The Jordan Harbinger Show - 257: Overcoming Accidental Accomplice to Fraud | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

You were recently and unknowingly an accomplice to fraud and credit card theft. You're a freelancer with a client who frequently used your services; you built trust, and then he asked you to transfer some money for him as a paid favor. Your poor judgment, kindness, and greed led to where you are now. Now the real credit card owners are issuing chargebacks, which are draining your account, and you don't have their money because you sent the money to someone else. What do you do? We'll try to answer this and more on this Feedback Friday! 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/257. On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: Interested in doing some prison time with Jordan next February? It’s filling up fast; reach out to [e-mail] for details! You were unknowingly an accomplice to credit card fraud. Now the real credit card owners are issuing chargebacks, which is draining your account and you don't have their money because you sent the money to someone else. What do you do? Because you're in the entertainment industry, you've been getting nipped and tucked for years and you look much younger than your time on earth would indicate. Is it imperative that you tell your new significant other about your cosmetic procedures? Your future in-laws seem to be in a financially abusive relationship — with one taking more than their fair share from the other — to the point that you hope they divorce. Are you out of line by wishing for this? What do you do when a friend, colleague, family member, or loved one seems to be losing their marbles before your very eyes? You've been growing your network with great success over the past few years, which is awesome. What's not so awesome is worrying about how to balance the time you spend with these connections as your network grows. How can you keep quality job one in this case? Even when you know a recent breakup was for the right reasons, it's hard not to ruminate over where they are, who they could be with, what they're thinking, if they are thinking of you, and whether they'll ever return one day. How can you move on? You've legally adopted your wife's 16-year-old, but he's troubled. How do you get him to see the errors of his ways? How do you look at him without wanting to snap at him? How do you lead him to want to better himself, grow, and not just do the minimum? You're a 16-year-old, and your parents have strange beliefs. They make you eat weird things, they don't let you have social media or watch TV, and they don't let you go anywhere. It's hard to make friends in such a controlled environment because everyone thinks you're the odd one,... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger, and I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills

of the world's most brilliant and interesting people and turned their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. This week, we had Tommy Caldwell.

He climbed the Dawn Wall. So the Dawn Wall is El Capitan and Yosemite. It took him six years. Not, of course, in one stretch, but he found all of, this is basically a flat freaking mountain, okay? Like a flat surface. And he's grabbing on to like credit card thin slices of rock. And he climbed the whole thing.

It's just unbelievable. It took him weeks to do it. Nobody had ever done it. Just an incredible guy, super interesting. And he'd cut off a finger before he's kidnapped one time, not on the dawn wall, of course. But while rock climbing, he has stories for days and he's just a really nice guy. I really enjoyed my conversation with him. We also had Malcolm Gladwell, who, if you haven't heard of him, what rock are you living under?

He's an amazing author. He's been on my interview wish list for, I don't know, 10 years or something now. He gave great insight to how humans think, make mistakes with cognitive bias and other fables of humanity. He wrote blank. He wrote Outliers. He wrote The Tipping Point. His new book is called Talking to Strangers.

This is one of the most in-depth interviews about his new work. And we did, I would say, a bang up, juries. You know, him and I had a great conversation, and I can't wait for you to hear it if you haven't already. Also, I write every so often on the blog, the latest post is the downside to following your intuition. You know, when are we following our intuition, and it's a good thing, and what are we following what we think is our intuition, and it's just all of our BS trauma, garbage, baggage guiding us, or misguiding us. Well, it's hard to tell, and that's what this post is about.

Of course, our posts and all my blog articles and writing are at Jordan Harbinger.com, slash articles and Malcolm Gladwell and Tommy Caldwell are right here in the show feed on the podcast. So make sure you've had a look and a listen here to everything we created for you this week. Of course, our primary mission is to pass along our guest's experiences and insights and our experiences and insights to you. And that's what we do on Feedback Friday. Every Friday, in fact. You can reach us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com.

And before we dive in, I want to give a quick announcement here about the prison trip. I'm going to a maximum security prison on February 26 or. or thereabouts, 2020. This sounds weird. It's going to be where I spend my birthday, but I'm inviting you to come with me. I'm gonna bring 50 to 100 people, not quite sure yet. It's an educational program for the inmates.

I've done it before, it's absolutely incredible. It will change your life for the positive. There's just something amazing about helping these guys do mock job interviews. And of course, it's not all work. Last time I went, we had a dance off. I probably don't need to tell you who won the dance off. And we have good speeches and a lot of fun.

It's just you will really see another side of humanity that will look a lot like what you see when you look in the mirror. And that, for me, changed a lot of the way that I think. It's hard to explain if you haven't been there. But I'm bringing you along. If you're interested in coming, it's a charity-based thing,

and it's going to be donation-based. I'm not taking any of the cash. It's going to be in Reno, Nevada, around February 26, and it's just going to be the best birthday ever. And I want you to come with me. If you're interested in that, email me, prison at jordanharbinger.com, prison at jordanharbinger.com. And I'm going to be bringing some people that you probably recognize from television, movies, et cetera.

There's a lot of people that are interested in this. And I think it's going to be just an absolutely incredible, incredible experience. Prison at jordanharbinger.com. It's going to be around 1,200 bucks plus the cost of travel. So it's not cheap, but it's not ridiculous either. And again, it's life changing and the money goes to charity. All right, Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hi, guys.

I was recently and unknowingly an accomplice to fraud and credit card theft. I'm a graphic design freelancer that had a client who used my services. We built trust, and then he asked me to transfer some money for him as a paid favor. My poor judgment, kindness and greed led to where I am now. Now the real credit card owners are issuing chargebacks, which is draining my account, and I don't have their money because I sent the money to someone else. What do I do? Thanks.

the accidental accomplice. This is ugly. This is ugly. And the reason that I say this is there's like nothing you can do about this. This is one of those fraud episodes where the con man sees you coming a mile away. And it's not your fault. I want to rephrase that. The con man sees you coming a mile away because you're not a con man, not because you

look like a victim or anything like that. This is so common. I pretty much guarantee you he didn't need any of your freelance services. It was a ruse to create a campaign. with you. This is really shameful. So let's deconstruct what happened. Jason, you've heard of this, right? Yeah, I've been caught up in something similar, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but yes, totally heard of this. Yeah. So what happens here is someone hires a freelancer because they know you have merchant processor capabilities. They know you can process credit cards. They know

you have your own account. They know you probably don't have insurance. You're not a big company. You don't have investigators, et cetera. And, you know, you don't have a fraud department in your company. It's just you. So they will retain your services. And then they will chat with you. They'll tell you how great of a job you're doing. They'll promise you a bunch of other work. And then they'll say, hey, by the way, you can let me know if this sounds familiar, Jason. Hey, by the way, I'm in this situation in which my merchant account got a little effed up.

And I need someone else who's got a merchant account to run these credit cards for me for my customers. And look, I'll let you keep 20%. That's my whole margin. But, you know, at least I won't lose money doing this. And I can keep my customers happy and I can deliver the work and make sure that they've paid. and, you know, then you keep 20% for your troubles and then just send me the money that you run through your account. Sounds harmless.

It sounds like you're going to get a huge kickback. You might make a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars, which you need as a freelancer. And in addition, this guy's your compadre, and he's going to hook you up, not only with that money, but also with future jobs. I mean, this is win-win. He's got all this business.

He's got 20 cards he wants you to run. These jobs could have been yours, right? Then you run the cards and you send him the money, via PayPal or bank wire, and then 30, 60, 90 days later, you find out that those weren't customers, those were stolen credit cards, and you sent him the money that you had run through your merchant account. So when the fraud department of those banks, those cards,

catches up, they take the money out of your bank account because you're the one that ran the cards. Now, you'll be suspected of running the cards as part of the scam, and you'll quickly explain your way out of that because you're the victim, but you're the bag holder. You are the one holding the bag because in that little merchant agreement where it says you're running credit cards, you as a merchant are responsible for the providence of those transactions. And this various state to state depends on some fine print here and there. But basically, you are not insured most of the time.

