The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1096: Ali Abdaal | The Hidden Economics of Creative Success Part Two
Episode Date: December 26, 2024Feel-Good Productivity author Ali Abdaal breaks down the real keys to sustainable success and authentic relationship building! [Part 2 of 2 — find Part 1 here!] What We Discuss with Ali Abd...aal: The Money-Time Paradox: The wealthiest people aren't always the happiest, especially when they become prisoners of their own possessions. As one billionaire demonstrated, owning 15 empty houses isn't freedom — it's just collecting very expensive headaches. The real wealth is having the autonomy to choose how you spend your hours. The Parenting Reality Check: Having kids changes everything in ways no amount of warning can prepare you for. It's like evolution has installed a cosmic memory filter that prevents parents from fully conveying just how intense it is — probably because if we truly knew, humanity would've stopped at cave paintings. The Two-Career Tango: Couples where both partners work intensely demanding jobs often face more stress than those where one partner has flexibility. It's not just about the money — it's about having someone with the bandwidth to manage life's endless parade of squeaky doors and donation runs. The "Freedom Investment" Principle: Financial freedom isn't about sipping mojitos on a beach — it's about having the ability to reinvest that freedom into what truly matters, like being present for your kids' early years or having the flexibility to take July off without asking anyone's permission. Here's something actionable you can do today: Run your numbers! Use a compound calculator to figure out your long-term financial runway. You might discover you're actually in a better position than you thought, and that knowledge alone can transform your relationship with work and time. As Jordan found out, you don't need to win the Powerball to feel secure — you just need to know your actual numbers. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1096 And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast.
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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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I'm Jordan Harbinger.
On the Jordan Harbinger show,
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Today, this is part two,
a conversation between me and Ali Abdal
on happiness and lifestyle and things like that.
If you haven't heard part one,
obviously go back and check it.
out part one, and then part two will make a whole lot more sense. All right, here we go,
part two with me and Ali Abdal. So you live in California where the taxes are really high,
you've got two kids. One thing I often worry about is like, well, I'm popular on YouTube right now.
Who knows how long this fame will last? Surely I should be trying to make Haywall the sun shines.
And a few years from now, yeah, yeah, maybe I should just make videos about passive income
ideas or some shit like that that will get the views and we'll have high CPMs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
because what if when I have kids and maybe, I don't know, they need to go to private school
because the state schools in the area are a bit shit or whatever, then will I regret my past self
for not having chased the money? Any advice? Yeah, sure. You seem to be doing okay, right? So the way that you
do, the only way, in my opinion, is to do the math. And it's funny because every year I kind of do
the math and I go, okay, how long do I need to do this and earn at this level? And what happens
if I lose 50% of my income through some, yeah, tragic turn of events, like podcasting CPMs,
amount people pay for ads, goes way down. What can I survive with? How do I make more money
doing different things, put other irons in the fire, like product or something like that that's
something I actually believe in or like one thing I do now is voice acting for video games.
It's not a massive, yeah, it's not a massive income stream, but it's like, oh, if I quit
podcasting and I only did that, I could earn a living doing that. It wouldn't,
the same living, but I could do it. So then you do the math and you go, all right, if I have this
much now and it's generally going to appreciate it 5% per year, and I only need to do this
for X number of years into life this, in which case, if I have this amount of money and I needed
to withdraw from that every year because I was retired forcibly or otherwise, how much money would
I have each year to survive on before that hits zero? And it better not hit zero before I'm dead, right?
So as you earn more, you realize, oh, okay, I have more years of runway.
So right now, the way that this, in fact, I have the app on my phone, it's called compounding
calculator or something I should show you.
But I've calculated that if I stopped working right now, I could live on a pretty damn good
monthly draw in perpetuity and still leave money to my kids.
It's actually the same amount of money that I happen to live on right now.
minus like the cost of doing business and stuff like that.
So that's a really good place to be in.
You are quite possibly also there.
You just haven't run the numbers.
I just never run the numbers, yeah.
So I have this like scary thing in the back of my mind of like,
what if I run out of money?
What if I run out of money?
But I've seen videos where you talk about financial stuff.
And unless you are just recklessly spending, you were probably fine.
Yeah.
And you should run those numbers.
Like, okay, if I do this for three years, I'll have this.
And then if I need to withdraw, oh, I can withdraw $40,000 a month.
until I'm at 94, you don't need, you know, you won't need that.
Kids are expensive, but they are not that expensive.
Yeah.
Okay, nice.
That's a good action point.
I'm going to do this figure out how to set up this charity consulting situation
and also the whole running the numbers thing.
Okay, but running the numbers is one part of the equation.
Like, you're also living in California where you probably, the sorts of people you hang out with
may well be the sorts of like tech multi-decker millionaire type people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
how do you prevent like lifestyle creep and mimetic desire from thinking that you need a
Lamborghini whatever the fuck it's called or you know this sort of stuff so you have to have your
values clarified really well this is going to sound probably again simplistic but if you get a lot
of money i've seen friends of mine who sell their company for like a hundred million dollars and
I'm like what are you going to do with it like that's real f-you money and then one guy will say
there's huge differences right one guy was like i'm going to get a yacht i'm going to buy a place in
Marbeia, Spain, these are different people. I'm going to buy this, I'm going to get that.
Other people are like, oh, I don't know. I don't really need anything. You don't need anything?
Well, I'll probably go on a trip with my wife. Okay, you should definitely do that. One of those people
is probably a little bit more satisfied with their life than the other, right? And I've got another
friend who is also selling his company for like over a hundred million bucks. And he lives part-time
in Spain, and he's very healthy about what he's going to do with this. His primary concern right now is
raising his daughters in a way that they don't end up being totally ruined by that amount of money.
And I'm like, that's a really good thought. Most people are just fantasizing about how many cars
they're going to get with this or something. So if you have your values set up straight,
lifestyle creep doesn't really have to be a thing. I know a lot of super wealthy people and they
have like car collections and stuff. And Jen and I are like, wow, look at all that stuff that guy has.
And she goes, yeah, but would you want that? And I go, no, actually, I would not want that. That is not,
I don't even have, I share a car with my wife, for God's sake.
