yourself in that situation where you're zooming out far enough on the timeline, your own timeline, you realize, "Huh, has anyone ever stolen from me before? Sure. What are they doing now? Doesn't matter. How often do you think about it? Never. How did you feel in that moment? Pretty much like you do now. Okay." So that I have been through things like this before. Yeah. And you survived. Well, not only that, thrived. Great. But I still feel bad right now. You're allowed to. Just realize that every second you spend feeling sorry for yourself is a total waste of time. And set a timer if you need to on your fancy Apple Watch and give yourself time to have your temper tantrum, call your mom and cry, go take a nap, whatever you need to do, and then put your pants back on, your britches back up, and get back to work. The one thing that made me feel better was getting back to work because I had all this anxiety which was energy I had that I didn't know what to do with. I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off and I spent a lot of it just whining or being like, "I can't do this. I don't know how to do this." None of that was helpful. But when I called my team and called my network, uh, my podcast network and they said, "Don't skip a beat. Just get back to work and produce the Jordan Harbinger Show. Stop whining about what happened to your last one and your last business." When I got back in the studio and I started moving forward again, I realized the lot a lot of the anxiety was this energy had no place to go. It was like a blender that you left the top off of and it's shooting all over your kitchen. I needed to focus this in one direction. And so when I focused that energy into producing a great show, rebuilding my business, I started to feel better again. Because if you're doing everything you freaking can to get back on your feet, then when you go to bed at night, you don't think, "How am I going to do this?" You realize you're going to do this one day at a time, one step at a time, one brick at a time. Along those lines, you wrote a really cool article recently, and the key takeaway for me was action ends suffering. Yes. I thought that was really cool. That was an accidental find, right? I didn't think, "I've got to take action and end this suffering. I've got to direct my energy in one direction." It was kind of like, "Okay, am I going to try to sleep all day or be depressed or be angry?" Or am I just going to get back to work? That That was my choice at the end. And I feel like a lot of us have those choices. The action ended the suffering in many ways, but I didn't expect that to be the result. I really thought I was just going to distract myself. And that was the initial plan. Just distract yourself with work. But what I didn't realize was the work wasn't just going to distract me. It was going to take all of that drama and pack it into a neat little ball, put it in a drawer, and not worry about it anymore, because I had a bigger mission. And part of that was the audience, the Jordan Harbinger Show audience. There were people going, "Where's the show?" And the answer was, "It's It's on the way." I didn't miss one episode of the show. When I left The Art of Charm, it ended on a Thursday. I would have had to release an episode on Tuesday, but I wasn't a part of the company anymore. The first episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show came out that following Tuesday. Wow. I called a friend, Mark Geragos, who's was Michael Jackson's lawyer and stuff, and I said, "What are you doing on Saturday?" And he said, "I'm really busy because I'm a really You know, I have a million clients." And I said, "Great. 11:00 a.m. works fine for me." And he did the show, and we launched it right then. And people who were with us early went, "Oh my gosh, you don't even have a website." And I said, "It's coming." But the first episode of the show was out. Action ends suffering. Not going to be universally true for every type of suffering. It might only alleviate some of it, but we see this pattern in people. We see the person who's uh on lost a child in a in a shooting or something and is now speaking about it. We see people who've undergone great tragedy and now run a charity that helps people who've been victims of similar situations or of different situations. That action helps them eliminate or mitigate their suffering. And so, this was an accidental discovery for me. Uh so, I can't take credit for it. But what I can say is, if you find that you are suffering right now, try taking action instead of taking a bath in that suffering. And I know it's easier said than done. Trust me, I know that. But trust me that this works as well. Uh so powerful. All right, before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find you and the new show. Sure. Sure. So, you are either watching this or listening to a podcast version right now. Search for the Jordan Harbinger Show in your podcast app or iTunes. We do have some clips that take place in the YouTube sphere, but really, I would love if people would find me and listen to the show because I will make damn sure that every minute of your time, your ear, your ear balls, your share of ear, whatever we want to call that, has been earned. I will earn every moment of your attention on the Jordan Harbinger Show. That is my promise to you. So, give us a shot and let me know what you think. Yeah, and I will just say that I think it's even better than what you were doing on The Art of Charm. I think you've broadened things out a lot more. I think the interviews are more deft. Um really, I'm super stoked on this. I think it's absolutely fantastic. Thank you, brother. All right, my final question. What's the impact you want to have on the world? I want to make sure that people get tools to improve their lives on a regular basis, that they can improve incrementally every single time they listen. So, every episode of the show, you learn something, you put it in like those little one-piece LEGOs, those little one-ies, you just stack them up and eventually, if you get enough of those, you could build a castle. That is what I'm trying to deliver because I think that as busy as people are even though the smartest of us are always trying to learn, it's hard to read a book or two every week. It's hard to make sure we're moving forward in learning when we're trying to build our own business or keep a career or manage a family. So I want to deliver this knowledge and this value in a way that people can get at the gym, in the car, etc. And then take those little tiny one-piece Legos and after a couple months or a couple years they go I built a freaking castle. Thank you. That is what I want to do is make it bite-size enough that anyone and everyone can do it and it makes their life better. Very similar to what you're doing here I think. Thank you, man. Great answer. Thank you so much for being on the show, dude. All right, guys, I'm telling you there's a reason he's considered the godfather of podcasting. This guy takes greatness to a whole new level and I'm telling you that behind the scenes, everything that he's talking about on camera and on the podcast, he's doing in real life. I cannot emphasize enough how excited I was to bring him on the show because I wanted to do something nice for him because he'd done so much for me. So not only did I think he'd be an amazing guest, but that sense of really building real friendships, nurturing them, making sure that they're blossoming of their own accord and never literally you can feel it in everything he does. He's never worrying about what the payoff is going to be and that is how you get a payoff. And you know me, I'm a big believer in holding two competing ideas in your head and he is the master at this. He knows that that's a good strategy. He knows that and yet he can approach you with such authenticity and give you those Legos. Whether those Legos are a piece of information, whether they are a connection. He is doing that better than anyone I think I've ever met in my entire life. It is absolutely extraordinary. There is much for me to learn from this man. He is, whenever possible, one of the first videos I go to research somebody that we have coming on the show cuz he gets absolutely amazing stuff. Go watch his show, subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show, and look at how he approaches life without a sense of scarcity. He's the dominant force and yet he reached out to me to find out how he could help. That is so beautiful and so inspiring and is just incredible and is something I think that we can all learn. So, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Jordan. Thank you. Good, dude. Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.