The Jordan Harbinger Show - 167: How to Deal with Jerks on a Plane | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Jason DeFillippo (@jpdef) banter and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday right here every week! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now, let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: What's the best way to deal with inconsiderate seatmates on an airplane? How do you conscientiously create social media content that doesn't inflict FOMO on others? Do you stay at your stable job that gives you more time with your family, or take the stressful, time-consuming job at the startup for the chance to make more money? You've been a counsellor for 15 years and want to transition to working online. Do you need to be really narrow with your audience, or can you reach out to people on a broader spectrum? You started therapy for acute to moderate generalized anxiety disorder recently. But should you disclose this to your employer? You've been running your own business for three years and finally had to hire some help. Is it wise that the first employee also happens to be your spouse? Gossipy coworkers have been spreading untrue rumours about you, and now it's affecting how others treat you at the office. How can you best put a stop to this? Life Pro Tip: Compliment or send appreciation to a friend or loved one every morning by text or email. Recommendation of the Week: Free Solo A quick shoutout to Cameron Schmidt! Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Jason on Twitter at @jpdef and Instagram at @JPD, and check out his other show: Grumpy Old Geeks. Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Carolla Classics: Producer Chris Laxamana and Superfan Giovanni introduce clips highlighting the most memorable moments from The Adam Carolla Show anthology. Listen back to the podcast's funniest bits and best celebrity interviews with additional insight and commentary on PodcastOne! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. Here on the Jordan Harbinger show, we love having conversations with our guests. And this week, we had Kevin Barrows, retired FBI current fraud investigator, talking about how to learn and use interrogation skills in our daily lives. We also had our good friend Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator, talking about negotiating like our lives depend on it. And I think we had an FBI week, Jason. Did you do that one on purpose? I didn't do it on purpose, but it's kind of cool that we did. Yeah, I agree. I think these are great episodes. I also write every so often on the blog. The latest post is how to make friends as an adult. It might sound a bit hokey.

Most of us, though, don't have this skill on lock. And this has been a very popular post for a lot of people. And we've gotten a ton of feedback, of course, because, as you know, we never stay on the surface with this stuff. It's not put yourself out there type of BS. It's real information you can use to create connections and is a spin on what we're teaching. some of the intelligence and other agency types during the courses that I teach.

And I'm going to be opening up courses to civilians in the coming months. So be on the lookout for that. You're going to hear about that on the show. I've left Advanced Human Dynamics. I'm going to be doing these courses under my own brand. So if you see something from Advanced Human Dynamics, that's not me.

But I'm going to be doing the courses under my own brand. Should be really interesting. You'll hear about them on the show first. So anyway, make sure you've had a look at the blog going to listen to those episodes earlier this week. Of course, our primary mission is to pass along our guests' insights and experiences to you and our experiences and insights to you. So in other words, the real purpose of the show is to have conversations directly with you. And that's what we're going to do today here on Feedback Friday. You can reach us at Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com.

Keep them concise. We'll get your question answered on the air, hopefully. And I'm off for a couple days to Mexico before coming back and teaching a course to some security guys. So I'm going to get some sun. I'm going to get a little bit of a time. Tanski, hopefully not get abducted by a drug cartel. A little tequila, little lime and corona. Yeah, and then I got my parents coming to visit as well. So it's weird because I'm like, I can't totally pollute myself because I'd like to come back refreshed and not the opposite. But you never know.

Yeah, you don't want to come back to mom and dad going, oh, servesa, please, por favor. I know. I just pour it down my throat. That's not wise. No. So, no. That's not a good son. You know, it's funny.

I was looking at my wedding photos. they were the ones that were like on the wall in the house. And I realized that the photographer who's Asian, Chinese, she lightened my skin color because that's like a thing that they think that Asian people want, I guess, in their wedding photos. And I was like, oh, yeah, white people were not trying to be more pale. We're not. No, no, unless you're Irish because, you know, Irish people glow in the dark.

But, yeah, for you, not so much. Yeah, so it's weird. Like, I'm unnaturally white in a lot of my photos. And I was just thinking, wait a minute. And I have naturally dark skin, like what's happening here? And it's super strange. Most people don't notice, but I'm thinking, wait a minute. And so we asked her, and she's like, yeah, I whiten you up a little.

I was like, thanks for that. And the thing is, it's, I know that photos are digital, but this one's printed on metal, and it hangs on the wall. So I can't just, like, print out another one. That's kind of cool, though, that you have metal photos. Yeah, it's like a wall hanging photo. So instead of a photo that's in a frame, it's just, printed on metal.

I've heard of glass. I've heard of canvas. I've heard of all the other stuff, but I've never heard of metal unless you're going back to daguerreotypes way back from the day. So that's kind of cool. No, no, it's, you know, it's probably just like a metal sheet that's like triple thick paper and then they just have some sort of spray on ink. But yeah, I'm nice and pasty in those. I don't know how we got on this tangent. Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hi, Jordan and team, I have a doozy for you. Last year, I had several bad experiences with passengers on an airplane. I was on my way to a funeral, and I had experienced several canceled flights.

Things were not going smoothly. I sat next to a woman who took off almost all her clothes. She took off her jackets, boots, and socks. Her socks fell somewhere, and she asked me to retrieve them for her. Oh, gross. I just got to say that is the grossest thing ever. Yeah. like, guess you're going on without socks.

Oh, that's so nasty. All right. Oh, it's so bad. I remember when we were going to the fireside conference and we were on the bus and some girl took off her socks and put her feet up on the windows. So gross. And we were just like, oh, that is so nasty. No, don't do that.

Uber tacky. So I gave her socks back and then she started talking to me about her life. Something I didn't want to continue, obviously. On my way back, I had a window seat on a two-seat row. When I arrived at my seat, my seatmate already sat down and did not get up from their seat to let me through. And I'm not a skinny person. I walked over that person uncomfortably. Honestly, you should have just rubbed your butt in their face if they wouldn't get up.

