#414: Jordan Harbinger on Building A World Class Podcast

Jordan Harbinger is an American podcaster and radio personality. He hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the United States, The Jordan Harbinger Show. In this conversation, we discuss Jordan’s story, how we grew his podcast, what the guest selection process looks like, why Jordan won’t sell to any podcast networks, and how his life experience informs his content. ======================= Digital art is here, and it's real. NFTs are selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars. The only platform I buy on is Nifty Gateway, which is an official sponsor of the Pomp Podcast. They release content from the best NFT artists in the world twice weekly, and have featured many world famous artists including Kenny Scharf, Trevor Jones and WhIsBe. NFTs on Nifty Gateway are in extremely high demand, so if you really want one, make sure to be on the website as soon as it is released. Go to http://www.niftygateway.com and sign up for an account today. ======================= Harvested Financial makes options incredibly simple. They’re the first options robo advisor, where you can build and customize a personalized trading plan that gets automatically executed. Options help you speculate in capital efficient ways, diversify your holdings with market neutral strategies, and generate passive income by selling premium. https://www.harvestedfinancial.com/pomp ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Jordan Harbinger is an American podcaster and radio personality. He hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the United States, The Jordan Harbinger Show. In this conversation, we discuss Jordan's story, how he grew his podcast, what the guest selection process looks like, why Jordan won't sell to any podcast networks, and how his life experience informs his content. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jordan, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Nifty Gateway. Bang, bang. I've been telling you guys, I'm

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

  super excited about digital art. I personally think the digital art market's going to grow to be bigger than the traditional art market. Digital art is here to stay, and it is real. NFTs, non-fungible tokens, are selling for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. The only platform I buy on is Nifty Gateway. They're an official sponsor of this podcast. They release content from the best NFT artists in the world twice a week, and they've featured many world famous artists, including Kenny Sharp, Trevor Jones, and Who's B. NFTs on Nifty Gateway are always the best. I like them, and so does the market, because they're always in high demand. So if you want one, make sure you go to the website and get an

• 1:31Anthony Pompliano?

  account. Go to niftygateway.com and create your account today. You can participate in the auctions, and you can also search through the secondary market. Niftygateway.com, your portal that allows you to start buying and holding digital art. Go check out niftygateway.com. Next up is Harvested Financial. They are making options incredibly simple. That's right, if you know nothing about options, go check out Harvested Financial. They're the first options robo-advisor, where you can build and customize a personalized trading plan that gets automatically executed. Options can help you speculate in capital-efficient ways. They can help you diversify your holdings with market neutral strategies and they can

• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  generate passive income by selling premium. Go check out Harvested Financial. I've had Mark Phillips on the podcast. He was great and the company is even cooler. Harvestedfinancial.com/pomp. Go to Harvestedfinancial.com/pomp and get access to the first options robo advisor that they've built. It's awesome. I like it. You will too. Next up is me. I'm sponsoring my own shit. I write a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com.

• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Jordan. I hope you guys enjoyed this one.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:34Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Jordan here. Thanks so much for doing this, man.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

• 3:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's jump right into your background. You've got a pretty crazy story before you got into media and the podcast. Just talk to us about where you grew up and kind of how you got to do the media stuff.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Sure. So I grew up in Michigan and my parents, you know, were like normal, middle class folks. My mom was a teacher and my dad was working at Ford as an auto worker. So for me, owning our business was never really like a thing I thought about doing. Entrepreneur wasn't a word people used. It wasn't, it's trendy now, you know, everyone's doing it, but like the internet economy obviously didn't exist when I was growing up. And when I was young, I was really trying to find things that would help me fit in. Because I was like, why does, you know, I don't understand how anything works. Why does anybody want a regular job? I didn't get it. And so I started to explore the internet in the 90s, the early 90s. And I was like, there's so much power in here. I just can't quite figure out exactly what all of it is.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  But I was communicating with a lot of adults online and I was doing a lot of different work online. Like, I remember one of my friend's dad's was like a stockbroker type person. And I think it was actually a stockbroker or he worked in some sort of brokerage house. And I would print off like stock quotes and then bike over to his office and give them to him. And he'd give me like 150 bucks. Because otherwise, he had to get the stock quotes from this like fax service that cost a lot of money. And it charged you every time they faxed you new stock information. And I think they only updated you like every few days, maybe, or something along those lines. Or every day at a certain time.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  And he's like, wait, I can call this kid and get like up to the minute plus a bike ride stock quotes from the internet? And I was like, yeah, I can do this. So he wanted me to set it up in his house. Couldn't really be done, but I could get like news, information, company information from libraries, from university libraries that was digitized. And nobody knew how to do that. So that was like me, that was like the beginning of me like, I guess you'd call it arbitraging information. I'm trying to hide this wire. It's not working very well. Usually sticks on the back, but I lost the clip. Arbitraging information for or from the online world. I'm just gonna let this go ahead and fall down like that. And that was really easy for, for me to do as a kid. And then as I got older, I was like, wait, there's, there's more to this sort of internet business. And I sort of let it go for a while.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  And, you know, now I'm doing media and radio on the internet. So podcasting with the Jordan Harbinger Show. But I was on Sirius XM for a long time. You know, I, I worked a lot sort of in adjacent professions and I was a lawyer before that. But I guess I was always sort of destined to work and do something online on the internet. Because that really was like what I'd been, what it sort of started doing, what I was interested in doing.

