The Jordan Harbinger Show - 86: How to Handle an Accident in a Rental Car | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: August 24, 2018

Jordan Harbinger (@JordanHarbinger) and Jason DeFillippo (@jpdef) banter every week and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday! Corbin Payne (@the_sue_chef) makes a cameo appearance in this one to help us cope with a bit of a legal pickle. If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now, let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: You got a promotion only to accidentally discover that the person who does your old job makes more than you do now. Now how do you leverage for a real raise? Should you feign interest in something you don't really care about for the sake of mingling with business clients? As a parent of young adults who carry the scars of trauma from your imperfect marriage to their other parent, how can you help them move through their current challenges? Now that you followed the advice from Alex Kouts in our three-part negotiation series and landed a new job, your current coworkers are kind of cold toward you. How can you make your last two weeks with them bearable? As a woman with a loud voice who punctuates her speech with spirited hand gestures in a male-dominated industry, how can you shed the all-too-common impression that you're somehow being unprofessional? Advice and strategies for moving on to new pastures and developing new friendships after the beautiful realization that life doesn't revolve around drinking. When your spouse is fired from the industry in which you both work but wants to make it seem like it was a voluntary move, how can you express support without being caught in an ass-biting, credibility-diminishing lie? Who's at fault when someone crashes into your rental car, you've only been speaking the local language for five years, and the police believe the other guy's story? Resident Jordan Harbinger Show Legal Mind Corbin Payne weighs in. Recommendation of the Week: Upgrade Shoutouts to Max in Germany and Ignacio Flores! Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Jason on Twitter at @jpdef and Instagram at @JPD, and check out his other show: Grumpy Old Geeks. Connect with Corbin on Twitter at @the_sue_chef. Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  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, and I'm here with producer Jason and Philippo. Here on the Jordan Harbinger show, we love having conversations with our fascinating guests. And this week, we had Charles Rue, part one, talking about his escape from North Korea. Just crazy stories galore in that one. I mean, you think that you've gone through some stuff? Try escaping from North Korea twice because he got sent back. Spoiler alert, but that's just the beginning of his trouble.

And we had Jim Quick talking about things like memory improvement, brain performance, a good friend of mine, and he is an impressive guy, great stories and great practicals involved in that one. And it's an interview unlike one I've done with him before. So I think even if you've heard a bunch of his stuff, you'll get something new out of that. So enjoy Jim Quick and a defector slash escapee from North Korea in this week's episodes if you missed those. Of course, our primary mission is to pass along our guest's experiences and our experience. and insights along to you. In other words, the real purpose of the show is to have conversations directly with you. And that's what we're going to do today here on Feedback Friday.

You can reach us at Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please keep them concise if you can. It really increases the chance your question will get answered on the air and saves a little bit of sanity for everyone involved when we don't have to read a little booklet about everybody when it comes into the inbox. So check us out at Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com, and we'd love to hear from you. As always, you've got some fun ones and some doozies. I can't wait to dive in.

Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hey, Jordan and Jason. I've been working at the same place for almost three years now, and recently I've been given more responsibilities with a raise to go along with it. Should be good news, right? The problem is they hired a new person to do the things I was doing before, and she's the wife of one of my coworkers. And I overheard her husband say how much she's getting paid.

It's more than I'm getting paid now. I'm a 23-year-old guy, and everyone I work with are in their 40s. I think they may be taking advantage of me because of how young I am. My questions are, how do I use the knowledge of my new hires pay in my favor? And do you know of any way to secretly find out what the people around me are making? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you, Salary Spy. So I can't think of any lawful way that you can get the salary info of what other people are paid.

it's pretty difficult to do that. You could ask people, but it's unlikely that they'll tell you, I would imagine. And it's rude also. But you could try if you got nothing to lose. The best way to get leverage, though, in a situation like this, is to go shop for other jobs

and get an offer elsewhere and then leverage that for a raise if they want to keep you. So you'd say, hey, actually, I got a job at Chief Competitor B, and I'm thinking about going, there but I really like working here. I just got this new promotion. I'm really happy here. I really like it. Can you beat the salary offer or match the salary offer that they gave me over there?

And if you want to figure out what a fair salary is for competitor B, you might consider some informational interviews with people there and get a salary range. So find somebody who's in a similar job and say, hey, if I were to work in a similar job, what's the salary range that I would get? and they might not say, I make $42,000 a year, but what they might say is you'd make somewhere between $35,000 and $45,000 a year. That way, if you're making $30 or 29, then you know that you're getting taken advantage of in your position. The best time to look for a job or a raise is when you already have a job or another job in the work. So, in other words, the best time to look for a job is when you already have a job.