That's a dick move. I fell asleep so I didn't have to interact with them, but it was woken up because their arm bumped to me when they had opened the window, which I had closed, and it was already dark outside. Another dick move. Yeah. Tell me, am I overreacting to these situations? Even if I'm overreacting, how would you handle overbearing passengers? I know not all airplane passengers are rude, but I feel like these two individuals were incredibly rude and inconsiderate.

I didn't know how to handle that situation and ended up being passive and agreeable to the first passenger, which looking back, I regret. The second situation, they disturbed my sleep and didn't even apologize or excuse themselves. What would you do in these situations? that make you uncomfortable. What would you have done if you were me? How do you know when to let things slide? How do you interact with people who have passed a personal boundary?

Or what are some ways to control these situations or deal with people you can politely not interact with? I will be forever grateful for any kind of suggestion. Sincerely frustrated flyer. Dude. It's really gross, honestly. So gross. I just...

The feat thing is what gets me. It's just like, oh, Do not take off your socks on a plane. Don't even take your shoes off on a plane. What's wrong with you? It's disgusting. It is gross. You ever go and see the people that go to the bathroom in their socks and you're like,

I'm trying hard not to step in giant puddles of urine with my shoes in this bathroom? Yeah. It's so funny. I was watching Twitter the other day. And Brian Copleman actually went to go to the bathroom on a plane and realized that he had socks on. Like he'd taken his shoes off. And he's just like he ran back to his seat and put his shoes on. He's like, I'm not going in there in my socks.

Oh, absolutely not. And then it's like you have to burn the socks after that. This is so gross. First of all, rude. Yeah. The window thing, this is one of the things that actually annoys me enough to say something, either to the person or to the flight attendant or both. I've got a night mask.

I always bring on planes, even if I'm flying like during the daytime, I'll bring it. Noise cancelling headphones because planes are loud. And then half the time I'm in front of somebody who's like, I'm going to have a really loud conversation with somebody across the aisle. and I get it, we're all packed into a tight space, and not everyone's considerate. But I will tell you that the window thing is something that I think, there's a certain level of obliviousness. You know, when they dim the whole cabin and they announce, we're going to dim the cabin, please close your window shade. And then someone's like, I want to look at the window now.

And it's like four o'clock in the morning, super bright outside. There's nothing out there. You can't see anything. It illuminates the entire cabin. And now you want to, it's like, please use the reading light. It's like, don't, this means you're not allowed to open the window. They're trying to be polite. It means you're not allowed to open the window.

And so what I found was, I'll tell people, I'll go, if they're near me, I'll go, hey, can you close that, please? And I say, everyone is sleeping or almost everyone is sleeping. And they'll be like, oh, sorry, I'm so sorry. Like, you know, I get it. You're oblivious. You fly once every five months. You forget that it's a night flight or you wake up and you don't realize it's illuminating

the whole cabin. It's still rude, but it might be unambiguous. intentional. But there was one time where I was flying home from China and this guy just kept opening his window and it's like four o'clock in the morning, you know, San Francisco time. And he's just like, screw it. I want light. And so I first, I thought he had opened it and then fell back asleep. So I shut it. He opened it again wider in kind of like this passive aggressive way. So I called the, I said, excuse me, you have to close that. And he pretended like he didn't understand me except I'd heard him speaking English fluently like the whole time. And so I was like,

okay, ding, flight attendant comes up. I'm like, hey, everyone's trying to sleep. She goes, oh, yeah, of course. She's like, excuse me, sir, can you close that? And he's like pretending he doesn't understand her. He clearly does. She closes it. She goes away, he opens it.

So I ding again, just so she knows that he's not cooperating. She's like, excuse me, sir, this has to stay closed. Everyone's sleeping. She's like a little pissed. She goes away a few minutes later. He opens it again. So I get up to go to the bathroom and I go, keep this shut. keep it shut and I'm like pretty I'm not aggressive but I'm like hey it's not just the flight attendant

following the rules you're actually being an asshole so he's and he's like okay so he doesn't do anything I go and shut it and I look him just deadpan in the eye not like trying to challenge him I'm just like keep it shut please and I smile I go back to my seat and he opens it again so I called the flight attendant I got up again and I said excuse me if If you won't leave this shut, you need to switch seats, as in like, please switch this guy's seat. And she goes, sir, you have to keep the shut. You're disturbing the whole cabin. And then he starts mumbling in Chinese, probably just cussing us out in Chinese.

And so, and of course, then one of the mail flight attendants or like one of the other guys came over and was like, is there a problem here? And he just kept mumbling in Chinese and ignoring us. So when we got to, when we landed, I was like, what's your policy for the guy who disturbed the security of the flight? And they were like, we're so sorry. And I was like, yeah, you should report that. And they're like, you know what? You're right. And so they actually called security on this guy.

They didn't arrest him or anything. But he was really nervous that he had to deal with the consequences. Now what I wish I had done is said something about that earlier. Like, look, you're coming to the United States. You can't reenter if you cause trouble on this flight. Oh, yeah. Like, if you're not, do you have a blue passport? If not, you might be going home.

So keep your effing window shut. Like, I don't want to do that kind of thing, but he just didn't care about anyone else on that flight. He wanted the window open. And so he was willing to make everybody else uncomfortable for the whole flight. Such a dick move. Such a dick move. Really bad. Really, really bad.

And in the past, honestly, if I wasn't a normal productive member of society, trust me, I thought I thought about doing other things. Not like punching the guy in the face, but I'll tell you, there was a moment there where I thought, oh yeah buddy guess what happens when i go up to customs and i say that guy said he had drugs in his bag bye you know like oh okay you want to stay at the airport for seven hours and maybe not come in but then i thought like okay that's the punishment doesn't really fit the crime on that and i'm lying to the police so that's that's just bad all around but trust me i thought like maybe you don't get to come to america with your friends now you prick i know trust me i know because there's a very easy way to get up and stand up and pretend you're like you know walking over your neighbor if you're in the middle seat and elbow somebody in the carotid very easily,

which will then knock them pretty much out. I know. I know. It's just, and look, I realize I'm totally triggered by this thing, but it's like this is so rude and entitled. The other thing is with the whole socks thing, she sounds just socially inept. You know, I would say I don't want to touch your socks. Sorry.

