MBA2665 Extended Interview: Jordan Harbinger - How to Start Again When Life and Business Punch You in the Face

This intimate conversation was recorded in Paris, where longtime friends and podcasting peers Omar and Jordan met for a rare, unguarded discussion while en route to The Podcast Show London. The setting proved perfect for diving deep into the vulnerable topics of loss, reinvention, and finding your way back from rock bottom. When life and business throw unexpected challenges your way, how do you pick yourself up and start over? What does it really take to rebuild from scratch—especially when everything you've built seems to disappear overnight? In this extended interview, Omar sits down with Jordan Harbinger—one of podcasting's most accomplished interviewers—who knows firsthand what it's like to lose everything and reinvent himself. Together, they break down practical, no-nonsense strategies to help you navigate setbacks, redefine self-worth, and use relationships as a powerful tool for your comeback. You'll also uncover proven networking techniques, expert insights for mastering your craft, and why integrity and steady innovation always triumph over hype and shortcuts. Ready to rethink resilience and take control of your next chapter? Hit the play button at the top of the page to tune in to this powerful, lesson-packed episode with Omar and Jordan. The Jordan Harbinger Show and his Free 6 Minute Networking courseWatch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:30Speaker 00

  So this is an in-person conversation. I can't wait to share it with you. We get into some really interesting topics.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Real quick, if these episodes help you in any way, hit the follow button on this podcast app. It helps us to keep bringing you practical business insights three times a week for free. Thanks. Jordan is a former Wall Street lawyer turned talk host and been podcasting for over two decades, which is absolutely insane. He's been podcasting from before the iPhone. I mean, that's pretty crazy. He's interviewed over thousands of guests and today I sit down and interview him. I want to find out what makes him so successful. I also get into his story of leaving his former podcast, which he ran for over a decade and having to start all over,

• 2:40Speaker 00

  from scratch, creating the Jordan Harbinger Show. That podcast, the Jordan Harbinger Show that he runs right now, is a top 50 Apple Podcasts of all podcasts. So in my discussion with him, I want to find out what he thinks about what's happening in podcasting today, what makes him successful, what makes a great interview show, as well as how to bounce back when you are down in the dumps, when you have to start all over, when you are in the mud and you have to clean yourself up, pick yourself up and keep moving forward. This is a raw and honest conversation with Jordan Harbinger. Can't wait to share with you right now. I'll be back to wrap up the

• 3:21Speaker 00

  episode and tell you what to do next. Let's jump into that conversation right now. Jordan Harbinger, when I was thinking about doing this interview with you, I was thinking to myself, how am I going to start this interview? How do I?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't blow it.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  So far, eh, C+.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  C+ in the first five words. But I thought of you and how you have a knack to get people to open up.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Really quickly on your interviews, people share things they don't share on other shows.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  How do you like to start interviews? How do you like to get people to open up?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  So I usually start before the cameras roll, I usually start with something personal. And it's not really a secret or anything. I just will find something like with Ed Helms from The Office I had on recently. I think this actually got left in the show, but I said, what is this about you loving radio controlled cars? And he's like, oh, that's funny. He told me a little story and I was like, I love RC cars and I play with them with my kid. And I really got into them when I was bored this time. And he was like, I got into it because I was bored in Michigan doing, shooting a movie. So he got really interested and excited about this, like, kind of admittedly silly hobby for an adult to have, you know? Two grown ass men playing with radio controlled cars. It's a little juvenile, but we were both kind of into it.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  So having him admit that puts him in a space where he's like, well, I guess I'm talking about things that don't make me look like super cool guy, pretentious Hollywood. Not that he's that guy at all, right? To pretend, he's not that kind of guy. So getting him in that mode was a deliberate choice. And for me, I wanted to walk through the door first with that and be like, I'm also not going to pretend that I am some sort of cool sophisticated guy. I'm going to admit that I have radio controlled cars that I pretend I buy for my kid, but are really all for me and I don't share. So he got a kick out of that and we started off that way. And then when I say things like, what's up with the tooth? In The Hangover, it looks like it really came out. He's like, oh yeah, I have a tooth that you can remove. And he goes through all these sort of anecdotes that people maybe wouldn't necessarily talk about.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  He showed me a photo of him when he was a little kid to prove that it was really missing. Cause he's, he's got this horrifying photo of him as a kid where he's like got braces that are just doing a lot, holding it all together.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Wow, that could have been easy.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  He's missing a tooth and he's like, see, it's, it's really gone. So you, you kind of like, try to figure out how to get people into the mode that I want them in as early as possible. Because otherwise it could take an hour, hour and a half to get somebody to really admit something deep or talk about something real. Why would you spend all that time doing that when you can, there's shortcuts to get there early?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, and what I find that interesting is that it's it's a personal but not like so private kind of question and it's something that he probably never gets asked doing like press junkets and doing all that kind of stuff.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  So I like that approach of like just talking to somebody like a friend or getting to know them as a friend.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so that's that's why people will do things like, oh, I had chat GPT prepare me for this interview. And it's like, okay, but the problem is chat GPT is gonna go, all right, I read the whole book that you uploaded and here are the main takeaways. But what it doesn't go through is the time that they mentioned that they had a tire swing in the backyard growing up that they had made and that he spun around a bunch of times on and barfed. And you're like, oh, I've done that. So like you could start the interview with the story about how you made a tire swing in your backyard one summer and then he spun around on it and barfed all over. But that's not going to make it into like your assistant who read the book for you is not going to put that in the summary that they give you on your iPad. That's what a lot of hosts do. They do that stuff. So they all have the

• 6:57Speaker 01

  same commoditized interview questions because they got all the air quotes important stuff. But the unimportant stuff is what makes the interview really colorful and good in the first place. Otherwise, you don't even need the person to be there. Just summarize the book.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  I was looking at my camera roll on my phone and trying to figure out like, when did I meet Jordan? When did I get to know him? It was 2014, I believe. It was some one day mastermind with, of course, John Corcoran, who invites everybody to everything. John Corcoran like invited, like introduced me to like half the people I know.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  That tracks, yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I just remember you were there. I actually remember you rolled in in a scooter. That's what that was very memorable.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Must have been in San Francisco.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you were in San Francisco at the time.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Like a kick scooter, like a razor scooter for adults.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. And ever since we've been friends and we've been, you know, going on holidays together and, you know, your wife Jenny and Nicole, good friends. And so one of the things I noticed about you early on is despite the fact that you've had a lot of success in your career as a podcaster, and you're probably one of the most successful podcasters I know personally, you still don't take yourself too seriously.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  You still make a lot of jokes, even self deprecating jokes. How do you keep that in check? Do you intentionally try to like, you know, keep your ego in order? Or like, how is that managed?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  I think it's, yeah, maybe, but also do I deliberately keep my ego in check? Well, I have two little kids. They don't care what I do at all. My wife thinks it's kind of cool, but you know, like, whatever. She's over it, you know?

• 8:33Speaker 00

  It's been a while.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  It's been a while. Yeah. So, you know, and when you have friends that aren't trying to get things from you, which is like what real friends are, not just like industry people, what are you gonna do? Be like, I'm kind of a big deal. So we have to go to the place to eat that I want to go to. I mean, you're not gonna have real friends for very long if you do that. So unless you're only, you know, I think part of it is I don't take all of my self-worth from doing the show and the success of the show is that. I think I'm sort of discovering this answer as I tell you it out loud, say it out loud. I think it's really easy if your entire sense of identity and self-worth is wrapped up in something you do. Like if you're a famous actor and this is the only thing you do and the only thing you're known for and the only thing you're proud of yourself for, then you're the guy who's like, do you know who I am? I can't get a table here. This is ridiculous, right?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  But if you pride yourself on raising kind children, you're not gonna behave that way. If you pride yourself on having a really good group of friends, you're not gonna treat them poorly because that would put that in danger.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  If you treat, if you pride yourself on being in great physical and mental shape for age 45, you know, no big deal, then you're not going to go out and do a bunch of drugs and make a fool out of yourself. Right? So the, all these little things that I feel like I do, that are not, have nothing to do with the show, are what make up the core of my personality. So it's really easy to make fun of myself because there's a lot going on that is ridiculous in my life. And so pointing that stuff out and being fun and funny with it is more important to me than like, I gotta show everyone they had realized how important I am because I have a successful podcast. And it's this kind of a ridiculous thing.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  It's also exhausting.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  It's exhausting. Also, I lived in Hollywood for a while and like, if you want to be, if you meet, you'll meet someone who's like really famous or really successful, and they're just kind of busy comparing themselves to this other person who's on the billboard and the rest, but behind them in the restaurant. And then that person, if you met them, they're probably like, oh, I wish I was not a TV actor, but a film actor. And then that film actor's like, yeah, but I was the supporting actor to the, this other actor in this movie. And that guy's probably like, I don't know, trying to figure out how to have dinner with Donald Trump or something. So like, none of those people ever feel like they're at the top of the game. And it's, realistically, like, I'm a podcaster, right? So it's, it's not like I'm ever gonna win that game. Like, I'm never gonna be like, well, finally made it to the Oval Office.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So there's no point in really like, playing that game and comparing yourself to other people. And so when you stop doing that, and you stop putting yourself worth in this weird hierarchy, that it doesn't matter if you take yourself down a peg.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  To make everyone laugh, because there's unlimited pegs.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Right?