You're not insured by the card company. You're not insured by the merchant company either. This is fraud. And since you're sort of the last person that they can trace in the chain and you have the least amount of power, let's be real. You're the bag holder. The bank doesn't want to lose the money because they want to incentivize you to be more careful running cards.

So this can start off as a money laundering scheme. Sometimes it becomes outright fraud. So sometimes you see this is a money laundering sort of operation, but usually it's just fraud. So this person, they didn't need your design services. They're in the credit card theft business and the way that they turn those card numbers into cash is you run them as merchant payments on your business,

which they are not, you're doing someone a favor, which is against the terms of service, therefore you're liable. You're sending them cash from your account, which you have gotten on credit from these credit card companies. Those card companies then renege on that because it was fraudulently obtained and you can't get your money back. Unless you're insured against fraud.

As a freelancer, you're not insured against fraud. You can write this off as fraud and as a loss to your business on your taxes this year, and you probably won't have any issues with that, even though you broke the terms of service and probably shouldn't have done it. But this really is a classic con. They built trust, they relied on you're not having seen this scam before,

and then relied a little bit on your greed and your need. I'm not saying you're a greedy person, and you don't have to beat yourself up about this, but they relied on the fact that, look, if you're running 10 grand and you're going to get to keep an extra grand for your troubles, I mean, that's a great deal, maybe even two grand. They get eight grand, and then it all catches up later, and you're going and hitting this person up

on, I don't know, wherever you got your freelance hire, and that account's been dead since two days afterwards. All the triggers are there. Don't ever run credit cards and then send somebody the money. That is always, always, always a scam. There is a way for them to do that on their own account. And look, yes, there's a scenario in which somebody might not be able to run cards on their own merchant accounts.

You don't think banks are jumping over each other to get new customers? he could wait a couple of days or a couple of hours and get approved on what is it chasing stripe or something like square yeah i mean you can get approved immediately for things like that pay pal you can get approved instantly for things like that and yes sometimes there's a reserve the reason those companies have what they call a reserve aka money you cannot take out right away when you're a new customer is because of this scam that's the reason that that exists so if banks are doing that to protect themselves and this guy's trying to figure out out a way around it, you better be damn sure you know who this person is and you know them well

because that's what happened. Don't beat yourself up though. Everyone gets scammed. In fact, Malcolm Gladwell said it this week. I asked him, why are we evolved to trust people if it gets us screwed over? And he explained that society is better off that way. And we actually are better off that way. Imagine if nobody trusted each other.

You'd be paranoid. You'd be weird. Commerce would stop as we know it. The economy would grind to a halt. So we're better off trusting people, even if we do get scammed. once in a while. The key is to be aware and if something seems weird and you're going, huh, that's weird. I'm doing this thing. And from a technical standpoint, it seems very strange, but I can't really find the flaw in it. Bear in mind, the person who's telling you to do this,

they know where the flaw is and you're the bag holder. Right? It's like, if you're looking around it, you don't see who the mark is, you're the mark. Absolutely. Absolutely. Jason, is this ever happening? I know you've freelanced forever. It wasn't this same scam, but I got scammed back in the 90s for cash and checks for somebody that I trust. and it turned really bad and it got to the point where I was left holding the bag, had to pay back all the money, and I couldn't get a bank account for five years. Now, that sucked. So learned my lesson on that one.

But yeah, it happens to everybody. Dust yourself off, move on, and just be a little more careful in the future. Look, if you have any kind of insurance, see if you're insured for fraud. But the idea, fraud is kind of when somebody pays you with a stolen credit card and you give them the goods. usually it's not going to apply when you run a stolen credit card for someone else in contravention of your agreement with the merchant processor, right? Because you're not running that cardholder's card for that cardholder. You ran that cardholder's card for some random dude on the internet. So it's tough. All right, what's next?

Hey there, J4. I'm a 35-year-old woman living in New York City. Anyone who meets me thinks I'm in my mid to late 20s. I have clear skin, juicy lips, and a youthful glow. No, it's not from eight glasses of celery juice a day. I work in television and began getting cosmetic procedures since I was 29. I've gotten it all, Botox, lip injections, cheek injections, fat transfer, under eye filler, lipo, etc. Before you freak out, no, I don't look like the cat lady or a Kardashian. I look like myself, but healthy, fit, and well-rested.

I live a very healthy lifestyle, working out every day, eating clean, etc. And get fillers once every few months is maintenance. Everything I do is outpatient and performed at a dermatology. office or spa. So do I tell my boyfriend about my cosmetic procedures? He's had exes who had obvious work done, and most of the wives and girlfriends of his friends and colleagues have been nipped and tucked. I know plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures are considered self-care among many millennials nowadays, but I also understand the long-standing stigma. As a man, would you and Jason want to be told, or should these beauty secrets be kept to myself? Thanks for the feedback, signed

forever young. Okay, well, Jason, I don't know about you. I would want to be told, I'd feel a little bit duped, and it's not because, like, oh, it's so fake, and I don't like fake and da-da-da-da. There's an element of that maybe for some guys, and I suppose I would feel a little bit like that, but if you don't look like a cat lady or Kardashian, you look like yourself, but healthy, fit, and well-rested,

I mean, all right, fine. I think the reason I would want to be told is when I eventually found out in a year or six months or whatever of a relationship, I'd feel a little bit deceived, not like, oh, I'm dating this person, and they don't really look like that. This is terrible. I want my money back. More like, oh, okay, so you're hiding the fact that you got cosmetic work. Are you ashamed?

What else have you gotten? That's serious. That's medical that you don't want to share. What else do you have? What sort of other weird secrets do I need to be aware of that you aren't sharing because you have an element of shame or you're afraid of being judged? That kind of thing would make me worry. You're in TV. I kind of get it.

You're a female who's in TV. I understand the pressure to want to get work done. If there's too much, I think it would be a red flag, but you know, you said that it's not that much. I guess I would just feel conned if I found out really late in the game. I don't think there's any need on date number one or two to be like, hey, F.WI, bro, I'm fake here, here, here, and here, and this is fake, and that's fake, and I get implants here.

I just wouldn't hide it. And you could say something like, Saturday, yeah, I'd love to meet up, but I'm going to get my lip filler redone, and I'll be done around three. what we could meet after, it should spark some discussion. Or you can say, hey, before we get more serious, you know, we've been out several times now.

You should just know, I've had some work done and some people have problems with that. If you have a problem with that, then we're going to have a problem. I just want to know where you stand on it because I like you. And I don't want to lose you because you don't like the fact that I have lip filler,

but if that's going to happen, then let's get that cat out of the bag. That should just be the end of it. I think most guys will just go, oh, yeah, I mean, that's fine. What else do I need to know? And then it's like, oh, well, you know, I've had this nipped and tucked and, you know, I'm in TV, the pressure's high. I think most reasonable men will go, yeah, I understand that.