Why would I want a car collection?
I don't even drive.
I let her drive all the time.
What am I going to do with the car collection?
And so my value would be more like freedom, right?
Oh, what would I do with $100 million?
I'd probably not change my lifestyle much at all.
And how do I know that?
Because I went from one area to another in terms of income, and I didn't really change.
I order more DoorDash, but that's because I have kids.
I worry less about retirement
because I've got that money in the bank earning interest.
I did not buy another house for the summer.
I do not have a car collection.
I did not buy a boat.
I bought nicer lighting that I don't know how to set up.
I got to get one of these.
But that is because I had my values set up straight.
The problem is once you add money
and you don't have those walls built to bounce off of,
you just go all over the place.
It's trying to make yourself happy.
If you figure that out when you're not dealing with $100 million,
it's not going to change that much when you do.
You know what I'm saying?
So you see these guys that get really, really rich,
and they're not happy.
So they keep trying to buy it, and it doesn't work.
That's how you end up with a car collection
and a yacht collection and a house collection.
You know what's interesting also is you see these guys,
they're just prisoners of the crap that they own.
I know this guy is probably close to or at,
actually a billionaire. I haven't asked because that's a rude question. And he was telling me
about some stressful thing he was dealing with about his house. And I was like, wait, how can you say,
you said your house is being redone, but where do you live now? And he goes, oh, no, this is one of my
other houses. And I go, oh, okay, well, you know, how many houses do you have? And he's like 15.
How do you live in 15 houses? I was like, do you run him out? He's like, no. So you're stressing out
over a house that you will never live in that no one lives in. And he's like, yeah, it's kind of
silly when you put it like that. Yeah, silly is an understatement. This guy's worth almost a
billion dollars or actually a billion dollars. He spent like 20 hours a week talking about this
stupid property either on the phone dealing with it, thinking about it. What a freaking waste
of life. Like sell that shit, man. Are you crazy? Get rid of that right now. Sell it now.
At a loss and be done with it. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
this guy, 15 houses.
You're going to be crazy?
Because I was like, oh, is it for investments?
No, they're not even investments, man.
He just owns properties because he liked the way that they looked.
Never even goes to these things.
It's the stupidest thing I can think of to spend your time and money on.
Yeah.
One of the nice things about having this podcast and interviewing people
and now increasingly hang out with people who are very rich
is that I can start to kind of notice the desires within myself
and try and actively counteract them.
A question I often ask myself is,
if I woke up with $100 million in the bank,
what would change about my calendar?
And usually my answer is not very much.
And if major things would change about my calendar,
I'm like, okay, well, let's change those things
before I have $100 million in the bank.
A hundred percent.
Why not?
You kind of mentioned this in a way in your book.
A friend of mine, I said something like,
oh, man, you've got this all figured out,
blah, blah, blah.
This is so great.
It must be so great to have all this money.
And he goes, well, you've got it all figured out too.
you're doing fine. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you have two kids. You told me earlier,
you were happy. You have your own house. You like what you do. You basically are winning on like every
level. And I was like, oh, that's really cool to hear from a guy who was like a shitload of money. And he's like,
yeah. And he goes, what would you do with the $100 million if I gave it to you right now? And I was like,
oh, I just put it in the bank and earned interest on that. And he's like, why? And I said,
oh, because then I would be able to safely retire at any time. And he goes, I bet you could
safely retire right now. That was what got me running the numbers. And I was like, oh. And then I
realized I don't need to win the freaking powerball lottery to get to feel safe.
Yeah.
And then that was a massive awakening for me, right?
He's like, no, really, what would you do?
And I was like, I would hire a healthy food chef.
And he goes, is it impossible for you to get healthy food?
And I was like, no, there's a freaking whole food.
They're three blocks.
I could literally walk there.
He's like, so you don't really need a healthy food chef to live or be in your house.
You could even buy, take, DoorDash, healthy meals from like a vegan restaurant or whatever
flavor you want. And I'm like, that's true. All these things you think you would get with that
money, you pretty much don't need that at all. And you can get it in a different way. It's so
ridiculous. Like, if you just keep asking why, the answer is always like safety. Yeah, it comes down to that.
Yeah. I had a great convo with a guy with a guy at a birthday party that was at a few weeks ago,
where he was like, he'd followed my channel for a while and he was asking me, how do I become
financially free? And I started off with like, with this why question, like, what does financial
freedom get you. Firstly, what's the number for him? It was like, oh man, if I could have an extra
million in the bank in the next 10 years, I'd feel really financially free. I was like, okay, but like,
what would that get you that you don't already have? Because he's married, he's got kids,
has a job that he more or less enjoys. He's a teacher, so he has, like, summers off and, like,
loads of holidays and stuff. What does financial freedom get you? In his case, it was, like,
ability to quit the job because he doesn't enjoy it all the time, ability to, like, get a housekeeper
or a cleaner or something, which he could probably afford anyway. For sure. And it was like,
I think a lot of people have this thing of when I get rich, then dot, dot, dot.
Yes.
But if you speak to people who are already there, it's like, I just think with any goal that we have,
implicit or explicit, it's worth speaking to the people who are already there.
It is.
And seeing, like, when I would speak to doctors who work 15 years ahead in their career,
I would ask them about their life and almost run a mini podcast interview with them over coffee or something.
And I'd find out so much stuff.
Yeah.
I could just be like, okay, I can avoid all these traps.
They all wish they'd spent more time going through training because they wish they
wish they hadn't rushed to be a consultant. They wish they'd taken more time off. They wish they'd
done part-time training. Huh, okay. That's useful to know. Rather than just sort of going fully on
this path with any goals, whether it's a money goal or a career goal or anything. I could not agree
more. And I really think humans do this thing, right, where we say, once I get this, I'll be happy.
And then you know that that's wrong because you listen to podcasts like this one, but then you
do it subconsciously anyways. And you have to constantly, at least I have to constantly catch
myself doing that. Like, why are you doing this? Oh, because if I had this,
then, oh, then I think I'd be happy,
but then what I would really do is compare myself
to the other person who has more.
Yep.
So you realize that you're on this hedonic treadmill,
this hamster wheel,
and you realize you can get off at any time.
