Good Life Project - Jordan Harbinger | How to Come Back From Disaster

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

What if you found yourself in the middle years of life, taking on responsibility, building a family, a reputation, a company, a living…and then, in the blink of an eye, had to start over? Not by choice, but by circumstance. That was the experience of this week’s guest, Jordan Harbinger. One of the pioneering voices in podcasting, he’d been in the space for nearly 15 years, building a big audience and a business around it. But, a series of events he never saw coming landed him on the outside-looking-in, wondering, “what’s next?” He could’ve left the world of media, podcasting, and conversation behind, and done any number of things. He’s a former lawyer with a mind for systems and tech. But, he loved the community of podcasting. It’s all he wanted to do. So, instead, Jordan committed to rebuilding his own show, his own career, his own company and team, entirely on his terms and under his control, from the ground up. Fast forward 5 years, Jordan has not only made a comeback, but he has also built one of the most popular and successful properties in the explosive growth world of podcasting - The Jordan Harbinger Show - many times larger than he’d dreamed of or, honestly, even imagined was possible. Jordan and I have known each other for years, we’ve shared ideas, visions, hopes, dreams, and experiences as we’ve both navigated the world of audio, inspiration, and life. But, I wanted to really understand what this recent season of life has been like for him, what he’s learned, how he accomplished such a breathtaking comeback, what he’s said no to along the way and why, how passion and relationships have played into this phoenix-like experience, and how he’s changed as a person along the way. You can find Jordan at: Website | The Jordan Harbinger ShowIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Debbie Millman about designing your life as a perpetually evolving experience.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED.Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I've never seen anyone split their focus between a ton of different things and do really, really, really well in one of them. And I love conversations. And podcasting is the best place to have long form conversations bar none. What if you found yourself in the middle years of life, taking on responsibility, building a family, a reputation, a company, a living. And then, in the blink of an eye, had to start entirely over. Not by choice, but by circumstance. That was the experience of this week's guest, Jordan Harbinger. So one of the pioneering voices in podcasting, he'd been in the space for nearly 15 years,

building a big audience and a business around it. But a series of events he never saw coming landed him on the outside looking and wondering, what do I do from here? He could have left the world of media and podcasting and conversation behind and done any number of things. Jordan is a former lawyer with a mind for systems and tech, but he loved the community of podcasting. It's all he wanted to do. So instead, Jordan committed to rebuilding from the ground up his own show, his own career, his own company and team entirely on his terms and under his control from the ground up. Fast forward about five years, Jordan has not only made a comeback,

he has built one of the most popular and successful properties in the explosive growth world of podcasting, The Jordan Harbinger Show, many times larger than he dreamed of or honestly even imagined was possible. Jordan and I have known each other for many, many years. We've shared ideas and visions, hopes, dreams, and experiences as we've both navigated the world of audio and inspiration and life, but I wanted to really understand what this recent season of work and life has been like for him, what he's learned, how he accomplished such a breathtaking comeback, what he said no to

along the way and why, how passion and relationships have played into this Phoenix-like experience and how he's changed as a human being, as a person, as a father and a husband along the way. And that is where we go in this conversation. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk it's good to be hanging out with you we've known each other for a long time now um yeah we've spent some time on the mic together on both sides and so i was thinking about like there's so many different directions that you and I can go in conversation and we do in private conversation. Some really recent stuff I want to touch on with you

and just, I'd love to get your take on some things that are going on in the world these days. I also want to sort of like take a step back in time. We have other conversations that are earlier in the podcast. We'll drop those in the show notes, of course, or people who want like the detailed backstory. But I was reflecting on one thing recently, which is I was actually listening to one of the free

sort of like downloadable audio books on Audible. And it was about phone freakers. Oh, I heard that one. It brought me right back to you. And I was like, I could not believe. So for those who don't know what phone freaking is, what's the short form version of what this is? Yeah. So before there, or I shouldn't say before, but around the same time that hackers were like starting to become a thing, the phone system was also kind of like before the internet, there was a big network of other electronic devices

and it was phones. And so like why before AOL and even Prodigy and all those, you know, CompuServe type networks, which were not really the internet, guys like me and older, cause I was 13 or whatever years old at the time, we would call and we would go, well, wait a not really the internet, guys like me and older, because I was 13 or whatever years old at the time, we would call and we would go, well, wait a minute, you know, theoretically, I'm connected to Japan, North Korea, China, Canada, at the least Mexico. So I,

we, we wanted to figure out how these things worked. And so we would dial numbers and we would listen to the tones and we would build devices out of electronics that would make the tones that phones made, not necessarily only the dial tones, but even things like a classic example is when you go to a pay phone. And for people who are younger, that's a phone that you put a coin into and you would put the coin in and it would mute your your earpiece. But if it was broken or that wasn't the case, you would hear, and you'd hear this weird tone when you put in a quarter. And that was the phone telling the network that someone had put in a quarter. Because remember, this isn't digital. That payphone has to tell the network, hey, there's a quarter in here, this person paid for the call. And it does that through tones. And so guys like me would figure out what these tones were, guys smarter than me and older older than me would figure out what those tones were. And we would figure out how to

mimic them or record them from a payphone. And then what you could do is something that I did when I was younger, I would, you know, you remember record a cards from Hallmark, they probably still have those. And you'd be like, Hi, Grandma, it's me and the kids, you know, you'd like put that in the card, and it would play when it opened. Well, that's a little digital recorder that has probably 10 seconds of solid state drive, you know, semiconductor memory in it. And it would record a decently high res enough sound file. So what I do is I go and get that $10 card, rip the card open, take the guts out. And I have this little tiny button that went and played a sound every time I hit that. No rewinding, nothing. You know, you don't need a giant tape recorder, which is subject to weather conditions and also looks

really weird because it's huge. You'd have this little tiny thing that was like the size of a few thumbs put together. Now, I would record the tone off of those payphones that said, this person has put in a quarter, and I could then pick up any payphone anywhere in the United States, probably even also in Canada, put that device up to the mic and flick that little button and it would make a quarter tone. And then I could do that 50 times and I could call Japan and China and, you know, wherever. And they would open the phone and go, there's no money in here, you know? And so they caught onto that pretty quick, but it was very common. Highly illegal. And for a 13 year old. Yeah, it's called that right

it's like and you you're actually one of those guys like in real life where you got to knock on the door it's like uh hello uh like this is the fbi here for uh jordan we've got an issue yeah that was a that was a different thing so this was cell phone freaking or hacking that was a different beast right that was more serious because now you're talking FCC, radio waves, and phone companies, and credit card companies because they're involved in the payment and the da-da-da-da. So that was an even bigger sort of mess. I don't know how much detail you want. I realize I went off on a-

Yeah, no, and I think we actually dive into that in one of our earlier conversations. Oh, okay, cool. But like Zoom that lends out, what's always been this really fascinating, consistent pattern with you is this, you are obsessive about understanding systems. Um, so for you, it's not like you were trying to get something over on the government or you were trying to sort of, you know, like spend somebody else's money. You're like, Ooh, this is sort of like this complex secret, you know, like puzzle. And I need to figure this out. And it's almost like the more complex it is, the more interested you are in trying to deconstruct it. So you start out with technology

as a young kid, and then you go into the most complex system on the planet, which is human social dynamics, and start to massively geek out and try and figure out what is this thing called? Interpersonal relationships and social dynamics and influence. And is this thing called? You know, like interpersonal relationships and social dynamics and influence. And is this a system that's hackable? Right. And, you know, it seems like you just transferred that same Jones to the human condition. 100%.

I mean, when I was doing the phone thing and I figured out how to like, let's say call Japan for free, I probably did that like, yeah, it was fun to do a couple prank calls to Japan, which didn't go over well because nobody understood what I was saying. And I didn't understand what they were saying. And they were probably just pissed off because I woke them up at 3am, you know, calling in from Michigan.

