The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 007: Jordan Harbinger - How To Be More Charismatic (The Art Of Charm). Also… Why Jordan Completely Disagrees With Howard Stern

Episode Date: April 27, 2015

Episode 007: How To Be More Charismatic With Jordan Harbinger From The Art Of Charm.  Also… Why Jordan Completely Disagrees With Howard Stern I was fortunate enough to have John Corcoran introduce me to Jordan (Thank You John).  Jordan was extremely kind, honest, and open with me about all ways to better yourself as a person.  We spoke for a great deal of time before and after recording and Jordan was the exact same guy on the show as he was off (that is not always the case with people).  He has a massive following… Earning 1.3 million downloads per month with his podcast The Art of Charm.  It is one of my favorites. “Don’t follow your passion, bring it along with you – Jordan Harbinger  Welcome to Episode 007 with Jordan Harbinger from The Art of Charm Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Radio. (Make these live links) The Learning Leader Show “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” – John Wooden (Make this tweetable) Some Questions I Ask: What makes a great friend? How can someone improve their body language immediately? What specific things have you learned from guests on your show? What do you think of Howard Stern’s comments that podcasting is for losers? What did you learn from your mentors? What type of responsibility do you feel for your fans? Describe your week long boot camp… In This Episode, You Will Learn: Why he completely disagrees with Howard Stern An instant body language drill that will help you Specific ways to leap outside of your comfort zone Tucker Max and law school How to make a great first impression What goes on at The Art of Charm boot camps How to manage tension in friendships Continue Learning Go to Jordan's website: www.TheArtOfCharm.com Read "How To Win Friends and Influence People" Follow Jordan on Twitter: @TheArtOfCharm  You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How to become a master connector with Jayson Gaignard from MasterMind Talks Episode 003: The incredibly interesting story of Maurice Clarett and how he built a 6 figure income after spending 4 years in prison Episode 009: The Creative Leader’s Guide to making money by thinking outside of the Box with Jason Zook (SurfrApp) Did you enjoy the podcast? Again, I was fortunate enough to have John Corcoran introduce me to Jordan.  I felt this conversation was extremely refreshing.  Jordan is incredibly honest and has no fear to voice his opinion.  His fans love him because he’s honest and he tells it like it is.  He also provides fantastic, useful content on a daily basis..  Who do you know that needs to hear this?  Send them to The Learning Leader Show! Bio: From Jordan - “A core principle of my own life, and upon which this company was founded, is that one should leave everything and everyone better than they were before we met.  By bringing positivity and abundance to others, you can’t go wrong.”    Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell  

Howard Stern just doesn't get that not everybody's friggin' 60 years old. And, you know, he's going to retire soon and become completely irrelevant. And then, you know, who's going to uphold Sirius XM, O'Anthony? No, they're just going to go onto iTunes and be like, all right, cool. Nobody cares about satellite radio. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders.

Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey and welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Tonight's show, very, very excited for Jordan Harbinger. But before we get to him, I wanted to do something a little bit different for this intro. I recorded a lot of these episodes prior to the show actually launching. And this is one of those.

It's episode number seven here with Jordan. But the show has since launched, obviously, you're all hearing this. And it's done incredibly well. And iTunes, people going to my website, learningleadershow.com, the feedback I've received. I'm just so grateful. I really, really am. And I really, really appreciate all the positive feedback and the coaching I received. And there's specific people that have really helped me.

And I wanted to name just a few of those. And I promise I'm going to leave too many people out. But that's just how it goes when you do these things. So some early listeners who've given me phenomenal feedback, Brent Shurs, Johnny Thomas, Brandon Hyatt, Parker, James and Harky, Kyle Mossbarky, Briannglass, Jeff Weaver. I really value the feedback you guys have given me. It's helped me so much, and there are many others too that I'm missing. People who actually helped create the website and podcast design, Anthony Tran, Nate DeMars,

Jason Zook, and my awesome editor, Scott Dinell. He's the man. Ask me about him. He can help you guys too. He's great. Mentors and coaches I have. Brendan Hufford from Entrepreneurs and Coffee podcasts. So great. The mini Skype calls late at night or even early in the morning, literally at four or five. Brendan, you're the man. Thank you so much. Greg Meredith, the first mentor I had in the podcasting world. We had lunch six months ago and Greg said, you've got to do your own podcast. You've got to launch it. I know you do great. I'd be happy to help you any way I can. And Greg's the best. I cannot wait for your podcast to be released, Greg.

Thank you so much. Last but not least, the earliest support I've received has just been awesome from my younger brother, AJ. Thank you so much for always being a sounding board 24-7 text messages at all times, phone calls, whatever. I really, really appreciate that. And certainly the most important for me, my wife, Miranda, who has been so supportive and so awesome, literally defines the word. beauty for me. Thank you so much. All right, let's get to the episode tonight. Jordan Harbinger. 1.3 million downloads per month for his podcast, The Art of Charm. 360 plus episodes, 191 countries listening to this show. Incredible stuff. If you want to learn how to be charismatic,

it's a learned trait. Jordan will teach you that tonight on the podcast. Also, why he completely disagrees with Howard Stern. I love that part. And then a great body link. language drill that you literally could implement today. Again, charisma, leadership, learning. Jordan does all of those things. He's awesome, a true giver as well. Again, guys, thank you so much for everything you've done for the show. I really, really appreciate the support, the ratings, the reviews, and iTunes, subscribing everything. Thank you. Let's get to the show tonight. It's Jordan Harbinger. And welcome Jordan Harbinger. Again, really, really excited to have you on today. Host of Art of Charm. It gets over 1.3 million downloads per month for his podcast.