And for me, I have to constantly remind myself
that I can get off at any time.
My wife is like, why are you working late?
Well, because I want to finish this thing.
What if you just finished it tomorrow?
That's a valid, can't argue that logic, right?
Like, cannot argue that logic.
And I find myself watching cartoons,
with my kids and I'm like, this is so much better than reviewing that document that I will finish
tomorrow, maybe. I've been noticing this in my life on two specific instances. Number one is I bought a
PS5 a few months ago because I was like, you know what? I can have bought a PlayStation 5 at this point.
Let me buy a games console. Like two days ago, it was like a Sunday and I had nothing to do all day
other than I should probably write my email newsletter which I write on a Sunday. Cool, whatever.
And initially my thought was like, okay, there's all this work I can do. I'm giving this talk and
ad corner that can prepare that and this.
You're giving yourself, finding shit to do.
I was like, well, why?
I mean, I could just do that during the week.
I've got enough time during the week.
What if I just played PlayStation?
I'm like, yeah, but there's all this work to do.
I'm like, yeah, but what's the point of the work?
Is the point of the work not that I can feel sufficiently safe so that I can, in fact,
play PlayStation on the fucking weekend?
I was like, I could just play PlayStation right now.
So I spent the whole day kind of like, I went to a cafe for breakfast, went for a
walk around the park, sat down, played PlayStation, went to another cafe for large,
sat down played PlayStation.
It was so glorious.
Yeah, that's what Sundays are for.
Meanwhile, you and me are, like, fighting the urge to get zero inbox and it's like,
what are you doing, man?
Yeah.
Come on.
The other one is, like, often I should send my email newsletter on a Sunday night or on a
Sunday because I called it Sunday snippets like six years ago.
And it gets to a Sunday night at like 10 p.m.
And I'm like, well, I haven't finished the newsletter.
I could just send it tomorrow.
That's right.
And no one will care.
That's right.
It's Sunday somewhere.
That's not how time works, but whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, well, it gets at 10 p.m.
Will I be more?
grateful that I've had a better night's sleep? Or will I be more grateful that I sent my new
fucking newsletter out 24 hours only? Yeah. No one cares. Coming soon. Tuesday snippets.
Yeah, Someday snippets is what the team calls it, because sometimes they get sent on a Thursday.
Yeah. I'm like, well, you know, at this point of my life, I'm going to prioritize,
that's hilarious. At this point in my life, I'm going to choose to deprioritize consistency
for the sake of, like, more important things. Yeah, I think that's totally fine. And how many people
have emailed you furiously complaining that their Sunday snippets came up Tuesday? The only, the only complaint I
at is like, for the last six years, I've been signing it off with my name and then two kisses,
like XX, just like casually. Yeah. And like twice I forgot to do that. And people replied being like,
oh, you know, it was kind of weird, but like, I really missed those kisses that you put on the
end of your email. Oh, that's cute. Yeah, that is cute. That's cute. So you've got kids now.
I do. Any tips? Oh, man. It changes your life in mostly a good ways.
Parenting is a really sensitive subject for a lot of people. There's a lot of experts on it.
but the problem is you don't know what kind of kids you're going to get.
And people think, and maybe they're right, maybe I'm wrong.
People think that they create their kids.
And by giving birth to them, yeah, sure.
But that's kind of, the rest of it is a dice rule.
And there's a lot of, oh, if you take your kids traveling early, they'll get used to it.
And that didn't happen for a lot of people.
Oh, if you tell your kids this, they'll get used to this.
And you'll get, and this will be your favorite.
You'll get advice from people who aren't parents.
and like with my son, he eats when he wants to
and he doesn't when he doesn't.
And we tried everything, forcing him and all that stuff
and shaming him and all this horrible crap
and he would gag at the sight of food
and we realized like, oh, that's not good.
But then you let him screw around for 45 minutes
and finish playing and he goes, I'm hungry
and then he just houses whatever you put in front of him.
He's obviously not faking a gag reflex.
He's four.
Meanwhile, we've got, I don't want to out anyone.
People used to, people who come over to our house,
often, we'll say, I wasn't allowed to do that when I was younger. So what you're saying is,
just don't allow my four-year-old to eat when he wants to or not eat when he doesn't want to.
Good luck with that when you have your own kids, a person who knows nothing about children.
So you can't come into having children with certain types of expectations. You know,
you really get what you get in a lot of ways. And I think your ability to craft your kids in
your own image is not as great as people think.
And I also think that those who try really hard to do that end up with resentful kids.
I don't think that's a good plan at all.
I'm not saying don't enforce discipline on your kids.
I'm not saying don't have structure, don't have rules, let your kids eat junk food all day.
I'm not saying any of that.
But I think coming in with the idea that your kids are going to be a certain way is a recipe for disaster for both you and for them.
And that is probably one of the worst environments.
An environment in which a kid is not meeting expectations is probably one of the worst environments to grow up in.
your mom probably really wanted you to be a doctor did she um once i got into med school then
you really wanted me to be a doctor there you go that's that's fine we all know people who are like
their mom wanted them to be a doctor when they were nine yeah that kind and now they're a doctor
are they the happiest doctor not always was childhood nice for them maybe it was too much
pressure involved i don't know so having a having a healthy detachment from outcomes i guess i think so
which is i guess similar to a lot of other areas of life as well it doesn't
It doesn't mean you shouldn't have, I shouldn't say, maybe expectations are the wrong word.
It doesn't mean you shouldn't have an idea of what your kids can achieve and you should support
them in getting there.
But I think a lot of people, you hear these stories about bad parents, right?
And it's almost always something like that.
There's horrendous cases, but it's the sort of damaging stuff that seems sort of everyday pedestrian is,
oh, my dad always really wanted a boy and he ended up with a girl.
And you're like, oh.
And then you just hear how that has messed with this person's self-confidence.
self-worth every single day of their life. And you're like, wow, what a crappy environment to grow up in.
Or you hear, my dad always thought that I would be an engineer like him, but it's said I'm an
artist. And it's like you can just, you can feel the disappointment from the parents coming
through the kid. And they're 40 and it's still there. Their parents are gone and still there.
