The Jordan Harbinger Show - 379: How to Deal with a Cheating Dad | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

You know that your father, who has a history of cheating on your mother, is currently having an affair with a family "friend." How should you deal with your cheating dad in a way that won't destroy what little cohesion your family has left? We'll tackle this and more here on Feedback Friday! And in case you didn't already know it, Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) 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: jordanharbinger.com/379 On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: You know that your father, who has a history of cheating on your mother, is currently having an affair with a family "friend." How should you deal with your cheating dad in a way that won't destroy what little cohesion your family has left? How can you keep growing your side hustle that has thrived during quarantine while convincing your unreasonable full-time boss that both of you would be happiest if you took a part-time consulting role so you don't lose your stake in the company? You find your workshop job well-paying and satisfying, but it takes its toll on your body -- as evidenced by your older coworkers. How can you secure an office job at your company to avoid the same fate? You've developed skills for finding and acting on opportunities that you'd like to share with others, but potential mentees so far have been lacking in ambition. How can you teach them to fish when they just expect the fish to come to them? Life Pro Tip: If you're a DJ, music producer, or podcast audio engineer, software can get pretty expensive. Email software companies explaining that you love their product and you want to do the right thing by legally purchasing it, but money is tight. They're often willing to pass along deep discounts when possible. 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 Gabriel on Twitter at @GabeMizrahi. And if you want to keep in touch with former co-host and JHS family Jason, find him on Twitter at @jpdef and Instagram at @JPD, and check out his other show: Grumpy Old Geeks. Sign...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. Today I'm here with Gabriel Mizrahi. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. I want to help you see the Matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. And our mission on the show is to help you become a better, informed, more critical thinker. So you can get a deeper understanding of how the world works, makes sense of what's really happening, sometimes even in your own brain. And if you're new to this show, on Fridays, we give advice to you and we answer listener questions. That's what's happening today.

The rest of the week, we have long format interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks. Spies, CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. I want to place a brick, even just one brick in the structure that makes up your life. That's what the show is about. This week, we spoke to Randolph Nessie. Why did we evolve the capacity to get sick? Why do we age? Why mental illness?

Why has that not been selected out by evolution? If you like evolutionary psychology, this is going to be right up your alley. I loved this conversation. And we had Stephen Johnson on the process of making good decisions, systems, techniques for making better decisions, and some fascinating science on how our brains actually process decisions, what our brain is doing when we are making a decision. So we had some great guests this week. I know we might sound acoustically a little different. I moved.

I moved. I live with my brother. Law temporarily, which is kind of funny. You don't think you're going to move in with family at age 40, but we're building a house next door. There's a Judd-A-A-Pat-O movie somewhere in there. There is a Judd-Apatow movie somewhere in there. You and your wife and your young baby have to move in with your single bachelor brother-in-law.

What's going to happen? That is literally the case. Yeah, that's exactly what's going on. And it's fun because it's like, it'll be like 9.30 and I'm all, oh, I'm past my bedtime. And he's like, yeah, cool. to order dinner and then we're going to watch a movie and then we're going to play video games. And the next day he's up and I'm up at the same time and I'm like, what time did you go to bed? And he's like, I don't know, like three, three 30, girl walks out.

And I'm like, what did you get here? What the hell did you arrive? Like, uh, one third. What is going on? What did I do? You just pitched every midseason episode of every network comedy. Yeah, starring Charlie Sheen, Jordan's new studio. And then that little like chime as like the.

person walks down the hallway and does the walk of shame. Do you dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunn. Pretty much. Rack focus to Jordan. Who is that? Yeah, quizzical look. Jordan, take that quizzical look again and turn your head completely around. I would watch that show with subtitles on.

You would have to. I would have to and I'd want to. It would be my choice. I'm exhausted from the move. I'm literally like these closed doors behind me if you're watching this on YouTube are just wall to wall. It's a bathroom filled with boxes that have shit in it. And it's a closet filled with boxes that have like jackets and stuff.

And I was just like, oh, yeah, got to do a show. So I was kind of not in the mood to do a recording. But then I, uh, White Claw to the Rescue. So is that what you have in the Tervis? And this coffee mug. What do you call that? Like a Tumblr? Is that a Tumblr?

Oh, that's a Tumblr filled with White Claw. Nice. So classy. Yeah. Get my drink on. I mean, it's better than putting it in Jordan's baby bottle. and sipping from it in the middle of the episode. Jaden's baby bottle?

Yeah, that would be weird. That would be weird. Getting quarantined. Getting quarantined. By the way, you can reach us, should you still trust us to answer questions about your life, you can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com.