And the reason for that is because you have all the leverage. You don't have to take a lowball offer. And I totally get it. This company, you're 23, everyone's in their 40s. They probably offered you what they thought was an okay salary or a competitive salary for somebody straight out of college or straight out of school. And you're getting raises based on that. And remember what we said in the Alex Kutz episode that I can't remember the exact statistics, Jason, maybe you do. But it was like a 5% raise early on equates to a million dollars in earning over the course of your career.

because you're getting a raise based on your previous salary. You're not going from, well, I made $29,000 bucks and now I'm getting a 5% annual raise to X dollars. You're getting a raise based on the original salary. So if you start $10,000 behind everybody else, $20,000 behind everybody else, you're getting a raise based on your original salary. You will literally never catch up because your percentage raises will also be smaller. So it pays to get this, literally, pays to get this handled as early as possible and figure out what fair. pay is and be ready to leave with another offer, but also not have to take a lowball offer from a new company because you already have a position. So the best thing you can do is go out, shop

around, use Alex Kutz episodes that we just aired here, use his negotiation techniques to get a top salary, and either have your current employer match or beat it and keep you or bounce and go somewhere else for a fresh start, which might actually be better because your current employer, Either they'll go, the jig is up, fine, here's what you're worth, but you might actually resent that. Because if they know they're underpaying you grossly, then there's a good chance that they're going to be resistant to giving you what you're actually worth, even if it's completely fair. What do you think, Jason? Absolutely, yeah. Definitely start asking around. There are a couple sites out there where you can do some salary comparisons as well.

We'll get those linked in the show notes. But yeah, this Alex Kootz episodes are must listen to. Go back, get the worksheets on those and dive in, and you will definitely be able to get a raise. Yeah, I mean, think about it. If you actually use those and you get the appropriate raise versus what Alex was saying where most people don't negotiate their salary and don't get the extra money that they're worth, those three hours could be worth a million dollars over the course of your career. And if you're in a high paid career, they're worth even more. The average amount that somebody who negotiates their salary is worth is a million dollars more than somebody who doesn't. That's insane.

Yeah, those Alex Kutes episodes are literally worth their weight in gold. Yeah, yeah. If you could weigh data. You're right. All right. Next up. Hey, Jordan and team, how can I get excited about something I have zero interest in? In this case, cars. And for that matter, should I even? I've never been a car guy. I appreciate their utility, but beyond that really could care less. I'm more into say computers, video games, and the arts. The thing is, I've worked in the signage industry for years and it isn't exactly booming. most money to be had, besides owning your own shop, seems to be in vehicle wrapping. You can do vinyl application on other things, too, like windows, wall murals, floors, really anything with the surface, but all the demand is centered around vehicles. I love the artistry of vinyl wrapping, and I'm working towards getting certified, but the only thing that gives me pause is when I think about marketing myself, mingling with all these gearheads and grease monkeys, to sell

myself when I don't care at all about their toys. I just like making things look cool. So, is there a way to get more excited about cars and stuff so I can get on with potential clients, or should I even waste my time indoctrinating myself into something I don't care about? Cheers, not so auto. Yeah, this is a tough one. I'm really a fan of maybe not necessarily following your passion, but always bringing your passion along with you. And I talked about this with Mike Roe before, and what I meant by that, and what he meant by that is you can find things that you love about the work that you do and bring that with you. You don't have to sort of like, follow your dreams. But if you're totally

uninterested in the part of your job that's actually lucrative, this is going to be a problem long term. You're going to suffer in terms of your happiness and it's going to be tricky. Now, I would say you should indeed find whatever you can to enjoy about your job,

but it is, I do see where this would be a heavy enough weight emotionally where you're wrapping some guy's Mustang and he's like, yeah, just dropped a blah blah blah in there and you're like, oh great, yeah, who cares? And he's like, yeah, thinking about getting, what do you think of OZ racing tires versus such and such tires? And you're just like, I don't know, man.

And then he's like, oh, okay. And you're doing that all day and your customers aren't really connecting with you because you don't care about what they care about. So it's actually going to end up, it'll end up costing you money. It'll end up costing you money because people will think that you don't care because you don't care about the subject matter. And you're not using it as much on your own car. So you're not going to be like, yeah, you know, I modified this to do this performance

wise. Granted, it's a wrap, but you know what I mean. So it's really not going to, you'll never get to the very top, top, top because you want to have a passion for it, which is kind of a shame. Being in a field where you know you will literally never actually enjoy or get to the peak of it because you don't care about it. That sucks. So bring your passion with you as much as you can, but I would find other things to be excited about that have to do with this type of project or service. So in my opinion, this is an opportunity to specialize in something that nobody else is thinking about. So if everyone else is thinking about cars, wrapping cars, doing detailing on cars, what can you do with your skills that nobody else is thinking about? For example, you mentioned murals or

things like that. You can wrap anything that has the surface. Murals, artwork and offices, vehicles for advertising instead of gearheads. Airplanes was an idea that I actually came up with when Jen told me about this. I thought, like, what if you wrap jets? right i know that there's probably not as many people with jets of course as there are with cars that want rap but what if you were like the jet rapper right i don't even know if that's possible or if you need totally different stuff but imagine especially if you could make it so that look it's it's not totally permanent it's a rap so if somebody rents a jet for like a month for their music tour you could create that for them you know what if what if there's some kind of

high end what if you got the beber jet right like who knows you could create all kinds of crazy stuff and you could be the zany jet rapper guy who is the only guy who specializes in this certain type of small high-end aircraft i mean the opportunities really are limitless when you start to open up the ideas and the the niche a little bit so i agree you shouldn't be forcing yourself to pretend you like something even if you don't but there's definitely an opportunity here that's ripe for the taking and focusing on that instead of trying to fit the square peg through the round hole, that's going to lead to a happier place in the future. And once you find that specialty, you can lean into it, you can niche down, as Chris Lockhead would tell us, and you'll be the top guy in that space while everyone else is

competing for one another in the car wrapping business, which you don't even care about anyway. So I would try to niche down as much as possible. And it's going to take a little bit of trial and error and a little bit of work, but I think it's worth doing. All right, next up. Hey, Jordan, Jason. I'm a divorced guy in my early 50s with two young kids in their 20s. After getting married after a quick courtship in my mid-20s, I had my two awesome kids by the time I was in my early 30s. At this point, I've realized that while I have really great kids, that my relationship with my wife had a really negative impact on their psyche that's manifesting more and more now. To say my wife and I had oil and water parenting styles would be a huge understatement. I think this is due to us both having grown up with totally different relationships with our parents and our families.