• 11:07Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  The pegs are irrelevant.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Hmm. Yeah, I like that. Um, one of the things that you touched on right now is that, you know, we've been friends for over a decade.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  And when we hang out, when we spend time together, when we travel, I, I can probably count on one hand, how many like, business conversations we've had. Like, it's more personal conversations, life, things like that. Uh, and one of the reasons why I was excited to do this episode with you is because I get to talk business with you a little bit.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  We kind of, we're walking, you know, we're in Paris, we're walking the streets of Paris, and we were chatting a little bit about this, and I want to kind of dig a little deeper. A lot of people have a different understanding, definition of what a podcast is. What do you, how do you describe yourself as a podcaster? What do you think your job is?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question. I, you're right, there's a lot of flexibility in it. It's like, does it include video? Our YouTube things, podcasts, or our interviews, podcasts? Uh, podcasting is really just sort of like, any recording that goes up on the internet, in my opinion. As long as it's put in a series, right? Like, is it a show? So like, Fridays, we have our advice segment, that's part of the Jordan Harbinger Show. But then I do interviews, that's part of the Jordan Harbinger Show. The Skeptical Sunday Scientific Ones, those are part of the, scientific air quotes, those are part of the Jordan Harbinger Show. But other people, they make like, dramatized true crime, and they've got music, that's obviously a podcast, too. Uh, two comedians riffing about the Diddy trial, that's a podcast, too, not one that I would listen to. But it's a podcast, it counts. So I try not to gatekeep the whole thing because when I started in 2006,

• 12:37Speaker 01

  I remember everybody compared us to radio, but not favorably. Nobody was like, this is the new radio. They were like, oh, if you're a loser with no talent, maybe you can start a podcast. And then when I worked at Sirius XM Satellite Radio, a lot of the hosts there were like, oh, podcasting. Yeah. Isn't that for, why did you, why do you still do that? You have your show here now. You don't have to be like a loser with a podcast. And then it's, it's kind of comic, comical now because now in 2025, those same guys will lose their contract at Sirius. And they're like, hey, how do I start a podcast? I'm like, oh, step one, start back in 2008, when I told you that this was something that you should have done and ran the whole time alongside your radio show. Step two, good luck, man.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Uh, it's, it's tough out there. When I told you to start, there were maybe 2,000 podcasts. Now there's 2 million, 20, what do I know, 5 million? So have fun standing out now. I mean, it's not impossible now. I, I don't want to be a jerk about it, but I just, I always thought that was kind of interesting. I, I don't really know if, how even important it is to define what a podcast is because.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  But well, how do you see yourself? Like when you walk into your office, like, what do you, what do you think about? Like I'm, this is my job. This is what I do. Like what, what do you, what are your, what are you trying to achieve?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  So the mission of my show is to make people better informed, more critical thinkers. So on Sundays, when we have Skeptical Sunday, I'll debunk a topic like uh, energy drinks. This one we did. And it's like, hey, these are not good for you. Here's why. But they're not also, they're not also like pure poison. Like you'll see on some vegan blog, right? Where everything has to be made out of oat milk.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  In the middle, yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Right. It's usually something in the middle. So we're like, here's why it's bad for you. Your heart rate is a, you know, 158 BPM, your resting heart rate. That's not good. Or if you know, that, that should be avoided. But if you're tired and you don't like coffee and you have an energy drink, it's fine. It's like, it's just not that bad for you compared to the thing you were going to drink that you've been drinking your whole life anyway. You're going to put 16 sugars in there. Fine. Get the sugar. Like, oh my God, diet soda. It's going to do this, all this bad stuff to you. Eh, it's probably not great for you. Is it better than going to get a big gulp and a slushy in the morning? Yeah. Is it better than a coffee with 20 sugar packets in it that you're drinking over the Yeah, it's fine. It's just not that big of a deal. So we try and do this sort of unbiased stuff. I don't sell like, I'm not going to sell my own energy drink, right?

• 14:54Speaker 00

  So which is common with podcasters.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  That's the grift, right? That's the grift. And I leaving money on the table, I was talking about this with Ryan Holiday, leaving money on the table. Integrity is really expensive because you gotta leave money on the table. If you want to get more clicks, you you make up some BS and you get people scared and you share it. They'll or they share it. If you want to make more money, you tell people that everything in their house is poison, but you've got this one thing that's not and you're selling it. And like, oh, if you want to be a strong guy, you need this protein shake, but not all these other ones. Get the one that I have that has my face on it. That's what these guys do. And it's a grift. It's they might even start out with good intentions, but the money is in telling people that they have to get the thing that you sell because then you sell more of it.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  So it's a slippery slope. And so I just just decided not to do that. I don't sell anything of my own. And if I did, it would be like more content on my show at a premium tier, not like a protein shake or a diet drink or something like that.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  It's a tough one.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  I love that line. Integrity is

• 15:56Speaker 01

  It's expensive.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  It's expensive. I mean, as soon as you said that, I thought of like Muhammad Ali losing his boxing license because he didn't refuse to go to war. Like

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that kind of stuff.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  He stood for something and we admire somebody like that because of the cost. That's incredible. I love that line.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  There's, there's a lot of things in life that show that integrity is expensive, not just in podcasting. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of, Brian and I talked about this on his show, The Daily Stoic, just about parenting and things like that. Actually, parenting makes it easier because you can just, when you're a single guy, when I was a single guy, I should use myself as an example. When I was a single guy, I think it would have been easier to say, well, I need to do this because I need the money to invest in my business. And so what? It's just marketing and blah, blah, blah. But

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Somebody else is going to sell it.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Somebody else is going to sell. But then when you have kids, you're like, hmm, how are my kids going to view this later on in my life? Or their life?

• 16:48Speaker 00

  It's on the record.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  And it's on, yeah, it's on the record. So it's like, okay, did dad do this because he thought it was a good idea? Or did he do this because he wanted to make a quick buck? Didn't he tell us not to do that kind of stuff? Okay, so he didn't act. And then you're just like, you're imagining your kid who's like 25. My kid's five. You're imagining your kid at like age 25 being like, oh. So dad was kind of not really putting his money where his mouth is.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  And then you're like, oh, I did it so that you could have a nicer, uh, I don't know apartment in college. And they're like, yeah, whatever, man, whatever.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  You know, and you gotta look your kid in the face and be like, yeah, all that stuff I taught you when you were growing up. That was mostly just BS. I was just telling you that because I want you to be a better person than me. Uh, we, that's a tough argument.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  That's a tough one.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  That's tough. So integrity gets, actually gets easier when you have kids because you have to look at them in the face.

• 17:38Speaker 00

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• 19:48Speaker 00

  You mentioned you started podcasting in 2006. I do a talk on stages about my trajectory in podcasting. I started in 2014 and when I started in 2014, I looked at all the top podcasters in iTunes back then. It was before it was Apple Podcasts, it was iTunes. And I mentioned in the speech that, you know, I had to get real. How am I going to compete with somebody like Jordan Harbinger, who literally podcasts before the iPhone?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  There is no iPhone. Forget about the podcasting app. There's no podcast, so iTunes Store, there's nothing. So you started out very early, some would say. So what was the initial idea of why did you want to leave your career as a lawyer and become a full-time podcaster?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Why did I want to leave? So this is, I'd love to pop this myth. So I started the podcast because I was recording talks I was giving and I was burning them to CD. And people would go, oh, I need more, I need this.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  What were these talks about?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  They were about dating and relationships initially. And then I started, so I started a networking class at the University of Michigan Law School, where I was going to law school. And nobody signed up except for like three women. And then the room we were supposed to go to in the law school, that this is like a free class. It wasn't like a real elective. It was just like a after, after school program. The room that was supposed to be for us to use was always locked and/or 100,000 degrees Fahrenheit, like a straight up oven with sun blazing in there. And it was awful. And so we started going to this bar called Ashley's in Ann Arbor. And I would teach the class at Ashley's at a table because it was like three women and me. And I was just talking about networking and networking systems.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Now that's my six-minute networking course, which is still free. And Guys would, guys would say like, how come you're in here with all these, these girls? And we started to talk about dating and relationship stuff, because that's what they were interested in. And I noticed the overlap between networking for business and job stuff was actually like, really closely related to dating and relationships.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  So then the girls started bringing in their girlfriends, because they were like, this is so interesting. This guy talks about body language and reading it and,

• 21:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  you know, we pick out a couple and he'll analyze the couple and then it's like all so interesting. So then I, the class was like 11 women and me.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  And guys started to go like, who is this dude who walks in here with like 11 girls every Tuesday? And it's just like the center of attention. What the hell's going on here? And then guys started to sign up, because they were like, I want to be in a class with a bunch of attractive women, learning about dating. So then the problem was, I'd already run, let's say, eight lessons. And the guys were starting on day eight and they're like, oh, what about this? I'm like, I've covered this so many times. Here's a CD of my previously recorded lectures.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  So you'd record them when you're teaching?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, like on a Sony MiniDisc player. And then I would go back to my room and burn them to a CD. And guys stopped giving me the CDs back. And I was like, what's the deal? And they're like, oh, it's so interesting. I gotta keep it. I'm like, no, I gotta give this to the next guy. And they're like, what if I buy it from you? So I was like, fine, 20 bucks. They're like, oh, okay, I need five. I'm like, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean? Oh, I want to give one to my brother. My cousin desperately needs it. My dad just got divorced. I'm going to give one to him and I'm going to keep one for myself. And I'm just thinking, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm not going to get rich selling CDs. But a lot of people love this information. How do I distribute a CD but like on the internet so people can download it? There was nothing that existed at the time. And my friend was like, oh, it sounds like this new thing called podcasting,

