← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
Jordan Harbinger On: How To Succeed at Work; How to Network Without Being Gross; And How Not To Succumb To Hustle Culture
01:17:39
Career advice from a man who has walked the walk. is a Wall Street lawyer turned podcast interviewer with an approachable style and knack for securing high-profile guests. His podcast, , was selected as part of Apple’s “Best of 2018.”...
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- [00:00]
Jordan Harbinger
Foreign.
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Dan Harris
It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Yo, how we doing everybody? Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, something I think about, slash obsess about all the time. Pretty much how to succeed at work without driving yourself crazy, without succumbing to what is sometimes called hustle culture. My guest is Jordan Harbinger, who has thought very deeply about this issue for many years and he has really walked the walk. He left a Wall street career as a lawyer, took a huge risk going into podcasting back when the industry was in its infancy. Now his show, the Jordan Harbinger show, is a big hit and Jordan and I have become friends. I really like him. In this conversation we talk about how to engage in networking without being gr. He has a lot of interesting techniques here, including something called Gmail roulette. He also has a cardinal rule of networking that I found compelling. We also talk about the ripple effect of generosity, how to ask for a raise, the strategic value of asking for advice, how to deal with bad bosses, how to persuade and negotiate, and the many, many problems in his view of hustle culture. This is part of an occasional series we do here on the podcast called Sanely Ambitious. We've got three Sanely ambitious episodes this week. If you missed it, check out Ashford on Monday. She's a researcher who talks about how we can get systematic about growing, failing and taking risks. And coming up on Friday, it's another podcast through Jonathan Fields. We'll get started with Jordan Harbinger right after this. Before we get started, I just want to make sure you know about all the cool stuff we've got going on over@danharris.com that is my new ish online community built with substack where paid subscribers can now listen to this podcast ad free. Head over to podcast.danharris.com to set up ad free listening today. If you're not a paid subscriber, you will be prompted to sign up when you go to podcast danharris.com paid subscribers get lots of other stuff, including twice monthly live sessions on video with me where I guide a meditation and then take your questions. Plus you get cheat sheets for every episode of this podcast which include a summary of the key takeaways and a full transcript. It's a lot of fun. You'll get to virtually meet lots of other folks who are interested in meditation. Community is a huge part of meditation that is often de emphasized these days, but shouldn't be. Meditation and life in general is much more Enjoyable in the carpool lane. Come on over to danharris.com and check it out.
- [02:46]
Chris Gethard
Hey, prime members, are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts? Good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad free top podcasts included with your prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon music app for free or go to Amazon.com ADFreePodcasts that's Amazon.com ADFreeP Podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.
- [03:12]
Jordan Harbinger
Hi, I'm Chris Gethard and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone. I tweet out a phone number. Thousands of people try to call, talk to one of them.
- [03:21]
Dan Harris
They stay anonymous. I can't hang up.
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Jordan Harbinger
That's all the rules. I never know what's gonna happen. We get serious ones. I've talked with meth dealers on their way to prison. I've talked to people who survived mass shootings. Crazy, funny ones. I talked to a guy with a.
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Dan Harris
Goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as.
- [03:35]
Jordan Harbinger
A pirate on the weekends. I never know what's gonna happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today.
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Dan Harris
Beautiful Anonymous. Jordan Harbinger, welcome back to the show.
- [03:44]
Jordan Harbinger
Thanks for having me on, man. I feel like I looked at this and I go, oh, we talked recently, but no, not with microphones.
- [03:50]
Dan Harris
No, we have had meals recently, but we've not been on the show together. You were last on my show in 2018 when I work ABC News.
- [03:57]
Jordan Harbinger
That's a long, long time ago. I know, somehow.
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Dan Harris
So I have a lot to ask you about.
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Jordan Harbinger
Well, considering the pandemic lasted 20 years, it's been a while.
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Dan Harris
All right, so just as a framing for this conversation, you know that I'm gently bullying you into writing a book, which I think you should do.
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Jordan Harbinger
I do know.
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Dan Harris
And so I have structured this interview as basically your audition for your future publisher, even though you don't want to write a book because you're too busy with your little children, for which I have a lot of sympathy. But I still think you should write a book.
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Jordan Harbinger
I saw time management as a bullet there. Yeah, we're going to come back.
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Dan Harris
Exactly. Okay, so you've had a sneak peek at my list of questions, but you've done a ton of work around basically what I'm calling, like, how to Succeed. You've done dozens and dozens and dozens of episodes on it. You thought about it. You've lived it out. You have a lot to teach on this. So I'm Going to kind of use that as my agenda during this interview.
- [04:49]
Jordan Harbinger
Sounds good to me.
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Dan Harris
Okay, let me start with relationships, what some people might call networking. This is a huge emphasis for you. And I'm just curious, before we get into the nuts and bolts, why have you chosen networking as a thing to focus on?
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Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, so when I was younger, I didn't care about this at all. Most young people don't. They think it's for old people. I remember saying to my friends, networking is for old people. Now that I'm old, I get it. But when I was really young, when I was a kid, like 12, 13, I got a computer, we got a modem. Parents didn't really understand what that all entailed. And I got on the Internet, and I started connecting with people in all different parts of the world in some of these chat rooms. Not the America Online ones, but like, the deep sort of Internet ones. And I started to realize that the world was a lot bigger than this little town that I grew up in, and that things I was interested in were shared by other smart people that might have lived in the Middle east or in Europe. And I started. I remember not knowing where any of these places are, where the people that I was chatting with were in, and they were all university students or older. And I sort of grew up in this weird Internet age where no kids my age were online. It was really unusual. And I started to get into a little bit of trouble. So I started to learn not just that these people lived in other countries, but that they could break into computer systems or that they could take a cell phone and take it apart and reprogram it. And I thought, oh, that's pretty interesting. I want to learn how to do this. And so I met up with groups of guys locally in Detroit. We'd go dumpster diving, which is you go to a cell phone store and at night, and you go. And you get the garbage out. And there'd be these reams of printouts. You know, the ones where you rip the dots off the edge. You'd pull those out, and it would be like, Dan Harris bought a cell phone. Here's his phone number. Here's the cell phone number. Here's his address, name. Here's this electronic serial number, the esn, which is like kind of like a password to your phone, but not supposed to necessarily be secret. It was a serial number of your. A cellular account. That usually was no big deal. But we made cables out of plugs and wires and things like that. And we would plug in these Cell phones. And we would put your phone number and your serial number into our phone. We could use it just like you could. So a lot of the guys that I was working with were just selling those to, like, drug dealers. I found out later I was using them to be a 13 year old who had a cell phone. That was the coolest thing in the world for me. And another guy was like, you think that's cool? You know, you can put this thing in test mode and you can listen to any channel that's going on. This is when cell phones were. Now they're all digital, they're encrypted, whatever. You could listen just like a radio to cell phone conversations. And so I started to do that. And then I started to learn how to tap those green boxes where all the phone wires are. In the neighborhood, when everybody had landlines, and you just crack that open with a wrench that you could even make. And there's all these line pairs in there. So a screw and a screw and a screw and a screw, and there's hundreds of them. And you could take alligator clips and connect those to another phone. And you could listen to any phone conversation that was going on on any phone line in the whole neighborhood. Our neighborhood had a bush near the road, near the green box. And I would ditch my bike there and I would sit there and I would just listen to people's phone conversations. This is the kind of crap I did when I had nothing better to do.
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Dan Harris
You were a punk ass kid.
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Jordan Harbinger
Punk ass kid, yes. And I remember once the cop stopped and said, what are you doing? And I was like, oh, yeah, there's a guy working on this. And I was just like checking it out. And he's like, whatever. Did not think, oh, there's a kid wiretapping, right? That was not a thing that occurred to him at all. And I remember even once a phone lineman stopped his truck and said, what do you think you're doing? And I said, oh, I was just messing around with this. And he came over thinking I was like breaking it. And he goes, you're just. Oh, you're using a handset on the. You're not supposed to do that. And he closed it and locked it. And he goes, you should be working for us, man. And he took off. And I remember thinking, like, that was pretty cool. I didn't even get in trouble. The reason this is relevant is there was one neighbor that was getting a divorce and he was on the phone a lot. And I listened to a lot of his conversations, like lots Hours of his conversations. And I noticed that when he was talking with his soon to be ex wife, he was a real a hole. I remember thinking like, why is he doing this? And then when he would talk to his mom, he was this like whiny little kid. And then he would talk to his sister and he was kind of like whiny little kid plus wannabe tough guy. And then when he would talk to his friends, he was just only tough guy. I remember thinking, this is a 13, 14 year old kid. If he was this way, like with his mom and his sister towards his ex wife, he probably wouldn't be in this particular situation. And he drove around in like a Corvette. He was kind of like having his midlife crisis, right? Convertible. And I just thought adults are three dimensional, real human beings. And that was new for me. Cause when you're younger adults, they feed you, they take you places, they make you do your homework, they yell at you, teachers, your parents. Those are like the only contact with adults you really have. This was a young kid being exposed to adult conversations without being put in danger by those particular situations. Usually when kids are exposed to adult situations, it's bad for them, right? It's like their parents are getting divorced or there's something, there's substance abuse in their house. This was flying on the wall. So it was like anytime things got too heavy or too much, I just unclipped and went home, right? This got me really fascinated with people. And I started to really get interested in something called social engineering, which is kind of hacking, but with people. And I started to get really into this underground scene of hacking phone systems and somewhat hacking computer systems. And that was the genesis of me being interested in people. Which of course now, as an adult who is not interested in committing felonies, is why I got interested in actually developing real relationships and connections with people. Because I got an early start doing it. I had a really early window into what makes people tick. And I also realized the importance of not mismanaging relationships in part because of that one guy's divorce. He was living at his mother's house at the time. So I always think, like, I wish I could go and like tell that guy, like, hey, I heard every word of your midlife crisis. I don't know if he would appreciate it as much.