my parents were extremely forgiving and believed I should learn from my experiences versus being told everything to do. My wife's family was the exact opposite and that everything was a conflict and blame and shame drove communications and expectations within the family and to the outside world. We both had our own style of family baggage we brought to the table when we started parenting, and the differences in backgrounds really caused challenges in raising the kids.

A month after my eldest went to college, our marriage ended. Today, both me and my ex have good relationships with our kids, though we don't speak to each other at all. Anytime we've ended up in the same place, the stress from both my kids is palatable. Sadly, what I've determined at this point is that we really screwed up our kids mentally. They both suffer from their own versions of anxiety disorder,

one bordering on depression, and the other with a PTSD-esque avoidance. As a parent of young adults, how can I help them work through these challenges in life? I want to help them fix things, but I know I can't really move the needle for them myself, but it's glaringly obvious that they have traumas that impact their day-to-day lives.

My 20-year-old still lives with me, hasn't gone to school yet, but is employed with a decent blue-collar job. My 22-year-old is a thousand miles away, on and off in school, working in hospitality, partying through life, is really struggling financially and is very distanced. I'm a high empathetic person and can feel the pain and suffering when I have conversations with them. I have my own baggage that I'm dealing with, including the parental guilt associated to their upbringing, but the one thing I've never been short on is simply unrelenting love and enthusiasm for them. I've looked into therapy for them, but that's a hard thing to pull off logistically, especially if it's not their idea. So here I sit, much like Jimmy Buffett reflecting on his life at

40, but I feel I've got a good shot at helping out at 50 if I can come up with some solutions. In the meantime, I'll just keep on loving them like REO Speedwagon would. Feedback and ideas are appreciated, a loving and heartbroken dad. P.S., apologies for the 80s music references. Huh, no need to apologize. All right. So I think, it's great that you're so loving, of course, and that you're taking the level of responsibility that you are for your kids and taking responsibility in part for where they are in life as a result of the parenting and the relationship with your now ex-wife. And I also realize you're feeling guilty and you feel like it's going to be logistically tough to get your kids into therapy together

together with you. But right now, you need to take care of you and get your stuff straightened out because you need to hit the therapist's couch hard. You need to make sure you. You need to make sure you've got the emotional foundation upon which you can start to repair the relationship with your kids. I'm not even sure at this point, and again, this is something you can ask your therapist when you get in the room. I'm not even sure having the bunch of you in a room right now is even what would be most beneficial at this point. I think what would be best is if you came to terms with your own issues, got a lid on all the emotions you've got boiling over, and took control of your own life back, because that's what your kids are going to need from their at in the future. At that point, you might see some benefit or you might even be able to convince

them of the benefits of therapy, but you've got to serve as proof of concept here. So start your own process and path to recovery and lead by example. And thanks so much for writing in. Keep us posted on how this goes. I really do think this isn't unrecoverable, but I don't think you can go, all right, everybody, we're going to fix this family and like pack everyone into a room no matter where they are across the U.S., they really, your kids really need to see that, look what my dad's doing, wow, he's a totally different person. Maybe I can fix some of this stuff too, and look how encouraging he is and look how much he's changed, not just we're all screwed up, we all need to get in a room.

Because kids are just like, speak for yourself, I'm going to the bar. Because that's how 20-something-year-olds are, generally. So I think you serving as proof of concept here is going to be a huge game changer for you and then eventually for them. This is Feedback Friday. Stick around and we'll get right back to your questions after these important messages from our sponsors. Thanks for supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash advertisers.

We're rebuilding this show from scratch, so a nice rating and review in iTunes or your podcast player of choice would really help us out. It only takes a minute or two, and if you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Now let's hear some more of your questions. All right. Next up. Hey, Jordan and Jason. Thanks in part to your negotiation skill set with Alex Coots, I have a new job. My current problem is leaving my current job. I put in my two weeks notice and suddenly everyone is kind of cold to me.

It's a great new opportunity, a 30% increase in pay in a more exciting field. Any tips on how to make the last two weeks at the current job more manageable? Love the show. Get so much out of it. It's the best non-sports, non-politics podcast out there. Thanks again, moving on up and moving on out. Yeah, this is probably more common than people think. might be cold to you for a few reasons.

One, they feel like you're ditching them and they feel like you don't care because you're out of there, which is possible. Maybe you're giving off a little bit of that vibe because you are excited about your new job and it's being misinterpreted by people as you don't care about them anymore, which I can understand why that would feel that way.