• 23:17Speaker 01

  where you can put like an MP3 file on a server and people can download it. And I was like, oh, I need that. So we set it up and that was the beginning of the podcast. And then I was like, oh, this is kind of like internet radio. So then I turned it into a show instead of just, okay, I'm talking about my stuff at this bar.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  And then after that, it was like, hey, welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. I'm talking about this today. And I would prepare a lecture like an outline, which is similar to what you do.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, interesting. Um, I, I think what I love about this story, The most is you didn't think about how to monetize it from like the first moment.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  No, well, what were you gonna do? I mean, there was no such thing as a podcast ad in two thousand and six, like there there just wasn't. And also, I was gonna be a lawyer on Wall Street, a finance attorney. I think I already had a job lined up. So I was like, I was gonna make like a hundred and sixty grand a year. So how many twenty dollar CDs is that at that point, right? I mean, it's just not a realistic thing, like making money on the internet was not really a thing in two thousand and six.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not discounting that you have to monetize, you know, monetization, earning an income is important. But this idea of like, I have something valuable here. Let me get it out to the world. Let me not taint it with trying to milk every dollar out of it. I think that's a very important point because I see my own story in that. Because when we started the Hundred Dollar MBA Show, I was really worried about getting sponsors in early. I wanted to just have a great show. Like, I just, I knew that if it wasn't great, then it'll never grow. And I'm just gonna be back to the square one again. So we literally said like no to everything until we like, we're hitting ten thousand downloads an episode.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  It took like six or seven months, but it was, and we needed the money.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  But that point of like, let me just focus on making this great. And usually, that's my answer to anybody who's starting a podcast. Like, just make a great show. Like, why do you watch Breaking Bad? Why do you watch whatever movie that you just saw in the cinema and you can't stop talking about? Because it's just good content. This is great, valuable, entertaining stuff. Like, what you, what do you find is the hardest thing for like new podcasters to get over? This concept or just getting better at the mic?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're right. I think a lot of people, well, I get this question some version. People are kind of disingenuous, I think even with themselves about why they start shows. So there's, people ask me this all the time. They'll, they'll say like, what do I need to know? And I go, treat it as a hobby. It's probably always gonna be a hobby. And they're like, okay, and I'm like, no, no, no, really do that. Treat it as a hobby because nobody, no, I like Legos. Now the secret's out with the RC cars and the Legos. And now I have a kid, right? So I buy, like, my kid walked into my office the other day and he's like, who's this this? Cause I had the, this Optimus Prime in the box. It says 18 plus. It's adult Legos. These are grown up Legos. He's like, is this for me? And I was like, no.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  And uh, so, but nobody, nobody buys Legos and then builds them and is like, man, I cannot wait to monetize this. This is gonna be so awesome. I'm gonna be famous for building Lego sets in my living room. Nobody collects model trains and is like, secretly, one day though, I'm gonna be the model train guy. Everyone's gonna look up to me. No one has a stamp collection or a comic book collection is like, I am really going to be a cornerstone of the stamp collecting community with this new thing that I'm doing. Nobody does that. Maybe, maybe there's some people, but I don't, I can't even imagine the person who would do that with Legos, for example. So nobody's really doing it. With podcasting though, somehow, for some reason,

• 27:01Speaker 01

  people go, yeah, no, it's just a hobby. It's just a couple of guys talking about sports uh, in Boston over beers. And then in the back of their head, they're like, but really, we're kind of like the next Joe Rogan. We're gonna start talking about aliens and conspiracy theories and we're gonna have famous people on eventually. Because my friend's cousin's friend's cousin's friend knows Derek Jeter's hairdresser, right? So it's like, there's, there's, I don't, I don't know where Jer- Derek Jeter, is he a Yankee? Yeah, he was Yankee. It's been a bit. So, so like, these guys, they, they say that it's a hobby, but it's like, secretly, they, they have an idea that it's gonna pay for their next vacation or something like that. And it's just not the case.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  And I, I think the reason that happens, there's a few reasons for that, right? Because there are no famous Lego builders, but there are famous podcasters. But it's really unrealistic. You have a better chance probably of moving to Hollywood, getting a job at a gym and trying your hand at acting as you do to become a famous podcaster, because there literally are millions of podcasts. How many well-known podcasters are there? I don't know, double-digit or maybe like low, triple-digit number, probably double digits, I would imagine. People who are making a living doing it, like a good living.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  So why would you start something? Nobody goes to act at their local YMCA community theater and is like, "Yeah, I think my next thing is I'm just gonna be in the next Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise." That's just not how it goes. So why do people do that with podcasting? And if you're doing that, like you really need to examine your motives, because if you're doing that, you're just going to quit, except you're gonna invest a lot more than you would if it was just a hobby.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  You know, because you're gonna think secretly, "Oh, this is gonna pay for itself eventually." You should go into it, go into it thinking, "There's no way that this is ever going to even pay for the equipment that I'm buying. It's a hobby, it's entertaining." Otherwise, it's kind of like a gambler's fallacy, where you're like, if you go to a casino and you play blackjack, are you thinking that you're doing it for entertainment purposes? Or are you thinking, "I'm gonna be a professional blackjack player, because I'm investing in my education by playing this"? That's, one is delusional, and you probably actually have a better chance of being a professional poker player than you do at being a professional podcaster.

• 29:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think one of the things I think about a lot is, you know, when I look at some of the biggest, most popular podcasts, what are they podcasting about, but also like, what has this person done? Like, usually, these people have interesting lives, they've written interesting books, or have been comedians, or are sharing a journey that's unique. I honestly think the only reason why I've had any success with the show is because I was sharing lessons that I learned building my software company, Warner Ninja. And a lot of people kind of got tired of, you know, the banter, or maybe like, long-form

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  type of stuff that, and I was trying to just like, "Hey, I'm an ex-teacher, I'm just gonna teach lessons." And I think that really is the only reason why I was able to kind of get some traction, is because There's some unique value that you're offering. And I think that's kind of hard to find if you're not doing interesting things.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  I agree with that 100%. I, when I go on trips like this, I often think, oh, I'm going to talk about this type of thing on the show. I mean, look, walking around Paris yesterday, it'll make a, it'll be a 10 second conversation on the show. But my trip to China.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  I'm like, I gotta do this weird thing that's kind of exciting and then I'll talk about it on the show. Going to North Korea. Oh, I want to go to this place, but then I also want to make a side John over here because it's going to make for good content.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  So I do that too. I don't live my whole life that way, obviously, but yeah, you're right. You, you came up with lessons that were shortened to the point that people could really apply right out of the box. Um, I, I don't love Joe Rogan content, but the reason he's famous and good at what he does is because before that he was an actor and he was a comedian before that. So he's got these presentation skills, conversation skills.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Connections.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  He's connections. He's got, um, interests that a lot of people have. I don't share them because I don't care about conspiracy theories. I like, you know, prefer science. Um, I don't care about aliens or any of that stuff that probably isn't really real. Um, but people love that stuff. And so he focuses on that and it's, he's genuinely interested in it and that shows.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  So that will make you good at it. You can't have just one of the pieces and then hope to be good at it. It doesn't work like that.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  There's a lot of comedians that don't talk about things that anyone is interested in, or they just recap the news and it's not that successful. Or they're a comedian and they're like, oh, I want to, I want to make my show popular. I think the way I'll do that is find some trending thing and talk about it. That doesn't really work long-term. You, you even have these flash of the pan type stuff, but it doesn't work long-term. And so that's again, why it should be a hobby is you should pick something you're really interested in talking about. Because then you can talk about it endlessly and the people that are interested in that will find you eventually and you'll have a small audience and you have to be satisfied with that. Cause if you try to make a broad, podcasting is narrow casting instead of broadcasting, right?

• 31:51Speaker 00

  So true.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Like you find. The audience of people that are really interested in like Apple products.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And you talk about the new watch and you talk about the new whatever, everything that comes out and you go into the store and you buy it and you review it and you do that. That's narrow casting and if you try to be a broadcaster, it's tough, man. Like I cover a lot on the Jordan Harbinger Show, but I've been doing it for 18 years and my audience comes with me on that, but a lot of people write in and go, "Oh, my God, I love the advice segments on Fridays." I don't love a lot of the interviews you do, but whatever, who cares? And other people write in and go, "I love the interviews. I don't care about the advice, though." But whatever, other people love everything. But I can get away with that because I've been doing it for 20 years. I build skills in these different discrete areas. But if you just showed up and you were like, "I'm going to talk about whatever I want," not very compelling.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  That worked 20 years ago because you were on TV.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Like Larry King can do it because there's one other show on at the same time or two and there, then there's Dateline or something competing with him. So like if you want a talk show, you just have to watch Larry King. So if he's talking with a person who's got animals on, that's what you're watching. You don't really have many other options. So you could broadcast that one. Uh, but now if you're like, "Oh, I'm going to force this down the throat of my audience," well, that's not going to work because there's eight bajillion channels and that's not even counting YouTube.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  It's interesting because you're talking about, you know, the different segments of your show, the different kind of things that you've tested on your, on your show. You know, I've been podcasting for over a decade. You've been podcasting for almost 20 years. We all have known a lot of podcasters. We've been to a lot of conferences. We've seen a lot of podcasters that were huge and you don't hear about them anymore.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  That stopped publishing.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  One of the biggest kind of, to be honest, fears I had when I, the last few years is like, "Am I innovating enough? Am I pushing myself? Am I staying too comfortable in my own comfort zone of the show? Uh, maybe I should test this out. Maybe I should do more video. Maybe I should, you know." How important it is to kind of innovate, push yourself, because I've seen a lot of podcasters that just have been doing the same thing for the last, whatever, 10, 12 years and their show is like half the size it used to be because, you know, they're, they're just not as good in comparison to what's out there now.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  That's true. I mean, I do. Do I innovate? I'd like to say no, but I don't think that it's necessarily true because I find other things that I'm interested in and I start to experiment with those. So Feedback Friday, our advice segment on Fridays, started off because I was getting so many people asking me questions and I was like, when am I going to respond to these? I don't spend all day answering my email. And I was like, oh, I'll just pick some recurring themes and do a show about it. I called it like the mailbag episode. So popular, people started writing in more. So popular, then I was like, I'll do this every month. And now it's every week and we can't get through the inbox. And that was, I don't know, a decade or something ago. And then I was wanting to cover science stuff and just debunk it, but not with a guest, with a researcher that I paid,