Yeah, that's exactly what I would have said. You know, I mean, we've heard this on Adam Carolla all the time, like people that get on planes and take their shoes off, take their socks off, and then the worst, the worst of the worst are people who clip their toenails on the plane. That should get them ejected at 30,000 feet, in my humble opinion, but, you know, unfortunately, we live in a different society. I'll tell you what, always polite, always smiling, firm but polite, polite, but firm. Some won't get it. If they're talking to you, you can put your headphones on. You say, I'm trying to focus on reading. It was nice talking with you. That's key.

Nice talking with you. Then you put your headphones on and you just straight up ignore. The other thing is I did have someone take off their shoes on a flight and then they put their feet between the window and the armrest and they actually touched me with their disgusting feet. And so I, and I'm like, look, not everybody finds feet so gross, but I was a little offended. And they were in my space at that point. Like, yeah.

Yeah. So I turned around and I loudly said, excuse me, your feet are on my armrest and it's pretty disgusting. Yeah. And she was like, and I was like, yeah, you get to, you get to complain and throw a tantrum, but you're, this is gross. I'm not going to let you get away with it just because you want to. Yeah, seriously. Yes, maybe I'm turning into Adam Carolla, but I don't want your dirty socks on my bare arm for four hours.

I'm not being unreasonable. No, I mean, it's personal hygiene. And you know what? What if you just unzipped your pants and put your balls on her arm? You know? Seriously. It's like, okay, your feet to me are my balls on you. So what do you think is going to happen?

It's just gross. Stop it. Well, you know what triggers Jason and I, I guess, if you're ever wondering, if anyone's curious. If you ever find us on a flight, please keep your feet and your balls to yourself. Jesus, yeah. All right. Well, we went off on a little tent. Look, usually we're pretty positive on the show, but this is one of those things where I thought, you know, I don't.

want to put up with this. It's just, I have trouble with other people not respecting boundaries, but only if it's unintentional, I get it. But when it's intentional like this, you got to stick up for yourself because otherwise these people, not only are they going to continue to get away with it, you're doing a society of favor with us, but you gain nothing by not being a little bit confrontational and standing your ground here. I'm not saying you have to throw a temper tantrum. You can call the flight attendant. It's their job to handle it, but they'll understand how rude that is. They will understand that and that's just you know before that some of this is just humans in tight spaces get a night mask get headphones and don't be afraid to be like great talking with you peace and then just go focus on

what you want and pretend to be asleep that's my move you know what my new move is i got a new uh sleep mask that i wear when i go on a plane it literally says f off on the front does it just say f or does it actually no it says the whole thing what it does say the whole thing yeah what if there are kids on the plane dude uh well you know I don't care. You're a grumpy old geek, man. You know, you know who I found this? I found this sleep mask because our friend of the show, Bob Fogarty, who does all of our notes and our worksheets,

he sent me Rob Halford from Judas Priest's Instagram account. And Rob Halford got on a plate and he was wearing a basically a sleep mask that says F off. And I'm like, I love that. I want one. So I went and found it on Amazon for like seven bucks. and I bought one, and now that's my sleep mask. Just go away. Do not bother me.

Keep your feet to yourself. Keep your toenails to yourself. Do not touch my window. Just go away. That's all I care about. Man, I don't know. I'd be so embarrassed when that. Anyway, let's move on to the next thing.

People are already like, okay, I've had it with this. What's next out of the mailbag? The horse is dead. We've beaten it to death. Yeah, totally dead. Hi, Jordan. How do you create content that doesn't make people feel like they're excluding other people. With social media, I like that you can connect with people. It makes people feel more

relatable. However, most anything that's posted feels inauthentic. What for me is only about sharing with my family could be said that if I'm not doing what other people are doing, I'm lazy or a bad person. Sincerely, socially confused. So this is the social media dilemma. You're either posting to create an image or you feel guilty for not putting up a certain image. And that's the inherent problem with this stuff. You're right. You could argue any content is aspirational, but I would say it comes down to intent. For example, if you look at some of these online influencer turds who post pictures of them next to a private jet, a fancy car, they are trying to trigger FOMO so that sense of lack, that fear of missing out in you, because what they're selling is that lifestyle. They are trying

to make you feel bad so that you admire them and you purchase their dumb real estate thing or their stupid way to make money online, whatever it is, your insecurity translates directly into influence for them, which is what they leverage for cash. It is sales and marketing. It is not classy at all the way they're doing it, and it is not healthy. However, think of the person who wins a contest and says, oh my God, I can't believe I have this once in a lifetime trip on a fancy jet. I'm so grateful. I'm so happy I won this contest to go see the backstreet boys in Las Vegas or whatever. I wish you were all here with me. They're maybe triggering some FOMO

in other people, sure, but it's different because they're celebrating, they're humble about it, they're real about it. Perhaps most importantly, it has nothing to do with their business. They're not leveraging this to create influence or to get cash. They're just showing off momentarily. It also depends on the greater context

of their profile and image. Do they do this constantly? Or is the rest of their social media, pictures of their dog and their friends, Jason? Hey, watch it there, buddy. But that's the thing. Like, you know, look, if you're posting things in your family because it's like, hey, this is my kids, that's fine. But if you're like, my kids are all really good looking and athletic and here's them in designer clothes, it's different.

