0
SPEAKER_00
We had a delusional sense of self-confidence, but we also were very focused on making our clients and students happy and focusing on putting out good shows.
0
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the Art of Charm.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
0
SPEAKER_00
Today we re talking with, well, my friend Gabriel Mizrahi s actually gonna flip the script and interview me a little bit.
0
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t even sure that was gonna happen, but that s the way it ended up.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot you can learn here.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of a mishmash, but I do try to stay focused on practical techniques and mindsets that you can use and apply.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I m curious to hear what you guys think of this show.
0
SPEAKER_00
It was really fun for me to record this.
0
SPEAKER_00
Very rarely am I on the other end with somebody who knows me so well.
0
SPEAKER_00
Glad to have you with us here today at AOC.
0
SPEAKER_00
Enjoy this episode with myself and Gabriel Mizrahi.
0
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, if you re new to the show, I d love to send you some top episodes, interviews, et cetera, as well as the Art of Charm Toolbox.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s where we discuss concepts like reading body language and nonverbal communication, the science of attraction, negotiation techniques, networking, influence, persuasion tactics, and even mentorship, basically everything that we teach here at The Art of Charm.
0
SPEAKER_00
If you re in the States, you can text charmed, text the word charm to the number 33444, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444, and of course, you can always go to theartofcharm.com as well,
0
SPEAKER_00
Also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, that s where you ll find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes of the show.
0
SPEAKER_00
Alright, here we go.
0
SPEAKER_00
Hey, I m here with Gabriel Mizrahi, friend of the show and television writer.
0
SPEAKER_00
Hey Jordan, thanks for having me.
0
SPEAKER_00
Are you a film or a television writer?
0
SPEAKER_00
I guess I should straighten that out.
0
SPEAKER_00
Both now, but mostly film these days, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
Got it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you transitioned from working at a corporation, I transitioned from working at a corporation.
0
SPEAKER_00
This topic ended up being important by accident.
0
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t something we had planned on recording.
0
SPEAKER_00
However, we get a lot of email with questions like, how do I know what to do with my life?
0
SPEAKER_00
How do I know whether or not my side gig is working?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it worthwhile?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it something I should keep pursuing?
0
SPEAKER_00
Should I quit my job to do this full time?
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I thought that two people who have made the transition would be a good place to start.
0
SPEAKER_01
And most recently, you ve been getting
0
SPEAKER_01
a lot of emails from what I can tell from people saying, I ve pursued that thing that I really love.
0
SPEAKER_01
But, you know, it s been a year, year and a half, like, how do I know if it s worth pursuing?
0
SPEAKER_01
Should I stick with it?
0
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m struggling, when do I give up on my dream?
0
SPEAKER_01
Which must be one of the hardest questions to answer for yourself.
0
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, hard for you to answer for somebody else.
0
SPEAKER_01
But you and I both did that at some point.
0
SPEAKER_01
I would love for you just before we get started to like, take us back.
0
SPEAKER_01
Can you take us back for a second to where you were when you left your job on Wall Street?
0
SPEAKER_01
There was like that period when you left that job and then you were about to start the Art of Charm, which was a huge risk.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like that must have been a big... It was.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, in so many ways, emotionally, professionally, financially, like you were completely changing gears and reinventing yourself.
0
SPEAKER_01
So take us back there.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like what were you thinking and what were you going through when you made that decision?
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, first of all, I need to take it back even further, because when I went to law school, I kind of went thinking, I m not really sure why I m here, but it s better than getting a crappy job that I really don t want.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, my other opportunity was at Best Buy.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was like, just retail side Best Buy.
0
SPEAKER_01
Wait, so literally it was like either the blue shirt or law school?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
because I had applied to a bunch of jobs, and the places that were hiring, and bear in mind, I had a four-year college degree from the University of Michigan, and I had good grades, so the places that were hiring, I knew three languages at this point, I had lived in a bunch of places, I had studied languages, commerce, and business, and stuff like that, so I wasn t like an English-lit major who didn t have anywhere to go.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was technically at least qualified for some kind of entry-level position, but there was no job counseling.
0
SPEAKER_00
It was just kind of like, go out there and apply, which is terrible advice.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I went to law school because it was like, well, I can continue to delay the real world and do this.
0
SPEAKER_01
This is not hard.
0
SPEAKER_01
Grad school for you was kind of a place for a smarty to hang out.
0
SPEAKER_01
and learn a certain set of skills and the analytical thinking and all that.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you re a smart dude, so it makes sense that you went to law school, but you didn t end up being a lawyer.
0
SPEAKER_00
No, well, I did for a minute, but what happened was I chose law school because the reasons that most people choose law school that are really bad, where other people tell you that you should be a lawyer because of some skill set that they imagine lawyers have that they think you also share a talent for, and those people are usually wrong, because they re usually not lawyers.
0
SPEAKER_00
telling you this, they re like, my aunt who s a teacher, you should be a lawyer, why?
0
SPEAKER_00
Just because you heard me talk or argue something one time and you think lawyers argue in court all day, there s no qualifying reason.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that sounds like a nice thing to say at a dinner party, like no one s gonna give you some weird side eye if you re like, I m an attorney.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so they re like, it s a safe job.
0
SPEAKER_01
Those people make money.
0
SPEAKER_01
You can do that.
0
SPEAKER_01
You should go to law school.
0
SPEAKER_01
That s interesting.
0
SPEAKER_01
I want to keep hearing about your story.
0
SPEAKER_01
But what you just said reminds me of a conversation we had recently, which is like, why do you make decisions?
0
SPEAKER_01
If you really pursue them down to the heart, it s hard to find a decision or a reason that you think you have that isn t ultimately
0
SPEAKER_01
like parasitic upon someone else s reason you know what i mean like you hear somebody wants to do something and suddenly because they want to do it you want to do it right you re almost like miming your own desires on other people s desires yeah if you don t look at them carefully and it s just weird how they unravel like
0
SPEAKER_00
It is weird, and if you look at a lot of people who went to law school, a lot of people I talked to when I first started, they were there for really interesting reasons.