• 6:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And as I was reading online before we went to do this, you've got like these crazy life experiences, which I always think makes people the most interesting or fascinating, or people who've traveled, people who have kind of had different experiences. I saw that at one point, there was this thing in North Korea, through China, there was some maybe difficult situations that like kidnapping in two different occasions. Like, talk me through just, it sounds like you've traveled a bunch outside the United States. Where did that interest come from? And then maybe tell a couple of those stories.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Sure. So yeah, I traveled a lot outside the United States. I was an exchange student when I was younger. So I went to Germany when I was like 17 years old to do my senior year of high school. And that was really something else, because I ended up in the former East Germany, which used to be communist, you know, Soviet Republic, essentially, kind of, but at least a Soviet satellite state, East Germany. So I grew up really getting, or I shouldn't say I grew up, I ended up getting a lot of different experience that most people my age never got. You know, most of the kids my age would like go into high school, senior year, they screwed around all year, hung out with their friends. And I was over it. I was bored. I moved to East Germany. I ended up learning German fluently.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  And like my host family and friends, you know, we would travel this place and that place. I ended up going to Italy for like two weeks, going to a public school in Italy, ended up going to England as an exchange student during my exchange on like a class trip with all these German kids. And so I really kind of got like three, four years of growing up in this one year, plus a language. And then when I got to college, I was like, wow, it's really slowing down again. I'm taking classes, everyone's just drinking all the time. So I was like, okay, going abroad is not only a cool escape, but it really is where it's at for learning. So I went to like, man, Panama, Mexico, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, and

• 8:16Speaker 02

  I know I'm leaving a bunch out. I worked at the US Embassy in Panama. I took Spanish lessons in Mexico, took a semester there. I went to Israel for a while, like I'd mentioned before. After that, I ended up going to Serbia, not Siberia, but Serbia, former Yugoslav republics. And then I was got into China and things like that. I ended up doing a tour company that takes people to North Korea. And then it became illegal to do that. So I sold the company to a British company operating out of China. So that that's all stuff that I did like in my 20s, you know, and then I became a Wall Street attorney as well during that time. And I was just like, this is sort of a slow paced gig, even though it's Wall Street. I was like, this really isn't for me. I'm I'm moving faster

• 8:58Speaker 02

  than the speed of first year associate at a law firm. You know what I mean? So I really wanted to start lots of different ventures and run them. And then I realized like, oh, it's not that I want to start a lot of different things. It's that I want to do something that moves at my pace. And so that's, that's how I ended up being in business for myself, you know, and, and starting businesses and ventures because I like to do a lot. I get more done in a day than a lot of people get done in a week. And it's not just like, oh, I work so hard. A lot of its productivity, a lot of its focus, a lot of its me being kind of a hyperactive person who always has a lot of irons in the fire. And, you know, I didn't know that I was like that until my parents told me I was like that. You never believe your parents. And then I started to look at what my friends were doing. And

• 9:42Speaker 02

  they were like, yeah, I kind of like do this, go home, watch TV. And I was like, what? I worked like 13 hour days because I like it and I want to get more done. And so I've always been that kind of a person, you know, I've always been that kind of like a move really fast, try things, see if it breaks, try new stuff, crack the code, figure it out kind of person. And that that works really well for business owners, especially on the in the internet space.

• 10:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What's North Korea like? Like, I feel like that's just a place that everyone hears about, but nobody actually has been other than, you know, select few people, especially in the Western world. Like, what is that like?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. I mean, North Korea is like, there's nothing to buy, there's nothing to do. It's not that you're sitting in the hotel board the whole time. It's just that there are no stores other than bookshops that sell books written by Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung or whatever. That's it. That's literally it. They sell posters. You know, you can't like get most goods. There's no random food for sale. Restaurants turn the lights on when you arrive because there's no commerce. There's nobody just wandering in off the street for a bite. You know, that that stuff just doesn't exist. So capitalism is completely absent in many, many ways, which is shocking. Like, you can't even imagine it. Most storefront areas are just closed. There's nothing there. The doors are locked. There might be a bunch of bottles in the window to make it look

• 10:58Speaker 02

  like it's got stuff, but when you walk by, you notice that like every shelf has the same thing, and it's a bottle pushed all the way forward on the display shelf. And it's like a bottle of, I don't know, like rice wine, basically, right? So soju is what it's called there. And they'll just have the same locally made soju at the front of the shelf. There's not like a whole row of it like there would be at a grocery store. It's not refrigerated. The lights are off. The bottles have dust on them. And you go, oh, they literally just put these in the window so that they can be like, this at one time maybe sold something like this, you know, but it's just sitting there in the sun, like 24/7 all day. And, you know, you might even see like a clothing store, but it just sells