So that wasn't the fun part. The fun part was going, well, we figured this out. And then it was like, you mess with it for an hour, and then you on to the next. And with humans, it was like, you could figure something out, but it was so unpredictable. And every person was different. It was like that system was slightly different with each human. And men were different than women and older people were different than younger people. And smart people were different than dumb people. And it was just like, wait a minute, this has endless variety. So it's a much more, it's a much larger challenge. But also the game board is so much bigger. It's probably like larger challenge, but also the game board is so

much bigger. It's probably like checkers versus go, you know, where like you can program Apple PC, like an Apple from 1985 to play checkers, but to program it, to play go and then be the human is something that I think Google has just only recently done with their AI, right? So it's just a completely different game. And that was endlessly fascinating for me and my friends. We called it social engineering. Like, of course, leave it to us nerds to figure out a way to name human hacking into a totally different thing. And it became, initially it was like for security researchers,

and that's still sort of where that science lay primarily. Like people will say, oh, persuasion and influence and things like that. But like a lot of security researchers call it social engineering, and it's figuring out how to trick someone into giving out a password or figuring out how to get somebody to send you something when they're not supposed to send you that thing. You know, that was really interesting. And again, it was about the system. It was like, can I convince this book company to send me free books? Great.

But then I get the books and I'm like, well, okay, great. Here's my trophy. But that wasn't the point, right? The point was to figure out and see if we could do it. And there was a lot of that. Yeah, and it's funny. So you end up at first,

or like a window in time, and this is where we share a history in the practice of law. And all of these things go into the practice of law. You know, like fundamentally, like when you're a lawyer, you're trying to figure out how do I understand like what's happening between human beings in a room or in dynamic? And then how do we actually create an outcome? Like how do we, how do you create a social dynamic, which leads to an outcome, which is constructive, you know, like for your client, but then maybe depending on how

you're wired, for everybody in the room. It was funny. I was thinking about your time in the law and my time in the law, and I was thinking about how you were describing social hacking. When I started out, I started out as a lawyer in the SEC, in the enforcement office, in a giant federal agency in New York. And they weren't prepared for us. There was like six of us newbies that showed up one day. They didn't have room. They're about to move offices. We hired you guys. Are you sure? I know. They literally forgot about us for six months and they put us kind of like secreted away in this room off the side of a library on a different floor with carrels that they threw

in there. And we basically just were twiddling our thumbs around a conference table. So we started actually sitting around a table and here like six young lawyers knew nothing about what they were doing and trying to kind of wait for people to give us work. And so we're like, all right, so there's a candy machine on this floor. And one guy like orders like the roll of Jolly Rogers and he gets the roll and he like gets a candy out one day. And he's like, I cannot get these plastic wrappers. They're glued onto the candy.

So then six legal minds sit around a table spending probably the better part of a week sort of like engineering this letter with every ounce of influence we know to send to the candy company to complain and sort of like this was a devastating blow to our humanity. And then we get back like a couple of weeks later, a couple of cases of candy. And we're like, ooh. Yeah. This is an interesting game. Good use of government resources.

Right. We're like, what else can we do here? But it was funny because it's like these you know, like these ideas can be put to use in the most silly ways, but also in the biggest ways to transform personal relationships, cultural relationships, societies, organizations, massive scale impact. So if you can start to get to like, what is the underwiring of this? What you're capable of accomplishing? It's really transformative. Yeah. A lot of people look at this and they think, oh, so what? So some dumb lawyers

figured out how to waste $3,000 of taxpayer money getting free ho-hos or whatever, or jelly ranchers or whatever it was. It was jelly ranchers, right? Because that's always glued to that wrapper. Yeah. I thought Jolly Roger, I think, is kind of like a ho-ho knockoff, but I'll have to Google that. Yeah, that's a different thing. And then, you know, and so some kid did free calls to Japan. But really, what this says is, you know, these same skillsets are like

what underpins the foundation of sales. It's what underpins the foundation of brands that have crazy cult loyalty, where like everyone always buys that band's music. It's not just because the songs are catchy, right? And not always. Or somebody will always sign up for that retreat that Jonathan's running.

Or somebody will always buy the book from that one author. There's a lot of psychology that goes into sales, branding, actual cults for that matter. And all this stuff is interesting. Usually when it's used for good, it's even more interesting than when it's used for bad. But if you're bored or you're 13 years old, you start with the bad because that's more exciting at the time. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. For you, there was a bit of an inciting incident when you were a lawyer. You're hanging out, you're practicing law, you're in a firm in Wall Street, New York, and you're working with somebody who you observed not being in the office a whole lot. Right. And so in the practice of law, there are these people that are known internally as the rainmakers, right? And they don't usually service accounts a whole lot. They're the ones who are out there constantly interacting with other human beings, developing relationships, and they're generating all of these new people to basically serve into the firm and then other people serve them. And it sounds like for you, this was a really powerful moment because you're like, wait a minute, there's this whole other thing that plays a critical role in the success,

not only of this one person, but of the entire endeavor that really isn't about this sort of day-to-day granular practice of law. Yeah. This surprised me because like many people in their twenties, I was like, well, networking's for old people, so I don't really care. I'll learn that when I have to. It's like, when I'm at the top, they probably make you join some country club. Maybe they even pay for it. I guess I'll learn how to play golf or something, and then dot, dot, dot, network, and that's it. It's a box I check. What I didn't realize was that's completely backwards, and what happens is that you build a network that's healthy, robust, and vibrant, and that's what takes you to the top in most cases in most industries. And for people who didn't really believe that, those same people sure had a lot of complaining

to do about how people got ahead through nepotism or through brown nosing. And I'm like, isn't that the same? It's like the other side of the very same coin is just somebody who kind of unfairly already had a network built in or is good at ingratiating themselves. But the best people, the partner that you're talking about that was internally sort of known as the Rainmaker, he was never in the office, but he was a very young partner. And I remember I'd see him like in the office once and he'd be limping and I'd go, hey, what happened to your leg? Oh, I was doing jujitsu and you know, something, something arm lock, leg, knee thing, whatever. And I'm like, Oh, you do jujitsu. He's like, yeah, a few times a week. And then he's

like leaving early one day to go play golf. And then he's not even there at all the next couple of weeks. And I was like, Hey, you're tan. And there's a guy from Brooklyn with a tan. So I'm like, okay, this guy knows something that we don't know. And he's like, oh, I was on a cruise all week. And I was just like, why don't you ever have to work? You know, so I, of course I didn't have the guts to say that, but one day he, he was supposed to be like my mentor. They assign you mentors on wall street. And it means somebody who like is required contractually to answer your questions once every quarter for two minutes. There are 30 minutes, you know, in the basement Starbucks. And most of the mentor mentee relationships were actually

pretty good. It would be like, they'd go see Blue Man Group and eat at McCormick and Schmick or whatever, like every week. And I thought like, oh, that's pretty good. Meanwhile, I haven't even seen this guy more than once that like orientation and that was it. So to answer any questions, he takes me to the basement Starbucks and he's like, do you have any questions? And I'm, you know, I'm asking about financial derivative instruments, but I'm like, this doesn't even matter. Just ask him, just ask him. And I said, so why are you never in the office? You know, you're a partner. Do you just, do you work from home all the time? And he's like, well, sometimes I work from home. Why? And I'm like, well,

you know, what do you, what are you doing like all day? And he goes, oh yeah, well, I generate business for the firm and that's sort of my primary focus. And I, it had never occurred to me that you would have to do that. I don't know what I thought. Yellow pages. I really don't even know how I thought firms got business at age 27, 28. I really don't know what I was thinking. And he's like, yeah, pretty much, you know, anytime there's a, our clients were investment bankers, right? Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers,

and other sort of famous fires, dumpster fires. And he's like, yeah, anytime there's an investment banker who's going to jujitsu or golfing or jogging or has an event or playing racquetball or squash, like my job is kind of to be there and, you know, make sure that they think of us first. And I just thought like, this is brilliant in its simplicity, but obviously I'm missing something

because if that's the highest leverage you have, why aren't all of the partners doing this all the time? And the junior associates and mid-level associates, why aren't we the workhorses that are just doing all this grunt work and managing all the, like when I walked in, one terrifying experience that I had as an attorney, right, is I walked into the office on like a Saturday night with a date and I thought, we're going to go into my office, it's going to be so cool, we're in the middle of Midtown, it's Saturday night in the middle of winter and I'm going to show off that I have this really nice office in Midtown Manhattan. And she's going to be really impressed. And I showed up and like all the partners were there. And I ran out of there as fast as I could because I was like, one, I don't want to get any work. And two, I don't want them to see me bringing dates in here.