• 34:57Speaker 01

  because I couldn't find an expert on energy drinks that I wanted to have on the show that could make it or whatever. And then it was, I wanted to do another show about, spoiler, can I say penis on there, your podcast? I've been a show about penis size.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Okay, that's not a gross word. Scientific term.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yes, clinical. And so I was like, well, I'm not going to find an expert on this. I mean, I could, but it's either going to be somebody overly clinical or overly like kinky and I don't really want that. I want this, I want to strike the perfect balance. I want a balanced show about penises. So I just hired researchers and now they go and do deep dives on topics for me. And it's like, yeah, energy drinks, the lottery, genetic engineered food GMOs, whatever. And so those became really popular too. And then with YouTube, it was like, okay, I want to do this kind of thing. I want to do that kind of thing. So do I innovate? I try new things.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Are they brand new, brand new, no one's ever seen it before's? Nah, probably not. But it doesn't really matter because it has my blend of presentation. I bring the audience from the show feed into it, you know, expose them to that kind of thing. But in a way, it kind of is innovation because it's, people will always say like, the Jordan Hartman show's like three shows in one. You got the advice part, you got the science part on Sunday and you got the interview part Tuesday or Tuesday, Thursday. So yeah, that's unique.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  But it's like, did I go, I need to come up with a trifecta of unique, different formats for my shit? No, not, not really. But the other thing is I'm always building skills. And I think a lot of people, like you said, those podcasters where they're like, their audience is half the size it was a decade ago because of whatever reason. I've got voice coaches. I've got people that I hired to look over scripts, script, I guess, script coaching.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, we've done heroic public speaking.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did heroic public speaking with Michael Port. Yeah, and so I build, you know, constantly build those different kinds of skills. Um, I took a bunch of video game voice acting classes because I was doing voice acting for video games anyways. And I was like, I should probably know what I'm doing. And then that stuff just bleeds its way into me goofing around on the show. And then it's like, oh, I want to add some funny soundbites that I think are, that make me laugh. And then I add those into the show. So the show constantly grows and evolves. I think a lot of the people where their audience gets cut in half, and I'd have to study this scientifically, I suppose. But a lot of those people, I think what they do is they go, I've got a winning formula. I'm really focused on my Lego building and kid raising.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna hire my team, outsource all of this stuff and sort of work like on Mondays. And yeah, their audience dwindles because they're really not even putting that much brain power into it. They're just sort of letting it slip. And I get it. And look, if they've already made 10 million bucks and they're going to retire anyway, and they can live off their show. Like, fine, do that. Uh, I don't want to do that because I enjoy what I'm doing. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, I can't really say I fault somebody for doing less of it. That's probably what you should be doing if you don't love it.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  It probably happens naturally, yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  It happens naturally. So my audience is growing and part of that is just kind of lucky, you know? Um, and a part of it is because I develop it over and over. And yeah, the, the, the audio stuff is, is tricky to grow. People do video for that. I assume we're going to talk about that at some point. Um, I don't focus on that for reasons that we could get into or not.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  We'll get into it for sure. I mean, uh, I'm going to push back a little bit because, you know, you talked about podcasting as a hobby and maybe you should just kind of do what you love. But, you know, you just mentioned a whole bunch of things that show that you're invested in what you do. Like, you know, I would consider you more a journalist, you know?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  You hire teams, you have researchers, you talk to scientists, you know? Most people that are podcasting are not putting in that kind of investment.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  You know, and obviously.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Well, it's not a hobby for me. It's my business.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  But if it, but if you, if I started now, it would be almost foolish to treat it like a business.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, but this idea of also just. Obviously, you're spending money on this, but what I'm saying is the amount of time and attention and thought you're putting into the episode. You know, that could, anybody could do, you know, this idea of like, and also being mindful, like, okay, I'm, I'm a podcaster. My instrument is my voice. Maybe I should improve my voice.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  You know, intonation, or, you know, my breathing on the mic, or whatever it might be.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, today I'm sniffling a lot. Don't judge me. Everyone's like, this is the guy who invested in his voice.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Charming.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's charming. Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  So you started in 2006. You were podcasting. You were the host of your old show for over 12 years. And then you had one of the hardest periods of your time, of your life. You've mentioned this a few times in public on other interviews. Probably the roughest 18 months of your life.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  Where you left your old show.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  I know that, you know, obviously there's some details we can't share, but I want to know a little bit about, what is it like losing everything and having to start from scratch? What was your first thought that morning when you woke up and thought, okay, I gotta start over?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  So I, I did that show for, yeah, over 11 years, I think. And I thought it was super depressing because I thought, oh my gosh, I'm gonna spend the next, like, maybe even 15 years trying to get back to where I am right now, or where I was yesterday. That's really scary. It's like being at the top of a mountain, then you wake up and you realize that it actually, you have to climb the whole mountain. You were just dreaming.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  And I also was older, right? When I started the first show, I was probably like 26. And then you wake up and you're 37 and you gotta do it again. You're like, oh my God, right? And luckily I didn't have kids, so I could really focus on this stuff. But I had a mortgage, you know, scary.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Gotta live.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, gotta live. And. So that was really scary, but what I didn't count on, of course, was, and we'll get into this, was like the people I knew, the connections I had, the skills I had built, you kind of discount all that stuff. So I spent a couple of weeks like really anxious. I lost a bunch of weight and stuff, which was really awful. Well, it was good, but it was not good. I was like, oh, the scale number sexy, but I look like a skeletal mess. I should try sleeping more than three hours a night. And my wife was like really worried about me. My family was kind of not, not like, oh, he's gonna do something bad, but they were just like, he looks like crap. This is not good. And so I was really, really worried about it. I thought it would be impossible

• 41:35Speaker 01

  because I thought, okay, we no longer have that sort of early to market advantage. All of the stuff I did to build this, like a lot of those strategies don't work anymore, like linking to blogs and, you know, having your friends send out to their email list, which they used to do for free. Now they're like, sure, for 25 grand, I'll send out to my email list. So that kind of stuff was really scary. What I didn't count on, you know, you see those like ESPN interviews and it's like, they're always like, you find out who your friends are. They're not talking about like, wow, you find out you just have so many friends. They mean that when you're broke, like your friends are gone. No one's taking your calls. Well, everybody took my call. I made a list of 100 people to call and I went, I think

• 42:15Speaker 01

  I did 140 podcasts in the next like eight months or a year. Everyone took my call. I explained my situation in as much detail as I could stand to all those people and people that I barely knew. And of course, the people I did know, but people, even people I barely knew were like, I'm gonna help you. I want to help you rebuild. I want to help you do this. So they had me on their show. They sent me out to their email list. They told their fans about me. They put it on their blog when those were a thing. They tweeted it when that was a thing that got a lot of traction for them. They would do whatever they could to help me get back on my feet. And that was really incredible. So I did have that ESPN moment, but it was like, wow, I found out I had a lot of friends. I didn't know that. And part of the reason was because I really had dug the well before I got thirsty,

• 42:57Speaker 01

  right? I built all these relationships before I needed them. I didn't ask most of these people for anything. I helped a lot of other people get what they wanted without asking for anything in return. I didn't have the expectation of getting anything in return. Then when I needed something, I had this, a whole bunch of people were like, I can't, I had some people say, oh my God, I can't wait to help you with this. I, you helped me do this thing five years ago. And I'm like, I don't even remember that. But they were like, I've been looking for an opportunity to be able to help you with something at some point. So I'm almost glad this happened, not to you, but like I'm glad that I'm able to help. And so after eight months, my new show and company was more profitable than my old company was after 11 years.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  After eight months, we had done more revenue in it, not more revenue, sorry, more profitability in a year than my previous company had in a peak year.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  And when, when Jen, my wife, told me that, when we were sitting around doing the finances, I was like, well, that doesn't sound right. And I was like, surely you're not counting what we pay ourselves. She's like, no, no, no. I mean, you know, if you count your salary and my salary and you add this, and then you put the money we have in the bank, it's this. And I was like, do we owe like a million dollars in taxes? She's like, no, no, no, we're, we pay our taxes quarterly, like in a, and I was like, well, I don't understand how this works. And she basically was like, well, in the old business, you had to pay all your partners out. They wasted a ton of money. They didn't really add anything to the bottom line. I mean, a little bit, but not much. You had a huge sales team. You had a house. You had all these expenses. With us, it's just you in the guest room doing a podcast.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  And I was like, that's true. We don't have this huge staff. We don't have all this overhead. We don't have all these partners that are like, I have to make as much as Jordan, because otherwise my ego hurts. Like, all that stuff was gone. And so we just made a bunch. And then that was also coincidentally, when I started, when I started the Jordan Harbinger Show from the old show, this is in 2018, there was somewhat of a, something of a renaissance going on in podcast ads around 2017, 2018, 2019, and then COVID hit. And COVID was like the e-commerce explosion, where everything closed brick and mortar and then was like, we're going to advertise online. Oh, we have to get to people in their homes. What are they doing? They're listening to podcasts. So then my revenue, I think,

• 45:15Speaker 01

  2018 was that profitable year, that first year. 2019, I think we doubled it. 2020, I think we doubled that. 2021, 2022, I was just like, and I watched the graph go like this. So it was really, I remember almost laughing, looking back at myself and laughing and going, wow, I used to be worried about this. That's kind of funny.

