The Jordan Harbinger Show - 209: How to Trick Your Teenager into Following Good Advice | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

You'd love for your teenager to listen to this show and learn some life advice by proxy instead of having to endure it in real time like you did, but it seems unlikely. Why are teenagers so stubbornly opposed to parental wisdom? We can't say for sure, but we do have some tricks for making them follow good advice against their own bratty proclivities. And in case you didn't already know it, 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! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/209 On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: When your main squeeze is giving you the turd degree for having one crappy day, perhaps something else stinks about your relationship. Should you dump them? Your professor drops your final grade if you don't bring a doctor's note for absences, but doesn't suffer consequences when they miss a class. Should you bring up this double standard? Your significant other failed classes early in school thanks to social anxiety, but has since improved. Is it dishonest to prop up a low GPA on a resume by specifying the higher GPA of their major? How do you impart what you've learned from this show to your teenager, who is unlikely to listen to the show directly? Is it worth cultivating one-sided friendship with people who seem only interested in talking about themselves and their problems? Life Pro Tip: It might seem common knowledge, but make proper backups of all your data — not once a year but at least once a month. Recommendations of the Week: Business of Being Born and Good Fortune A quick shoutout to Jackie Jones! 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! Find out what “Good Game” really means from a trio who's taken the sports business by storm: Rick Fox, Jace Hall,...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 fascinating guests. And this week we had Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and myself, hosting the commencement episode of his podcast, Masters of Scale. We dissected clips of wisdom from Daniel Eck, founder of Spotify, Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo, as well as loads of others, including Reid Hoffman himself. It was a two-part episode that will go down as one of the most indebted. interviews Reid Hoffman has ever done. I also write every so often on the blog, the latest post is about how to use embarrassment to your advantage. It's not just take a lesson every time you get embarrassed. I have real tactics for what embarrassment is, the function, the positive results that can come from it. The negative results are pretty clear in how we can reframe and use embarrassment to our advantage, whether it's something small or whether it's something fairly serious. And that's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash articles. So make sure you've had a look and a little to everything we've created for you this week.

Of course, our primary mission on the show here, we always want to pass along our guests' insights and experiences and our insights and experiences along to you. 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 Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Try to keep them concise if you can.

It does increase the chance your question will get answered on the air. And we do love hearing from you. We've had some really fun questions recently, and this week is no exception. for me man jason i'm getting ready for this baby coming in coming in hot oh my god coming through lady with a baby that's right that's right coming in hot we're making sure we have everything in order we're trying to schedule all kinds of crap around it and just in time it's like hey jordan are

frank the other day goes hey sir are you kind of like staying home now like winding your travel schedule down so you can be with jenn and i was like dude are you kidding me it's this week LA, next week, New York, the week after that, Boston. So winding down my travel schedule, yes, but if I wind down, you mean going on all the trips I would normally go on in the next four months in one month, then yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm winding it down. Winding it down by ramping it up.

That's how you do it. Right. Packing it the hell in hard. But we're really excited. I mean, we're having a baby. It's going to be amazing. And, you know, my parenting so far, has been me getting used to a cat, which I will say is pretty good practice for not caring about

your stuff as much. When we first got cats, I was like, this cat is in my food and it's on my table and it knocked something off and it ruined the windscreen on a microphone. By the way, do not keep a microphone windscreen around a feline. There's nothing they like more than a boom arm with a little fuzzy foam thing on it. And the big panels that you used to have in your studio in San Francisco. I remember Momo would always be jumping up and climbing on those. And when I came over the first time, I saw the claw marks. I'm like, oh, my God, completely shredded. They're all here in the studio, and a lot of them have, like, brown cat butt stains on them and, like, shredded.

There's, like, shredded, pill, they're all pilled, you know, from cats jumping up and being like, I bet I can hang on that for a minute. Yeah, spider cat. Climb up it. Yeah. Yeah. So, look, I want to get to the doozies here, because the first question today, look, by the way, the first question, not safe for work. So if you're listening to this at work, you got young, young kids in the car. You might want to go ahead and turn it off.

I would say this is a 12 and up question. It's not like horrifying, but it's definitely not something you want blasting out of the conference room. Yeah, definitely. There are a few S bombs in here, as they say. Yeah, yeah, but they're used literally, so it's fine, right? All right, Jason, what do we got here? Hi, guys. I've been with my boyfriend for just over a year now.

I live alone and he frequently spends the night at my apartment. apartment. We have a healthy trusting relationship. However, I'm aware that his previous girlfriend cheated on him. Prior to this week, he has never expressed any lack of trust in me. My apartment is fairly old, so it takes a while for the water to heat up. Sometimes while I'm waiting for the shower to get warm, I take a dump. I don't want to flush the toilet and screw up the water temperature, so I'll take a dump, shower, and then flush the toilet. A few days ago, I spent longer than usual washing my hair and just... Let me back it up. That logic completely checks out, by the way. Absolutely.

The only thing, it's funny, because when Jen and I were going through this, she's like, I'm angry. I was like, why? She goes, you know how much water she's wasting? I'm like, you know, you're right, because you know she's not like, oh, I bet it's hot now. I better finish up. She's like, it's just running.

I'm not done yet. Gallons of wasted water. Then Jen's like, I can't let it go. She's wasting so much water. I feel you, though. All right, continue. But maybe she has her poo's time just right. She knows it takes like two and a half minutes to get it up to speed.

And then she's just like, I got about two and a half. minutes in the tank. Let me just, uh, let's, let's, you know, release the crack in here. All right. Continue. A few days ago, I spent longer than usual washing my hair and just completely forgot to flush when I left the shower. I know, I'm a wild animal who deserves to live in a barn. Let's move on. Anyway, my boyfriend came over later that night. He went to the bathroom, stayed in there for a few minutes without making any sound, and then emerged with a completely dead look on his face. He asked, whose shit was in the toilet? I was a,

mortified and explained that I'd forgotten to flush. But he just kept asking, whose shit it was, to the point where it became obvious he wasn't trying to tease me. Then he said, what guy shit in your toilet? By now, I was completely bewildered. I told him again that I'd just forgotten to flush. He replied that I was a liar and that no girl could take a dump that big. How do you react to that?

Like, oh, oops. Oh, continue. Chipotle. Do it. The only, yeah, the answer is Chipotle. He was completely serious. I couldn't believe I was in this conversation. I couldn't even get upset or angry.