• 11:40Speaker 02

  like workers' uniforms, all of which are the same for men and women, pretty much. You know, communism doesn't have like, a bunch of clothes that you can just buy that you want. It has certain state issued uniforms, and you can go in there and get those at that place, maybe during certain hours when they're open, if they're ever open. And that's what it's really like. I mean, you can go in huge apartment buildings that have non-working elevators, but the place has like 40 floors. You know, you can go in hotels that don't have electricity. You can go in museums that don't have heat, even in the middle of winter. And so everyone inside is wearing a jacket. You can see your breath. Like, it's just, it's a completely dysfunctional society. There's no mass transit that works all the time, or even most of the time for everyone. There'll be lines that are two hours long to get on a bus. It's really...

• 12:25Speaker 02

  It's really a weird scenario and like they do their best to kind of hide this from you when you're there. Like they'll have fake customers in a store that are all buying one pair of socks. And you're just like, that's weird. There's three people buying one pair of socks each in this store. And like all the stuff on the shelves is expired. It's just very weird. It's a very weird scenario because there's no capitalism. There's no market forces. There's no money. There's no trade happening. So it's like this very bizarre scenario in which you, it's completely alien to anything in the United States. And like, as soon as you drive out of the capital city, there's no electricity. There's no running water. There's people that live in little like handmade huts essentially, just like they were probably living in in

• 13:06Speaker 02

  1850. You know, there's, it's really, really weird. The mobile phones can't call outside the country.

• 13:14Anthony Pompliano?

  How, uh, how aware are the people who live in the country of where they're living versus like this isn't how it is everywhere else?

• 13:21Speaker 02

  They kind of know because they all watch these bootleg films from South Korea that are brought in via China. So there are people that have, but again, if you don't have electricity, maybe your friend has electricity. Maybe you've seen something over someone's shoulder or at a friend's house one time. But you know, when you watch that, that other places have that, those kinds of things, like they'll show B-roll of South Korea and there's a bunch of cars driving around, office buildings that are well lit, people walking by, playing with their smartphone and eating a bunch of food. And there's a lot of people that talk about this on YouTube where they're like, at first you think it's science fiction. Just like if you watched a video of somebody flying around, you'd be like, well, that's not real. But North Koreans see that over and over and over.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And they start to think like, huh, they're not really making a big deal out of having this food or this smartphone or this car or this building having electricity. So it doesn't really seem like it's a real, it's not like a plot device. Like if you're watching a movie and someone can fly, this is a movie about somebody who can fly. Like that's what the movie's about. But in South Korea, if it's just teenagers having a romance in a soap opera and they're going out to eat all the time and jumping in an Uber and calling them each other on their smartphone and texting each other with an iPhone. It's not like this is, this is happening. The future is like this is happening right now. So they start to slowly get the idea that they are left over. And people who live in the capital, who see foreigners walking around with their phones, they are under the impression that we are like

• 14:47Speaker 02

  super rich one percenters or diplomats. So we have like millions of dollars and everyone else is poor. And there's all these propaganda films of like people in the United States that are homeless, only being allowed to eat one cup of frozen water, like snow every day. And you know, it's like, it's so stupid, but they don't have any internet really. So they don't know what the difference is. You know, they have no internet. They have no social media. Their phones can't dial in or outside the country. They can only call each other. So there's a lot of people that really don't know and don't get it. But I think they highly suspect that something is wrong because they don't even have food, you know, in a lot of these places. And a lot of the people are malnourished and their hair is falling out. So like outside of the capital city, they might know less,

• 15:29Speaker 02

  but there's rumors, there's always the rumor mill, you know, of so and so's cousin goes to China and they feed their dogs more than we eat at the equivalent, you know, of a national holiday here in North Korea and it's on the floor. There are books about this where this doctor escaped to China because she was starving and she wanted to find food for her patients and medicine and things like that. And she crosses the frozen river into China and she sees a dog bowl. Well, she sees a bowl on the floor full of rice and has like one sort of half eaten short rib or rib in it and she's crouches down and eats it. And then this dog comes over and starts eating and she's like, oh, and she's like, that's when I realized that a dog in China eats better than a doctor in North Korea. So there's a lot of people that know. And now that there's people that work

• 16:13Speaker 02

  on the border of China and get wifi signals or mobile phone signals or things like that, or are transporting goods illegally, or soldiers that work on the DMZ and are looking across the border with binoculars. They can see that there are tourists that go and look at the DMZ from the south that all have smartphones and Gucci handbags and, you know, are dressed well and they're picking up these wireless signals and they know that like their entire family in a year makes 600 bucks or 400 bucks or a hundred bucks or whatever it is. Like they know there's a majority of people, I would say probably highly suspect that something is wrong, but they just have no hope because they can't leave.

