The Secret to Making Powerful Friends | Jordan Harbinger

I think one of the the other key psychological concepts that people should focus on more is the idea that you can practice something

deliberately

So you have to deliberately practice the weaknesses and make them as strong as you can

While also practicing your strengths and making those the top of your performance. Most people are too lazy to do that

They just want to practice everything or they don't want to even bother to figure out which piece is the most important

Everybody welcome to another episode of impact theory our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that

Will help you actually execute on your dreams. All right

Today's guest is a former Wall Street lawyer who gave it all up to pursue a life of meaning

Following his love for learning instead of chasing money

He co-founded a podcast and Academy called the art of charm back in

2006 long before podcasting and online courses were a thing and he methodically built it into a

seven-figure business and one of the most dominant podcasts on iTunes

Before leaving to start something new his interview show received more than 4 million downloads per month and his new podcast

Which he just started from scratch recently has already received more than a million downloads in the first three weeks alone

And it's no surprise giving how hard this guy works and how damn interesting he is

He speaks five languages including Mandarin Chinese and Serbian. He used to run a business giving tours of North Korea

He's been kidnapped twice on two different continents and in high school

He was an exchange student in the former Soviet stronghold of East

Germany his company and interests have led him to study some of the most successful people in the world

And from that he's created a playbook on social dynamics that has made him one of the most sought-after speakers and coaches in the world

His work has been presented in Silicon Valley at mega companies such as Google Apple

Twitter and Square and he's given talks on security social engineering and psychology at places such as blackhat

Def Con and Harvard Business School

Additionally Forbes named him one of the 50 best relationship builders

Anywhere and heat magazine paralleled him to one of the best interviewers in modern era

so

Please help me in welcoming the former phone hacker. And now host of the Jordan Harbinger show Jordan Harbinger.

I am stoked to have you on the show dude, you are the master of introductions

I would if I didn't know who you were introducing, I would have been very excited to hear from that person that person

Yeah, they're gonna be here today. Oh good. I'll stick around exciting what's crazy is

How many weird things you've done? Yeah, like the the North Korea, that, in my notes

I literally wrote "what the fuck" like I had to go back and like listen to that again

I'm like he actually gave tours in North Korea. How does one end up giving tours in North Korea?

That's what my mom wanted to know, too

Of course. Wait, how does that happen?

are you sure this is allowed a long time ago when I was in law school a

Friend of mine kept telling me about Turkmenistan and how weird this place was and how they had this crazy dictator

that was renaming the calendar months and everything and

Built an ice palace in the middle of the desert and I thought what a weird guy. So that's for sure interesting

But the thing I really want to know is what makes you when your friend goes. Oh, there's an even crazier dictator. What?

Yes, you've moved towards that. That's a good question

I think anything that's really esoteric or forbidden was always appealing to me when I was a kid. So you mentioned former phone hacker

Totally great reference because that was me when I was a kid

Opening up those green boxes on the side of the road where you needed a special wrench to get it and I thought they don't

Want people to open this you need a special wrench?

I'm gonna figure out how to open this and I open it and there's all these little screws with wires attached to him and

I see the lineman with his little orange handset clip and alligator clips on there and I went and got

one of those things and

Started to play with it in the green box and I was listening to people's phone calls when I was 13

And I thought this is something I'm not supposed to do that

Theoretically doesn't hurt anyone. So I like that and

now as an adult

I realized that I still have that

bit of code that says people kind of don't want you to do that and I go

Oh well in that case, it's more appealing

So it's a little bit of a rebellious streak

But I'm more interested to learn wipe people are trying to keep something a secret

Then I am about breaking the rule itself if that makes sense, totally

So this whole like lifeless ordinary thing, is that something that you cultivate?

Intentionally like so I know the story you're a lawyer on Wall Street at the time of the collapse, and so

It there was a natural out if you wanted to take it

But I don't feel like you took it because there was a natural out it would have been easy enough for you to do something

That was still centered around lobby

You don't you start something that at the time would have been so beyond counterintuitive like in 2006, I'd listened to exactly zero podcast

Yeah, I don't even know if I'd ever heard the word podcast

I don't think people listening today really understand like it didn't really exist back then no

So, how did you.. Why did you get into that?