And I wanted to pull a quote that I found earlier this week. Isaac Osamov, the science fiction writer, nailed this. This is 1980. He said, there is a cult of ignorance in the United States,

and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance

is just as good as your knowledge. And I think it's safe to say that we haven't solved this problem and it's probably gotten a lot worse since 1980, Gabriel. That quote has aged well. Yes. That quote, I feel like

it pops up on social media every like three to five years and it feels like it was written last week. It's never been more relevant. Yeah, except it's written by somebody when, possibly before I was born, depends when in 1980. That's true. I guess that is what, he's a good sci-fi writer because he saw some stuff coming. Yeah, he's like, this definitely not going to get any better anytime soon, which is a little sad. By the way, all of our, quick announcement here, all of our transcripts of all of our back catalog and current episodes

of the Jordan Harbinger show are searchable now on the website. So, with, all human-made transcripts. None of this machine, garbage, they're all on the site. They're all searchable using the main search. So if you want to know the one guy who said the one thing that one time, you can go to Jordan Harbinger.com,

you click the search bar, the little magnifying glass. You search right there. It'll show you what show it's in. You go down, expand the transcript, and you can control F in that transcript, and it will find every instance of whatever words you're looking for.

So I thought that would be useful. We spent a lot of time doing this. I think it took all of 2020 up till now and a lot of 2019 Q4. We had transcriptionists going through all of these transcripts, I mean hundreds of old episodes, hundreds of hours and going through and labeling the speakers and checking everything

and then saying, hey, what's this word this guy said? And then Bob Fogarty, our show notes writer, had to listen and go, I think he said, Namzan, which is spelled this way. And the four Filipino transcriptists are like, How is that, do you know what I am saying? We're like, don't even... Don't even go.

This transcript tool is so good. It is not only so accurate, but it's so user-friendly. And I love that you timestamped each moment because then you can go to the episode, listen to that section if you want to and hear how it was said. That's right. Or you can just read it if you prefer to read things or check back on them. I'm looking at it right now.

It's beautiful. I love this. It took a lot, and we were kind of like, is there going to be ROI on this? And I thought, you know, in the future, they're probably going to have machine searchable transcripts of every bit of audio, but it's going to be kind of crap for like five years. Right.

So why don't we just do it now? And then that way people who are disabled in some way can look for it, or people who are just going to not listen to 17 hours of audio to find somebody talking about that one thing can just search the site and boom, it's done. People can find our promo codes easier from old stuff, although that's all on the slash deals page at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. We appreciate when you use those. But this was a big project.

Really proud to have it done. It just got done today. So that's the big news around here. I'm just happy that in 23 years from now. Somebody's going to be able to see that we use the word quarantine. Quar intern. They're going to be like,

is that the word that they went with quarantine? Okay, cool. Got it. Oh, that's funny. There were more than 12 humans back then. Dude, they were going to have to go on Urban Dictionary to understand what we were saying in the past. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I won't go too far down the tribal, but some of the transcripts, stuff was really a riot because we had like freeway Rick Ross episodes in there and Dennis Rodman episodes in there. And the transcriptionist was just like, I really don't know if I can do anything in this episode. Amazing. So what did you do? You went back to the episode and listened to it. We went back and she just highlighted everything she didn't understand. It took like a long time to correct it because there was a lot there where even if you're sitting in front of him,

unless you can understand some of the dialect and mumbling and stuff like Dennis Rodman was doing. I mean, it's just, it wasn't easy in real time when I was conducting the interview, let alone when English is your second language and you're hearing it without any visual cues at all. So, yeah, I'm harping on this because it was kind of a feat to get all of this done in the time that we did. I'm so happy you did. Yeah, Millie, our transcriptionist deserves a major pat on the back, Jen, who orchestrated the whole thing, and Bob, who checked all the words that nobody knew. and listened to the audio and found out what they were.

A lot of funny moments in there. Anyway, Gabe, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Okay. Hey, Jordan, team. Back when I was a teenager, my mother and sister found out that my father was having a secret affair with multiple women. This devastated my family. We felt hurt and angry and lost our trust in him.

Eventually, it all came to an explosive altercation the night we confronted my dad by showing him the text and call history we had as evidence. I even got physical and threw punches at him. He didn't stay at him. the house for a bit, but he eventually did come back home. I think we just came to the conclusion to move on from this and that he was going to stop what he was doing. Fast forward to today, I'm in my mid-20s now, when my unfortunate suspicions these past few months came true. While I was doing errands in town, I saw my dad driving the car with one of the women he had an affair with, who is an extended

family friend. I'm once again upset to see that nothing has changed. Now I'm at a loss as to how to handle this. I live at home with my family while working a full-time job. I feel like it's not right for my dad to keep this affair going, spending time and resources on this other woman, and acting like it's okay for him to come back home to my mom. My father also gets verbally abusive with my mom, and I'd sadly say that he is an alcoholic. I don't just want to get angry and yell at my dad because I know that won't resolve anything, but I don't approve of what my dad is doing, and I feel deeply ashamed that this is still happening after almost 10 years. Any advice on how I should handle this rough situation? Do I need therapy? Part of me is afraid that if I do talk about this with my dad,

my old feelings of anger might come up and make things worse. And I honestly think it'll be hard to persuade my parents to handle this in couples therapy. Thanks for everything stuck in the middle with them. Well, I'm certainly sorry to hear that you are going through this. Oh, that must be infuriating. I know that people don't like, you know, physical violence and it's never the answer, but I think I would just lay my dad out if he was having an affair. I totally understand the urge to be super pissed off about that.