• 16:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's absolutely wild. How did you go from that life of experiencing all of that and understanding that and kind of going around the world to starting the podcast and saying, look, I want to go do kind of more of the media content stuff.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I started off the podcast as a way to get ahead at my Wall Street firm, like make network connections and things like that. And that was really what I was mostly concerned about doing. And so I was learning about body language and persuasion and influence and things like that. And that got me started on the podcast. And then I started interviewing people that also taught those things. So that was kind of interesting, you know, interviewing coaches, getting free knowledge and that sort of thing. And then my, I was working in real estate finance on Wall Street. So my firm took a major downturn in 2008 when there was a recession. And what happened then was I was like, okay, I can either find a new job that I don't really want, or I can keep doing this podcasting thing. By then

• 17:46Speaker 02

  I'd been picked up by Sirius XM Satellite Radio. I was doing like phone coaching for people. And I was like, I'm just going to turn this into a real coaching business. And that's what we did. You know, I never went back to the law. I started the coaching business that would later become The Jordan Harbinger Show, using the podcast as lead gen, and made a few million dollars doing that, realized I didn't love coaching, split with my business partners, restarted again, the podcast as The Jordan Harbinger Show. And now I just make my living from advertising, really, which is great. You know, it's a nice sort of privileged place to be. I don't have to sell products. I don't have to hawk anything. I noticed a lot of like, coaches and people online, they all have like, 7,000 products for sale, and they're launching a book every year to stay relevant. I just, I'm just glad I'm kind of out of that rat race.

• 18:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. How did you launch the podcast, build such a big audience, and kind of make the podcast work? Right? There's a lot of people who are listening to this that probably either have podcasts, want to have a podcast, and they're saying, look, Jordan did a great job. Like, what was that playbook like?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Sure. I mean, that's a tough question, because I was super early to market, right? I started in 2006. So I had an early audience. A lot of people write me now, and they're like, hey, I've been listening to you since 2007, 2008. You know, I have long-term fans that have been listening for a decade or possibly longer. So I started off with a lot of early success and momentum, because there were only like, 800 podcasts or something like that when I first started. That said, you know, having good quality content that's consistently good, and never mailing it in, and never being like- Screw it, I gotta release something this week. What's it gonna be? I don't care. Just put something out there. I never do that. You know, I spend like 20 hours prepping for my interviews. I always read the book from the guest. I do better and more comprehensive interviews than most people because I outwork them.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Not because I'm talented or anything, but because I outwork them. And then I appear on other shows like this. But I mean, right now, the gasoline on the fire is, you know, I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on advertising. That's what's growing the show at the rate that it is. You can go on as many shows as you want. It's a good place to start and launch a show, but you're never gonna scale anything massive in the media space without advertising unless you have another platform behind you. You know, the biggest shows in podcasting are gonna be run by massive media platforms like the New York Times, NPR, Vox. The way to compete with them is to spend money. There's no magic formula. There's no like drive Facebook ads to your show because you're smart, you know how to use Facebook ads. Like, that's delusional. You really need to be spending like hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to compete

• 20:13Speaker 02

  at that level. So I never advise people to go ahead and do that because it's unrealistic.

• 20:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and in terms of the spending, if you want to build that big audience, where is the most effective way to do that? Are people doing that on other podcasts? Are they doing that on the social channels? Are they literally like buying ads in newspapers? What are they doing?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  The only thing that I've found that works is buying ads on other podcasts. The problem is measuring conversion. As far as I know, I haven't... So I have an agency, I wasn't gonna bring this up, but I have an agency, I only have like three clients. It's a side business, if you will, because I'm one of the clients. But I'm the only one who is doing this. And I know this because the software that I use called Chartable has told me that I'm the only person that is using the software in this particular way at this scale to grow the show. So what I do is I buy ads on other podcasts, I mark conversion, I take conversion metrics, and I measure certain types of conversion. And I know like what to look for, how to match audience, how to measure conversion well. I know how to do the ad buys, negotiate the pricing. So that's what I've been doing.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  But it's a pretty large scale endeavor. I mean, if people have a real budget to grow their show, sure, reach out to me, [email protected]. But I mean, the minimum I would say is gonna be 10,000 to 20,000 a month, per month. And I would say you need to do at least like a three to six month commitment before it's even, makes it worthwhile to like... Sign up for Chartable for me to like even look at it, you know, just not because I'm so busy and I'm so special, but because nothing moves the needle unless you put money in it, it just doesn't work. The reason you can grow a podcast slowly over like five, six, 10 years by just going on other shows, doing good content, posting about it on LinkedIn, you know, but you're

• 21:57Speaker 02

  going to get five new listeners a day, 10 new listeners a day. If you want 500 per day, you have to pay for that.