Just incredible. Jordan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, man. I really appreciate you coming on. Like I said, you have your current business called The Art of Charm. There's a lot that goes into it.

It's not just a podcast, but that's one way. That's actually how I was made aware of it. Talk to us a little bit about the creation of the art of charm, your podcast, and everything that goes with it. It started essentially. in my friend's basement, well, AJ's basement, he's my business partner now, which is awesome. And we were just talking, we went out every night for a year to try and figure out a certain set of skills, and I'll talk about that in a second.

And people kept saying, you should write a book, you should write a book. Then being a guy studying for the bar exam and AJ is a cancer biologist, I was thinking the last thing I'm going to do is write a book. That is, I have no desire for that whatsoever, no time. and podcasting was brand new. This is back in 2006, and so we decided, hey, all right, let's just do this podcasting thing and see how it goes. And that actually turned out to be, in retrospect, a really awesome idea at a really awesome time.

But the way that we started to get interested in this stuff in general was I used to be a Wall Street attorney and I had a job in a summer internship and we were assigned mentors. And when you're assigned a mentor for a summer internship, basically they're supposed to like wine and dine you and take you out to cool places and meals and stuff like that and it's you know it's all fine and good but my mentor was never around and i started to complain about it which is you know because i just didn't care about the job like everybody else is getting wine and dine and going to cool shows and everyone's like dude your mentor's dave that's awesome man dave's the man but i'm like yeah dave sucks he's never here you know this sucks this is a dumb lameau somewhere all i'm doing his work

and um hr made dave take me out for coffee and sort of like just to humor me on the whole mentor thing and he basically was like, yeah, ask me anything with his Blackberry, which no longer exists in his hand. And I said, okay, I don't really care about this job anymore. That's what I was thinking. Obviously, I didn't say that part, but I was like,

okay, I don't really care about this. I'm going for broke. And I said, how come everyone says you make more money than the other partners, but you're never in the office? And he was like, part shocked, part, just like incredulous, part amused. And he puts down his

Blackberry and he goes, that's funny. I didn't know people noticed that or said that. Even me being a first year summer associate, like I should definitely not be in on the rumor mill. And yet I was. So he was kind of tickled about that. And he said, well, I bring in the business deals for the firm. So I actually get more money than the other partners who just bill hours. Because when you're a lawyer, you might bill $800 an hour. You might have an hourly bonus as a result of that. But, if you bring in a deal you get a commission on the deal and so Dave's job this is a guy from Brooklyn with a tan so he obviously knew something that other people didn't but especially a finance guy with a tan like when do you get outside good sir uh and so he was running around on

the company dime and I don't mean running around like some sort of irresponsible guy I mean he was doing jiu jutsu playing golf going on charity cruises going to dinners and non-profit events and volunteering and playing squash. That was his job. His job was to network and build relationships. And since that was such a rare skill set, he had a nice black card that he would run around New York with. And basically, if there was an investment banker

that had a day off somewhere in Manhattan, his job was to hang out with him. And that was powerful because he would bring in a seven-figure deal, and he would run the deal, of course, but he could do it from home or he could do it from his house on the Hamptons. He didn't have to sit in the office and file documents. He had people for that because even if anybody else resented it, it just didn't matter. Because he was bringing a massive amount of value to the firm that was more than just being a workhorse.

And I'll remember, not to put too fine a point on it, I'll remember when I, one day I went up to my office at like 1 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday to try to impress this girl and be like, yo, I work in a skyscraper on Wall Street, blah, blah, blah, whatever, right? I was like 24, 24, 25. I show up. I'm thinking no one's going to be here. This is going to be so rad. I get to show off my office. Everyone was in the office. And I thought, oh, my God, what's going on here?

So I hauled to get that out of there, of course, before anyone saw me. And then on Monday or Tuesday, I asked this senior associate that I was cool with, like, hey, what's going on? Is there a deal closing? You know, I showed up on Saturday. A ton of people were here. And he goes, no, man, we're always here on Saturday. We're always here that late. And I thought, wait a minute.

everyone's here all weekend, late night, doing this, like working. And Dave's not even here at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday because his value was better spent making relationships with other people than sitting in the office. And that was like a massive eye opener for me because that changed the way that I look at work. Because I knew that I wasn't going to be like the most technically skilled attorney ever, probably. and I certainly knew that I was never going to be the hardest working guy in the office. I mean, there were people sleeping under their desks and stuff like that in the office. And I was never going to be that guy. I knew that from the get-go.

So that for me was kind of like, well, wait a second. If this is what I'm up against, I have no choice but to master these people skills. Wow. That reminds me, have you read Tucker Max's piece on why, nobody should ever go to law school. Yeah, of course. Have you talked to him on your show? Yeah, I have.

Yeah, him and I are buddies from way back, but we've sort of recently reconnected. But I remember that piece from a million years ago. And I remember talking with him about the piece before it even came out because it's, there's not a whole lot in there that's exaggerated or untrue or, you know, like everything in there is accurate. Yeah, I sent it to friends who've, I'm not a lawyer, but to friends who've gone to law school and they're like, oh, my gosh, everything in there is. is like dead on. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not a good investment,

unless you are sure that you want to be a lawyer of a certain type, and you can get into a top 10 school. There's almost no reason to go anymore, at least in this current work. Why did you go? I didn't have anything else to do, which is like the worst reason to go to grad school. Really?