Right, so in college, I had to outwork everyone which is easy because in college everyone's just drinking partying

So I out worked everyone that was my competitive advantage

But then I got to Wall Street and everyone was really hardworking and really smart and I thought okay

We can all work 20 hours a day seven days a week

How do I make myself smarter in a timeframe that's short enough for me not to get fired because I had hard core imposter syndrome

Whereas like they're gonna figure out I don't belong here

I'm gonna get fired then I'm gonna be out of luck

And I have all this debt from law school. So I decided to work on this sort of secret third path

which well

Actually, I wanted to work from home so that nobody could see how much I didn't belong at this Wall Street firm

There was a partner that always worked from home

And eventually I caught up with him and I said "hey you're never in the office. Do you just work from home a lot?"

He actually explained well sometimes but I usually get business

I generate the business for the firm by creating and maintaining relationships and that was really interesting to me

So I asked him how that was done and he explained

Look, I'm friends with these people and they throw us deals and I don't even worry about my billable hours

I just bring in deals and get Commission based on that so I dedicated my life to learning how to create maintain

Relationships, because that was my only hope that was my secret third path not outwork everyone

I was already working as hard as I could not try to make myself smarter in some way and

you're dealing with real natural talent and hard work with some of these other people that were at my level, but

Nobody was thinking about networking in relationships. We all thought well we stay here long enough

We put our time in dot dot dot senior associate or partner Country Club network

That's how that worked in my head at age 25

That's not how that works. You build that network the entire time

Deliberately, ideally and then you have those relationships

That are valued enough to make you a partner or get you to the top of the law game or any game

So I decided to focus on that thinking if I work on this

I'll probably have five years before any of my

Colleagues even think about this as a skill set and that time advantage will allow me to master the networking and relationship development skill set

That I need to not get fired. Maybe make partner stay at the top of the game

So I focused on that

Skill set and that was what we were talking about at

Bars, and at meetings and things like that and other people wanted to learn these skills too because they started noticing

Some of the rewards that were coming from it. I would never wait in line at a bar

I would never pay for any food or drinks when I went out

I always seemed to know everyone I was with different friends all the time

So bartenders doormen everybody knew who I was and that

Was appealing to younger guys, and girls for that matter, back in college

But it was really useful in the working world

So when I finally started to teach these skills on the side

I was having the same conversation every

night six nights a week because I was going out trying to work on these skills and I started burning those conversations to CDs and

Eventually a friend of mine said, you know

You might not have to carry a pocket full of crappy burned at home CDs if we can figure out how to distribute these

mp3 files in another way

there was no way to do that back then and then we found out about

Podcasting and at the time there were 800 shows in iTunes

There are about 350-400,000 now and that's what we did

we started uploading our conversations to a server and listing them in iTunes and

The first couple days we had 24 downloads and couple of them were from South Africa and that's when the light bulb went off that

there's something here that

Nobody's really paying attention to if I can have a conversation

with my friend in his basement or living room and that

Can go to South Africa an hour later and someone can email us and say hey, I tried this and it worked

We have a new concept here. Remember YouTube did not exist. I think it was like video Wiz or something, right?

so it was like this small niche nerd community of people that knew about podcasting and

That's what we started building from there, and we just thought this isn't a business. It's a hobby

we went on with our lives and

Then one day we checked our numbers months and months or years later and we went this is a real snowball

There's really an audience here. Now was that when you were still at the law firm or yes?

yeah, I was working at the law firm and then

actually sort of moonlighting because a

Couple friends of mine said hey, I'm doing this show on Sirius XM satellite radio a couple blocks from your office

I don't want to drive up and make it because there's too much traffic

Can you just do my slot on the show is the guest?

So I show up to Sirius XM satellite radio and I go hey

I'm here to talk about someone else's book and I get up there and they're like you didn't write the book No