439 Master Social Skills and Confidence with Jordan Harbinger

"The mind follows the body and the body follows the mind." - Jordan Harbinger If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/439 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 439 with Jordan Harbinger.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  You know, a lot of times I get people reaching out to me and saying that they're struggling with their life or their business. They tell me different things that are holding them back, challenges to make more money, challenges in their relationships, challenges with their family, and a lot of it comes down to self-confidence and social skills. And if we don't have self-confidence in our dreams, in our voice, in our way of being, in our health, in our thought process, if we are not confident with ourselves, then usually a lot of things will suffer. We'll second guess ourselves when something goes wrong. We'll not be as intentional about our day.

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  We'll just kind of go about things in a lackluster way as opposed to owning the day and owning your life. And so today, we're covering about how to build self-confidence with Jordan Harbinger. And for those that don't know who Jordan is, he is the co-founder of The Art of Charm, which is a podcast, a company, and an experience where they help people have more confidence. And he hosts bootcamps and training sessions and works with companies and individuals all over the world about how to increase self-confidence, be more persuasive, confident, and charismatic in your life. His podcast also gets over two and a half million downloads per month and growing.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  He's been one of the OG podcasters, again, over 10 years now, been doing it. It's pretty impressive. And what we cover today is how to develop social capital and Why it's so important. Also, what most people don't understand about building quality relationships in business. The crazy stories of Jordan getting kidnapped, not once, but twice in different countries. Also, how he got a podcast going 10 years ago and why he's never stopped. Also, a simple tip you can practice daily to build your physical and mental confidence.

• 2:36Lewis Howes?

  That and so much more on today's interview, LewisHowes.com/439 is the link if you want to share it out with your friends. And without further ado, let me introduce you the one, the only, Jordan Harbinger.

• 2:54Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the legendary podcaster, Jordan Harbinger, in the house. Good to see you.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Good to see you, man.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  Now, you've been podcasting for 10 years.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  10 years this month.

• 3:04Lewis Howes?

  10 years this month. It's four years this month for me.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Congratulations.

• 3:06Lewis Howes?

  I'm like a child compared to you.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  But they're, they're both eternities in the world of digital anything.

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Facebook, I think, is 12 years old, almost.

• 3:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  So, think about doing something for one-third of the time Facebook has been around.

• 3:19Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  That's a long time.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, 10 years, man. And you were doing it before it was cool and before.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Is it cool now, though?

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  Before a million people are doing it.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  What is it, what is it, about 400,000 podcasts out there?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I was gonna ask you the same thing. I think that it's around, I remember in 2013, 2014, it was a quarter million, maybe. So, now it's gotta be 400 plus thousand, right? Has to be.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy, man.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, 90% of which are abandoned, like Twitter accounts.

• 3:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't get updated, they pod fade, and there's nothing left.

• 3:48Lewis Howes?

  Pod fade, man.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:49Lewis Howes?

  People get so excited about it and they launch a few and then they just stop after it gets hard, they're like, oh, okay.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  And, and you know how much work this is. I mean, just, people are happy to, to buy the lockers and put the plant on the table and get a light set up. And then, when they go to edit it and upload it and they're like, wait, where's my millions of downloads? How do I, where's the advertising revenue? And then, when that doesn't materialize overnight, they, they vanish. And we had this advantage that when I started doing the show, it was a hobby, and I did it in my friend's basement. And for years and years and years, it was a hobby up until maybe four to five years ago. Around the time when you got in the, even right before you got in the game, I started going, I like this, I should take it more seriously. That was both a disadvantage in that I could have been pedal to the metal for five years. Could have really concentrated on making it a business.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  But here's the upside to treating a business as a hobby, any business in the beginning, was since we started the show as a hobby, all I did was go, oh, I want to interview that person. That'd be fun. Oh, I'd like to talk about that. That would be fun. Oh, I didn't get this out today. That's all right. I'll just release it tomorrow. What's the big deal? And then if I looked at my download numbers once a month, that was a lot. And there were no Libsyn download statistics. There was no like SoundCloud plays. It was just up on a server somewhere. I had to log in and kind of do math and I thought eh. So I never looked at that stuff, right? And the downside of course is what's measured gets managed, you know, since I wasn't measuring that stuff. Really, I wasn't managing it. But the upside was those numbers probably weren't that good. So if I'd looked at that and gone, when am I going to get internet famous?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  It just never would have happened and I probably would have gone, this sucks. I'm going to Instagram or whatever. And I think a lot of people do that with their business or even in their relationships too. They're like, oh, the next, you know, this is going to materialize into this big thing. And then when it doesn't, they get disappointed, they get discouraged and they quit and they move on to something else. So I think in looking at it like sports, for example, that you do so much of, especially compared to me. You know that you don't go to the gym for a week and go, where's my six pack, man? This is a gym. You know that you've got to work constantly and build up to something and get to the Olympics at some point later on down the line. It's not going to happen your first season.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Right? Definitely not.

• 6:00Lewis Howes?

  10 years. How many episodes have you done? Do you know?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good question. 600 plus all of the mini-soed Mondays, which I think are around 60, plus all the bonus episodes, which are probably like 100, plus all the fan mail Fridays, which are probably like nearing 100. So close to 1,000, close to 1,000 episodes, but probably not quite that many.

• 6:18Lewis Howes?

  1,000 episodes, 10 years, two and a half million downloads per month and growing.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Hopefully growing.

• 6:25Lewis Howes?

  What, what would make this, I know, right?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  I mean, you don't know sometimes. And then December, it was like, alright, we're going out of business. I'm going to Bermuda.

• 6:34Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Now, what would make this, I usually ask this question before I start, but I'm, I want to ask it during. No, I want to ask it during because you've done all these episodes and all these interviews, 10 years of this. What would make this the most powerful episode you've ever put out?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  This one?

• 6:50Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Man, it's hard to say because if I knew that, I would try to do that before. So you've got me in this kind of like Minority Report loop going. I like it already in that we're friends, we've been friends before we started doing this stuff, which is cool. So you have like a natural pour and I like the fact that I don't have a microphone over here that I have to lean into.

• 7:09Lewis Howes?

  I'm trying to convert you into it, yes.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  I'm getting there.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  Perfect.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  The plant honestly makes a huge difference.

• 7:14Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It's a globe and a plant. Let's, hold on, there we go.

• 7:18Lewis Howes?

  Now, there's a lot we could cover. We did an interview in June 2014, episode 73 together.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 7:25Lewis Howes?

  Uh, but there's a lot of things, I kind of want to share a little bit about you so people have some context. I actually don't want to go into the stories of a lot of these things because I think we did some on the last one.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 7:35Lewis Howes?

  And people could hear it in other interviews that you've done on your show.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Cut me off if I start going down that, that road.

• 7:40Lewis Howes?

  But the cool thing, well, not cool, but the interesting thing about you is you've been.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I know where you're going with that.

• 7:45Lewis Howes?

  You've been kidnapped twice.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:47Lewis Howes?

  In your life.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:48Lewis Howes?

  And could you just tell the durations of time you were kidnapped for?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Sure, they were short durations thankfully. So the first time was a matter of under an hour where I was in a fake taxi. I didn't obviously know it was a fake taxi, which ended in drop, being driven way out in the middle of nowhere outside Mexico City. Ended, ended in a physical altercation. I was doing, uh, well, they don't, we didn't call it MMA back then, but I was doing like jujitsu and, uh, we called it kihon, which was like this Japanese boxing type thing. And this guy was like 50, I was 20 at the time, I'm 36 now to give it, to put it in context. And so it ended in a physical altercation and he was driving and I was behind him. So, well, I'm here, so you know how that shook out. And The second time? And the second time, I was a teacher in the former Yugoslavia, which in this place called Serbia.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And I love it there, but I got targeted by their state security guys because guys and gals, I'm sure they're equal opportunity. But I got targeted by them because you're supposed to register with the police wherever you live. But the last time I had done that, they assumed that since I was in the police station at 1am, I wasn't just coming back from a late flight. I must've done something wrong. So they locked me up overnight before, so someone could come back and administrate in the morning. And they locked me up overnight with a bunch of these Roma women that were just chain smoking. There were these prostitutes from like a camp and they were chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes the whole night and talking super loud. Worst night in, in memory. I can imagine. Cause not only can I not sleep, I'm inhaling this stuff and I can't even understand.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  I'm not even learning anything. I can't take part in the conversation. Nothing. All I'm doing is inhaling secondhand smoke. So I, I went, I'm not registering with the cops again and that caught up to me. So they grabbed me and they took me to a safe house. Ironic term for a place where they beat you up and like lock you in a basement. And I ended up in a way, talking my way out of that one. But my friend who was there, who was Serbian and a mix of nationalities, but Serbian. He, his parents had some organized crime connections from like the nineties. So they, which were not working in his favor at all when we were there. And he randomly, and this was truly random, had lived in this, he was living in the same building as this arms dealer that they had just busted in Belgrade.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  And so when they caught us, they were like, wait, you live at this address? Okay. Hold on. We gotta make sure that you're not this guy. And then you're with this American guy who we think is a spy because he's not registered with the police. And I was a teacher, but the person paying my paycheck or the company paying my paycheck was a US organization. That was called ACTR XLs, which is kind of Fulbright-ish, but is sponsored by the Department of Defense. So I looked hella suspicious. Wow. Like, and they were just not having it and they were also a little bit under the influence of stuff because we were at this festival. So. They decided to take their time and that was one of those times where I thought, okay, this is gonna be awful. Like I was in a basement with all these rusted pipes coming out of the wall and there's like little wires and car batteries that I'm like, please don't connect