And then you'll probably have this beautiful just the way you are a conversation. And that's what you want to hear. So I wouldn't worry too much about it. You don't have to advertise it because, frankly, it's nobody's damn business. But if you're going to be in a serious relationship, you got to start with your cards on the table, in my opinion. This is similar to if you had $30,000 in credit card debt, yeah, you might not know. mention it in the first month or two. But if somebody's like, hey, I really like you, we should meet the parents and maybe we should look at moving in together, you don't want, hey, we can't

get a lease. Oh, well, the problem is I have $30,000 in credit card debt because I used to be addicted to shopping. What? You know, like, that's the kind of thing you don't want to pop out at an inopportune time, because then you seem untrustworthy. I know that that's a little unfair because we're talking about appearance, but I think everybody likes to know, I think if you think you know someone, you don't want that to be shattered because somebody else was maybe embarrassed to tell you something. That's a little bit deceptive. I don't know, Jason, what do you think? Yeah, it comes down to trust, but I also think this is no big deal. Honestly, just, you know, if you're going to go get a treatment done, just tell them, hey, I'm going to go get my lips done

or got to go get my thing and just, you know, leave it at that. And if he asks, tell them, but say, I mean, just don't hide it. But I don't think there's any reason why it should be a big deal at all. I mean, if it keeps you looking great, great. And it's your business. It's honestly, it's your body. So you make the decisions about it. I can see where there can be a trust issue if you keep hiding it. But if you just take care of your business and, you know, this is what I do. You know, don't make a big deal about it. Don't sit them down and say, honey, we have to have a talk. You know, don't go about it like that. Just brush it off and let them know. And that's fine. If that happened to me, I'd be okay with it. I'm like, well, hey, if it makes you look better, go for it. You know, especially if that's your job when you're on TV and you have to look. good? If anybody judges you for that, kick him to the door anyway. You don't need them. Exactly. My sentiment's exactly. All right, what do we have? Hey guys, my fiancé and I live in Denver, Colorado, and her sister lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her parents, who are nearly retirement age, own a 100-acre farm in rural Indiana that's a three-hour

drive from any major airport. We fly to Chicago and make the three-hour drive every quarter, which ends up costing us about $1,000 each time, between flights and rental cars. her parents come out west to visit us two or three times a year, and her dad really loves it out here. To the point that he's talked about selling the farm, buying one out in Colorado or Wyoming, and transporting a few cows in his farm equipment out west. Their farm is worth close to $2 million, so buying land in a house out west with a large chunk of money left over is more than feasible. To my fiancé, her dad and I, it makes sense for them to move outside of either Denver or Charlotte because traveling between the two is much cheaper than traveling to the Midwest.

The three of us operate in the logical side of our brains, while her mom and her sister operate on the emotional side. At times it seems like her mom is resisting the idea of moving out west because she wasn't the one that came up with the idea. Our wedding is being planned for next fall out west, so we had hoped that her mom would possibly fall in love with the West the same way her dad did while she's helping us plan the wedding. Something that greatly worries my fiancé and I is the financial relationship her parents

have. Her mom has her own career and her own income, but still takes a $300 allowance every week from her dad. In addition to that, anytime her dad sells any hay or beef that he puts the time and sweat into producing, she feels entitled to half of the income. It's also been revealed to us that she took the entirety of his tax return and put it in her own account. She's not accountable for where the money is going and gets defensive whenever her husband brings it up. Part of us want to learn to communicate emotionally to encourage her mom to move out here with her dad. but there's also a side of us that wants them to get a divorce so her dad can take half the value of their assets, move out here, still afford a nice farm, but be better off being away from a seemingly parasitic

and possibly even financially abusive relationship. Are we out of line with our thinking? What do you recommend in this situation? Thanks for taking the time to read this, dealing with a deadbeat mom. Yeah, so, you know what's funny is I used to think financially abusive was one of those terms that would, It used to be one of those terms that make me roll my eyes. And as I get older, I realize how real this is. Totally, yeah.

There are so many people that control their kids and their significant other using money. It's probably one of the primary angles that people use to control others. And it's so obvious now, but when I was younger, I didn't have any money. So I wasn't thinking about it. Yeah. This is sketchy. It sounds that way, right? I mean, yes, she's entitled to half legally.

That's how this stuff works with marriages. but to actually take half and then squirrel it away, kind of hide it in your own account. I mean, what's going on here? This makes me think that there's maybe some compulsive shopping, there's maybe some debt, there's maybe some credit cards that nobody's talking about. What happened to the tax refund?

I mean, what the hell? Where is it? Why would you think you can take that and then put it in your own bank account? I don't understand what the impetus is here to take the money and hide it. So maybe she's got some control issues. Maybe she's also spending it.

Maybe it's Maybe it's Maybe it's literally maybe maybe she's a compulsive shopper and she's got a ton of makeup and clothes somewhere I don't know Maybe she's planning to bounce maybe they are going to get a divorce and she wants a bunch of cash Squirled away safely just in case anything else happens or she plans on having kind of a bad faith split and Once she gets you know a few hundred grand in there She's just going to be like well this isn't working out give me half and then in the meantime She's going to have more than half. I don't know we just don't know enough here but I do think it's strange that you your fiance kind of wants her parents to get divorced.

Yeah, that escalated quickly, didn't it? Right. That came out of nowhere. And I was just like, okay, there's more to the story here. It sounds like there's a major rift in the family with the whole, oh, well, the sister and the mom, their emotional brain and where logical brain, by the way, everybody is both logical and emotional brain. So it's not, I know what you mean.

They seem to communicate and think and rely more on their emotional thoughts where you seem be more rational and measured in your decision-making. I understand that that's what you meant. I just want to clarify, it's not like there's two types of brains or something like that. That's not a thing. It sounds like there's a major rift in the family, though, with one daughter on one side, your fiancé on the other, in my experience, and I'm no clinical therapist, of course, this is unlikely to heal itself magically since you're adults.

It's different if your siblings and you kind of grow out of the whole, well, my sister, she's always doing this and this and this. That's a little different. I don't see this happening where this is just going to magically fix itself. You can't make your father-in-law, your future father-in-law, do anything. And it sounds like he's actually been a willing victim here for a long time. You might have to call this to his attention, not you, of course, your fiancé should. You should probably not be involved in this at all, except for supporting your fiancé,

if you need to drive her out there. He's got to wake up from this, but you're not going to be able to shake him out unless he wants to. It sounds like there's a lot more to the story. He might actually know what's going on, but he doesn't want to say anything because he doesn't want to make waves or he doesn't want to divulge the shame. Like, yeah, my wife's cheating on me

and she's got a secret lover and she buys them all kinds of stuff with my money, but, you know, I don't know. I love your mom and I don't want to do it. I mean, you don't know what's going on, man. You don't know. I hope things work out on this one. It sounds like it could lead to family drama.

Now, if you're willing to get your hands dirty a little bit, you can run a credit check on your fiancé's mom. This might not be strictly legal per se, and you'll want to be careful here. You know, I'm a lawyer, I'm not your lawyer, you're going to want to consult a real lawyer and blah, blah, blah, and your state, all that stuff. This is black hat, so keep it on the low. You're not going to want to be, like, posting on social media. How do I run a credit check on somebody? Check with a lawyer.

You might find that your future mother-in-law, maybe she's got a lot of debt. Maybe she's got 17 open credit cards from every department store in town. Or maybe she has another dwelling, and that dwelling is full of Mabelene and clothing and unopened MacBook pros. I mean, who knows? Where there's smoke, there's fire. You could hire a private investigator if you find the credit check to turn up something strange. You can do a background check for landlord-tenant-type stuff. That'll turn up, and then, yeah, if you need to do a background check where there's more involved, let's say, let me know if you decide to go that route.

I got a guy. In fact, we had that guy on the show. Kevin Barrow's on the show a while ago. He's a former FBI agent, and he was the one Jason who, after the interview goes, let me know if you ever need to find somebody because I'm pretty good at it. Yeah. Which is like the most detective slash mafia movie slash law and order type of thing that's ever happened at the end of a show. Let me know if you ever need anybody ever needs finding.

I was just like, wow, okay, that happened. Good to have in your back pocket, though. Definitely good to have. Yeah, definitely good to have. So this is the type of guy who can go, well, you know, we ran the credit. check and this turned up this and then he did all his private detective investigator magic and found out that she's got something else private investigators they don't just follow people around and take photos you know some of them do for like celebrities who want to prove that their significant others cheating on

them or something like that but a lot of this stuff can be done basically it's glorified Lexis nexus database searches oh yeah it turns out your wife has another name and a property in that name and that person has a bunch of credit cards open and they're paying them off using the money that she's siphoning from your business, that kind of thing. And it happens, man. People be crazy. They got skeletons.

So definitely look into this. I'm not saying you have to do it. I am saying check the laws. And if you're wondering where the money is, it's not that hard to track money. It's very hard to move money off book. That's the thing. So you'll be able to find it somehow. Option B is you let them go about their business and you handle your own problems.