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Dan Harris
He would run you over with his Corvette, I think.
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Jordan Harbinger
So Y.
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Dan Harris
How has this played out in your life? This keen sense that you got as a teenager of how people operate? How has this played out in your career to your benefit or Detriment.
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Jordan Harbinger
Yeah. So I first, surprise, surprise. I started getting in trouble a little bit because I remember using cell phones to order pizza from my school, and the cops called the FBI and I had to talk to the FBI. And then I got in trouble with my parents and, like, got in trouble. And I just remember the FBI agents and stuff like that being like, man, you are so close to ruining your life. And my parents, you know, my mom being like, you're so close to ruining your life with this stupid crap. And having to find good role models, aside from my parents, that were also interesting. Because your parents are good role models. Generally, I should only speak for myself. My parents were good role models, but they weren't, like, interesting and exciting. I had bad role models that were exciting but were not good for me. So I needed to find that middle ground of kind of, like, interesting and exciting people that were also doing something good. And now the Internet provides a lot of that for younger people. They listen to shows like yours and mine, and they go, oh, this guy's interesting, and also is successful and not headed for prison. That's completely absent from the early 90s. That stuff doesn't exist. And so while I'm getting in trouble and I'm doing all these sort of teenage hacker escapades, I finally start to realize, like, okay, anything that's good that's happening in my life is a result of a pretty lucky good connection. I started making money early because a kid that I went to school with, his dad was a stockbroker, and he couldn't get real time or even up to the date quotes. It was very difficult. I had access to the Internet, and he was like, how can you get me up to date quotes on this stuff? And I would go, there was no Yahoo or anything. I'd have to go on these websites and do it. And I would get him this information. And he was blown away at a massive competitive advantage because he could get early information, early ish, on these stocks and sell them to his clients in this wealthy area of town. So I thought, like, okay, well, I only got that because this guy knows likes. Trust me, all the bad things that have happened have been due to people that know like and trust me, but are up to no good. So I learned early to kind of filter in people into different buckets. I think a lot of people make a mistake when you know, like, or trust somebody and they don't have your best interests in mind. And we see that a lot with people who are in prison, for example, or in gangs So I started to filter that stuff out really early or in really early. I started to make connections with judges who are my friends, dads, and things like that. And these guys really were like, hey, you are smart, but you are also an idiot, and you're gonna get yourself in trouble. You should consider doing literally anything else, and you could do it to a high level. So I had early enough role models that allowed me to do that, and those connections helped quite a bit. I went to college. It was not easy to get into college. I ended up becoming an exchange student in Germany in the 90s, and they sent me to the former East Germany. So for people who don't know, Germany was split down. The middle. West side was capitalist Western. The east side was Communists. It was essentially a Soviet satellite state run by a secret police called the Stasi. So I got placed in the former East. It was just starting to become industrialized. Privatized. I shouldn't say industrialized. It was privatized. And I stayed with a local family. The host father of that family, he told me that if you wanted to get anything done in the former East Germany, it was all about who you know, right? Your connections were everything. And he still kind of operated that way. So when I went in to get a visa and some papers to go to school, he just sort of cut in front of the line and was like, hello, yeah, hey, do you remember me? I used to play at this bar, and I know that you and your brother owned this old bar. And the guy was like, oh, yeah, come on in. What can I do for you? We skipped a massive line of people. And I thought, oh, that's cool. You skipped a line. He's like, that's not a line. And he told me story after story about real leveraging, real relationships back in East Germany, one of which was. I don't know if this is interesting to you, but I think it's hilarious. He wanted to get a driver's license, and it took two years to do that in East Germany. So he wrote his cousin in the west, in Canada and said, send me a case of Jack Daniels. So the Guy sends him 12 bottles of Jack Daniels. It arrives with 10 bottles because the customs and immigration guys took their cut. He goes to the police station, and he goes, hey, I want to get my driver's license. And they said, you got to go to driving school. He goes to driving school and says, hey, I already know how to drive. And the guy says, you need a wait list till you get in, and then you need to pass A test. And he goes, how about two bottles of Jack Daniels? And you just test me right now. And the guy was like, sure. So he gives him a driving test, gives him a little piece of paper, and he goes to the police and he says, driver's license please. And the cops say, there's a wait, we gotta process this. It's gonna take another year or so. And he says, how about two bottles of Jack Daniels? And you process this right now. And he gets the little stamp and he walks out with a driver's license. And it took him, you know, two days or two weeks instead of two years. That's corruption. Fine. But everything that he was able to get done in that place was based somewhat on this. And he still kind of operated that way. Not in this corrupt sort of sense. But everywhere we went he was like, let me call my friend first and see if that guy knows anybody who knows anybody who knows anybody who works at this thing everywhere. And that really blew me away. So when I got back to the United States and went to college, I thought, okay, we don't have this sort of rife, corrupt environment where everything requires a little Bakshis or a bribe, but there's still a nugget to be taken away where you connect with somebody you know at this, you make it a little bit of a win for them in whatever you're doing. Where can I apply this in my college life? And I started to really put those pieces together and it worked out quite well both for what I wanted to study in college and what I wanted to eventually when I went to law school. One example from university was I really had no idea what I wanted to study. And they make certain courses really hard to do. Business school stuff, the pre biz, pre whatever, is very difficult. But I found through a friend of mine who suggested this, to go talk to an academic advisor and learn what you can do to make your own degree. And he said, well, you have to present a really good case that you are going to select courses that are going to be as rigorous and useful as any other concentration at the university. I asked him to introduce me to people who'd done that already. He did that. Those people said, here's what you gotta do. It's all about the presentation. Those guys helped me with how I presented my ideas. You go in front of like the Academic Standards Board or whatever it's called, and you do a bang up job, you just knock them their socks off. And if you do a really good job in the presentation, they don't care. If you eliminated calculus and you got rid of accounting 101, which is like impossible and graded on a super steep curve because it's all pre biz. So I picked courses that I was. I know this is ridiculous to say out loud. I only picked courses I wanted to study in college that I was interested in. And I put them all together and created a coherent narrative of what that would be. And then you can name it anything you want. So I said, oh, well, the more impressive sounding the better. So it was Integrated International Commerce. And so when you say that, people are just like, well, that sounds like a pretty hoity toity degree from the University of Michigan. But the thing is, you could name it whatever the hell you want. I don't know if I choose the same name now, but you could do anything you want. So when I applied to law school is, they said, well, what did you study? This guy studied anthropology. This person studied English. What did you study, Jordan? Integrated International Commerce. Oh, well, that's. I don't think we have anybody else who studied that who's applied here. Oh, I'm pretty sure you don't, because I made it up. Right. So there's a lot of little like system hacking in very ethical ways that was only enabled by me getting really good advice from other people that really would not normally have helped me but for getting a warm introduction from somebody else.
- [19:20]
Dan Harris
The problem when you start talking about networking is it pretty quickly gets into, and I don't love this word, but the issue of privilege. Because if it's all about who you know. Well, that kind of depends to a certain extent on which womb you came out of.