You're trying to get people to think a certain way. You're not just sharing. So it comes down to context, intent of the post, and not just the effect that the post taken out of context has on others. So I'd post pictures of my kids, family, whatever you want. If you're doing it because that's normal, you're sharing with your friends, you're celebrating your kids and your family because that makes you feel. feel good and you think that others who follow you will be interested, then it's fine. But if you're doing it because you want people to say,

oh, she has it all, maybe if I drink magic herb weight loss shakes, I'll also have a loving family and I'll get to go to Las Vegas. Then you're being a jerk on social media, you should reexamine your life goals and how you achieve them and don't wonder why nobody likes you. And you'll notice that on Instagram, 90% of what I share, if you follow me, I'm at Jordan Harbinger. 90% of what I share is funny, 5% of what I share is serious,

Another 5% is an image of me with a guest or some content relevant to the show. Most of it is just stuff I think is funny or ridiculous that I see during the day or that you folks send me that puts a smile on my face. That's the majority of what's on there. Most of the stuff I'm not even in. Also, I've never even once asked anyone

to buy anything, register for anything. It is not a sales tool for me. It's more just me being a tool, actually. So it's different. If it's, hey, there's three spots left my seminar, I'm on my jet right now, click here to register. That's one thing. And I don't really do that. And I think people that do that, yeah, they're trying to trigger FOMO. If you're posting a picture of your kids and you're like, Dylan's first soccer game, that's different. You know,

that's what social media was originally designed for. This is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharmiger.com slash deals. And if you'd be so kind, drop us a nice rating and review in iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really helps us out and helps build the show family. If you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Now let's hear some more of your questions here on Feedback Friday. All right. Next up. Jordan, Jay, and Jen. I've been in my role as an outside sales rep at a market leader for 12 years. I've grown, make nice money, and enjoy the work. I also get to be home every

night with my kids as I only cover a single metro area. Through heavy networking and skills implemented in your networking course, I'm going to have the opportunity in the next few months to join a disruptive startup as their first sales rep. The product is exciting and I see huge potential in it. If all goes well, I'll grow rapidly with an equity stake as this company is poised to explode, setting myself as a pioneer in emerging technology within the market I already work in. But I'll cover a much larger swathes of the United States and be gone several nights each week in a far from stable position. It's also going to take a monumental effort to get this off the ground. Do I stay at the stable place and earn a nice living until I retire at 67?

Or do I take a risk in my 30s, adding in stress in my family life with a potential reward of retirement in my 50s while trying to avert financial ruin in the short term? My gut tells me I'll regret not going for it. The business world is littered with the stories of people who refuse stop. options at Apple in the 80s for a small bump in pay. But then I look at my kids and how fast they're growing up, I'm really conflicted. I keep telling myself is that I'm smart, good at what I do, and have connections. Even in a worst case scenario, with the new company failing, I'll always be able to put a roof over my kids and food on the table. Signed, autopilot mediocrity or high risk,

high reward. So I see your dilemma here. My dad worked a lot. He spent a little bit of time with me, but not as much as he probably could have. He probably regrets it, but he was able to save and retire early. He wasn't a bad father or anything. Don't get me wrong. I have a great relationship with him, but I think he was just really busy.

He was a workaholic, much like myself. I wonder where that comes from. Yeah, exactly. But only you can make this decision. I would say this is something you have to discuss with your family. You might be able to retire early or not, but you don't want to put off your life until then, especially because you're going to miss your kids growing up.

And you should spend a lot of time thinking and talking about this. Nobody else can tell you what to do here. Really? If it were me personally, I just enjoy my family because my dad, I don't think he did. I don't think he had a chance to. He retired with a bunch of extra cash. Now he's enjoying retirement, but probably not as much as he would have enjoyed doing more stuff with me and my mom, going on vacation, once in a blue moon.

It's a miracle. My parents are still together. I have to say. And you may also be able to achieve some balance in the new position. It won't be the same as what you have now, but perhaps you can work your butt off during the three to four work days and then spend Friday nights and weekends with your kids. Only you can really evaluate this.

You're the only one who's going to have all the information here. Just personally, I'd like to point out that most of these startups fail and you might not actually make all the money you think you're going to make. And just statistically, if you look at it from a statistical point of view, it's not the safest way to go. You know, I'm with Jordan. It's just like I'm with front loading your life. You know, if you have time to spend with your kids and you have a job that's okay,

do it. Stay with that job and just do it. That's my personal take after being in the industry for so many years where so many people have just put everything on hold, stop their lives and said, hey, I'm going to try and win the lottery. almost none of them have won the lottery and they're miserable after the fact and then they're just trying to play catch up. So if you have a family and you have kids, just spend the time with the kids. Exactly. Yeah. It's, uh, look, either way you'll be happy with your choice most likely.

It's whether you'll be happy about it long term and whether your family will be happy about it in the short term. That's the question. So you really have to talk with your family about this and find out what you want. You got to get clear on your priority. and your goals. I can't tell you which way to go, but only you're going to know this. And look, retiring with $10 million, I mean, for what? You know, like, what do you want to do with that? Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. So you can't, you can't buy history with your kids. No, you can't. You can't say, okay, I've got an extra $5 million that I can spend a, can I get that time back with my kids from when they were five to 12? No, you can't. You spent that,

time getting money what the hell does money matter yeah getting money later maybe that's the thing and a lot of parents have told me because i'm i'm working so hard and stuff like that they're like look when you have kids you're going to stop i'm like no i'm going to manage all of it and they're like kids spell love t i'm like oh yeah exactly yes they do all this traveling i'm doing all this sort of on location stuff i got to figure out how to balance it because i can't keep doing it well jordan i i i have I have a question for you. You were a single child, right? Only child, yeah.

Yeah, me too. Were you a latchkey kid? Yeah, it sucked. Yeah, it sucks, doesn't it? Yeah. That kind of answers your question right there, doesn't it? Would you rather have had time with your parents, or would you had them out there making more money that doesn't really do anything for you?

They don't even need it. They're donating stuff to charity. My mom was a public school teacher. My dad was an auto worker. They donate money to charity. They have a trust fund for like some charitable thing. They are like, hey, maybe we'll buy a house near you. And I mean, they're not rich, but they definitely don't need all of it.