I just said like an idiot, but it's my shit. My boyfriend walked out without another word and ignored my calls for the rest of the night. The next day, he agreed to meet for lunch. He apologized for leaving in such a rush, but said he still couldn't believe me when I said it was my own poo. He said he was willing to give me a second chance if I could prove it. I didn't really understand what he was getting at, so he elaborated that he he wanted to see me take a dump in front of him to prove that my shit actually looked like that. That was yesterday. I have absolutely no idea what to do. I guess we could compromise and I could

take a dump in the toilet and then call him in to see it, but this is just too weird and bizarre and gross. I seriously love this man, but I'm honestly at a complete loss. He's made it clear that this is a deal breaker for him. So my boyfriend is going to dump me if I don't take a dump. How on earth do I handle this? Thanks. Stuck in a crappy situation. Oh my gosh. Okay. Best question ever. Serious though. Yes, amazing, but also, yes, we're juvenile and we're 12 years old and this isn't the normal format of the show. However, this is a real problem because I get where this guy's heads at. You know, I understand what he's thinking, but it's coming from a place of deep insecurity. And other people who had opinions on this were like, oh, just do it. You're going to. You're going

You know, you're living together soon enough if your relationship goes that route or eventually it'll happen. That sort of avoids the real issue here. Literally one of the weirdest questions I've ever gotten. But the larger issue is that he is insecure. He doesn't trust you. He's insecure about the relationship. Yes, it could have been triggered by something else, but it would have gotten, this would

have gotten triggered eventually, most likely, by something. Right? He didn't just look at that and go, oh, she's cheating on me. Right? There was some other, this has been brewing for a while. No pun intended. No pun intended. He had to have been thinking about this for a while with other, something else or a past

relationship has triggered this. You need to address that. That is the real issue here. He's in his head about this. He's ruminating on this. He's thinking about this a lot, especially now. And he's just thinking, oh, this person did this on purpose to sort of mark their territory. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that's probably.

probably going through this poor guy's head. Even if you do set this up and go in front of him, he literally won't see the proof. I said proof required to placate him, right? He's going to, there's all these studies that show, in fact, I think we did a show that mentioned this, where police officers, for example, will actually, quote unquote, see a weapon in someone's hand if they expect one to be there. And these are cognitive biases and cognitive phenomena that are pretty commonplace where we see in large part what we expect to see, confirmation bias, things like that. So even if you sit down and you go to the bathroom right in front of him and he looks in there, he's going to go, and you could measure the dang thing, right?

Which I, let's not even go down that road. You could do that and he'd go, well, the other one, you know, was bigger and this is different. He's not going to be able to see what you want him to see. He will imagine that this is a different scenario. there's still something going on, he will probably then move the goalposts and say, well, okay, this, but then there's this other clue where, like, I came in the other day and there was a sock on the floor that wasn't yours and wasn't mine and it was a man's, and you'll go, well, I went to the laundromat and it ended up in my basket because it was in the washer or the dryer and he's

going to go, no, there was a guy here and he left a sock. I mean, you know, there's going to be something else later. So you've got to address the root cause of this. You can do both. You can address the the initial occurrence, but you really need to address the root of the issue here. Or this problem will keep popping up like it now, just next. Next. Yeah, I'm just wondering how she, you know, if he's going to have to be in the bathroom with her. Otherwise, you know, there's no chain of custody, as it were. That's right.

Yeah, yeah, right. Like what, then she might have a bag of poo under the sink that she just pulls out like a drug test, plops it in there and goes, huh, huh, plop. Here you go, Joe. Right. But you literally, yeah, you literally can't even go, hey, come over, you know, you got to see this. Here's a phone. Like, you can't even do that because he will then go, oh, well, you planned this or the guy just left and you took a photo and sent it to me. I mean, you can spend all day doing this kind of ridiculous gymnastics and it's not going to help because you have an underlying issue. Okay. Well, thank you very much for the best question we've ever had. Yeah, unbelievable. All right. Next up.

Hello, Jordan and Jason. I'm currently in grad school, and I'm taking a course with a professor who's very stringent on attendance. Over the course of the semester, I've missed class twice. The same amount she's missed, by the way, yet she requires documentation from a doctor in order to excuse my absences, or it will drop my final grade by a whole letter. I have provided her with the required notes for both days. I was not ill, but still managed to get a doctor's note.

She's not excused the absences and has never replied to my email. frankly, I find her stance on this to be childish and hypocritical, given that both times that she's misclass, she has not provided any reason, whereas her doctor's note. Anyway, because my job provides tuition reimbursement for the course, on the condition that I get no less than a B in the class, I need to ensure that the absences do not drop my grade. Would you suggest emailing her again and pointing out her double standard regarding attendance,

or should I just wait and raise the issue with the department? I cannot believe this is actually an issue in an adult setting. sincerely done with double standards. This actually reminds me of Scott Galloway, who was on the show last week, his response that went viral. This is an email from, I think, 2013, and this kid had written, you know, I can't believe you're angry with me or you locked me out. I can't remember what it was, but this kid came to class late and then wrote a scathing note to Scott Galloway because he basically got dropped or kicked out of the class or something like that. And the kid wrote, well, here's why I was late. I was auditing different classes. and Scott Galloway wrote this email response to him

that got something like a million views on Business Insider and we'll link to it in the show notes here. But essentially, it was a rationalization of why the kid was late. And I think that your approach here, I know you want to point out the double standard and be like, you don't even follow your own advice. You need a softer and more respectful approach

because what I'm seeing here is an ego issue most likely from the professor. and there's probably more to it, right? She's just sick of people taking liberty. She's sick of people not showing up. Maybe she doesn't like you for another reason. But either way, if she's not replying to your email, she hasn't excused the absences in the face of a doctor's note,

she doesn't like you. She doesn't like you. She doesn't like you. You've got to take a softer tact. You've got to be more respectful. If you try to go head to head, you're going to butt egos against a professor who's got more power than you. Not a good situation to be in, even if you're right.

Here's the thing. Schools are run like corporations most of the time. Most schools are, at least the ones I went to. And students, you're the clients. You're the customer. You have some power. In real life, of course, having some humility will be crucial in order to get along with your peers and succeed. But I wanted to see what Scott had to say about this. And I took this from his piece here. And Scott Galloway says, getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a life, work balance. These are all really hard. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility, these are all relatively easy. Get the easy stuff right. In and of themselves, they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential, which by virtue of you being admitted to Stern, that Stern is the school, you must have in spades. It's not too late. So what he means here is get the easy stuff right. That's what he's talking about in this letter. He says, look, getting to class on time, being respectful, respecting the institution,

the class, whatever, that stuff is easy. There's all kinds of stuff that's hard in your life. This is not one of those things. So don't create a conflict or create a battle here that doesn't need to be created. Now, that said, this professor does sound like she's on a power trip. It's kind of weird. Who cares? So someone missed two classes and then they got a doctor's note?