0
SPEAKER_00
Some people were like, I just wanted a job that made a lot of money.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, well, okay, that doesn t sound like a great reason to go to law school, but it s better than my reason, which was no reason, really.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then other folks were like, oh, well, this is my second career, and I have kids now, and my first career, I was an engineer, and I was just getting bored of it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, okay, well, I guess switching careers is as good a reason as any.
0
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of the other people were there for the same reason as me.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, their parents, or their aunts and uncles were like, you should be a lawyer, it s respectable.
0
SPEAKER_00
Or they were from other countries, and they didn t go to medical school, so they had to go to law school, because that was kind of how
0
SPEAKER_00
you did things, if you didn t get into medical school, you went into law school, because you re from India or something like that.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right, it s from the familiar playbook.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s from the familiar playbook, exactly.
0
SPEAKER_01
So what you re getting at then is that you were never really fully 100% interested or committed to the law.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right, I had done no research on this, which in retrospect was kind of dumb.
0
SPEAKER_00
I shouldn t say no research, I did the standard amount of research that I think most dumb kids, which I definitely was, fall into, where I would ask
0
SPEAKER_00
my parents, if they knew any lawyers, and they re like, sure.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so those people were like, whoa, if you get into Michigan Law, you should definitely go.
0
SPEAKER_00
But they re coming at it from a perspective of, well, clearly you ve decided to become an attorney, so which school are you gonna go to?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes, it does matter.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I thought, oh, well, in that case, I m going to apply to only good schools, and if I get in, I ll let that determine my career track, which is also not a really great way to do things.
0
SPEAKER_00
It sounded like such a good idea back then, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
It s like saying, well, I ll go to college if I get into Harvard.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then you get into Harvard and you go to college, and you re like, crap, I didn t want to go to college, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
But you don t know that in the time.
0
SPEAKER_01
And no one s going to be like, yeah, you should just turn down Harvard.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_01
Because there s something better out there for you.
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that is almost guiding the decision at that point by itself.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, my friend Jenny Blake, she wrote a book called Pivot.
0
SPEAKER_00
The only move that matters is your next one.
0
SPEAKER_00
She worked for Google and then she left because she was like, oh, I ve kind of done my thing here, I m gonna write a book.
0
SPEAKER_00
And people were giving her a ton of crap, like she just broke up with Brad Pitt, is her example, because she said people told her things like, well, you think you re gonna do better than Google?
0
SPEAKER_00
And that was the same thinking that got me into law school.
0
SPEAKER_00
well, okay, I got into Michigan Law, I should go do this.
0
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of people do this with opportunities in their life no matter what.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, well, I ll stay at this company if I get that promotion.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, so you re managing other people, even though you hate your job right now, you re gonna then turn into the person who dictates what people at your level are doing?
0
SPEAKER_00
Do you really think that s gonna be better?
0
SPEAKER_00
doesn t sound right at all.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so there s a lot of that sort of, I call it default thinking, where it s actually not thinking at all, but you re just following the default, the path of least resistance, where you re going through life kind of like, well, if I get into law school, I ll go.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, if I get a job in New York, that s where I ll live.
0
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes that s a cool adventure when you re young.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t fault anyone who does something like, well, if I get a job in China, I ll go there.
0
SPEAKER_00
If I get the job in Russia, I ll go there.
0
SPEAKER_00
Cool, but don t let it decide whether or not you spend seven years or four years or in law school three years doing something that really only pays off if you have a career in that field.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s different than deciding where to go temporarily.
0
SPEAKER_01
Right, like don t relinquish all control over your career just to the chance of where you get a job or where it takes you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_01
But you re right, there is kind of like a magic to that adventure, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you and I both,
0
SPEAKER_01
have had some incredible experiences just following what the world is sort of telling us to do.
0
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
0
SPEAKER_01
And the more you get, the older you get, the more things you do, you start to connect those dots.
0
SPEAKER_01
And you realize that, like, in a way that you couldn t possibly have understood, the world was subtly pushing you into interesting things if you chose to follow them.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right, like for example, my going to Serbia and being an English teacher for a year, that was cool.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m not an English teacher, it was, now obviously, it was fun back then, I learned some Serbian, I made some great friends, had a great time, it was one year and then I was done and that was the end of that career.
0
SPEAKER_00
The reason that default thinking works there is because it s so temporary that the investment of time, even if it was like a terrible year and I hated the job, which I did,
1
SPEAKER_00
and I loved it, but even if it was like, I hate this career, and I don t have friends here, and I don t like Serbia, which wasn t the case at all, even though I got kidnapped there, that s a story for another show, it would have been a beneficial experience in some other ways, even if I just traveled around Europe and been like a deadbeat for that year, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was like a self-contained little experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
But the reason that education doesn t fall into that same category is because you re paying so much to go do that, and then you end up with a set of quote unquote qualifications over a period of multiple years that has opportunity cost, and then you have to go into that profession.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because now you re servicing the experience, you have to pay for it.
1
SPEAKER_01
whatever.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right.
1
SPEAKER_01
That is an interesting phenomenon of the world pushing you in ways that you wouldn t necessarily push yourself.
1
SPEAKER_01
But then also the world becoming kind of like a tyrant when you have to continue in that path and service that degree or service that job for years, which is, as you say, like a huge opportunity cost.
1
SPEAKER_01
But let s go back to you once you finished law school.
1
SPEAKER_01
Tell us what happened.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like you went to go work on Wall Street, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I did.
1
SPEAKER_00
I went to go work on Wall Street after law school, and this was also default thinking, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So, looking back on how I got that job, I was using a lot of the principles from social capital that we have in our social capital course, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think I ve told the story before, but the nutshell version is,
1
SPEAKER_00
I had not made any plans.
1
SPEAKER_00
Since I thought default thinking was really working for me in terms of getting into school and getting a job and stuff, I just thought, all right, I m in another country.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m not even gonna sign up for on-campus interviews.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m just going to show up maybe to on-campus interviews.
1
SPEAKER_00
And everybody thought I was just crazy.
1
SPEAKER_00
So where were you at this point?
1
SPEAKER_00
I was probably in Serbia again, I think.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you were in Serbia during law school?