Like if they could trade some of their money for more time back then, I guarantee you they would. I have 100% sure they would. The problem is you don't know it back then. But they're not in the same position. They were sort of like, you know, public school teacher and auto worker. If you're comfortable right now and you've got all this time, Oh man, people envy that the world over. Time is key.

It's all about time. Just honestly maximize for time. Yeah. You don't need the extra money. My friends Alex and Mimi Icon, they've done really well with this hair extension business. And they have the greatest lifestyle. They travel all over with their kid. They work from home.

They have a great relationship. They always tell me every decision we've made, we always optimize for lifestyle. And it's just genius. They're like, yeah, we say no to things we don't want to do. I'm like, but, da-da-da-da-uh. Meanwhile, they have millions of dollars from their hair extension business, but the thing is, they didn't win the lottery.

They just always optimized for lifestyle. They got stuff they don't wanna do in their business, they hire it out, even if they make less money. You don't wanna work in the office? Cool, okay, cool, now you're able to travel all over the world and homeschool your kid. Like, they optimized for that. That was their number one priority.

So now they've figured out how to make money, a lot of it, in that particular set circumstances that they've created that has the lifestyle already. They figured out the money later. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, it's amazing. So now they got crazy good business and they're like, let's go to South Africa for three months. You know, it's, it's great.

That's how you do it, man. I'm telling you. Yeah. I just, I just want to just drive that point home. It's about time with your family and the people that you care about because, you know, I'm 47. I'm turning 48 this year. You're 30, you're going to be 39 this year?

Yep. I just turned 39. You know that. But not everyone else does. Yeah. Oh. But it's about time. It's about time with people because we're not here for very long.

I look at the road ahead of me and it is much shorter than the road behind me. So I care about being with family and things like that. So I would never take that deal that he's talking about ever now. All right. Next up. Hello. I've worked as a counselor and social worker for well over 15 years in different agencies. My life has taken a turn. I'm raising my infant grandson, and I would love to transition to doing

counseling online. I'm not trying to be an online life coach guru. I'm just trying to have a small business doing what I love, helping people. Do I need to be really narrow with my audience, or can I reach out to people on a broader spectrum? With my experience, I'm qualified to work with many people, but want to make the smartest decision with my business. Feel free to just say I'm crazy and to keep my day job if that's what you think. y'all and when is Jen going to get some more air time? I really like when you say the advice that she suggests. Signed counselor in transition. So it's a little unclear to me which platform you want to get clients from, so I don't totally understand your business here. But let me just plug BetterHelp. They're a sponsor of the show.

I mean, we went out and got them deliberately because we like what they do. Betterhelp.com slash Jordan is where people can experience online therapy and counseling. That might be a good place to start. as for narrowing the audience, I think it depends on whether or not there's a specific niche that you're particularly good at or interested in because there's definitely online counseling. I mean, I went to BetterHelp.com slash Jordan the other day to figure out the answer to this whether or not they're hiring. And they literally have a link that for careers because I think they're expanding like crazy for online counseling.

It's a huge, huge space these days. Yeah, they've got 3,000 counselors right now and they're definitely looking for more people. And my counselor, I cannot say anything bad about. He's awesome. I've had my one conversation with him, and he's helped me immeasurably. So definitely check out better help if you want to, you know, use your skills to help people for sure. There you go. It's always better to be specific when you're marketing.

And the reason for this is because there's something that a couple of entrepreneurs of mine called the bigger net or the wider net fallacy. I don't know if it's a fallacy. but essentially the erroneous thinking is, oh, if I say we're general for everything, we'll get more people, but that's not really how it works. I had a real douchebag friend back in the day.

He did it with online dating. In his profile, he said, no redheads, because he actually liked redheads. So he wrote no redheads. And he knew, and he also liked really assertive women. So he knew, and he's kind of just one of those guys where you roll your eyes, everything he does. But he knew that what would,

happen is a bunch of redheads that were really assertive and confident would be like why what's your problem idiot you know like redheads dumbass you know like so he would go well maybe i'll make an exception and they would end up chasing him and i was like you're a genius but you're a douche so it worked but think about this here's the doctor analogy right would you rather have you go oh man my my stomach hurts oh there's something wrong with my gallbladder do you go to the gallbladder specialist or do you go to the doctor who's taken assorted organs out of people over the last couple decades. You go to the gallbladder specialist. Yeah. And if you're a gallbladder specialist and you are pancreatic and you're an endocrinologist and you're blah blah blah, blah,

make separate websites for each one of those things. Like, oh, hey, look, I specialize in this. Oh, great. And then they come back three weeks later and they're like, wait a minute, aren't you the same guy? Yeah. But I want the person who says, look, I'm gallbladder's 24-7. It's all I think, it's all I do. Gall-bladder's all day, air-day. Air-day. Air-day. Air-day. Gall bladders all day, every day. I want that guy or gal taking up my gallbladder. I don't want somebody who's like, yeah, you know,

I've, you should see the things I've removed from people. No thanks, gallbladders only.com. That's what you want. You want specialization in a specific area. So yeah, if you're a counselor and you specialize in depression and anxiety, but you can also handle everything else, I would say market yourself as you're specializing in that because especially if you like that,

you're going to end up with a better fit for a position because they might go, oh, good, we're looking for depression and anxiety. But if you market yourself as general, but hey, it'd be great if I got more depression and anxiety clients, they're going to throw you into the general pile and then you have to work your way over to the specialty you want. There's a good chance that unless what you're doing is something that everybody specializes in for some reason, being specific in certain areas is always going to help you. It'll help you get hired and it'll help you get the clients that you want. Oh, I need to tell my therapist about that because he's a very specific anxiety doctor, which is what my thing is. I have generalized anxiety disorder.

I thought he had specific anxiety disorder. Hey, yo. But he's also a master yogi for doing yoga and stuff like that. He's a Buddhist teacher and things like that. I'm just like, you know, I don't care about that stuff. I'm not doing yoga. I'm sorry. I'm never doing yoga ever.