• 22:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And in terms of how do you go about guest selection or kind of the topics that you cover on the show?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  I only go with my own interests, you know, I just basically say like, look, this is an FBI agent that went undercover in the mafia. Cool, interesting. This is Amanda Knox, who was falsely or wrongly imprisoned in Italy for a murder she didn't commit. I'm interested. This is a CIA operative that uncovered a major human trafficking organization. Cool, I'm interested. This is an art forger, I'm interested. You know, those are the people that I have on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I don't really go like, oh, who's trending? I see YouTubers doing that and it's great, but they're on this treadmill. They're on a hamster wheel where they have to find trendy people and they have to get them in early because otherwise nobody cares. The beauty of podcasting is I can have someone on and I can go, you have no idea who this

• 22:52Speaker 02

  is, I read the book, you're going to be interested, I know you trust me because you've listened to 100 episodes of the Jordan Harbinger Show and I haven't disappointed you very often, so check it out. That's what, that's the beauty that podcasters have. So I never worry if something's going to be too far off base, you know, with, with rare exceptions, you know, if I'm talking about traveling to North Korea, I still think a large enough percentage of my audience is going to be interested in my travels to North Korea, so I might release an episode about that. But what I won't do is be like, oh, I'm really interested in, uh, my wife's into beekeeping, so we're into beekeeping this month, let me do a podcast about beekeeping. I don't do that because that's too far off the through line, but anything that can talk

• 23:34Speaker 02

  about psychology, human behavior, or is a fascinating story, I feel like it's in the through line and I have enough rapport and trust with my audience over the last 14 years that people will listen and there's a lot of A lot of people that skip around when they're new and then I'll get an email like, hey, I've been listening to you for six months or a year. I'm going back and listening to all the stuff I missed because I was just listening to Kobe Bryant and Howie Mandel and Chelsea Handler and Dennis Rodman. But now I realize that those episodes that I don't think are going to be interesting because I haven't heard of the guest. Those are also interesting. So then people go back and listen to like the other, you know, 398 episodes of the show.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  So for me, I just never try and guess what's going to be trendy or go viral because there's no such thing as going viral in podcasting. That sucks in a way because it means your, your show can't go viral and just get a whole bunch of new listeners overnight. But it's great because what it means is your audience is loyal and they'll listen to a lot of the things that you put out. And you grow slowly but consistently over time, which YouTube typically does not do.

• 24:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of interacting with that audience, like what you've really built is you've built fans, right? And so that is much different than just somebody who kind of passively listens once a year or once, you know, a quarter. They're constantly coming back. They like you. They like the conversation, like the topics, they trust you. How else have you really kind of nurtured that, that fan relationship? Is it things that you're doing on other platforms? Is it over email? Is it just literally time over the podcast? Like, how do you think about developing kind of that deeper relationship with the, with the listeners who become fans?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, I do answer all my DMs on Instagram. I answer my LinkedIn inbox, although next year I may not be able to do that. Just because I, there are thousands of messages that come in there every month and it's, it just gets massively overwhelming. I do answer every email. I'll probably do that for a long time because I feel like if people take the time to email, that's so much easier than a DM. It's so much easier than a tweet. It's so much easier than a LinkedIn message. So I'll probably always take the time to do that. But I may take time away from other social platforms. So I engage there. But, you know, at the end of the day, if someone's listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show and they're catching one hour a week or three hours a week, I mean, People know me like they know people in their family after a year or after six months. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of rapport generated that way.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  It's a, I think, what do they call it? Like a proto-social relationship or something like that? So there's a lot of rapport built that way. There's a lot of FaceTime sort of in a way built that way. But I do engage in the other way because obviously the listeners are the most important people that you can have. The guest comes after the fans, you know, and that's how it has to be. I know a lot of hosts put the guest before the fans. They try to be friends with the guest. Those shows are universally crap because it's a bunch of softball questions because they want to be friends with the guest and they want the guest to think that they're cool. That's, I see a lot of influencers do that and I'm always like, this show's gonna be a waste of time. I never trust those hosts after that. It's always, it's almost always and universally just a waste of time because the host is

• 26:35Speaker 02

  just sort of like brown nosing with the guest and that disrespects my time as a listener. So I never really do that. I think you should always put the listeners first and the best way to do that is to think about what's good for them when you're creating the content and then secondarily engage with them. And I think Gary Vaynerchuk talks about that too, right? He talks about like, you have to engage, engage, engage. People go like, I don't have time for that. Well, I mean, maybe re-prioritize your time.

• 26:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. How do you think about in terms of actually editing the content itself, right? There's some people who say, hey, look, I want to have it as authentic as possible. I don't want to touch it, maybe like a Joe Rogan. So, you know, two, three hour conversation, no editing in between. Then there's other people who heavily edit the podcast or videos, basically to prioritize people's time. Hey, if I ask you to listen to this for 30 minutes, it may have been an hour and a half long conversation, but I've edited it down to the best 30 minutes. It's super fast paced and you'll blow through it and learn a bunch. Like, how do you kind of think about that balance between those two arguments?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there isn't really a good argument to not edit your show. You know, like people will go, but Joe Rogan? And I go, cool, are you Joe Rogan? If no, then you're wrong about this because look, Joe Rogan's audience is not the same as other podcast audiences. The survey data shows it's largely working class. Now, he has listeners of all social strata. But a large working-class audience of people that do labor with their hands are not knowledge workers. Those people are listening for a long time at work. A huge amount of his audience is on YouTube passively listening. Also, it's not an educational show. He's not sitting there going, "Okay, there's five important things you need to take from this episode." He's just having a conversation. Half the time, it's with a comedian telling