So you didn't really want to practice law or do any of that? Did you want it for like the social status of being an attorney? No. Or just, I need to keep going to school because I don't know what to do. Yeah, totally. Like what happened was I graduated from undergrad and I spoke like three languages and I was well-traveled and well-spoken and I had job experience and I got out and I tried to apply for a job at Best Buy and they're like, yeah, you can work in the CD department. And I'm like, what? I built computers from my friends and myself from scratch.

Like I'm sitting here like mounting microprocessors on motherboards and you want me to sell CDs. You know these things aren't even going to exist in a few years, and I don't know anything about music. And they're like, uh, then we'll put you in computer peripherals. And I'm like, what the hell? What are you talking about?

You know, like, what are you talking about? So I didn't want to take the job. And I applied to a bunch of law schools and I had, I happened to get into Michigan, which was, I think at the time,

number six law school in the country. So everybody was like, you have to go if you get into a school like that. You have to go. Because, you know, as you can imagine, it's like Harvard. Yale, you know, Columbia,

dot, dot, dot, whatever, Michigan, dot, dot, dot, Virginia, you know, and then some other schools, and then everyone else, right? So they're like, if you go to Michigan, you will get the best job on Wall Street, you'll get the best salary, you know, and then you can just figure it out from there because you can write your own ticket.

You can get a clerkship with a federal judge, you know, you can, like, the world is your oyster. So I was like, well, I'm going to go there for sure. Yeah. And I went, and I, it was awesome, though. I hung out with a ton of smart people. I hung out with some of the brightest minds, the young minds in the United States, the hardest working people. I had to step my game up big time to compete.

And what I found was pretty surprising, which is that smart people hate competition. And you can outwork them really easily because they're not used to working really hard most of the time. They're actually used to everything coming to them naturally because they're the genius in their class. Every class they go to, they're the smart one. So I was like, well, you know, this is really easy. I just have to study 10 hours a day, but nobody else will do that. So, you know, it's me and like those guys. But then I thought, do I want to do this for my whole life?

Not really. I mean, this really sucks. So after I got this job on Wall Street, which I got through a networking connection, I thought, all right, I'll do this for like two years and then I'll just figure something else out, which is a crap plan. It's just a crappy non-plan, really. Yeah. Yeah, and so at that point, when do you make the decision, I'm done, I'm out of here.

Was it that Saturday that you went in? Was it after the talk with the formalized mentor? Was there just a moment where you're like, I might not have enough money. You probably have college debt or law school debt. Who cares? I'm just going to go and start this little business called Art of Charmer or whatever it might have been called it when you got started. What point forced you or made you do that?

What happened was I had already started the podcast. Once I started to figure out, okay, the people's skills are key here. I went back to law school. I started researching like pop psychology and, you know, all these different types of of sort of like evolutionary psychology and persuasion and sales and public speaking. And like I just read books on the subject because I was a student. I wasn't like, I'm going to invest $40,000 in training. Although looking back, man, I wish I'd taken training instead of going to law school, but I digress.

I started to try to figure this stuff out for myself, but it was actually really hard because we find ourselves in our comfort zones all the time as just humans. And we decide like, okay, well, I'm not going to be able to go out and meet new people because I'm hanging out with my friends all the time. Because if you go out with the same group of people every night and you're like, I'm going to work on meeting new people. What's going to happen is, no, you're not. You're going to have drinks with your friends and then go eat a pizza and go home like you do every night. And that's what we were doing. And I had sort of made a decision like, all right, I'm not going to go out with these people anymore at night to, like, do their thing until I master this skill set. And that was in 2004.

Not that I ditched all my friends and was like, I can't hang out with you anymore. I hung out with them a lot. I just didn't go out with them at night. And I'd sort of carved out that time. And I spent months and months reading and being like, okay, you know, I need to get all this stuff down and learn all this before I go and do it. because blah, blah, blah, which is a huge mistake that most people make when they're learning a skill that puts them outside their comfort zone is they rationalized not doing it because they need to learn more academic stuff about it.

Or like, I don't want to go out tonight. I'll go on the message board and reply to all the threads there because that's the same thing. Like there's tons of that, right? And so that eventually led to me just like going out alone, standing in a corner, being super awkward, hating every minute of it, trying to meet people, and then running into to guys like AJ, who's my now business partner who was really good with girls, also had the same problems with like networking, creating solid relationships.

And so it was great for us to run into each other with this stuff because we had complimentary skill sets in a lot of way by that time. And we started to figure out ways to hack ourselves into forcing the issue. And that's when people started to like notice us and follow us around and buy us drinks in exchange for being able to sit down and talk about nonverbal communication and body language and have us tweak them a little bit. And we had guys who were like, hey, I heard you guys know how to talk to girls and make new friends.

And, you know, we came here from Syria. We're like, really, we don't know how this thing works. We'll give you $400 if you hang out with us today. And we're like, well, this is weird, but okay. And we would show them how to like go and talk to girls, go and talk to guys, make friends with people, get their email or phone number and, like, follow up. And originally we kind of felt bad because we're like, we're not real coaches. You know, this is 2004, 2005.

We don't know what we're doing, you know. But these people started to write us back and be like, this is so awesome. This is life-changing. You guys need to write a book. And now we've come full circle into why we started the show. And that's how the company started. So you started a podcast in 2006. Right.