But if you care about anxiety and you have a PhD in anxiety studies, tell me about that. That's what I want. And that's why I talk to him. And that's what he's really good at. He's also a really good yogi, but I don't care about that side of thing. So, you know, that kind of turned me off at the beginning. But once we started talking, we just kind of pulled back from it. And definitely, I think the specifics are the way to go.

Definitely. Definitely. No redheads. We'll be right back with more feedback Friday right after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And if you're listening to the show and the Overcast Player for iOS,

please click that little star next to the episode. It really helps us out. Now back to the show for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right, next up. Hello, Jordan and Jason. I love your show and both of you give great life advice. I started therapy for generalized anxiety disorder about three months ago. The severity is acute to moderate and my therapist is emphasizing our sessions on social anxiety.

I see her about once a month. I currently have a floor level position as a technician in manufacturing where I interact with many people. I've been promoted once, but I wish to move up from my current position into a leadership role. However, I fear I would be held back if HR or my boss is new. My management team has been both supportive and positive, save for the constructive feedback once in a while, but when choosing to promote, my disorder may hold me back. I haven't told anybody about my disorder nor my therapy, but I'm enticed by the idea that my department, at least, might give me some support to overcome my anxiety, like changing the verbiage,

provide more one-on-one feedback sessions, etc. Should I disclose my anxiety and my therapy to my employer? Any advice is appreciated. Signed, overcoming anxiety. Wow, another anxiety question. Very common. I mean, this is, dare I say it, an epidemic in our day. It is.

Yeah, it is. First things first, though, consult an employment lawyer before you do anything here. I want to highlight that. Get a lawyer now. I cannot agree more. Look, you are playing with fire here. You've got to make sure you know what you're doing. My advice is you should probably not do this.

You should probably not tell your own. employer. I know that that's weird. I'm all about transparency where possible, but look, you'll always suspect that if people treat you differently, even if they're not and you're imagining they are because you're of anxiety, you'll suspect that they're doing it because of anxiety. If you don't get an opportunity, you will never know. You may suspect that you didn't get it because of anxiety. You might even be right. And confidential things at work, they often don't necessarily stay that way. And yeah, your employer might give you extra feedback, or they might see it as a burden.

Think about this. If you're an employer, you, would you be less likely to hire a woman for a project if she said, well, I'm thinking about having kids in the next few years. She would go on maternity leave. She's going to work shorter hours some of that time because that's within her rights and she should. She had a kid for crying out loud. She might not do that, but probably, you know, there's a more than 50, 50 chance that

she's going to end up doing that. If you've already hired her, are you less likely? to promote her to a position with more critical responsibility. This is why employers are not allowed to ask about stuff like this. Yeah, definitely. Because discrimination is very real. I remember a long time ago, one of my aunts was like, I need a week off every month because I get bad cramps and I get da-da-da-da-da-this

and you don't want to be around me when I have PMS. And I was like, look, I'm sorry that you get cramps, but you do realize that what you're doing is you're saying, don't hire me because I don't want to work. Think about that as a policy. I should get a week off every month.

Okay, so why don't I just hire people who don't get those symptoms, aka men? Like, that is a big problem. So it's a big deal. It's a big problem. I'm not saying you shouldn't, by the way, to be clear,

I am not saying don't hire women because they have children or they have menstrual cramps. Like, of course. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't want the emails from that. Oh, I know.

No, of course. I'm not saying that at all. But what I'm saying is you're always going to have this problem. Like, I guarantee you any woman right now who's listening who's had kids is probably thinking, yeah, I didn't want to deal with all this crap I had at work. There's a reason it's illegal for people to treat people differently because of things like this. And some things you can't hide. If you're pregnant, you're eight months pregnant, you're going to be on maternity.

leave, you can't hide it, nor should you have to. But if you have anxiety and you're hiding it and you're just hoping your employer gives you extra benefit as a result, it might work, it might not. But that's a really big deal and it's a really big decision. If they're not allowed to ask about these things, it's because knowing these sorts of things causes them to consciously or unconsciously treat people differently in ways that are less fair to you as an employee. And if you let the cat out of the bag, those protections for you likely evaporate, right? They might not say you're not getting promoted because you have anxiety and they're worried, but it might happen anyway.

And if you don't get the job and they don't say why, would you secretly suspect that it's because of anxiety or because you told them and then resent them for it? There's a lot to consider here. It's unfortunate. I get it. You might need to work this issue out on your own. But again, consult a lawyer. See what HR says.

If the lawyer is okay with you talking to them about it at all in the first place. HR is a lot more sensitive about this stuff often, especially at bigger companies because they don't want to get sued into oblivion. But going back, you know, looking at what my dad's aunt was saying about getting a week off each month, you have to be careful. There are protections in place, but the reason those protections are in place is to make things fair for things that people can't help. You can only take it so far. The law can protect you, but it's not going to protect you from people being like, look, all other things being equal, do we want the guy who's going to have a panic attack? even if that's not what's happening to you, realize people are bringing their baggage and their stereotypes with them to that condition.

Yeah. And that's going to affect you, right? Absolutely. And when it comes to HR, you know, they are about the bottom line of the company. They don't really care about you. They are going to do what they have to do to make the company money. So they're not your friend. Remember, they're never your friend.

So definitely talk to a little. lawyer first and figure out if you want to do that, I would say no, do not. Do not disclose this unless there is a reason that it needs to be disclosed. All right, next up. Hi, Jordan, Jesse, just kidding, Jason, and Jen. I started my career as a custom home drafter nearly six years ago. Three of those years, I've owned my own business. I'm working on expanding in a new area, so I decided that I needed an employee. I've never had an employee before, so that's a challenge in itself. But the point of the email is that the new employee is also my husband. We're both excited for this change, but I'm concerned that boundaries will blur unless I figure out how to handle this new dynamic to our relationship.