• 28:14Speaker 02

  sex stories, right? So that's a completely different format than somebody who does like a business show, an education show. If you don't edit your show, you're probably just telling yourself you don't need to edit your show because it costs money and it costs time. There's no argument to be had for, "It's more authentic." That's just a bunch of bullshit. Honestly, that's bullshit. It's authentic. Why? Because I get to hear every thread that you go down, that nonsense comment, every sort of tangent. Why is that important? That just disrespects your listeners' time. If it's a comedy podcast that's sort of like empty, there's no real content, there's no real nutrition there, go ahead, leave it unedited. But bear in mind that most people, they want a return on their investment. And

• 28:57Speaker 02

  that desire goes up as people become more educated and more affluent. They want more of an ROI for their time. So The Jordan Harbinger Show is usually like an hour, but it's edited way down. It's very dense. It still flows like a conversation, so people don't necessarily know that it's been edited down, and that's the way that I want it. I want it to seem like we just naturally got a really good, tight, 45, 55-minute, hour-long conversation. That's what it should seem like. But I cut out all of the ums and the uhs. There are guests that say um before every word. My editor cuts all of those things out. There are people that go on tangents that are nonsensical and not funny, not entertaining. Those all get cut. Anybody who says, "Oh, but it's more authentic," I don't really care about

• 29:42Speaker 02

  authentic. I don't really... It's authentic to fart in an elevator. Why do I want to be in that elevator? I don't. You know what I mean? So like, I don't need every little thing that crosses your mind. It's not valuable to me. And it's not valuable to your audience if they get everything that's going across your mind. It takes a real, special kind of narcissist to think that everything they say is important. And that's kind of what you're saying when you do nothing to produce or edit your show.

• 30:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's been the most surprising guest or most interesting that you've brought on that people wouldn't expect?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  I don't know. That's a tough question. I've had like thousands of interviews so far.

• 30:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna leave all the thinking, I'm gonna leave all the thinking unedited just for you.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Leave it in. Yeah, it's up to you. It's your audience. You know, like, the level of respect people have for their own audience is their own choice. I'm just telling you the way I feel about it. Um, I don't know, I can't really answer that question. Uh, it doesn't really make any sense because I, I have a lot of variety of different guests. They're all different, you know, so I really don't know. There's no answer to that question.

• 30:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Uh, in terms of looking forward, what are you trying to accomplish with the podcast or kind of what are the things that you're doing now to, uh, to kind of say, hey, this is where I want to be a year from now, two years from now, five years from now?

• 30:59Speaker 02

  So I'm scaling right now, uh, and what, what that means to me is I'm growing my show as large as I can because, you know, the more that I grow the show, the less I can work if that's what I choose in the future. Right now, I'm kind of a workaholic. I release three episodes a week, 12 episodes a month. Uh, I get a few hundred thousand downloads for each one, but if I can double, triple, quadruple that audience, then I can go down to one a week if I want. Um, because right now, my kid's 14 months old. I want to design a lifestyle where I can afford to do whatever I want, of course, already there, but I also want to be able to have time to enjoy it because kids spell love T I M E. And I know a lot of workaholic parents that made a lot of money and their kids are like estranged or, you know, not that close to them.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  And they're like, what the hell? I became a partner at Goldman Sachs, you know, I'm leaving him $2 million, $10 million. Who cares? You know, I want to be able to go to everything that my kid does, volunteer at his school as needed, uh, hang out, do the Boy Scout troop or whatever if kids are still doing that in five, 10 years, you know, like, that's what I want to be able to do. And I can't do that if I'm trying to figure out how to like maintain a lifestyle through some sort of digital media thing. So, and I don't want to like sell products online. So, or at least not too many. I want to have really good ones that I've spent a lot of time doing, not just be releasing the next, uh, turd in a box because I need a quick cash infusion to keep the lights on, which I see a lot of internet marketers doing.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  So I'm scaling right now so that I can grow the audience as large as it possibly can until I start seeing really low return on my investment for advertising and scaling. And then I'll be able to sort of decide how much time I need to put into things. And of course, I'll be able to hire a lot of help. I hired plenty of help right now. I can't think of what else I might need, but who knows? Maybe I won't want my wife to worry about cooking food or cleaning the house and I'll hire a live-in housekeeper. Like, those are the kinds of things I think about five, 10 years from now. Right now, she enjoys cooking. You know, we love having that daytime housekeeper come by and clean up a little bit and take care of our kid while we're working. But in the future, we might not want any of that. And I want to have flexibility. I also want to be able to retire in five years.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  I don't think that I will, I'll be 45 years old, but I want the ability to do so. Because if there's uncertainty, or if podcasting is an industry, starts to become real commoditized and it's hard to grow, or, you know, it becomes very sort of unpopular for some reason, I want to be able to just opt out and not have to pivot into selling widgets.