Two, they know you're leaving and they don't feel like investing time into the relationship with you because they don't think it's worthwhile. Well, he's leaving. We're never going to see that guy again, so whatever. And three, they're jealous because they wish they were leaving to or because they know you're moving on to a better opportunity. It's probably

a combination of all of these. It's hard to say it doesn't really matter what the reasons are. There's not much you can do about it now. What is important, though, is leaving the job on good terms. What I would do in your situation, I think, you know, I don't have all the facts here, of course, maybe write personal notes slash emails to each person or have conversations about what specifically you learned from them on the job and ask for advice going into your next position and tell them what you liked about working with them. So tell them what you learned on the job, ask them for advice on your new job, and tell them what you liked about working with them. The key here is to be very specific, as specific as you can, because it's more believable and credible and it feels

a whole lot better to hear like, hey, Jim, you know, I know we didn't work together that closely, but you're always sort of really responsible, cool-headed when problems arose. I'm to bring some of that into my new position. I just wanted to thank you for modeling that for me. That was really cool. You've worked here for a really long time. I really respect that. You're clearly, you know, highly capable. And it was an honor to work with you instead of just some sort of blanket. So it was nice working with everybody or, hey, Jim, I know we didn't work together much, but it was nice knowing you or nice working with you. That doesn't mean anything that's really trite. And people just go, yeah, you too, man, see you later. But if you're specific, it's like,

oh, okay, this is a real compliment, right? This is. a real thing that this guy found value in. And of course with the asking of advice, you get the benefit of the Benjamin Franklin effect because of the advice part, right? So what do you think I should do moving into my new job? It might say, well, I didn't work with you that closely or, well, you know, one thing I noticed that you're getting better at is communication. I think continuing to manage expectations in your new job will be really helpful. And you say, great, that's really helpful. Can you give me a specific example by any chance? You know, then you're getting the Benjamin Franklin effect and people are going to be rooting for you.

you, which I think will change the way that they behave towards you during the last two weeks. It'll also help set you off on the right foot leaving this place and moving into your new job. And the good news is it's only two weeks no matter what. So even if people are like, you know what, I'm sick of this little shit. It doesn't matter. You're out of there. So congrats on the new job. Keep in touch and onward and upward.

Next up. Hello, Jordan, Jason, and Jen. I'm a female in a male-dominated industry. I do have a loud voice and often speak with my hands. For some reason, when I have a disagreement with someone, male or female, they say that I'm being unprofessional. One male co-worker said I was even speaking rather aggressively, and we were just talking about some upcoming changes to our workload.

It often seems like just because I have a loud voice, people are quick to say that I'm speaking in a bad tone and being rude, and this is hardly the case. I even had another coworker say, some people just do not understand strong Latinas. WTF, how do I tackle this situation? Why does my loud voice carry such a negative connotation, and what can I do about it? about this. Sincerely, loud and proud. I feel like we're going to hear from the family, the Jordan Harbinger Show family at large about this,

because this has got to be something that happens quite often. I just think it's really, I shouldn't say really funny. It's a funny visual. It's not funny for loud and proud, but I can imagine a bunch of just like really, this is what I'm envisioning, Jason, a bunch of really square white people sitting in an office, and she's got a ton of personality,

and they're just all like, I don't know. I feel like loud and proud yelled at me yesterday when we were talking about that. It's just like they just can't handle it. And then they say, some people just don't understand strong Latinas and they don't realize that that's kind of not appropriate things to say it worked. It's kind of like not a, you don't really say stuff like that like, oh, black people are so funny. Like you just don't say that stuff in the office anymore. Like, ah, sassy black lady. Like you can't do that, right?

You can't do that in an office environment. And here they are doing that while also simultaneously. giving you crap about your cultural stuff that they, I don't know, there's so much wrong with this. But I get it. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place. You're caught not only between the male-female divide where people have to get used to women speaking authoritatively, but you're also caught in the the Latin gringo divide, if we can call it that, where someone who's more passionate might be seen as overly emotional and perhaps even a bit out of control in some way. Just, you're being unprofessional. Why? Because I'm excited about this or because I have.

some something in my voice other than a monotone drone from Ohio. I don't know. I hate that this exists for you because it isn't really fair. I also want to equip you with the best tools for results here and not just tell you that you're right and kind of move on from there. I'm also not going to ask you to stop talking with your hands. I'm not going to ask you to be more quiet either because I don't think you should have to change those things about yourself. After all, you're obviously a very strong Latina, at least to some people in the office. And I see that as a strength of yours that you shouldn't have to temper. I think there's a lot of companies, especially out where I am in Silicon Valley, where that's totally fine to disagree with people. In fact, you should. And I'm reading radical

candor right now with Kim Scott, who's coming on the show. And she's got all these stories, Jason, about Silicon Valley companies where Larry Page, founder of Google, will be saying, hey, I've got this idea. And somebody who's like 17 rungs under him will be like, oh, you're going to be causing our department so much trouble. There's going to be so much web spam and crap we're going to have to deal with. We can't do this. This is a terrible idea. And they're saying this to like the absolute CEO, be all and all power in the company or Steve Jobs saying something like, hey, we're going to try this and one of the other people on the board at Apple or or in the C-suite or even just below that saying this is a bad idea, Steve. You have no idea why. And there's a quote from

the book that I love, and again, this will come up in the show, which is Steve Jobs was a lion, and if he roars at you, you better roar back, but only if you're a lion also, because otherwise he's going to eat you for lunch. So a lot of strong leaders, they love having people disagree with them. It's how these companies scale and grow aggressively, but obviously the office where you're at is not like that. So what I might suggest is to modulate all of this with something else. either your workplace isn't a fit, which is kind of where I'm leaning, but you can either check in with people and jokingly say something like, well, I'm pretty passionate about this topic, so don't let me scare you if I get loud here, right? You can also perhaps make sure that you know these people well enough and that they know you're not actually getting angry. I'm curious how long that loud and proud has been at this job and how well she knows her coworkers, because I feel like if I worked with someone for a year, I would just be like, oh, that's how she is. She's not mad. You know, we had lunch the next day. There's no issue here.