Like, who was podcasting in 2006 besides you? Like, Dan Savage from, The New York Times. He had the Savage Lovecast or whatever, which is like one of the largest shows around now, which doesn't hurt that he was a columnist for the New York Times. Yeah. It still is.

Emily Morris, who does sex with Emily, she was podcasting right around then. She had just kind of started off as well. I mean, not a whole lot. Like Leo Leport, you know,

with this week in tech, I think, kicked off around then. But he had an advantage because he was like already in tech. We were just two guys in a basement. The difference is we enjoy. doing what we were doing and we only took a hiatus here and there. We used to release like one every three weeks.

But now it's like now it's twice a week plus the bonus one that I do on Friday. So it's a totally different ballgame now, but that's because we went from high school straight into the pros kind of by accident. Yeah, I mean with over a million downloads a month, you must feel a responsibility I would imagine to your listeners to keep producing great content on a regular basis, I have to imagine. Yeah, and it happens where like a show doesn't come out on time. And sometimes people will wait like five or six hours. But there are people that wait up at night.

And I didn't realize this, but now I guess it makes sense. Because I release the show at 12.01 a.m. on Monday, 12.1 a.m. on Wednesday. And there's people in Europe who are like getting up at that time to go to work. And they'll get the newest episode and put it on their, you know, iPod or whatever. And they'll go to work. And if they're younger and maybe they don't have a data plan, they're like, they're getting up for school or work and they're like, what the hell? And they'll send me a message like, hey, where's the new show, man?

And I'm like, oh, and then I'll go look and like some dumb technical thing went wrong and like didn't fire off. I'm like, thanks for noticing. And, you know, I'll have to hit our tech team. And I'm like, hey, the show didn't fire. And they're like, oh, man, oh, hold on. And they'll fix it. And so, yeah, I mean, when you start getting enough of those or like people saying, you save my marriage or like, you know, hey, you save you. to save me a ton of money on this or like you, I avoided massive mistakes in my

professional or relationship life because of you or it gave me the courage to leave a bad relationship. I mean, those things are hugely, hugely important for people. And these are pivotal life moments that wouldn't have occurred but for, to use a legal term, the Art of Charm podcast. So the responsibility is there not only to put content out regularly, but to put it out, put out really good stuff. Because if I start putting out crap, then, you know,

I might as well just stop doing it. Exactly. And it leads me to, I don't know if you've heard Howard Stern when he talks about podcasters. And he basically said they're losers and can't make money. And I'm curious to get your thoughts. One, if you've heard him already say that. I haven't. So I recently heard that him say that.

And people have responded. Obviously, it's been a hot button issue. And I like listening to him on the radio. But do you think there's a generation maybe older than us that refuse. refuses to understand that podcasting is one of the mediums for the future. I mean, it's going to be in every car coming up. I mean, everything, it's just going to be so much easier to listen. It already is with your iPhone.

What do you think about the difference between the younger generation of these guys who are hustling and getting after it and producing great content versus maybe some of the older media generation who says, oh, it's, whether it's, you know, serious XM radio or we don't need to do podcasts. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, I spent three years on three and a half years. years on series XM.

Here's the thing. Like Howard Stern is a controversial guy. He says controversial things. I have a feeling he probably just like doesn't like Adam Carolla or something. So he said that because that would piss off Adam Carolla. But I mean, the truth of the matter is I have a million comebacks for this. Like, well, it's wrong. And too, like Howard Stern is very wealthy.

But I can claim a greater than 1% share of his net worth, which I mean, I don't think he can argue that that's a small number. And no one can. And the other thing is, if he wants to look at people in media and broadcasting that aren't making any money, maybe he should look at everyone else at Sirius XM that's not him or Opie and Anthony, because those people are making far less money than the Art of Charm is. And I'm talking about pretty much every broadcaster on Sirius XM is broke and underpaid.

And the reason is because he's taking all the money. And that's fine. It's fine. It's capitalism. But here's the thing. serious xm is going to go out of business the second he leaves so it's not radio it's his following that he's had for 40 years come back to me in 30 you know 32 years or however long he's been on the radio and look at how look at the size of the articharm podcast then maybe you can credibly tell me that

podcasters are losers and don't make any money and i'm granted like listen radio is definitely bigger if you look at huge radio personalities they're making far more than big podcasters but if you look at how long radio's been around, which is literally older than your grandparents, and you look at how long podcasting has been around, which was, let me put it this way, I was old enough to rent a car overseas by the time this thing was even a real thing. So there are people that grew up that were born after podcasting that are like, you know, still in elementary school. I mean, this thing is new.

And by the time it's 10% as old as radio, people are going to be like, radio. like as if you watch black and white TV. And that's the thing. Stern can say that all he wants because he's in a position of authority. But as soon as cars, and I mean like next year, you are getting data streamed to them to listen to music services like iTunes and Spotify. And bear in mind, the smarter business model will prevail where like right now,

if you want Sirius XM, you've got to pay like $20 something dollars a month. I guarantee you that your data for your car radio is going to be cheap. or free because if I'm Spotify or iTunes or some sort of third-party data provider, what I want is a share of the ad revenue that comes from blaring ads into your ears every time you commute instead of having you plug in your iPhone, right? So I want to pay the $5 cost for that data per month unlimited. If it's even that much, if you're a cell phone provider, all you need to do is put those radios on the existing mobile network and cover the cost of data. And the average, is going to be much more lucrative because I'm actually listening to something I like, not 87.3 playing the top 10 songs, 87.3 times in a row on my hour commute to Palo Alto. You're going to be able to sit in your car and go, oh, I wonder what sort of genre of talk I want to listen to and you'll just push shuffle and there will be. And that doesn't even include what we're going to see in the next five to 10 years, which is the majority of cars, mark my words, be. self-driving cars, especially in larger metropolitan areas, where I don't even have to pay attention anymore. My car is now an office and an entertainment center instead of something that's a death machine