I do want to say, though, and I'm not defending Dad by any stretch, it sounds like his life is a mess, Dad's life. This guy's life is a disaster. He's deeply unhappy. His problems go deep. They run years back there. I mean, this, if you're having an affair in 1990 and you get caught having an affair in 2020, I mean, the odds that you were totally cool and clean for the 30 years in

between, I just don't know what the odds of that are, candidly. I would ask, what do you think your mom wants to happen here? Because stuck in the middle with him, he doesn't deserve this pressure. This is his dad's decision, his dad's creation. You, dear writer, you are not under any obligation to keep your dad's toxic secret. It's going to cause you stress. The type of stress that this is going to cause leads to depression and anxiety in extreme doses. I would talk to a therapist if you want that'll help blow off some steam. But the root cause has to be addressed. You know, when you go to a therapist, they're not just like, oh yeah, you have this terrible thing going on in your life? Have you tried swimming and walking outside? They're going to be like, oh, let's address this root cause.

But the root cause here is your dad's infidelity and the secret that you have. So you can't address that because it's not your freaking problem. It's not your problem that you have created. you're around it. He created it for you. So the solution is kind of like, get away from it. You got to figure out what your mom wants because she probably knows. I don't know. It's hard to say, but if this is going on over and over and over, she might be willfully

ignorant, but she probably knows. I don't think there's a need to confront your dad if you don't want to. But if I were you, I would tell your mom first, ask her how she wants to handle it. I would also wonder, can this guy get support from his siblings? This is just a burden that he shouldn't have to bear. It's not his burden in the first place. Now he's dealing with it alone and sort of bottling it up. And he's like, do I rat on my dad?

I mean, what an unfair situation to put your kid in. So unfair. Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like he's actually, it isn't his burden, but he's carrying weight in a way for both of his parents. He's carrying the dad's secret for the moment anyway. and he's carrying the emotional impact that his mom is going to feel or has felt in the past. It sounds to me like he cares about her a lot and she seems like the victim,

but there's some stuff going on here with mom as well, which is definitely her domain. If she's putting up with the verbal abuse, she's putting up with the infidelity or, you know, I know she doesn't know about this latest round of it, but, you know, that's her choice. And I think you, I wouldn't be surprised if you got, you had some feelings about that a little bit too. So how do you handle this rough situation? I think you've got to decide if you want to stay completely out of it or if you want to help your parents resolve this, knowing that it is not your job ultimately to help them fix their marriage. But if you are close with them and you're living at home, it's really hard for you to separate from them.

And if you're close with them and you care about them, which I get the vibe that you do, then it is something you could help them do, but you're only going to be able to do that up into a point. The real work of the marriage is going to be up to them. If you do talk to your dad, Jordan, tell me if you agree. If he talks to his dad, I would focus on how you see your dad's decisions affecting you guys as a family, as opposed to what you've done is wrong and I hate you for it. Because he might not fully understand that right now. It might help him make up his mind and understand why his choices are having such a big impact on you guys as a family. And by the way,

same with your mom. That said, know that your parents are their own people running their own lives. So if your dad wants to continue drinking and having affairs, that's his choice. If your mom wants to continue to put up with it, that's her choice. So you can help them process their feelings. You can help them maybe understand your feelings, but you can't change them. agree with that? I think his dad's really throwing away his relationship with his kid, which is such a shame. And his dad is chasing demons, man. You know, if he is, or running away from demons, if he's drinking and he's having, like, these are escapist, this is escapist behavior. I'm going to drink, I'm going to go have a fling, I'm going to run around the town. Like, he knows that he's screwed up

his life most likely, and he just doesn't know maybe what else to do. Or who knows what else he's going through. I mean, you know, there could be a blow to his ego. He might be struggling at work or he might feel a certain way about his position in the family and he's looking for a validation or a little boost to his ego or something outside of the family. Like, that's also possible. Hey, what do you make of this section where he talks about part of me is afraid that if I do talk about this with my dad, my old feelings of anger might come up and make things worse. I thought that was really telling. Yeah. To me, that sounds like that's part of the damage that your dad and maybe your whole family has done. I don't mean to point fingers. I'm just been real.

Like, you're afraid to be angry at him, despite the fact that you have evidence that he's doing this all over again, you're afraid of your own experience. So if you talk to him, I wonder what would be so scary about getting angry? I mean, you certainly have a right to be. So I think that would be something very fruitful to explore with a therapist. Yeah, I think he's probably also afraid that now that he's older, he's going to light his dad up big time. Maybe.