Just let it go. Who gives a crap? That's where I would stand on this as a teacher. It's just whatever. It's not a big deal. Something else is going on here. I would be very respectful and humble about what that might be. If she still lowers your grade after you speak with her, after you try to get a hold of her, if she won't speak with you, yeah, you have no choice but to go to somebody else in the department, but you should be trying to get her attention and respectfully have a dialogue, not just go over her head. But if she still lowers your grade, then what I would do is absolutely go to the department. Let them know you are playing by the rules, set forth by the professional. and that you literally now may have to leave the institution and not finish your program because your company won't reimburse tuition if your grade is lower than a B.

And since she lowered your grade in a way that is unfair because you did play by the rules, they will lose all of your company's money forever and you will not graduate because they want you to graduate. Schools want to keep you there, real bad. Not only does it look bad because they have a lower percentage of graduation. They want your money. They want your money much more than they want to let this professor play games with her students or be cocky or arrogant. They want that much more than they want her to feel good for five minutes about the power that she has over you.

They might not care about your grade, but they sure care about your cash. You can bet on that. You can take that to the bank and you can take it to the regents. What I would do is make an official complaint, with the regents, not just her department. Her department, she could be the leader of that. And the department goes, hey, boss, what should we do about this person complaining about you?

And she goes, light it on fire and throw it out the window. But if you go to somebody above the professor and they say, what is this about you screwing with your students who have doctor's notes, let it go. What is your problem? We're gonna lose this student because you need to be right. There's always a chance and a good chance that professors who do this, they do this with a lot of stuff.

Right? You're not the only student that she's done this to. You're not the first person who's going to complain. And so if there's a track record of her being difficult, somebody over her head might see this. Somebody at the, what is it called Jason, like the registrar's office or something? There might be somebody at the registrar's office. Yeah, yeah. Who just goes, oh, Diane, Professor Diane over in the humanities. Again, okay, we're just going to add this to the pile of grades that need to be changed because she decided to. screw with somebody or like pretended she didn't see their email in time even though we have a print out. You know, there were professors like that at the University of Michigan who did stupid stuff like that where they'd say, come to me in confidence if you have any problem with your project. And I remember I went into my Spanish class and I said, I'm the only one who did any work on this group project. And it was real obvious. I had all the files. I had all the versioning from everything that we created and the other students. They didn't present at all. I did all the talking and then she goes oh well I'm still lowering your grade because you didn't finish your

presentation and I go yeah you took way too long and half the class never even got to go up and talk and she goes oh well you should have brought printed handouts of all your slides and it's like what what are you talking about this doesn't even make sense so she lowered our grade by a whole letter and I was like all right and then when I went in to say to complain about that and to complain that I was the only one who did work she called the other students or emailed them and was like Jordan said you didn't do any work. I'm lowering your grade. So I got all this harassment from these people that I worked with.

So I complained to her and she was like, I don't see anything wrong with what I did. Just a total idiot. And then I went to the head of the Spanish department and they were like, ah, yes, okay. And I went, what's going to be done about this? I need a good grade on this. And this is BS. And they were like, nothing, nothing, nothing because it's the Spanish department and we would rather go eat food and like have a margarita and laugh because this is a language apartment at a big school. Nobody cares. None of us have tenure. We don't really care. So then I finally

went to the languages, something administrative level. Thankfully, I had a connection through my German professor who was sort of higher up in the food chain. And she was like, yeah, that's not cool. And I said, yeah, I need a hearing about this. They just canceled the hearing and changed my grade. They didn't even want to go and do the hearing because they just knew they had nothing. Oh, yeah, we changed your grade because we made up new rules on the spot. And then also we didn't keep your information confidential. Like, nobody wants to get that on a written record of a meeting. So they just changed my grade.

It was just so stupid. And I did end up going through with a complaint because I was like, don't hire this professor full time. She's an idiot. I don't want other students to have to deal with this BS. She is a moron. And normally I don't bother with that, but you're doing everyone a favor by getting someone like this on record as being difficult and making people's lives harder.

You don't need this from administration in a school. You're a student. they should be helping you. And I get why she has a strict attendance policy. That might help you learn some of the small things. But to screw with you on this, just to sort of mess with you on this, ridiculous. Your adults, if you miss class, it's on you, you misinformation. That's the punishment, not some arbitrary penalty by a professor who can't take her own advice.

So go the polite route, go the humility, go the humble route. And then if that doesn't work, then and only then do you go over her head. always stay humble and you always stay comfortable with this because what your argument should be later is look even if you don't change my grade you need to make sure that this isn't happening again to someone else and also you're going to lose me from your school because i can't afford to pay for this tuition that's what you need that they need to be going oh this isn't just a be and the kid feels bad this is we're losing a student that changes the equation for them And once that's really clear to a person in power who cares more about you as a successful student and the money that the university gets from your company versus just being right, somebody high enough on the food chain will care about this.

This professor has a chip on our shoulder. You just need to get around it. And you ever know. Could have caught her on a bad day. You could catch her in the office and she could go, oh, yeah, sorry, I meant to do that. And then you're done. And you're good. So always, always start out.

Relaxed, comfortable, cool, and humble. and that will go a long way, even if she is wrong. And step one, make sure she got the email. Yeah, make sure she saw the email. Seriously, go speak to her in person and just super politely go, hey, I know you're really busy and you probably don't have time to go back and forth on this. I just wanted to make sure that you got my doctor's notes and that my grade will reflect that because my company won't reimburse the tuition if the grade is low enough and I can't

continue with the program. She might even go, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that. Okay, well, look, don't do this again, okay? and then you're done. You don't know. This could be so easy to get handled. Or she could dig her heels in, and then, yeah, you go to battle on it.

But you should win on this one. This is ridiculous. 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 jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

And if you'd be so kind, please 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 jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe. Now let's hear some more of your questions here on Feedback Friday. All right, next up. Hey, guys, I've been supporting me and my fiancé while he finishes his bachelor's degree.

It will be four years by the time he graduates, which is in one year. In his first few semesters, he had some major social anxiety issues and got some Ds and Fs. He's since switched majors, sought therapy for anxiety, and highly improved his grades. The past few semesters, he's gotten A's and B's in a rare C. Unfortunately, those Ds and Fs are really weighing down his GPA. Even if he got all A's for his last year, his GPA will still be 2.7. In his field of actuarial science, he really needs to have at least a 3.0 to even get an interview in most places. Now he's looking into getting his master's degree, but only to get a higher GPA.

In his field, he has no better chance of getting a job or higher pay by having a master's, but he thinks he'll not even get an interview with this low GPA, so this is the only option. It was suggested to us that he could put actuarial GPA on a resume, which would be much higher like a 3.4 or 3.7. And then, of course, disclose it with HR and the interviewer. But is this dishonest? I really don't want him to waste time, money, and energy getting a master's degree if there's another way around this GPA issue.