or something I've got to pay attention to while driving. Once that happens, in-car data, if you don't have in-car data, it's because you don't have a car. And then no one's going to buy satellite radio for 20 bucks a month when you can get everything else for free or cheaper. Yeah, it's already got to be taking a hit now. I think as podcasting grows, I mean, I personally never listen to the radio anymore just simply because I always have four or five phenomenal podcasts queued up ready to go, listening in my car, listening when I walk from one place to another, when I work out, all those things. And it just, it seems like every day you find new people

who are getting into it or maybe as somebody who's in the podcasting world, we spread the word to others to say, have you heard the art of charm? I think it would help you. Have you heard startup is really, really cool, good storyteller? You know, things like that. Yeah, I mean, dude, if you're listening to the radio, it's because your iPhone died. Just face it. Nobody's listening to the radio on purpose.

I mean, it's just not, I mean, if you're a construction worker or something like that, and maybe you're listening to the radio. Like, I mean, Howard Stern just doesn't get that not everybody's friggin' 60 years old. Well, and, you know, he's going to retire soon and become completely irrelevant. and then, you know, who's going to uphold Sirius XM, Opey and Anthony? No, they're just going to go onto iTunes and be like, all right, cool. Nobody cares about satellite radio. Howard basically does a podcast anyway.

It's just live. And then they replay it throughout the day. And you might as well just record it with, you know, he gets some of the best guests in the world. Just record it and put it out as a podcast anyway. You could edit it if they feel like it and then sell the ad revenue. I mean, I know he's making a ton of money for what he's doing. But it's not like what he's doing is that drastically different.

than what a lot of people who are in podcasting. They're just some extra filler around guests promoting whatever it is that their movie or their album coming out, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's really easy for people to say like, oh, man, podcasting is just a dorky thing. And they're 99.9.9% right. Like, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a podcast that's in the 0.01 percentile.

So, like, yeah, when you look at somebody who's just got like 100 downloads per episode or something, you better be doing it as a hobby and not as a living. You know, at least right now. But if you look at somebody who's been in radio for as long as people have been in podcasting, they're making far less than your average podcaster. I mean, there's plenty of people who've been on radio for 10 years, and they're not making even six figures, which is like, how is that possible? Right.

You know? And those are the guys at the top of radio. There's a lot of radio shows where the host doesn't even get paid. That's crazy. Yeah. That's unbelievable. I was reading through your bio, man. And you said you've spent time overseas and been through, traveled through war zones and been kidnapped twice.

Obviously, that's going to peak my attention. What is, what's that all about? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get too deep into the details because it's freaking depressing. But when I was 20, I could kidnap by a fake taxi driver in Mexico, which is kind of like ridiculous. Wow. And then, and I escaped. And then, which is really scary. And then I had in 2005, I had a problem with the Serbian state security.

They're like internal police force because they thought I was a spy, which kind of makes sense, but also they're just idiots. And so that was a big problem. And I had a big problem with them. And then I had a dumb friend with me who made it really bad. And then we both escaped that too, but it took a lot longer and it's a lot worse. But that one, I was actually able to use a lot of art of charm sort of negotiation skills, rapport skills. sort of mental jujitsu to get the opportunity to escape. So that's one where I really lean in.

And whenever we have classes with like special forces or intelligence agents, I bring up that example and I go really in depth because that's a situation they may actually face. Wow, that's incredible. So let's say, so you have the in person training in L.A. Is that correct? Yes, we do. Yeah. That's where I am right now.

I mean, I'm in, we have a big old house. in Los Angeles on the sunset strip or right near it and or as I like to say right near Chipotle because that's more important to me but we built a studio in there that's where I am right now there's where all the guys live during their boot camp and it's awesome it's like huge classroom workout area

pool table the recording studio the dorm area the big old roof deck where they can like hang out and it's right near all the cool stuff to do in Hollywood So it's just like a really sweet space. How long is the boot camp? It's six days. Six days. And guys fly in from wherever they are in the world.

So like right now, there are guys right outside this nice soundproof door that are from like Denmark, the UK, Australia, the U.S. and Canada. Really? How many guys per class? Cap it at seven. Seven. Do you have girls too? Nope. Nope.

Not for this one. I know you're kind of branching out into that more on your podcast. It seems like you're trying to not just help guys, but girls. So what are the specific? So of those seven guys, I would imagine the reason they're signing up or they're coming to you guys is they're saying I have issues socially, maybe professionally. I don't know how to handle, you know, myself in the office or making friends or obviously getting girls. Is that the specific focus of these guys? And how do you guys take them from one point the day they get there to a week later saying, wow, I'm ready to go?

Yeah, no, it's actually that's not really it. This isn't a remedial class. A lot of people are like, oh, I have trauma. What kind of losers go to that? Actually, the losers are the people that say things like that. The guys that are coming through AOC are typically very high performers or just regular performers that are like, I need an edge because this is going to pay dividends later on. So we get a lot of like college kids who are way ahead of their time, lawyers, military special forces, like I mentioned earlier, We have classes of green berets.