Yeah. Because if you're 15, you're like, Dad, I hate you. And you start punching him, okay. But when you're 30 and you do it, you know, you're. Depends how big you were when you were 15, but I guarantee you're stronger now and your dad's weaker than you now at this age. Maybe that's what he's afraid of. He might also, well, I was going to say, say something he regrets, but unlikely. I mean, what can you say that isn't true to your experience that the other person doesn't deserve at that point?

Right. Right. It doesn't make, not a whole lot. Not a whole lot. I feel bad. I mean, it's so hard. You know, parents have their own drama, right, with their relationship. But when you have children, it reverberates with your kids.

And I've talked to other people who are in your shoes, the exact same situation. One parent's having an affair. They know about it. They know about it before the mother does. And they've said how sad and destructive this kind of situation is, especially for you, you haven't separated from your parents. You still live at home, which is a whole other topic. I'm not judging you for it.

I'm just saying that makes this whole dynamic a lot trickier because you're involved with this family in a way that you might not be if you moved away or had your own place or whatever. So I think at some point you're probably going to have to draw that line on your own. but you also don't want to abandon your family. So I think give them a shot, see how receptive they are to your attempt to help them. And then if they don't want it or if they're not interested or they just need to work it on on their own, then you have to let them.

And you've got to separate emotionally, internally, you got to separate inside yourself to make sure that this doesn't spill over into your life. Yeah, I think that's very good advice. I do think the boundary is key. A lot of people are determined to screw their life up. My mom kind of learned this hard way. She raised her little brothers because her parents were kind of like these enablers of all their bull crap. And then she felt bad for them for so long and they just used and took advantage

of her. And it took her till she was like 60 to be like to hell with all of you. Wow. It might have even been later than that, honestly. And a lot of it was, it put strain on their marriage because my dad was like, why are you dealing with these A-holes? You know, they're a bunch of worthless pieces of crap. She's like, they're my brothers. I don't know what to do. You know, is that kind of thing. this could really suck you in and make you depressed for a decade with two parents, one or two parents, that don't care enough about themselves to handle their own crap. The last thing they would want is for you to get sucked into it. And the last thing you should want for yourself is to get sucked into it, honestly. It's just not worth it. You could go to an early

grave worrying about other people that don't even want to solve their problems, period. You're listening to Feedback Friday here on the Jordan Harbinger show. We'll be right back. And now back to Feedback Friday on the Jordan Harbinger show. All right, what's next? Hey Jordan. I'm a 50-year-old director of a printing company with eight staff members. I've worked here for 20 years and have a 10% stake in the business. The majority of our staff was furloughed back in March,

and our sales are a third of what they used to be. My income is fallen by 50% and my partner has been made redundant from her company. We have three children and a hefty mortgage to support. But I haven't just been sitting on my hands during this time. Instead, I've been steadily building up a 3D printing business from my garage that I've been operating in my spare time for the past 12 months. Since the lockdown, orders have gone crazy, and my income from this business has outpaced the income from my job. Nicely done, dude. My boss of the print company is starting to make noises about

everyone coming back to the office. However, the thought of returning to a three-hour daily commute into the city on public transport isn't something I want to go back to. I enjoy working from home and seeing my family every day, but I don't want to make the mistake of losing my print job and my 10% stake in the hope that my 3D printing business will continue to thrive. Sales may decline when my customers also return to work. The worst case scenario, I lose my job and the 3D printing business sales decline. The best case scenario is, I keep my job, but as a consultant, and work only a couple days a week from home and continue to build the 3D printing business. What would you do, and how would you broach this request with your boss? By the way, he's pretty unreasonable at the best of times.

All the best, sizing up my side hustle. I don't like the sound of my boss's pretty unreasonable at the best of times. That is, uh, that's not good. Yeah, no wonder he doesn't want to go back. He has no kidding. Three hour commute and there's a guy waiting for him who's going to be on his back and be unreasonable all the time. Yeah, hey, I'm not going to listen to good ideas because I'm an A-hole. Also, yeah, drive to Arkansas, I had to go to work. No thanks. So let's dispense first with the, the so-called stake in the company. We can't get answers in real time here, but I would ask what kind of stake? Because there's a lot of people I know that think they own shares or something. I got a stake in this company. If you own shares formally in a company, great, you can sell them back

to the company. If the stake is just some psychic interest in the business, which you could potentially sell to another business that acquires the print shop, then that's something else and sounds like vaporware to me. If somebody offered me a stake in their business, but the person has to essentially die and then get acquired by Microsoft to get value from that, that doesn't mean any, that is worth zero. And no offense, because I'm not in the print business, so I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about here. But when we talk about a print shop, that is not super exciting when you have a stake in something like that. Like, that's probably worth at best a few million dollars, but probably less, especially given where printing is going right now,

depending on what you print. If you add a stake in Apple, it would vest at a certain period of time I mean, you could sell it or you could cash it out, right? You don't have a stake in a printing company that you can share to another person in the printing company. And look, if you do, you can sell it to another person whether you leave or not. It doesn't matter. It's worth something where it's not. Okay.