You know, because I think this is a situation in which you are more likely to make your future father-in-law angry than you are to actually help the situation short term. Now, if you think that she's really up to something, yeah, you can help protect your family. But if you think this is just some family drama and he's kind of a push over, then, yeah, I would not touch that one if I were you personally. 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 have. heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And if you'd be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and

review on 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, what else we got? Dear Triple J, I'm 19 years old and my parents got divorced when I was five. I lived with my dad until I moved out. I had a pretty good life living with my dad, but I'm concerned about my mother's mental state. I visit her all the time, but I don't even want to anymore. She won't listen to anything I say unless it comes from, in her opinion, the most reliable news source, Wikipedia. I don't know how to talk to her about anything because she just won't listen. Do you have any

advice on how I can talk to my mother, signed Wikipedia Addick's daughter? Well, at least Wikipedia is reliable. Somewhat. Somewhat. I mean, you can go in and change things That's true. Yeah, there's a lot of BS in Wikipedia, but it's policed pretty well by the users, depending on what you're looking at. It's not like Info Wars or some crap like that where they just make this crap up. Gay frogs. Stay away from the gay frogs. They're making a freaking frogs, yeah, that guy. No, it could be worse. It's not us weekly. It's not the Inquirer. It's still publicly sourced information. All right, well, the gist of this question is, what do you do when a family member seems to be losing their marbles? My first clue here, though, is your

parents got divorced and you went and live with your dad. That's unusual. Most kids who are in divorced families, they do live with mom unless there's some exigent circumstances. So my question would then be, what circumstances were those that led you living with your dad instead of your mom? Sure, you could just be a very progressive family and maybe your dad just was more of a parent than your mom, but there's probably another reason. It sounds like she's hinting at the idea that her mom maybe wasn't ever always totally together. And it sounds mostly harmless for now. It sounds like she's really opinionated, you're budding heads, unless I'm misreading the

situation here. In your scenario, maybe keep conversation light. Maybe don't get into controversial waters if that's where the issues are. Also, set up boundaries. So if your mom is picking fights with you about politics or conspiracy theories or chemtrails or religion or something, just draw the line there, set up a boundary and then enforce it. That's always the key with boundaries. If everything's going swimmingly and then she says, well, you know, this, this, this, and this, and this, and the way you live your life is wrong, you can just say, Mom, we talked about not doing that. Let's just have a pleasant visit. You know, that kind of thing. You have to enforce that. And if she won't do it, then you go, well, I have to leave now because you're not adhering to our agreement where you said you wouldn't do this. Now, if she's really losing it and she starts talking nonsense, then you can worry. But for now, it sounds like she just might be stubborn, bored, or intellectually starved, and, you know, possibly not

all there, but maybe not any worse than she was when you were growing up. Hard to say. Then again, maybe there's more info and more to the story that we don't have yet. So I don't know, Jason. I'm trying to read between the lines here, but I don't know what I'm coming up with, not coming up with too much. Yeah, we need some more info on this one because it seems like, okay, she's sourcing her stuff from Wikipedia.

Okay, and if you really want to get to your mom, then you go in and you, when you know that she's going to go read some kind of news story that you go in there and you can modify it before the sensors come and roll it back, just to play with her. That would always be fun. You start gaslighting your mom? Oh, God, that's terrible advice. I'm just saying if you want to have some fun with her, that's just one way to do it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we don't really have enough information to go anything beyond what you said already, I think. Yeah, it really depends on how bad this is. If she's, like, completely delusional, then there's a big problem.

But if she's just kind of like picking fights with you because nobody else will talk to her and she has no friends, well, that's the real problem. It's far less of a Wikipedia issue and more of a mom has no friends, and so I have to kind of put up with this, but I can tell her that we're not going to talk about why Disney has secret messages in the movies anymore, because that's ridiculous. Although that turned out to be true, apparently, and they had to fix it.

Did you hear about that, Jason? No, I didn't hear about that. Yeah, there was some thing where, like, Disney movies, some of these old hand-drawn animation Disney movies, they'll be like a smoke cloud that disappears and it kind of looks like a penis, and then they have to fix it, or the cover of an old VHS will have a castle.

And if you really zoom in and look carefully, one of the towers is clearly, you know, a hand-drawn penis. And they fixed all of it because this is hand-drawn animation. It was either deliberate or it wasn't, but they weren't expecting things to be on Blu-ray discs where people can look frame by frame. And who knows why people even bothered to do that, but they did.

And so they would find these things. And I don't know if it's a conspiracy, somebody having a little bit of a laugh or just complete co-intuitive. that happens when things are 8 billion frames long and something happens to look like a dick for one of them? Who knows? Yeah. And also those guys were probably really bored hand-drawing those things over and over again.

So you've got to entertain yourself some way. Yeah, imagine. And they're just kind of like having a laugh. And they're thinking literally no one will ever find this. We're the only ones that know. They don't think, gee, it's going to end up on laser disk in 30 years. What's a laser disc? Yeah.

This stuff just didn't exist. All right. Anyway, Disney animated penises aside, what's next? Hey, Jordan, Jason, and Jen. I've been working pretty hard to grow my network and friend circles since I moved to a new state two years ago. It's been going really well, and I've met some amazing people. However, it's gotten to the point that I don't have time for a lot of them. I have a normal nine to five job, and often want to see my close friends and boyfriend on the weekends. So I usually have at least one lunch a week with someone at the university where I work, but for people outside

of work, I can usually only swing one coffee date every two weeks at most. I often get as many as three requests a week through mutual friends or just encounters around town. I've been wrestling with the fact that as my network grows, I'll have to not be close with many of my friends and connections. It's hard for me to come to terms with that. I've thought about consolidating people through things like the Dory Clark dinners that Michelle Laterman mentioned in episode 178, but I'm not keen on the idea. I'm a bit more introverted and really like to hang out with people in smaller groups. I'm not shy or nervous and larger groups, but I'm not a fan of big crowds when trying to really get to know someone. What kind of advice would you all have for me to be more accepting

of the nature of my growing network? I think part of the mental resistance might be fear of missing out on meeting potentially amazing people because of my time limitations. But I feel like I rank everyone that I come across as either close friend material or just outer fringes. Thanks for your help, signed, It's Too Big. Well, this sounds like FOMO to me. I totally understand that. You can be close to people without spending tons of time with them. I know it sounds like you can't. You got to do all these coffee things. I don't really do that. I text one person or four people a day. That's the Connect 4 drill from six minute networking. I use a CRM like contactually to keep in regular touch with a lot of people. And yeah, people say, hey, let's get together soon and I'll say, yeah, what I'm doing is I'm going

to X, Y, Z convention in October. Are you going to be there? And if they're like, no, I'm not, but we should get to food, I'll usually go, yeah, things are really busy right now with the baby or with the new job or with the company, but I'm going to be at that convention and I'm going to be at this other convention in January. You're going to be there. And the subtext of that is, I'd love to meet at something I'm already going to. Because if you start saying yes to coffee things and you start saying yes to all these individual things, you'll never have any time for yourself and it's a waste of time. And a lot of people will end up pitching you on stuff and you'll quickly get burned out. I also do phone calls in the car.

While I'm on walks, sometimes if I'm not reading something, I'll be like, I'm going to call it this person and catch up. Definitely check out some of the ways that we create maintenance of networks in an automated way. Six-minute networking, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I've got a lot of drills where you can sort of avoid the whole coffee date trap. But yeah, a lot of this sounds like FOMO, fear of missing out. You just don't want to miss anything. I definitely understand feeling like you're leaving something.

on the table. I know people who indulge this and they're stretched really, really thin, and it's no good for them psychologically because it's just never enough. And you can network and network and network and not work on anything and have no time for yourself. It doesn't sound like you're there yet, though, but it is a slippery slope. I would also recommend doing smaller dory dinners. You brought this up. I do this. I think these are great even with three to four people. I'll have a meal and I'll be like, hey, I'm doing this thing. Why don't I call everybody I know in such and such. city that wanted to meet up and we'll do like a little steak dinner three to four people no need to go full dory and have like a dozen people involved if you don't like bigger groups i like the smaller groups

everyone gets to talk a bunch that's what i do and i love it and it does kill three four five birds with one stone and then everybody's kind of connected and friends it's really really useful you don't have to worry about all this individual coffees and all that stuff because transit time will kill you. It'll kill you and I'll kill your business. So I would prefer smaller groups and inviting people to meet up at events that you're already going to. So I'll dedicate time at a lot of events for networking. In fact, events are usually 90% networking anyway. And if I don't meet up with someone there and they're like, oh, give me a call when you're in San Francisco and we'll meet up then. It's like, well, no thanks. I'll meet you at the next one, unless we've got some business to do.