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Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, it does. So that said, I've had pretty much zero connections ever made from my parents introducing me to somebody. I learned how to do this well from some of the stuff that I'd learned as a kid, of course, but also especially from my host father in East Germany. He was a teacher. This is not a guy that came from like a aristocratic communist family. It wasn't like, oh, my dad's the chief of this particular party branch. This is not a guy who was born into connections. In fact, he was in a band that was his side gig. So he would go to all the restaurants and bars and offer to play for free in exchange for food and beer when they were younger. And then he would use those particular connections to bring people into that fold because it was expensive to go out then. But if you were in the band, you had access to all these different places and all these different people and People recognized you and that was cachet. So I sort of tried to use that as best I could. This was not like, oh, I grew up and went to a private school and my dad owns 17 car dealerships. And so I got into this. My dad was an autoworker, my mom was a teacher. They gave me great work ethic, they taught me to bust my ass. They did not call the dean of admissions and pull a favor. That was not something they would be able to do. So yeah, hey, look, if you can marry into or be born into a really connected sort of setup, I highly recommend you do that. But for the rest of us, you have to make that on your own. And I will tell you also on the subject of privilege, one of my best friends from law school is American ish royalty kind of guy. I went to his wedding, it was at his parents house. There was an after party at his parents house in Georgetown over in Washington D.C. and I said, under the giant moose head there's a giant painting of Paul Revere that's probably taller than you and I both. And I said, hey, this is so weird. Why do you have that? And he's like, oh, my parents have really weird stuff in their house. And his wife, who was also a good friend of mine, she goes, yeah, he's being modest. That's his great, great granduncle or something like was Paul Revere. Okay, so this is like a blue blood American family with their house, their row house in Georgetown. That's not even where he grew up. It's just one of the houses that they have. He, his family was so well connected. Surprise, surprise. And I remember being on a trip with him in law school and going, I will never have the level of connection that this guy has from going to private school, from having these parents, from having these grandparents and these extended. I will never get there. Bummer. I remember thinking like, wow, some people really have an advantage. Years and years and years and years later, I'm still friends with him. It's very clear that I have a wider, deeper, more connected network than he does. He's great at what he does. He has a great career. I love this guy, but I am definitely more connected and better connected than he is. And it's tortoise in the hare. He was born into a privileged situation and he didn't really focus on this stuff. And he still has plenty of connections. I'm sure he could probably call grandfather or dad and get connected to people, that's no problem. But I certainly have watered this garden over the decades, and that has resulted in a massive advantage. I never took my foot off of the gas. I think the other problem with networking is you run into the idea that this is schmoozy BS and it's all about what's in it for me. And I would say that, but the opposite is actually the truth. It's all about helping other people as much as possible and just not even being attached to getting anything in return, if possible. So if somebody wants an introduction or help with their podcast or whatever level of expertise I can provide, I do not go, huh, what can this person later on do for me? Or what can they do for me right now? I don't care. And a friend of mine put it best. He said, aren't you just getting the short end of the stick on a lot of these things that you do? And the answer is yes. But I'm collecting a lot of sticks and I'm stacking those sticks up. It doesn't matter if I got a better deal. Not keeping score is one of my cardinal rules of relationship development. You should never keep score. If you find yourself keeping score, you are doing it wrong. And you're gonna poison the well of pretty much all the relationships that you have. Because if you are giving people things and you are keeping score, you're always gonna think that you've done more for them than they have for you. Unless somebody really goes out of their way to do something for you. And the odds of that are pretty him. So unless you want to feel bad about every single person that you know and every single person that you help, don't keep score. Don't worry about it. The only time you should even. That should even cross your mind is if you feel you are actually being taken advantage of by somebody right then and only then do you go, okay, I'm going to draw the line.
- [24:17]
Dan Harris
What you were talking about reminds me of Adam Grant's work, which I'm sure you're familiar with, the great book Give and Take, which is absolutely the first book I read from him. He's gone on to write many other great books, but it had a huge impact on me because his argument is, look, you should just be. Be generous within a work context, and it will work out to your advantage in many, many ways in terms of people being willing to help you, but also the act of helping people. You learn a lot by doing that.
- [24:45]
Jordan Harbinger
I could not agree more.
- [24:46]
Dan Harris
So generosity is. Is. It's good for you in lots of subtle and interesting ways.
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Jordan Harbinger
It is. It's funny because People hear this and they either go, I don't like this guy. He's too. There's too many plans on the table. Or they go, this guy's a pushover. He's probably getting taken advantage of by a ton of other people. Both of those are the wrong way, in my opinion, to look at this. Adam Grant is brilliant with this, right? I'll introduce somebody to a publisher when they want to write a book. And I don't think like, oh, later on I'm going to ask. It doesn't even cross my mind. People write to me that I will never meet in my whole life because they listen to the Jordan Harbinger show and they go, hey, I just have no idea how to start doing voiceover for video games. I know you do this. And I go, here's my coach. He's got room for new clients. I don't know what your budget is. If you can't afford him, I highly recommend one of these other. You know, it's. I'm not like, okay, and when you get your first video game job, make sure you call me. I don't. It's not how I operate at all. I want everybody around me to be success. The ideal outcome for you if you do this is that everybody you've helped is a wildly successful, runaway, absolute runaway success. And maybe one out of a hundred of them is like, hey, I should thank you for that. And maybe something cool happens as a result. That's enough. And even if nobody ever comes back to you with anything, those people are eternally grateful for your help. And you've done a good deed by helping a bunch of people succeed. It's really win, win. There's almost no cost to doing this kind of thing.
- [26:11]
Dan Harris
Yes. As long as. And then this is an important caveat. As long as the help you're providing isn't derailing your own ability to do your own work, it's basically giving you little squirts of happiness through the course of that sounded a little gross, but yeah. Little, little happiness. I don't know how to say this. Cancel. We're both canceled.
- [26:35]
Jordan Harbinger
Yes.
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Dan Harris
It gives you little doses of joy by being able to do this. And by the way, you reference introducing somebody to a publisher. You did that for me last summer. Coming up, Jordan talks about some tactical approaches to networking.
- [26:56]
Chris Gethard
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- [27:59]
Dan Harris
We'Re talking at a very high level about networking and you actually have some really interesting tactical approaches. So I'm going to just throw some terms out at you and just hopefully you can define them for me. Okay. One. Connect four, AKA text exchange.
- [28:12]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah. So something I do every day, I call it Connect 4 because everybody can remember that in my phone. In your phone. If you open up your messaging app and you scroll all the way to the bottom, those are those threads where it's like, oh, I met that person at a conference in 2019 and we had lunch with three other guys and I don't remember ever following up with them. Right. It's just dead threads. Sure. Maybe your ex is down there. You can skip those people. Skip the person who like stole from you or fired you with no warning and that didn't pay you. Right. You can skip the outright awful connections there. But most of those are just like, oh yeah, I never did follow up with that person. Or oh yeah, I made that introduction and I never saw how that went. Or that person helped me out with something or I went to school with them and I haven't called them in years. I send texts to four of those people every weekday. I say, hey, it's Jordan Harbinger here. You use your name because if they don't have your number, they're going to ignore you. Right. So you use your name. Jordan Harbinger Here, man. We haven't talked in a really long time. What's new with you? I've got a couple of kids now. I might send a picture of my kids so that they see the extra personal touch. And also it's a little bit more like, oh, this, Somebody sent me something. I'm gonna look at it and read it. And I say, like, where are you these days? I'm in the Bay Area. I'd love to know what you're up to. No rush on the reply. I know everybody's busy and I just let that fly. 50 to 75% response rate. And you would be shocked at what people that you haven't talked to for years are doing and how that comes back to you. So most of the time it's, oh, hey, I work in insurance sales in Boise. It's great. I also have kids. Photo of their kids. Glad our lives turned out okay. Was on the rocks there for a while back in law school. Are you still a lawyer? No, I do a podcast. Oh, yeah, I'm working in insurance. That's it. Then it ends, right? It's fine. But over the course of months and years, so much opportunity comes as a result of this. Recently I caught up with somebody just doing that. This is months ago. And then they came back earlier. Hey, I'm walking into a sales meeting. We're picking our annual speakers for our event. I don't suppose you do keynote speeches. I do. Great. What's your fee? And I said, give me as much money as possible. Right. I mean, that's the game, right? So I gave him like a rough number. And I said, and also, if you land this stakes on me at the event. Well, he got me a paid speaking gig and it was well paid. I'll leave it at that. But the reason that he thought of me was because I was top of mind. Ish. After catching up with this person I hadn't talked to in over eight years, that's the type of opportunity that comes. And it's one in every 200, you know, text exchanges. Fine. A lot of people will say, I'm still in law, but I'm thinking about going off on my own. Didn't you do that? How do you even begin to go off on your own? I'm worried about the following things. And you say you can maybe assuage their concerns, introduce them to a good lawyer who can help them with something. I recently referred my estate planner to somebody and she was very thankful for that. And if we ever need to do anything, she's going to do it for free because I got her a new client and the client probably gave her for $5,000 to do a bunch of complicated trust and estate stuff. So I'm just doing that like a machine every single day. And I'm catching up with people, staying top of mind and finding out what those people need and using that to plug into other people in my network, like my estate and trust, an estate lawyer or web designer. My web guy loves me. I rarely pay for any upgrades or updates on the website because people will go, man, your website is really good when they ask what I'm doing. Yeah. Jordanharbinger.com wow, this is really good. I could really use a website like this. Hey, it wasn't even expensive. Here's my guy in New Zealand, and this guy's just like, man, you send us business every other month, and we get a new client from you every other month. Thank you. So this is the kind of thing that allows me to build and reinforce those connections. People I don't even necessarily talk to all the time. Web guy gets plugged into somebody that I'm recently reconnecting with. And I've strengthened both of those relationships at the same time. And this is scalable. I don't spend five hours a day texting people. I do this while I'm waiting in Starbucks for coffee. Instead of scrolling Instagram, I send those four texts, and that's it. It's really just a few minutes a day. And it's responsible for hundreds of relatively strong connections.