• 10:45Speaker 01

  that to some part of me anytime today. Right, right. And I just remember being like so utterly helpless and then talking and talking and talking, trying to calm the guy down who's interrogating me and then finally being like, look, I need, I need water really bad. And I think that may be why I, I drink so much of this during shows like this, right? Cause now I'm like, whenever I need something to drink. So they went to go get us water and they left and that was when I was like, I was pretending to be completely out of it, couldn't like really move, slurring, but it was fake. And then when I, when they went to go get me water, I heard the Jeep door close, they left and then I grabbed my friend and just got the hell out of there. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Cause they just thought, oh, this guy, he's just, he's not going anywhere. Wow. But I was, I was on the move. Yeah, escaped. Holy cow. How old were you?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Uh, 25 at that point. That's 2005. Yeah. It made front page news in this newspaper over there called Politico. Yeah. Yeah. I, I knew that because my friends in Australia who were Serbians who check in with their local Serbian news every morning were like calling me the next few days and they go, are you okay? And I said, yeah, why? Wait, how do you know what's going on? They're like, you're on the freaking newspaper. You're on the front page of the news. Wow. And, uh, and so I, I took that opportunity to get the heck out of there. Cause I thought, oh, this is, they're gonna forget about me. Like I'm just gonna pack up and leave. And I was at the embassy at that point, but my phone was buzzing and I just thought like, what's the problem? I mean, I thought this was all squared away. Cause their interior minister had sent a letter to the US embassy like, look, we got this. This is fine. He's

• 12:12Speaker 01

  not a spy. He just needs to register with the police. So they kind of apologized about it in a weird roundabout way because I went straight to the embassy and was like, I just got kidnapped by cops. You know, this is crazy. And so they they sorted it out and I thought, maybe I can finish my contract, which is naive as hell.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  No, you had to get out of there.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  I had to get out of there. And so I just left. And and a lot of shady stuff happened that year, man. I left a couple of friends there. And they were friends with these activist uh kids that were my age, maybe younger, twenty-three, twenty-four. And they worked for these resistance groups that were against, formerly against Solubin Amlosovich. And at this point, they were also against, I don't know, Kosovo independence or something like that, or for Kosovo independence. I can't remember, one of those two things. And my friend came home four days later and I go, why are you home now? And he goes, my friend was found dead in elevator of a heroin overdose. And I go, Ismail? And he goes, yeah. And I go, he doesn't even drink. He, of course, he wasn't doing heroin, like he got shot up by somebody and left in his in his building.

• 13:11Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  So I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm not going back there. Serbia is not a dangerous place, though. I want to reiterate that. There's certain, I'm sure you have Serbian fans. They're going, what are you talk, what? This is not my country. And now I'm sure it's even better. But back then, in that kind of circle that we were in, I think we just kind of edged on the outside.

• 13:28Lewis Howes?

  Outside of town or something.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like the outside of the circle where we were just on radar of bad people. And I just thought, all right, I don't need to deal with this.

• 13:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man, crazy. Um, okay, so that's happened in your life. You also.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  So that, there's that.

• 13:42Lewis Howes?

  There's that. You also, how many languages do you speak now?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Uh, five, but some of them not so good, not so good anymore.

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  No bueno anymore.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  No bueno anymore.

• 13:50Lewis Howes?

  Which languages?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  So English, uh, as you, English and bad English, like Bruce Willis, right? English, German, I can still speak really well. Uh, I was an exchange student there in the nineties.

• 14:00Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  And uh, and I ended up in the former eastern part of Germany, which, as you know, was part of a Soviet satellite state eastern block. So when I got there, it was no, that was no longer the case. But all the kids my age grew up learning Russian and German. There was very little English, except maybe in the high school level, because things had started to change. So everyone speaking English was like, hi, nice to meet you. And I was like, oh, God. So I learned German really fast. Because otherwise, it's not like Germany now where they're all like.

• 14:29Lewis Howes?

  They speak better than us.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  They speak better than us, yeah. So, English, German, Spanish, I learned when I worked at the embassy in Panama, which is brief, and I'm, then I moved to Mexico, got kidnapped, check that off the list. And then, uh, after that, I moved, I was studying Russian for a bit. I moved to Ukraine to learn, to work on that stuff, but then I ended up getting a job in Serbia, so I switched from Ukraine to Serbia, which, when you learn languages that are really close together, you get a lot of interference. So, my Russian was starting to become okay, but then I moved to Serbia and it kinda all went out the window. So, when I got to Serbia, I couldn't speak Serbian, I could only do Russian, and then after a while in Serbia, I could only speak Serbian, I couldn't do Russian. So, I did that, and then, a few years after that, more recently, the last five years or so, four and a half years in change, actually, five and a half years in change, I started

• 15:14Speaker 01

  learning Mandarin Chinese, because I thought, uh, people kept going, "Oh, you're really good at languages, what do you speak, like, Chinese or something?", and I thought, "Okay, if I think I'm really good at languages, let's put that to the test."

• 15:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  And I started learning Arabic, and then thought, "I'm gonna have to spend a lot of time in these places", and I started researching what I liked more, and I thought, "Chinese..."

• 15:33Lewis Howes?

  Do you wanna be in Egypt, or, yeah?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chinese is a good bet economically, I'm not trying to join the CIA again, or something like that, so, I'm not gonna do that. Uh, so, I switched, I, I made sure to focus on Chinese, and I started enjoying it, and I thought, "I'm learning a symbolic language, which is really good for your brain, I'm not a scientist or a doctor, of course, but, there's something to be said for activating this part of your brain that memorizes tons of symbols, learns things in symbols, moves things around in your brain, and puts them together in symbols, and that's what Chinese is." So, that's been really helpful in all these weird abstract ways that I probably can't articulate.

• 16:07Lewis Howes?

  Right, wow, so, are you fluent in Chinese now?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  No, I'm not, I wish, I know twenty-two hundred characters, and I need to probably learn another fifteen-hundred more to be able to read a newspaper, but...

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Can you speak it, or no?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  I can speak it, yeah, cuz I take lessons on Skype, and on Skype, there's, uh, the teacher and me, and that's it, and it's like twelve bucks an hour, and, uh, it's really cool, yeah, and I've got a book, and they've got the same book. And they've got it scanned as a PDF or something like that. And I can just converse with them and learn and go through the grammar. It's slow going though. I mean, you run a business, I run a business. Imagine picking up Chinese an hour in the morning.

• 16:41Lewis Howes?

  It's not easy.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Three days a week. I mean, it's pretty, it's kind of like going to the gym once a month.

• 16:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, for 10 years you're getting healthier.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, yeah, it's going to the gym, maybe not once a month, but it's like going to the gym once a week. It's, it's really slow climbing the hill. And then the rest of the week, I'm not watching Chinese TV. I'm not reading Chinese books. I just forget about it.

• 17:01Lewis Howes?

  You're not having conversations.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Nah, not really.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Have you ever thought about just going over there for six to 12 months and working and just being

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:07Lewis Howes?

  Immersing and then having it so you don't have to go to the gym for 10 years to learn it?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely, I have, yeah. And I, and I think now before I have kids is probably the best time

• 17:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  To go over there and do that. So I was gonna do that this year, but I'm getting married this year,

• 17:19Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Which is awesome, but I don't think I'm gonna have time to go to live overseas.

• 17:24Lewis Howes?

  Does your fiancee Jen, she speak any other languages?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  She does. She speaks Mandarin. So in theory.

• 17:29Lewis Howes?

  Why would you practice with her?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Here's, here's the thing.

• 17:31Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  She can't read and she can't write because she grew up here and Chinese is like two languages. You have to learn the symbolic reading and writing and you can learn speaking and she's from Taiwan. Well, she's American, but she's Taiwanese. So she has a weird accent. She uses different words for a lot of things. Her parents I can understand really well. So them and I will speak in Chinese a bunch, but her Chinese is so strange that I have so much trouble with it. It's, it's kind of massively discouraging.

• 17:56Lewis Howes?

  It like hurts you more than helps you.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  It kinda does. It kinda drags me off the, off the way. But I will say, I was sitting on a bus a few weeks ago. I can't even remember where we were traveling. And I, I thought, somebody smells so bad on this bus. And I didn't want to say anything because I was in Australia and I thought like, I'm not gonna just say, who smells, right? But I wanted to tell Jen, I was like, do you smell that? Is, what's going on? Is that me? So I told, I asked her in Chinese and we just kept, we started speaking a little bit in Chinese. And I, and then every time I do that though, I go, alright, can you just speak with a Chinese accent? You're driving me crazy. You know, it's kind of like trying to learn English and so you go to South Africa or something or even

• 18:38Speaker 01

  some crazy version of English that doesn't make any sense, like Singapore where they're like or Jamaica. It's like Jamaican English. Sounds cool if you know English fluently, but if you're trying to learn, you're just like,

• 18:49Lewis Howes?

  Hey, you could even go to parts of Alabama and I couldn't understand half my teammates playing arena football down there. A lot of great people down there, but some of the language is like extremely hard to hear. I had to ask them over and over what they're saying.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Well, I got, I got pulled over once in my life by a police officer and I was in Alabama, driving and it was a speed trap and I had no idea what this guy was saying. And of course he thought, cause he's watching TV. He knows what I'm saying. He can understand me. And he just thought, what's your problem, boy? You don't understand me? Or are you pretending you don't understand me? Like you're going to get a ticket either way kind of thing. And I thought, I was just like, can you, can you say that again?

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  Slower?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he's just like, have you been drinking? And I'm like, no, I don't need to be drunk to not have a clue what you're saying. I'm in the middle of a highway in rural Alabama. If there, if there's anything other than rural Alabama. And this guy was probably from around there and I just had no clue what he was talking about. I did. It took two years to get mailed back to Michigan. Two years.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Everything is slower in Alabama. I'll tell you that. It took 20 minutes to get fast food when I was there.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Maybe he kept it for a while and then went, ah, here, I'll send this onward.

• 19:55Lewis Howes?

  So you could get yourself in the escape from a kidnapper, but you can't get out of a speeding ticket.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Not that time. No, not that time.

• 20:02Lewis Howes?

  Well, you've gone through all these incredible experiences. You've interviewed hundreds of people over the last decade. You've learned all these different languages. You've got a school called the art of charm, which is your business and brand and your podcast name. What made you so fascinated to learning about social and human dynamics and um, Everything about how human beings think, work, perceive, act, talk, to get them through things, out of things, enrolling people in themselves, their vision, whatever it is, why are you so obsessed with it?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am obsessed with it. That's a great choice of words, actually. It goes back to when I was a kid, and I just recently thought about this, because I know you wanted to talk about something that I hadn't talked about everywhere, and I thought, okay, that's a challenge for guys like you and I, because we're going, what have I not told that I actually still remember in my life? And it's, there's not a lot. But when I was little, and by little, I mean like 13, 14, I was painfully shy, and I used to skip school because I didn't want to be around other kids, because I thought like, oh, maybe people are looking at me, and like, I always tried to make myself small. I always felt, you know, when you do something dumb, and you turn red, and you feel hot?