I'm also curious where she works, that people actually get bothered by this stuff. Like, what am I missing? How loud are you, right? What is going on here where people are actually like, you're on professional and mean or getting angry? Honestly, though, this seems like something that can be corrected by otherwise strengthening the relationships you have with your coworkers so that when things do get heated, they know this is just your spicy personality coming out. You're not actually getting aggressive.

And once your coworkers know you a bit better, this should subside unless there's a piece here that I'm just not getting. But I also think it's possible that the workplace is just not a good fit. Because if somebody's passionate about something and they actually express their opinion and other people consider that unprofessional, I'm not sure that's a place where a lot of us can grow. I think that sort of everybody in being polite, quiet, and agreeing with each other is not really a good culture for somebody who gets passionate or excited about anything they're working on. It just doesn't seem like that's good. It doesn't seem like that's a place where people can grow, especially people with your personality type.

Yeah, I'm definitely curious to hear where she works because, I mean, if she's working like in an accountant's office and everybody's like got their head down and doing everything like and trying to focus on their numbers or she works at a library, you know, some kind of place like that. But yeah, let us know what you don't have to say exactly where it is, but what type of environment it is because I'm very curious. We'll be right back with more feedback Friday after these brief but important messages from our sponsor. sponsors. Thanks again for supporting the show. Checking out the sponsors is what keeps us on the air.

For a list of all the discount codes and links, visit jordanharbinger.com slash advertisers. And if you have an Amazon Alexa, check out our Alexa skill. You can get clips from previous shows in your daily briefing, and it's completely free. Just go to jordanharbinger.com slash Alexa or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa app. Now back to the show for the conclusion of feedback Friday. All right. Next one. Jordan and Jason. In the spirit of keeping things short, dive right in, my hero. What sort of advice and strategies do you have for moving on to new pastures and developing new friendships after the beautiful realization that life doesn't revolve around drinking? I find it very easy to avoid temptation all week long and notice my values

stay in line until Friday creeps up in old habits and patterns come into play. How can I effectively wean off caring about missing out on or not being around those people I've spent so much time around for so long? Does friendship equal drinking and bad habits? Thanks, cleaning up my act. Well, you know what I'm going to say here. Friendship does not equal drinking and bad habits. A lot of times drinking buddies who aren't actually friends just enable each other. You know, working in the old company and stuff, seeing that all the time, going out a ton in my 20s. There were so many people that I was just not friends with.

And I see it now among other people young and old where they're just like, oh, yeah, my friend this, my friend that. And I'm like, you're not friends. you don't hang out when you're not consuming substances. So you're not friends. These are not friends that would come to your wedding. These are not friends that you can call and have lunch with or that you can go to a magic show with. These are friends that want to get hammered and hang out

and then you share a pizza. That's not a real friend. Sorry. And I realize people bond over this stuff, especially in college when they're younger, but there are a ton of other things you can do that are healthier. All this stuff really going out,

drinking, parting all the time. Not only does it get boring and it's unfulfilling, but it's bad for your health, it's bad for your physical and emotional health. And the way that I dug out of that myself was the skill set list that I've mentioned a lot on the show, but I'll do it here again. Make a list of skills that you want to learn, things that you're interested in. I mean like Italian cooking, writing short stories, whatever, just make that list. Doesn't matter what it is, doesn't matter the availability of anything, of any teachers, skills, whatever. Find classes, ideally in person, not just online, and take those classes.

One at a time, maybe two at a time, depending on how much free time you have. Make friends with the people in those classes. Find out where they're going, what they're doing, what kind of other activities there are for that hobby, get involved in that stuff, especially in classes that have communities, and then join online communities. I deal with a real-life component to continue expanding the social circle. So if you want to get better at photography, find a photography class, and then find an online community of photographers that are like, hey, we go out to downtown Philadelphia at night on weekends and explore abandoned buildings that are still in good shape and we run around taking photos. There's tons of meetup community. Jason, you must know about this stuff, right?