1
SPEAKER_00
During one of the summers.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I actually got a government grant to go there from the Department of Defense to go back to Serbia And so I was like cool that wasn t default thinking that was something I d applied I m very tempted to ask you what that was all about but something tells me you re gonna be like, yeah, I can t really tell Yeah, and so Jordan literally just looked down at the table as I was like, let s just move on from that one.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I thought default thinking was working for me really well, and so what I ended up doing was going to on-campus interviews, last minute decision, just showing up, and like walking around, and I don t know what was wrong with me, but I think I had had so many positive experiences from default thinking that I thought I could go in there and make something happen.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sure, you got kidnapped.
1
SPEAKER_01
Why wouldn t you be able to ace your interviews?
1
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, yeah, I m fine.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I did talk to a bunch of people and they re like, oh, I didn t think you were participating in this.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you re not on any of the lists.
1
SPEAKER_00
Where are you gonna interview?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I made a game of it, super deep dive default thinking, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
I made a game of finding out where no-shows were by just walking by the emptiest lines for interviews in this hotel where they had set it up.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if somebody was like a no-show for their interview, I would literally just duck in there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or I would give the person conducting interviews, the coordinators, my cell phone number, and I d be like, call me if there s a no-show.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they re like, sure, because they want to fill their time too.
1
SPEAKER_01
They want to fill their time, but you re also telling them something about yourself without actually having to drop any self-promotional BS, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
You re showing that you re the dude who s just going to show up and want to talk to them.
1
SPEAKER_00
And hustle, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And hustle, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
What they thought, and this is 20-20 hindsight, but what they thought was, see, it s a bidding process for these interviews, and I won t get into that too much.
1
SPEAKER_00
You sometimes didn t get a chance to interview at your favorite firms.
1
SPEAKER_00
You got to rank them, and then the stupid office, the career office, would decide whether you got a chance to interview at which firms.
1
SPEAKER_00
if you have any sense.
1
SPEAKER_00
I know, it s ridiculous, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
But they want to make it, quote unquote, fair for everyone.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I just went where there were no shows, and people who were late or doing something else or decided to go and do a different interview, and those same firms would have me come in.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they thought I really wanted to interview there, but I had not made the list.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they were like, this guy actually wants to be here.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I got tons of calls.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I ran into a friend of mine who was my undergrad college roommate, and he said, hey, Jeremy D is over at Thatcher, Proffitt, and Wood.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why don t you go say hi?
1
SPEAKER_00
And he was really well connected, my undergrad college roommate, and he d worked in DC and stuff, and I thought, well, that s kind of silly, but I guess I should go say hi.
1
SPEAKER_00
What I didn t realize is that go say hi means
1
SPEAKER_00
go say hello and maybe see what this person is doing here, because he had graduated and was working for this law firm.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I showed up, and I was like, hey, Jeremy, what s going on?
1
SPEAKER_00
He s like, hey, Jordan, give me your resume, man.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I was like, oh, OK.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I gave him, you know, you re walking around with copies of your resume.
1
SPEAKER_00
I gave him my resume, and he goes, cool, what are you doing right now at lunchtime?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, nothing, thinking he wanted to go out to lunch.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he goes, great.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sit down.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hold on one second.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he goes, and the partner s like housing a Subway sandwich.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, hey, do you want to do an interview during lunch?
1
SPEAKER_00
Do you mind if the partner eats during it?
1
SPEAKER_00
Of course, go ahead.
1
SPEAKER_00
Of course, I m here.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let s do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m already here.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is my default thinking and action.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I sit down, do the interview, totally unprepared, which didn t look as bad as it would have.
1
SPEAKER_00
It looked fine because I hadn t signed up for the interview.
1
SPEAKER_00
So they were like, well, we don t expect you to be prepared.
1
SPEAKER_00
We weren t even on your list.
1
SPEAKER_01
You accidentally shifted the terms of the interview.
1
SPEAKER_00
I completely shifted the terms by accident.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, not planning to.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it didn t matter that I didn t know anything about the firm.
1
SPEAKER_00
I just knew generic stuff about firms and they were like, look, that s totally fine if you didn t make it to the list because that s not your fault.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s the career office s fault.
1
SPEAKER_00
So then they ended up giving me a check mark and flying me out to New York and I got the job before I even landed back in Michigan.
1
SPEAKER_01
After that interview so like that s a great example of default thinking that in a way is actually really cool I mean I get what you re saying like you don t want to just give yourself over to like accident But this accident put you in touch with someone interesting at an interesting moment when you were basically living abroad and weren t even that invested right process and
1
SPEAKER_01
And even though you re not a lawyer now, like so much of what you re doing, you could probably tie back to that experience.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like you definitely defected at some point.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
But you do have that training and you probably wouldn t be doing what you re doing now if you hadn t started there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Of course, I just wanna underline this though.
1
SPEAKER_00
The whole Huckleberry Finn effect that we re seeing right now in default thinking, it works great when you use default thinking and you re super flexible.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had very little debt because I had this sort of Michigan scholarship thing from when I was born.
1
SPEAKER_00
My dad bought these education credits, whatever, and they translated.
1
SPEAKER_00
and there were some socks and stuff that I got in gifts when I was a kid that paid for law school.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I had taken on like 70 or 100 grand in debt, which was like nothing compared to my peers, and the rates were so low, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
So default thinking works great when you do that.
1
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t work great when, again, you re looking at a long-term investment of time, like law school and then a career, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
It works great when you re deciding on a vacation.
1
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t work great when you re deciding on
1
SPEAKER_00
Should we have kids?
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, let s just keep having unprotected sex and see what happens.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s not good, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And then 15, 20 years you wake up and you re like, how did I get here?
1
SPEAKER_00
How did I get here?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s not good default thinking.
1
SPEAKER_01
So there s a place for it.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s a place for it, but it s not the strategy, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
So you end up on Wall Street, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then what?
1
SPEAKER_00
So I end up on Wall Street and I m having fun because it s new and I picked a great firm to work with with a lot of cool people in it that were all my age and really fun.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like really great people, just good people.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then the market takes a downturn, and I m in mortgage-backed securities in the real estate department, so I start working in 2006, early 2007 I start working.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I do like nine months of work, and even that s pretty sparse, because I m a first-year associate, so a lot of it s just baloney, checking for commas in documents, and then the downturn hits.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think that spring or summer was when those two hedge funds at Bear Stearns fell.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was like May.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was like May or June, because I remember I was working at Smith Barney.