That's ugly. It's really bad. How do you approach balancing the kids thing with the career stuff?
Yeah, so I liked this a lot, this subject, because having kids changes you in a lot of ways.
And it certainly limits your career much of the time.
I don't think it has to, but I think if you're going to be like a really involved father,
then it probably should limit your career in some ways.
You almost don't even care.
And that's a weird feeling because I was like, nothing's going to stop me from achieving this.
And now, you know, I used to work till like 8 p.m.
and really just busts my,
and then when my kid, now when my kid comes home,
I'm like, okay, I'm done working.
And he wants to play Legos or throw water balloons outside.
And I'm like, all right, this is what I'm doing.
And I don't go, oh, God, I have to do this thing
instead of checking, you know, doing this or creating that.
It's just the change is maximize time spent with kids,
especially while they're young,
because there's a day that comes,
and you don't have any warning where they don't want to hang out with you.
They want to go hang out with their friends,
and your heart will explode at that point,
or implode, I guess,
this may be a better term. And that could be any time. Or they could be taken away from you by
something horrible or you could be taken away from them by something horrible. So what are you going to do?
You're going to spend an extra hour going through the spreadsheet again, you know? Are there days
where I work a little bit later, even though my kids are playing? Yeah, of course. I try to avoid it,
first of all. And I've set up systems to avoid that for the most part. And it's great. It really
reminds you that the most important thing in your life is raising those kids, even if you don't end up
with the same amount of YouTube subscribers you would have, or whatever, had you not had kids, right?
You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show. This is me with Ali Abdal. We'll be right back.
This episode is sponsored in part by Better Help. The holidays are my favorite time of year.
There's nothing better than cozying up with Jen and the kids watching classic holiday movies,
sipping hot chocolate while the lights twinkle on the tree. But let's be real. Life is not always that
cozy, stress, you got work, you got family dynamics, it can all pile up. Sometimes you need just a little
extra support. That is where therapy comes in. It's not just for people going through something huge.
It's for anybody who wants to handle life better, manage stress, or simply grow into the best
version of themselves. Therapy has helped me navigate through tough situations with a lot more clarity.
If you've been thinking about trying therapy, BetterHelp makes it really easy. It's entirely
online, which means it's designed to work around your life. You fill out a short questionnaire,
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Find comfort this December with BetterHelp.
Visit BetterHelp.com slash Jordan today to get 10% off your first month.
That's better, h-E-L-P dot com slash Jordan.
This episode is also sponsored by Constant Contact.
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Six-minute networking.com is where you can find it.
All right, back to my conversation with Ali Abdal.
For friends that you have who have well-adjusted teenagers, what are the patterns you see in those sorts of families?
I know, God, you trust me.
Now we're like, oh, my God, what did you do?
My cousins, they're so well-adjusted, and they're adults now, but they're, as teenagers, they were also just so nice and really awesome and didn't fight.
It's a brother and his sister.
And I asked my aunt, what did you do?
And she's like, I wish I could take credit, but they've just sort of always been this way.
And I'm like, damn it.
Because you look at your own kids and you're like, uh-oh.
I don't have the same experience.
So what does that mean?
I will say that there are some,
it's not that there's no patterns, right?
Parents are involved, but not too involved.
The parents are interested in their lives,
but they're not controlling their lives.
They're not trying to steer them all the time.
They are encouraging of good behavior,
but they are not domineering.
They encourage their kids to explore curiosity.
They set up a safety net so that when they fall,
they're caught, but they don't set up a safety net
so there are no consequences to doing something stupid or bad or against advice, you know, all good
advice. They don't plow the way for them. They let the kids fail, but they're there to support
them when that happens. It's a delicate balance, but I don't think it's impossible. I think what's
hard is watching your kids fail, wanting to do something, realizing that you shouldn't, and then
letting them deal with the consequences. That seems to be hard. With toddlers like I have, there's not a ton of
that, it's small, low stakes. Oh, he can't build the Lego thing and he's getting really frustrated.
I'll just build it for him. No, I should really just patiently help him do this and realize that he can do
it himself. But with teenagers, they call you from jail or something like that and you're like,
I'm going to go bail them out right now and you go, actually, that might not be the best course of
action if this is their third time getting arrested. Maybe they need to sit there for a few days
in scary jail and realize they can't just call dad and get them bailed out of jail.
Because you see that patterns with bad parents and kids who are super spoiled,
and those patterns are remarkably similar.
So unfortunately, a lot of it seems to be the dice role of having kids that just
are like get along and are intelligent enough and don't throw things at each other.
How are you thinking about not spoiling your kids?
Yeah, it's tough because I grew up with significantly,
we weren't poor by any stretch. I don't want to indicate that. My parents were both hardworking,
but my mom was a teacher and my dad was an auto worker. So now we live in California and we're in a
higher income bracket than I was when I grew up. My kids have way too much crap. I told my parents
this, they agreed. My kids had way too much crap. And then they said, but you had way too much crap.
And I go, yeah, that's true. So every generation thinks the next generation has too much crap.
What I've found, though, is my kids don't really care about material things.
They like new stuff like anybody else, but they're not super attached to that stuff.
And I don't know what it is we did right or if we have done this, right, but they don't
seem to care as much because they don't have any sort of sense of scarcity, right?
They might not want to share their Legos, they might not want to donate their old toys.
That's just a toddler thing.
but they're not really attached to that stuff.
And it's interesting to see that.
So when you show somebody the value of experiences,
and this is hard to do with toddlers,
but me and my wife are big on experiences over things, right?
Like I said, we share a car.
There's no need for us to really do that.
We just do.
That, I think, is a good,
all of the science shows that happy people
prioritize experiences over material things.
Material things, you just end up on the hedonic treadmill.
experiences build a character and stories and shared experiences and things like that.
So we're planning to show them that early on.
Like money can buy you things like freedom and being debt-free and getting good experiences
and enjoying those experiences and lower levels of stress.
What we're trying not to show them is money can buy you every single freaking Lego set.
Money can buy you every toy that you want on a whim.
Money can buy you every little material thing that you want,
even if it's just temporarily because you're bored.
You want to go buy something.
That stuff is, that's a dangerous slope.