So you have to figure out what that is because you either have something that's worth something or you have something that is worthless. And if it's worthless, then don't even, it's not a factor in the calculation of whether you stay or not. Does that make sense, Gabriel? 100%. It sounds to me like it is a real financial stake, but that he might. be over indexing how important that financial stake is in the decision. Because there's something

about a stake that makes it feel permanent or it feels like you have something invested in this company that is above and beyond your salary or your involvement. And I feel like that's probably weighing on him a little bit. Yeah, totally. Look, if you've got a 10% stake and this is a, let's say it's worth a million dollars, which I think is decent for a print shop. I could be wrong, could be a huge company. That's $100,000 on a good day if you don't get diluted, you know, by some other investor. later on. Right. So great. That's 100 grand. But there's more to the story too. Yeah. So how does he weigh that against the commute and his own personal interest? Yeah. If you had a 10% stake in something

that was worth $10 plus million and you could retire off that stake, great. But again, when does the stake become, when does it vest? When does it become liquid? When does it become something that you can actually monetize? Or is it just, and it better be on paper and you better have something formal, not just like a contract that says, you have a stake in my company. at 10%. That's not really how that stuff works. Anyway, that's neither here nor that's for a lawyer to sort of look at and say whether this is legit or not. But on to more important issues here, a three-hour commute is brutal. That is really bad. That is a huge chunk of your life wasted and or listening to this podcast, not necessarily mutually exclusive. It doesn't seem worth it.

It doesn't seem worth it if you have a stream of side income that actually makes you more than your job. I do understand what you mean about not wanting to give up something stable for your side hustle, especially in this economy, thinking that sales might actually go down later. That is possible. Why not keep the job for a while? Bust your butt after hours and on weekends doing the 3D printing business that you're doing until you can see whether or not sales decline. Then, even if sales decline or they don't, depending on your situation, you can try to

negotiate with your boss about staying at home and working as a consultant. It would be good for you to go back to the office at first, though. This is where Gabriel, you might disagree here. I think he should go back at first as a sort of show of force. Like, look, I'm all in. Show your boss. Your head is still in the game with your regular gig. Because I feel like if he says, all right, everybody, time to come back in.

Let's do this. And you go, well, I kind of want to work from home. I kind of like it. That to me as an employer, I would be like, oh, you're either doing something else or you just like waking up at 10 a.m. and walking around the neighborhood with your dog for two hours while you're doing conference calls, you know? Right, right.

How much productivity am I getting out of you? But if you come back, Rip Roaring, I'm ready to go to the office every day, I'd be like, okay, you're an A player, you're on the team, you're ready to go, then you can negotiate and your boss goes, well, you've been really productive and you work really well. I don't see any problem letting you go back home and working. And he doesn't have to know you have a side hustle. In fact, I would maybe not advertise that.

He could see that as a threat, as a side of, side hustle, and I didn't address this in the answer before when I was planning on it, but a lot of employers, and you have to be very careful here, a lot of employers, they, I wish I could remember what this was called, but essentially it's an invention where, let's see you work at a print shop, and now you've got a 3D printing business, your boss could say, that's my 3D printing business, because I hired you to work at my print shop full time, you started a side hustle using your knowledge, resources, equipment, your computer, everything on company time. It's in the printing industry. That is an invention that you got as an employee of mine, therefore it belongs to the company.

And this happens a lot. You'll see people who are working at a tech company and they'll be at home tinkering with something and they'll invent, you know, oh my gosh, I can get this data cable to go faster and I can do this and this and this. And the company goes, great, we'll take it. Yeah, we're going to patent that. And you're like, well, no, no, it's mine. And they say, no, it's not. And we're going to sue you and you're not going to get crap. We're going to give you a nice bonus, but we're not going to give you the $10 million it's worth. Here's $10,000. Here's some stock options. If you're lucky, you know, as a settlement in court before you go to trial to save them on some legal fees, you know, they might do that. But you've got to be very careful that you are making

damn sure. In fact, I would document, I only work on this on Saturdays. I do not use company, computers, resources, emails, contacts, sales leads, materials, when I do this, et cetera. In fact, I would also keep it on the low. I wouldn't advertise this at all. If your 3D printing business is still hot after you get back to work, you're gonna have a lot more leverage

to negotiate with your boss on going home. And if it's starting to slow, the 3D printing business, that is, then you can either find other work or negotiate with your boss or just suck it up and take a three-hour commute, go in like normal. It's not gonna matter as much if your boss is reasonable or not,

if you are the one holding the cards. So if you have another source of income, that you feel is decently stable, and your boss doesn't necessarily have to know about it, and you find out what your rights are with respect to the 10% stake in your company, then you are the one in control of your own destiny here, really. He may be unreasonable,

but that, in my opinion, that is just another reason to negotiate more freedom or take your freedom by leaving. And if you have a stake, sell it. And if you can't sell it, then your steak doesn't mean squat because it's not worth anything. Gabe, what's next?