1
SPEAKER_01
I was interning at Smith Barney that summer, and I just remember everybody freaking out when that happened.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was bad.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so they were like, this is going to be over in five months, we re just going to keep you on.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the next six plus months or so, I sat there collecting full salary and benefits
1
SPEAKER_00
And after a while, they re like, look, you don t even have to come to the office.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, what?
1
SPEAKER_00
And bear in mind, I d already been podcasting with AJ in the basement, Art of Charm still existed, I was kind of moonlighting.
1
SPEAKER_00
So these overlapped.
1
SPEAKER_00
They overlapped.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so you start Oh, interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you started the Art of Charm in law school in law school, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
I remember that.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I didn t realize that you were also working on it while you were working your job.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was, and we had our satellite radio show on Sirius XM as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
So look, I mean, default thinking kicks ass, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I ve got this high-paying job where I now have no work, and I ve got this other business that I m running that happened to get me on Times Square satellite radio every Friday.
1
SPEAKER_00
But now you re living a double life, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So did you feel like when you put on that suit and you got in that elevator that you were like, who am I, what am I doing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Or did it feel like AOC was real life and this was some alternate reality, or was it the reverse?
1
SPEAKER_00
That s a great question.
1
SPEAKER_00
I actually don t know the answer, because when I went to the law firm, I had major imposter syndrome.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I still to this day kind of think that I m right about that, you know, imposter syndrome, where you just think I m the only one that slipped through the cracks somehow.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, totally, like, I m a fraud.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we talk about that a lot on the show, but I really do think that it was only a matter of time, because I did not have it together.
1
SPEAKER_00
Do you mean as a lawyer?
1
SPEAKER_00
As a lawyer, but even just as a guy, like I didn t have it together at all.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was that guy who would like walk out, forget your keys, go back in your apartment, take a glass of water and throw it in the sink, and then walk out and go,
2
SPEAKER_00
I still don t have my keys.
2
SPEAKER_00
Go back in to get my keys, take my shoes off, and then go to the bathroom and then walk back out and go, I still don t have my keys.
2
SPEAKER_00
I just was like an idiot.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what was wrong with me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Super ADD, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You were just like a little ADD or not totally there?
2
SPEAKER_00
Totally, totally absent-minded and ADD.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you were like, if I can t even get my keys when I leave the house, how am I possibly advising companies on what to do?
2
SPEAKER_00
Of course, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there were so many guys there that were like,
2
SPEAKER_00
reading up on real estate, their cousins worked in the industry, they were going to dinners with investment bankers.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, these guys are like, they re living the world of it, and they love it, yeah, they geek out about it, and you did not.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was like, punch in, mail it in, punch out.
2
SPEAKER_01
But can we talk about that for a second, because I think there s something unique about client services, like whether you re in the law or management consulting, which is what I did for a few years,
2
SPEAKER_01
Part of your job, especially in the early days when you re, I don t know, a first year associate or like some like nobody analyst is to pretend that you know what you re doing when you don t know what you re doing.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s like a whole skill set.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m telling you, like, I remember distinctly being an analyst training at Deloitte Consulting where I worked.
2
SPEAKER_01
And part of what they teach you is how to build a spreadsheet, how to build a model, how to do PowerPoint, the technical stuff you need to know.
2
SPEAKER_01
But there was so much about that job that was just like, somebody is going to say 10 words you don t understand, they re going to tell you to book a meeting with three people you never heard of.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re 22 years old, you just landed in the airport in Wichita, Kansas.
2
SPEAKER_01
You live in New York, and now we re working at a manufacturing company that makes tractors.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don t know anything about tractors, but you better convince the client that you know exactly what a John Deere is and how it works and who wants it and how much it sells for like, you have to project that idea that you know what you re doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
So my gosh, I feel like
2
SPEAKER_01
it was probably something similar at the firm for you, and it s kind of funny how much of people s jobs is to pretend that they know what they re doing, so how can you not have imposter syndrome?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I agree, and I think some people are really good at it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was not as adept at faking it, because I just had no concept.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there were guys and girls there that were super smart.
2
SPEAKER_00
Remember, Wall Street s hiring people who got top grades, and me, at top law schools, and those people were the smartest, quote unquote smartest,
2
SPEAKER_00
in terms of the legal skills that needed from their undergrad institutions, which were smart kids from their high school.
2
SPEAKER_00
So this is technically the cream of the crop in terms of the legal profession.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had actually gotten in through networking, da-da-da-da-da, through chance, so I really had good foundations for my imposter syndrome.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like you really didn t belong there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, it wasn t like, oh, I got a fluke high test score, and then I got a fluke interview because of a family connection, and then I got a fluke, da-da-da-da.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, this was like,
2
SPEAKER_00
I didn t have the scores, I didn t have the grades, I showed up when I wasn t necessarily invited, my friends shoved my resume in a stack, interviewed over lunch hour, they happened to need people like crazy because the market was booming, and they hired me, and then I was the guy who couldn t even remember my wallet and keys.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you were aware of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was aware of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
While it was happening.
2
SPEAKER_00
So my thing was, don t show up too much, not like,
2
SPEAKER_00
attend but show up in the sort of broader sense too much, because somebody s gonna go, who the hell are you?
2
SPEAKER_00
You don t know what you re doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you were like trying to limit your exposure.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
So whenever there were projects, I was torn between volunteering for that project so that I didn t look like I had no enthusiasm, but making sure that I was like,
2
SPEAKER_00
the last guy on the totem pole in that project, so that somebody was just telling me what to do at all times.
2
SPEAKER_00
No one could see me.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was kind of a miserable existence, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and also feeling crappy about your prospects in that career.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s one of the reasons that I got into the Art of Charm heavy duty stuff, because we d already been doing the podcast, it was mostly about sort of dating and relationships and stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
But one of the guys that had hired me, Dave, he was never in the office, and everyone who listens to the show has heard this story a million times,
2
SPEAKER_00
He took me out for coffee and I asked him why he was never in the office and he said, I m making relationships and I m building relationships and that s why I m not there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was for me like, wait a minute, this is the secret weapon that I can use to get to the top of the law game because I m not good at a lot of the other stuff, but I have a natural ability to work with this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that natural ability wasn t natural at all.