• 21:12Lewis Howes?

  Put your head down.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  And you go, ah, that's how I felt every single day in school, all day long.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  That's not good.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  It's not good for you. It's not good for you. And it's a symbol of like, some kind of weird anxiety stuff, that's beyond just regular teenager stuff. And I don't have that anymore, so I can't really explore it. I got rid of it, thank goodness. But what I was doing instead was I was going to school on the bus, and then I would just bounce home. And my parents had gotten a computer, it was like the one thing I really wanted. And I got a modem, and I was connecting to the internet. And this is 1993, 1994. And I was connecting to these billboard, or bulletin board services, which are like mini internets, basically, where all like, people are connecting, nerds are on there trading software and typing to each other. And I would do that all day. And I learned

• 21:56Speaker 01

  how to wiretap phones. I learned how to copy cellphone data. So like, you could take your phone, and this is before digital phones, they were analog. So you could take the phone in, you could copy something on the, on what's called the e-brm, you could copy the, the little... Semiconductor data onto another one, using your computer or using something else, even another phone, and you could basically like, like tuning a radio, listen to other people's conversations.

• 22:23Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Cause cell phones are basically two-way radios.

• 22:25Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  So I started doing a lot of that.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  You could do that.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  You could do that. Started doing a lot of that. I do that all the time. I hope the statute of limitations is up on this, by the way.

• 22:32Lewis Howes?

  So you could listen to other conversations by-

• 22:33Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 22:34Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:35Lewis Howes?

  You can't do it anymore with these phones, huh?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Nah, I mean, I'm sure that you can, but it's probably a whole nother level that I'm, I've not spending the time on.

• 22:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  I do that these days.

• 22:44Lewis Howes?

  And you'll probably go to jail for real this time.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  I think that's real jail time, yeah. Especially because now they're supposed to be probably encrypted and all that stuff. And it's, there's, there's laws about that. Back then, it was just kind of like, don't interfere with other signals. And there were wiretapping statutes, but it was kind of like, are you wiretapping? Cause it's wireless, but you're not really supposed to be on this channel. And you definitely had to steal information from a dumpster of a cellphone store to get the numbers and the info.

• 23:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  And you just figured people who bought a cellphone near your house, there were only a handful of these stores in, in the whole state of Michigan. So if you bought a cellphone in that store near my house, you maybe lived there or in that area and I could pick up a call or two here and there. And so I did that. And I also learned how to wiretap those green boxes that you see outside that are, belong to the phone company that had the pairs in them. And I got one of those orange handsets from a lineman's truck. I was not a good kid. I got a, I pinched one of those from a truck. And I would listen to the phone calls on that thing.

• 23:39Lewis Howes?

  Pinched means stealing.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It's just a euphemism for borrowing something for a really long time with no intention of giving it back ever.

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And, and I took that stuff and, um, and I remember feeling really bad and going to give it back to the lineman and he goes, what are you using this for? And I said, I'm opening up the green boxes and, and looking at how it works. And he goes, you keep that. And I just thought, what?

• 24:02Lewis Howes?

  Maybe you just thought you were like a curious kid and wanted to learn about like-

• 24:04Speaker 01

  He did. He showed me a bunch of stuff in the box. And he was just like, you never, you didn't hear this from me. And I think he was just kind of like, if you're bored and you're getting in trouble, but you're getting in trouble with this, I don't want to take this away from you. And then you go like inhale glue or whatever. Yeah. You know? Like, you know, what are my options? Right, right. What am I doing? Steal something else? Yeah, steal something else, get caught, drugs, yeah, what, yeah, exactly. Smoke cigarettes or worse. Okay, so you're learning how to hack and all these things. Yeah, and, and so I'm starting to listen to conversations. And when you're 13, 14 years old, adults are actually just two dimensional objects that stop you from doing things that you like and/or they buy you stuff, right? And you, and then you have your parents. They feed you, yes. Yeah, you have your parents who are slightly more three dimensional, but they got their own stuff going on and you're 13, you're not paying attention to that stuff.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  And so, and my parents were great. They weren't dysfunctional. I came from a great household. I just had, you know, I was 13 and I was more precocious than probably was necessary. So I started listening to these conversations and one of them was my neighbor and he was getting a divorce. Not my next door neighbor. Sorry, Dave, but a different guy. And he was getting a divorce and I remember listening to him talk to his soon to be ex-wife and he was just a monster. And I thought, ugh, this guy is terrible. He deserves it. And then he would talk to his brother and it would reinforce the idea, but he felt, it felt like he was a little bit trying to be macho about it. And I thought, oh, that's weird. Why is he doing that? Then he would talk to his sister and he would be like, why doesn't she, you know, understand me and all this stuff? And I thought, wait, what are, what is this element of your personality that I, I never saw coming?

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Why don't, you know, where's the macho thing with your brother and where's this like jerk that you are with your soon to be ex-wife? And then he would talk to his mother and he's like, ah, my wife's divorcing me. She doesn't love me. He's crying. And I thought, wait a minute, other people have real three dimensional feelings and brains and personalities, just like me. And to a 13 year old kid who is an only child and kind of isolate, self-isolating, that was a massive realization for me. So I started to study people really hardcore, online and in real life. And I turned my whole life into like a science experiment where I started asking myself, how come this person's doing this thing this way? What are they getting out of this? And what, why does this person decide to do this or act this way or be this way?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  And that started to fascinate me and I started to study this subject really in depth, a lot, in my free time.

• 26:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're like the modern life Dale Carnegie.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Maybe, yeah. I mean, I think he did a lot of that stuff too, right? I'm trying to, I read that book so long ago.

• 26:28Lewis Howes?

  How to Win Friends and Influence People, yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Great book. I'm sure he was a really interesting dude. I think, wasn't he a janitor or something at first?

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  Who knows?

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And he was just probably bored and then started observing people.

• 26:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:39Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. Okay, so through all these experiences, what is it you, understanding people have three dimensions to them and all these different emotions and feelings and act different ways to different people? Kind of, what's the biggest findings?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  You know, the biggest findings are gonna be the things that I get from science, not something that I just came up with on my own. And it's gonna be namely that nonverbal communication always trumps verbal communication. What you say with your body is much more, I would say credible than what you would say, the things you're trying to say with your words. Because you're, we all know how to lie. We all know how to tell lies. We probably learned that when we were like five years old or something like that. I mean, little kids lie all the time and it's kind of funny because it's so bad, right? You ever see your friends with kids and it's like, "Did you take another popsicle?" And they're like, "No." And it's dripping and it's in their pocket, melting. You know, so, like, we all know how to do that.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  But what we can't do very well, just as humans, it's very hard, and only sociopaths are really, really good at this, fortunately for the rest of the population, is that you can't have your body kind of back up every lie that you tell. Even people who do it really, really, really well also have flaws in doing it. And most of them are gonna be in Hollywood later on next month, get an Academy Award for doing it. So it's tough. And so I learned that keen observation of vocal tonality, eye contact or lack thereof, the nonverbal communication that people have, the, and now after this, we're all gonna be like, eye contact, right?

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  The nonverbal communication that you have, the way that everything works together in concert is such a telling picture. It tells a very accurate tale of what's going on in our heads. In fact, I was reading this today. Steven Kotler's new book that's coming out next month, Stealing Fire, yeah. They're talking about this AI shrink. And this artificial intelligence shrink is a robot. It's just a, probably an iPad connected to a computer or something like that. It, it can ask you basic questions. It can generate like really basic rapport. Where are you from? Chicago. Oh, I've never been there. I'm from Los Angeles, right? It's really basic, but it will measure vocal tonality, the way that, where your eyes are going, how fast your body's moving, where you're facing, how fast you're facing, how fast you're talking.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  And it's taking 60 measurements per second on your non-verbal communication. And it's, and verbal communication, I suppose for that matter. But it's not thinking, hmm, is that a lie? It's just taking an objective measurement of each of these 60 data points every second and going, this person is in this emotional state. This person is in that emotional state, which I think is fascinating and very, very cool for therapy reasons. However, what that also means is that since this technology is in its infancy, what that means is that Ex Machina or whatever, remember that movie? Is right around the corner where robots can manipulate our emotions much better than any sociopath ever could. Because they're not going to make mistakes. Because they're going to be programmed by experts that have gone through thousands of iterations of the same scenario.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  It's not going to have agendas that serve its own biology or emotions because it doesn't have any. Right? A lot of times what gives up a sociopath is they can't help themselves. They, they find themselves addicted to some sort of psychological stimulation like sex, drugs, money, whatever, ego. A robot doesn't have that. It's only thinking about the end result, which is just like, that could get messy.

• 30:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  I don't know how we get on this topic. Right. So, so that's one of my takeaways, right? Is that the, the body doesn't lie or it has a harder timeline.