And most people should understand that. But if they start to get offended that you've never wanted to go out with them individually for coffee, it's like, well, fine, meet me at the gym and we'll work out together. People don't get to dictate how you come and see them. If they want to do coffee, fine, but you're going to bring five people to the meetup. That's the thing. You're all doing it as a group. If they don't want to go on a walking meeting with you, but they want to go out to lunch, just say no, that you don't do that because it's not a good use of time. You can be diplomatic about it. But I've had people say that to me, too. I called my friend Shaline Johnson, and I said, oh, let's do lunch when I'm in OC, and she goes, I don't do lunches because,

of the time factor, but I do workouts. You wanna come work out? And I was like, hell no, because she's a fitness trainer. She's like one of the top fitness trainers around. And I was like, me working out with you and Sean T, can I meet you afterwards for smoothies? Because I don't wanna die.

And you know, that's the kind of thing that makes sense for everyone. You have to meet people where they are and people have to meet you where you wanna be too. You don't have to succumb to the dreaded coffee, small talk hour that ends up taking three hours out of your day. It's just not a good use of your time.

People should understand that. If they don't, they're probably not that busy either, and that's not necessarily the kind of person that you want to be around all the time if you're trying to run and start a business. All right, what's next? Hi, Jordan, Jason, and Jen. I'm 28 years old and recently got out of a long-term relationship. I'm at a spot where I know the end of this relationship was inevitable, and it would have been toxic to stay in it any longer.

Yet, I'm having issues with a few things in my journey to full recovery. First, my mind keeps drifting to what my ex is up to. I know her life after our breakup is none of my business. But how can I train in my mind to stop thinking about this? It adds zero value and detracts attention from whatever I'm doing in the moment. Secondly, I keep thinking of the breakup as a competition. It bums me out thinking that I'm losing the breakup. And lastly, as I jump into the dating world again,

what are some tips you can suggest to meet people in real life? It seems that most connections nowadays are made online, but I'm someone who thrives on building connections in person. Sincerely, looking to move on. Oh man, I hear you. Well, number one, distract yourself. This is almost like meditation. You know, you find yourself thinking about your ex.

Do not engage. Do not indulge. This is a practice. Distract yourself. Do something else. Bring your mind elsewhere. Make sure you've got hobbies and that you're learning new things. And I'll get into that in a second.

But make sure you're hitting the gym and taking care of yourself as well. I find that whenever there's any sort of breakup, one of the problems is a lot of times people feel a little down. So they sleep in a little bit. than they're on social media. If you're going to the gym and you're feeling good, you have less time for that crap, and also it's easier for you to go, eh, I don't want to do that.

I've got stuff to do. I'm going to go for a walk instead. I'm going to read a book instead. Also, this will help you with not thinking of this breakup as a competition as much. You're running your own race. You're doing your own thing. If you can't shake the idea

that this is a competition, fine, but use it as fuel. Use it to get your ass in the gym, get to some cooking classes, learn something new, work on yourself. If you're thinking of it as a competition and you're thinking I'm losing because I don't have a supermodel girlfriend already,

that's a problem. Don't focus on the results. Focus on the process. Right? So, oh, man, she's already dating someone else and I feel so bad and so alone. Don't focus on then finding someone else. That's a result.

Don't focus on, I'm getting a six-pack. That's a result. Focus on, great. I'm working on myself. I'm taking an Italian cooking class. In the past, whenever I've had a breakup, I'd learn a new skill or two. Remember, I learned Chinese when I broke up with someone else a while ago,

because it was a skill I'd always wanted to learn, and I had more time on my hands because I didn't have a girlfriend anymore, and I started doing CrossFit back then as well. So I was like, I'm going to get back in shape. There's nothing that builds confidence and forms building blocks of a new identity, like learning new skills and getting back into the swing of self-improvement. And the identity part's important, because our identity is made up of skills and things we think make up,

who we are, right? I'm a great computer programmer that loves cooking food and photography, right? So when we add and improve on those building blocks, we change our self-identity for the better, and we move in a positive direction. And we have to do this because often our identity, especially in a long-term relationship, includes another person. So there's a gap left when that other person is gone, and we have a sense of self that's somewhat lacking. We feel like we've lost ourselves a little bit, even though we have it. What we need to do is find ourselves, again, and we can add pieces to our personality and to our identity. And this will help you feel more like you're winning, whether it's winning at life or winning the breakup contest, as you put it,

which isn't super healthy, but, you know, I'll hear me there. You really can't get yourself to stop doing X, Y, Z. You need to redirect your energy elsewhere. And the way to do this is to pick up new skills, pick up new habits, change your routine. Pretty soon you're just not going to care what your X is doing. Trust me. Been there, done that. And this all helps answer your question, which is how you get back out there. Make a list of skills, make a list of things you've always wanted to learn, pick a couple of classes, one or two, of those skills and those things that you want to learn and take classes and go and do them, join groups that do those. I've given this advice 100 times on the show when people move to a new town. It's very,

very similar slash the same advice. Make that list of skills. You're going to start to get excited. Worst case scenario, even if you meet nobody in those classes, great. Now you know how to whip up a mean canoli. This is going to be healthy for you because you're going to start to get excited. as it moves you forward and brings you a new circle. And get used to meeting some people in apps. You don't have to surrender to that strategy either. I know people hate meeting in apps, but this is kind of a reality now.

You don't get to just be like, I don't use apps, unless you have a full social calendar. You just don't have that luxury. But you can meet people in real life. In fact, if you're not at a gym or if you're at a regular big box gym, I would suggest joining something like,

it doesn't have to be CrossFit, but it can be something similar. There are gyms that are definitely much more community than they are like a gold gym, right? If you go to a CrossFit box, those people there, they're hanging out, they're going to eat after. Everyone knows each other. They work out together three, four, five times a week.

That's a community. You're going to meet a ton of people at a place like that. I work out of a buddy of mine occasionally at his CrossFit gym. That's not CrossFit. It's NC Fit. His name's Jason Kalipa. He was on the show.

I work out there sometimes. You can't not meet people there because people are like, hey, what's going on? what's your story and you're sitting there, tying your shoes, getting ready to go, and people are sitting with you and asking you questions and chatting you up. It's hard to not meet people at that type of box, that type of gym. So you can find places that are doing some cooking classes at the Learning Annex, and you can find culinary schools where people are really into it.

Pick the ladder. You're going to end up with a stronger sense of community. And you'll be fine in no time, man. I know you feel like crap now because you're looking at your accent. It looks like she's quote-unquote winning, but you need to figure out what you want to want to do and move that ball forward and that will get you to stop worrying about what other people, especially your ex, is doing right now. Okay, yoke.

What else do we have, Jason? Hi, guys. I legally adopted my wife's three kids five years ago and I've been in their lives for seven years now. Their biological father signed his rights away faster than signing a birthday card. The issues I'm having are with my now 16-year-old son. I want to call it rebelling, but deep down I think it's more than that. I've tried to connect with him, but he's the total opposite of me. me. This year alone so far, he's gotten into drugs, mostly weed, but has been busted trying

others. He tried to commit suicide with Tylenol, which we found out later once one of his friends tried the exact same thing. He's been caught stealing a vehicle, sneaking out, and is also runaway, and those are just the big things. We've taken away almost everything from him, grounded from friends, no phone, no Xbox, no after-school activities. He didn't attend those anyway and skipped out and hung out with his friends. We even moved him into a smaller room with less options for hiding stuff and going out the window. I've always tried teaching the kids action equals results. Do bad, get bad.