2
SPEAKER_00
It happened to come from working on the art of charm skills that we ve been teaching.
2
SPEAKER_01
you saw another role that fit you better.
2
SPEAKER_01
Not just at the firm, but in the world, clearly.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was just like, wait, what if I become a rainmaker for this firm?
2
SPEAKER_00
Then I won t have to worry about being an incompetent SOB, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, then you can wake up at nine and play golf and bring in business and you ll play by a different set of rules.
2
SPEAKER_01
But here s my question.
2
SPEAKER_01
While you were working, moonlighting, basically, on AOC, did you feel that imposter syndrome when you worked on that stuff?
2
SPEAKER_00
on the Art of Charm stuff?
2
SPEAKER_00
No, the Art of Charm stuff was great.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, sure, you re challenging yourself because you re teaching people a skill.
2
SPEAKER_00
At the same time, you re working on mastering that same craft for a little bit further down the path, maybe, than the guys that were coming in to our programs.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it was super fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was kind of weird because that was the beginning of the startup stage.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is the honeymoon phase of Art of Charm where
2
SPEAKER_00
Everybody was super fun, and all the clients were just having tons of fun, and all the people who worked here were having fun, and we had 21-year-old, not even, interns, like, sleeping on the couches in our badass Manhattan apartment that had a pool, and a jacuzzi, and a squash court, and a gym, and trainers, and famous people lived there, and a roof deck, and all that stuff, and that was what I was spending some of my salary on, but there was, like, six, seven people living in there, and it was a one friggin  bedroom apartment.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was ludicrous, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Ludicrous, but salad days, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly, and so it was really super fun to come back home after working at this law firm and being bored to tears or just like hanging out and talking and surfing blogs.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then be able to work on something you actually love.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then come home and everyone s like, Jordan!
2
SPEAKER_00
and they re about to go out, and they re eating a pizza, and they re hitting the gym, and class had just ended, that Johnny and AJ were teaching, and essentially, what was my living room back then, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
So it was awesome, and on days where I had to have my tonsils out, as an adult, which is very strange, and it s kind of serious surgery, and they mandated that I take 10 days off, between 10 and 14 days, and the firm was like, definitely take the full two weeks off,
2
SPEAKER_00
because things are slow.
2
SPEAKER_00
Remember the market had already kind of hit this tank.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and you didn t want to be there anyway.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t want to be there anyway.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I had recovered really well after even five days, maybe even three days.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was young and healthy as a bull.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I recovered and I couldn t talk that well, but I was still up and at them and all around.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yet I had like 10 more days off after that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So
2
SPEAKER_00
I just hung out with all the guys and it was freaking epic.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was just amazingly epic.
2
SPEAKER_00
Were you guys coaching at this point?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we were coaching.
2
SPEAKER_00
Johnny was here coaching.
2
SPEAKER_00
We had brought him up from North Carolina.
2
SPEAKER_00
A.J.
2
SPEAKER_00
had flown in from Detroit, Ann Arbor to work with us in New York.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it was just it was freaking amazing.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you basically had some vacation time.
2
SPEAKER_01
You had already recovered.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now you re like, why isn t this my real life?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, why isn t this my real life?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So at what point did you decide this is I m just going to make this my real life?
2
SPEAKER_00
What happened was the firm started, there was just no work, and that was later on the point where they were like, hey, you just don t even have to show up anymore, there s no point.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they had that kind of all hands meeting where they re like, look, you guys.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re gonna be removing some redundancies.
2
SPEAKER_00
What was great about it was it was a bunch of Brooklyn guys, and they were like, look, we don t know when this shitstorm is gonna end.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, what we think you should do for your career, we just feel bad for you, we re not giving you any work, we re not gonna fire you, but after this year, if it doesn t look up, we re not gonna have an incoming class, and we re not going to have new associates, you should try to get another job for the sake of your career.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they re like, we re just gonna pay you for the rest of the year.
2
SPEAKER_00
but you should not even be here unless you need to use the office and the computers and you wanna talk to HR or you wanna do anything with the fax machines or the copiers or whatever, we re at your disposal, but don t think you have to show up and provide what we call FaceTime.
2
SPEAKER_00
Pretty cool way to get fired.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a great way to get fired.
2
SPEAKER_01
So yet another way that default path kind of was serving you yeah, so you just stop showing up, okay?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I copied crap from my computer that was personal which you re not supposed to have on there anyway But they didn t even care at this point and I bounced and they had loaned me money, too And I was like should I pay this back and the HR person was like well technically yes But between you and I don t bother we re not gonna frickin send you to collection my god everybody this company was probably like we don t even know if we re gonna exist, so yeah
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t even worry about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
She was like, because I d taken like a $10,000 summer loan.
2
SPEAKER_00
She s like, yes, I need you to send me the $800 checks for the last two months.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ll contact you each month that you need to send over the check.
2
SPEAKER_01
So they basically gave you a little bit of funding to ease the transition to AOC full time, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
not only were they paying me full salary and benefits each month, which was awesome, they had given us essentially another month s pay on top of it to kind of, quote unquote, ease our transition.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because a lot of people had to move.
2
SPEAKER_00
They were like, I can t find another job in Manhattan, so they went home.
2
SPEAKER_01
And these are the people who really wanted to be there on top of it, which is crazy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I felt bad about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Isn t that weird?
2
SPEAKER_01
I remember that 2008 was when I joined the firm, and that 2008 to 2009 was such a weird period.
2
SPEAKER_01
And one of the weirdest things about it was watching the people who
2
SPEAKER_01
Wanted to be there so badly or like in some cases like needed to be there because you know, yeah gone to business
3
SPEAKER_02
and they had families, and their whole identity was wrapped up in that business card.
3
SPEAKER_02
And it s like painful to watch, you just realize you have so much to lose when all your eggs are in that basket.
3
SPEAKER_02
But now these people, you re young, so you were at a different stage of life, but they basically told you, start a new phase, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
So that s what you did.