• 30:07Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  And the other, the other thing is that we filter, and there's a lot of these takeaways, I suppose, but one that's been on my mind recently is that we filter everything through our own emotional filters. So if I send you an email and you just tripped over some dog poo on the sidewalk and, you know, you got a call from a friend of yours and they were unhappy with you for some reason and... You know, all your team called in sick the same day because they went to a concert. Not that you would ever do that, but that and you're just annoyed. And then I send you a text like, hey, man, what's going on? You might just, you're not going to go, I'm great. What's going on with you? You're going to, you're going to respond in an emotional filter. And that's an obvious consequence of a, of a certain exchange.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  However, if I send you a text that says, hey, what's the deal with your new book? You might be like, why? You don't like it, right? Instead of if you're in a positive emotional state, you might go, yeah, I'm super excited about it. It's awesome. The cover's done. Let me send you a picture. It's going to be red. Can you check out the first chapter? Uh, check out the, the last page. I got this infographic in there. Right, you're excited about it because you're in a positive state. If you're not though, you filter through an emotional filter of negativity and that guides your response. And I realize that we do this in every single area of our life. So no matter how you react, or no matter what kind of stimuli come into your world any given day, it's always going to be filtered through the goggles, the virtual goggles that you are wearing that are your emotions.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  And that's interesting because a lot of times we can control our emotions and that it's hard to do that. But that will color the way that we experience our entire life. And that this, this has head nods to probably every ancient tradition and religion and Buddhist thing out there. However, it's cool to see now that you can, not only can you see this in real time in yourself, but you can start to take control of it. And science is finally starting to back this stuff up. Science is finally starting to say, oh, all right. If you are, if you wake up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed and you experience all these different things, you can kind of tune and dial in the way that you want to experience pretty much everything in your whole life by trying to access and change your own emotions, which you can control.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  And it goes back to these old maxims of focus on the things you can control. Don't worry about what you can't. And I don't know who said that, if there's probably a hundred people who said that from the Dalai Lama to the guy who works at the front desk of your building. But. Focusing on what you can control is not just, oh, I can't do anything about what that person says, but I can control my response. It's that, but it's also very granular in that we can focus on our actual individual emotional responses when it comes to things like that and realize in the moment, oh, I'm not mad at my wife or my girlfriend or my dog. I'm not mad at the delivery guy for showing up late. I'm not mad at my neighbor, actually. I'm mad about this thing. Well, wait, am I mad about this thing that happened yesterday?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  No, I'm mad about what that thing says about me in my own mind. Okay, wait, I need to change that perception. Wait, where does that perception come from? It comes from this, it comes from this, it comes from this. And then you find yourself tracing, you go Freud on this-ish, and you find out like, oh, this thing that happened when I was in fifth grade that got compounded over middle school has been impacting the way that I deal with money, women, family, business, friendships for my whole life. And only then at that point can you let it go. And this isn't like meditate on this grasshopper, right? This is like do some writing and soul searching and look at your actual responses. If you throw a book at the wall tomorrow because your

• 33:46Speaker 01

  sales letter didn't convert, it's probably not because the sales letter didn't convert. There's something else going on.

• 33:52Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. I think that's interesting because, you know, a lot of us go through these, we have these habits of triggers. You know, we're triggered by different things in our lives that happen. I think that happened to us or around us, and then we're automatically triggered to respond in a certain way, whether it be we close off and are, you know, scared or depressed, or we get aggressive, or we lash out, or we start fuming, or whatever it may be. And like you said, it's not that thing that happened in that moment that triggers us. It's something else that we built up over time and our perception of what's happening. As a protection, uh, as a defense mechanism essentially, right?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and unfortunately, our defense mechanisms, mechanisms often just make things much, much worse.

• 34:33Lewis Howes?

  It's a bigger story.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  I mean, I got fricking triggered today because I, I've got a one star review on the show on iTunes and that drives me bananas.

• 34:39Lewis Howes?

  Right? You're like, do you know how long I've been putting energy into this?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, come on.

• 34:42Lewis Howes?

  Ten years of hard work.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  And you, and especially when you get one and it's just like stupid and you're like, that's it? No criticism? There's no like measured response?

• 34:52Lewis Howes?

  There's no name on it and it's like...

• 34:53Speaker 01

  It's like they bash their hand on the keyboard five times or whatever. And I know that that's a thirteen year old kid who's like, I'm just gonna click dislike on this. Cause it's at the top of iTunes right now in front of the one I was actually looking for. Or this wasn't the search result I wanted, one star. Or it's the guy whose foot I stepped on yesterday, you know, I don't know. But I also know that my response to that is unreasonable because it doesn't actually say anything about my work. It has to do with their perception of, maybe not even their perception of my work. And even then though, but I put so much pride into what I do. That when I see it, I'm, I love when people email me and be like, here's why I don't like your show. I get that.

• 35:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  I don't like when it's an anonymous coward on iTunes or somebody who's just firing something off on 4chan.

• 35:38Lewis Howes?

  Tell me your name and your website so I can reply to you.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:42Lewis Howes?

  And, and we can have a conversation and see how I can make it better and get real feedback.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, dialogue. But, and I know logically that works, right? However, our emotional responses are the opposite of logic. Our logical brain is completely disengaged. All it is, we're in throw the book against the wall mode. That's entirely, the, it's lizard brain takes over. It's completely unreasonable and it always does us a disservice. And so that mindfulness key concept is important, but it's also important to not just go, hmm, I'm feeling the emotion of distress right now. Let me calm down.

• 36:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  You gotta trace it back.

• 36:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  You gotta trace it back or you're always gonna be effed up and the, the triggers are always gonna be there. You can't just buff it out. You've gotta replace the little panel, the wooden panel that's got the dent in it, right?

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So let's talk about perception then because I think there's a lot of people listening who would like to have, who would like to create more in their life. They would like to have a bigger business. They would like to have people supporting them, promoting them, whatever it may be, get the job they want, things like that. They want more in their life, health, business, relationships, everything. And perception and first impressions, what we were talking about earlier, plays a big role in how you create what you want in your life. You know, if I had, you know, a lot of everything is perception, right? It's the way you build your brand around you, whether it be your business, your personal brand of you just showing up in the world. It's a brand. And if you put out a negative energy or negative brand, you're going to have a negative perception about yourself.

• 37:10Lewis Howes?

  The way you speak, the way you look, the way you talk, the way you look at people in the eyes, the way you touch, all these things. It's either going to connect to a positive perception, which people are going to have that for a long time unless it's shifted, or it's going to be a negative thing or an off thing where they're not inspired either way. So how do we, and I know you have a tool for this or some type of process or drill, you said, but how do we really set ourselves up to win so that we create a positive perception in the minds of everyone we come in contact with as often as possible. Obviously, we're going to have off days and stuff like that, but what can we do?

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Sure. So one of the, the sort of common misconceptions is that our first impressions that we make on other people are the first thing that we say or the first interaction that we have. And that sounds reasonable when you're thinking about making a good first impression with people in general. However, the, what we know from science and what we know, and I'll back up and prove this real quick, is that our first impression is not made when we open our mouth. It's made when we become a blip on the other person's radar. And so what I mean by that is our Perception of other people, and this is evolutionary psychology 101 here, is that we do snap judgments of people based on what we see.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  And we have to do that. It's a safety thing. Women are 10,000 times better at this than men. That's not a scientific measurement because they have a, they have a safety question that that is just the elephant in the room.

• 38:38Lewis Howes?

  Is this person safe?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Is this person safe? Right. Whereas you and I, I don't, I only think about that when it's like, face tattoos and serious like dark alley type stuff. Yeah. And other, even then, if I'm in a civil, if I'm in a movie theater and there's a guy who's 6'6" and has face tattoos, I'm like, hey, man. Pass the popcorn. I don't care. Right. But if I'm outside at night in Hollywood or something like that, then it's a different story. But for those perceptions that we make, they're made completely non-verbally and you can test that just by going out for a walk right now and then, or maybe after the show. Go out for a walk and see when you make a judgment of the next people that you see, and it's going to be before you talk to them. Unless they sneak up on you, in which case you got other issues.

• 39:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  But the reason this is important is because since we're making those judgments the second we see people, and it's happening at a subconscious level in our brain, that means that our first impressions are always made non-verbally. And so this is really, really important because people who spend a lot of time thinking, what do I say? How do I start this conversation? What do I do to approach this person and get them to like me? That all becomes far less relevant.

• 39:42Lewis Howes?

  It's not as much important about what you say or

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:45Lewis Howes?

  even how you're saying it. It's more about who you're being.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:48Lewis Howes?

  And the way you're saying it in beforehand.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. It becomes far less relevant to the, the actual connection that you have with that person.

• 39:58Lewis Howes?

  And before you get into the drill, I'll back that up by giving, you know, as a positive example of this, there's so many times, like when I was single. Years ago even, like not even the last time I was single, but years ago, like in my early twenties, when I was just like, you know, trying to like say hi to every girl.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

• 40:15Lewis Howes?

  I always, yeah, I always felt like, I never knew what to say. I always felt like this dumb kid. It was like, I don't have anything clever to say. I'm not like this smart kid. But I was like, you know what? Let me just practice using the gifts that I do have, which is I can smile. I can smile and come up to someone with like positive energy, like be open hearted and just like smile and look them in the eyes. And not like stare into their soul or whatever, but just like

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Creepy style.

• 40:38Lewis Howes?

  Kind of make them like a little bit like uncomfortable, like, oh, that's interesting that the person has the confidence to look at me for like two seconds. And smile. And then just kind of like keep walking or whatever, or say hello. And when I would do that, I would always feel like if I came with a big smile, like genuine. Almost a hundred percent of the time, the girl would talk to me or whoever I wanted to talk to would talk back and it'd be like this friendly conversation. Just like that one little cue of big heart, big smile.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of switches being flipped in the subconscious mind when that happens, which is the safety switch go, well, okay, dangerous people often don't smile, which isn't true, by the way. But it is, is, that's why dangerous people do over emphasize a smile is because they're often overly charming because they are dangerous and they're predators. It's another, that's another thing for, I did a show with Gavin DeBecker, The Gift of Fear. We talked a lot about that.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, you're right. You're flipping a lot of the right switches, which is, look, this person is friendly. This person is maybe safer. This person isn't judging me right now or has judged me in a positive way, which is great. So there's approval there. Uh, that's very welcoming for a lot of people. And then of course, you having other friends in the same room is also very helpful. Any situation like that that comes about can be, add to a positive first impression. And so

• 41:55Lewis Howes?

  But I never said anything like unique or clever. It's just like, oh, we can have conversation by just being positive.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of guys, I think when they're dating, especially if they don't know how to start conversations. Or even if you're going up to your favorite speaker at an event or something like that, often people are like, oh, I don't know what to say. And it's like, well, it doesn't really matter because here's what's happening. If you're not saying anything, I'm getting a weird vibe from the creepy, quiet person who's just staring at me, trying to figure out what to say because your body does weird stuff when your mind is otherwise engaged.

• 42:30Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  So it's better to just turn that off. Cause if you're thinking, hmm, what do I say? What am I gonna do? Then you just look like You look strange and you look unapproachable and the gears are turning.