And I grew up with kids like that.
I grew up with, like, wealthy kids in my school.
And a lot of them turned out to do absolutely nothing.
Their parents indulge those materialist whims
and they've never accomplished anything.
What do you wish you'd known before you had kids, if anything?
My wife and I agree.
We had no idea how much work it was going to be,
which sounds remarkably naive now.
Everybody with kids is like,
you didn't understand that kids are a lot of work.
we understood that kids were a lot of work.
Understanding and really understanding, it's very different.
You know, it's like running a marathon's probably hard.
I've never done it.
I'm pretty sure that's an understatement.
And if I went and ran a marathon, I would be like, why did I decide to do this?
This is terrible.
You know, you hear about people running a marathon and they have like raw nipples and they're bleeding.
That's what having kids, that's the level of pain that you get from having kids.
Like, oh, it's going to be a lot of work.
You're going to have to, your life's going to change a lot.
And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally, I get it.
And then you have kids and you're like, I mean, you said we'd get less sleep.
You didn't say we weren't going to sleep for three years.
You know, like, you said it was a lot of work.
You didn't fully convey how much we were talking about.
Like, I was like, I'll change a dirty diaper.
Yes, you will multiple times at 4 o'clock in the morning after they've peed on the bed,
which includes you.
And now you're soaking wet too.
Are you going to take a shower?
By the way, you have to get up.
in two hours to go on a flight or something with those kids.
You know, it's just, it's like, oh, that wasn't really like, you said it, but you didn't,
I didn't get it.
I didn't really sink in.
And there's a lot of stuff like that, man.
There's a lot of stuff like that with kids.
So if someone had been able to help it sink in, would that have changed anything?
No.
But, you know, I'm also really glad.
There's a reason that evolution has made it impossible for someone to understand just how much
of a pain in the ass it is to have kids.
You know, because this is, I swear it's like science.
You know how women don't remember how much childbirth hurt?
Have you heard about this?
That's for sure evolved because the women who were like,
damn, that was terrible.
They only had one kid.
The women who were like, you know, the miracle of birth?
Yeah, I remember it being uncomfortable.
They had like eight kids, right?
And a bunch of them survived.
So we have evolved to not really know just how much, how brutal this is.
So I am glad that it's impossible for me to tell you how much having kids is going to change your life.
It's impossible for me to convey it in a way that you would fully understand it.
And that's good, because if I did, you might make a different decision.
What I do say to people who are on the fence about having kids is I say, if you're on the fence, you probably should not do it.
And the reason is because it changes everything about your life, your career, the amount of free time you have, the amount of sleep you get.
It ages you prematurely for sure.
It stresses out your relationship in a lot of ways.
It limits a lot of the things you can do, a lot of the things you can accomplish.
I think the trade is fair.
But I was like, I definitely want kids.
And my wife was like, I definitely want kids.
And then we had two kids.
And we're like, we definitely would have more.
But it's a little bit late in the game.
I'm 44.
She's 38.
And it's like, oh, let's quit while we're ahead.
That was a conversation I was having with your friend downstairs earlier.
If you're on the fence, though, or you're like, I don't really want to have kids,
but I feel like I'll regret it if I don't.
I'm like, don't do it.
Do not do it because of FOMO.
That's the worst reason to have kids, fear of missing out,
and thinking, oh, what if I regret it later?
I don't know if that's setting you up for success.
Yeah, interesting.
I've met a lot of people who are in their 40s
and don't have kids who regret the fact
that they didn't take dating seriously
when they were like in their late 20s or early 30s.
Sure.
I really wish that they had found someone.
And they were quite careery when they were in their 30s
and now look at that and think,
ah, I'm now still a career when I'm in my 40s,
and it's now sort of lost some of the charm that it once had,
that sort of thing,
which to me feels like the sort of regret for not having had kids earlier.
And I would ask those people, when you were younger,
were you sure you wanted kids or not?
Because I think for a lot of those people who regret not having kids,
they probably thought,
I definitely want kids, but now's not the right time.
Oh, yeah.
But there's a lot of those people who probably don't necessarily regret not having kids,
and they were like, I don't know, maybe I'll have kids
if I meet the right person, maybe I won't.
I don't know.
Those people probably are like, oh, well, I'm 45 and I don't have kids.
Guess it's not happening for me.
Not sure how much I care.
Anyway, I'm going to fly to Italy for two weeks.
You know, let me know how the Wiggles concert was.
And I'm like, my flipping double birds
as they fly off into the sunset, right,
while I'm holding a poopie diaper in my pocket.
So that's what I would ask those people.
Because I think if you're thinking,
I have all the time in the world to have kids,
you're wrong about that, for sure. Biology says otherwise. But if you don't really care,
I would say don't have them. That's my personal opinion. Now, leave room for your opinion on that
to change. If you're like, my cousin's like, I don't know if I'll have kids. I'm leaning towards
no. I'm like, bro, you're with 26. Calm down. You know, in 10 years you might have a different
opinion. They're open to that. But if you're 37 and you're like, I don't know, I'm leaning towards
know it's an adult decision you're you're a grown-ass man a woman and you made that decision that's
probably qualified you were qualified how long have you been married for no oh god i should know this
right off the bat i have been married for six years nice yeah and how long were you together pre-marriage
four years oh okay so 10 years relationship yeah any tips for healthy happy long-lasting
relationship anything we should know yeah let me think yeah i think for me for me
I was unaware of how my programming as an only child comes into play in my relationship.
So my wife has a older brother.
But me as an only child, I was used to kind of like only thinking about myself.
It's really hard to break that habit.
In my opinion, I'm not like super selfish or anything like that.
But it's really hard to think, what does this other person want in this relationship?
And that sounds dumb to say.
It sounds silly out loud.
Of course, you have to think about the other person in relationship.
It's not like I never think about the things my wife wants,
but it's not a habit to be like,
what are we going to do as a pair?
And we really take time and we're like,
what do we want to do this year?
Our mutual friend Noah Kagan was like,
plan out your year in January.
We did that and it was awesome.
It was like, okay, we're going to probably be able
to take one or two international trips.
One with the kids, one without.
Where are we going to go?
When do we think we want to do that?