Any advice to help a new employer and wife to keep our great marriage out of the business and business out of the marriage? I hope that makes sense and thank you for any help you can provide. Sincerely, want to be a wife boss, not a bossy wife. Okay, so first of all, everyone told Jen and I, not to work together. And I get why. I've heard, I mean, who was the first person to probably bring this up? I'm like, dude, what are you doing? What are you doing? Honestly, I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't desperate for an assistant at that point and hopelessly behind on a ton of stuff and she was really, that she was just really good at. But man, when I was in entrepreneur groups, a lot of

these guys were like, do not do it, do not do it. And everyone had a horror story about hiring their wife, hiring their girlfriend, hiring their sister-in-law, nobody was like, yeah, it's great. Oh, yeah, there are no, like, you know, stories about this is the best thing I've ever done in my life. I cannot believe how well this worked out. You show me one of those stories. I will show you a unicorn. Yeah, yeah. I mean, now it's great because Jen and I work together and it's amazing.

But I will tell you that for 99 out of 100, it's a freaking mess. And that said, it's amazing when it works out. And now I know tons of entrepreneur couples that work together, and it's great, and everyone's really happy. But for each one of those that I know, I know tons of people that are like, ah, ruined our marriage. Yeah, it ruined our blah, blah, blah. We don't have those issues.

And the reason is because, look, I think it should work as long as your husband does not feel an inferiority complex about the dynamic. And again, this reminds me of Alex Icon and Mimi icon, friends of mine, Mimi is the face and the boss of the company. Alex works more behind the scenes. He contributes strategically, but he really enjoys the dynamic. There's no conflict there. He's really interesting.

The way he thinks about things, he's strategic. She's very much like seemingly extroverted social media influencers, super personable. Alex is also, but she's really got a talent for that, and he's got a talent for a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff, and they're fine with it. So I will tell you some of the positives of working together. There's flexibility. You get to travel together. It'll be really exciting. You can work from home.

The challenges, though, you're dependent on one income source. If there's difficulties, you're both stressed. It's not, oh, good, my wife can support us for the next eight months while I look for something. You're both out of work when one to use out of work, right? Honestly, I wasn't that intentional about setting boundaries when I hired Jen in the beginning. One reason that works for us now is that Jen is happy in a support role. She has no aspirations of being an on-air personality. She doesn't want to do it ever, really.

We tend to work seven days a week. We don't take that many breaks. But when we want to relax, we're very clear with each other. When Jen needs to take a nap in the afternoon, I don't wake her up. I don't make her feel guilty about it. When she wants to go get her nails done or get a massage, I'd go, all right, enjoy. I don't say, well, there's all this crap on your desk. I don't do that.

When Jen has a work question while I'm trying to relax, she says, hey, can I ask you a question? about such and such, and sometimes I say, no, not unless it's urgent. She's like, okay, can wait. So those little things go a long way. Also, have regular meetings where you ask him how he's feeling about working with you on this stuff, what you can do to make the job easier. If you need to hire another assistant to do some of the more mundane tasks, you know, if he's overworked with all kinds of craziness, you might outsource some of it.

You might get a personal assistant to take care of the housework while you're both working from home. Honestly, my biggest challenge is to get Jen to stop doing work that we could outsource to somebody for five to ten bucks an hour overseas because she wants to do everything. She has a crazy workload. It's a high quality problem, but it'll still, you know, burn us out. And when one person's burned out in a relationship and you work together, you both get burned out. You both feel it. So make sure you set those boundaries communicate really well and take it one step at a time. Don't give over a ton of mission critical stuff without training them well. And if you get frustrated with people you work with, be extra vigilant to be easier on your partner.

Because the boundaries blur. There's no stopping that. You can't go to the office and work there and then come home and never talk about work. It's just not realistic. All right. Next up. Hey, Triple J's and team. I'm an under 30 female working as an aerospace engineer.

I've been at my current job for about eight months. And at first, people I worked with were very welcoming and friendly. Recently, I've noticed people starting to treat me differently, and I'm finding it harder to build business relationships with other people in the company. I asked one of my closer friends at work if I was just being paranoid, but it turns out I'm not crazy. There are three people in my team, two of whom are technically my bosses, who have been spreading rumors about me.

These rumors range from, I don't wash my hands after going to the bathroom, to I'm sleeping with a married colleague, and every time I wear a nice clothes, it's to look good for him, to I have ranked all the guys in the office in terms of bangability. Of course I know that none of these things are true, but the people spreading the rumors have worked at the company for a long time and are well-trusted. This means that they have a high amount of believability in the company. As far as I was aware, these three people and I were on very friendly terms. I always knew that they liked to gossip, something I've not taken part in,

and usually I would just shrug this off and ignore the rumors, albeit feeling a little hurt. but it's affecting my work due to other people in the company not wanting to interact or work with me. Do you have any advice on how I can resolve this situation without making things worse? Should I ask them to stop? Should I log the rumors with HR? Should I just woman up and ignore it? Thank you for this wonderful show and all that you guys do. Kind regards, working in the rumor mill.

First of all, it makes me so angry to hear this. It sounds like backstabbing BS. It sounds like there's some jealousy. It's terrible. I didn't realize they had aerospace companies in kindergarten. It's so gross, so gross. Yeah, yeah, first of all, make sure you document everything, journal it, whatever. Listen to the Joe Navarro episode, perhaps even read that book.

He talks about documenting all the crappy things that narcissists and bad people do to you because they're not documenting all of their stuff. And then consult with an employment lawyer ASAP. In fact, they may have you report and log this to HR so that it's, It's documented in the company, but you need to go to a lawyer first. I am so sorry to hear about this, but this is flat out textbook, hostile work environment and most likely sexual harassment, honestly. There's no such thing as woman up or man up in these situations.

You do not have to tough this out. This is not something where you just have to stick it out because that's how life is. These are awful people. This isn't an obstacle that you should be facing when getting ahead at work. careers are hard enough. This is this kind of behavior is completely beyond the pale. And those people should be sorted out, filtered out, kick the F out of the company. Am I, in my opinion, this is actionable.