Hey, guys. I'm a 29-year-old tradesman from Australia. who works in an engineering workshop. I'm making good money, and I like my job, but I've noticed that by the time my colleagues on the floor are in their 50s, their bodies are just getting flogged out. How can I get off the tools and upstairs into the office before my body starts to fail me too?

Bleaching my blue color. I really like this question. You're thinking ahead. You're noticing what it's like for the people around you. You're trying to game out your career. I think that's smart. I think a lot of folks don't do that. And then they get a knee injury and a job where they're, I don't know,

a steel worker. And they're like, oh. What do I do now? I got to retrain now. That's a bad situation. We're all good. We don't need supervisors for the next three years, but you can, I don't know, learn something else. Good luck.

Here's your unemployment check. So by trying to rise up in the company, you're really asking how to build on what you know and become the right candidate for another job. The big mental shift you're going to have to make moving up and moving into corporate is how to work on the business and not in the business. in the business means working on the tools, understanding your little niche, your little sphere.

Working on the business means developing skills, developing expertise beyond your role, getting to know what makes the company tick, et cetera. And I think you're in a good position to do that. I mean, you can obviously observe what everybody else is doing. Starting off at this position is great to then later manage those people because no one's going to be like, oh, you know, Jordan doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's never had to do this. Well, he worked in that part for 10 years. He knows your job better than you do. Yeah. And there's nothing more annoying than a manager who tells you what to do without understanding the details of the business. Right. Like that thing you just told me to do?

One, not possible. Two, we have a machine for that. And three, the way you want me to do it is illegal and unsafe. Exactly. So basically, go F yourself and also no. Yes, totally agree. So practically, I think I would break this down into a few concrete goals or habits. First of all, I'm going to sound like I'm parroting Jordan here, but he's dead on.

He's 100% correct. I would start by developing relationships within the company and a, side of the company as much as you can. Six-minute networking is going to be your best friend. People write into the show constantly saying that it's a game changer, and I think it could be for you as well. The best thing you can do right now really is to get to know the guys upstairs. Like get to know them, ask them what their job is about? Ask them to chart a path for you. What would they do if they were in your shoes right now? If they were trying to prepare for the desk job, what kinds of things should you be thinking about? And I would go into those conversations with a very

simple agenda. Be a student. Be humble. Be kind. Be curious. People will respond to those qualities if you demonstrate a genuine interest in educating yourself about how it works upstairs. Those are the best people. Those are the people people want to invest in as well. And hand in hand with that, I think, is studying the company. And I know you probably know a lot about the company already because you're in operations like you are on the ground. But studying the company in a corporate way is sort of another level. It's a different way of thinking. So I would put on your consultant hat and look at the company like an outsider trying to figure out what it's worth. Break it down. How does it make money? How does it spend money? How can it grow? What's the overall industry like right now? Is it growing? Is it shrinking? You know, what are the trends? Like, what are the strengths? What are the weaknesses? What else could your company do? Beyond what it's already doing? So, you know, it's an interesting exercise to ask yourself, like, if you were CEO tomorrow, what would you do to improve it. And if you start asking yourself those questions and then connect what you're learning to what you're seeing on the ground. You can start to develop a point of view that would be super valuable if you rose up in the company or actually had a hand in some of those decisions.

Of course, and you knew I was going to tell you this, invest in yourself. Based on your study and conversations with people in corporate, what do you need to know? You know, it's easy to go, oh, man, I need an MBA and I got to go to, they might go, look, man, MBA, great, yeah, whatever, we sort of hire for that. Learn basic accounting and then come in here and you'll be able to do everything that all these MBAs do because you actually did the job. You don't really need an MBA. We hire from them if they have no experience, but you have 10 years of experience. work on the machine shop, like you don't need that.

So don't assume that you need to get papered up. They might be like, the last thing we need is another paper pusher. We need somebody who knows how the system works and the assembly line works and the shipping works. So if that's the case, you're already growing, but you might need to round it out with some skills,

some classes, like I said, accounting 101, whatever it is, experiences, like, oh, we really need somebody who understands the shipping line. And you go, oh, well, I've been working in the machine shop. Maybe I should transfer to the shipping line for two or three years and get a really good idea on how that works. Oh, supply chain? Sure, why not? I'll be the manager of the supply chain, that kind of thing.

That can really go a long way. My dad, actually, he worked at a tire company. This is like in the 60s, 70s or something like that. I don't know. He worked at a tire company, an auto supplier in Detroit. He worked at a bunch of other auto suppliers. Then he, and I'm going to get the chronology wrong, but it doesn't really matter. then I think he started forward on the assembly line.

Then he went, oh, I'm going to go to college and move up in the company because all the guys who went to college are the guys that are the boss's boss's boss. So he went to college. He was the first one in the family to go to college. So he went to college after he was already working for all this time.