Plus, I'm paying most of the bills while he's in school, so that means another two years of paycheck to paycheck and not being able to save money. Is it unethical to put actuarial GPA on a resume and then explain the situation, in an interview. By the way, we've already checked and he cannot retake the classes he got a bad grade in because he needs to declare the other major. Also, if he were to take some easy classes just to fluff up his GPA, he would end up taking at least two years to get him up to that 3.0, which in that time, he might as well have just done the masters. Sincerely, past mistakes holding us back. Well, for me, there's always an alarm bill going off when somebody writes on behalf

of their significant other. Jason, I don't know, whenever I see, hey, my husband this, or my girlfriend that I'm always a little skeptical, not of the, not of the questioner, but I just wonder, is the other person committed? Are they owning this also? Sure, if you're writing because you're having a problem with your significant other, that's one thing. But if you're writing on behalf of your significant other, why didn't they write to me? Well, I think past mistakes is just kind of at the end of a rope with having to pay for everything. And she's just like, is there a way around this that we don't have to spend another two years of me working my ass off to pay for this guy to go to school because he had a really rough first, you know, year or two? It seems to me that she's just looking for answers so she doesn't have to pay for another two years of this Yahoo to go through school. Yeah, I get it, though. I mean, she's supporting him. Maybe he doesn't listen to the show. Maybe that's why I just want to make sure that we've all got buy-in on this.

Maybe he's not fully committed to making this happen. But it sounds like in this case he is, but I'm always just a little skeptical when it's like, oh, yeah, my husband wants to do this, but we can't. It's like, well, where's he? Well, it seems like this guy, I mean, he went to the. therapy, he turns his grades around and is actually making the effort. He just has this screw up over his head from when he just came into school and was unable to perform because of his social anxiety. But it sounds like he's done the right thing by getting therapy, getting his grades up, changing his major, so he was in something that he wanted to do. So it sounds like he's done the work.

Yeah, yeah. The screw up was at the beginning, so they have to kind of deal with that side of it now. And I understand where she's coming from. So I don't know if he doesn't have buying, because it sounds like he does from the work that he wants to do and spending another two years in school to get his GPA up is actually a lot of work to actually get the job that he wants in the career in the field that he wants yeah good point that's that's a good point so i think in this case maybe i just got a little triggered by because someone wrote in on behalf of someone else i often have this thought when i see somebody writing in about their significant other this case you're probably right so with respect to your question remember we're going to have to work our generation we're going to have to work in our career for

like 50 years. I'm not exaggerating, Jason, I think you and I, I mean, unless things really change with AI or something, we're going to have to work for like 50 years. Your career is going to last a half century. None of us are getting pensions also, I assume. So make sure. I know, I'm resigned to work until I'm dead. It's like, yeah, okay, stop record, upload the show, put me in the box, take me to the cemetery. That's it. I'm done. Exactly. Yeah, I feel. I feel like that's the case for a lot of this. I would make sure that you are comfortable and that he is comfortable with this little fib of the GPA for the next half century. It might be fine. It might be fine. But think about this long term, and I mean very long term. Don't think about

this in the time frame of your new job. And once the interview is over, you take a deep breath, you exhale, and this is all behind you. We don't know the types of things they'll be doing with our schooling and transcripts in the future. I have a feeling that there's going to be HR software that does background checks. There already is this software, by the way, that does background checks. They do like criminal background checks, credit checks. Why not add in schooling and transcripts at some point if they don't already have that? Oh, yeah, let's just go ahead and, you know, we have a way to sort of privately download transcripts

directly from schools so we don't have to believe resumes anymore. and it's just a cursory check. And, you know, if you're off by point one, no big deal, that kind of thing. That could just be a random checkmark. HR could never see your grades unless there's a discrepancy. But what happens in five years when they get this software, 10 years when they get this software at your job and they run everybody through and they say, screw it, we'll background check all your current employees for free.

When you install us, when you take a three-year contract with us, that kind of thing. And your resume shows up as off by a whole point. you know, that's a big problem. And this is not something I'm just imagining. This is very, very possible and very likely, in my opinion. You just don't know what your company is going to be doing in the future. And then what? You go to another company and you have to keep that on your resume or you change it,

but then you've got experience and they're going, huh, they took you at this bank or this insurance company with that GPA? That's weird. So are you going to leave the fib on there and then do that every time you switch jobs? I mean, what are you going to do? people have been fired from jobs most notably academic institutions i'll caveat it with that after like 20 30 years right before retirement because they lied on their resume now the example i'm thinking of the case i'm thinking of was a woman at a university in an in an admin position who had lied about

having a degree she didn't even have i remember that story yeah that was that was kind of heartbreaking yeah yeah i mean she was beloved she worked there for like 25 30 years she was about to retire i think she was going to retire in like a year or two. Yeah, it was really close and then she just got busted for that. Something happened. Yeah, I don't even remember how they did it. I think they were, I really don't even know how they caught her. Yeah, that was a tough one. It was just like, you know, they were just doing like regular checks to get their records up to date and it just came through, like somebody made a phone call. Like, oh, we just want to check on this and it came back. No, she never attended this school. And it's like, oh, no. Yeah. Yeah, like, we can't find,

they can't find it. Oh, that's so weird. She must have gone there, didn't go there. And then they had to fire her because she worked for a public institution. You know, what happens when you're working for an NGO or a big company and they have to regulatory, whatever, says they got a background check everyone and you come back as somebody who can't be trusted? You know, that's not good. So keep this in mind and think long, long term, not just we'll get past it once we get our interview or our first job. Also, this isn't just any job. This is actually, science. This is literally the science of using accurate statistics and numbers to get a result. Yeah. True that. True that. Right. Like somehow using that creative math to get a different GPA.