Okay, Taiwan with the kids, Spain without.
Great.
What do we want to do in the business?
Five things is a lot.
How about picking two?
Okay, cool.
We pick those two things.
Those two things get done.
And then you review it at the end of the year,
and you're like,
we did all this. This is pretty cool. And we decided on it in January because what I found is if you
just float through the year, at the end of the year, one of you is going, well, we didn't do this thing
with the business and that's disappointing. And the other person's going, well, I didn't get to do
this thing and that's disappointing. And you realize, you totally could have done that. You just didn't
plan it for it. And if you let that stack up over years, what you end up with is, wow, my relationship
and kids have stagnated my business. And the other person's going, we never do anything for.
fun. That's not good. That resentment builds over time. That's not good. So I would say,
shockingly, planning out your business in the beginning of the year and adding the personal stuff
in there with your partner is a really good idea, because then you're at least aware,
you have a little bit of a roadmap, and you've both bought into it. So that's been helpful.
Nice. Yeah, with my partner, we found that she wanted to go on vacations and stuff. And I was
like, sure. And then none of us sat down with a calendar to block the time out. And then six
months later, it's like, my calendar is blocked out because work will always fill stuff and there's
always things going on. Yes. And she's like, so when are we going on that vacation? And I was like,
oh, we didn't block it out on the calendar. So now we have calendar blocking sections where we like
look at the spreadsheet. And we're like, okay, what's the plan? Yeah. You're like, how's November?
It's like April. That kind of thing. That's not what I had in mind. I was kind of thinking like next week or
the week after and you're like, best I can do is three months from now.
Exactly.
To what extent do you bring the wife along on business trips or like, how do you guys think
about business travel and personal travel as like a thing?
So we used to do everything together before kids.
It was like, oh, I'm going to London.
Great.
All right, let's do this.
Here's all this stuff we want to do.
Here's all the people.
And she would have been in here like doing what your friend does with the cameras and stuff
like that.
And they, okay, I'm recorded.
She's like doing producer and it was stuff like that.
now she's at home because we have two kids and she's like they're not getting like you get these text
messages when you wake up like they're not eating they're not sleeping fml and then it's like how's it
going and then oh fine they fell and you're like thank god right you just don't know what you're waking up to
so we really do have to block this stuff off before it was like yeah we just go everywhere together
and now it's like all right i'm arranging child care luckily my parents live across the street
her parents live 15 minutes away there's an aunt that lives really close we have a
nanny that helps during the day. So we have a lot of help. And we can ask those people like,
all right, we're going to be gone for five days and we can go to Spain or something like that.
That stuff now, though, has to be planning in advance. What you guys have now, your calendar
fills up. I think, though, if it meant a lot to her to do, I really want to go to the running
of the Bulls and it's next week. You could figure that out. That's not the case with kids necessarily.
It's like, well, they're in school. What are you going to do? Let grandma and grandpa screw up their
diet and sleep and take them to school. Like, how's that going to work? Can't take them with you.
they got school. So you really do have to plan more and you have to be open to not always getting
your way, which is weird because you're like, not getting my way. I'm the boss. I'm the one who earned
all the money and blah, blah, blah. And then you're like seeding to a two-year-old. What kind of BS is this?
Who made you in charge? The answer is you. And then you're really kicking yourself. Like, I gave birth to you
and now you're dictating my whole life because they want cocoa melon and they want it now.
Yeah.
What are the ways you found, you mentioned the nanny, what other ways are there where having money gives you happiness when it comes to kids?
It's funny you mentioned that because I was thinking that's one of the major advantages.
I look at childcare and my wife and I go, how do people who can't afford this do it?
And the answer is they run themselves ragged.
Having money allows you to find quality childcare.
Like one of the nannies we have is a nurse.
Like she's a nurse from Mexico.
so we pay her really well.
And another person that works with us is Jen's aunt, my wife's aunt.
She is family, and she's in a position to help us.
And we pay her too.
But then I see our line item for that, and I go, holy cow, that is insane.
The other thing we're able to do is buy healthy food that may be prepared by us
or prepared by someone else.
A lot of families that I know, they can't do that.
Healthy food in America is expensive.
And pink slime, fast food, junk is cheap.
So you can afford to feed your kids good stuff.
Not that they freaking want it, but you can afford to feed them good stuff if you want.
You can afford to take care of yourself.
I have a personal trainer that I work with to keep me in good physical shape,
which helps me stay in good mental and emotional shape.
My wife also works out.
That stuff is one of those where you go, I'm privileged to have this and I'm lucky and you
couldn't do it without money.
Yeah.
But it's a luxury.
It's not impossible to do it yourself, but I'm not going to sit here and be like, you can do it.
I've got a personal trainer and a nanny, but you can totally do it.
Just work out on your own and take care of your own.
That's just ridiculous.
You know, I would never tell two parents don't have those things or a single mom or whatever
that they should have the same stress level and diet or whatever as me.
I fully realize how lucky and privileged that we are to be in the position to do that.
But otherwise, your money can only get you so far.
Sure, super rich people probably outsourced raising their kids. How well adjusted are those kids?
You hear these horror stories, man. I've got friends who work with very wealthy people,
and one of the stories this guy told me was awful. So he works at a really boozy school.
A kid, God knows how this had. It's a boarding school. God knows how this happened.
The kid fell out of a window and landed on a railing. And he had to go to the hospital,
and he was in the ICU for two months because he'd like, I think he like smashed his rib.
Something happened with his liver, and he had a spleen removed and all this stuff.
No one visited this kid in the hospital except for an au pair, which is basically a nanny,
that came after a month of him being in the hospital.
His parents were traveling.
They weren't even working.
They were just on like a long extended trip to Italy or something, and they didn't fly home
to see their kid.
And it makes you think, who raised this kid?
And the answer is probably the nanny that came to visit.
That is so sad.
So you see these rich, spoiled kids that have everything that they want and like crazy money,
and you would never trade your life what theirs.
Like you would never do it.
You'd have to have had a hard lot in life to want to trade with one of those kids.
We kind of touched on this a little bit, but like what are the patterns you see amongst
people you know who are rich and happy versus rich and other people?
Yeah, yeah.