3
SPEAKER_03
And so this is where the default thinking was serving me, right?
3
SPEAKER_03
Because my other default thinking was, I went through like a two hour, maybe two day, and I put this in air quotes, panic.
3
SPEAKER_03
where I thought, oh my God, I better start getting another job.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I called in my friends and I was like, guys, is your firm hiring?
3
SPEAKER_03
And some places were, but it was pretty obvious to the partners at some IP litigation firm that some guy in a real estate department who s a first year associate who hasn t even completed that first year and is now applying for jobs there is damaged goods, right?
3
SPEAKER_03
You didn t really wanna work there, you didn t really wanna work in patent litigation, you re scrambling because the firm is effed.
3
SPEAKER_03
Why are we gonna hire you?
3
SPEAKER_03
You re not experienced.
3
SPEAKER_03
Like, just get off my doorstep.
3
SPEAKER_03
Didn t even get interviews with other firms.
3
SPEAKER_03
And a lot of people were really having similar troubles.
3
SPEAKER_03
And then I thought, wait a minute.
3
SPEAKER_03
I m working eight hours a day on Art of Charm, and then going home and hanging out with the Art of Charm guys, and thinking about Art of Charm 24-7, so why am I wasting my time trying to get another job that I don t want?
3
SPEAKER_03
This is dumb.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I just said, screw it, I m not going to, and default thinking and risk-taking at that level of my career, since I had low debt, super low rate, bunch of savings, and money was still coming in, I just thought to myself,
3
SPEAKER_03
Well, I m just going to focus on AOC.
3
SPEAKER_02
Just that next step and they closed off the other avenue anyway.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like was there ever a time or were there ever times in the AOC journey where you weren t sure if you should have kept going and if there was like a moment where you were like, I either have to make a choice to continue going and building this company or I need to go somewhere else and you decided to keep going.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like what was going through your head if there were those moments?
3
SPEAKER_03
Well, the thing that I had sort of realized was, one, I was hustling to get a job that I didn t really want to replace another job that I didn t really want.
3
SPEAKER_03
And that was a tough decision because everyone s like, you better get another job, you better get another job, you better get another job.
3
SPEAKER_03
My parents were surprisingly supportive.
3
SPEAKER_03
They were like, look, you can always move back home.
3
SPEAKER_03
There s tons of jobs, it s fine.
3
SPEAKER_03
They were cool.
3
SPEAKER_03
They were cool.
3
SPEAKER_03
panic with me, they wouldn t indulge that, because they re like, dude, you got this job so easily, what are you even worried about?
3
SPEAKER_03
And I just thought, you re not seeing the rejection that I m seeing.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, in some ways that makes you more nervous, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
Right.
3
SPEAKER_02
Other people are like, you re fine.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
But I m not.
3
SPEAKER_02
But I m not.
3
SPEAKER_03
I just thought, what s the best case scenario?
3
SPEAKER_03
And this is kind of a cool drill, right?
3
SPEAKER_03
What s the best case scenario?
3
SPEAKER_03
Let s say I get hired by Patent Bogs, or whatever I was applying to, and I get a job.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s gonna be 12 hour days.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s gonna be 12 hour days, six days a week, seven days a week, whatever.
3
SPEAKER_03
I m not gonna have time to work on Art of Charm.
3
SPEAKER_03
I don t want that job more than I want Art of Charm to work, so what the hell am I doing here?
3
SPEAKER_03
And I decided to not play it safe.
3
SPEAKER_03
I decided to quit, go all in on AOC, and that s exactly what happened.
3
SPEAKER_02
Were you aware that you had a set of skills that you were like, if I can just put this all into the company, then it has a good shot of working?
3
SPEAKER_02
Or were you just following the fun of it?
3
SPEAKER_03
I d love to say, look, we had this grand plan where we had all this good stuff going on, but really we were just young, optimistic startup nerds at that point that didn t know what we were doing.
3
SPEAKER_03
This was before startup culture was a thing.
3
SPEAKER_03
This was 2008, 2009, 2010.
3
SPEAKER_02
to do.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it was people were not turning down Wall Street jobs to start companies.
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, no, no.
3
SPEAKER_03
And nobody our age was starting companies.
3
SPEAKER_03
Everybody our age that we ve met that was also a quote unquote, entrepreneur, like printed t shirts, or, you know, rock band promoters, right?
3
SPEAKER_03
They re like side hustles.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it was all just kind of like teenager immature.
3
SPEAKER_02
So
3
SPEAKER_02
You guys were basically you were naive to a certain degree definitely like not even idealistic you were just naive naive But but also you were in touch with what was fun about what you were building with AOC Like I know based on what you told me the early days were kind of a happy accident They were what you re describing for example like in New York like that doesn t sound like a company that sounds like an experience that was like slowly calcifying into a company and
3
SPEAKER_02
Great.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s a great way to put it.
3
SPEAKER_02
It really was.
3
SPEAKER_02
So I wonder whether that s a huge part of whether something is worth pursuing when you just feel like this is interesting.
3
SPEAKER_02
Something s happening here.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like, I, I noticed that when I come home from this job, I don t really like I actually love my friends.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I love myself.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I love what I m doing.
3
SPEAKER_02
So let me just see where that goes.
3
SPEAKER_02
Because that s probably a pretty good indicator that I m on to something.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hey, Art of Charm listeners, I m excited to share a new podcast I ve been absolutely binging.
3
SPEAKER_00
Winning is an everyday mindset, and Craig Robinson and John Calipari are here to help.
3
SPEAKER_00
On Ways to Win podcast, Craig and Coach Cal use their on-court wisdom to solve your off-court problems.
3
SPEAKER_00
Whether it s trouble at home or a workplace dilemma, the coaches will help you find a winning formula for success.
3
SPEAKER_00
You ll hear from prominent athletes, business leaders, and celebrities who reveal insights that made them into the leaders they are today.
3
SPEAKER_00
And don t miss President Obama sharing how he deals with pressure by projecting confidence, believing in your team, and taking criticism.
3
SPEAKER_00
Listen to Ways to Win wherever you get your podcasts.