• 45:36Speaker 00

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• 47:22Speaker 00

  It's incredible, like, what life teaches you about what you're capable of. You know, like, and I think that the reason why I wanted to talk about this is because I know there's people listening that are having a tough time right now. Yes. They're having a tough time getting up in the morning and telling themselves what they need to do. I remember a period of time when I was running my software company, Webinar Ninja, before we sold it, where we... I call it my wartime. Like I was going to war every day. The the the peacetime rules and things we spent on and the way we ran our team don't apply anymore.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Martial law. There's a curfew.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Stay up after ten to get shot.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  In order for us to to kind of get through that period of time where we were competing and we were trying, you know, it was it was like that post covid dip and we're trying to like really manage the situation and luckily we were able to get through it and and do well. But I remember vividly like having to get up, force myself to get out of bed and just like, I just got to take the next minute to go to the bathroom, next minute to have breakfast, like just take it minute by minute.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds familiar.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I mean, if somebody is going through that right now, what advice would you give them?

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really had a hard time with that. I would so I don't want to sugarcoat this at all. A a typical, the first couple of weeks when I restarted my business, a typical day for me would be go to bed around ten or eleven because I couldn't, I had trouble sleeping, wake up at two or three AM to go to the bathroom, be literally shaking, lay in bed until six o'clock in the morning, fall asleep for another forty five minutes, get up and then try and have some semblance of a day. And I did that for weeks and I literally lost like twenty five pounds. And my wife was like, you need to eat food and you need to sleep more than three hours a night. And I was like, I would love to, but I can't. So I get it and it sucks and it's like a medical condition, you know.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Um, but one thing that really helped me was I made a plan, which was all the people I needed to call, schedule calls with, whatever it was, all the things I needed to get done. Cause when when I had, oh my God, I need to make a website. Oh my God, I need to do a show. Oh my God, I need to do this. I just would do like parts of each thing that were sort of within reach at the moment. And then at the end of the day, I'd go like, I I didn't do anything today. And then it would even make my anxiety worse. Once I made a list of all the things I needed to do, I remember there were like three hundred things on this list. It was like a giant Google Doc. And it was like, call this person, call this person, schedule a call with them, make a call with them. If I got up in the morning, I would schedule all these calls all day. Handle some of the other calls that I actually did and then it would be like, okay, register new domain and set up domain security.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Uh, have contact friend about website. Then I'd go to bed and go, wow, I did so much today. So instead of being like a blender with no top on where all the stuff goes onto the ceiling and you're like, oh crap, now I gotta clean that up. I was like a laser where it was like, okay, I did all these things, like a laser burning a hole through the problem.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  So then I would go to bed and I'd go, all right, it doesn't maybe feel like I did that much today, but look at all the stuff I did today. All of which was important. Wow. I did out of 300 things. I did 11. I just need to keep doing this.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  And then in a month, like this list will be empty.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And I felt really good about that. And I remember I slept like a freaking rock.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  That day.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  And my wife was like, what, did you take, you know, I live in California. So she was like, did you go to the dispensary? And I was like, no need. I'm high on life. Cause I completed 11 really important things today.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  One of them didn't finish or whatever, but like, I feel good. I feel like I got this. And my wife was like, okay, whoever this new Jordan is.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Stick around. Cause I'm sick of waking up at 4am and you're like staring at the ceiling and shaking and like, you know, making coffee. Uh, or, you know, snorting coffee grounds off the kitchen table. So yeah, the, the focus of having a plan was actually kind of magical. I really, if, if basically like that, that focus really eased my anxiety. It, it, it just took away all of the jitters and it, and it made me feel like I was moving forward. It's like one foot in front of the other. It sounds like a cliche and I'm sure that it is, but it, cause before I was just sort of spinning around in circles and running around like a chicken with no head.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  But once you go, if I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, going in that direction, I'm going to be all the way on the horizon by the end of the month. That was just a massive, massive boost. And then I just kept doing that. And then eventually I didn't need the list anymore. I had my to do list app and it's like, okay. And then I had my calendar and I fell into a routine. And then like I said, eight months later, I was like, okay, I feel like we're doing okay. Money in the bank. Jen, what's our status? Oh, our statuses were more profitable than we ever were in the last 11 years. And I was like, this, like I said, I was, I remember sitting there at this restaurant in the mall and going, there's no way that that's right.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  That can't be right. Run me through the numbers.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  And she's like, all right, I'm gonna do it all again in front of you. And I was like, I can't believe it.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incredible what we're capable of.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  Two things I want to kind of pull out of what you just said. First of all, one of the things that really helped me in my period of time was just changing my environment. Like, we normally work from home, but I decided, Nicole, we're gonna get an office and a coworking space and need to just change what my, get on the bus, go to the coworking space, see other people, be working in public so you feel a little bit more accountable. Like, okay, I gotta get through my to do list today. I can't just like do the laundry, you know?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I'm updating my gaming workstation. That's, that's, it's important.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's part of my mental health. Yeah. So it allowed me to kind of just get up, go work, come back home, try again tomorrow, that kind of thing.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  And also you want to leave, right?

• 53:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  It's like, if you're working from home, you're like, I'm just gonna take a quick break and do, like you said, do the laundry. I want to go work out for a while, come back. Nice. However, when you're at, what are fish burners or something?

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Like, I gotta get out of here. Ah, but I have 30 more emails.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  I'm doing these emails and I'm getting the hell out of here.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. I'm not staying for happy hour.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Drinks, Kurt? Don't miss me with that.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. That was, that was some tough times. The other thing is, is that this idea of just, one of the hardest things of any business owner is that they have to be the planner and they have to be the implementer at the same time. You know, and most people, they mix the two. So I think it's important to kind of like say, okay, right now I want to put on my, you know, planning hat and I'm gonna do my to dos and I'm gonna plan my next few weeks and the things I gotta do. And then I have to then put on my implementer hat and just trust the, the planner person that they made a good plan and just, just do it. Stop questioning, because then you never get anything done. Because like, well, maybe I should do this in a different way, blah, blah, blah.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  So that mentality helps you kind of get through it. Like, it's better for you just to Get things done rather than worry if it's the perfect implementation or not. Uh, because momentum is huge in those moments where you're just trying to get out of that trough of sorrow.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  I agree. My wife does a lot of the schedule, all the scheduling and planning. And so I just look at my calendar to see what I have to do on any given day. And so I don't have a choice, really, which is nice. And she also does a lot of thinking. She'll be like, I'll, I'll go, oh my God, this week looks crazy. She's like, yeah, well, next week there's three days off. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. So, so you're right. That does really help. You, I, I, my calendar is like a religion for me. Um, if it's on the calendar, it gets done and it gets done at that time. And if it doesn't, if it's not on the calendar and someone's like, can you just do it? And it's the answer is no, I'm, you, I'll refer you to Jen. She'll fit you in on my calendar.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Oh, but that's in July. That's when I have time.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  So if you have a compelling argument for why I should move something else, go for it. But if you just are in the mood to talk to me before that, it's not going to happen.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  And the other thing that I love about the calendar, not just that I follow to a T, is that let's say you have like an hour for email. Most people, they don't put that on their calendar. They're just like, oh, I'll do it between other things. Well, how much time do you have between other things? Zero time. Okay. So now you have 8,000 emails that you got to get to. Now you're working on Saturday, right? So, or Sunday to catch up. So I'll have that hour of email and then let's say that Jen's like, hey, my friend wants us to look at, uh, turf for the backyard. Can you jump on this call? I'm like, okay, I gotta do that. That's important. So now I put that on the calendar. Now I'm going to drag that hour of email somewhere else.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  And I go, all right, Jen, now I have to work over the time that you had planned for us to go out to dinner. And she's like, okay. I try not to do that. But, but the idea is that doesn't just vanish in like, oh, I'm going to do two things during this hour. If that's not happening, you have to shift it down and it makes it so you can't lie to yourself.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Because if you're moving that thing somewhere else, you're like, oh, I have to put that over this other thing that I wanted to do. Oh, now I'm not going to the gym.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Cause I decided to screw around for an hour and now that's over my gym slot. So you only do that a few times before you're like, okay, I have to follow this plan because I made the plan and if the plan works, I'm going to have a great day. And if the plan gets all screwed up, I'm gonna have a really crappy day. So that's been really, really helpful.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  That's a really good point because I think that the longer you're in entrepreneurship, the, the more you realize, oh, I'm in a bubble. Like I don't realize that most people outside of entrepreneurship, business, creators, don't have a calendar. Like they don't actually have a calendar. They don't actually put anything in the calendar. It's not, they're just committed to memory and that's it. It's actually one of the first modules, first lesson, I think it is in the hundred on BA program is put when you're gonna do this course in the calendar. Because if you don't have it in the calendar, it's not gonna get done. Um, and I think that's the reason why a lot of people fail in anything.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  Working out, anything.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  There are so many people that will tell me, like, someone will miss a call and I'll go, hey, you okay? Oh, I'm so sorry. So what happened is it was on my calendar, but I never checked my calendar and I go, what's the point of having it? And they go, well, there's only like two things on it. So you're only doing two things this week? No, I only put calls on it. Okay. So all the other stuff, you just do it kinda like whenever and they're like, yeah. And I'm like, oh, I bet this guy's not productive at all.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. A lot of people think of you, you become a slave to the calendar or like, oh, I don't have any flexibility.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  But I think it's, it's the opposite. Like I can unplug my brain. I don't need to think of or remember anything anymore. I just look at my calendar in the morning. Okay. This is what I gotta do today. Great. Awesome.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  I have flexibility. I can move whatever I want in the calendar. It just has to go somewhere else. What these guys do is they go, I have flexibility. I just don't do the thing that was supposed to get done at that time. And then later on, when my boss goes, hey, where's that?