So rich and happy people, I think again to our earlier conversation, have this,
they figured out their values early.
Like, I want to be able to spend more time with my family.
So they use their $100 million windfall to make sure that they can live close to their
kids' school.
They go to a really badass school so they move closer to that school, even though it's in a Ritzie
area.
Or they use it to take months of time off because they hire extra help at work or they hire
a COO that works with them.
And then, you know, they can set up the ability to go away for the summer and
do things remotely or whatever it is, or they retire their spouse with the money.
These don't even have to be super wealthy people.
There was a time when my wife had a separate job.
She was an accountant.
And I remember I wanted to go to New York City for four days over a weekend.
And she goes, I can't.
I've already taken all my PTO for the year.
And I can't take any time off right now.
And I remember thinking, I did not work this hard to ask your boss,
who's like 10 years younger than me,
if you can have time off so we can go do something.
So I was like, I'm hiring you for my business.
And that was like the beginning of the,
I mean, her career ended like a week after that.
And then she was like, this is amazing.
And now the reality of actually having to work with me
has set in too late now.
But that kind of thing is a luxury, right,
to work with your spouse and not have,
because corporate America, it's like,
oh, well, we do well, and my husband wants to go.
They don't care.
Sorry, it's tax season.
You're going to be working 60.
hours a week. This is the Jordan Harbinger show. It's me with Ali Abdal. We'll be right back.
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with Ali Abdal. To what extent have you seen this as a pattern? A bunch of friends I've spoken to
are in a position where only one of the two is working because they're like entrepreneurs or
they're rich or something like that. And I also have friends where both of the parents,
are working and they seem way more stressed than the pairs where one of the parents is working.
Does that hold true for the pattern you've seen as well? Definitely. And part of the reason is there's
all this stuff to be done at home and you can't really hire it out. Yeah, you can hire a housekeeper,
but someone's got to manage all the stuff that happens with a house. You see really wealthy people
and they're often like, oh my God, there's so much to do. There is so much to do. Someone's got to
figure out, even if it's just stuff that we would look at as trivial, who's managing the renovation
on the gym that you're building in your backyard or something, right?
Like there's some, but somebody's got to do that.
You're not hiring somebody to do that.
That's ridiculous.
And if you're hiring somebody to do that, who's managing that person?
So two people working with limited power over their schedules.
Now they do less with each other.
There's less family time.
There's less time to bond with each other just as a couple.
There's a massive to-do list of stuff from someone's fixing that squeaky door in the
bedroom and the other.
When are we going to take all that crap?
to the donation place and how do we get rid of that rug? It's heavy. I need your help doing that.
That stuff adds up and it's like cognitive bandwidth that just gets taken. And also I think
there's probably something to be said for when you have dual income, it's because you need it
most of the time. Not always, but most of the time. Or you're both career oriented. So what happens
if two busy doctors are in a relationship? Even if they work at the same hospital, how often are you
seeing each other? Can you coordinate your time off? Are you able to relax when you do get time off?
There's all kinds of stuff like that. If one person is working, the other person can sort of say,
my wife told me she's like, let's take July off. I was like, it's impossible. She's like,
we can do it. It's possible. So since she manages my schedule, she arranged me to interview a bunch
of people before then. I still have to record ads and stuff like that, but it's very light lift.
that's really hard to do when both of you have jobs where you are not the boss.
And if both of you run companies, maybe that stress levels are.
I'd love to see data on like two people.
Each one runs their own company and they're both sort of equally busy.
Two people who are professionals, they don't run their own companies.
They're really busy.
Two people, one of them works, the other one works in the home out of the home.
I'd love to see the different varying bits of data on that.
Yeah, I think that would be interesting.
A lot of the reason for going after entrepreneurship or financial freedom and stuff,
is back when I read the four-hour work week, it was my motivation when I was in like med school
and beyond was, okay, cool, I'm optimizing for freedom so that I don't have to do things I don't
want to do. But increasingly I'm realizing that like, you know, I know I want to have kids
fairly soon, hopefully. And I know that actually the thing I'm optimizing for is the ability to,
that's what the freedom buys you. The freedom buys you the ability to hang out with the kids
when they're young, for example. Or take vacations with the kids or whatever, hire help so that like
both parents are not completely stressed.
Or things like that that are not sexy sounding and there are not like the, you know,
work on your laptop on the beach kind of digital nomad dream.
But the ability to buy that freedom to then invest it in a family, that to me feels like
part of the point.
It totally is.
And I couldn't agree more.
You reinvest that free.
That's a great way to put it.
You reinvest that freedom in your kids.
I say no to so many things now that I've had kids.
And I don't feel bad.
One of my agents is like, when are you going to write a book?
You could have written two by now.
because it's been like years and years.
And I'm like, I don't want to because every hour that I spend writing a book
is an hour spent away from the family.
And of course, agents are like, no, no, no, we're going to hire a ghost writer.
You want to have to do anything.
Really?
I've heard that bald-faced lie before.
I wanted to do anything, except for the five years of promotion that comes after the book
is published.
I'm like, no, I'll write one when my kids are older.
Like, you can write one when your kids are older and you can write one right now.
And I'm like, look, I realize you want a house in Nantucket.
but I am not going to take on a project that I don't want to do right now.
And they'll say something like,
you're missing out on like a million dollars or whatever, for example.
And you have to make this calculation.
Would that million dollars change my life?
Not really.
Okay.
What would the time investment do to my life?
No thank you.
Right?
Because you might be able to get that extra million dollars,
but then what?
You now you have to work till 7 p.m.
every day instead of five. Well, those two hours belong to your kids. You're stealing them from your
infant children for money that you don't need, that when you die, you will leave them. Do you think
they really care about that? Yeah, when they're 68 or whatever. Right. Yeah. It's like once you
start running the numbers, you start to go, if I don't write this book, I'm going to leave them with
this when I'm old and gray. That's okay. And if I do write this book, I'm going to leave them with this.
And it's like this tiny little, like, weird shift.
And you're like, okay, this minus this is this.
That looks like a lot.
But if they get this, are they going to be happy?
Yes.
If they get this, are they going to be happier?
Not really.