It's either genius or very dangerous. And I have a feeling a potential employer will go, wow, that's really creative. And you did plenty of fancy math to get that. But you did it to deceive us. And we're not sure how we feel about that. So it depends on the firm that he's going to interview for. If he goes to a firm that's looking for that kind of quote unquote creative accounting, he might find a nice new home there. Yeah, and I don't think that they are. I think they're looking for the most accurate result because it's insurance, right? It's actuarial science. So actuarial science, for those that don't know, these are, there's different things you do with it, but largely it's, okay, this person wants insurance. What's the probability that this random thing is going to happen? And then the actuary

says, okay, well, they're 38 years old and they've had this record. and they're this ethnicity and they're this nationality and they have this many years of experience and they work for this company in this region and this weather pattern so the probability is 0.001 okay we can have a premium that works like this and we'll cover it up to this amount that's what they're looking for and if you get if the actuary gets it wrong with this complicated math it can be very costly for the insurance company very very costly so they want accurate that's why they hire people who are math geniuses here. So if you do use this creative GPA, make sure you explain what this is by noting very candidly that you changed majors and your grades in actuarial science are three, four, but your

other grades are a two, whatever. Just be as honest as possible if you're going to pull this little stunt. You know, you put that actuarial GPA on there, put a little asterisk, and then at the bottom of the resume, you can say based on actuary science major courses. you know and then when you go in for the interview and they're like what's that what's that all about you can go yeah i did really bad when i took anthropology and i had some family stuff going on i would not mention the social anxiety because if your employer does not know what this is they might not believe you they might think that you're unwell that you have mental health issues that your reliability you don't need to disadvantage yourself even further over here you can just say in your old major

you had some family stuff go down, some personal stuff go down, whatever. That derailed the semester because you had to focus on other things and that personal stuff has concluded. There's no need to elaborate. I don't even know if legally they can ask about that. So I would not try to hide it. I would try to be honest about it, but I wouldn't go into too much detail and I would say,

look, when I study actuarial stuff, I got all these great grades. When I studied all this other stuff in a major that I wasn't really interested in, I did poorly. and it was because I wasn't as interested and because I had some personal stuff happen. None of that reflects on my actuarial stuff. And they might give you a shot. You don't know.

Hopefully they do. Going, in the end of the day, going for a master's, as opposed to outright BSing your way in, is probably a better idea. If you run into trouble, I would try to get interviews first using the above strategy

and just make sure that you're honest and forthcoming about it so that it doesn't bite you in the ass later on the line. Remember, think about a 50, year time span, not a five-month time span. 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, and we really mean that.

So to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard and check out our sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Now back to the show for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right, next up. Hi, guys. How do I impart some of the knowledge I've learned the past few years from your show to my teenage son? of 17. He's not likely to listen to the podcast himself, so wondering if you have any advice on how to encourage your kids to learn these valuable life lessons earlier? Or do we let them stumble along

and make the same mistakes we did when we were younger? Signed, do as I say, not as I do. 17's tough. Yeah, 17 is tough. If he won't listen, man, he's got to make his own mistakes. I remember when I knew everything, glorious times indeed. I don't know if you had this in your high school counselor's office, but the poster was in mine. It said, move out, leave home while you still know everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. And I get it now. Yeah. I remember thinking like, huh, ha, ha, stupid adults, whatever, you don't realize. And now I'm like, oh, my God, kids, I get questions from kids and they, the premise is always, I know I'm going to have a hundred million dollars and have private jets and fly all over the play. And I'm like, you won't even want that

in five years, man. you will not care about that in 10 years at all. You'll laugh at yourself. And it's just you can't convince him because the time span of a 17-year-old life is so short. You don't have an accurate representation of how your views change. Because your views change from liking GI Joe Beanie Baby, whatever, My Little Pony, whatever it is, cartoons, to, oh, I'm an adult now. You don't see that being an adult is also just as malleable as when you were going through the different phases of life as an adolescent and a child. You don't realize it.

You just think, oh, I'm grown up now. And when I was 17, I did not have the level of maturity to be able to learn that much from other people. I did a little, but not a ton. And I certainly didn't have the level of maturity to go, you know what, I should start downloading podcast and learning from all these adults. I listened to some self-help tapes, mostly out of boredom. and because my dad had them in the car and they were unused. I think it takes some stumbling along to know what you don't know and to be open to feedback.

That's why it's really hard to sell personal growth or learning products to people in their early 20s generally. It's really hard because not only do they not necessarily have the economic ability to purchase a lot of those things, they don't feel like they need them. I remember when we were teaching social skills and dating stuff like 10 years ago. I remember guys being like, I don't need this. You know, I'm in a frat. Everything is awesome.

And then one of the most common customer bases we had were guys that graduated from college and went. So it turns out, I can't just invite 50 drunk girls over to my house every Friday and try to hook up with them and then dot, dot, dot, girlfriend. And I'll go, yeah, rude awakening, huh? Yeah, seriously. How's that cubicle life? Remember before when you taught and told me that what we taught was stupid and you didn't need it and you're awesome? And how's that cubicle life going where you go home and you're alone? You know, it's rough.

It's a rough realization. Of course, you can also listen to the show while your son is in the car with you and you can ask him what he thinks about certain points that we're making. And he'll probably just say, I don't know. I'm on Instagram. Dad, you're boring. You never know. You never know. He might be sort of silently listening and going, huh, there's something to be said about that.

And you can just continue to play it and talk about things you find interesting. I have a feeling he might resist you just because you're his dad. It doesn't even mean he's not interested. It really doesn't. I remember very clearly my parents showing me things that I thought were really interesting and not wanting to give them the satisfaction. Did you do that, Jason? Oh, yeah, yeah.

This is where some reverse psychology might come into play. He's like start playing the show around the house and go, oh, you wouldn't want to listen to this. It's adult stuff. And maybe then he'll kind of come around because anything my dad said that I should do, immediately and instantly I was against it. It doesn't matter what it was. Had no bearing on what it was. If my dad said, you'll like this, I hated it immediately and irregardless of what it was, period.

Because 17, I wanted to ride my skateboard and try and find some boobs. That was it. Yep, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, it's, uh, It wasn't something I was interested. I remember so many things like this when I was a kid. I remember not wanting to do any work around the house, not wanting to help out with anything.

And then I'd go to my friend's house or something and the parents would go, hey, can you guys come out here and help bag these leaves? And I'd run out, like, be super helpful and work for like three hours dripping sweat, you know? And they'd be like, I remember my parents would come pick me up or something. And they'd go, man, your son's a real workhorse. And my mom or dad would just laugh because they're like, What are you talking about? Workhorse, you're insane.

Yeah, he just wants to sit in his room and play video games. Yeah, he's asleep when he's not watching TV. What are you talking about? He's a workhorse. And then I come out like dripping sweat and drinking a bottle of Fago or something. And like, my mom's like, what did you do? And I'm like, ah, we dug a ditch and bagged leaves and then chopped down a tree with my bare hands and this hatchet that I crafted. It's like, what are you talking about?

What are you doing? Who are you? So yeah, this is a thing that you're going to have to just get used to. Maybe have a friend of yours who he respects bring it up instead. By the way, I wanted to clarify something. The Scott Galloway episode, Scott said something like, if you want to be economically successful, you have to realize that in your 20s and 30s,

you might not have work-life balance. And I think what he said was more along the lines of, if you do want balance in your 20s and 30s, you have to get comfortable with the idea that you may not be academically, sorry, economically successful later on in life or as economically successful as some of your peers. And a lot of people wrote in and they're like, this is so depressing, I'm 32 and I don't have it all figured out yet. Or, oh my God, I'm not wealthy and I'm 36.