Oh, it's a huge thing. People basically do photo walks. So there'll be a group of people. They'll meet like at the library in a certain place. like to say if they were going to do night shooting so you get like 20 people all with their cameras they meet up at the library they hang up they walk around the town take pictures and you get to meet people that way and it's really fun i've done a couple of them they're they're really fun yeah so i think there's plenty of communities like this photography doesn't have to be your interest there's

probably everything from botchy ball to photography to uh sheesh i don't even know learning italian cooking like i said oh yeah we're going to go to this restaurant we're going to talk to the chef we're going to cook in the kitchen at the play i mean who knows there's all kinds of cool experiences that you're going to get that don't involve going to the same bar, ordering three pictures of beer and then stumbling home. And I lament all the time I wasted doing that. You know, like, yes, there was fun times when I did it, but I feel like I just did it for years longer than necessary

because I didn't know what else to do. And that was just such a waste of time. I'm making up for that time now. That's why I read three books a week. You know, that's why I decide to do all this crazy learning stuff and all these adventures is because I spent so many years. years just being just farting around it was just a waste of time waste of life i wish i'd known that stuff earlier me you and me both yeah right i think that's like the story of everyone's life when they hit middle

age is like oh my god i wasted all this time when i was younger not doing this uh i think that's normal but use it i like to use it as fuel for sure soon enough though i think you're not even going to miss your old crew of friends chances are there's going to be a few of them who want to jump out of that life in that cycle as well they just don't know how so feel free to keep in touch with them text him and say like, hey, I can't make it out tonight, got photography class. By the way, if any of you want to learn photography, now's a great time to join. I got a great class, et cetera. Now's a great time to learn Italian cooking.

Any of you guys want to figure out how to do this? This is really fun, meeting a lot of cool people. Somebody might be in, they might not be, but this is how you level up and you move onward and upward. That's just really what it is. You don't want to have to be stuck waiting for other people to get their act together. It's just a losing strategy. you're never going to find people who are starting off with this.

You have to start. You have to lead. Amen, brother. All right. Next up. Hi, Jordan. My husband was just fired from his job and we both work in the same industry. We both work in politics and we're both working on different campaigns.

A lot of people in our industry had been frustrated and angry with how the organization my husband was working for is running. And it's been rumored to be horribly run this year. My husband asked me to say he quit, but I don't know how comfortable I am doing this. at the same time, I don't want to throw my husband under the bus and want to respect how he wants to message this, but at the same time, I don't want to get stuck in a lie. How do I navigate this? And some other factors to consider are, due to the poor performance of the organization, I don't think the folks running it this year will be in very good positions in the near future. And I'll be working with this organization very shortly, and I'm worried about people asking in the short term. Signed, Nervous Nelly.

So this is interesting. Wait. the organization has poor performance. Your husband got fired, but you're going to be working with that organization very shortly? I don't know if that sounds like a bad idea. Am I misunderstanding what she's writing? Since it's politics,

I think, you know, you have to kind of mix and match a lot. So maybe she'll be working them, like, with them, but not for them. That's the only thing that I can think of because if, like, they're firing your husband and they suck, you know, why would you go work with them? So it has to be some kind of other working with, I'm assuming. Yeah, I'm so confused. Makes no sense to me. But I guess, yeah, well, whatever.

That's neither here nor there. I would say it's better to be truthful than to lie. And I get why your husband wants to preserve his ego. I definitely understand wanting to preserve your ego and the illusion that it was mutual or that you left or whatever. I totally get that. But if everyone knows the organization is bad, they won't be surprised that they let go of good people.

If he was in a bad situation and thinking of leaving anyway, you could position his leaving as him being fired as he was making arrangements to leave, which is coincidentally what happened to me. There's truth to that in any case. And it also highlights that the other organization is so poorly run that that's how they handle internal problems. And leave it to the outside world to sort of go, well, wait a minute. Wasn't he the head of this? Wasn't he doing that? Doesn't he have other good references from other organizations? this is the outlier, but everybody knows that organization is full of crap, so no surprise.

It's always nice to say, well, we left, we didn't get fired. It's kind of like the whole, yeah, I just broke up with my girlfriend. It was really sudden, but it was mutual. It's like, wait a minute. If it was sudden, probably wasn't mutual, right? There's always something that doesn't quite match there. And if you left, you didn't get fired, and that's what you're saying. But then the truth is out.

It's going to bite him in the butt when he looks for a new job. if he lied to all these people when he got the new job in the first place. So he goes and he gets a new job. Yeah, I left. Wasn't working out. Da-da-da-da. And then somebody else comes in and says, yeah, sorry I had to fire Tom. He was really a good employee, but it came down from on high.

So I really couldn't do much about it. Wait, Tom got fired. He said that he left. No, I'm the one that fired him. Good to be working with you again, Tom. One of the worst decisions I ever had to make. Oh, wait a minute. You lied to us when you got this job.

Now, what else did you lie about on your resume? Exactly. It's just not worth it. It's just not worth it. In fact, Jason, I don't know if we talked about this before, but I saw some documentary or something on the news where this woman who had worked at a university for like 38 years or 28 years and was like just months away from retirement, somehow it came out that she didn't attend whatever school it was that she attended. I can't remember that. Yeah. It had been on her resume.

And she had a, her career was great. She crushed it in her job. She was respected by everyone, but she had lied to get the job. And since it was a public institution, they had to fire her. So she got fired after her long, successful career. And she turns out she didn't even need that. Like, maybe she needed it to get the job, sure. But was it worth it?

Now she has no pension, probably, you know, because it was misconduct. Like, you can't, I don't know. I would imagine that's a pretty crap way to go out. and there's probably some penalties, no severance, probably no pension. I mean, it's just terrible, really, really bad because you lied on your resume. Why? You didn't have to do that. You know, it would have been better for her to just go to that school and get that degree after all that.