• 57:53Speaker 00

  I'm not accountable.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Where's the TPS report? You just go, oh shit, I gotta work all weekend. Cancel the trip to Disney with my kids. I gotta do this thing for the boss. It's like, they're just not productive. People will look at my calendar and go, wow, you do more in like one day than I do in the whole week. And I go, yeah, but we have the same number of hours in a day. So the difference is I'm just getting it all done on Monday because it's on the calendar. And it's all scheduled and it's all efficient. You're getting it done in a week because you're like, ah, I think I want to go to the gym. Actually, I'm just taking early lunch. You know what? I don't feel like dealing with that right now. I'll do it tomorrow. And then in the three months, you're doing the thing I did, you know, six Mondays ago or whatever. It's just, there's, you can choose to live like that, or you can choose to be productive.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  And I choose productivity because I want the extra time. At night, I'm done by like 5pm every day. Because I want to play with my kids, I want to go to my gym.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Other people, they work till eight or nine, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what are you doing? Less work than I'm doing from nine to five, less, like far less. Because I don't screw around for 30 minutes between each thing. It's in there.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  So I can't recommend that enough. When I first started working from home, I swear my day got started at like 10, 2pm, and then when I was in my 30s, it was like 10am. And I got, you know, a few hours of work done every day, the end, but it still felt like I worked all day. Now, it feels like my day goes by really fast, and it barely feels like I worked all day. But I get more done in a week than I used to do, or sorry, I get more done in a day than I used to in a week.

• 59:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  It's all just because of time management.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, all good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's incredible. Let's shift gears a little bit. You've interviewed all kinds of people, spies,

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  billionaires, celebrities, athletes, Kobe Bryant, comes to mind, one of my, you know, like great, Kobe Bryant was one of my heroes growing up. What is like the common thread that you've found from people that are just amazing at what they do? Masters at what they do?

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, there, there's a few things. One, they enjoy the process of it and not just the results. I think that's probably the main thing. They enjoy the process, not the results. Kobe liked practicing and working out. Yeah, I'm sure he loved winning championships too, but I think what he loved is like getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning and shooting, I don't know, 1,000 Yeah. free throws or whatever. I think that guys like Ray Dalio, they love, or whatever, they love learning about investing in companies, and they love learning about how to spot trends, and they love going to China and seeing the new thing that's gonna happen. They love money, I'm sure, too, but I don't think-

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  That they're like, oh, we're gonna make so much money doing this. I think they're like, oh, we learned a lot about how this is gonna work in the future. The AI guys, like the driven investors, they just love being on the cutting edge of things.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yes, then they make a big bet on what that's gonna be and they make a bunch of money. But if you talk to like Marc Andreessen, he's not talking about his yacht.

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  And he's not talking about his bank balance. He's talking about the future of AI and how AI works or whatever, some cryptocurrency thing. So these guys are always interested in that kind of, they're interested in the process of what they're doing, the learning more about it, the mastery of it. They're not as interested in the results. And I, I, I mean, to go back to the top of the show when we were talking about podcasting. I always know if somebody's talking about how they're gonna build an audience, I'm like, this person's screwed. Because as soon as they see how hard that is, they're just gonna be like, no, thanks. And they're gonna move on to like TikTok or something. Uh, but if they're talking about how much they love discussing Pokemon cards. I'm like, oh, you're gonna be fine because you're probably not even gonna check your download numbers. You're just gonna start talking about Pokemon cards.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  And film it and then put it on your podcast host and your YouTube channel and then just like never look at the analytics because you don't care. That's a person who's probably gonna succeed in this game.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  Do you find these, these masters to be obsessed, mon, like almost like maniacal?

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Uh, sometimes, yeah. Like I would say somebody like Kobe Bryant was probably a little maniacal. I mean, you hear all these stories of. Who's, I think it was Tim Grover who coached like Michael Jordan and Kobe and those guys. And he, he would say something like. He would end at 11:00 PM and then he would come back at 5:00 AM. And he's like, oh, Kobe's already here. And he's like, I never left, you know, or whatever, like this is some crazy crap like that. Like he stayed up all night doing free throws. Cause he had the day off the next day. He was jet lagged. So he like spent like eight hours.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Shooting hoops. And it's like, holy smokes.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So yeah, there's some of those guys and guys like, guys like Tim Grover, those coaches of athletics guys, they're, they're kind of maniacal. Yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Um, they're on another level. It's harder to say is like, is like Ray Dalio, like a maniacal learner of, I don't know. That's, it's a different level.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  I mean, maniacals is a word, but I. I personally find that anybody who's highly successful in what they do. That thing. That craft is one of the top priorities of their life.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  You know, that's, that's true.

• 1:02:55Speaker 00

  Um, they just don't compromise.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  I interviewed a bunch. I always do these like inter- other, uh, interviews with like spies or undercover cops. There was one recently, there's a few recently, cops, ATF, FBI, regular police that infiltrated like biker gangs, the crips, whatever. One theme in, in their work is they always work way more than their bosses want them to and that they're allowed to. And they go off the books. And I was like, what is off the books? And he's like, so my boss authorized like 30 hours of overtime and I worked like 300 hours of overtime and I just didn't get paid. And I'm like, what? And he's like, but I really wanted to take down this street gang. So he's like, on my days off, I would roll through the neighborhood and just say what's up to people.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  I didn't put that in the report because I couldn't, I didn't want them to have to be like, oh, we can't afford to pay you for the two hours that you will spend on Saturday. So he's like, I just didn't mention it. And then it was like, and then.

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  They care about the results.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  They care about the results. So they would like go and do all of this stuff. And he's like, yeah, I didn't write a report about how I went to this neighborhood barbecue with a bunch of crips and like sat there for six hours talking about so and so. Because they didn't authorize that overtime. So he's like, I just took my day and like brought my wife and like went to this barbecue with the crips. And, and like the biker gang dudes were like, yeah, I was doing this and then I was supposed to do this other thing. And then I just decided to tag along with them on a cross-country ride. And I didn't say anything because they would have had to arrange backup and it was going to take too long and be too expensive. So he's like, so they just like, talk about maniacal. They put their own personal safety at risk at that point, right? Cause there's like no FBI van trailing them. They're, they're like in another state.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  And they're like, well, if I want to get, build trust with these guys, I gotta like ride.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Figure this out, yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Down to Florida from Michigan or Canada with meth in the bike. And it's like, and if I get arrested, I'll go to jail and they'll eventually be like, oh, this guy was an FBI agent.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like real Donnie Brasco.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and it's like, so she was like, that's the worst case scenario where they find me and they kill me. But he's like, what's worse is just not going and then missing out on this like massive meth deal that I will eventually use to indict all these guys.

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's maniacal. Cause these guys like they, they throw like all caution to the wind to, to catch criminals.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  Pretty incredible. That dedication, wow.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, these, these are the guys where you're like, when you see like an old detective drama and they're like, at a bar alone, drinking a whiskey after a long day, you're like, that's what these guys are. They only have the job. And even if they're married and they're like, their wife's like, you haven't been home for three days. And it's like, oh yeah, could I take a shower? Yeah, you better take a shower. You look like a bum. Don't let the kids see you.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  It was horrible. Oh my gosh. We touched about, about this, we talked about this a bit, uh, off camera. But there's so much changing in podcasting. We talked about video, there's things happening. You know, people are, are putting everything on, you know, breaking up their podcasts, putting it on TikTok, putting it on Instagram reels.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  They're doing live shows around the world, all kinds of stuff, kind of changing the landscape of podcasting. I know you have some strong feelings about the audio format of podcasting. Can you share a little bit about all this and your opinions of what's happening?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't love TikTok. I mean, for one thing, I think it's like spyware from the Chinese government, but whatever. Um, the, speaking of conspiracy theories, but, uh, I don't love video. I film my shows, not all of them, but mostly only the interviews. But I don't create for YouTube. Um, there's a reason for that. With video, you look at your analytics and you see what does well. And what does well are like wild thumbnails, crazy topics, getting people to make viral clips.

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  The Mr. Beastification.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Yes, the Mr. Beastification of things. So when I see, what I see is podcasters, I call it the Jerry Springer effect. And what they do, so.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  That's how old we are, guys.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how old we are. Uh, RIP. So Jerry Springer used to be a serious journalist. People like, don't even know that because he's such a clown. Uh, was such a clown. Well, he stopped doing the serious stuff because Geraldo Rivera.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Did a show with like KKK guys and Black Panthers and they started fighting. He got hit in the face with a chair. And he broke his nose and everyone was, it made like news and everyone, then his ratings went through the roof and Jenny Jones, Ricky Lake, Jerry Springer, and I forget who else, like they, they.

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  Sarah Jessica Raphael.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Yes, Sally Jesse Raphael, yeah. Their ratings went like they tanked. So what those folks all did is they decided to copy that format and become more and more ridiculous. That's why you have.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  That's clickbait, the beginning of clickbait.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Beginning of clickbait. It was, oh, Geraldo's having on Black Panthers and KKK. Well, Jerry Springer's having on, my sister got pregnant with this. Oh, that's Maury Povich, right? And then you are not the father, right? It's that, that whole thing. So those guys, they all used to be serious and then they became a complete circus. That is what YouTube does to podcasts. So there's a lot of serious shows that were like about science and things like that. I'm not going to mention any names. They were about science. They had really smart people on there. Now, if you look, it's like an actress that's still hot, but hasn't done anything for five years. Next on this channel. And you're like, what happened?

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  What happened was they figured out that women do better on this channel. Attractive women do marginally better on this channel. Show business stuff does better on this channel. Uh, people who are popular on this Instagram viral thing and on this other channel did better on this channel. So now you have every YouTuber does the same guests, tries to get the same clips, makes them the same format.