- [32:23]
Dan Harris
Gmail roulette.
- [32:24]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah. So this is essentially along the same lines. I crack open my email. Any email program will do this. But if I'm waiting for something or if I'm answering other email, I'll type a couple of letters. And you know how it pops, tries to autocomplete. So you might type in ad, and it's like, oh, did you mean Adam Grant? Oh, I haven't talked to him in a long time. Let me shoot him a quick note. And I'll just do that once or twice a day. Just type in a totally random combination. And if somebody pops up that's interesting, I will write to them. And it's quite useful, even if it's just a quick check in, I'll do that. And there's a lot of opportunity that comes from that, too. I sent Adam Grant a note recently, and he sent me a guest that ended up coming on my show. That was absolutely fascinating. The app's not out yet, so I don't want to spoil it, but it was a doctor who found his own cure. Right? Have you had this guy on, I'll have to tell you, David Feigenbaum?
- [33:13]
Dan Harris
Yes, I have.
- [33:13]
Jordan Harbinger
He is so good. And Adam was like, oh, have you had this guy on he's really good. He's a friend of mine. He's standing right here or whatever. It was absolutely amazing episode that I can't wait to release.
- [33:22]
Dan Harris
It's interesting to know both you and Adam Grant because you both walk the talk. Adam Grant is genuinely one of the most generous human beings I've ever met, and you are very similar. I remember when I was leaving ABC News and going out to be a full time podcaster. I mean, you spent. Spent 90 minutes on the phone with me educating me about the industry and et cetera, et cetera. There was really nothing in it for you. And just.
- [33:49]
Jordan Harbinger
Just this friendship that I treasure. But otherwise, no, nothing really.
- [33:52]
Dan Harris
Exactly, exactly. So I say that largely just to. For anybody listening, that I can take you behind the scenes a little bit and say that this isn't just some bullshit you're dropping on a podcast.
- [34:03]
Jordan Harbinger
Right. I appreciate that.
- [34:04]
Dan Harris
Let me just go down this list and there are a bunch of other things I want to talk about beyond networking, but. But this next one's less of a tactic and more of a philosophy. But I like it, and I think it's important to get you to hold forth on digging the well before you're thirsty.
- [34:17]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah. So this is not a term that I made up, as much as I would love to claim it. I think it's the title of a book from the 90s by. Is it like Harvey McKay, one of those sort of OG like you can do anything you put your mind to kind of guys. And those guys are. Right. I guess I shouldn't make fun of them. Right. But dig the well before you get thirsty. The problem is a lot of folks and a lot of young people will write me and they'll go, hey, honest question, why do I need to network? I don't need anything right now. I'm in college. And I go, oh, I get it. You're only looking at what other people can do for you. And then when you do need something, you plan on building a relationship. When you need that relationship, they often go, oh, yeah, well, when you put it like that, because the truth is, who are you more likely to help? Somebody you've known for three years, even just tangentially, or somebody who cold calls you and you're like, oh my God, I went to high school with you. And they're like, yeah, can I have a job? That's not gonna work. So you have to build those relationships before you need them. The idea is, hopefully you never actually need them. Like, nobody wants to be thirsty, right? Nobody wants to Go, oh, I got laid off from Facebook and now I don't know how I'm gonna pay my mortgage. Do you want to be searching for jobs by cold calling companies then? Or do you wanna reach out to your network of a hundred people also in tech, in your area that you know, that you've talked six months, eight months, 12 months ago, and go, hey, I got clipped in those layoffs. Is anybody over there at Google hiring? Is anybody over there Dropbox hiring? Do you want to have that happen for you or do you want to be flipping through the Yellow Pages, which I don't even think exist anymore, and sending your resume into a black hole online? One of those things is better than the other.
- [35:55]
Dan Harris
Point well taken. My grandfather worked for the Yellow Pages. Miserable human being. I mean, he was miserable at work.
- [36:01]
Jordan Harbinger
Let me just say. Oh, I was going to say, wow, tell us what you really think.
- [36:03]
Dan Harris
No, no, no. He was a. He was complicated, but miserable at work. All right, you made a reference before to, I would rather be doing my Connect4Text exchange than scrolling Instagram. But there is something in your arsenal here that does involve social media. And the idea is, to use your term, making social media more social. What does that mean?
- [36:26]
Jordan Harbinger
It's funny because when you read it, it sounds so corny. And I'm like, where did I write that? I need to change that. I need to update that and make it sound less like. Like a bumper sticker my mom would have on her car. Social media, for me, it's not something I enjoy particularly. I answer my DMs from show fans, which takes a few hours a week. I enjoy that conversation, but I don't enjoy all the flexing and all that crap that goes on in social media for me. Let's say your friend gets married, they'll post their wedding photo on Instagram. Most people will like it. A lot more people will like it than actually type a comment. But good friends will maybe type a comment. I don't engage at all on there. What I do is I will call or send that person a note, text whatever it is, and take it completely off social. I call this being kind of above the fold. So like a. Like, I'm not going to notice that if you like my wedding photo unless it shows that you liked it, which, like, they're putting one person's name there and then they write. And others. If you write a comment, I might eventually read all those. But I'll probably be on the plane on the way to my honeymoon, like, scrolling through and go, like, look at all these people that said it. Congratulations. I'm not even necessarily looking at the screen. I'm certainly not remembering, oh, look, look. Dan Harris said, congrats and put a champagne emoji. And I'm not going to remember that. What I will Remember are the 27 people out of 2700 that sent me a text or an email that was like, hey, I saw that you got married. Congratulations. You deserve it. You and your wife get along so great. You're going to have great kid. I remember those two dozen people, and I don't remember a single person who liked my photos from. From that day. I remember the people that were at the wedding, and I remember the people that called or wrote me something. That is all. So if you have a chance to engage above the fold, don't delay and don't engage below the fold. Don't be a person who goes, well, I liked it, or I sent them a comment or even a dm, Take it to an inner. A more intimate place. If I have your phone number, I'm kind of in the inner circle, right? So why would I not use that method of communication? People who've never met you in their life that listened to one episode of your show and then Instagram suggested they follow you. You, that's the people who are liking your photos there. You should never use the sort of outermost ring that you have available to you. If you live next door and I found out you got married, I would walk over and knock on your door and leave you something. That's the level of communication. You should have the most intimate one that you have available to you. And so if it's a text or a phone call, then you should do that. It should never be a like that. That gets buried in a sea of likes.
- [38:53]
Dan Harris
Did you ever read how to Win Friends and Influence People?
- [38:55]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, I did. That was kind of one of my early introductions to this stuff. And I remember thinking, some of this is really cool and some of this is really corny, which is the exact experience that your listeners and viewers are having me right now.
- [39:07]
Dan Harris
I remember reading the book. I don't know if I read the whole thing. It's interesting because there are lots of, like, references to the Harding administration because it was written in the 30s or whatever.
- [39:15]
Jordan Harbinger
And I was like, Jane was a typewriter saleswoman, or actually, I think all the women in the book were like, secretaries, and all the men worked at typewriter salesman.
- [39:23]
Dan Harris
Yeah, there's that too. There's that too. But what came screaming out at me from the book, which is also hitting me in this conversation, is on the one hand, you talk about something like networking or winning friends and influencing people, and it sounds very, very selfish. And yet the guy who wrote that book, Dale Carnegie and you and Adam Grant are all emphasizing empathy and generosity. Get into the mind of other people and think about what it is they want and try to help them with it. And it may not pay off in some direct transactional way, but if you add up a enough, as you said before, short straws, it's very good for you.