But three, it haunted me because I thought, why are they all here? And I remember on Monday, I asked one of the sort of fifth year associates, I go, so I came in on Saturday night and everyone was here. And he goes, yeah, that's pretty normal. And I was like, no, this wasn't a closing. This is, is this my future? Am I gonna be here on Saturday night at 11 p.m.

when junior associates get back from the bars? They're gonna be passing me on my way home for the first time since Friday? You know, and that terrified me. And he said, well, yeah, I mean, this is when they get a lot of work done. There's no phone calls, maybe from a few clients to investment bankers who are also working, but there's not like day to day stuff. There's no errands. Their families are usually at their summer home or they're, you know, on vacation. So they get a lot of stuff done. And that just crushed me because I was like, oh, they have no life. But of course, Dave, this partner,

Tuesday afternoon, not there again. And it's just, that blew me away. So I told myself, I said, okay, I figured out the phone freaking thing. I did some computer hacking stuff. I was doing the cell phone cloning. What's with this system? You know, this is the real,

this is like the black belt hack. Because if I can figure out how to generate business for the firm, then I will have a life that is enviable instead of just being like literally locked in a fancy skyscraper, you know, for 24 hours a day, seven days a week or six days a week like all these other guys. So that was where I was like challenge accepted.

Where do I, what do I do now? You know, I gotta to do this now. And I mean, for you that, that sets in motion, this sort of like autodidactic deep dive education into the world of human dynamics and social dynamics and how do people relate and, and send you eventually out of the law into the world of really going deep into this, developing ideas, framework systems, programming, educational experiences, building company and brand. A big part of that is a podcast set that you almost stumbled your way, the way that we've talked about it in the past, into the world of podcasting. Before it was really even podcasting, you start sharing all this stuff. You build a remarkably big audience. Everything is humming along. You've got an educational company.

You've got a leading media brand. And you're building a life around this. A couple of years back, this machine that seems unstoppable, that's kind of like humming along, that's building your new career, that's sort of like making a name for yourself, hits a moment where everything grinds down, everything basically crashes and burns. And you are tasked with grappling with this massive moment in your life where you have built like so much, you've devoted everything to building something. And then in the blink of an

eye, it's largely gone from your existence. So without asking you to dish or throw anyone under the bus, this is somewhat past history for you. But the circumstances, I think, are really powerful for a lot of people now, because there's a lot of lessons, what you went through a chunk of years ago, and a lot of people are grappling with now. Can you walk me through sort of the crash and the rising process? Because it really is a Phoenix-like experience in many ways.

Yeah, thank you for saying that. It was surprising even for me, and I think it'll become clear as to sort of like why when I tell the story here, the brief story. But yeah, I did the other, I did a previous show, previous business for 11 years, starting in 2006. So think about podcasting

now. This is my 15th year podcasting as of like, you know, this week. So that's a long time in tech. You know, the people who were in tech before me started like pets.com or whatever, you know, those are the people that were in tech before me, like nineties.com folks, AOL or whatever. So I, my company was nowhere near that size, just to be clear. We're talking about apples and oranges here. But I started this, and I just went completely guts to the wall with it. And it took everything that I had. You know, there was no roadmap for startups, entrepreneurs. That wasn't really a thing. Like every entrepreneur I knew owned a dry cleaner or a restaurant.

There wasn't like tech startups really in 2006 in New York that we knew of. Nobody was thinking about it. Facebook was relatively new. You know, startup culture, hustle culture, entrepreneur culture, like that didn't really exist yet. Not in the form it does now where it's like mainstreamed. It was really sort of a weird niche thing.

And I'd negotiated an amicable split with my partners because it was a dating company. I was getting married. I was really just like, hey, this is not for me anymore. The podcast that I had created, I started to try and interview more and more interesting people. You know, I have like scientists on there,

but I also have like mobsters. And yeah, I just have a wide cross section of very diverse people. You know, I have like scientists on there, but I also have like mobsters and yeah, I just have a wide, wide cross section of very diverse people. And that was really fun and fulfilling for me. And I realized, you know, money's great, but fulfillment is better. And that's something that a conclusion that I think a lot of healthy people come to in their mid to late thirties, early forties, depends on timing. If you're smarter, probably in their twenties, but I wasn't in that camp. So, uh, you know, I wass, depends on timing. If you're smarter, probably in their 20s, but I wasn't in that camp. So, you know, I was going for the money early. And so we came up with an amicable split. And then some at some point, those guys were like, you know what, we don't actually have to honor our deal, because you're probably not going to be making any money if you're starting

a new business. So we're just not going to pay you and you can sue us, but like, you're just going to go broke doing it. So that was really kind of hurtful because I'd known these guys for, you know, over a decade. And they really were just like, we're going to sort of sociopathically take advantage of you because we can. And I left and I talked with a lot of my mentors and friends in entertainment industry and otherwise yourself included. And I was like, what do I do right now? And it was like, just one of the common threads was don't lose momentum. And because a lot of folks said, oh, take a year off, go to Hawaii, learn how to surf.

And I was like, oh, that sounds all right. But then most of the people that I knew who were actually really successful in business were like, do not take time off. You will lose steam. People will sort of forget about you. Your brand will start to decay. This is the ugly truth. Get on it right now. So my last episode of, to give you an idea of the turnaround, my last episode of that previous show was on a Thursday or a, no, Friday. On the following Tuesday, I released the first episode of the

Jordan Harbinger show, which I had recorded that Saturday. So it was like, last episode Friday, next day Saturday morning, record the first episode of the new show, get I had recorded that Saturday. So it was like last episode Friday, next day Saturday morning, record the first episode of the new show, get it produced and get it out there. So I really didn't lose any momentum. I really kept rocking and rolling with it. And within the first eight months of the Jordan Harbinger show, we were, in terms of profitability, we were where the old company was after 11 years. So eight months of progress ish economically anyway, in eight months, eight to 10 months. And now we're four years in, and it's not even close. I mean, I think we're something like 20x more profitable than the previous company, or it's

something like that, you know, in the best year. And the show is 10, 20 times the size, which is actually quite a surprise even for me, because no sane person thinks, I'm going to leave my business of 11 years, but don't worry, I'll recover in four years, but I'll be 20 times bigger. I was literally thinking when I, and I'm glossing over a lot, which we can dig into. But when I first went through the separation, I thought, in five years, am I even going to be where I was at this point? Is it worth trying? I was so demotivated because it was like looking at the top of a mountain that I was just on and going, okay, so it took me 11 years to climb that. If I really sprint, can I get there in five years? Is it even possible to get there anymore? Because we're not

early to market. We're not the first show in iTunes anymore. Like I kind of, you know, we were the first 800 when I first started podcasting. And now it's like, there's a million, you know, what do I, what do I do? So that was intensely demotivating. I definitely got quite depressed for like two weeks, not horribly clinically, but like anxiety attacks at night, can't sleep wife freaking out. Cause I'm freaking out team saying, Jordan, you need to get it together because we're here working with you, but people are going to want to leave. If you keep like having panic meltdowns during meetings, dude, like put on your big boy pants. I heard that a lot from my producer who, and my wife was like, you got to toughen up. And it's like, you know, my wife's like a five foot tall,