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  And you're serving the lowest common denominator.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that you're serving the lowest common denominator and the algorithm likes it. So like even my thumbnails, I'm like, oh, is this, whose show is this? Oh, is this Diary of, oh no, this is my show. Why, why does it look like Diary of a CEO? Cause they make the thumbnails look similar. Why? Because then people click on them. Oh, okay. And then it brings our analytics up and it creates results and discovery. So it's like literally we're copying my YouTube team. I don't even, they, they're their own, uh, different company and they do their own thing and they make money doing it. And they're often like, oh, can you interview this person? I'm like, oh no, they're terrible. And like, okay, fine. So we try to find this happy medium of like stuff I'm interested in and stuff they can use. And the, the overlap is not a hundred percent. A lot of the, most of the stuff that I create, they're like, yeah, we're not gonna put that on the

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  channel, cuz it's not gonna do well. It's like advice about a serious problem, or a scientist that doesn't have a footprint on the internet. And so I create that stuff, my audience loves it. YouTube is like, nah, we want you to have on this person who talks about aliens. And I'm like, nah, what if I have that person on, but we talk about life on other planets in a scientific way? And they're like, we can try it. And then it like, doesn't do as well as when they're like, UFOs are all around us. You know, it's like, so you have this Jerry Springer effect. And then people who are, they're, they're, they're more interested in the clicks and in the money than they are in the actual content. They start creating for the YouTube algorithm, which tells them to create stupid stuff for stupid people.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  And you make way more money creating stuff for uneducated stupid people and or kids, which is kind of the same thing.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  No offense, kids.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  No offense, kids. But that's, if you, if you create for those people, you will get many more clicks. You'll start to make more money. You'll get more notoriety. So I just don't play that game.

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  You see me sighing because we started publishing our episodes on YouTube in August of 2024. And we went through this whole cycle of like, okay, what is YouTube? How do we, you know, succeed here? The whole thumbnail game, the whole hook game, the whole. And what happened is we started to change the podcast, really, and being a little vulnerable here, to try to do better on YouTube.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:37Speaker 00

  But then we started to realize, wait a minute, this is like, you know, the, the tail wagging the dog.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  This doesn't make any sense.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  That's the expression I was looking for.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I was listening to an episode of mine. I asked, I listened to my own episodes in the car. And I was like, I don't like this.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  This doesn't sound like what I created the podcast for. This doesn't sound educational. This sounds like I'm trying to like, Wait, don't go anywhere. We're gonna tell you something really important, but before that, did you know that you like all that?

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  You're creating all these open loops to get people like stick around and you're like, people don't talk like that. It's exhausting.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  Exactly. And it actually communicates better on video, to be honest, like those hooks and those types of things. It's not that obnoxious on video, but on audio, it just sounds really bad. It's not a good experience. And when I heard that, when I'm driving, like, I literally stopped the car. I called Nicole, our producer and my wife, and I said, Nicole, we need to stop doing this. This is, this is, like, this is not the show. And we said, okay. And basically, we just do a totally different audio version. And we do YouTube the way YouTube, and we even talked to our content team who runs our YouTube channel and does all the videos and the editing and the thumbnails and all that kind of stuff. We said, we, we don't care about a million subs. We don't care about any of this stuff. We just want

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  to have a good show. We want to produce the podcast. And if it doesn't do well, fine, doesn't matter. We can still use the content and the clips to market the show.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  And it took us like six months to realize that. We went through all that, all those stages of disappointment and grief and what's going on, why it's not working, blah, blah. You know, and to be honest with you, when we were on hyper YouTube mode, we grew. We got just like 12,000 subscribers and blah, blah. And it was, but I wasn't happy with the product.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look, man, I've still got, I think, 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. It's just that I don't look at it as a, I look at the revenue and I go, cool, pays for my vacation. I don't try and grow that. I mean, the team tries to grow it. I don't, I, they, they ask me to do things and I push back. And I don't let them say, if you do this, you're gonna make 10,000 more dollars a month, because I don't even want that to taint my idea of what I should be creating. You're right. It's so funny. You mentioned that it, what works on video doesn't work well at audio. Cause you're right. If somebody is in a video and they're like, I'm gonna tell you first how to do this thing, but before that, I have something special to share with you. You're like, okay, this is an acceptable thing to do in a video. But imagine if you were like, hey, Jordan, what time, what time is it? And I'm like, I'll tell you that, but in a second. First, I want to tell you about,

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  you'd be like, no, dude, just tell me what time, what is wrong with you? And you know, like, if you talked that way to a normal person, they would lose their freaking mind. So I won't talk to my audience in a way that I wouldn't talk to like my friend. It's too weird. But you're right. On video, you get a little bit of a pass.

• 1:13:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. We change the scripts, all that kind of stuff. It just wasn't working.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  I'm glad that we realized quickly, but at the same time, I think people don't realize that podcasting as a business is a totally different animal versus YouTube. And from a monetization point of view, it just actually makes more sense for you just to do audio.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  It does. Yeah, I agree. God, I'm thinking of like, Jordan, what time is it? I'll tell you in a moment, but first, have you heard of HelloFresh?

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Fresh meals delivered to your...

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  I am never inviting you to France again.

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  You're so weird, man.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, boy. So I want to talk about something that we've kind of talked about a few times. Neither of us have written a book.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  Okay, we're in Maison Bruce's Hotel, who's a famous author.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  In France.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  What a flex.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Look at that, original painting up there.

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  And I couldn't help but feel the sense of honest jealousy when I was in the, his library downstairs, looking at all the books he's written, looking at the impression he made on a whole nation of France with, through his, through his, his writing. Is a book in your future?

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Maybe. Yeah, I, my agent would love that. She, there's a lot of cool offers on the table. I just, I realized from talking with so many authors on the Jordan Harbinger Show that like, the amount that you, of time you have to take to write a book that's good is crazy. And Ryan Holiday is one of my good friends, so I always see and hear about his creative process and I'm just like, oh my gosh. The thing is, to write good books and to do a podcast, I have kids, so like, I want to spend a lot of time with my kids. Ryan Holiday somehow manages to write books and do a podcast.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  And manage a farm.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  And manage a farm. I mean, his podcast is...

• 1:15:22Speaker 00

  How do you do it, Ryan?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not as much frequency of the podcast and he's got his bookstore and stuff. He's got a good team. He works really hard, obviously. There's, there's that too. But he's, he also loves writing books, so it's like a non-negotiable part of what he's doing. I get that, right? For me, like, working out all the time is a non-negotiable part of my life, so I dedicate the time to that.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  The podcast is that for you.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  And the podcast is that for me. I would write a book, but I'm not going to sacrifice the Lego time and the, you know, RC car time and the wrestle with my kids time. And I get my parents are around, they live across the street, they come over every day. So like, imagine not spending an hour with them, not spending an hour with my kids or three hours with my kids and parents because I'm writing a book while my parents are still around, they're in their eighties, while my kids are still little and want to play with dad. It just seems like a really bad trade.

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, the trade off is huge.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Really bad. And then when you write the book, great. Okay, now spend the next five years promoting it.

• 1:16:15Speaker 00

  A lot more realize that, yeah.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  You gotta travel, you gotta go on these tours, you gotta go on media stuff that you would normally say no to.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  So now I've given myself a part-time job and during that time is my workout time, my kid time and my parent time. It's like, no, thank you. Terrible deal.

• 1:16:31Speaker 00

  I mean, I think one of the things we've realized in our careers is, you know, once you say yes to something, it's like you're committing hours, days, years of your life.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  Like now, I can't do a whole bunch of stuff now because I said yeses.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Right. Like I'd rather go to France, I just got back from China. If I was writing a book, that would, none of this would be happening. I'd be at home, like, right, sitting there, writing this book with my co-authors and submitting things to my agents. I mean, Proust, yeah, he created a lot of stuff, but to be fair, all that guy had to do was drink absinthe and write. Like, he, it's a pretty good gig.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I'm sure he was celebrated as well, yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Smoke unfiltered cigarettes through one of those long holders that they had back in.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  I mean, that was, that was top class.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  That was.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  Oh, man. So as we're kind of wrapping things up here, I want to ask you, I like to ask this question to all my, you know, friends in podcasting.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Signature, your signature sign off?

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  No, no, no. I don't do this on the show. I just do this on a personal.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Like, because I ask this stuff, I ask this question to myself a lot. Like, what's this all for? Like, what am I working for? What am I doing? What's the end game here? Is there an end game? Is it, I just want to keep doing this as long as I can? Like, what is that for you? And even if that answers, I don't know, that's fine. But for me, I ask this question a lot, like, because I feel like it has to mean something, it has to end somewhere.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, look, I, I love doing the show because it helps people. I got a letter the other day that was really interesting. This guy, he had been dumped by this girl that he loved and he was crying in his car.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  And he was like, I'm gonna go through all her old texts, cuz he was like in a hard, having a hard time. And she had kept telling him to listen to different podcasts and like, you know, you gotta grow as a human. She was growing as a human, like, he was really negative and I think he like drank and smoked and stuff. So he goes through her texts and he's like, the show she recommended was yours. He started listening to the show, lost a bunch of weight, quit smoking, quit drinking, started training, met another girl, is now friends with the ex and is like, this changed my life. He's shared that with us. And I was just like, wow, this is really meaningful to a lot of people, not just me and my producer. So I do that. I love that about the show. It helps people. It say, it literally like saves some people from going into crazy downward spirals in their life.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  It's not just entertainment. Some of the stuff I do is pure entertainment, but it's really informative for a lot of people. We help a lot of people through some really hard stuff, especially on the Friday stuff. So as long as that's working, I'll probably still do it. No one's gonna care about any of the things that you and I have created in a hundred years after we're dead. It's gonna be completely irrelevant. So I try to remember that when I'm like really stressed out about things. And I focus on my kids. So I will continue doing it as long as it's fun, cuz I could retire now, but then I'd be really bored. And I think purpose is important in a person's life. So until, as long as this is serving that purpose and making me feel fulfilled, I'll keep doing it. And then eventually one day I'll probably be like, hey, this is hard. It's not really fulfilling that purpose for me anymore and I'm an irrelevant old man.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Maybe I should just like, go to Paris for two months instead of two weeks and bring my wife there and sit around and watch people walk by. That sounds like more fun. Right now that sounds miserable.