Is this ever going to happen for me? That's not what he meant. He didn't mean you have to have it figured out by the time you're 40 or that you have to be getting wealthy in your 30s already. What he meant was you have to be busting your ass in your 20s and 30s. Now, that could be you're in HR and you're pulling crazy hours in your 20s and 30s. Or in your 20s you worked in construction and you worked 60 hour work weeks and you learned the business and you spent a lot of time not having fun and learning the ropes.

And then in your 30s you were managing stuff and you worked a bunch and you work in your way up the ladder. You don't have to have the trappings of success by 40. You have to put in the groundwork to get the skills. You've got to be skill stacking, which we've talked about on the show. You have to be working your way up the ladder. You have to be generating a network of people that will help you later, getting mentorship, helping other people pulling them up to generate connections and relationships. That's what you need to be doing in your 20s and 30s.

And that's not something that can be done working 35 hours a week, calling in on a lot of Fridays to go off with your friends, taking all your vacation time. It can happen that way, but it's unlikely. What's more likely to happen is everybody who busted their ass and was obsessed with work. By the time they hit their 40s and they start to get that balance, they're just so much more valuable to their company by that time. That's what he means. He doesn't mean if you don't have a jet by 38, you're screwed.

That's not what he meant. So I just wanted to sort of placate everyone here because I got a lot of sort of scared emails and tweets and Instagram messages from people that just thought, dang, I'm screwed. You know, I'm, I don't have my own business with 700 employees. So I'm, I'm, is it really over? I don't like this. And that's an uncomfortable thought. And that's not at all what Scott meant. And I know that to be true because I asked him about it myself.

All right, next up. Hi, team. It's important me for me not to say Triple J or any sort of corny intro. Can you offer any advice on how to deal with one-sided friendships? There are certain, let's call it narcissistic friends who seem only interested in talking about themselves and their problems. It's in my nature to provide thoughtful, objective feedback. But anytime I bring up my own problems or issues, they have nothing to say back and mostly make it about them. It's to the point where I'm becoming resentful and honestly don't

enjoy talking to them. I think you can understand the details and I imagine this question resonates with the bulk of your listeners who surely all know this type of person. Thanks, Triple J, couldn't help myself. Sincerely, tired of talking to myself. My thoughts on this are that, and I've had so many one-sided friendships. I get it. I don't know if they're narcissists. Maybe they're a little self-centered. I get it. Some friends just do not have the capacity to help other people because they're so wrapped up in their own issues. Is that narcissism? Maybe. I don't necessarily think it's narcissism, though. It doesn't mean that they're bad people or that they are completely self-absorbed. I think some people just don't have the bandwidth because they're only

talking and thinking about themselves. So if you're, think of it this way. Imagine you're the type of person that's really wildly insecure about everything in their life. You think my work isn't working out. My relationship life isn't working out. My career prospects are grim. And someone says, hey, I really need your advice on my, should I move to this other

part of town? They just, if they're really anxious, they just don't even have the processing power to kind of go and think, oh, you know, let me think about this problem this other person has. They are completely self-absorbed, and that could be a negative quality, but it can also just be a function of their anxiety. Some people just can't do it. And there are plenty of better folks to speak with out there. You just can't bang your head against the wall with people who just make everything about themselves. You can't do it. They literally don't even have the ability to put themselves in your shoes because they're so firmly locked in their own problems. It doesn't

make them bad friends. They can be fun. They can be interesting. They can be smart people. It just means you can't really lean on them for emotional support. So I would stop leaning on them for emotional support and find other people who you can lean on. And if you're sick of them and they're not giving you anything, then just, yeah, cut them out. I mean, if they're fun and they're great, but you can't talk about certain topics with them, just stop trying to do that. You're just going to drive yourself crazy. It's a bummer to have to cut people out, but sometimes it is necessary to move on, you can't change this with them. They have to change for themselves on this. And often it's a personality trait where they're going to feel insecure no matter what. So again, my advice,

stop banging your head against the wall. You're only going to drive yourself nuts. You can't change these people. You have to either accept the way that they are and enjoy the relationship that you have with them, which is maybe they're fun to go out and have a drink with. Maybe they're fun to play sports with, but they're not good to talk about real stuff with. And maybe that's the kind of friend they are. And if you don't need those kind of friends, then make some new that's really the only thing you can do there are certain people in my life that I know I cannot count on for certain things I'm still friends with them it doesn't make them bad it just means that that is not something that they can provide and I get it this is actually a topic you and I've

talked about on the show a few times before and a lot of people that have this quote unquote syndrome are single children you know who didn't have any brothers or sisters and were just the only the only child because I think you and I both struggled with this for a long time, but we came through the other side, and a lot of people don't. Yeah. I'd be curious to find out how many of his friends that he's having problems with are actually, you know, only children. Because that is a thing that really is, it's kind of endemic to our situation.

It is a thing. Yeah, I'm an only child, and I remember for a really long time, somebody would ask me something, and I'm talking like back in college, somebody would ask me something about themselves or a problem they were having. And I just, I remember like not even, not, not listening, but thinking, no one ever asked me for anything like this because I'm around adults a lot or I'm around childhood friends we don't talk so I remember when I had real stuff and somebody shared something I was like Jesus be vulnerable with somebody I'm not doing that are you crazy or I'd go hey you know you know uh let me

tell you about this thing I'm having and then suddenly I'd realize I'm still talking and I didn't talk about I'm not even talking about their thing I'm just talking about me and I was a little self-absorbed and that's because that's how I grew up but yeah I realized after a while ooh I need to start really radically focusing on other people's stuff and helping other people. That's why we do the six minute networking stuff where it's all help other people before you worry about what's in it for you. Because for me, that was a habit that I had to form by brute force.

This is not something that came naturally where I went, you know, I'm going to help lift other people up and get what they want so that they, no way. It was all about me for my whole young life. It was. And you're right. I had to really manually make this adjustment.