- [40:00]
Jordan Harbinger
In lots of ways it is. Imagine that you help a thousand people over a period of years, and not a single one of them ever helps you back. Your reputation is so good as a result of doing that that it doesn't matter. Not only do you feel like a million bucks, but you are known as just such an awesome person for doing that. And that's if none of those people ever help you. And those odds are virtually impossible. Possible, right? I mean, I would say that for every 10 people that you do something for, one of them is going to bend over backwards for you in any way they can. The other ones might try, but might swing and miss, right? Like, they're not hiring anyone. They can't do it, refer anyone to you over time. There are people that I have done something for years and years ago, and I don't even remember what it was. Probably six years ago now, I ended one business and I started another one. The previous business did not end the way that I had negotiated with my partners. Instead of the soft landing, it was like unplug the machine and kick the guy out of the airplane. To mix metaphors here, I was like, oh my God, how am I ever gonna get back on my feet? I made a giant list of people, called all of them, told them what happened, went on a bunch of other podcasts. Favors essentially at that point, told my story about what happened, talked about the Jordan Harbinger show restarting and all of these different things that I needed. And I thought, thought, well, I'm going to make 140 requests of different podcasters and things like that, and maybe half will say yes, the other half are going to ignore me or say no. Actually, just about every single person that I asked for help helped me out in that time of need. I remember one guy said, I'm going to email this to my list right now. And I said, oh, that's really generous. Thank you, I appreciate that. And later I found out that he charges something like $50,000 to mail your product or service to his email list. And he obviously didn't charge me anything. He just did it the next day. It was like, oh, you just gave me that $50,000 gift because you are a nice person and I've known you before. You know those ESPN documentaries where the athletes are like, man, you really find out who your friends are and they're not talking about how they had so many. They're talking about how no one cared about them when they were broke. I had the exact opposite experience. Said, wow, you really find out that you have hundreds of people that feel goodwill towards you and want to help you with something that is in an incredible insurance policy that money could never buy. And the reason that I had that was because I helped other people without the attachment of getting anything in return. And I dug the well before I was thirsty. I didn't plan on losing my business and being thirsty. Nobody does. But you said, I walk the walk. Thank goodness that I actually bothered to do that, because if not, I would be in deep trouble. Right. It's really easy to pay lip service to something. It's a lot harder to do it. Thank God I actually did it. All right. We wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
- [42:54]
Dan Harris
Probably a few more terms. I want to hit the dossier technique.
- [42:58]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah. This is if I know I'm going to meet somebody that I want to connect with. I don't show up being completely clueless about what they're working on or what they do. It's real easy to go, oh, I'm going to meet Adam Grant at this event. Right. This author or Malcolm Gladwell at this event. That's going to be great. I'm going to shake their hand and then try to get their email address. Fine. What I try to do is I make or have my assistant now make a little file that I read on the plane, like Wikipedia things they're working on, recent social media posts. And now, of course, if I know anybody that knows them personally, I'll go, hey, I'm meeting them at this event. What are they talking about recently? What are they doing recently? And you'll find out that. Well, real example, I was going to meet this scientist at a science convention. Isn't quite the right word, but essentially where he was giving a talk and this person is famous in their arena. Tons of other scientists were going to be there. He was going to have a line after his talk that was probably 40 people, and he's going to eventually escape and go to the airport. I reached out to him on LinkedIn before that and said, hey, I'm going to be at this conference. I know you like squash. Do you fancy a game of squash the morning before your talk? Not, can I have breakfast and talk to you about things that I want? Not, can I connect with you like 8,000 other scientists want to do at this event? Do you want to play squash? And he was like, yeah, sure. And I said, I'm not very good at it, just so you know, but I might be able to keep up because you look 20 or 30 years younger than me. I think you'll be fine. So I played squash with this guy. I did not do well, and he kicked my ass. And I kind of became, you know, buddies with him over that period of time, spoke with him during squash afterwards, got a bite to eat afterwards, he gave his talk. I can reach out to this person at any time, at any time. And these other folks I remember waiting after his talk, there was at least 20, 30, maybe even 40 people waiting. Most of them never even got a chance to speak to him at all. I have a cell phone number. I found out what he wanted, what he's interested in, set up a court, and asked him if he wanted to join me for that. There was never, not, by the way, when we play squash, I'm going to ask you how to become one of your PhD students. I even told him, I'm not a PhD candidate for anything. I'm a podcaster. I'm interested in your work. But also I'm looking for somebody to play squash on Tuesday. And he was like, good enough. That was it. So the dossier includes things like enjoys squash, or for me, my dossier would be, has been to North Korea four times. If you want to get through to me on something, you emailing me podcasting news, it's not going to be interesting. You emailing me something that I'm interested in personally is going to cut through the filter and probably get a response from me. If you say, like, oh, hey, have you seen this new podcasting app? The answer is probably yes and I don't care about it. Or you're the 50th person to send it to me, it's old news. I might just bookmark it for later and reply in a batch. If somebody sends me something kooky about North Korea that I haven't seen, probably going to start a conversation via email or social media with that person. And so somebody who finds out what I'm interested in is going to be able to cut through the noise. And so I always recommend doing that. The only way to do that is you have to do a little bit of legwork beforehand.
- [46:10]
Dan Harris
I'm sensitive to time and there are a million other questions I could ask you about networking and relationships, but there are other questions I want to ask you on other success related topics. Just to say as we conclude this though, if you go to jordan harbinger.com there is a free course from Jordan.
- [46:24]
Jordan Harbinger
On NETWORKING if it's at6minutenetworking.com too, if that's easier for people to remember. And it's free. And I don't go like, enter your credit card and I'll give you my free. I don't want anything from you other than for you to go through this literal 13 video course. And each video is like a minute long. This is the fastest dang course that you will take. And if you take one or two things away from it and do those forever, I've won. I've taught you a new habit. That's it.
- [46:49]
Dan Harris
Let me ask you about another prominent feature of your career, which is pivoting. Well, you started as a almost, let's.
- [46:57]
Jordan Harbinger
Use the euphemism, dating coach.
- [46:59]
Dan Harris
Almost. Well, you started as an almost incarcerated teenager.
- [47:02]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah.
- [47:02]
Dan Harris
And then you went to law school and then you became a Wall street lawyer.
- [47:07]
Jordan Harbinger
Yes.
- [47:07]
Dan Harris
And then you got into a podcasting zone of like dating related stuff.
- [47:12]
Jordan Harbinger
Right.
- [47:12]
Dan Harris
And now you are a podcaster who talks about like a whole. You're, you're a very small scene. The Catholic interest you have like a very. You talk about international affairs, you talk about wellness, you talk about politics, whatever's interesting to you. But. So that's a lot of pivoting over time. What did you learn in the course of all of these changes? And what would you recommend to others who are thinking about building a career where they may change over time?
- [47:36]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, I think it's really, especially when you're young, you go in thinking, I'm gonna pick this thing and this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. That's a very hard decision. When I was young, I thought, how am I going to possibly make this clearly very difficult decision about what I want to do for the rest of my life? And the answer is, you are almost never choosing what you are going to do for the rest of your life anytime you make a decision. When you were a journalist, did you think, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life?
- [48:02]
Dan Harris
Yes, I did.
- [48:03]
Jordan Harbinger
Right. And now here we are.
- [48:05]
Dan Harris
Yes.
- [48:05]
Jordan Harbinger
Right.
- [48:05]
Dan Harris
So something went wrong.
- [48:08]
Jordan Harbinger
Something went wrong. Lower the stakes for yourself, man. Like, when I went to law school, I went in going, I'm probably not going to be a lawyer because I really don't care about it that much. And everybody was like, what are you doing here? This is law school. Everyone here is going to be a lawyer for the rest of their life. Do you know what percentage of those people are still lawyers? It's tiny, because most of us went there because we didn't know what to do with ourselves. And like, our aunt told us, you should go to law school. Your uncle's a lawyer, he makes good money. And we were like, okay, my grades are good, and I can't get a job at Best Buy with an undergrad degree, which is even more true now. So I'm just going to go to grad school. Well, I don't have pre med stuff. Never took those courses. I don't want to get a PhD in English. Guess I'll go to law school. That's the thought process for like 80% of the class, maybe higher. So I went there thinking, law degree won't hurt you. Looks good on every application, even if you're not going to be a lawyer. Maybe I'll be a lawyer for a short period of time. Then after law school, these law firms came and went, I know you don't want to be a lawyer, but what if we bury you in a pile of money in exchange for every minute of your time? And you go, great, my time's not worth squat, but you're going to pay me for it. Let's do this. So I did that. And then when I was in law school and when I started my legal job at was doing podcasting, a friend of mine said, hey, I've got an evening gig on Sirius XM satellite radio doing a show. I can't get there. I live in Virginia. You should just do it. And I said, I don't think that's how jobs on radio work. I don't think you can give them to your friends. But he gave me a shot. The station manager liked my podcast, which I had already been doing for six months or eight months or however long it was. And he goes, oh, you can do this. Gave us a shot at radio. Did radio and podcasting for a few years. The economy tanks. They ask us lawyers, who wants to take a buyout? I raise my hand and take nine months, full salary and benefits, go do the radio show, go do the podcast. Start this little coaching consulting company that I was running before. Stop doing the radio. Move to la, right? All these little pivots, you have to be. And there's probably some Zen Buddhism thing in here, Dan. You're have to step in. You can't really be so locked onto the rails. Life is sort of like a hike, right? It's like you go off the trail, you got to go to the bathroom. You want to see the flower over here. People act like it's a railroad track and you can only go in this direction. What they don't realize is you're supposed to meander around and go and take a drink from the stream. I'm going to screw up this metaphor, by the way, so I'm just waiting for you to rescue me. You're going to take a drink from the stream, you're going to go look at the birds, right? You have to be open to that. Because the people who treat it like it's a railroad track, they wake up one day and they go, why the hell am I still working at this bank? Bank? I hate this. Then they got the golden handcuffs and they go, but if I leave, no more private school for the kids. Probably have to sell the boat. And they just go, I'm retiring in 15 years. This will be fine. That's what a lot of my friends are who are still lawyers. That's literally what they tell me. I'm looking forward to retirement. I'm like, we're 44 or 40. You're 41. You're thinking about retirement. Do you know you were not even halfway through your career? Man, that's depressing. So be available to the pivot. And for me, it's not follow your passion. It's bring your passion with you, especially in the beginning, right? In that job that you don't really love as an attorney. Bring 100 of your focus and energy to it and do a damn good job. But it doesn't mean that you have to do that for the rest of your life. Like, you really have to have your eyes open to what you want to do in your interests. We'll talk about on my show what went wrong over at ABC News. But is it safe to say you enjoy doing what you're doing now more than you?