like very like sort of small Asian lady. And she was like, toughen up, man. You know, so, so I got some tough love, but I also got a lot of compassion and where that compassion and tough love came from was from my network. And this is sort of like the broader lesson, which is, you know when you watch those ESPN documentaries? I'm not a sports guy, but you see those documentaries and they're like, it's like an athlete that had $100 million and now he's broke

and works at like a car dealership. And they go, man, you find out quickly who your friends are. They don't mean you're gonna be so pleasantly surprised about how many friends you have, right? They are talking about the opposite scenario of when they say things like that. And so I fully expected to be extremely disappointed

in my network. I don't even know if it's disappointed. I think I expected nothing, so I was like, well, I'm gonna get nothing and it's gonna meet my expectations. But I wasn't expecting to get anything much from it, especially outside of emotional support. Well, I had quite the opposite experience. You know, I talk a lot on the show, on the Jordan Harbinger show, dig the well before you get thirsty and among other sort of catchy slogans that are probably stolen from smarter people than me. And that was something

I decided to do, kind of walk the walk, because it's embarrassing if you don't. And also, it was a pretty good idea to dig the well before you get thirsty and build relationships before you need them. But no one who's doing this thinks, one day I'm going to be so thirsty and screwed and like out on my butt, and I better have these relationships in order. Nobody's thinking like that. Very few people prepare for disaster. And if you don't believe me, look at how many people who pass away with no life insurance at age 43 from COVID or a car crash or something. You know, it's horrifying. So for me to call people that I'd talked to a few times in the past few years, just sort of acquaintances at best, as well as my close friends, as well as my many sort of like middle, you know, somewhere between acquaintance and close friend, you know, friends, I guess, regular friends.

It was like 99 out of 100. We're like, I'm going to help you right now. I'm going to mail your new show out to my email list. And I'm like, what's this guy's name again? John something. When did we meet? Oh, we had lunch once at Cafe Gratitude in San Diego at a conference. Now this guy's going to send out an email to 300,000 people, which probably he could charge like $25,000 to do if he was if I was Casper mattresses, right? I'd be paying like 50 grand for this. And he just did it because he was a friend of mine. And like Pat Flynn, who you probably know, was like, I'm sending this to everyone I know on my

email list. That's a huge email list of podcast listeners. I had a lot of that. And it was something that made me sort of sit back and be like, I'm the most fortunate person in the world. Yes, I kind of got screwed over by a former company which by the way then sued me but they saw how much momentum i was keeping and getting and they actually filed a lawsuit probably about a year later or or several months later to slow me down because they thought i was going to go away they literally told a mutual friend i thought he was just going to kind of like go away i don't know why he's banging his head against the wall trying to restart the business. It's never going to happen. And then a few months after that, they ended up suing me and not winning, by the way. And that was really funny to me because I

thought they really thought that I was down, like they counted me out. And a few other friends of mine had said, hey, man, I didn't tell you this at the time, but I'm I was not sure you were going to be, you know be doing this again. And I said, you and me both. This is just as much a surprise to me as it is for you, but I'll leave you with this, Jonathan, before I take a breath here and let you talk on your own show.

I was so surprised at myself being able to do this with my team, but I really think that my network was the instrument was instrumental in this. Cause as, as many people have said, I can't believe this worked. And as many times as I agreed with them that said, I can't believe we're here. So many folks said, this is not a surprise to me at all. You know, I w and people were same people had said, I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars for your new business. I just want 5% negotiable. And I'm like, I don't have a business idea. And they're like, I don't care if you're executing it, it's going to be a $2 million valuation within a

year or two. So giving you a hundred grand now to get 5% is already a good deal. Like I'm buying stock in Jordan Harbinger. So that made me like, literally brought me to tears a few times, but also was a, it forced me to rethink a lot of my own sort of self-confidence. Cause I'm like, if these people that I sort of know or know well, but not super, super well, like this isn't my cousin

or my brother offering me a hundred grand. This is somebody I've met three or four times in the business area. And these people are like, I'm not surprised at all, but I'm surprised, but you don't doubt your belief in your own capability. But there's no basis for that if you don't believe yourself. So it's like this weird spiral. I want to deconstruct a little bit of what you shared. One of my curiosities, when you're like, okay, so I need to step into the next thing. I just devoted 11 years of my life to this one thing successful, but man, this I'm in a world

of hurt right now. I'm smart. I know how to deconstruct systems. I have a network. I could literally do a lot of different things and go a lot of different directions. Was this the only thing that you considered at that moment in time? Were you like, I'm going right back into podcasting, into media, into tech? Or were you like, let me pause for a moment. Let me like pull out the whiteboard and throw as many different ideas against it, because maybe I'm going to go in an entirely different direction. It's funny. I was just talking about this yesterday with a friend of mine. They're like, oh, how did you know you wanted to go straight back into podcasting? You know, what they were saying was

you can do different things. Like, I was a lawyer. It's not like I went to school for podcasting, I started a podcast, and now I know nothing other than how to make a podcast for a living. Like, if a lawyer gets laid off, they don't go, you know what, I'm gonna be a cop, right? They just go and do other, they go join another firm

or start their own firm, dentists, you know, they don't change, people don't change careers that dramatically that often, but that wasn't really the case for me, and so a lot of folks said, why don't you pause for at least a few days or a week and like kind of figure out what you can do, and a lot of people were like, go into YouTube, join another type of platform, why don't you do this, why don't you do a totally different thing, why don't you step away from the mic and do something behind the scenes because you can manage things well too, maybe?

And I had all these different ideas, live events and products, and I'm gonna do this and do that, and then email marketing this and partner up with this person that. And my wife was like, okay, fair enough. It sounds a little miserable, but we gotta earn a living somehow.

I mean, you know, we're, we got to make money, you know, so we'll do whatever you think we can do or that we have to do. But then it was like, well, I'm going to keep my podcast going because I like it. And also because, well, I don't want to lose momentum. So it was an insurance policy. Like I said, record on Saturday, release the following Tuesday. And as I was doing it, I just felt so comfortable. And I was like, I love this. You know, even, and I go, if somebody said like, what would you do for free? And I was like, well, podcasting, I've said this a million times, you know, if I didn't get paid to podcast, I would still do it. But I'd also have some other job to pay the bills. I'd probably be a podcast consultant or something, right? So if that exists, so I would do it. And I thought, why am I trying to be like live events, sell online products, whatever the

ideas I had at the time that I wasn't really crazy about email marketing. When I'm good at this, I love this. And I know that I can monetize it at least a little, even if I take like a 50% pay cut, I'm still doing okay. You know, like I'll survive on it and my wife will get a job and we'll be fine. You know, like we'll just be normal middle class people. And so it really sort of like sucked me right back in. It wasn't like I was trying to get away from podcasting, but I was open-minded about doing something else just because the growth of shows is very slow, as you and I talk about all the time. And I didn't want to be like a YouTuber, because that's a young man's game, first of all, anyway,

and second of all, it's, you know, not my bag. And I just kept going, but I love conversations. And podcasting is the best place to have long-form conversations, bar none. And if it's a hobby and I'm doing it, and I'm good at it, and I've monetized it before, it just didn't make sense to switch. It was kind of, it just didn't make sense to switch. It wasn't like banging my head against the wall.

It wasn't a slog. It came really naturally. I had a huge network in the space and this didn't hurt. My network, Podcast One, was at the time owned by Norm Pettis, who's like one of the wealthiest guys in LA. I mean, he's probably got half a billion dollars or something like that, or way more. I'm not even sure. And he said, you know, I've been in, this is a guy who's been in radio since I think the 60s. He basically invented syndicated radio. And look, I'm going to sound like I'm tooting my own horn, but this is, I swear it's for the purposes of this story here.