Seal Team 6 came through here. I don't think anybody's going to be like, Seal Team 6, what a bunch of losers. Like, Marlon's going to do that. Yeah, because they realize that a 1% 5% edge is worth, one, is life saving for somebody in that niche, but also is something that makes them millions of dollars. So we get sales guys that come in that sell things super high-end products and services,

and they realize like, oh, I need to send my whole sales team through here because getting people to like and trust you is the crux of any actual beneficial relationship. So somebody coming in for a week of time and spending the money and time to come out here is worth tens of millions of dollars over the life of their career. And so those are the people that come through Art of Charm. It's not like the guy who ties his shoelaces together and has tape on his glasses. Wow. Okay. So you're getting already high performers who understand the value of investing in themselves to say I do want to try to get, you know, 5% better, 10% better that are probably already doing pretty well.

I mean, still Team 6. What was that class with them different than the normal class? I'm just, I'm fascinated by the military, fascinated by what those guys do. No, it wasn't. And just to be super clear, a lot of the guys that come through are like, I need a little bit of help in this area. I've been a shy guy my whole life. Like, I don't want to dissuade people who are like, oh, I'm a software engineer. I don't belong in our charm.

Like those are some of our core clientele, but it's not like, oh, I don't know how to talk to any human being. We don't get those people because people who are that socially inept, they look at stuff like Art of Charm and they go, ha, I don't need that. I'm, I have cool friends and I'm great with people. They're so far off the reservation that they don't actually even realize they need help in this area. And that's always kind of heartbreaking for like, I get a lot of letters from women that are like, oh my God, I want to send my son to your boot camp. This sounds perfect. And then you talk to the son and he's like, no, I don't need this.

I'm awesome. And his mom's like, oh, honey, no, you need to go. And they just won't do it. And the male ego is the thing that gets in the way the most. But when you get a group of guys like SEAL Team 6 or any military guy in general, especially at the elite special forces level, they are, that ego has been beaten out of them, you know, years ago through training. And they realize they need it and that they can use it. they don't care about talking about how cool they are.

And they're coachable, you know. Yeah, they're very coachable. We love military and we love intelligence guys because they're critical thinkers and also they're very, very coachable. Like the intelligence guys are obviously more critical thinkers than the military guys and the military guys are obviously more coachable than the intel guys. But it's great to have guys that have a mixture of both like special forces because they come in and you're like, all right, be ready by 11.

And at 1045, they're all lined up, cleaned up and sitting on. the couch and you're like holy crap you know how am i the one that's light it's it's awesome because the classes run exactly the same and they get the exact same train i mean we tailored the training for every client obviously so we might focus on different things if there's a group of apple software engineers versus a group of navy seals yeah or green berets but to be totally fair at the time when they were here we didn't know who they were because they didn't give us their real names we They didn't go, well, hey, we're still team six, and we want to roll through Art of Charm. They came through and we're like, oh, these guys are really funny and cool.

And they're like, all in really good shape. And they all go jogging in the morning. And, you know, they all know each other from like military something, something. And then after the fact, they would write emails to us here and there and be really hard to reach. And I was like, hey, how are, you know, how come you're falling off the map? Is everything cool? And they're like, yeah, I was deployed for a while. And then you see him again a few years later.

And you're like, wait a minute. What do you really do? And they're like, all right, well, I'm on a special forces unit, blah, blah, blah. And they don't even ever come out and tell you, like, I'm on Steel Team 6. Like, they just don't do that. You figure it out through things that they've told you, plus other things that I know about special forces guys, plus mutual friends of ours that let stupid stuff slip here and there. And then they finally, it finally comes back around.

Like, these guys never told us themselves what they do for a living. I love those guys to hear about them. My younger brother, AJ, has a podcast of his own, and he had Rob O'Neill on, the Rob O'Neill, the guy who shot Osama bin Laden, and I was just sat there and it was a video podcast and watched that podcast over and over. It was just incredible to hear the stories, inside stories of what that guy did. And he's had other skills on too. I'm just like, oh, these guys are just on another level. Yeah, they're absolutely on another level. Like, the level of performance is crazy high.

Same with Green Berets and stuff. Like Navy SEALs are heavily romanticized, but I kind of, if I had to choose one, I would definitely be a green beret if I just got to magically join a unit. Because they get to live in other countries for a long time and kind of like assimilate and hang out with locals, which is way more fun than just killing them in my opinion. Yeah. I got you. So if you were to give, not to give anything away, but to give a teaser of specific things that you're doing in the class with these guys, you know, obviously not giving anything. given the class away, but specific things that you do, what would be a few things that people could expect if they signed up for it?

Yeah, I mean, here's the funny part, right? I can give the whole class away, and I could print out the whole syllabus and show you a video of the whole class from start to finish every minute of those six days, and you wouldn't be able to reproduce it anyway, because it's all tailored feedback for each specific students. So it doesn't even, there's no secret information. Like the information, we give a lot of it away on the podcast. The real value comes from having somebody go, ah, here's what you're doing, here's how you're showing up,

and here's how to fix it. You know, that's why the coaching is potent and powerful. The information is just information. So it's got to be a lot of back and forth then, or you just have to be talking to them and you're doing a lot of listening. Then it can't be just you standing up in a classroom or whatever saying, okay, here we go. And then going down a PowerPoint deck.