• 42:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  And we don't think, and you guys can probably back this up. If a guy walks up to a female and he is nervous, a lot of times, if he looks like the type of guy who shouldn't be nervous, like if it's Lewis and he walks up and he's like nervous and fidgety, you're not thinking, "Oh, how cute, he's nervous." You're thinking, "Okay, what is going on here? This is creepy. I don't get it. Why is this person creeping me out?" And we mirror people naturally, like I will mirror your emotions.

• 43:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Women will mirror our emotions, they'll mirror each other's emotions. That's a human thing. So if I'm nervous and anxious, other people are gonna start to become that way in the interaction and they're not gonna go, "Oh, well, you know, he probably just has a little bit of anxiety because he's not used to being in a room full..." No, that's not what's happening. What's happening is they're going, "He's nervous. What's he gonna do? Cause I'm nervous now and I don't know why. And since I don't know why, I'm just gonna leave because that's gonna make me feel not nervous, which is where I wanna be. That's my comfort zone."

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  You end up making other people feel strange. Whether through eye contact that doesn't match the rest of your body, eye contact that seems like there's an intent behind what you're doing, that's not the words that you're saying. So all of these things goes back to the body can't lie, that first takeaway. The body can lie, it's just very hard, but the body certainly will give away and betray your intentions. It just might be that the other person's perception of your intentions is incorrect.

• 44:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 44:08Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  And so what we try to do is create positive first impressions that we now know have to be non-verbal and they have to be positive, they have to be open and they have to make sense and they have to portray the intent that we have, which is hopefully positive, friendly, open, loving, whatever sort of positive adjective we wanna throw in here.

• 44:27Lewis Howes?

  Right. So what's the drill then?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  So the drill, I call this a doorway drill, is this kind of an art of charm staple. And what this is, is you know, when you're confident, you naturally are upright, like you basically just did this. Upright, open body language, smile on your face, chin up ideally, chest back or chest forward, shoulders back. You don't have to be like, you know, Superman pose or anything. Uh, those power posing things have kind of been, those studies are hard to replicate, I'll put it that way. But if we, if we remember what we look like in this position and we're doing this socially and this is how we feel positive, open, loving, open-hearted, I think is the word that you used. If we do that every time we walk through a doorway, we no longer have to do this manually. Cause what a lot of people do is they go, oh, good, right. Open, tall, positive body language.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Put a smile on my face. That's going to work next time I go into a place and start a conversation. But the problems crop up when you're trying to do what we just talked about, what you just talked about, and you're trying to remember to do that at all times. Not going to happen.

• 45:26Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  It's kind of like telling yourself, remember to notice things. It's an impossible task, right?

• 45:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  You can't do it. You can't be mindful of your verbal and nonverbal communication and stay present in a conversation. It's, it's too many things for your brain to concentrate on with different parts at the same time. It's very difficult. I don't know anybody who's good at it and still looks natural doing it. So we have to relegate the positive, open, friendly, nonverbal communication to the level of habit. And the way that we do that is with the doorway drill. Doing that upright, shoulders back, chest up, chin up, smile on your face. Every time you walk through a doorway, even in your own house.

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  When we have that, when you have that posture going, I don't know how, I, I should count how many times I walk through a doorway. And I'll tell you to illustrate my earlier point, I've tried to count in a day, how many times I walk through a doorway. But you can't because you just can't remember to count every time you walk through a doorway. Just like you can't remember to straighten up, put your shoulders back every time you have a conversation. It's impossible. You're not going to do it. You need to make it a habit. If you do it every time you walk through a doorway, let's say you walk through a doorway a hundred times in an average day in your office or house. You will eventually have the habit of having upright, positive, nonverbal communication. And you gotta do it every day because it, I just got off a plane. I've been sitting like this for,

• 46:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  You know, two hours. You gotta reset and you have to constantly reset every time you sit up, stand up, whatever. This is great because if you do this and you relegate this and you create this habit over time, the next time you go downstairs to Starbucks, do you drink coffee? I feel like you're not a coffee guy, but I could be wrong.

• 46:57Lewis Howes?

  Uh, normally I don't, but I've been doing bulletproof lately. Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Dave came over and was like, here's a bag of coffee. That's what he did to me.

• 47:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  He's like, here's a bunch of stuff that you're going to feel really guilty about not using.

• 47:09Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. So.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Here it is.

• 47:10Lewis Howes?

  I do that, but sometimes I don't need it. I mean,

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:13Lewis Howes?

  I've never really been into coffee.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:14Lewis Howes?

  And I still don't feel like it does anything to me.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  It like, I don't feel, like I can drink coffee at midnight and fall asleep.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Oh, shoot. I'm sorry.

• 47:21Lewis Howes?

  I can drink it in the,

• 47:22Speaker 01

  I'm the opposite.

• 47:23Lewis Howes?

  I can drink it in the morning. And still feel like I have the same energy as if I don't drink it. So it's not like I ever feel like I'm exhausted, I need it.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:31Lewis Howes?

  But I kind of just like the taste and you know, the idea of it.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  I have, I have the worst of both worlds. Here's my coffee experience and I'll get back to my earlier point in a second. I drink coffee in the morning and I go, I don't think that worked. And then I know that if I have a second cup, I'm just gonna feel jittery and irritable. But then I try to go to bed 12 hours later and I'm like, crap, what's the prob- oh, I had coffee this morning.

• 47:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Ca- caffeine half-life is so long that you still have caffeine in your body. It's not worth it. Um, but what I was, what I meant to say before my, and now you know that I have ADD.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  When you walk downstairs to Starbucks or when you go to that networking event or when you go to that next meeting,

• 48:07Lewis Howes?

  It's automatic.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  It's automatic. And then you can focus on your verbal communication, which is so much more difficult for us to stay present in the conversation. Think about, alright, what am I trying to do with this conversation? Where do I want this to go? What am I going to say next? That's a whole different set of, I would say, skills slash problems of self-management and self, self-actualization and authoring that, that get us past that. However, to not then worry about your non-verbal communication is so powerful. And if you don't do it, not only are you not going to be present, but you're gonna run into this type of situation. And let me give you an example here. You're gonna walk into, uh, let's say I'm going to meet you at a bar with a bunch of our mutual friends, right? And you guys are on the right and we're all single, let's, let's go back 10 years or whatever.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  And there's a bunch of cute girls on the left and we're in college or something like this, right? We'll do a dating context thing, cause I know a lot of people watching are, are of that age group and in that, in that mindset. If I walk in and I walk over to you guys and I'm just, you know, tired from the day and I'm, I just, I didn't have my coffee, my bulletproof, and I'm going, alright, let's get a drink. So I'm going to ordering a couple of drinks, even though we don't drink. Let's pretend we do. We're doing that and we're hanging out. And then I notice, oh, there's some girls at a table over there. Let me have another one. Let me, let me pretend I'm watching the basketball game. You know what I'm talking about. Right? You're watching at the bar like, oh yeah, the, yeah, bullets, cool. And then eventually I walk over there after three Jack and Cokes and I'm like, hey, what are you guys drinking?

• 49:36Speaker 01

  And they're like, nope. And it's not because of my height. It's not because of my skin tone. It's not because my hair doesn't have enough stuff in it or too much stuff in it. It's not because my opening line wasn't clever. It's because when I walked in the door, they noticed that the, they're noticing the other people in the venue. They noticed me when I walked in or at some point thereafter. They saw me standing around watching the bullets, those spurs or whatever with my hands in my pockets. They saw us sitting over there drinking Liquid Courage, maybe not smiling because you know, we're guys gotta be tough, you know, hang out, take up way too much space. They saw that stuff and they went, oh, that guy's insecure. So I don't, we're done with that. Next, and then-

• 50:13Lewis Howes?

  They might not have said it, but they're subconsciously thinking it.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  All subconsciously happening. Yes. Hundred percent. Hundred percent subconscious. And they might even think, oh, my first impression was when he walked over here, but the, the brain isn't troubling their conscious mind with the real deal, which is, we already wrote that guy off 20 minutes ago. You don't even have to worry about him, Angela. Just, just let him go.

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  And you may not even have like looked at the person for, you know, even a minute. It could have been like a quick second.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:41Lewis Howes?

  But the brain automatically associates with a certain perception-

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:45Lewis Howes?

  Of the energy you're putting off.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:47Lewis Howes?

  And whenever I go to an event, you've been to a lot of events, I've been to a lot of events or bars or just places with lots of people in it. There's really only a couple of people that maybe stand out that you notice that you're like, oh, they've got something different about them. Like, and it's always their energy, their posture, the way they smile, the way they look, their intention, what they're doing with their hands. There is a level of comfort that they have that you're like, I want to speak to that person or that's the girl I really want to talk to. Or the guy who's like, I wish he came over and talked to me type of thing. Or, uh, this guy's just curious. I just want to know who this person is. So I want to go say hello and introduce myself. There's only really a few people and maybe there's more when they listen to your show. There's tons of people now, but usually I always see a few people that I'm like really stand out.

• 51:31Lewis Howes?

  And I'm like, there's something different. And when you go back to thinking like, what is that thing that was different? Like they're usually, you know, not sloppy dressed. They don't have to be over flashy, but there's just a level of confidence.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Comfort in their own skin is kind of hard to stand.

• 51:43Lewis Howes?

  Comfort in our own skin, yeah. So how do we, you know, and I think the quote you said last time is something about, and I remember specific things, but I think this was something about, um, we default to the level of our training.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yes, we don't rise to the level of our expectations. We default to the level of our training. And I can't remember who said that.

• 52:00Lewis Howes?

  Probably some Navy SEAL.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  I got it from a Navy SEAL who started the, one of the guys who founded the SEAL Team Six dev group. I got it from that guy a long time ago.

• 52:10Lewis Howes?

  What is it again? We don't rise to our what?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  We don't, and it's, his name is Dick Marcinco, if you want to look it up, but I think that the quote that I remember it is, we don't rise to the level of our expectations. We default to the level of our training. And I think it was maybe originated by him, or at least appropriated very aptly by the guy who started.

• 52:28Lewis Howes?

  So we.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  One of the, that organization like that.

• 52:30Lewis Howes?