He said, you're one of the more talented guys that I've met in my career in radio. And so you can do anything you want. And I thought, if this guy who has no real incentive to lie to me, I mean, what's he going to get from puffing me up? You know, I'm 35 or 38 or whatever it was at the time, 38, 37. What is this guy who's 75 need to puff me up for? I have nothing to offer him right now, right? I'm starting from zero. It's not like he's trying to get me to sign on to podcast one.

I'm already, I was already there and now I have nothing, no platform. And I thought if this guy says that I'm talented enough to succeed in this business and he's one of the most authoritative people, except for maybe like, you know, Howard Stern or something like that could say that. And you'd go like, oh my gosh, this is that kind of reaction. It'd be like if LeBron James told you that you're pretty good at basketball and wasn't just blowing sunshine up your, you know,

what? So I was like, okay, I got to just at least give this a shot. And he then said, hey, if you sign on with Podcast One, do a two-year deal, we'll rebuild your show. It's probably going to be pretty slow, but we can sort of give you a loan up front so you can pay your bills and whatever. And so I asked him for some money up front so that I didn't have anything to worry about and I could rehire all my staff. And he cut me a big fat check and gave me a two-year contract, which like, why, why did he do that? You know, there was no reason to do that. That's why I, that's one of the reasons I never, you know, leaving podcast one until Norm fully retires. And maybe not even then, because they've like saved my bacon and encouraged me to do what

I love. It's, it'd be like losing a leg and then you get drafted by the Detroit Pistons and they cut you and they're like, you're going to be fine. You're going to regrow that leg and you're going to be great. That's how it felt. And it felt as impossible as that. And yet here we are. into orbit because you had spent years developing relations because also you had spent years devoted to the craft. Like one of the things that we've talked about and, and, you know, is that you look at this, not just as, Ooh, I love to do it. I'm going to turn on the mic and just go like you study the craft of what this is. You study, how do I do it better? You deconstruct what you've done in the past. You deconstruct what other people are doing in this space. And you're sort of like constantly trying to figure out you're taking that same systems thinking strategic approach to mastering and craft and saying, how do I commit myself to that? So that when something happens like this, you know, like

Norm wasn't just reacting to the fact that you happen to be like front and center with him. He's reacting to the fact that he sees the result of years of devotion to craft, showing up mixed with whatever innate talent you bring to that and saying, huh, there is something really distinct here. You made another decision back then that fascinated me too. And I remember when you were sharing this with me, because in the early days, I remember us talking and I was asking you, I'm like, okay, so you're telling me that you're going to podcast and only podcast. You're not going to do this or that or this or that, but what if it fails or what if it doesn't work?

You've got like, you're like, you're like moving into family mode in your life. And then you're like, but what about hedges? What about building these other things? What about multiple streams of revenue? Like most companies try and develop. And your answer to me was like, stone cold, I'm doing one thing. Like you don't get it. I am doing one thing. And that always kind of blew me away. That makes sense. That sounds like something I would say. I do believe in doing one thing. You know, I get a lot of people that say, hey, can we do this like particular thing? I mean, just the other day, someone was like,

can you write a book? Would you write a book? And I was like, well, I don't have time. And they're like, no, no, no, we'll get a ghostwriter and it'll be like minimal investment of your time. And I thought that doesn't sound right. But also it doesn't sound like how I roll or how I do things anyways. But I also knew that you can't, I've never seen anyone split their focus between a ton of different things and do really, really, really well in one of them. And even sort of famously, Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Stripe. And until recently, the CEO of Twitter. What's Twitter doing? How's that stock been doing the last four years? It has done nothing, right? It's like you could have bought stock in bird dung

and you would have done better than if you bought Twitter stock in terms of at least forward, upward, sort of to the right motion on that stock. It has done nothing. And the reason is in part because you can't split your focus. You just can't do it.

And I knew that if I was going to rebuild a business that I built over 11 years, if I was going to do that in five slash one, I really had to put everything I had into working on the podcast. And then later on, I can come up with some diversified streams of income. And look, don't get me wrong. I believe you probably should some diversified streams of income. And look, don't get me wrong. I believe

you probably should have diversified streams of income. I think it's a bad idea if you're only selling widgets. It's just you're very fragile at that point. So I have some things in the works. I do some consulting, which I've always kind of done I'm doing one product that is going to be for my audience specifically on a specific subject you know but I don't want to do like I very much have resisted hey do live events and then when you're doing live events you can sell merch and then you can sell a book and then when you sell the book it's part of your funnel for your course and then when you do that course then you have the mastermind, the upsell from there. Because everybody I know who's doing that and doesn't love coaching, like you, you know, like guys like you like love coaching or whatever,

but everybody I know who does that and doesn't love, love coaching and is also, or is just like not really cut out for it and is just doing it because it's a rev stream, they're miserable. And their customers, frankly, it's sort of, it's reflected in the reviews. I went to this event. It was okay, I guess. Like, do I want to run an event that's just okay? I guess not really. And do I want to write a book where everyone sort of reads it and goes, this was a guy who wrote a book because somebody offered him a million dollars and he decided to write a book. And I'm left having learned maybe one or two things from it, but I'm not blown away. Like, I don't really want to, I don't want to create things like that. And a friend,

a friend of mine that you probably know, Todd Herman, but he told me once, he's like, man, you're leaving so much money on the table. And I said, yeah, I know. I think about it. I get FOMO and he goes, nah, you're like an artist, you know, like you're, this is how you do it. You're, there's a reason your art's popular and it's because you leave money on the table. You know, you don't sit there and tell everybody to buy things from you constantly and you don't have a bunch of different stuff that you're doing instead of your art. Like that's what you do. And I never thought of myself as a creative, which is sort of funny because like podcasting is inherently creative. However, there is something to that. You know, I am a focus all on one thing kind of guy

until I diversify. But what I will tell you, the difference is I don't go all in on podcasting one year and then all in on cryptocurrency the next year and then all in on NFTs the third year and then all in on question mark the year after that. I do all in on podcasting and then I slowly like carve a little tiny piece of the pie out for

investing in another tiny little piece of the pie out for startup advisory and, you know, and then another one for a product. But the 95% of my time is still, how do I make the Jordan Harbinger show as good as it can be? And how do I market that product so that more and more people are impacted by it? Everything else is just kind of extra. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of a conversation I had in the very early days of this show, back when we were filming actually. In fact, it was in Colorado where I am now. And we went over to Keystone, Colorado, where Brad Feld was in one of his places. And Brad is this really beautiful human being and also a very successful multi-time founder and venture capitalist. And during the conversation,

we were just talking about a lot of his philosophies and what he learned and he shared his memory. He said something like, my dad once told me, in this life, you pick your 2% and you put everything against it. And he's like, as much as I can try and follow that, it's not always the easiest thing to do. That's what I do. I pick my 2% and I put everything against it. And it really, you know, it's what you're describing. And even folks who, you know, when you look at them 10 years down the road

and you're like, oh, but you've got this other successful thing going on. Very often the people who have that, you know, what people don't realize is that they actually spent the first eight out of those 10 years doing one thing at a world-class level. And then they built enough equity, they built enough stability, they built enough platform, enough relationships, whatever it may be, so that they could leverage that to much more easily and in a much more accelerated basis basis run these other experiments in different

domains without doing anything to damage that core that continues to be their sort of like primary source of everything. It was never, let me get six months into this one thing, and then I'm going to go six months into the next thing. It wasn't splitting 20% of the energy every six months into different things. It was the vast majority of the time with one to make it extraordinary. And that becomes this massive lever for all of the other things that they want to experiment with after that. And it's very overweighted in one thing. But when you look at it down the road, if you don't know that history, you don't realize that that was actually the mechanism that made it all happen. It's very, very true. What's funny is, as many people as were pressuring me to like write a book early and do an online product early and do live events early. Now that the Jordan Harbinger show

as a platform is big enough, people will be like, hey, would you keynote this event for us? And we'll give you, you know, out insert outsized amount of money that doesn't seem quite rational or fair, you know, and I'm like, yeah, so this is like the amount of money that doesn't seem quite rational or fair, you know? And I'm like, yeah. So this is like the amount of money I would have made off of running the entire live event myself early on, right? Or someone will say, hey, can you do this voiceover for this video game? And we're going to give you like a slice of it and dah, dah, dah. And it's just like that comes from the result of doing one thing well enough and visibly enough that it actually has very outsized returns.