Do good? Get good. I've always tried to be real with everyone. I grew up with a sketchy childhood and have done good for myself. So I don't try to hide things because I want people to know that they make the decisions that affect their lives, and it's not their lives that make the decisions for them. I'm a hard dad. I expect good grades, chores to be done, and to treat people with the respect you want from them.

He wants us to let him do what he wants to do, which is smoke weed and hang out with those bad influences. Everything we talk about leads to arguments. Dinner time used to be joking, talking, and the occasional food fight. Now it's eat up and get up. I've lost all trust in him, and lately I feel like all I do is snap at him for everything. He wants trust, but doesn't want to give it. Counseling isn't helping. Meds, vitamins don't do anything.

I'm at a loss for what to do next. I've clearly explained our expectations, and he knows we'll call the police as we did when he ran away. On top of all that, I work four-twelves and overnights, and I'm in the process of moving up again. Been working on the six-minute networking and just finished, it's your ship from Mike Abershoff. I can lead a crew of 20-plus mechanics every night,

but can't lead my own boy. How do I get him to see the errors of his ways? How do I look at him without wanting to snap at him? How do I lead him to want to better himself, grow, and not just do the minimum? Any help is appreciated? Thanks from a failing dad. Wow, this is heavy.

I'm really sorry to hear about this. I'm glad that you enjoyed episode 231 with Captain Mike Abershoff. He is great, and his leadership qualities there in that episode are really great as well. Look, I was a little punk once. There's something more going on here. If counseling is not working, is this family therapy or is it just him? Because if it's just him, I kind of get why it's not working, because he just wants to get out of there as fast as he can, go smoke a bowl with his buddies,

and not think that there's something wrong with him, even though he knows there's something wrong with him and the way that he's interacting with other people, it's not a good feeling. This is a family issue, and so the whole family actually needs counseling. So if you're not doing that, you really need to start doing that.

That is what builds the circle of trust back among everyone. Because right now, he knows he's messing up, and that hurts, especially when you know everyone else is looking at you because you're the screw up. That's not a good feeling at all. And the kid for sure, he has some issues. It sounds like his biological dad is a total piece of work,

and your son is now just becoming a man, and he's probably wondering why he's not good enough to be loved by his own biological dad. That's got to be a terrible feeling. This whole Tylenol suicide is a cry for help, but it's also a very real way to die, so take it seriously. It's either that or very inept,

but man, Tylenol can harm your body and liver if it doesn't kill you. Yeah. You know, when people attempt or even just talk about suicide, you have to take them seriously. There was this trope back, I think, in like the 80s or 90s where it was like, oh, if they're talking about it a bunch, they're just trying to get attention. It's a bunch of BS. It's not.

Nope. It's not. People talk about suicide before they kill themselves a lot. It's not just like, oh, my kids trying to get attention. This is when people are thinking, what's the point? And they're sort of thinking out loud and they're maybe saying, does anybody even care? Would anybody even care if I did this? and that's how they test the waters for that.

So you have to be very careful. Jason, I know you have something here. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm really glad he didn't succeed. And the Tylenol thing is terrible. It is one of the worst ways to go because my ex-girlfriend sister, she was an ER nurse. And she said she got at least one person a month that went out that way. And there's nothing they can do.

Once it hits a tipping point, there's nothing they can do and you just eat yourself from the inside out. It's horrific. So hopefully you guys keep the Tylenol all the way now. But it is a sign of a larger problem. And as somebody who, as a teenager, did basically something similar to this. I understand where he's at, and we'll talk about that more later. But, yeah, man, you dodged a bullet with that one, literally. Yeah, that's, this is horrible.

And by the way, you're not failing. Your family hasn't solved the issue yet, but you yourself are not failing as a father. Failing would be to ignore this problem or to think, oh, there's nothing I can do. And it's not my kid anyway. You're not doing that. So don't be so hard on yourself. To your questions, how do I get him to see the errors of his ways? How do I look at him without wanting to snap at him?

How do I lead him to want to be better himself and grow and not just do the minimum? You probably can't get him to see the error of his ways. This is going to take time. It's a family effort. There's a good chance he sees the error of his ways already. And that's why he's suicidal and depressed. I do wonder what your wife, what his mom, is doing during all of this. She didn't factor into your letter at all.

So I worry maybe she's not as focused on it as you might be. Family counseling is a good place to start with this. You need professional help as a group, not just taking this on yourself or sending him to a counselor and sort of outsourcing the problem or outsourcing the solution. I do get that you want to snap at him all the time.

Trust me, I'm a snapper myself. But bear in mind, he already knows he's disappointing you. He already knows he's screwing up. It feels terrible. What he needs is a father, period. One, he knows actually cares because his original father clearly didn't.

I'm not saying you can't let him have it when he screws up. I think that's definitely something that fathers who care actually do. I'm not saying you need to be a pushover. But right now, I bet he feels like he can't even tell you anything about his life because you're just going to get mad or frustrated. This, unfortunately, makes the problem even worse and exacerbates things because the only people he thinks he can trust now are these other idiots that he's hanging out with

who are probably worse off and further down the drain than he is. He sees them as an example and he goes, ugh, look at these people. He doesn't think they're cool. These are the people that he thinks, these are the only people that tolerate me. I might as well kill myself with Tylenol. That's the thought process here for a lot of these kids. How do you lead him to want to better himself to grow and not just do the minimum? Well, this comes with time.

And right now, he probably feels like a loser kid who is unloved. He's not in personal growth mode. He's in just make it through the day mode. If he's suicidal, he's in just one foot and full. front of the other mode. That's why his grades are probably down the drain, et cetera. Doing activities that help build confidence, any kind of skill building, any kind of learning, anything creative, working with you on something fun. You want to remodel the bathroom? Have him help cut wood with you and work on stuff. Maybe he'll hate doing it. Maybe he'll see it

as a chore. Maybe you work on a car. Counselor can probably help with this as well. He needs something to look forward to. I bet you he looks forward to nothing every day. Absolutely nothing. He probably wakes up and is dreading the fact that he even has to get out of bed. I realize that this sounds macab, but this is what depression is like. Does he like to do anything at all with you? When's the last time you remember him having fun with you in the past? Is it work on cars? Does it build model rockets? Does he like fishing? Does he like hiking? Anything. Try and find literally anything that will bond you guys. Try and get him excited about literally anything. See what he wants to do. He might not have any ideas and he might just roll his eyes. Expect him to resist.

expect him to complain the entire time. That's what teenagers do, but it doesn't mean that he's not enjoying it. Trust me, I remember this like it was yesterday, man. Good luck with this. It won't be easy, but it is important, and you have a unique opportunity here to not only save this young man's life,

but teach him that he is loved and cared about and that his biological dad is the one that screwed up. It's not a reflection of him. That's a lesson he needs to learn and internalize if he's going to be a healthy man in the future. So I'm rooting for you on this one, brother. This is a tough call. Jason, I know that you and I both had The Ugly Don't Get Me Out of Bed Monster at some point in our lives.

So what do you think? Yeah, I think I was more in line with this kid. I want to get out and break things and steal cars and go to drugs and be a really nasty person for many years. And the two things that got me out of it, speaking of find something that this kid likes, skateboarding and photography. Once I found those two things, I basically stopped everything else. else because I threw myself into those because it was something that I was passionate about, something that I cared about, and I had a community around me that was also passionate about it, and it wasn't self-destructive. It was about growing. You know, I was learning new things with other

people. And they both tied together for me, and that really pulled me out of almost everything. And so what you need to focus on is what he can get into that is going to be healthy for him to make him stop doing these things. Now, I also have a little thought about how you're treating him with, you know, you're just grounding him, putting him in a smaller box, a smaller box, taken away his Xbox, not letting him do anything. That's going to backfire. I guarantee it.