• 33:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. In terms of the team that you've built now, it sounds like it's yourself, you've got an editor, how else, for those that are trying to figure out like, hey, this is what it takes to actually build a highly successful podcast. Talk a little bit about that team and kind of the roles that you've filled.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  So I've got an editor, I have an assistant that helps book everything. I've got a show notes writer, I have a transcriptionist. Of course, those people are part-time. And that's it. That's the whole team. It's a really, really small team.

• 34:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And in terms of, you've got the podcast you have now, what about other podcasts, building out networks? Can you see a bunch of people going and kind of making all of these quote-unquote strategic moves to kind of grow? So not grow one show, but grow through these other shows? Is that something that's attractive to you? Or do you just feel like focusing on your one show and growing that as big as possible is the best path forward?

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just going to focus on the one show because you can't control talent very well, and that's the problem that all these big networks have. They're all producing content in-house, and they're using writers and pre-scripted stuff, and they're selling all that stuff to, you know, TV outlets or whatever, so they'll do a big podcast, and they'll sell the script for, as a TV pilot. Not my, not my thing. I'm not a screenwriter. I don't want to interact with Hollywood. I used to live in Hollywood. It's not a scene I enjoy at all. I almost resent going there when I have to meet with my agent or anything like that, you know, he's a nice guy, but whatever. And that's not something I want to deal with. Also, all those companies that are doing that, big spoiler alert, none of them are profitable right now. Of course, there's companies like Spotify

• 35:04Speaker 02

  and Apple that are massively profitable, but all these little networks you see, virtually zero of them are profitable. They go out of business all the time. They lose money all the time. I'm not in a hurry to get in that game because it adds stress and doesn't really, the big promise is what? Selling to Spotify, maybe at some later date? I'm already on that train. I can do that at some point. The other thing is you can't own talent. So if I don't do pre-produced stuff, what do I do? I pick a couple of hosts and I grow their show, then what? They leave because they don't need me anymore? No, thanks. Or I get them under contract and then they want to leave anyway, and then what? I gotta sue them? Well, no, thanks. So I know how this turns out. I see it happening all the time in other networks, and I see how much money those networks are losing, and I see how much hair the CEOs are losing, and I think, no, thanks. If I grow my show,

• 35:49Speaker 02

  all that money is mine. It belongs to me and my family. All that time that I get back from hiring help, all that's mine. It belongs to me and my family. If I start growing other people's brands, I'm trading my time for their success, and I just hope that they don't screw it up or bounce? No, thanks. Bad trade.

• 36:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. What's, uh, what's the biggest lesson you've learned over the last couple of years building out the podcast? Like, the thing you wish you had known in the very beginning?

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the thing I'd wish I'd known in the very beginning was, there's so many little things that I think I learned over time. But one of the, one of the big things I learned over time was, man, there are a lot. I'm trying to even think of what the most important one is. I initially started with business partners, and I would say that a lot of people, they start off, we start off thinking, everyone will work as hard as me because we're all equally incentivized. We all have equal skin in the game. You'd be surprised, you know, how much... If you have a Midwest work ethic and you're working with other people, you'd be very surprised. You start making a hundred grand a year and you realize that some people have never dreamed they're going to make a hundred grand a year. So they start to check out because

• 36:56Speaker 02

  they're satisfied. And then you start making 200 grand a year and then another person checks out because they're satisfied. And then you start making a million bucks a year and they check out because they're satisfied. But you're still working because you have big dreams or you want to do something and they're going, "Go ahead, work all you want. Just make sure you cost our 30% or our 25%." And that's what I started off doing. I realized I was just dragging dead weight, making a bunch of people rich who didn't care and only cared about going to clubs to party and do bottle service. And I was working six, seven days a week. And as soon as I split with those guys, I started crushing it because I was able to refocus the money and the energy into growth of the business. I wasn't trying to figure out how to pay for

• 37:36Speaker 02

  somebody else's Porsche, you know? So I really was able to soar. And so I think when people think, "I need to start a business and I need business partners," you probably don't. You're probably just having a confidence issue, thinking that you can't do it. It doesn't mean you don't need any help, but when you give equity to somebody, that equity is expensive. Just try and pay people a salary that they're worth. And if people think, "I don't want to do this. I'm too important," you know, and a lot of people don't want a salary, they want their own business, don't ever hire those people. They're in love with the idea of being an entrepreneur. They probably have no business running their own type of company or anything like that. Most entrepreneurs, right now especially, these wannabe entrepreneurs, these wantrepreneurs, they have no business running their own company at all. They should get jobs, get experience, find out how companies work. I

• 38:21Speaker 02

  sure as hell should have done that early on. I think my mistake was going into business for myself too early. I should have worked for somebody else who knew what they were doing, learned a ton from them, and then started a company. I started a company because the opportunity was there and because the market tanked in the real estate division of the law firm that I was at. It wasn't the right time, per se. I got lucky that I landed on my feet. My business partners that I left, by the way, they're totally screwed right now. They're totally screwed right now. They never learned how to work hard. They only learned how to grift and coast and they're totally, totally screwed.

• 38:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I ask the same two questions to everybody before I finish up and then you'll get to ask me one question to end it. The first one is just, what's the most important book that you've ever read?