3
SPEAKER_01
Over the last 17 years, we have launched our fair share of online courses, coaching programs, and finding the right platform has always been a challenge.
3
SPEAKER_00
They say if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you re an entrepreneur, you know the hard work that comes with it.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s why you need Kajabi.
3
SPEAKER_00
Kajabi makes it easy to run your entire online business from one platform so you can focus on what you love, creating.
3
SPEAKER_01
Kajabi is the ultimate all-in-one platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs build successful online businesses by unlocking predictable recurring revenue.
3
SPEAKER_00
No matter your niche, Kajabi makes it easy to turn your skills, passions, and experiences into enriching online courses, exclusive membership sites, subscription podcasts, thriving communities, personalized coaching, and more.
3
SPEAKER_01
The best part, Kajabi doesn t cut into your revenue because everything is owned and controlled by you.
3
SPEAKER_01
So keep 100% of what you earn.
3
SPEAKER_00
And with Kajabi, you also get robust analytics, easy payment options, email marketing tools, and customizable website templates, all built in.
3
SPEAKER_01
You don t even need a huge audience to make sustainable income.
3
SPEAKER_01
There are thousands of creators on Kajabi making six and seven figures with less than 50,000 followers.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right now, Kajabi is offering a free 30-day trial to start your business if you go to kajabi.com slash charm.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s K-A-J-A-B-I dot com slash charm.
3
SPEAKER_01
Go to kajabi.com slash charm and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over seven billion dollars.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, back to the show.
3
SPEAKER_03
It was kind of like, look, worst case scenario, we had a ton of fun doing this for the last few years, and then I ll figure out how to get a job, because default thinking.
3
SPEAKER_03
I ll just huckleberry thin my way through this.
3
SPEAKER_03
Does that make sense when I use that expression like that?
3
SPEAKER_02
It s funny you say that, because I ve been reading a lot about Mark Twain recently.
3
SPEAKER_02
I read that book in high school, and everybody else was like, I don t really get it.
3
SPEAKER_02
As an adult, that book is incredible.
3
SPEAKER_02
It makes perfect sense to me.
3
SPEAKER_02
Not only insanely well written, but yeah, his philosophy of life.
3
SPEAKER_02
But why don t you unpack it a little bit, because I don t know if everybody knows.
3
SPEAKER_03
Right, so when I say Huck Finn, my way through this, what I mean is, and I could just be misremembering this, but when I remember reading Huck Finn, it was something like he just starts walking down a road one day after some other adventure, and it s getting dark, and he s like, huh, I should probably sleep somewhere, and he sees a house in the distance, so he just goes, I ll just walk towards this house, and they say, who s there?
3
SPEAKER_03
And he says, it s me.
3
SPEAKER_03
And they say, who s me?
3
SPEAKER_03
And he goes, George Jackson, I think is what he said.
3
SPEAKER_03
I can t remember.
3
SPEAKER_03
This is from 10 years ago.
3
SPEAKER_02
I don t remember the name either, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_03
George Jackson.
3
SPEAKER_03
And they re like, who?
3
SPEAKER_03
George Jackson.
3
SPEAKER_03
And they re like, all right, because that was the family that was in the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
3
SPEAKER_03
And he ended up just living with them for a while and becoming a part of their family.
3
SPEAKER_02
OK, got it.
3
SPEAKER_03
That s kind of how I was running.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like just one foot in front of the other, right?
3
SPEAKER_03
It was just one foot in front of the other.
3
SPEAKER_03
So I was like, look, I ve got pay coming in.
3
SPEAKER_03
we re making some money at AOC, we re living on shoestrings.
3
SPEAKER_03
I mean, everybody s living under my roof, and I m giving everybody like a grand a month to pay for food.
3
SPEAKER_03
That s it.
3
SPEAKER_03
And we survived on that for a while.
3
SPEAKER_03
And then Johnny was bartending off nights and eating at the bar, and I had saved up tons of money, I was living off that, and AJ was skimming by on some of that stuff,
3
SPEAKER_02
So in each of your ways, you are making it work.
3
SPEAKER_02
We re just making it work.
3
SPEAKER_02
I wonder like this one step at a time thing.
3
SPEAKER_02
Do you think that s a philosophy that you can live by at any point in your life, in any experience?
3
SPEAKER_02
Or do you think that s something that s unique to being young and naive?
3
SPEAKER_03
I think there s a beauty in being young and naive when you do it because right now, I think if I tried to do it, I would not be able to do it without a massive level of anxiety that goes along with it.
3
SPEAKER_02
Is that just because your lifestyle s changed or?
3
SPEAKER_03
Lifestyle has definitely changed.
3
SPEAKER_03
I think part of the problem is
3
SPEAKER_03
bills, right?
3
SPEAKER_03
And I don t mean like, oh, I ve got to make ends meet, but I mean, look, if you want more freedom, don t buy a house, don t buy a car, don t get engaged, don t get cats or dogs or whatever, don t do any of that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_03
But the problem is when you huck fin your way through the whole life, I know a lot of AOC clients that have been huck finning for a while, some of them love it, they re well suited to it, and they re younger and it s great, they re moving to Columbia and they re working on
4
SPEAKER_01
and they re doing this and they re doing that.
4
SPEAKER_01
But some of the guys that I see in the entrepreneur circles and also AOC clients who are maybe in their 40s and 50s doing it, I think there s something missing from their life that they re still searching for.
4
SPEAKER_01
And part of the reason that they re not finding it is because you can t really go one foot in front of the other and build something that s got real purpose behind it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those things just come with planning.
4
SPEAKER_01
you can t just stumble into some great, amazing thing that becomes a phenomenon.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s so rare that you re betting on winning the lottery.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s fine, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re Alice Cooper and you re thinking like, hey, wouldn t it be cool to start a band?
4
SPEAKER_01
Whenever you look at people who you think have stumbled into something and done the Huckleberry Finn thing to fame and fortune, when you really start to read about it, you re like, wow, okay, you were surrounded by really sharp people, you had some lucky breaks, but you also worked your ass off for a long time to make this band or whatever a reality.
4
SPEAKER_01
just bumbling through it is not going to work.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think if you try it long enough, you end up kind of depressed a little bit.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s so true.