  So we essentially need to train being comfortable in our own skin every single day.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:35Lewis Howes?

  In order for us to rise to the expectation of doing that when the moment comes, right?

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Right. Cause you're, you're basically, you're setting the bar of where you train. And what he meant by that is when the bullets start flying, you're not going to become Superman. You're going to default to whatever your lizard brain knows you have to do. So if our habits, our lizard brain says, all right, well, every time I go anywhere, I straighten up. Cause I walked through a doorway and I smile. You don't even have to know why you're doing it. You don't have, even have to know that you are doing it. And then since we also know that the mind follows the body and the body follows the mind, and this comes from the Botox study, which I can talk about in a bit as well. We know that you're, you'll eventually start to feel differently in terms of the way that you interact with other people.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  But the other side of the, the cycle, the virtuous cycle also takes part here, which is when you see those exact people that you just mentioned, you treat those people at a subconscious level, a little bit differently than you would treat somebody who's like. Hey Louis, I like your show, right? You would treat that person well, but you wouldn't think, wow, that's, that's the kinda guy I wanna surround myself with, right? Because there's a certain type of communication that's happening here. So when those people that have that little extra air of confidence, they look a little put together, they have, they're comfortable in their own skin, you treat them differently. And when those people go through their whole life, being treated differently, you need a charger for that sucker. That's good. When they go through their whole life, being treated differently by people in a, in a positive way,

• 54:02Speaker 01

  they start to fulfill that role, because why wouldn't they? We almost always allow other people to train us how to act. We allow society to program us, whether it's program us to be confident with a cool athlete guy who's popular in high school, or whether we're the kid who skips school because he turns hot and red when he thinks people are looking at him even though nobody gives a crap, right? We allow that outside influence to come and program us, no matter how tough, you think, I don't let anybody, no, you do. It's subconscious, you can't stop it, don't try to stop it, shape it. And one of the ways to do that is the doorway drill. And, uh, and the reason, by the way, I wanna prove stuff, cuz I like science and I like to not just have people take my word for it.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  When I say the body follows the mind and the mind follows the body, the Botox study was super interesting. We know that, there, there was a study a long time ago, and I can't remember what this, a long time ago, several years ago. I wish I'd looked this up beforehand. When they gave depressed people, well, first of all, Botox, for those of you who don't know, is a toxin that you inject into your face, and it's supposed to stop wrinkles, so it's actually botulism toxin, AKA the plague. They, they shoot it into your face, it's very popular in your neighborhood, actually. And what it does is it causes your face to take these unnatural kind of paralyzed forms, because the toxin paralyzes the muscles in a tense way in your face.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  And that's what makes you look younger, slash makes you look like a clown man from Beverly Hills. But- When you inject that in your skin, it stops the muscles from doing what they're gonna do. So they did a study where they injected this into the frown lines on people with depression. And their symptoms were either partially or largely alleviated.

• 55:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  And they went, wait, what's happening here? They thought maybe the botulism toxin was having some effect on the brain, or was da-da-da-da. They figured out in, by stimulating the nerves manually, that it's very, very hard to get sad, stay sad, be sad, default mode sad.

• 56:03Lewis Howes?

  Where you smile like.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  You can't move your face, right? They figured that out and they figured, oh my gosh, what other things will cause us to change emotional state? And you end up with the research from people like Amy Cuddy, which I said, there's some, maybe, let's put a little asterisk by that, because there may be some difficulty reproducing that study, but we see power posing, we see some of the Tony Robbins stuff, we see a lot of emotional state shifting as a result of changing your body. And we all know we can do certain movements, right? And we also know that things like exercise release endorphins, which are also released during certain types of physical motions. So it's not just, Jordan said, the body follows the mind and the mind follows the body, do the doorway drill. It's, look, the science is there, it's maybe not all packed in, jammed tight,

• 56:46Speaker 01

  but I'm not gonna wait for there to be an exhaustive 100-year study to try something and see if it works for me.

• 56:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Right? If it doesn't work for you, my bad, but try one of the other bajillion drills that we give away on the show. But I think this will work for you, because I haven't met anybody that it doesn't help.

• 57:02Lewis Howes?

  You know, I went through many years of being insecure. I was not the popular high school athlete kid, you know?

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Really? I totally just pegged you as like the guy who always, you know, rocked it.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  Because I was the youngest, uh, you know, my freshman year, I was like on varsity sports, so I was like the one they picked on. Like the young, like rookie, I was always like the young one.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  Because I was playing up.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:21Lewis Howes?

  Um, and so it wasn't until I was a senior where I was like, oh, now I'm the oldest. And I'm not like the little brother that everyone's picking on and making fun of constantly. Even if I was like one of the best athletes in the school, it was still a lot of insecurity. And so I didn't have comfort talking to other people, I didn't feel comfortable in small groups, I couldn't speak in front of an audience without trembling. I could never go up to a girl and say- Hello. Yeah. So I started doing these tests myself because I was like, okay, I want to become Batman, so I need to become the bat. And I was like, that means I need to go talk to girls every single day, even when I'm scared of it. And I became, it became a habit. Nightmare. Yeah, it was terrifying, right? When I was like sixteen in the summer, I made a commitment to myself. Every single day when I see a girl that gives me butterflies, I'm gonna go up and at least have an interaction.

• 58:06Lewis Howes?

  Now, the first like month, it was like, you know, I didn't know what I was saying. It was just like fumbling over like trying to not look like an idiot. But I was like, okay, it wasn't that big a deal if they like ran away from me like, whatever, there's another girl down the street, like, let me go try again. And I got comfortable being uncomfortable and experiencing rejection over and over and started to feel like, okay, what works? Where I get a positive response, where someone smiles, and then where they actually reply to me. And then where they, you know, give me a hug, or they like give me their number, like, I would just be like, okay, I can just be more myself, be more natural, and it works. And I started practicing certain things because I, I grew up really like lonely and insecure and, and depressed through various times. Um, you know, my brother was in jail for a number of years, parents were divorced, a lot of different things happened.

• 58:50Lewis Howes?

  So I just feel, felt very confused. No, I'm, I'm a white male that grew up in America, so I'm very blessed in that sense. But I also had a lot of inner battles emotionally, which made me feel like my life was chaos inside, right? And I remember practicing certain things where I would just stand in front of the mirror, and maybe this is like Tony Robbins-esque or something. But I would stand in front of the mirror and just smile at myself. And when, and when I would see a smile back, it was like, it brought more joy to me. So I said, let me practice this with other people, where I smile in front of them and see a smile back. Like, if I could just get them to smile, it would like bring so much joy to my life. When I would like walk down the street in New York City, when I lived there, I would smile at people. And just see if I could get them to smile.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  New York, and they're like, creep, get away from me. But like, you always see like a, like a smirk at the end of this, you know? Cause it's a fricking physiological reaction. And you're just like a genuine smile, not like a creepy smile, like a genuine smile, just like, hey, you know? And someone would smile back, it's like, okay, I created a positive response in that person, which brings me more fulfillment and joy, which makes me wanna smile more. Exactly. Stand up taller, just naturally, I'm not even thinking about it. Right. But I feel better. And so I would just smile throughout the whole day. So I try, one of my drills is every time I see someone, it's a smile. Great. Even if I'm in a negative mood. But if I don't smile, I'm gonna stay in a negative.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Right, you're gonna stay, you gotta break that state, right?

• 1:00:12Lewis Howes?

  You gotta break it at some point. Now, obviously, there's time and place for just like being in a rut and having your moment or whatever.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  You gotta allow it.

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you can't just be fake all the time like, "Everything's great, my dog just died," you know what I mean?

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Pulling the Nicole Kidman, like, face is always the same no matter what.

• 1:00:26Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, but I mean, I think if you wanna get out of this estate that's not working for you, like, smile at the next person you see and just keep smiling at the next person and see if you can get a mirror.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it. I love that. And I feel like the, what you just mentioned with being that guy in high school also illustrates a little bit the earlier point that we always let other people program, or inform, I should say, not program, how we feel about ourselves. And that can be really destructive, as it was for both you and for me in our time in school. However, now, when we know how to change the raw ingredients that go into that impression that we're making on them, we can cause the world to treat us differently, which then will, of course, positively inform the way that we feel about ourselves.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  So, you can't reject outside influence. It's a tough guy, bro-ism, like, "I don't give a crap what anybody..." You care so much what other people think, that you're telling us about how much you don't care. That's a, and that's not good. And so, rather than trying to fight that outside influence, you should actually use it to your advantage. And that's, that cascades into all of those reasons why you and I like to hang out with ballers and awesome people that are really cool and positive. And that's why I will send you a text when I feel like crap about something and you'll be like, "Actually, this was good and I liked that thing." And I'm like, "I was glad I texted Lewis today, I felt like crap earlier," you know?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  And I can count on you for that. Even though, like, you and I are still dudes in the same space, so we have this like, "Oh yeah? Well, you did that? Well, I'm doing this." Like, there's a light competition, but I don't feel like it's gone... To the level of where it's unhealthy or weird and I feel like I can still open up and go, God, you know, sometimes I just wonder what the hell I'm doing here.

• 1:02:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  And it's, and it's fun and it's nice to do that and then get reassurance. Like we had a call two weeks ago or a week ago. And I remember hanging up and going, I'm so glad I'm not the only one having these problems in the business. Cause we are on, we are in objective terms to successful people. What by pretty much any measuring stick that you can use that I, that I can hear of, right? If you've got a great place here, you've got a great team, you have good friends, you're in a relationship. This setup is cool. We're both on the upward swing and yet you can still walk outside tomorrow after getting up on the wrong side of the bed and go, this is a bunch of crap, you know, and it's raining outside and it's raining inside and you just can't do much about it.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Other than try to change the, the internal stuff that's going on, which is rolling that boulder uphill. I think it was a Prometheus who's doing that. Or you can try to change the way that the world reacts to you by change, tweaking a few levers. In the way that you present yourself and that is what we try to do, seek to do every day at the art of charm.

• 1:03:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool. Um, I want to ask a few more questions.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  Tell me about social capital and why it's so important.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Right after my, I hope this, this is, is this a sponsor of?

• 1:03:25Lewis Howes?