And that's worth pursuing. I had a conversation with somebody in publishing recently, and they were saying, yeah, you know, I want to revisit our conversation from five years ago about writing a book. And I was like, you know, I thought about this, and the reason I said no then was this, this, this, and this. And now I don't really want to do one because I'm building this platform. And as the platform gets bigger, I'm still going to be able to sell the book to the audience. And I'm still going to be able to make a lot of money for the publisher and for us as authors. And she said, oh yeah, you're absolutely right. And I was like, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait. We basically argued about this last time we talked. And she goes, well, early on, you you know things weren't really sure it wasn't sure if you're going to be over here over there doing this or doing that so we wanted to capitalize on it but now it's really clear that you're on a rocket ship and so you know we don't really have to get on early you know if you're building a big platform you're building a big platform you can write the book later and you'll just sell that many more copies of it and i was like okay that's so funny because before everybody was all worried about sort of cashing in on my brand as they thought maybe it was going downwards but now that it's

going upwards they're like oh yeah take your time you got plenty of time to write up you can write a book later on you can write a book in 10 years no big deal you know like they didn't even care i just thought that was fascinating because you're right. It's a lever. And once people see that lever, they're like, oh, I get it. But before that, they're kind of like, well, you're just wasting your time, you know, cash in now while you're trend while you're trendy. And I think if you prove you have staying power, that's also kind of a big deal. You know, the, the show I did before was, was popular for a long time. And again, going previous conversation,

nobody really thought you could rebuild something like that. So we rebuilt something that's 10, 20 times larger than that. So it sort of shows like, hey, if I'm putting my mind to it, if I want to create something and do it, it's going to work in this niche. And so yeah, I'm just in no hurry. I'm enjoying what I'm doing now and having a big platform like this. Diversified income streams are important, but it really is like podcasting would have to stop being a thing.

I'd have to get banned from every podcast platform for some thing. And they can't even ban kooky Alex Jones from every platform. So I think I'm pretty safe talking about nothing political and focusing on science and interesting personalities. I'd have to get hit by a beer truck. I think that's the real danger

here. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

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getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So, you know, a lot of what we've been talking about, you've experienced over the last four or five years. But a lot of what we've been talking about, you've experienced over the last four or

five years, but a lot of these lessons that they are really relevant to so much of what's going on right now, like as we're recording this conversation where, you know, this will air a little bit later, but we're heading into the final days of 2021. A lot of people are looking at kind of turning a page into 2022, but there's this phenomenon that we've all been talking about over the last four or five months in particular that the media is calling the great resignation. There are reports of in August, 4.3 million people leaving their jobs. In September, 4.4, 4.5 million people leaving their jobs at every level from the C-suite to front lines to day labor and all for different reasons. Some people for other opportunities, many people are actually leaving without having

the next thing lined up and people are trying to figure out like, well, why is this happening? And some people are like, well, we're being called back into the office, but actually that's not really bearing out to be the reason. And then people are like, well, you know, there are people waiting for more money. And it turns out that that's actually now there's money being thrown at people and that's not bringing them back. People are trying to figure out what's actually going on here. I'm really curious, you know, like with your lens on society, on culture, on how people relate on what they want out of life. What's your take on this moment?

I have noticed that this is happening. I mean, I've read about it, I should say. I don't have any sort of anecdotal or empirical data that the New York Times doesn't have. But when I look at this, it reminds me of, you know, it's hard to put myself in someone else's shoes, but I would have to say, when I got laid off from my law firm job, which everybody in my class did because it was 2008 and any sort of financial law firm was like, hey, we're probably They were really freaking out. It's kind of rightfully so. I mean, most of them didn't have a parachute or anywhere to land. We were all

broke. We were all, you know, drowning in student debt, et cetera. But I was thinking I can finally do all of these things that I wanted to do, primarily focus on my show. And I was on the radio at that time as well as doing the podcast, you know, Serious XM. So like that was kind of a nice vote of confidence. I had coaching ideas that I wanted to do. I wanted to travel again. And I was still 27, 28 and had just gotten out of law school. So what do you need to survive when you're that age? $25,000 a year, you know, as long as you get a roof over your head.

You could have 10 roommates, which at times I had like seven, you know, whatever. Who cares? Just don't touch my eggs. You know. That's what my life was back then. I think a lot of that has spilled over into adulthood where adults are going, you know, I don't need to do this for the rest of my life. I don't need to be stuck in this sort of unhappy environment. Yes, I went home and worked from home, but the freedom I had working from home was really incredible. And it got me thinking about what's really important to me, spending time with my kids and husband or wife, whatever it is. And then, so that's why I think people say, oh, it's because they're being called back into the office. But

what that, it's, that's not really it, right? What it is, is people said, well, if I don't have to work in an office, maybe I don't have to work for Chase Bank or whatever at all. You know, maybe I can actually if the whole world of work can be turned upside down in all these things we held sacred, like being in my cubicle at the certain special time every day after fighting everyone else on a commute to work, if that's no longer sacred and the sort of unavoidable truth of life, what other paradigms are just rotten and ready to break? Maybe the nine to five. You know, maybe the idea that I can't make money metalsmithing fine garden tools and knives in my garage. Maybe that's a paradigm that can break. And so people started trying things and realizing that they might not be able to make as much money as they did in banking, metalsmithing tools in their garage, but they're making half as

much and they're a lot happier. And guess what? You don't need $180,000 a year to live nicely, especially now that they can move. So there's been all these things that have started to change people in, like, you know, people started to move out of California or New York or Michigan or Ohio to somewhere else. Cause they were not tethered to the office anymore. And that's another parent. Like if you grew up and you worked there for 20 years, now the fact that you can commute to work using zoom has changed the game again. So it's about almost like, I hate using these stupid cliches, but you'll know what I mean. It's almost like a consciousness shift, like an awareness of none of this is real. It's like when you found out money wasn't real and wasn't backed by gold and you're

like 16, you go, wait a minute. So this is worth something just because we all have like hallucinated that it's valuable and we've kind of tacitly agreed that it is, but it's just a piece of paper at the end of the day. Like that's the kind of thing that is, that's shifting in everyone's mind. And it's happening because so many of our sacred cows have died at the same time. Yeah. That's such an interesting take.

It's sort of like dominoes tumbling, right? You know, and we're so focused just on what we think are the first domino that's tumbled, not realizing that the deeper reason that so many people are probably making these big disruptive changes is because it's the fifth domino. That's where people are just starting to realize, oh, if this isn't true and this isn't true and this isn't true, well, what about all the other 10 assumptions that I made when I made the bargain to do this for the rest of my life? Maybe none of it's true. And what if I test that now? And I feel like we're in this window where there's a forgiveness. There's like a society-wide forgiveness for running experiments and for doing something different and doing things that three years ago would have been looked at as being irresponsible or aberrant. And now people are like, no, we're all in this together. Everybody is running these experiments.