So when I was pushed out of my old company, I was very forthright about it. And in the end, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, just as your husband being pushed out of a terrible organization will probably end up being one of the best things that ever happened to him, too. It's just not worth having to go back and rewrite history later on, which you can't do. So when in doubt, always err on the side of truth and transparency. Always. I also recommend Nervous Nelly goes out and buys a copy of Sam Harris' book lying and gives it to him that he can read since he doesn't have a job right now. Yeah, got plenty of time. Short book anyway.

All right, last but not least. Dear Jordan, I'm writing to ask advice for a car insurance claim. I'm Chinese. I've been living here for five years and only speak English for five years. I am good at speaking the professional language and have good knowledge about my work and some degree of casual conversation. Besides that, I know limited of everything in the U.S. Here is the story. I rented the car and waived insurance because I learned my credit card will cover the insurance, which I called to confirm.

The accident happened on a Miami highway while I was on vacation. I was about to exit the highway, turned on my blinker, and checked my mirror and blind spot twice. Then I changed lanes and got hit by a car from behind. My car spun about 30 degrees and I got hit again by the same car. I stopped by crashing into the wall. Nobody was hurt, thank God. We were both shaking and asking if everything was okay. I had no idea what to do by that time besides shake.

There was a guy behind him that saw the whole thing, but I was in shock and didn't ask anything from him. The driver's brother came shortly and had a conversation with the eyewitness. He also came over and told me that it was all my fault. Meanwhile, the tow truck came and took both cars to a parking lot where the police were. The brother separates me with one tow truck driver, and they stayed with the eyewitness. While I was answering the question from the police in the parking lot, the eyewitness was interrupting us and told his story.

The brother walked away after that. Based on my description, you might know that I got the ticket with 100% fault. After a two-month concussion, I learned they took advantage of me. Now I've received both claims from the rental car company and the third-party insurance company. I also learned my credit card insurance only covered my car's damage. period. But I still have a $13,000 claim letter from them. I don't know what my options are and what I should do. I don't personally have a car, so therefore I don't have primary insurance. People are telling me to find a lawyer, but how to find one, find who, and is the price going to make it harder? If I'm going to pay,

can I pay for it over several years? That is my story. I really hope to get some direction from you. I've been learning so much about this country to adopt the life here from your show, wondering if we can have some learning about dealing with a car insurance company. After this accident, I learned so many of my friends experienced a similar thing. How can you help us get some tips? Thank you very much. Cashed and confused. So normally I wouldn't answer such a specific question about a legal issue, but it seems

like this is happening a lot, and I feel really bad that somebody who is new to the country is being taken advantage of. Yes, probably should have had different types of insurance. That's a little confusing. But I find it completely not okay that it seems like this brother interfered with the eyewitness testimony and that this other insurance company is trying to take advantage of this person. Now, I don't know the exact circumstances, but I think it is definitely advisable that she get an attorney. And finding an attorney can actually be quite tough. So we bring in here today, Corbin Payne, are, we should give you a title, Corbyn, like the resident.

Jordan Harbinger show Legal Mind. Is that too grandiose? I like it, though. No, I love grandiosity, and that's a great title. All right, so you're the official legal wisdom center for the show, at least for this particular issue. How's that? So what does crashed and confused do here? Obviously, in any situation, we're trying to apply this not just to car accidents, but in a situation like this where you don't know what's going on, maybe you're from another country. Where do we even begin with this stuff when we're getting the screws turned on us by somebody else? I feel so bad for Crash and Confused here. It really does sound from her email like the brother in this situation just took advantage of her confusion, of her unfamiliarity

with the legal system and interacting with the police in order to just completely massage the details of the story to put her 100% at fault. In the future, in talking with a police officer, so if there's been a crash, and this applies to anybody, in talking to a police officer, make sure your side of the story gets told. And you can even, at a situation like that, I would even say, look, ever since this happened,

the brother of the guy who hit me has been over there talking the year off, the witness who came upon the scene of this thing. The officer may or may not believe you, but a competent officer is going to note in his or her report that you have made this claim, and that's something that gets entered into the official record. So, Jordan, I'm going to back you up 100%. She absolutely needs a lawyer, and she does not need to sign or agree to anything without consulting an attorney. specifically she's going to be looking for a personal injury attorney, one who specializes in defense. And if she can find one who further specializes in automobile accidents, that'll be even better. There are people who do this sort of thing in a city as big as Miami.

I think there will be several. So in terms of finding one, first I guess would be to start by asking around if she knows anybody who knows somebody, but if she's on vacation to Miami, that's probably not an option. So one place she can start is with some legal services that list attorneys for a geographic area and rank them and rate them. The most prominent of this service is called avo.com. That's avvbo.com. And look for attorneys on there who have decently higher rankings and who have multiple people giving them feedback. Their rating and feedback, mechanism is very similar to the way Amazon does it. So go on there and act like you're

shopping for an attorney on Amazon and hopefully that'll lead you to somebody pretty good. Honestly, the first place she might want to start would be to contact her embassy or the nearest console to see if they can make any recommendations, especially if a lot of her friends have had similar experiences. The embassy or the console may have figured. out a way to help people in this situation. Because unfortunately, I believe her when she says, as she's related to this scenario, and as she has said that many people she knows have been through it, people who are not born into our culture, who are not fluent English,

they're at a disadvantage in our legal system, and that can leave them open to abuse. So, again, I cannot stress this. I think a consul or an embassy, would probably be a pretty good place to start. So to answer her other questions, the claim letter that she's received is often referred to as a demand letter. This is a letter where the people who hit her

are saying that they are legally entitled to be reimbursed for expenses they incurred in the accident. The expenses could be damaged to the car, medical bills, towing fees, etc. So she's not been sued just yet, and she will not be sued until somebody comes to her and serves process upon her. So I'm going to hand her paperwork saying, hey, you're being sued.