  No, it's not, but they're getting some free promotion.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  In that case.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Social capital is a term that we use for, and it's not just, I don't think we even made this up. It just sounds awesome. And it's something that's, that I found in the scientific literature after we started creating this product. But basically what it is, is a fancy term that encompasses things like referral currency, strong relationships, friendships. And, uh, and your network, which networking is a dirty word. So we don't want to talk about that. Like, uh, networking reminds me of like, here's my business card. Call me when you need a financial manager. And now you're just like, you know, that's what people think of networking. It's a dirty word. With social capital, we're taking into account the people that you surround yourself with. You only go as high as your five closest friends is a favorite quote that you and I have probably beaten people with over and over.

• 1:04:18Lewis Howes?

  Is that Jim Rohn?

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Jim Rohn. Yeah, exactly. And it's super true. And so I thought, okay, I want to surround myself with great people so that I can rise to that level. And you're doing the same thing here. There's pictures that prove it on your wall in the studio here. And Those people inspire us, they get us to do the right thing. Our shows are largely about this, right? Surrounding ourselves with these people virtually wherever possible. And in order to do that, you can't just call up Tony Robbins, or Chris Voss, Rob Dyrdek, Prince, you know, you can't do that. For, if, most people can't do that. We have worked, we've worked hard to get access to some of these people and get their wisdom available to our fans. And so what we've tried to do with the social capital course that we

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  run and what the concept of it at AOC is to show people, look, social capital is how you get promoted inside your organization. It's how you create a new social network when you move to a new town. It's how you create newer and stronger relationships or repair relationships with your family. Because a lot of us, I would say the majority of us, when we grow up, we're not thinking, I better manage this relationship that I have with my parents. We, we figure that stuff out after we leave the nest. And then, I don't know about you, but I left home and then I, I was probably like, yeah, cool, I'm free now for a few years. And now I'm 36, I'm going, oh, I should probably talk to my parents and manage this. Like, this is, the finite nature of these relationships is starting to become apparent.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  And so, we work on these skillsets that get us access to people inside our company that will help us, mentor us, move us up the ladder. We get access to higher quality friends. If the people that we are surrounded by now are satisfied with mediocrity, which by the way is the majority of us, the majority of people anywhere have people in their circle that are satisfied with mediocrity. And it's your job, like a bonsai tree, to trim and prune those people while also trying to bring them up, right? Because you don't just want to reject everybody that's not serving you in the right way. You want to help them as well. That's part of, it's, it's your job when you get to the top to send that elevator back down. It's, it's a, I think that's a showbiz quote, actually.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  And so, we want to teach those skillsets and we want to help people not only in their family and in their job, and in their social circle, but we also want to help people apply these things in every aspect of their life. Because, as you probably have also noticed, the highest leveraged thing that anyone can do is create relationships. Because that's your Archimedes lever. That's where you're gonna find other people helping you do the work. I can't just promote my show to everybody with one-on-one Twitter messages or something like that. It's impossible. But if I have an army of people that are referring Art of Charm out to everybody, because they like the content that's on the show, they're interested in what we do, that's how you get something that's incredible to grow. You can't do it alone.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  And that's no big secret, but what I found has been kind of hidden and secretive by accident, is the individual tiny little, little tiny steps that are necessary to build those networks and to nurture them. And that's, that's what social capital is for us. And that goes back to the doorway drill and the first impressions and the follow-ups, and the offering, delivering value to people to make sure that you create relationships with them that are valuable. It's a whole set of skills that most of us ignore, until we find ourselves knocking on the door, trying to get up, and people go, "Who are you?" "I've been here for 10 years." Well, this guy who's been here for five years has been working on all these different projects. He's the one who got promoted.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Or, and I learned this, the hard way slash the easy enough way on time. When I worked on Wall Street, and I got hired by this guy named Dave. Dave was never in the office. He was a guy from Brooklyn. He had a tan, which is strange. But I figured he knows something other people didn't know. And he was never in the office, like I said, so he's, "How are we billing in six-minute increments? How you making money for us, Dave? What's the deal?" When I finally asked him this, he told me, "Look, I bring in the deals for the firm. I bring in the business, I bring in the relationships that generate revenue for the firm." And I thought, "Wait a second." I've been trying to outwork people my whole life. I've managed to do that all the way through college and law school. I've tried to rely on my smarts my whole life. I did that all the way through college and through law school.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Now I'm on Wall Street. Everyone's smart. Everyone's hardworking. What's my lever? What's my Archimedes lever? What's my competitive advantage? Then, I didn't have one, and that freaked me out. And I thought, "I'm gonna get fired. They're gonna figure out I don't belong here. Imposter syndrome. Classic." Then I saw that Dave had a lead on what looked like a secret third path, right? Nobody's paying attention to this path, the relationships and the networking. Nobody's focused on it, nobody's learning the skills involved. And so I decided to dedicate and focus more on that, to double down on that. Because as much as I'd been studying humans, relationships, persuasion, that obsession you mentioned earlier. I figured, "Oh, I'm a lawyer now, you know, I'm good, I don't need to worry about that."

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  It's, it turned out to be even more true at the top of the corporate ladder, or anywhere on the corporate ladder, than it was even throughout my regular life, dating, with friends, and anything like that. It was even more true then. And so I started to focus on that, and I realized that the people, when the recession hit, Dave walked into another firm as a partner. Everybody else that was working at this firm got laid off, a lot of the partners retired early. Fancy speak for basically being unemployable anywhere else. And, and they didn't want to be a mid-level associate after being a partner. I mean, it was just not, not in the cards. And so these guys were out of luck, and I thought, "Wait a minute." These guys didn't not know what Dave was doing, they were benefiting from the deals that Dave was bringing in.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  And then it, it really hit me that if you're not working on your networking, your relationships, and creating those relationships, you're just being willfully ignorant of the secret game that's being played around you. And Dave did that to his advantage, and all those other partners did it to their disadvantage. And the same thing goes for everyone listening right now and watching this, which is if you are not focusing on your relationships, you're not focusing on that social capital, you're not focusing on those connections between people, you're being willfully ignorant of the secret game being played around you. And eventually, of course, as with any game that you ignore, you will eventually lose. Because you are in that game whether you want to be or not. It's just that some people have their foot on the gas, and some people have their heads in the sand. Which one are you?

• 1:10:47Lewis Howes?

  Boom, that was good. Um, it comes down to, everything you're saying right now comes down to two quotes for me that resonate really well. One is, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:59Lewis Howes?

  And the other one is, I think Maya Angelou said, people won't remember what you said, but they'll remember the way you made them feel.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Yes. Are those both Maya Angelou or just the one?

• 1:11:08Lewis Howes?

  No, I think the first one's Roosevelt.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  May- oh, yeah, maybe it's Eleanor Roosevelt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Man, those all blur together, huh?

• 1:11:15Lewis Howes?

  But they're both essentially similar in terms of like, again, it doesn't, they're not gonna remember what you said to them when you open the conversation, that starter line, that whatever topic. They're gonna remember the way you made them feel, and people don't care how much you know, how smart you are, until they know how much you care. So, um, I think that's what it comes down to. If you can understand the science of that game, if you wanna call it, I don't really call it a game, I call it like,

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a tough.

• 1:11:40Lewis Howes?

  The world of understanding human beings, and what makes people tick, and what makes people feel safe, and feel lit up, and feel inspired, and feel driven, and empowered. All these are things, if we can understand that aspect of life, you will be extremely rewarded, in my opinion, if you know what to do with it.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  I could not agree more. I mean, this is what we've dedicated our life to doing at AOC. It's of course related to everything that you're doing here at School of Greatness as well. And so, it's, it's cool to be on the same mission in many ways with you doing this, because, uh, there's not a whole lot of people focusing on this, even though I think, and I agree with you.

• 1:12:19Lewis Howes?

  It's everything.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  It's everything. It's the most, it's the single most important thing you can focus on right now, especially if you're younger. Because when you, it's, and at work, just using it in one context, in your work context, if you're 24, or 28, or whatever, your first job out of college, your first real professional gig, you are probably just as equally qualified as every single other person on your rung of the ladder. The only way to set yourself apart is by having great social capital and networking skills. The soft skills will set you apart. The hard skills are all commoditized at that level. And then as you progress through the ladder, it's all about who you know. And people put stank on that. You should use that to your advantage. It's all about who you know. And then you get to the top and then you go, wait a second.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Everything that was true at the beginning of my career about soft skills and social capital is 100X more true now. Because how come that guy's been working here for 10 years? How come he's a partner and I've been here for 15 and I'm not, I'm of counsel, which is a position that you get below partner or as a nice little pigeonhole in a law firm. And you can end up going, oh my God, I've been heads down at work. And it's easy to feel like you got robbed, but really they focused on something that you didn't. And you can, you can try to say you didn't know and you can try to say that you focused on the right things. But really, you probably ignored the secret game being played around you.

• 1:13:44Lewis Howes?

  That's it, that's it. Uh, final few questions for you. Uh, and one is called the three truths.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:50Lewis Howes?

  And so if this is your last day on earth many years from now, and you only got to share three things. That would be your final message to the world, the three lessons, the three truths. From all the interviews you've done, the experiences, the things you put out there. Uh, there would be no memory of those things anymore. And you would have a piece of paper with three lessons or truths that you would share with the world. What would be your three truths?

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Oh man, this is hard without going into straight up cliche mode. I would imagine a lot of people go, uh, love and peace and happiness. Oh God. I don't know. Let me think right now before I just answer firing off at the hit. I think it's really easy for me especially, I can only speak from my own personal experience. So I'll just, I'll just dive in there. These probably aren't going to be the three most important things in the world.

• 1:14:39Lewis Howes?

  Your three truths.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  My three truths.