Absolutely. I mean, you go to work and you want to do your work. You're in an aerospace company. You want to make rockets and do crazy stuff. And if you have to worry about somebody doing this kind of crap, that's just BS. Yeah, these people need to get the hell out of the company. In my opinion, you know, this is worthy of a lawsuit. This should become a lawsuit if the company will not take action here.

So consult an employment lawyer immediately, seriously. Do not mess around with this. Do not wait it out. Don't wait for it to get worse. Document everything. Go to the lawyer with your notebook full of stuff. Pardon. Go to your lawyer with the notebook full of stuff.

Lay it on his desk and say, what do I do about this? Because the answer is, you get serious now. You get serious right now. The first thing they should hear most likely is from your lawyer saying, it has been brought to my attention that this is happening. Because then if they fire you, well, that looks real bad. Yep. Oh, she reported sexual harassment claims and then she got fired for non-performance.

Oh, really? Your lawyer's going to be licking his chops. Oh, man, field day, field day. Because this is an aerospace company. They want to make rockets. They want to put things into space. they don't want to deal with this kindergarten bullshit. No.

Period. No. That's all they want to do. They want, you know what? They want rockets in the sky. That's all they care about. So if these people are just harassing you with all this BS, your lawyer is going to walk in there and say, hey, this is what's happening.

And I think that they're going to get these people out ASAP. Yeah. And you know what they don't want? They want rockets in space. They don't want these kinds of stories in the news. They're going to settle with you. You don't have to put up with this. You're going to get what you need to get a different charge.

job and you're going to get paid. Well, hopefully she can keep the same job and do what she's doing and put some rockets into space. Yeah. I think honestly, if you just want reasonable things to happen and they can be convinced to be reasonable, I think those people are going to get the boot because that kind of, that is no place in any professional environment, period. Absolutely. Totally agree. All right. Life Pro tip of the week. You know, I'm going to go with my idea that every day you should, and this is sort of similar to what we talked about earlier, send some morning appreciation or a compliment to a friend. I do this every day. I send, you know, a Facebook messenger, a text, a quick email. I'll just tell somebody something awesome that I saw they did online. I'll tell them how great their new website is or how great

of a friend they've been or something like that. I just do that once a day. And it's hard to get inspiration sometimes because you're like, oh, I haven't talked to anybody in a while. And it sort of gets you thinking about all these awesome people that helped you out or you go on Facebook for five seconds or Instagram, you're like, hey, just want to tell you, you know, you're cool, your posts, make my day, you're really funny. That kind of stuff goes a long way. Imagine getting that from somebody. Just, it's nice. I did that this morning to our friend Gabriel Mizrahi, works for us. And I'm like, hey, man, that latest episode you did was just amazing. And now we're planning a lunch next week. So, you know, I thought that he just knocked it out of the park last week. And I'm like,

that was one of the best things you've ever done. I'm so glad. And I've been here for almost a year and we still haven't hung out. So why not? So let's go hang out, you know? And I, I want to do this for everybody once a week. It's amazing. It makes everybody feel good. That nobody walks away feeling bad when you do that. You damn right. So that's what I recommend. Set it up is a recurring task in your to do list app that just pops up every morning. That way you don't have to remember it. Recommendation of the week, free solo. I haven't seen this, but everybody's been recommending this to me. Have you seen this, Jason? I have not. I cannot. And I will not watch this movie.

You can have Virgil? Yeah, yeah. I have a massive fear of heights. And I used to work for Tim Ferriss and Jimmy Chin was one of my first shows that I did with him. And Jimmy Chin is the director of this movie and I know how insane he is. And just watching some of the clips that I've seen, I cannot watch this. But I recommended for everybody who does not have a crippling fear of heights. I cannot, I cannot watch this.

It's like, if I, if I stand on a stool, I get vertigo. I can't, can't. But this is about a kid who reclined El Capitan in Yosemite and with no ropes, no nothing. And everybody that's seen it has just been like, oh, my God, this is the coolest thing ever. Yeah, I'm, I normally wouldn't recommend something I haven't seen, but so many people have told me about this. We'll link to it in the show notes. The mind-pumped guys told me about it among just every, I keep getting hit with this from all angles. Obviously, I want to get this under my belt, get this in the queue and watch it.

Check it out. Hope you all enjoy that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. Don't forget, you can email us Friday at Jordan Harbinger to get your questions answered on the air. We'll always keep you anonymous. Quick shout out to Cameron Schmidt, who wrote us a really nice handwritten card. I actually met him when we interviewed Mike Posner. He's helping him with his walk across America.

Good to meet you, bro. go back and check out the Kevin Barrow's FBI agent episode on interrogation and the Chris Voss FBI hostage negotiator episode on negotiation. So interrogation and negotiation, if you haven't heard those yet, and if you want to know how I managed to book all these great people, manage all these great guests, I've got systems, I've got tiny habits, consistency, it's really something you can learn. Hell, I taught it to myself and learned it. I've assembled this for you in a course that is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. This course, replace you. the level one course. I no longer have any affiliation with level one or advanced human

dynamics. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. It's upgraded. It's got upgraded drills, upgraded tech and systems in there. And don't kick the can down the road, dig the well before you're thirsty, get those relationships built before you need them. And not when it's too late. Take six minutes a day. Actually takes maybe four to five, but what can I say? Six minute networking had a nice little ring to it. It reminded me of six minute abs, which I think is funny. So that's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show. Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube is where the videos of these interviews are on YouTube as well. Jason, where can they find you? I'm on Instagram at JPD. I'm on Twitter at JPD Def and my personal website

is jpd.me. So check those out. And you can also hear my other podcast, grumpy old geeks, over at gog.com or your podcast player of choice. Nice. All right. So this show, So, co-produced as always with Jen Harbinger, show notes for the episode by Robert Fogarty. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at Jordanharbinger.com. Keep them concise if you can. It does help us answer your question on the air. Share the show with those you love and those you don't. Lots more in the pipeline.

Very excited to bring it to you. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format.

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