So now if you go and do this thing or try this thing or move or try and start your own thing, people are like, yeah, I get that. There's a suspension of social judgment now that I think is generating a level of freedom to experiment and to try things and to question that I don't remember seeing in my lifetime. No, I'm with you. Like, look, three years ago, if you say, I'm quitting my job to metalsmith knives in my garage, everyone's like, are you crazy or just high? Like, what is wrong with you? And now if you do it, people go, oh man, that sounds really, that's, that's great. Cool. How's that working out? Oh, great. You know, I started as a side

hustle when I was home from not having a commute. I have two free hours every day. So I just started doing it and I put them up on Etsy and I'm making $3,000 a month doing it. And I only make 4,000 at my regular job. So I'm out, man. You know, I'm not coming down on Saturday anymore. So there's been a lot of that. And you know, another thing, and this is, again, just a complete theory based only on the data that everyone else has, but we've seen a bunch of relationships crumble and the divorce rate is supposedly up and things like that. And there's probably some truth to the fact that two people working at home are now just finding out after 20 years that they don't really like each other that much and they're getting on each other's last nerve. There's probably some of that, but I think a lot of it

is also the same thing that you just said, where they've been kind of thinking about the end of their relationship for a really long time, going to work and focusing on their career outside of the house probably allowed them to put it out of sight, out of mind. But now that there's a suspension of that judgment and they're faced with all of their problems, it's kind of like, you know, now's maybe not a bad time to split up and do other things because we're faced with the unavoidable truth of the situation, and also, hell, if you're gonna quit jobs and knife smith in your garage,

well, I'm gonna quit my job and do this other thing, and for that matter, I'm moving to Florida, right? Like, the paradigms are all shifting. The sacred cows are all dying. And so what if people judge you for splitting up? They're already doing that for everything else. And like you said, that suspension of social judgment is kind of like, it's in full swing.

There's momentum here where there's a lot of big changes. That's why we see people who don't like big changes going into overdrive, right? The regressives are like, oh my God, we need to rewind to 1959, you know? Not to get political or anything, but you see a lot of that, and part of that is a reaction to

what's gotten done recently. I mean, we've allowed gay marriage, we've let people quit their jobs and work from home, or whatever, we're allowing people to do all kinds of stuff, work on the internet and do podcasts for a living. Like, how dare you? That's a fake job. You can't make a living doing that.

That's not allowed, right? There's all kinds of things like, so you're going to skip college because it's too expensive and go to trade school. This, you know, all of these things are changing. And so I think it's only a matter of time to like, we kind of examine every truth we've always held dear and go, huh, no, maybe not. Even on the edge of this, on the fringe of this to like, we kind of examine every truth we've always held dear and go, huh, no, maybe not.

Even on the edge of this, on the fringe of this same idea is going back to the money thing is the cryptocurrency idea, right? Like a lot of the hackers space in the crypto sphere is like, hey, money's not real. And if you needed proof, look at the state of the world versus our stock market and our economy. Does that make sense to you? Hedge, baby. And they're buying Bitcoin and, you know, doing blockchain stuff. Like we're sort of all, I don't want to say waking up because it makes me sound like QAnon or something, but you know what I mean, right?

We're all sort of getting an awareness that wasn't there before and it's spreading like wildfire. Yeah, no, I don't disagree with that. And I also feel like there's a window right now where like that suspension of social judgment, that openness to running these different experiments, at some point that window is going to close. You know, it's just sort of like human nature. There is a time limit to it, whether it's a couple of months or a couple of years, I have no idea. But at some point, you know, people are going to sort of gravitate back to some level of groundedness, of stability, of form and structure. And I'm really fascinated by how different people

are taking advantage of this window to either push to try and see like, how do I turn the great resignation into the great reinvention for me? Or try and rush back to the former status quo as much as humanly possible before that window changes. And it is really fascinating to see how people are making choices within this window. But I do think I would love to see people take this opportunity to really think about what are the assumptions that I made? What are the bargains that I made that got me to this point in my work, in my relationships, in my life? And are those the bargains that I want to keep making for the next season of my life? Because there's this one moment that we're in right now where there's a window of opportunity and forgiveness to try and create a new bargain. And for those who don't even,

doesn't mean you have to change things, but for those who don't even investigate whether they want to continue that bargain, I just think it's a wasted opportunity. Yeah, I'm with you. To be, like you said, you're allowed to decide you love your life and that you love your job and that you love your commute.

Like, that's fine. But you're right. There's something that's a shame about, if lawyers are good at this, right? Smart people in general are overachievers or overthinkers are really good at rationalizing existing behavioral patterns and deciding that that's the way it's gotta be because it's comfortable.

And so, especially I would say, everyone should do what you're saying, but especially professionals who find themselves being like, well, I couldn't possibly X, Y, Z, because even doctors are going, I don't need a practice with an office. I can go to where I'm needed, you know, I can or I can do doctors without borders, which I was going to do when I retired or join the Peace Corps or whatever. All of these things that, you know, maybe weren't going to be possible are now actually, well, probably possible. And so it is a good time to sit down, especially because it's the new year, right? Like if you're going to go on the resolutions train, maybe start thinking about what you want to do this year. And maybe all you do this year is start wrapping up things so that in 2023, you're ready to really take a major drastic move. No one's asking you to like sell all your belongings and join Hare Krishna, you know?

And I think that a lot of times people get scared to make big moves because it always looks like leaving society when really you're just taking a left turn. Yeah. And again, like we've both said, this is not a rally call for everyone to turn the world upside down and do something different. It's a rally call to just take a moment, take this beat and just examine the state of your life, the state of your choices. You may find that you're actually pretty good with them. And that's cool. That's amazing. Then you don't have to endure the inevitable pain of disruption and of change. That's totally cool. But at least take this moment and ask the questions.

You know, we're having this conversation also at another interesting moment for you personally. You know, you become a family man over the time that I've known you. As we have this conversation, literally like on any given hour right now, you're expecting baby number two. Yeah, like any minute now. Like my wife could come barging in the door and be like, I had a kid while you were doing

this podcast. I was like watching my phone today. I'm like, I'm not going to get a text from him saying, uh, we need to put this off a little bit. Yeah. Can't do it. Cutting an umbilical cord. Right.

So here's my curiosity. Like you're a guy who tends to really look at your circumstance and reevaluate what you're doing and why you're doing it moving forward. As you sort of move into this next season of your life and really look at the life that you want to live, not just the work that you're doing, but the life that you want to live, the quality of that life, about to have child number two, are you in a process of sort of re-evaluating things? And I'm curious also over the last few years, whether you feel like stepping into this new role as a parent and like soon to be a parent of two kids has changed you in meaningful ways, changed what you want out of life, changed the way you devote yourself, what you say yes and no to. Yeah, yeah, it really has. I spent all of 2019, eh, all, most of 2019 trying to do interviews in person

because there's a quality to the conversation that's different in person. Some ways it's better. It depends though. And when the pandemic hit, I had a, I don't know, X month old child. And I had really been missing him because I'd go away.

You know how it is when you have little kids, you go away for the weekend, you come back and you're like, wait, he can talk now and say these, when did he start making sentences? Oh, yesterday you were at the airport, you know? And I felt like I was missing a lot, but I was like, well, you know, I'm still here 90% of the time. It's also, it's for the good of the business, yada, yada, yada, all the rationalizations that we just talked about. And the pandemic hit and it's like, there's no travel. And I thought, you know, I did the show for 12, 13 years remotely. Let's just keep doing it remotely. And now I'm like, ah, I'm only gonna travel when I want to. You know, if I'm interviewing somebody that I've always wanted to meet,

sure, I'm gonna fly to New York and make it happen, you know, and I'll do a bunch of stuff while I'm there. But I'm not gonna, I'm no longer gonna fly halfway around the world to interview a scientist who's like, why didn't we do this on Zoom, man? You know, the answer is, I don't know. We should have done it on Squadcast or whatever. So I stopped doing any sort of unnecessary travel,

and then that got me thinking, well, wait a minute. What else is unnecessary? Oh, a lot of these sort of, hey, can I jump on the phone with you for an hour for no reason kind of phone calls. Not with friends. I want to talk to my friends, but I don't want to talk to a perfect stranger just because I kind of feel like I probably should maybe sort of kind of need to do it. That's all gone.