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Oh geez, maybe like, let's see, everything's such a cliche with these types of questions. I would say, how to win friends and influence, not that the question is cliche, but the answer's always cliche. How to win friends and influence people, cliche answer number one. But another one that nobody really mentions that often is Extreme Ownership by Jaco Willink. I like that book because what it tells you is that whenever something goes wrong, there's one part of it that you had control over, not necessarily that it's your quote unquote fault, but that you had control over, and you have to look for that part. Because otherwise, you just end up blaming people. Like, when I look back at my old partnerships that I mentioned before, I can go, wow, these guys didn't work hard, and they're so stupid, and they wasted, what part did I have control over? Oh, I should have left earlier. I saw

• 39:45Speaker 02

  the signs years ago, and I stuck with these, these guys. Why did I do that? Because I didn't think I could do this on my own. The truth is, I would have been better off on my own. I could have left 10 years ago, and I would have been better off. You know, so that's the type of thing you have to look for. And so Extreme Ownership, it stops you from playing the blame game. Everybody who's unsuccessful that I know, they always blame someone else. Always. I always hear that. That's the common thread they have. Don't be that guy.

• 40:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Second question is more fun. Aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Nah, I mean, look, they, is there other forms of life elsewhere in the universe? Probably. I mean, mathematics say so. Are they flying around the world here on Earth in flying hubcaps that get caught on computers, but nobody ever sees them? No. There's no good evidence for this. The whole aliens built the pyramids, all this evidence is so spurious, it's just, it's laughable, and the only thing that's not funny about it is that people believe it.

• 40:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So basically, you have a different definition of alien. It's, there's likely to be life somewhere else, but not necessarily intelligent life, and definitely not here on Earth.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, there's probably, just mathematically speaking, there's probably intelligent life somewhere else. They're so far away, we will probably, certainly not in our lifetimes, contact them. And people who go like, oh, no, they're visiting us. Okay, cool. And so, they've decided to do what? Never interfere in anything? They've never had any accidents or anything? They're hiding so well due to their superior technology that we catch them, what? On bad old film or on like military radar, but then the people who are looking at it don't see it. Or the pilot sees it, but the radar doesn't see it. I mean, look, if they're trying to hide, they would have been hiding. If they're not trying to hide, we'd see them freaking everywhere and we'd have no idea. Right? So I don't know, there's just not really any good evidence for that. I think people really want to believe that they get excited about it.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  But whenever I look at the evidence, I always go, that's really it? I don't think so.

• 41:38Anthony Pompliano?

  You could ask me one question to finish up. What do you got for me?

• 41:41Speaker 02

  For you?

• 41:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Puff, usually it's the other way around. Uh, what would I ask you? Surprise attack. I would say, why start a podcast? Why? It's one of the worst ways to make money on the internet.

• 41:52Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the most selfish thing I do. I get to meet interesting people, ask them questions and learn. Right? I mean, it's a, it's one of these things where the idea of even making money when I first started it. I basically started it, uh, almost as a joke. I told a story a million times on the podcast, but like some people approached me and they said, hey, you should start a podcast. And I was like, uh, how do you do that type thing? Right? Recorded three conversations, came popular, uh, pretty quickly. And I said, okay, I'll record a couple more. That was fun. Right? And I see, you know, you start to meet interesting people, you learn a bunch and you realize it's a great way to, uh, to kind of elicit, uh, conversation with folks that maybe, uh, you wouldn't otherwise meet or, or talk to. And then, uh, the value to them is they get to talk to a large audience and, and kind of, uh, have a good ROI on their time. Um, and then they get kind of the feedback loop of then listeners reach out and, uh,

• 42:37Anthony Pompliano?

  and want to kind of engage on various topics that they discuss on the podcast.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Look, that's the best reason to start a podcast. If you're trying to make money, I always tell people, don't do it. It's the worst idea ever. If you want to have great conversations, you want to meet people, you want to teach the audience. Like I'm passionate about education. Everything I do is about the listener. I'm an advocate for the listener. I don't let the guest waste the listener's time. I won't waste the listener's time. Um, I'm always thinking about the listener first. So you doing it for yourself and for your audience, that's the reason to do a podcast. People who want to get rich doing podcasting, I just go, man, you better just start digging in your backyard for gold. You have a better chance of striking, striking it rich.

• 43:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Where can we all find you on the internet? And we'll send them to go download the podcast as well.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, The Jordan Harbinger Show is the podcast, jordanharbinger.com and at Jordan Harbinger or Harbinger on social media, you know, Twitter, Instagram and that kind of thing. And I'd love to hear what people think about the show. You know, I've got a lot of episodes. Like I said, I take great care in making sure they're all valuable for the audience. That's really what it's about. And sort of me being like very like stern or focused like I am with you right now. Some of my podcasts are like that. Other ones are much goofier. It just sort of depends on the mood that I'm in. And you caught me over caffeinated, so here we are.

• 43:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it, man. Thanks so much for coming on. We'll have to do it again in the future.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it.