- [51:40]
Dan Harris
Yeah. No, nothing went wrong at abc, actually. I just. I had two things I really liked, and this is the thing I liked doing more. I think.
- [51:47]
Jordan Harbinger
You didn't buy a boat.
- [51:48]
Dan Harris
I definitely did not buy a boat. I lived very frugally. When you said follow your passion for a second, that just reminded me of the fact that I think I've been wrong on this before. If there are loyal listeners out there, they may have heard me talk about this before. But in 2005, I was invited to give a commencement address at the school. School that I attended, the college I attended, which is Colby College, okay. And I got up and gave a follow your passion speech.
- [52:11]
Jordan Harbinger
Who doesn't?
- [52:12]
Dan Harris
Which I believed at the time because that's what I had done. But not everybody actually has a passion, right? Sometimes the passion actually follows the engagement. You do work on something that you may not be passionate about at the beginning, but the passion emerges from that. But that was not true for me. I was passionate about journalism, and I went and did it, and I was off to the races. But that actually was a bit of a Here we go with that word again again, privileged argument. So what's your take on this question?
- [52:39]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, so people always go, you're a hypocrite. You're doing something you're passionate about. That's true. But it's not like I graduated from high school and I was like, I am going to be a podcaster. Nobody even knew what podcasts were when I started. They didn't make money for almost a decade. There was no such thing as podcast advertising for the first 10 or 12 years that I did the show. So I don't think most of us should follow our passion. In fact, there's no better way to ruin a passion than to try and monetize it and make it your job. This is the interesting thing, especially about podcasting, right? People go, oh, man, how long did it take you before you started making money? I'm like, it's a hobby. You're asking me how you can monetize your hobby? When your kid is building Legos, does he go, man, one day I am going to make a ton of money building these things. Nobody's collecting model trains and going, this. This is going to be a great career for me. Nobody does that. But somehow with podcasting, it's, like, not allowed to be a hobby. It always has to be a business. I think that's a terrible way to look at it. And I think, think partially is survivorship bias. Looking at somebody like you or Anderson Cooper or like Brian Williams, you're looking at pure survivorship bias, right? These are the people that had a lot of talent, a lot of luck, and also shoveled a metric ton of shit and got through to where they are now and maybe are not necessarily enjoying every minute of what they're doing, but they make $485,000 a year or add a couple zeros to that. What do I know, right? And that's why you see those folks doing that. And were they passionate about it or were they good at it and then got great at it and now they're stuck doing it or they love doing it. Now, there's plenty of people that don't follow their passion that make a great life. Scott Galloway, who I'm sure has been. Has he been on the show?
- [54:24]
Dan Harris
Yeah, he has.
- [54:25]
Jordan Harbinger
One of his things is the person giving a commencement speech and telling you to follow your passion. They made a billion dollars in iron smell melting 100. Right. The person telling you to follow your passion. Mark Cuban. If you go, what are you passionate about? Oh, investing. Well, okay, when you didn't have any money to invest, what were you passionate about? Nothing. I was just dead set on making money. So you were passionate about getting rich. Now you're passionate about using your money. He wasn't passionate about. What did he make his money off of? Like amalgamating radio shows onto Broadcast.com so they could be streamed online. Literally no human has ever been passionate about doing in that. Nobody. Nobody's passionate about that. But he will tell you, or somebody like him, I should say, not going to put words in his mouth. Somebody like him will tell you. They'll get up there and go, follow your passion, follow your dreams. That is probably a great idea. If you're talking about how somebody could find a hobby, you should follow your dreams. If you want to find a hobby that you enjoy, follow those dreams. If you want to find a career that actually pays for you to live an acceptable lifestyle, I recommend H Vac. I recommend construction or any trade. Those are really good ways to make a good life for yourself. You don't have to follow your passion, but you bring it with you. When you get that H Vac job, you learn everything you can and you take all of the knowledge you get during your apprenticeship and you learn the business and you be the guy who owns 12 H Vac trucks that go all over Manhattan. That's how you get rich. You bring your passion with you. You don't necessarily follow it. Those of us that followed our passion and got rich doing that, you might as well buy a lottery Today ticket.
- [55:51]
Dan Harris
Yes. Right. You and I both won the lottery.
- [55:54]
Jordan Harbinger
We won the lottery. And anybody who's in our position, speaking of privilege, that doesn't acknowledge the massive role of luck and timing is li. They are delusional. They are lying to themselves and they're lying to everybody else.
- [56:06]
Dan Harris
Yep. Yep. Well said. Coming up, Jordan talks about his thoughts on Hustle culture, how to ask for a raise, and the strategic value of asking for advice.
- [56:20]
Chris Gethard
Hey, prime members, are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts?
- [56:25]
Jordan Harbinger
Good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad free top.
- [56:30]
Chris Gethard
Podcasts included with your prime membership.
- [56:32]
Jordan Harbinger
To start listening, download the Amazon music app for free or go to Amazon.com adfreepodcasts that's Amazon.com adfreepodcast to catch up.
- [56:43]
Chris Gethard
On the latest episodes without the ads. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know, when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code SPACE80@TALKSP.
- [57:50]
Dan Harris
You and I are both sort of. We find ourselves in interesting corners of what has sometimes been called the manosphere. You know, white dudes with podcasts. One of the things you sometimes hear in the darker precincts of the manosphere is you gotta crush it. Always be working. Thank God it's Monday. You know you can sleep when you're dead, et cetera, et cetera. Hustle culture.
- [58:11]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah.
- [58:11]
Dan Harris
And so you've done. I listened to a great episode you did earlier.
- [58:14]
Jordan Harbinger
If you do the hustle thing.
- [58:16]
Dan Harris
Well, exactly. Yes, you can. You will be sleeping sooner than the rest of us. What is your take on Hustle call? I know what it is, but I would like you to tell these folks.
- [58:24]
Jordan Harbinger
I know you know, this is how questions and interviews work. Thank you. Yeah. You know, for me, it was a shame to see this because the hustle culture that existed when I was in law school, where it was every Minute you're not studying, someone else is studying harder than you. The final exam is 100% of your grade. There's a finite number of jobs out there. There we're all competing for them. Hide the library book that everybody needs so that they can't. I mean, that. That existed, right? To see that proliferate to everybody is horrifying. That was very toxic, very unhealthy. The level of competition drove people. We had suicides. We had eating disorders. We had people that just opted out and quit. We had people who dropped out of school that would have made fine lawyers because they couldn't handle or didn't want to handle all that. That's a damn shame. So to see that now being absorbed by high school kids is awful. It's not a good way to live. It's not motivating. People who need to be motivated, being told that they're never going to be enough unless they work 24, 7, that's very temporary motivation. Usually it's completely ineffective motivation. So I strongly recommend people insulate themselves from this and do not consume that kind of content. By the way, I know a lot of those big channels that create those videos, those hustle culture videos. You know how those make money. They either get a ton of plays and they have advertising or they sell courses on things like how to get ahead. But it's all the same recycled nonsense or stuff you could get from how to win friends and influence people, phrased by some dude in a video that's $48 a month recurring. That's how that guy's getting ahead. He's not hustling, he's making videos telling you to do that, Right? It's just like, again, Mark Cuban said something along the lines of people ask him, like, what do you think of these guys who sell business courses and teach people how to do this? And he goes, anybody who's teaching you how to make money, they are lying to you because if what they taught worked, they would do that. That's how they would make their money. The last thing they would do is package it into an easy to consume course and make that for sale. And that's true. Like, I tell people how to grow podcasts and stuff, but of course, I have certain trade secrets. And I'm like, I will only talk about this when it is either already widely known or less effective than it is for me right now. I'll give people the basics and stuff like that. But anybody who's like, trading cryptocurrency and knows the secret formula to do it. They're not telling anybody else. They are using that glitch to get rich as hell. And then when it either doesn't work anymore or starts slowing down, that's when they go, go, all right, how do I continue to make money doing? Ah. I train other people how to do this, and they'll make a little, but I'll make more. That's hustle culture. It's at heart deceptive, it's disingenuous, and it relies on you feeling like you are not enough or doing enough to succeed. And that is inherently bad for you, Right?