Absolutely. That is very interesting. Years and years of experience working before he went to college. Wow. Very cool. He didn't necessarily know that he wanted to go to college. And then he wasn't like,

oh, I'm going to go to college and make something of myself. I think he was more like, oh, you mean I don't have to lift tires and assemble oil pans or whatever you do on an assembly? I don't have to do this forever and I can make more money if I get a four-year degree from Eastern Michigan University. Great, okay. And I'm not sure if the company paid for that or helped him out at all, but he went to college for that. I don't think he was just like, it's not like now where you just go to college after you go to high school. It was like, back when my dad graduated high school, which is insane when boomers are like, kids are lazy.

No, you could afford to have your wife not work, buy a house, and have three kids and a high school diploma. Because you were making the equivalent back then of, I don't know, whatever it is now, $30 an hour on an assembly line, the equivalent thereof in that age, that doesn't exist anymore. So you have to do that now. So my dad just realized the writing was on the wall. I don't know if he saw that jobs were going to be outsourced, but I think he realized that he didn't want to be lifting, pushing around carts of metal car parts. for 30 years. I think he saw himself as realistically not wanting or not being able to do that.

So he went to college. Yeah, he went to college to move up. He didn't go to college because he liked literature. Certainly not my dad. So your dad actually asked himself the exact same question. This guy's asking himself. Super interesting. Yeah, I think so.

It's good to know that it works, that you can do this. I love that. I'll just add this something to file away for, you know, keeping in the back pocket as you go through all this. Don't fixate too much on the end result of rising up in corporate. I would say go do all of the things we're talking about, but be open to being surprised about how many opportunities present themselves to you when you start thinking in this way. You might totally land that job in corporate that you want, or you might land a job in corporate at a rival

company, or you might create your own role at this company that doesn't exist yet, or you might realize you want to go to school, or you might find somebody who wants to start a company in the same space, but you know all of this stuff now because you took the time to learn it. So I think if you fixate, it's great to have a goal because it gives you sort of a direction to head toward, but It's sometimes just as fun, sometimes even more fun to think about just to be open to the other ways that your life can turn out when you start to invest in yourself. So stay open to that. Anything that comes your way as you start this new journey. I love that you're thinking about this. I think it'll be awesome.

This is the Jordan Harbinger show and this is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back. After the show, we've got a preview trailer of our interview with Dan Pink on why some of us are morning people and some of us are evening people and why science says we're more racist in the afternoon. So stay tuned for that after the close of the show. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. Who doesn't love some good products and or services? You can always visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals

for all the details on everybody that helps support the show. And now for the conclusion of Feedback Friday. All right, what's next? For the last 15 years, I've worked in corporate business development where I'm responsible for finding and developing new customers. I've never been an order taker. I've developed skills and outlooks on finding, and developing opportunities that I'd like to share with folks that are just getting into the game.

From what I've seen, there are a lot of people who are just waiting for customers to come to them, which may or may not happen. There is nothing super secret about what I do. I just follow a very robust process. So here's the pickle. I recently tried to mentor a younger colleague, but there was no interest on their part. They just wanted the orders to come in without being proactive. I realize that there are a lot of folks that don't have the experience or available mentors. I'd like to share my experience and process with people. I don't want to give a man of fish. I want to teach him to fish. Do you have any thoughts about finding folks to mentor?

Ultimately, I may scale to a consulting or coaching business, but that isn't my intention right now. Thank you in advance for your thoughts, desperate for a disciple. I really like this question because it shows that, first of all, not many people are that giving, right? Not many people go,

you know, I want to help make someone else's life better. Yeah. It can readily identify with that. I think it's probably very frustrating. It's probably how adults feel when they have kids and they go, hey, you know, if you do this, this and this and this and this.

And the kid's like, yeah, I just don't care. I just want to get it over with. Can I just go to play Fortnite? Okay, good talk. Bye. I don't want to learn how to fish. I just want to like relax and smoke weed or whatever it is. And not that all kids are like that, but I think every teenager kind of gives that

vibe to their parents, whether they're, whether they'm into or not. So teaching someone how to fish, great. I think the problem here is you're trying to force this model of mentorship on people that don't want it, encouraging people that. to ask questions and things like that is great. This is more of a filter people in type situation, not a, or someone else to be interested in you. Yes.

Totally agree. It might take 100 people before you realize that, well, let me back up. Some people just want a job. Some people don't want a career. They don't want a mentor. They think, this isn't my forever job anyway. I'm going to get really good at, again, Fortnite,

and I'm going to be a pro, whatever. I'm going to have a Twitch stream and be a streamer. I'm going to be a YouTuber. This whole working at this company for a paycheck thing is lame. I'm going to go buy a product I saw on YouTube and become an entrepreneur. You get that a lot. And you get other people that are just like, hey, man, I appreciate it, but I'm paying my

way through college with this, or this is my first job here and I hate it and I can't wait to leave. I don't want to waste your time mentoring me because I can't wait to GTFO. Other people are more curious. They can be driven, you know, to open up about the job, the career. you can foster that curiosity. What do you think, Gabe? You're probably a little bit more informed here.