And it wasn't easy. No, it's not easy. And it took me to like what my mid-30s before I even realized what I was doing when enough people were going away. And like a few friends actually tapped me on the shoulder. It's like, dude, it's not about you. Stop it. And finally got some help and figured out what was wrong with me. But, you know, you came through it. I mean, I know we've had many nights at the bar where we've talked about this exact thing. And, you know, you can, you can bring it up in conversation if you want to like try and salvage the friendship instead of just like kicking them to the curb. Because I know the friends that came to me and said, hey, dude, you just keep an eye on this because it's a thing. And then once enough people said it to me, then I actually worked on it and fixed it. And I still find myself falling back to it every now and again. But then I catch myself and I'm like, oh shit, I'm doing that again. Stop it. Yeah. You'll notice it because it's, it's, you can catch yourself. You can audit yourself at the end of the of the night. If you find this to be something that you're doing, right, you can go, yeah, that was a fun conversation we had at the bar where Angela talked about

her divorce and then I talked about all my relationship problems for two and a half hours and then, oh yeah, we kind of never went back to Angela's divorce, which is why we met at the bar. Oops, I'm a dick. You know, like, I better call my friends and go, hey, I realize I made that about me. Do I do that a lot? Because I should try to change that and I'm not used to doing that. And I really value your guys' friendship. And I would love it if y'all would sort of let me know with a polite tap on the shoulder when I do that.

because I want to be there for you guys, and I'm not used to that. It's a habit I need to build, and trust me, I really would love to work on this. So thank you. And people will be like, dang, he finally realized he only talks about himself. Or they'll go, you know, I didn't really notice that.

I think you're being too hard on yourself. And then you go, oh, okay, thanks. I had my college roommates who are also just children tell me this, and I remember being really defensive about it in the moment. And then years later, when I saw them, I remember going, yeah, that was me. And they're like, oh my God, you knew? Oh, and I'm like, yeah, I know now.

And they're like, oh, my God, it was insufferable. We love you, man, but Jesus, man, it was awful. Yeah. It was awful. And I go, I know, I was really insecure. And they're like, yeah, we all were. We all were. Don't worry about it.

And it's fine. But it'd be great to solve that problem as an adult or in the moment rather than later on, you know. All right, life pro tip of the week. Jason, you turned me onto this because I think you had said like, hey, when did you back up your computer last? And I was like, uh, I don't know. never yeah we've been round and round over the years about this i'm like you don't have the show that we just recorded last week you're like no i had a crash and i'm just like what what what yeah and that that's been years because i set up time capsule but then it was like what happens if that that backup

doesn't work or how quickly can you restore from a time capsule backup if you're not around and i was like oh that's that's ugly so i got carbon copy cloner and we'll link to it this is your recommendation right I think you told me about this program. Yeah, absolutely. It's a Mac only program, though. So this is for the Macs. Ah, okay. So there are plenty of other opportunities.

I don't know what they have for Windows. I'm sure there are some easy ones. But it does surprise me. People forget to make backups of their data, or they just don't do it. I just have a calendar entry that says first of the month and the 14th or the 15th of the month. Just plug it in, and carbon copy cloner runs in the background. A hard drive crash can happen anytime.

It doesn't have to be your old ass junkie computer. You can have a defective solid state or hard drive in your laptop easily. You can drop your stuff and it breaks. You can lose the computer. It can get stolen. Cloud-based storage, so cheap now. For a couple bucks, you've got tons of gigs of storage. Save yourself a lot of trouble and backup your data.

But don't just do the cloud backup. Because if you lose your stuff and you've got a terabyte, you know how long that's going to take to download on a home internet connection. Oh, my God. Or ever. It could be weeks. It could just not be worth it. And even if you have an office connection, it could take forever or just fail halfway through.

So carbon copy cloner, you essentially plug it in, it runs in the background. It runs on a $80, $2 terabyte or 4 terabyte Western Digital Drive I got off Amazon. Every time before I go on a trip, I will back up my drive. That way, if I lose my laptop on a trip, I've got a copy of everything I had prior to getting on the plane. And so, of course, the hard drives at home. get home and I get a new computer, I can just plug it in and restore. But in a real pinch, someone can go in my house, grab the hard drive. It's always in the same place, in the same drawer. They can FedEx it to me if I had to buy a new MacBook on the road because, say, I'm doing a

presentation or something, or I'm doing a show. I need it. I'll go to the Apple store, buy the computer and I'll say, hey, walk into my house, go upstairs, grab the yellow hard drive that says Jordan laptop back up and shove it in an envelope and send it to me. And then I plug the thing in, and in a few hours, I've got my old computer back, essentially. It just sort of clones your drive, hence the name. Jason, you've got more data-specific stuff because you've got critical, critical stuff on your computers. I am so about to up your game right now. It's crazy.

So for the house, I have three rotating 8-terabyte hard drives. I have one that I work from. That's the workhorse. Every day I walk into the office, I plug one of them in with a secondary, and during the day, my main hard drive with carbon copy cloner, every four hours is cloned to the secondary drive. In the house, I have the third drive. Every day I swap out the secondary and third drives.

So when I come to work every day, I've got another backup of what I've just been working on in case the master dies. I have another backup, always pretty much ready to go. The worst it's going to be is 24 hours out of date. Now, some people might think that's overkill. But for what we do, we have very critical data that we need to protect because these shows cannot be replicated. It takes us a month to get a guest on and we get the recordings. and then, oh my God, the hard drive dies, that's just not the way that you do professional work. So that is my rotation with just the stuff at the house.

Now, when you go on the road, you leave that hard drive at home. I recommend having two. You keep one at the house and you keep another one with you. Those little tiny Western digital, like two terabyte drives, under $100, do a carbon copy cloner of the entire system right before you leave. Throw it in your luggage. It's not a lot of weight. and so you just have it in your luggage.

If your laptop dies while you're on the road, go to the store, pick up another one, plug it in, you're back in business, don't have to wait for FedEx, you're good to go. And also when you're on the road, always use cloud storage for your documents. Use either Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever, one drive, whatever your flavor is.

So anything new that you create while you're on the road is always going to be in the cloud. So you can restore your hard drive, get all your data back, and then pull anything that you've done recently back down from the cloud, so you do not miss a beat. That is absolutely the best way to go.

Yeah, you're right on the documents thing. That's another thing that I didn't really mention because I talked about cloning the drive. I don't have anything on the computer itself that's an important document. All the show prep, any sort of file that anyone's working with is almost always in the cloud. Now, yes, I'm going to have some images

or whatever on my computer or some notes or something that is on a maybe not cloud backed up, but nothing mission critical. There's not going to be anything mission critical on the computer itself. I just don't want to have to read download and install freaking to-doist and Chrome and Sound Studio and iTunes and Skype.