- [61:20]
Dan Harris
Yes. The always behind this never enoughness piece of it is really pernicious. And I would say the other part of this is there's a really good argument to be made that I'm stealing this from a guy named Alex Pang. Alex Sujung Kim Pang. You should actually have him on your podcast. He wrote a book called Rest, and his argument is that work and rest are two sides of the same coin. In other words, if you want to be productive, you need rest. And rest doesn't just mean lying on the couch. Although lying on the couch can be great.
- [61:48]
Jordan Harbinger
Sounds good.
- [61:49]
Dan Harris
Could be. Yeah. But it can also be a hobby that requires a lot of energy. But sometimes something that gives your mind a rest, so that when you come back to the thing you're quote, unquote, hustling on, you're bringing fresh ideas, you're not stale, you're not burnt out. That lands really well for me because I was hustling in an unhealthy way previously.
- [62:11]
Jordan Harbinger
I agree. There's so much. I'm glad there's science behind this now, because when I went to law school and I would say things like, you know, I need to be well rested for this, or I need to go to the gym. Him. People would go, sucker. Look at him doing that now. Of course, we know actually endorphins, this sleep, brain waves that the science is there. But before it was, there were guys in my law firm where it was like, oh, you're screwed, man. You have a family. You're never going to make it. Or you better get used to never seeing your wife and kids, because there's no such thing as work life balance. If you're in a job like that, they do not value your individual contribution. You are a workhorse. You're a stamping press that can be replaced as soon as you are worn out. Look, we're in a creative sort of sphere. I'm doing interviews, I'm reading books. I need to absolutely be in good physical shape to be reading 24 7. I need to build Legos with my kid and I need to play video games and not talk to anybody. And I need to go for long walks and hikes and stuff like that because otherwise my work suffers because I don't want to freaking be there anymore. And when that happens, the interview stinks or my ability to ask reasonable questions goes out the window because I am just trudging through yet another one. I'm so glad that people are now talking about the science of rest, because now people might actually finally listen. Before, it was just, yeah, if you're a wimp, I guess you can take a break. Break? Yeah. If you're a loser, I guess you can sleep eight hours a night if you want to be like that. You still see these hustle culture gurus out there and it's like, oh, yeah, whining about how you don't have time. What are you doing from 8:00pm to 4:00 in the morning every night? I've heard somebody say that. I'm not going to mention their name. They live in this very city. What are you doing from the hours of 7pm to 2am? Oh, it's called my family. Oh, wait, you are divorced and maybe your kids don't talk to you. Maybe I shouldn't take your advice. Maybe I shouldn't listen to you and follow your example. You're rich. But are you. Your wife left you. I don't think that's a win.
- [64:14]
Dan Harris
Well said. As I made my table of contents for the book that you should be writing on how to Succeed, one of the chapters that I'm proposing that you write is on, and this is actually taken right from the title of one of your episodes is the Pluses and Minuses of Vulnerability. Yeah. We've got people like Brene Brown out there doing great work on, you know, vulnerability. In other words, being honest, real in a professional context. Although she talks about it holistically. But within a professional context, what's your take on the ups and the upsides and downsides of. Of being authentic or vulnerable or whatever the word is you want to choose.
- [64:52]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, I know. Yeah. Any word you use is automatically overuse. Yeah. So for me, when I was younger, again, these are other influences I see cropping up now that make me a little bit sad. When I was younger, it was all about like being a tough, macho guy. That was a trait that was valued among young men. I was really grateful that that started to slip away. Now of course, we see a resurgence that's stronger than I've ever seen in my life, unfortunately. But one of the things I used to teach back in the day when I was doing the personal development stuff, was a strong guy can put the shield down and doesn't need to wear all the armor. It's not the strong guy that needs to front and put up the idea that nothing phases them and that they're completely unbothered. Like, that's kind of an, in my opinion, antiquated and outdated ideal of masculinity. Think about it. A strong guy, when their son is having a problem, what does a strong guy do? Does he say, suck it up. You need to learn how to not deal with this and shove it aside. That's kind of like what our parents did or their parents did. That's not what a real strong man does. A strong man has the emotional capacity to deal with somebody else's perceived weakness or somebody else's need for their strength. Right. When somebody needs your strength and all you do is push them away, I think that's one of the weakest things you can do, especially as a father. If your daughter has a problem or your son has a problem, the worst thing you can do is pretend, because that's what you're doing, pretend that that shouldn't bother them and that it doesn't bother you. It's ridiculous. You need to develop that ability to put the shield down in. The way you connect with people as well is you put that shield down. The guy who acts like he has absolutely no flaws, no faults, and can never be wrong, that person doesn't have great relationships. Why would they? So the best people to learn from and connect with are the people where you go, man, I just don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I don't know where I'm going with my career, and I don't know if I'm making the right move. And they go, oh, yeah, I've felt that way a lot in my life. Here's the last time I felt that way. Here's how things worked out for me. Here's what I did right about. About it. Here's actually what I did wrong, what I would do a different way if I had the choice. And that person goes, man, I feel so much better. Look at you now. Look what you're doing. And you went through something that was this bad or worse, and you made it to where you are now. I feel a lot better. If you go, sucks to be you. How do you think that person feels that that never happened to me or I'm too tough for to worry about that that person is not going to connect with you. They're never going to open up to you, they're never going to create a relationship with you and you have not helped them at all. So for me, there's no real downside to that level of vulnerability. Now if you make it like your entire personality, I think it can be a little off putting. I feel like then it becomes inauthentic. Once again, just everything is always about love and vulnerability. And look, every man has their own degree of this. And I think when you're talking about women especially, they're a lot more comfortable being open and vulnerable with each other. What do we notice about friendships between men? Men and friendships between women? Which gender typically has stronger connections with each other? In every civilization, it's women.
- [67:58]
Dan Harris
Have you ever seen the SNL skit where girlfriends are taking their boyfriends or husbands to essentially a New York City dog run or a dog park, but it's for dudes to make friends with each other?
- [68:11]
Jordan Harbinger
I think somebody sent this to me, but I can't remember.
- [68:13]
Dan Harris
It's. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's hilarious. And it really just speaks to the emotional imbecility of many of us men. And that inability to create connection, to have actual friendships is, I think it's safe to say, a big part of why you see mental health issues among so many people with our chromosomal structure.
- [68:36]
Jordan Harbinger
Could not agree more. Men making friends as adults. I don't know what the stats are. I should look this up. It's abysmal. And my email inbox, we do an advice segment on Friday, Feedback Friday, where people are like, how do I escape this cult? Or like, how do I get a raise at work, whatever it is. And the letters we get from just lonely guys who are like, I moved away from all my childhood friends and I realized I have no idea how to make new ones. We get that letter every single week. And it's really a shame because friendship is probably one of the most beautiful things that we have in our lives. Right. Relationships with other people. So the idea that we are brought up and we are never taught how to strengthen those relationships is profoundly sad and profoundly, it results in profound loneliness.
- [69:21]
Dan Harris
Yes.
- [69:22]
Jordan Harbinger
And you're right, mental health has never been, probably never been worse for men. And that's a huge reason.
- [69:29]
Dan Harris
What about in a workplace, this whole idea of bringing your whole self to the office?
- [69:34]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, I Mean, you should probably ask a guy who's had a real job in the last decade and a half. That might help. I bring my whole self to the office, but it's also my. My own house and I'm usually not wearing pants.
- [69:46]
Dan Harris
How big is your team?
- [69:47]
Jordan Harbinger
There's six of us. Most of them are not working in that particular hostile environment.
- [69:51]
Dan Harris
Mean they don't see you?
- [69:52]
Jordan Harbinger
They don't see me. Pants. They see. Yeah, they're mostly remote. I've got a bunch of. A bunch of people elsewhere in California. I've got people in my area, but they're related to me. Right. My wife works with me as well. And then we've got a couple of people overseas in Eastern Europe that do things like sound engineering. That's it. You know, the. Bring your whole self to work. I think it's probably healthier than not. The idea that people are connecting with each other in a more real way in the office is probably good. I'm sure there's a limit to that. This, and I'm sure that that limit has been reached by. In some of the offices from some of the people listening to and watching this particular show. Yes, I think that limit has been reached by many. We even may have even talked about an example or two of this in the lunch that we had before recording here. There's a way to overdo these kinds of things, I think. Yeah.
- [70:38]
Dan Harris
You made a reference to this a few moments ago, and it's on my list of things to ask you about how to ask for a raise.