I think you're dead on, man. I mean, look, rather than look for a mentee, I would see who deserves your mentorship, who expresses a real desire for it. I mean, that could be as simple as somebody who seems a little more curious about some of your advice or admires your technique and tells you and sort of signals to you that they're ready.

And then you can build it from there. But as a potential mentor, you have to follow other people's cues first. Then you can be the guy who teaches them how to fish. my question for you, just to scratch a few layers, is that a phrase? Did I just invent that idiom? Scratch a few layers. I think I'm, scratch the surface or peel back the layers, I think is what I was trying to say. My bigger question, either way, let's scratch it. My bigger question for you is, why do you feel the need to mentor so strongly? Why do you want to take people under your wing?

I think it's wonderful. I love it. I don't mean to psychoanalyze you. I'm just asking, the impulse is so kind on your part, but it's important to understand your motivations. Sometimes we think we just want to help people, but really we want something else. Like there's something else going on. Like we want to feel validated or we want to feel important or needed, all of which is totally normal. Maybe we couldn't get that mentorship ourselves when we were younger and we're desperately trying to recreate it with other people.

Everybody's different. I would do just a little bit of introspection on your part so you can become the best mentor you can be and make sure that you're sharing your gifts with the people who really want it and deserve it. And if you end up opening a coaching business or a consulting business down the line, then understanding that part of yourself will be even more important. Great questions this week. We do have a life pro tip from a listener. Gabriel, take it away. Yeah, we got a really good one from a musician who is writing it about music software and how it can get super expensive. The life pro tip that he was sharing is always email software companies explaining that you love their product and you want to do the right thing by legally purchasing it, but money is tight.

He says, I found that companies can give you massive discounts. I even got up to 50% discount on some major software by asking that question. Especially with a lot of people self-quarantining right now, this can be a useful trick if someone wants to get some software for their business but can't afford the full amount. Hopefully this helps. And that is courtesy of DJ Frecaro. Is that Frichero? How would you say that?

Frichero. Frachero. AKA DJ Pizza. DJ Pizza. We appreciate it. DJ Pizza. Hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week.

Of course, a link to the show notes are always on the website. website Jordan Harbinger.com is where you can search all the transcripts, as we mentioned, at the top as well. Go back and check out the episodes with Randolph Nessie and Stephen Johnson. If you haven't yet, I think those were two pretty strong episodes. And if you're into psychology and the way your brain works, well, you're going to love those. If you want to know how we managed to book all these great folks, it's always about our network. Six-minute networking course is free. It's over there on the think-ific platform at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Do it now. Dig the well before you get thirsty. The drills take a few minutes a day. That's the stuff I wish I knew 20 years ago.

Find it all for free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. I'm on LinkedIn. A lot of people are engaging with me there. Videos of our interviews and this show, this episode are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. This show created an association with podcast one. Thank you, Gabriel Mizrahi for your sage advice and question curation. And of course, my amazing team, including Jen Harbinger, J. Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Millio Campo, and Sal Cotching. Keep sending in your questions to Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Our advice, opinions are just that. I'm not a shrink. I'm not a therapist. No clinical authority whatsoever. None of this are treatment recommendations other than you should get treatment if we recommend it and probably

even if we don't. I can only share what I've learned on my own with my team. I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research. And that is not YouTube videos. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody who can use the advice we gave here today. Lots more in store for you.

Excited to bring it to you. But 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. As promised, here we go with the preview of our interview with Daniel Pink. People were more likely to get parole early in the day and immediately after the judge had a break. If you came before the judge's break, you had a 10% chance. If you came right after the judge's break, you had about a 70% chance.

They had two groups of jurors. Every group had the same set of facts. One person had a defendant named Robert Garner. The other person had a defendant named Roberta Garcia, but on the same set of facts. Then they had another group that deliberated in the afternoon. Same deal. When jurors deliberated in the morning, they rendered the same. same verdict for Garner and Garcia, because it's the same set of facts. But when they deliberated

in the afternoon, they were more likely to exonerate Garner and convict Garcia. Racial bias increases during that time. I would love to be the kind of badass who gets up at 4 o'clock in the morning, works out, reads three newspapers in three different languages, and it's like at the office at 615 before the cleaning crew. But you know what? That's not me. So the idea that everybody can just get up earlier, that's easier said than done. It's not very sustainable. I know there's a ton of fellow entrepreneurs and just regular folks out there that have trouble getting up early and think, oh, I'm lazy. About 15% of us are very strong morning people, Lars, about 20% of us are very strong evening people. Owls, two thirds of us are in between. We are in some ways walking timepieces.

We have time and timing literally imbued in our physiology. For more with Dan Pink, including how to match your schedule to your body's peak times for rest, recovery, and optimal focus, check out episode 63 here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. 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 look for

the bright yellow light bulb and start listening you can thank me later