Meetings are gone. And I mean, even meetings in my own company where we probably could have skipped it and done some sort of notes thing. I'm like, we're skipping that. I really started to sort of shave things off because I'm like, if this is annoying for me or something I don't want to do, it's kind of bad to waste everyone else's time doing it too. But it also ended up affecting the work, the Jordan Harbinger show.

And what I mean by that is, you know, I would release a show that I thought was good and I'd release a show that I thought was great. But there were a few shows, and as I'm sure you've done, where you're like, I'm kind of on the fence. Like it's good, but is it good enough? I feel like it's good enough, but I'm not sure. Now I think of it like this. Am I going to waste 300,000 people's time or am I just going to have wasted mine and the

guest? Which one is the lesser evil here? You know, and it started to, because I used to be like, I can't email them and tell them I can't release the episode. That's, I just don't want to deal with that. Now it's such an obvious calculation that I'm here to serve the audience. Why, how dare I waste that amount of time? I mean, if you think about it, if 300,000 people really did spend that hour and most of them didn't like it, yeah, it's bad for the business. It's bad for the show. But like to take it to the extreme, you've wasted so much human potential. You could have cured cancer in that 300,000 hour time block that you distributed over all of those innocent people who are like, well, I'm now dumber for having heard that one.

Thanks, Jordan. You know, I think of it like that. So it's a higher standard for the work. It's a higher standard for my own time. It's a higher standard for my family.. It's a higher standard for my family. And that's just been good all around. And yes, what I'm working on, to answer your question, what I'm working on in 2022 and beyond

is I'm gonna grow the Jordan Harbinger Show. I'm gonna scale it. I'm gonna market it and things like that, like you and I have talked a little bit about offline. But one of the reasons I'm doing that is because it allows me actually to work less later and this sort of might be obvious to everyone but just in case it's not you know if I work really hard now and I scale things up my job at the end of the day is to read books and talk to smart people

right so if I'm doing that for the show and 100 people listen, great. But if a million people listen, it's the same amount of work. I just get much more of an impact. And of course, the advertisers are, the rate goes up significantly, right? So why not scale up to that level? And then later on, maybe I only do one show a week instead of three or two instead of three. Or maybe I take a three-month period off every year and I don't release anything or I release very sporadic shows. And now, since I've scaled up, I don't have to do any weird things like, well, I can't afford to go on vacation.

I don't have to make lifestyle cuts. I don't have to stop donating to the charities I like because I've scaled up in that way? Or I mean, what if the economy gets nuked by, you know, another pandemic or who knows, podcasting goes out of style and my audience gets cut in half because everybody's doing metaverse shows and I can't quite figure that one out, right? Well, if my income gets cut in half, but it's already twice as much as I need, then I'm okay. And so that's kind of the way that I look at it. The line though is how much work am I willing to do to get there? And if it's two hours a week of marketing and I'm enjoying it, fine. If it's 10 hours a week of marketing and I hate every second of it and I haven't had dinner with my family in three months, now we got a problem. So I have to sort of balance that out. But I'm trading a little bit now for way more time with my kids and family when they're old enough, especially to remember spending time with dad as well. These aren't default decisions. These are decisions that you're actually making very intentionally, but sort of thinking through,

what do I want? Like, what do I value in like, and maybe it's changed. Like maybe your values 10 years ago were different than they are now. What do you believe in that? And like, you're sort of sitting down at this moment and saying, here's what's important to me. And here's what I'm willing to do. Here are the sacrifices I'm willing to make.

Here's what I'm willing to suffer. And here's what I also want to pursue in the name, not just of where I want to go, but also how I want to feel on a day-to-day basis now. But it's a very intentional process for you. And I think it's important to really bring that to the surface because a lot of times I think we fall into making decisions like this just kind of by default. We just start doing it without really examining what are my assumptions underneath that? What are the values that are driving this? And just taking a beat and saying, why am I doing this? It's very worthwhile to me. And I know that a lot of people are like, well, duh,

but you'd be, I mean, I don't know if you'd be surprised, but many people would be surprised. I should, I'll speak for myself. I spent a lot of years just being like, no, no, no, head down, work as hard as possible. And when I look back, I go, what did I do from 28 to 35? All I did was work. I traveled here and there, but I was kind of miserable and I'd convinced myself that I had to do it that way. And I put up with unending amounts of frustration.

I used to call them my post office days because I would wake up in the morning and go, you know, if I just worked at the post office, all I'd do is go drive that truck and deliver mail. I'd know exactly what I was going to be doing today. I probably wouldn't run into any big problems. That sounds nice. That's predictable. And that's no offense to people who deliver the mail. It's a very important job. But I don't think anybody sort of wakes up in the morning who's an entrepreneur and thinks, I can't wait to be not doing this anymore. Like, that's not a good sign. You're allowed to go through a dip. But one, the dip shouldn't be years long. And two, it shouldn't make you so miserable that you don't even leave your room. There were times,

I remember I had to go to the doctor. And she's like, what's wrong? And I can't remember exactly what brought me there, but I was like, also I have hip pain. And she's like, are you sitting a lot? And I said, yeah. Well, what's your chair like? Oh, I just sit on my bed. And she goes, well, why don't you get a chair? And I go, well, I mean, I just kind of wake up and open up my laptop. And then, you know, she's like, well, how long are you there? And I said, well, let's see, I'm there. And then I get up and maybe I'll go eat like two meals. Usually skip breakfast. And she's like, so it kind of came down to, wait a minute, you're on your bed from when you get up until like 11 p.m.

And then you just lay back down. And I said, yeah, pretty much. And she's like, yeah, this you need to get a therapist like yesterday. This is not the reason you have hip pain is because you have impingement from not moving for three years, man. You're gonna have back problems, you're gonna have knee problems, like you're gonna have everything wrong with you,

but mostly you psychologically, you're just a mess because you're not leaving your dark bedroom ever. This is like prison, you know? And I thought, oh yeah, that's a good point. I'm living this so-called free life. You know, I have this entrepreneurial gig and like I'm more miserable than I've ever been. Thankfully, that was almost 10 years ago now.

But I just look back and I go, man, I lost those years in many ways. You know, there just, there was no, nothing was going on. It was so toxic. And sometimes you look back and you're like, um, how much of those years were necessary to get me to a point where I was actually willing to consider a different way of stepping into my life and being at this moment, like which you happen to be in like a pretty incredible place.

So that also feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation today. So hanging out in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Hmm. You know, having kids will change this for you, as I'm sure you're aware. Maximizing the impact you have on the good impact, I should say, that you have on your kids and family and those around you has become paramount for me. And one of the reasons I love doing the Jordan Harbinger show is I almost get to reach through the internet into people's ears and be like, and impact them in almost a parental slash big brother slash hopefully cool friend way as well. So it's almost like I'm able to scale that. It used to be just a fun thing to do, a great way to make money, fun conversations. But now that I've had kids, it really is obvious that the best way to live a good

life is to create other humans that add value and also make sure that you're constantly serving your audience. As corny as it sounds, you know, none of us are going to be here forever. So kind of all we have is a legacy is our impact on others. And since I'm not taking us to Mars or anything like that, or inventing ways to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, the impact that I have is really all that matters. You know, no one cares how much money you make. No one cares that you rented a yacht for your 50th birthday party. All they're going to remember is what you did for them. And so to be able to help people and make that my job

and a job that I enjoy and it also helps my family, it's like this is the best stroke of luck, like the finest stroke of luck and the best life that I can imagine living. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you will also love the conversation that we had with Debbie Millman about designing your life as this perpetually evolving experience.

You'll find a link to Debbie's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It will reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll be right back. on January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

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