Would they trade that amount of money for an extra year with their dad?
Of course they would.
Unless you have absolutely no relationship with them
because you were writing books all the time or whatever, right?
Like, if you have a well, it's just,
the math starts to work out to the point where you go,
I really don't want to do this. Now, I'm not trying to be judgy for the dad who's like,
I have to work 60 hours a week and want to put my kids through school. I'm not saying that
that person is doing a bad job parenting. You are doing a bad job parenting if you make
$3 million a year and you want to make $3.5 and so you spend no time with your kids. Then you're a
bad parent. You're making a bad choice. One of the things I've been thinking about is,
you know, I'm thinking about like leaving the UK and where we want to live long term.
And I think one of the major considerations is actually in a low cost of living place because having a low cost of living means you have to work fewer hours to get exactly the same lifestyle.
And right now I'm in a stage where like, I don't mind working.
I enjoy work.
Work is fun, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Every single parent I've ever spoken to has said as soon as they had kids when the kids were little, suddenly they wanted to hang out more with the kids.
So I'm like, okay, cool.
If I take a reasonable bet that I'm probably going to end up like that.
I can't imagine it right now, but something shifts when you have kids apparently.
So it's like, all right, cool.
It's a low cost of living place,
rather than living in bang in the middle of freaking central London,
actually living in a random place
that's maybe three hours away from London
or not living in the UK at all
or whatever the thing might be,
seems to also be sort of in a weird,
Tim Ferriss sort of geo-arbitrachy type way,
another way of buying back your time.
I agree.
Yeah, I agree.
I think you probably...
Look, I'm taking a guess only based on videos I've seen from you and stuff,
but I think you could probably afford any lifestyle
you want in any city you want,
but then you're digging into the retirement runway that we talked about earlier, potentially.
But once you run the numbers, you might be like, oh, actually, I can do this, this, this, this, this, and this, all in central London, and I can still retire with X number of gazillion dollars that I leave my kids, and it's all good.
You've really got to run the numbers.
But yeah, you might also want to live at the seaside of Spain and live in a warm climate.
work less and have a healthy food chef or whatever it is because the cost of living is much lower
in Portugal or whatever. So there is that. Yeah. I agree. Having kids changes you. You should,
anyone should bet on that. Thinking you're going to maintain whatever sort of trajectory and lifestyle
you're on once you have kids, it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or not. Once you have kids,
something changes inside you. It doesn't matter what you have on the outside. So you have to be
ready for that. I think it's wise that you're planning for that. Nice. Cool. Final question.
I've just turned 30.
Brilliant.
Anything you wish you'd known when you turned 30 that you could share with me.
These snippets of life advice.
Everything I have now revolves around kids, right?
So I would say anything you think you're going to do after you have kids that doesn't involve
kids, do it now instead.
Because my wife and I were thinking, we're going to live in different places and we're
going to go travel and do this.
And we did a lot of that before kids.
We thought we would continue doing that.
But it turns out you really can't do that when you have a little kid.
It's hard.
It's very hard.
And when you have family infrastructure, that shit is priceless.
Those people are not going to go with you to Spain for three months over the summer.
You might think that that's a great opportunity.
They don't feel like doing that.
You need the help.
You're not doing that.
That plan is gone.
So do all that stuff before kids, but also plan, be realistic about your ability to have kids.
I would also, this is probably TMI or whatever, two in the weeds.
I would get everything tested, if you know what I'm saying, because what you don't want is to be like, oh, well, I'm a man.
I can have kids all the way up to X age, and my wife, future wife, whatever it is, she's this way, and we're going to be like, you want to know whether you can do it.
And if you need to freeze things or start doing hormone stuff, or if it's not going to happen, maybe you find out early and you realize that you can plan totally different.
Yeah, nice.
That's a good idea.
Yeah.
That's a very good idea.
Blood work.
Yeah.
And whatever else goes into a cup.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that's a great place to end this.
It is.
Jizz and a cup is always a good place to end a podcast.
You might have to bleep that out.
Nice.
Good session.
You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with a former FBI agent
and how he gets people to reveal the truth.
We want the best out of life.
We want the best business deals.
We want the best personal relationships that we can get.
A lot of that information that we need to get that best deal is often hidden.
With elicitation, people don't realize that you're using elicitation techniques on them.
You're just setting up a psychological environment that predisposes them to want to tell you information they wouldn't otherwise tell you.
Typically, elicitation doesn't use questions.
If you ask me a direct question, I'm thinking, what does he want?
How is this information going to be used?
Is it going to be used against me?
why is he saying this? What's his motivation? And then, of course, I'm going to come out with my
sunshine answer and give you something that I think you want to hear. There's a human predisposition
to correct others. If I want to get information from you, I will just give you what we call
a presumptive statement, and although it's either a false statement or a true statement,
but you're going to corroborate and say, yes, that's true, or you're going to say, no,
that's not true. It's this. We take our students after four hours.
hours of instruction in the morning, we take them typically to a public mall, and we will assign
them targets randomly throughout the mall. And we'll tell our students, see that person over
there, go get their date of birth, go get their Social Security number, go get their pin numbers
for their computer and their bank accounts. And the students can do that within three to five
minutes of meeting a stranger. If I can get some stranger to like me within five or ten
minutes, the brain automatically ascribes all the rights and privileges of a friendship that
took maybe years to develop.
For more on how you can use elicitation techniques used by the FBI to negotiate a pay raise,
check out episode 467 with Jack Schaefer on the Jordan Harbinger Show.
All things we discussed in this episode of the show will be linked on the website at
Jordan Harbinger.com.
Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show all at Jordan Harbinger.com
slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter, WebitWiser. You all are loving this. I love the feedback. I love the replies I get. The idea behind WebitWiser is something specific and practical that'll give you an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology and your relationships. And it's like a two-minute read, if that, we try to make it real digestible. Nobody wants to read a bunch of stuff in there. You already get enough email, right? We want the signals of noise ratio to be really high here. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show.
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Don't forget about six-minute networking as well over at six-minute networking.
I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.
You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
And this show is created an association with Podcast One.
My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.
Remember, we rise by lifting others.
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In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show
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And we'll see you next time.
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Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits
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