All you're doing is you're putting him in a pressure cooker. My dad tried the same thing with me. It completely backfired. That's when I ran away, too. I took my car and I just didn't come home one day and spent three days on the road, went from Chicago to Virginia, and hung out with my cousins down there, got drunk, and, you know, until they kind of talk some sense of me. He's like, dude, you got to go home.

You can't stay here. You know, didn't really think that went out very well, but that was the pressure thing because I'd been grounded for two months. And at one month and three weeks is when I snapped. I could see the end of the road in sight, but that didn't matter because it had been building up for so long and so long. And so when I got back, wasn't grounded anymore. It had a certain set of rules that I had to follow, but I had, you know, my freedom to do

the things that I wanted to do. but, you know, there were rules. You got to be home for dinner at this time. We're spending this time together. You're not going out after this amount of time. But, you know, there were freedoms involved because I can just tell you, I can feel it when I was reading that. I'm like, oh, man, that's going to end badly. I remember it like it was yesterday, too, Jordan.

Those are some nasty times. But once I got into something that was good for me, like photography, which is something that takes a long time to learn. It's a skill that you can go deep on. You can get in the zone with it. And you have the physical side. So that was the mental side. The physical side was skateboarding.

So I'm out with my friends. I'm just, you know, running myself ragged every day because he's 16 and you need to get rid of that energy. You know, you've got to have something. Otherwise, that pot smoking, that is just, it's, you know, a replacement for the exercise and all of the pent up stuff. He's just hiding it, bottling it down. You need to find a healthy release for him that he enjoys and that he really wants to get into. Not something that you force him into. It's like, oh, you got to go play football, son.

Because, you know, you got to go run, go run, be play football. football. He's like, I hate football. No, you got to find something that he wants to do. It's going to take some time, but just ask him, because I bet he has an inkling of what he likes and what he wants to do. And it might just be sitting around playing Xbox for a couple years until he goes through that phase. That's fine, but give him his Xbox back. You cannot keep building that pressure up. Yeah, I notice that. I get that you want to punish him, and I totally understand, like, oh, we're taking away your video games because you like that. But then it's like, okay, this was the one thing where I can play, I play some video games to get my mind off work stress because it's just

enough to keep my brain engaged where I'm not thinking about, but it's also relaxing. And you and I, dude, even producer Jason and I will play some freaking far cry and blow stuff up because it does help burn off a little bit of stress. And so that type of thing is really helpful. And if you're taking that away, you're right, that pressure cooker, that's really, really bad because he, yes, you're making him feel worse, but he's not going, well, I ran away so I don't get to play my Xbox. All he's going is, oh, my God, the one thing that I was relying on to not think about how much I hate my life is now gone. Nobody understands me.

So what's the point? That's kind of what's going on in his head right now. Exactly. And if he's playing Xbox, guess what he's not doing? He's not out stealing cars are getting high. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bummer because it sounds like, yes, I should punish him. Yes, I should do this.

this is a kid who needs help bad. And so to take things away that are making him feel sane, even as a punishment, I totally understand your logic here, but even as a punishment, you're kind of playing with fire here. You're really playing with fire here. And I don't want it to blow up in your face

and then you're blaming yourself for something because it's not your fault. I follow your parental logic. I just think the kid needs an outlet. So to take away things that look harmless like video games, you might be taking away one of the only, things that ground him to reality and keep him away from the losers that are just smoking pot

or worse all day every day. Yeah, because I bet this kid is bored out of his mind. That's why he's doing half of this stuff. You know, it's possible. It's very possible that he isn't challenged by school and has trauma from his biological dad being a terrible person and is going, what's the point? The reason he's not trying might not be because he's like, screw it, man, smoke weed every day. He might be like, this is so easy.

I'm bored. and I hate all my friends, but they're the only people I have. And I'm a social outcast, and nobody loves me. So I'm not going to hang out with anybody who's not a loser because I have low self-esteem because of my crappy biological dad. Now he's got even fewer options. You know, this is a sad situation. You really do need family counseling.

That's what you need. Not just sending him to the counselor because there's something wrong with him. We'll be right back with more Feedback Friday right after this. Thank you for supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the end. air. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Now back to the show for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right. Last but not least. Dear Jordan, I'm a 16-year-old girl. My parents have very strange

beliefs. They make me eat weird things. Don't let me have social media or watch TV. They don't let me go anywhere and much more. As you can imagine, I get bullied and nobody really wants to be friends with me if they know about my life. I go to a very small private school where I know basically everyone, so I can't really make any new friends there, and my parents don't let me go anywhere, so I don't meet anyone anywhere else. The few friendships I do have are built off of lies. Those few friends don't really know anything about me, and our friendships are weak. I'm scared to tell my parents how I feel because of the punishments they give me if I even complain about the smallest things. I'm also sure that they like my little sisters better than me. My plan is to leave once I graduate high

school and get as far away from them as possible, but I still have two years. I'm beginning to get depressed, but I want to make it through those two years. I've never considered suicide. I know that once I'm on my own, I can make things work. I can forget my childhood and create a new life for myself, but I just can't keep waiting and things aren't getting any better. I really appreciate your advice. Sincerely, hopefully waiting. Well, wow. Well, we don't have a ton of info here. All we kind of know is you feel like your parents constrain you a little bit. They don't let you go anywhere. They make you eat weird things, whatever that is.

They have strange beliefs. I'm not sure what that is. Not letting you have any social media or TV. Yeah, it seems a little sheltered and controlling what you eat is also a little weird at age 16. It sounds like there's maybe something very strange about your family, and I don't know what that is because it's not really detailed here. Small private school makes me think that you're in a religious environment potentially,

so I'm not sure what to sort of do with that. but the friendships that you do have being built off lies, the fact that you're not getting along with your parents. This sounds in many ways like typical teenage stuff, but also a little bit more severe. And you thinking your parents like your little sister's better than you, you may even be right at your age, because maybe you're kind of a terror to be around,

and I totally get it. I was at your age. I'm not blaming you for anything, just so you know. I know that you feel a little depressed. You need to get through the years. That is very familiar to me as well. There is a couple options here. Now, I'm not recommending this at all, and I'll talk about this in a second.

You can be emancipated depending on the state that you live in. You're going to have to check the laws in whatever state that is. But before you pursue this process, you've got to ask whether you should be emancipated in the first place. This isn't, do I want to be free of my parents? What you need to consider is, can you pay for your own food and cook it? Can you pay for your own health care? Most people your age cannot. Can you find and pay for a place to live in the furniture,

and utilities that go in it. Remember, you're going to be legally responsible for contracts that you sign. You're going to be financially liable for breaking a lease if you do get one somehow. It doesn't entitle you to get necessarily a place to live. You're going to have a tricky time. You're going to have to prove that you're emancipated. It's a court situation. Every situation is unique, of course.

But remember, there are only a few ways to get emancipated. One, you've got to be financially independent. I don't know that many 16-year-olds that are also in high school. You could be legally married. Do not do this to get emancipated. That is the worst possible idea. If you can prove that your parents are abusive, neglectful, or otherwise harmful to you, then you have a shot at this. Again, you have to be financially independent.

That's problematic if they're just weird or controlling. You also have to have some moral objections to your parents' living situation. Now, if they've got drugs in the house or they are doing some other craziness, you've got a situation. If you've been kicked out of your house, that's another thing. Don't go and get kicked out of your house so that you can be emancipated. Because, again, you have to be financially independent and able to pay for your own food, health care, and a place to live. Now, if you've considered all these options, then it's time to explore how you do this.

You really do have to go through a court process. Options are pretty limited. If you don't have your parents' permission, of course. If you have their permission, it's easier. But if you don't, you've got to join the military, which is really hard to do. You, again, need your parents' permission to do that. I would not recommend doing this. You have to be really careful here.