I mean, it can't change. Yeah. No, the classroom work is not sitting there with a notebook. and like, you know, hanging out for eight hours, taking good notes on what the instructor's saying. No, there's concepts that get taught to you in 45 minutes or whatever, and then there's like six hours of drills. And then you sit down for another 90 minutes and learn some stuff and have an interactive conversation. And then there's another three hours of drills. You know, classes are really long and they're really exhausting emotionally because it's all hands-on.

It's not just listening to information. That's why, like, sometimes people come into Art of Charm and they're like, can I record this? And we're like, yeah. And they're like, oh, awesome. It's like, yeah, you know, don't put it on the web in case somebody shares something personal, you know, because there's guys in there

that don't want, like, their divorce aired on BitTorrent, which you can't blame them for. But if you just want to record stuff because you don't want to write stuff down, fine. You know, we don't care because the information in itself is of minimal value, right? I mean, maybe not minimal, you know, because people are listening to the show

and they're getting a ton of value, but it's plateaued at a certain point. You can't listen. You can listen to all the podcasts you want about being a badass baseball player. But as soon as you go up there and try to swing against the pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, I don't think you're going to crank one out of the park, no matter how many hours of ESPN you've got under your belt. Right.

You've got to do it. You've got to do it. Yeah. People always say that the best way to learn is to teach. And so I got to believe just the repetitive amount of teaching that you're doing, talking about it on your podcast, doing it in person. Have there been some specific people take your class without obviously naming names where you've learned just an immense amount because of what they brought to you?

Yeah, the students bring a ton to the class. And I mean, looking at like the people that have worked at Art of Charm are all former students. Generally, one of the guys that's living in the house now that is one of the newest additions to the team. he's an exercise physiologist and a personal trainer. And he came through Art of Charm as a student and we were like, man, it would be awesome to have a physiologist and a trainer living in the house. So we basically just hired him to, he's like the Art of Charm house marm where he lives in this giant house in Hollywood and trains all the students that comes in and revamps

their nutrition program, goes through a little bit of biohacking type stuff with them to help maximize their fitness or just turn them around if they're not fit, you know, and he's really, really good at it. And I'm like, wow, I never would have learned this stuff if it weren't for him. Like, I don't sit around researching nutrition and fitness because it's not my core interest. I also get a ton of value, and the instructors get tons of value out of the individual students that come in. I mean, we had a guy come in and he, last week for boot camp, and the place we're in is kind of new. And he was like, oh, this electrical socket needs replacing. Oh, you know what, let me straighten up your door lock. Oh, you know what? This is a little uneven. It's causing friction. Let me sand your door down.

I mean, he was doing all kinds of stuff like that. So it's funny to have people come in the door and, like, add to the art of charm as a whole. Just like everybody that walks in leaves kind of their mark on the program. And that's why the program is constantly evolving. I could see that. Earlier in our talk, you talked about your comfort zone and essentially leaping outside of it. This is something I talk about a lot. I think it's very important.

I'm curious from your point of view, what are the specific things that the regular person can do to jump outside of their comfort zone to help them today. If they said, they're listening to this like, oh, you could go and do this right now. Are these three things right now to get out of your comfort zone and it will help you? Basically, it depends on the client, right? Because a lot of people are listening. They're like, I'm a professional public speaker. Like they would need something totally different than the guy who works at Microsoft as an engineer.

But one of the drills and exercises that I actually give is I give a body language drill. So basically stand up right now, if you can, stand up right now, straighten up, shoulders back, chest up, smile on your face. This is your first impression, right? Because you make your first impression, not when you open your mouth, but when you become a blip on other people's radar. And if you don't really know if that's true or not, and you want to test that, go out and walk down the street and see if you make any kind of judgment with the people that you see

before they talk to you. And the answer is, obviously, you do, right? If you walk down the street and you see a homeless guy sitting on the corner drinking a bottle of vodka, you're not like approaching this man with a blank slate. Maybe he's a college professor. Like there are certain judgments you make about these people, right, based on things that you see. So we can sort of accept that as fact. Well, we do that even more subconsciously. So if you're hunched over, you're looking at the ground, or you have a bad handshake or you have poor eye contact or you have certain postural things that need correction, people are judging that.

They might not even know that. Even non-judgmental people judge you. It's evolutionary psychology. You can't stop it. It's science. Get over it, right? Work with it. So straighten up, chest up, shoulders back.

Don't exaggerate. You look like an idiot. But if you remember this posture and then you build it into your life as a habit as follows. Every time you walk through the doorway, in your house, in someone else's house, in public, straighten up and realign. And what that does is since you're walking in and out of door, doorways all day, every day, you can realign yourself to the point where it starts to become an automatic habit. You don't have to think about it anymore. And of course, when are you usually

making your first impression when people normally see you? When do they normally see you? When you walk into the room? How do you walk in the room through a frigging doorway, right? So it automatically gets you making great nonverbal communication and first impressions every single time throughout the whole day. And what happens when that happens is people start to treat you differently, because you look different. And when people start to treat you differently, you start to react differently, you start to react differently,

and so the mind follows the body, and the body follows the mind. That's when you don't have to think about your posture anymore. That's when you don't have to think about having confident physiology anymore, and people start to treat you like the confident person that you're becoming. And that is a positive feedback loop that will change the way that not only you feel about yourself, but how people interact with you, which is what people want anyway.