If she retains an attorney, that attorney will help her navigate through any negotiation with the other side. Cases like this tend to be worked out between the parties and their attorneys. It doesn't often go to trial. It doesn't often go to court. Very often these things can be agreed to before anybody pulls the trigger and files in court. So it'll probably get settled through negotiation. And in a negotiation, she could agree to pay any amount that she agrees to pay over the course of time or come up with something else that would work for her. And if it does go to trial and it goes against her and she's ordered to pay over a certain amount of money, again, she would probably have the ability to pay that over an amount of time.

the no attorney no court system is going to expect that somebody's going to be able to fork out several thousand dollars in one lump sum on the spot so she'll have time no matter how this goes i think and i would also close that for future reference she may want to look into getting an umbrella insurance policy these are relatively inexpensive and they protect the policy holders against lawsuits So with this type of insurance, as with the insurance provided by her credit card or by the rental company, she really wants to look into what exactly that insurance is going to cover and maybe talk with some illegal expert or somebody who would be able to walk her through that. So I'll also reach out to some of my classmates and colleagues that I know down in Florida, see if we can make any, get any legal recommendations for an attorney down in the Miami area and we'll pass that along to her if any come through.

That's great. That's really nice of you. Yeah, I think this is really a confusing situation for a lot of people. And I can only imagine how much more confusing it is if you're not from this country and you're being told you owe someone money. You don't really think, oh, I should question this, right? You think this is a legal letter. It's official.

It's not official. It is supposed to look official so that you get scared. And don't feel bad, crashing confused. This happens to a lot of people, not just the accidents, of course, but the fact that lawyers try to intimidate people. It happens to non-lawyers, and it even happens to lawyers. I got served with a lawsuit recently from my old company, and it said, you owe all this money and all these damages and all this stuff, and it was just designed to scare me, and it didn't have a shred of truth to it. but at the same time, I still definitely hired an attorney with experience to take a look at it and make sure that I wasn't going crazy. And lawyers try to do this all the time. In fact, much of the time, the lawyer who drafts the suit also isn't totally sure of the merits of all of the claims in there.

They're just kind of trying their luck, at least in that first demand letter. Is that correct? That's correct. I mean, a demand letter, all it does is it, well, what it essentially does is it starts a negotiation process. So it's kind of like if you're buying a house, the first number you're going to get from the seller is kind of a high number that they're hoping you take. But you can also come back and try to bid them down. So this attorney has probably done enough of an investigation to confirm, yes, there was a crash. Yes, the police do say that she was 100% at fault for the wreck. And from there, they've just packed that letter and packed that demand with as many claims as they think they might possibly be able to get away with, knowing that if you hire an attorney, they're really going to try to negotiate it down before there's any settlement. Great. Thank you so much, Corbyn.

You're very welcome, Jordans. Good talking with you. And we'll link to those resources in the show notes where people can find attorneys and sort them by rating as well. recommendation of the week Jason have you seen upgrade I have not oh man it's okay so it's a fictional movie it's not a documentary but this guy he's it's in the future you know but not too far off

and he gets injured deliberately by some guys and he's paralyzed and he's a car mechanic but now most of the cars are self-driving or something like that so he's kind of considered old school because he works on gasoline engines well he's making a fancy car for this billionaire computer guy and that guy comes in and says hey you know i like you why don't we try

this chip that can help you walk and be functional again because you're he's a quadriplegic or whatever so they implant this i chip in his spine and he essentially turns into like kind of like neo from the matrix but there's a bunch of different plot twists going on here the movie was excellent very cool i'll check it out it's called upgrade it's 2018 so if you're searching for it online. That's how you find it. Hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. Don't forget, you can email us Friday at

Jordan Harbinger.com to get your questions answered on the air. Happy to keep you anonymous, of course. A link to the show notes for this episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Quick shoutouts to Max, who says he's living in third world Germany. Max is upset that he can't get me undies and blue apron and Simplicef and Organify

and Rhone and all that stuff. So sorry, yeah, a lot of those companies do not ship overseas, but we got your mailing address coming. We're going to send you a little special care package of stuff that you might dig. And to Ignacio Flores, he was in the Marines. I think he's still in the Marines. He was stationed in Italy. Now he's back home, and he listens to the show all over the world.

I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show. Jason, where can they find you? You can find links to all my socials at jpd.m.m. And you can check out my other podcast, grumpy old geeks. Now twice a week. For more information on that, just go to Gog. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com.

Remember to keep them concise if you can. It really does help us, and it'll increase the chances of getting your question answered on the air. Share the show with those you love and even those you don't. A lot more like this in the pipeline. Very excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen.

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