If you're not married, you're not enlisting in the military with your parents' permission, you can't get your parents to sign off on this. You can file a declaration of emancipation in court. Now, again, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. You can want to hire a real lawyer, again, with your own money, to see about this. And some states don't even allow it. Other states, you've got to be at least 16. In California here, minors as young as 14.

become emancipated, but this is a terrible situation generally that most of these kids find themselves in at that age becoming emancipated. Again, you've got to be financially self-sufficient, not including government aid. You have to be able to make and keep stable living arrangements and prove to the court that you're mature enough to make adult decisions. You also have to be enrolled in school and or have a high school diploma. This is all key. You can't just bounce.

You've got to be able to take care of yourself. The court fees are a couple hundred bucks. that's probably not going to be the biggest issue. The biggest issue is going to be showing a judge that you can do this. Now, if I were you, and I know you don't love this answer here, I would bust my butt to graduate high school early and then go to college. Go to school someplace where you will live on campus, not at home. This way you'll be away from your parents.

You don't have to destroy your relationship in order to make that happen. And you never know. Things could improve. They might realize at that point that you're an adult. Maybe they're controlling because they're afraid to lose their little baby. Who knows? You can also get a job. You can support yourself while you're away at school.

All the better, if you work really hard in school, you can get a full ride to college. Then you aren't reliant on your parents for financial support. And unless you're being outright abused, I think it's good to avoid going nuclear and destroying your family ties. It sounds to me like your parents are probably weird. They're probably controlling. Maybe you've outgrown life at home or you soon will. That said, the real world can be a tough place to be alone. especially as a young person on their own.

So if I'm in your shoes, I'm putting my head down, I'm soldiering on, I'm graduating a year early, I'm taking some college classes to get advanced stuff in, I'm making the best of it. And here's a little bonus idea. If your parents are up for it, and they might not be, but perhaps you can convince them that it's good for college admissions, because it is really good for college admissions, see if they'll send you abroad to be an exchange student your senior year of high school.

It'll help you learn a language. You can go someplace like Europe, you can go to a place where you'll grow up fast. You'll be treated like an adult in a place like Europe, but you'll also be in a safe environment. You're not going to be out on the street. You're going to be with a family, a host family that probably considers you to be an adult at age 16. I did this myself, not because I had crazy parents, but because I was bored to tears in high school, and I started getting into trouble. This was the most formative year of my life, by far.

I was treated like an adult. I was saddled with a lot of responsibility. I learned a foreign language. I came back three years, emotionally, three, four years older than all my peers. I got a great edge up, leg up on college admissions because I was one of the rare few that had gone in an exchange and became fluent in a foreign language.

Contact an organization like AFS or EF. We'll put some links in the show notes for these exchange organizations. Look, this is not cheap, but there's probably some financial aid here and there that you can get. I don't know much about that. It is literally the best thing that I have ever done in my entire life. And it helped me get way ahead in college and in life. And it got me out of the house a year before anyone else.

So let me know how this goes. Being a change student, if this appeals to you, this is a far, far, far better option than detonating your family relationships by trying to get emancipated or running away from home or getting married to some old guy just so you can be away from your parents. Trust me. I think it sounds like unless they're abusing you, they're doing it. Doing this out of love, it's just weird and annoying. I don't think you should destroy your family just to get away from them, unless there's

something that's more serious going on that we don't know about. Life Pro Tip of the week, if you're buying clothes for a friend or a relative's young child, always overestimate the size of the kid. Kids grow so fast. Jayden's already outgrown a bunch of the stuff people got for him a month ago. Kids grow so fast. The larger clothes are guaranteed to fit at some point. The other thing is, whenever there's a newborn, everyone's like, here's a onesie, here's a onesy.

So we have 8,000 unworn onesies because even if he wore a new one each day, he would have outgrown the ability to wear half the stuff before we even opened it. What we don't have are things for six months old, eight months old, ten months old, 12 months old, 18 months old. We have a very few of that. And we have three bigillion onesies that we're mostly going to have to donate or give to other people or keep the cutest ones for our next kid, that kind of thing. So if you're gifting something to a friend or relatives young child, always get a bigger size. You can even get

something for a one-year-old. It doesn't matter. A kid will eventually, God willing, be one years old. And by then, not as many people are going to be mailing stuff and sending stuff over. So trust me, they will appreciate that. Recommendation of the week, Jason, have you seen this diagnosis? I have not. Tell me more. So it's on Netflix, of course. Dr. Lisa Sanders, she has a column in the New York Times Magazine. And what she does is she looks for rare and mysterious medical conditions.

And what she does is she publishes this column. All right, this is these person's symptoms, and we don't know what they have. And doctors and amateur random, I don't know, hypocondriacs from all over the world, they read this and they go, this sounds like textbook, blah, blah, blah, super, rare metabolic condition that's only present in pediatric cases, but it sounds like this random adult has it for some mysterious reason. And you'll find these people on diagnosis, they have weird shooting pains, and their urine is like coffee ground color, and they've got kidney issues, and they don't know what it is, and they find that it's a pediatric condition that nobody knew

about in this Italian team who read the article found out about her and said, wow, this is what we're doing our PhD thesis on in this university. Let's go to the hospital lab and test for this. And I found she just had a super rare metabolic condition that could be treated with diet. And she's like been bedridden once a month or so for her whole life and unable to work and in massive, massive debt and all this medical treatment's not working. There's all kinds of really interesting, and I say this because I'm not a victim of one, diseases that people have that are so rare that doctors just can't figure it out and they kind of just shrug and give you some Tylenol and send you on your way.

Or you're admitted to the hospital and you can't hold a job because you're in the hospital for four days a month. It's crazy. So diagnosis outlines some of these rare and mysterious medical conditions and they do a documentary series based on this New York Times Magazine column. It's fascinating. Very cool. I will check it out, but I will not let my hypochondriac roommate see this because then she'll

think she has everything under the sun. My urine's almost coffee ground color. No, it's not. Look at my urine, Jason. Come here and look at my urine. No, shut up and have some water. That's right. Hope you all enjoyed that.

I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. A link to the show notes for this episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. If you want to come to prison with us, email me, prison at Jordan Harbinger.com. It'll be a life-changing event. Trust me, I love it. I can't wait to meet all of you, and I think it's just going to be one of the most fun things I've ever organized. February 26th, outside Reno Nevada. It's going to be around 1,000 plus the cost of travel, 1,200, whatever.

We haven't quite figured that out yet. email me prison at jordan harbinger.com is where you can get the info for that quick shout out to nicholas from denmark he's been a heavy podcast listener for six years the show is the best he's ever come across so far i'll take that that's a great compliment because a podcast listener for six years you've probably experienced a lot of podcasts so yes i will keep it up the whole team will keep it up and we really appreciate you listening all the way from denmark go back and check out tommy caldwell and Malcolm Gladwell episodes from this week if you haven't heard him yet. And if you want to know how we manage to book all these great folks, manage relationships using

systems and tiny habits, check out six-minute networking. That course is free. That's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And don't procrastinate. Do it now. You've got to dig the well before you're thirsty. The drills take just a few minutes a day. This is the type of thing you ignore at your own risk.

I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. This has just been crucial to my personal life and my business, and I just, can't recommend it enough. It is free, and it's not enter your credit card free. It's free, Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. Greatly to get a hold of me and engage with the show. Videos of our interviews are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. Jason? You can check out my tech podcast, Grumpy Old Geeks at GOG. And if you're a podcaster, check out the club. It's a place for podcasters to just chill out and discuss the business and craft without Mark Zuckerberg looking over our shoulders.

That's over at club.podcastschool.co. It's free and open to everyone. This show is created an association with Podcast One, and this episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, edited by Jace Sanderson. Show notes for the episode by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Our advice and opinions, and those of our guests are their own, and yes, I'm a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. So do your own research before you implement anything you hear on the show. 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. 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 What Was That Like podcast? If you're looking for a new show to add to your rotation, something that'll make you stop mid-d dishwashing and go, wait, what that actually happened?

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