- [70:44]
Jordan Harbinger
Oh, yeah. Well, probably too long of a particular strategy. There's an article, I think, on our website about this, and I'm not just trying to like, squeeze people to the website. The reason is it's never just about the ask of the raise. It's about the groundwork you do years prior. The best way to get a raise is to basically work for the job that you want or go for the job that you want. The best success stories of people getting a raise from Feedback Friday from the Jordan Harbinger show are people that say, I really want to work on this particular project, but I'm in this department over here and our advice is always something along the lines of go over to the department where they are working on that and ask if they have anything that you can do. Even though you are in whatever sales and you want to work on the rockets, is there anything you can do, especially after hours, that would help them in what they do and then do that. You're not going to get extra compensation. You got to get permission from your boss to do it. And they're going to go, only if you do it and it doesn't interfere with your current work. Adhere to that. And you go over there and you go, I'm going to do all of the reconciliation on the spreadsheets for the one, whatever. And you do that and you do that and you do that, and maybe you do it for a year. And then suddenly you're a good part of that team. And when a position opens up, they're going to consider you first. That's how you might make a lateral move. Or in the case of actually getting a raise, you would go to your boss well before you actually want the raise, and you would say, I really would love to run a project. Here's an idea that I have for a project. One real example again from Feedback Friday, is somebody said, said, I do this thing, but there's definitely going to be a way to automate this. I found some tools that can do it. They're kind of expensive, but I feel like I could build something like this. I just don't really know exactly how. And I go, okay, go to your boss. Ask him if you're allowed to try your hand at creating an automation tool that does an element of your job or somebody else's job. And then when you create that and you have to run it, just keep your boss posted every few weeks or months on this particular project. So this guy built, built. I don't know all the details by heart, but he built some kind of tool for the sales pipeline that plugged into Salesforce, probably some sort of plugin for their API, whatever it was, and it was very specific to their industry. And it eliminated like five or six hours a week of this team's work. And he told his boss he was doing that. And then when it came time for his performance review, he was like, hey, we're saving six hours a week doing this thing. I have other ideas is. And additionally, he goes, those six hours are worth about. Because it's six hours of multiple people's time. They're worth about 1200 bucks each. So I would like 50% of that savings added to my compensation. And by the way, I have other ideas of things we can automate. So they created a sort of pseudo position for him where he's going through different systems and finding out ways to automate things. And he's compensated for the work that he already did creating that other system. But he basically had to do that for free in order to prove that he was worth doing that and worth that extra compensation. He didn't go in and go, I need 5,000 extra dollars because I've been here for a year. That's not how you do it. You raise your game up and then you ask to be compensated for the value that you've brought.
- [73:58]
Dan Harris
Do you think brute seniority is not a good reason to ask for?
- [74:02]
Jordan Harbinger
I think it is because you have experience. Maybe you're better at your job. Is that the best way to ask for a raise? No. Is it a possible way to ask for a raise? Yeah. You might get your cost of living, increase, increase your inflation match, whatever it's called. Sure. But would you rather be somebody who goes, hey, I'm bringing in an additional $20,000 in revenue. Can I have five of that? Or do you want to be the guy who goes, can I please have enough money so that my salary isn't melting away from inflation? And they go, well, I'll give you 50% of what you asked for because otherwise what are you going to do about it? Right? Especially if you're creating extra value. If you can make yourself indispensable. Right. This guy is automating things in this current company. There are other companies that does what he, where he works. He could bring those tools to the competition. Do they want him to leave and bring the extra value to a competitor, or do they want to give him literally one half to one fourth of what he's actually bringing them? It's a no brainer. It's an easy calculation for them to make. The numbers work out in his favor. If you're just saying, I need extra money, the numbers do not work out in your favor. Now they're making a decision as to whether they can afford to lose you because you're asking for more. Are you worth that? Now, that's not the calculation you want your boss making. You want your boss going, we cannot afford to have this value go somewhere else. Not, can we afford to do business without this person? That's a totally different question. One's a massive advantage and a massive lever, and the other one is not.
- [75:30]
Dan Harris
Last question for me. What is the strategic value of asking for advice?
- [75:35]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, so this is one of my favorite things. Things. First of all, when you ask for advice, you get advice. Check that box. Second of all, there's a couple schools of thought here. One is, there's this old, possibly apocryphal story about Benjamin Franklin. And I think it's in how to win friends and influence people, where Benjamin Franklin had some enemy in like the, whatever, the Congress somewhere, or some guy didn't like him. He said horrible things about Benjamin Franklin. There's quotes to this effect. Benjamin Franklin finds out. He does the dossier technique, right? He finds out. This guy loves collecting books. And remember books back then. And it's like one guy, you know, might have one copy of one thing, and it's the only copy anywhere in the United States or possibly anywhere. So he finds out that this guy has a rare book and Benjamin Franklin writes him and goes, I heard you have a, I'm paraphrasing, kick ass book collection and you've got an edition of this. I would love it. And no obligation. I would be so amazingly blown away if you would let me read that. So the guy sends him the book. And what this does is now called the Benjamin Franklin effect. This guy rationalizes, well, I sent him that book. He must not be such a bad guy, because I wouldn't have done that otherwise. You know what? Maybe my beef against him is a little bit overblown. And they become fast allies, fast friends. When you ask somebody for advice, not only do you get the Benjamin Franklin effect, but you get the bonus of them. They now have stakes in your success. If you say, say, how do I grow my show? Because I'm leaving ABC News and I want this to be a sustainable business because I love it and I give you 90 minutes of advice. If you turn around and fail after that, I feel kind of bad, like, geez, I gave you the best help I could and you fell flat on your face. That doesn't feel good. So now I've got a little bit of skin in the game, right, Psychologically. So if you're asking for advice from folks, one, they know you want to be there. They know you're serious about learning. Learning you got the Benjamin Franklin effect in case there was a relationship issue there. But now your relationship with them is stronger and they have stakes in your success. Man, that's a really good combination of factors. And in addition to that, you might actually get some good advice. Yes, but it's almost like a side effect of everything else.
- [77:44]
Dan Harris
Right. Is there something you were hoping that we would get to that we didn't get to?
- [77:49]
Jordan Harbinger
I was hoping we'd turn on the air conditioner at some point. I don't know if you're gonna leave that in. You know, honestly, not really. There's so much we can talk about. Whenever we do meals, they. They last until they kick us out of the restaurant. There's A reason for that. So I'm just grateful to have the opportunity to be here, man. I really appreciate you having me on and it's a lot of fun.
- [78:07]
Dan Harris
But you're gonna write the book.
- [78:08]
Jordan Harbinger
No.
- [78:10]
Dan Harris
I will say that your reason for not wanting to write the book, as I mentioned earlier, has to do with time management and not wanting to be a part of hustle culture because you have two very young children, etc. Etc. But I do think they're. I think you have a book in you.
- [78:23]
Jordan Harbinger
Eventually I will write it. You're right. I have a two year old and a four and a half year old and I spend a ton of time with them and I'm away from them right now, which is, you know, it's. It's not a good look to be like, I spend all kinds of time with my kids. Aren't you in New York City right now and you live in California? Forget about that. Yes, I do. So I'm going to Legoland after this and I'm doing it for multiple days. So one, pray for me. And two, I wouldn't be able to necessarily do that kind of thing if I had a bunch of extra projects. So I right now, while my kids are young and they actually want to hang out with me and they actually think dad is cool, I'm putting a lot of this stuff to the side because it's like, oh, man, every hour that I spend writing or doing something that's not paying the bills right then, yes, there's building blocks and stuff that I can put together for later, but why do I want to be building on something that I cash in? And then I go, all right, we made an extra whatever from that book. And my kid goes, whatever. Can you drive me the mall right now? He actually wants me to be there and I want to be there. And I feel like that book will be there later when I'm driving my kid to the mall.
- [79:25]
Dan Harris
Amen. Just remind everybody, before I let you go, the name of your show, what the website is. Just plug away, please.
- [79:32]
Jordan Harbinger
Yeah, Jordan Harbinger. H A R B I N G E R. The Jordan Harbinger Show. Or Harbinger, if that makes it easier to remember. I'm still not even sure how I want to pronounce it. And it's Jordan Harbinger.com is the website with everything. Wherever fine podcasts are sold, you can find my show. We have a YouTube channel as well, but only like one third of my shows go up there.
- [79:56]
Dan Harris
We will put links to all of these in the show notes. So if you don't have a pen handy, it's in there. Jordan, always great to see you.
- [80:01]
Jordan Harbinger
Thank you. Thank you very much.
- [80:07]
Dan Harris
Thanks again to Jordan. Don't forget to check out his show, the Jordan Harbinger Show. Also, if you want to check out the other episodes we're doing in the sanely ambitious Bucket, I will put a link in the show notes to a playlist of priority episodes. Also, don't forget to check out danharris.com Subscribers will get a full cheat sheet for this episode filled with all the key takeaways and a full transcript. We're also doing lots of other cool stuff like live AMAs and yeah, anyway, come. Just come check it out.
- [80:36]
Jordan Harbinger
Trust me.
- [80:37]
Dan Harris
Before I go, I just want to thank everybody who works so hard on the show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
- [81:05]
Chris Gethard
This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. Help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code space80@talkspace.com.