• 1:14:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Uh, the, the people and the time that you spend with those people is the best part of your life. And it's very easy for guys like you and I and, and hard charging guys and gals, entrepreneurs and stuff like that to go. Well, I don't want to go out with my friends this weekend. I got too much stuff to do. I don't want to go to your parents' house for dinner. I got too much stuff to do. I, I can't watch this movie or I'm going to check my email while we do this. That type of thing, I've spent so many years doing it and it's, it became, that it actually became hard for me. To enjoy time when I wasn't working on something and I still get that way. But I've realized that every time that I take a time out. And I spend it with people that I love. Or you know, friends, family, whatever.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  I always realized that that was a really, a really, really good use of time and that I really needed it. And I, I found an important truth about myself, which is that spending time with people that have nothing to do with my business. Or that have, maybe they have something to do with my business, but we're spending quality time together outside of that. That recharges me more than I ever thought possible. And I think a lot of people will think, oh, I'm an introvert. I don't really need that. I need to. I think people will surprise themselves. If they actually set aside time to enjoy other, the company of other people. And it's hard to do when you're running your own ship. It's really hard. But it's just as important as any business meeting that you'll have. Mm hmm. Okay. That's number one. Oh, man. The second thing.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  The, the second thing is that health has to be your number one priority. And I mean emotional and physical health. Um, I won't go into the whole self-care emotional stuff as much because maybe that'll be truth number three, but. Truth number two is. Look, I've played that game where I can't work out because I'm too busy. I've played that game where I've got to eat something unhealthy because I'm too busy. Or I don't have access to something. You can always figure out a way to eat healthy and work out, even if you're living in airports. And you will do that. If you treat health as your number one priority and people often pay lip service. To their health being their number one priority, but they don't actually put the systems in place to handle it.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  You'll put an email system in place. You'll put a Pinterest strategy in place, but you won't put a strategy in place to make sure that you have. Something healthy to eat for breakfast because you've got an early flight. You won't put something in place to make sure that you can work out, uh, in the hotel or the Airbnb where you're staying. Oh, I didn't, there's no gym around here. Guess I'm off the hook. No, come on, man. We're adults now. Put the strategies into place. Treat your health as a number one priority. Because just as with other business meetings, your health has to, that time at the gym has to be sacred. Don't care what you do. You have to take care of yourself. I spent. A long time. Oh, I've got to be home and check my email. I gotta be, I'm buried in this. I gotta get this work out the door. I gotta do this show.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  You have to, I've canceled shows to go to the gym. Don't tell anybody, right? But. I, because you have to, you will drive yourself nuts and your body will go. All right. You don't care about me? You're going to see the consequences. And then you can't give your gifts to the world. It's impossible because you're falling the frick apart.

• 1:17:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Okay, that's number two.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Phew. Number three, uh, it's gonna, it's gonna be, it's gotta be still self-care. It's gotta be still self-care because I feel like we neglect a lot of this stuff. And it's gonna, there's gonna be emotional self-care this time. Um, not just spending time with others, not just treating your health as your number one priority, but looking at things that you're doing and, and checking in with yourself regularly. Am I still happy with what I'm doing? It's very easy. Like you could look one day and go, kinda sick of like interviewing all these people and some of them show up late and it's irritating and I'm just, these orange lockers are driving me crazy. I keep banging my toes into them. But we don't do, we don't do that, right? Because we think, no, I built this. I have to keep building it. And what this is, is just a big picture, 30,000 foot overview, sunk cost fallacy in action.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  And what I mean by that is, a lot of times we can look at the family we built on autopilot, the business we built largely on autopilot, the friends and, and relationships that we have largely unconscious autopilot that we've made these choices. And instead of going, well, wait a minute, this person always complains and drives me nuts every time I talk to him. This food isn't good for me and I eat it and I eat lots of it, but I just, I don't know. And I've been doing that my whole life. Uh, oh, I always show up late just because I don't know. I mean, who cares? Those types of things that we don't question, that autopilot that we use to run our own lives and ru-run the way that we interact with other people and that we treat other people, a lot of that is done unconsciously. And the second we start to go,

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  hmm, maybe this can be done differently in a way that serves me better. That's a daily thing that we have to keep asking ourselves. We have to, we have to ask ourselves every time we do something, well, this, let's be realistic. We have to ask ourselves every day, maybe with one thing. Do I still enjoy this? Is this still delivering value or am I doing it just because I like it? Am I?

• 1:19:38Lewis Howes?

  I'm supposed to.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Right. Do I like golf or do I do it just because networking, corporate, you know, pink polo? I don't know. Do I like the type of exercise that I'm getting? Or am I just doing it because I gotta go to the gym? Do I like the sports games that I go to? Do I like the sports that I play? Do I like the people that I surround myself with? It does, does sort of encompass the last two things that I said, but it's, this, this truth is about mindfulness and making the choice every day to continue with what we're doing. And so when I get up and when I do a show and when I do an interview, I make the choice to go, look. This is something that I want to do. This is a person I want to talk to. This is the way that I want my show and my business to be, and this is the impression I want to make.

• 1:20:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  And if you constantly manage that at a conscious level, you're gonna find that you're guiding, you're, you're, you're driving. You're guiding the horse, not the driver leading the rider. And I think that's very important. And I feel like years of my life have gone by where I went to college because that's what you're supposed to do. And I went to a law school because that's what will get me a better job. And I woke up one day on Wall Street and said, what the hell am I doing here? And that was the day that everything changed and that we started taking off with AOC. And this is where we are now.

• 1:20:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Amazing, man. Amazing. Well, um, thanks for sharing those three truths.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:51Lewis Howes?

  Powerful. And before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Jordan, for, for showing up, for changing your life to make an impact in other people's lives and do something you actually want to do. So I think a lot of people do get stuck and they say, well, I've got the golden handcuffs and now I'm stuck here because I got the kid and responsibility. So this is my life. I'm stuck. And you set a new example and you're an inspiration to so many people by taking action in a different route and by doing something that you do love. And supporting people over the last decade with your work.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, 10 years.

• 1:21:24Lewis Howes?

  I want to acknowledge you for your incredible gifts, man. Yeah. And, and for constantly taking on your life every year to learn and grow, learn something new and grow. I think a lot of people will stop after a certain amount of time.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:35Lewis Howes?

  They've been successful. You're taking on a new language. You're taking on, you moved to a new city to try something new. You're taking on new things all the time to try and explore. So again, thanks for being a great example.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Dude, I, I love it. I, I would be lying if I said, oh, I do it all for, for everyone. It's, that's complete and utter rubbish. I do it largely for myself.

• 1:21:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  And the fact that it happens to be something that I can, am able to give to other people, that's a great rewarding joy. But I don't think anybody should, uh, lie to themselves and say, oh, you know, it's all about giving. It's really not. It's about, you can only give as much, and there's probably a cool quote or concept in here. You can only give as much as you're able to do yourself, right? You can't give love and knowledge and expertise and, and example. to other people when your own ship is just sinking like the Titanic so but thank you for that acknowledgement I appreciate it brother

• 1:22:27Lewis Howes?

  of course uh make sure you guys go check out art of charm podcast art of charm.com you're on social media at art of charm

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  yeah at the art of charm on Twitter and I don't do snapchat I know you probably love snapchat

• 1:22:41Lewis Howes?

  I like instagram more

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  yeah you're all over instagram and we're at the art of charm on instagram

• 1:22:45Lewis Howes?

  the art of charm yeah uh online on social media art of charm.com itunes art of charm check them out and the final questions what's your definition of greatness

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  I should have seen this one coming my definition of greatness man I don't want to give a cliche answer so give me just a second here

• 1:23:02Lewis Howes?

  sure

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  I really think okay this is probably cliche by accident but I mean it the greatness to me is really not accepting any excuses from yourself and I don't mean beating yourself up because we're all eventually gonna do something where we go I shouldn't have eaten that burrito right I mean I just did that literally today but uh but you can't accept excuses from yourself in terms of well you know I'm just too busy to go to the gym I mean how easy is it to say something like that or it people often go why are you learning Chinese there's no real benefit I mean I guess you may maybe you'll teach your kids and it's cool that you can talk to Jenny's family but like man it's like 10 hours a week six hours a week you're spending on this

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  and I it's so easy to go well yeah I just don't have time I should focus on this what am I gonna do though check more email if you don't accept excuses from yourself you'll find and you call yourself out on this stuff oh why are you why are you drinking do you enjoy it well no but you know I'm just I need to relax you can't relax in any other way by doing other than doing something that's bad for your health alright well that's true when you put it that way you have to have that conversation with yourself oh well you know I can't be like Lewis and Jordan cuz those guys have This type of privilege, they were born this, they have that, they live in these places, they had this opportunity, Louis is tall, I can't do this, right? I mean, whatever, you have to have that excuse conversation with yourself and you have

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  to not believe your own brand of bovine excrement. Because if you start to believe your own excuses, other people will humor you and you'll tell other people your excuses and they'll go, "Oh yeah, totally, you're so busy." And then they'll turn around and not accept excuses from themselves and in 10 years they'll look down at you and go, "Oh, you poor bastard, you just led yourself, you just lied yourself all the way into an early grave and a mediocre lifestyle and you're so unhappy." Because you believed in the short-term gratification instead of calling yourself out on stuff. And I think greatness will come from people who, every day, day in and day out, with exceptions and a room for error and forgiveness of yourself, call themselves out on every

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  single excuse that they can possibly find in their life, whether big or small, and instead take the high road, instead, you know, walk outside in the rain uphill both ways, or whatever your grandpa said the way to school was. If you can do that, you will be great.

• 1:25:27Lewis Howes?

  Jordan Harbinger, thanks, brother.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Thank you, man.

• 1:25:30Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate you coming on.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  It's been awesome.

• 1:25:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with your friends. Again, the link is lewishouse.com/439. Or if you're listening on SoundCloud, Stitcher, iTunes, any place you're listening to your podcast, click on the share button and tweet it out or post it on your Facebook page. If you know that your audience would enjoy learning about how to build self-confidence and how to master those social skills, share it out and be the hero of your network for sharing great free content. And if you missed last episode, we just hit four-year mark for the School of Greatness, where we announced it last week. And I'm super pumped and proud of what our team has created, what we're building, and what is to come.

• 1:26:16Lewis Howes?

  There is so much incredible greatness coming your way. So if this is your first time here, thanks for joining us in the four-year mark. If this is your fourth year here and you've been on every episode, thank you so much for your support. Again, make sure to subscribe, leave a review over on iTunes, so it'll help spread the message of the podcast even more. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.