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  But when that sounds like more fun than doing my podcast, then I'm just gonna stop doing the podcast.

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  Knowing when to hang them up.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, knowing when to hang them up. I have no delusions that this is gonna be like, oh, people in fifty years are gonna be looking up what I said about AI. No one's gonna care. So it's it's only really serving the purpose for myself and for the audience. And so as soon as that's dwindles, yeah, I'm hanging it up.

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  You talk about networking a lot. You talk about building friends, building relationships. This is something that you're really good at. I know this firsthand as a friend of yours.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Check that off.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I do want to say this before we wrap up because I do mention you a lot and things I learned from you on the show and the program, all that kind of stuff. It's really important for everybody who's listening to find a bunch of Jordan Harbingers in their life. Find a friend that they can count on. You don't have to talk to them every day. You don't have to be like besties and, you know, spend weekends every day.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Go to France. You have to go to France again.

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  You don't have to do that either, but I do recommend finding a good group of people that you can send them a WhatsApp and say, "Hey, I'm going through something. I need help." Or just, "Hey, what's up, man? I'm thinking about doing this with the show. What's your experience there with that?" I've always felt like I can ask you questions. I felt like I can always lean on you when I need something. But I also feel like I, when I need to do that for you, it never feels like a burden. Never feels like, "Oh, there's Jordan again." Right?

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  I remember that conversation when we had the business split and you said, "Man, I do not envy you." And I went and I said, "Yeah, what do you think?" And we went through this whole thing, you and me and Michael Port. And then when you said you had somebody quit with like no notice and leave you in the lurch and I was like, "Man, I do not envy you." But then we went through, we talked about the whole thing and I just remember being like...

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  The worst part about that was that they got poached by one of my friends.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Oh, that is terrible.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  And then when I approached them, I said, "Hey, what's up, man? What's going on with that?" And they're like, "Business is business." You know, like...

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Not cool. Not okay.

• 1:21:46Speaker 00

  Just as you say a word twice doesn't make it legit.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Just because it sounds catchy doesn't mean it's not an immoral, terrible thing to do. Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. You got to find a bunch of Omars and people in your life that you can throw things at. Because I've had some serious questions. I called you with something that was really bad a couple of years ago. And I was like, "What would you do if you were in my shoes?" And you went through your own decision-making process and it happened to be the outcome that I was leaning towards. And I was like, "Thank God." Because it's really, some decisions are very hard to make on your own and... Sometime and back to the integrity thing or like, and it's like, what do I do? You really need to be able to unload this stuff on people that you trust and get good feedback, honest feedback that is going to be, you know, a legal course of action or an ethical course

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  of action. And most people don't have anybody that they can do that with.

• 1:22:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that requires you to make an effort to, to go to conferences, to go meet people, to go to even parties, friends. One of the things that I find it to become harder and harder as we get older is just meeting different types of people, like getting out of your circle. Like one of the reasons, I talk about this on the show a lot that I actually, I've started playing poker a lot and I'm playing with like, and I'm meeting and talking to people that I would never talk to ever. Like these people from different walks of life, people that are like professional poker players that like used to be like a truck driver and now is like, you know, a savant. And, and it just humbles you and I started to realize, oh, there's so many different ways to win at life. There's so many different ways to kind of, and there's so many things you can learn

• 1:23:21Speaker 00

  from all these types of people. So, but it doesn't happen by just sitting at home. It doesn't happen by just.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, it does not. Yeah. Making friends as an adult is hard. I don't want to even trivialize it because I think a lot of people are like, easy for you guys. Say you're super social. You go out and do the, all this stuff. You get invited to stuff.

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  It's tiring.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  It's hard. It's hard. You gotta, I recommend people go to a conference and then one of the tricks that I used to have that I do less now, but I used to do is I used to create like a side thing at a conference. And I think you participated in one where.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  The piggyback conference.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  We were at FinCon or something. And I was like, okay. I think it was Jen's idea. She's like, let's go play miniature golf, invite Omar, Nicole, John Corcoran, and a couple of other people. I forget who we went now. So I met with you guys there and a bunch of other folks. And then we were kind of like all friends. Then I think we did dinner later. So I went to that conference and I met people at the conference, but then I really deeply connected with all of the people who went out and mini golfed because we kind of spent like the whole day together.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was fun. I think we just forgot about the conference.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Basically, yeah. And it was great. So it was like an unconference. So anybody, and anybody can do that. You can, you can go to a conference and you can, even if you don't spend the whole day. With people, what I recommend is, um, this is another trick for my six minute networking course. There'll be a professor who you know is going to get like mobbed or a speaker you know is going to get mobbed. So I'll look them up on LinkedIn and social media and see if I can find personal interests of theirs. There was one guy, this is a long time ago, but there was one guy back when I was playing squash. I found that he played squash. So I rented a court nearby where he was going to be speaking on the day where he was going to be speaking. And I emailed him and was like, hey, I'm looking forward to your talk on XYZ. Uh, by the way, I got a squash court for 10 a.m. I don't know when your flight gets in. Do you fancy a game? It's right near the hotel.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  We can ride over there together. I'm a beginner squash player, so you're going to cream me on this, but it probably will feel good to burn off some sweat. So some calories after getting off the plane. And he was like, sure. No problem. So this dude was like, cause he probably was like, oh yeah, I'd love to play squash. And I wasn't like, I have to, I want a job. I even wrote like, by the way, I'm not asking for a job or anything. I just read your book. I was really interested in it. Um, that's all.

• 1:25:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  I work over here. Yeah. It was, it's like, yeah. P S. I'm not a psycho stalker who's going to try and get a job in your department at the University of Iowa or whatever.

• 1:25:36Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  So he, he was like, hey, you must be Jordan. Um, and then we went and played squash. And then I didn't need to wait in this long ass line of people that wanted stuff from him after his talk. And I kept in touch with this guy for years. Because I rented a squash court, which probably cost me like 15 bucks. Right? So it was, and I still do stuff like that. Like I'll write to somebody and I'll be like, hey, uh, you know, when are you getting in? Uh, I would love to, to work out. I know like guys like Ryan Holiday will go for runs or something with people. It's just really.

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  Facilitate that for them. That's, you're doing them a favor.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like I think Noah Kagan did something where he went, hey, do you want to go for a bike ride along the beach? I know where we can rent bikes. And I was like, yeah, that sounds awesome.

• 1:26:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  So it was me and him and a couple of other people and we basically became friends because we were riding bikes along the beach. And this was also in San Diego. Doing little things like that is massive. It's way better than let's go get coffee between talks.

• 1:26:29Speaker 00

  And it's awkward and you're not doing anything. The thing about these activities is that like you're doing something. So it's not, uh, confronting.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Right. And it's something you would do anyway. So even if you're like, I got three people to confirm and then like one shows up, you're not like, oh, I failed. Or no one shows up. You're like, well, I guess I'm going to go for this awesome bike ride on the beach.

• 1:26:47Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Kind of a bummer. Nobody came along, but oh, well, I'm already doing this cool thing in San Diego. So I recommend people start to look for things like that. And really it'll help you, even if you, if you leave a conference, you have one buddy afterwards. Major win, especially at age 45. If you've made one friend this year, you're killing the game.

• 1:27:06Speaker 00

  You're, you are, you are gregarious.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:27:10Speaker 00

  Jordan, thanks so much, man. I really appreciate you taking the time and, um, you know, I really appreciate your friendship over the years, but also just everything I've learned, listening to your show, you know, being your friend, uh, the talks you've been given, uh, over the years. So just to kind of wrap up as, as the last word of, uh, of this conversation. One of the things that I aspire to do is I try to get better at every episode I do at the podcast. Any piece of content I do, any speech I do, a lot of that comes from just observing you in particular of like you taking your craft seriously. You putting everything you got, you not trying to just like phone in it every time, you know, just to, because this doesn't mean anything.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:51Speaker 00

  I just want to say thanks for like leading by example. That means a lot to me.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 1:27:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Love it, man.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on, man. This is a lot of fun.

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  I had a blast.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, same.

• 1:27:59Speaker 00

  Let's go have some fun.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Jordan Harbinger. I sure did. It was a pleasure to really have this talk shop conversation with him. We've been friends for a while, like I mentioned, and we don't really talk about business too much. So it was nice to kind of have that forum to do so. Check out Jordan Harbinger's podcast. I highly recommend you check it out. My favorite episodes are T-Pain. He has an interview with T-Pain, which is surprisingly honest, refreshing, insightful. Uh, I also love his episodes with Robert Greene recently. So check those out. Jordan Harbinger Show, where you like to listen to podcasts. Also, if you want to learn from Jordan directly, he has a free six-minute networking course

• 1:28:47Speaker 00

  over at jordanharbinger.com/course. It's absolutely free. And if you want to learn how to grow your network through Jordan Harbinger's methodology, you know, it's saved his career and his business as a podcaster. So go ahead and check it out at jordanharbinger.com/course.

• 1:29:05Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for checking out the $100 MBA Show, listening, subscribing, being a part of this community. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

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