Like, I want that to go back. But no, information data files, those should all live in the cloud because you can, the internet was designed to withstand nuclear attacks. So Google Drive, I mean, with the exception of earlier this week when it went down and that was a big deal because half the internet was down,

your files aren't going anywhere. was back up in hours and nobody lost any data because they had backups they've got backups of these things literally in glaciers okay there's not just a copy in mountain view at google there's these are more secure than they could ever be your house could burn down your entire city could get hit with a warhead and you'd still have your google docs and your drop box exactly that's why you use use the cloud for anything that you need especially like if you're going to a conference you need your show prep you need your slides, all that stuff. That stuff should be accessible from any laptop that's connected to the internet. But yeah, getting your apps back up to speed and all your settings and all your

personalizations and tweaks, that's what you want that hard drive for. And on the final stage is like I've got all my photography, all my family photography, all of my personal documents. That's on another drive, which I have a set of two for. One of them I keep locally. I back it up every three months and then I ship it to my dad's house. When my dad gets my new drive, drive, he ships my old one back to me. Then in three months, I do another clone, put everything on that, ship it back to him. So in a worst case scenario, like I live in Southern California, there's a chance that I will either die in an earthquake or a fire or some other crazy, you know, just natural disaster that I want all of that stuff to be somewhere that's safe and offsite. Offsite backups are

key, but everybody has so much data nowadays. You can't do it just in the cloud on your home connection because a lot of people, especially here in the United States, we have bandwidth caps. We can't use more than one terabyte a month, but you may have five or six terabytes of family photos, especially once you get kids. Oh, my God. It's crazy. So you always want to have that offsite backup going as well. Just a rotation.

Three months is fine. You know, you're not going to really lose that much if you lose the main drive for three months, because then you'll have at least the entire span of your lifetime still backed up somewhere else. because I know I have photos going back from 1986 on the hard drive that's at my dad's house. So, you know, if anything happens, that is at least safe. All right. Yeah, really good strategy here. Don't be the person who goes, eh, nothing's ever happened.

Oh, yeah. It can be a real problem. I mean, it can really be a problem. And one of these small hard drives in a $30 copy or whatever of carbon copy cloner can save you hours and hours and hours. And this isn't just like, oh, I'll fix it this weekend. This stuff happens when you have a presentation in four hours after you get off a plane. That's when this happens, right? It happens in the middle of a conference when you are like up next or up soon and you just had to go to the Apple store in Las Vegas when you're staying there for a conference and you had to buy a new MacBook and you're going, crap, I don't even have freaking keynote.

That's when this stuff happens. So get it done. It's really just going to save you a lot of pain and it takes very little time each month. recommendation of the week. The Business of Being Born. This is a film from about 10 years ago, but it's a really interesting, of course for me, I'm looking at this stuff. But the U.S. has one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world and has the second highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation, which is ridiculous. The film criticizes the American health care system with its emphasis on medication, costly intervention. its view of childbirth is essentially a medical emergency rather than a natural process.

And it's starring the infamous Ricky Lake is in this one to give you kind of a blast for the past. And it offers a really probing look at childbirth in the United States, explores the history of obstetrics, the history and function of midwives, and how many common medical practices are actually doing new mothers more harm than good. And yes, it's 10 years old, but this process of kind of treating babies like little plugs in the Matrix has only gotten worse over the last 10 years, not any better. And so that I recommend people watching if they're interested in this at all. Health Care and or Birth is kind of an interesting watch. If you're not interested in that, we also watched Good Fortune, which is the true life story of the billionaire and philanthropist Jean-Paul DeGioria, who co-founded Paul Mitchell Hair Products and Patron Tequila. Really interesting guy. really sort of crazy, fun entrepreneur story.

And that's called Good Fortune. And we'll link to the business of being born and Good Fortune in the show notes. I have seen Good Fortune. I thought it was a fantastic documentary. I really like this guy a lot. So it is definitely well worth the watch. Hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week.

And don't forget you can email us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com to get your questions answered on the air. We always keep you anonymous. I'm going to be doing some live events soon, doing a lot of corporate training right now. I wish I could tell you with who because some of it is really. cool. Let's just say Silicon Valley giants. I won't make any other commentary because, you know, no need, no need and don't want to get in trouble. I've always got to, working with big companies, Jason, you've got to check with everything because they never know what you're allowed to say. Even if they're in the company, they always have to run everything up the flagpole,

and it's a long flagpole. So kind of a funny work experience for me to be back in big corporate doing what I've done for so long, non-corporate. A link to the show notes for this episode. can be found at jordan harbinger.com and a quick shout out to jackie jones who said don't read the bad emails read mine i love your podcast it's a must listen to pod not a lie i commute an hour and 40 minutes each way five days a week for my job that is a long-ass commute oh god that's terrible and over three hours a day on the road over three hours a day on the road so she listens to the jordan harbinger show after hearing about us on adam carola and um she said you have a great radio voice with natural timing i wish it was natural, but it's not.

Nothing natural about that. Yeah. Lots of hard work. A lot of hard work. It reminds me of Wayne's World, Jason. Remember when they go to see Handsome Dan? Handsome Dan? Yeah, they go in and they're like, oh, we're going to meet Handsome Dan. He's like their favorite radio guy, and he's got this great voice.

But they show up and he's in this disgusting track suit. He has disgusting hair, and he looks just like totally gnarly. And he's ugly. And so now they find out it's ironic that his name is Handsome Dan. and he's like not listening to anything they say he's just being a radio guy i don't know whatever handsome dan i'll slack you a little link to that video jason that joke just died on the vine but anyway shout out to jackie jones thanks for listening wow three hours a day she's looking forward to the commute every day now she said so thank you for that and you're welcome for providing the content

go back and check out the reed hoffman part one and two if you haven't yet that was all of what we released this week if you want to know how we managed to book all these amazing people and managed relationships. What Reed Hoffman included was got through the network. And he founded LinkedIn. He's big on networking. We're teaching you this. Six-minute networking. It is a free course. Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. It replaces any old course that we have. It's all upgraded, all new tech, all new drills. The problem with kicking the can down the road and saying you'll do it later is you cannot make up for lost time when it comes to relationships. Once you need a relationship, you're too late to leverage it. Got to dig the well before you're thirsty. Six-minute networking

is designed to take five to six minutes a day. You ignore these habits at your own peril. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. Again, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show. And videos of our interviews are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. And we have a great Reid Hoffman set of videos up there right now.

Jason. I'm over at Instagram at JPDs. You can go look at pictures of my puppies if you want. My personal website's at jpd.m. and you can check out my tech podcast, grumpy old geeks at gog. Show or your podcast player of choice and make sure the kids aren't in the room because we are a little bit salty.

Yeah, salty is a good word for it. This show is produced in association with podcast one. This episode was co-produced by Jen Harbinger. Show notes for this episode are by Robert Fogarty. Keep setting in those questions to Friday at jordanharbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those you love and even those you don't. Lots more in the pipeline.

Very excited to bring it to you. 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. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same.

Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that, I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts.

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