So I strongly recommend people do that and build these little habits. And of course, the Art of Trump podcast is basically entirely just filled with these types of sort of automatic behavioral change type stuff that people love that they can apply right away. Yeah, that's why I love it. It's why a million others or more than a million others are downloading it every month. I have one more question about friendship. And is this a big deal? And I do talk about this a lot too. And from what I've gathered and listening to your show and seeing what you've done, you seem to have got.

a good feel on being a great friend to others. And I'm curious about what is it that makes somebody a great friend? This sounds like such a simplistic thing, but people for some reason don't talk about it. But it's such a, it's so important. How have you become better at that? And what are the specific traits that make up a great friend? You know, that's a really interesting question. Not a lot of people talk about this.

Guys really suck at making friends. We usually have activity partners. and we don't really open up emotionally enough to have great friendships most of the time. Most guys who have great friendships, it's because there's a long period of time where they have proximity with other people or where they go through like a trying time with someone else. You know, like most of our friends as guys, unless you were in the military or you're on some kind of sports teams or something like that for a really long time. And even then, often enough, you don't really have a close, close friendship. you might be able to pick up where you left off, even if you haven't seen each other for a long time.

But I know guys I went to college with and stuff like that, you grow at separate rates, you don't keep in touch. Guys tend to be much more self-absorbed or less relying on social networks than women are. So what I try to do is stay in touch with people much more than the average guy. I try to involve people much more than the average guy. And I try to meet people where they're willing to go in terms of like opening up emotionally. So I have friends where I'm like, hey, yo, let's go drink. and party and they're like, cool.

And then I'll ask them questions about their life and we'll, you know, they know they can trust me and vice versa. But I have other friends that are like, man, you know, I'm just in a weird mood today. I just feel a little bit like blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, let's talk about it, right? I have those friends, too, guys and girls. And it's, I would say, I would recommend to guys to try to make friends that are a little bit maybe different than what they're used to and sort of embrace that.

And I don't mean like, oh, make a friend who's Chinese because you're not Chinese. I mean, like, if you meet somebody who's willing to be much more open or you're willing to be much more open, just go for it. Some guys might be like, oh, yeah. And, you know, you might say, well, I'm having a tough day. And they go, have a beer, dude. That guy might not open up to you. But you might be surprised. You might tell a friend, like, man, I'm just having a rough week.

And you might be surprised about who says, huh, well, what's going on, man? You want to stop by and just, like, get some stuff off your chest? You might be really surprised who's kind of ready for that sort of, like, bro down, real. Because guys need this stuff whether we know it or not. It's just that we have no idea how to build it It guys are really bad at making friends and so the best way to go about that is to test the waters of being a little bit vulnerable where you might not necessarily be used to being vulnerable And sure some of your friends are going to be like oh, this is uncomfortable. Let's just go play video games and some of your friends are going to be like oh my god. Is this the person who's actually going to be real? Yeah Let's do this. You know you'd be surprised because if you're thinking about it some of your friends

friends in your circle are absolutely thinking about it too. Absolutely. And what about tension for maybe friends that you grew up with and you're and you feel like you're a very loyal person to those friends? When I say you, I mean like we as a group of people are loyal to people, I think inherently, at least most people are. But sometimes you outgrow them or maybe you just have grown into completely different interest or you have bigger ambitions than maybe they do.

How do you handle that tension of maybe somebody who's been a friend for quite some time, but they are headed in the opposite direction as you. This isn't an answer that a lot of people are going to like, but I don't personally have time for a lot of people in my life. Like, I just don't. So I have to pick and choose. And there's an element of loyalty to people that I grew up with, you know, and spent like 15 years hanging out with and Boy Scouts and stuff like that.

Of course, you know, even though that guy's in a totally different path, I still keep in touch with those people. Those people are dear because there's only so many of them that you have in your life. but when you look at the people that you meet in college and stuff like that and you grow apart, I mean, my personal philosophy is, oh, well, don't worry about it. One of the few upsides of the fact that men's friendships are so shallow is that you can make more. And they'll get to the same level relatively quickly. Like I'm not saying you should replace all your friends, but I am saying one of the core maxims of the Art of Charm podcast is that you only go as high as your five closest.

friends. So if you have to choose those five friends based on them doing amazing, life-changing things that are really epic, well, then do that. I don't mean ditch the guy you grew up with that's been there for you and was best man at your wedding. But I do mean, hey, maybe you don't have to hang out with your neighbor just because he's your neighbor. Maybe you don't have to hang out with your college buddy just because you're his only friend. Like you don't owe him that. You owe more to yourself. Exactly. John Wooden's quote, show me your friends and I'll show you your future as one of the my favorite quotes are bringing up pretty much every episode. It's so true, so true.

I appreciate the opportunity, man. This is a lot of fun. Yeah, man. I really appreciate you coming on. This has been really, really enlightening. I've learned a lot. And where can people find you, Jordan? They can find me at, since you're already listening to podcasts,

the art of charm.com slash podcast or just search for the Art of Charm podcast. And, you know, there's 400 episodes in there to keep you busy for a while. And if they want to learn more about what we do in our live programs, they can just email me. I'm Jordan at theart of charm.com, and I respond to everything. Yes, he does. I can attest that since I emailed him initially, colon, so you respond it right away. So I appreciate that. But Jordan, thank you so much for coming on, man, investing this time with us.

I really, really appreciate it, man. I hope to talk soon. You got it, man. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Learning Leaders Show. I absolutely love doing this show, as I hope you can tell by the passion that I bring to it on a daily basis. If you enjoy this episode, I'd like to ask one thing of you. You could go to Ryanhawk.net.

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