4
SPEAKER_00
The version of events that you read about and you hear about, especially with success stories, they re like the tip of the iceberg of how that story happened.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wonder all the time, why is it that that s the version of events that gets passed around?
4
SPEAKER_00
People who succeed in their fields enjoy, I think, telling a story and making it sound almost serendipitous or accidental or a little easy.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that perpetuates a myth does that is really damaging.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I mean, if you can see it for what it is, then it won t, you know, you won t fall for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But like, we re so susceptible to believing in stories where it s just like, and then I did that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then this happened.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then people really liked it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then before I knew it, I was Alice Cooper, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But like, that s not how life works.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like, why is it that that s the version of stories that gets passed around?
4
SPEAKER_01
The reason I think that a lot of people do that is because of two things.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s probably more, but the two things that come to mind are, I guess it s called hindsight bias.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s actually more like hindsight distortion, where you re going, well, you know what, I just worked really hard, and I,
4
SPEAKER_01
got a great team together.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like if an analyst looks at that business and does a case study for Harvard Business School or something, what really ended up happening in that estimation is you caught lightning in a bottle because you decided to make a mobile video app when mobile phones were just getting cameras.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then when you did that, you had a couple of viral videos that were really popular because the person who was in it
4
SPEAKER_01
had some crazy scandal, and then that video went viral, which got you a bunch of users, and then you got acquired by AOL, which acquires everything for ridiculous amounts of money, but then you took that money and reinvested it, which got you reacquired by, or sold to Facebook, or something like that, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
But what that ends up being is you go, see, we created this amazing
4
SPEAKER_01
and everyone loved it, and we created users, and then we got acquired by Facebook.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it s like, kinda, but there was all these different things, luck and circumstance and things like that, that came into play that you weren t aware of in the moment, and are clearly not really looking at.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because the second point, which is, if you do have to acknowledge those things, it makes you look less awesome than you really are.
4
SPEAKER_00
I completely agree with that.
4
SPEAKER_00
That is so dead on.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because when you look at the people you admire, and you try to figure out how they got to where they are, the last thing they wanna do is be like,
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I chatted up the person on the subway next to me about his shoes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it just so happened that that dude was working on a screenplay that he needed some help with.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he still didn t want to hire me.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I pestered him.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I sent him nine emails over the next year saying like, What are you doing?
4
SPEAKER_00
What are you working on?
4
SPEAKER_00
How can I help that?
4
SPEAKER_00
And even then he wouldn t meet with me.
4
SPEAKER_00
But finally, we met and then and then before you know it, it s like, if this is even an interesting story, which some people would be like, I don t want to hear about this.
4
SPEAKER_00
I want to hear about how it was successful.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, like you ve reduced the magic of your success to like a series of banal details, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don t think people want to hear them, and the people who do want to hear them are asking for those details from somebody who doesn t really want to reveal them.
4
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, so that s why you hear amazing stories from luminaries in the entrepreneurship field that go something like this.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have to follow your passion.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is what s gonna keep you up, motivated at night to do this and waking up at five o clock in the morning to make it happen because you re not gonna stop at anything to let somebody get in the way of this.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nothing, no haters are gonna get in your way or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right, just that like blustering kind of self-help stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
Super self-help-y, hustle-y kind of crapola.
4
SPEAKER_01
The problem is, that s not what got them there.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those are qualities that they may have, super hustle, determination, grit, that s great, that s definitely a part of what made them successful, no question about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
However, that s not all that it was.
4
SPEAKER_01
And for them to also say,
4
SPEAKER_01
And we got really lucky because one of our co-founders  father had a direct connection to the CEO of Microsoft, which got us an inside look at something that they were looking to build that they were doing a terrible job with.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we were able to poach some people from this other company because we had these other things going on.
4
SPEAKER_00
They don t want to talk about that because that s not commencement speech material.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not commencement speech material and I think they think it detracts from the legacy or the myth of how awesome they are.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re doing everybody a disservice.
4
SPEAKER_00
They don t mean to be, I don t think, but they re doing everybody a disservice, anybody who really wants to know what it takes.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a reluctance to talk about luck in general and we should talk about this for a second because you and I have both worked insanely hard but we ve also been extremely lucky.
4
SPEAKER_00
I actually don t believe that luck is one of those things that, like, some people are lucky, some people are not, and the ones who are lucky have that extra little bit that gets them there.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, luck plays a huge role, but it doesn t really mean all that much unless you meet it with a ton of, like, all those other things you just talked about.
4
SPEAKER_00
Hard work, determination, creativity, like, whatever it is that puts the lucky pieces together in the right way.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s that, yeah, what s that misattributed Mark Twain thing?
4
SPEAKER_00
The luck and opportunity.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, preparation meets opportunity, which is like, yeah, we ve heard that so many times, but it s true.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I wonder why people are so reluctant to talk about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is it because they re not willing to also say, Well, yeah, my friend s dad did know the director of American Express or whatever, you know, but it was us who had the answer to that problem that they really needed.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like we had the thing that they needed right at that moment, they needed it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, if they just joined the two together, and we re very clear, that s a story I d want to hear.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but we re not
4
SPEAKER_00
We re not hearing those.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re not hearing that stuff because you have to take an unemotional look at what makes something successful and look at everything that that business maybe had tried, failed at, the people involved, et cetera, which one, is a massive undertaking, so you have to be a real business analyst or academic to be able to do that.
4
SPEAKER_00
To do the forensics.
4
SPEAKER_01
To do the forensics.
4
SPEAKER_01
And two, it s not something that we as humans are naturally equipped to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m equipped naturally to look at something that made an emotional impression on me and signal that as maybe a deciding factor.
4
SPEAKER_01
And also, it s impossible for me to take an unemotional look at my own business because I m so close to it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because it s your life.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, like you re not really, most people are not in the business of doing the post-mortem on themselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_00
which is why you have like professional biographers, forensic analysts, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_00
But you and I have had this conversation a lot over the years.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s coming up more and more because it s becoming I think a problem on the internet.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s this it s this new phase of self help stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this luck and the storytelling that we re talking about as part of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m talking about the kind of self help stuff that you read when you jump on medium.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s just a feed of people telling you
4
SPEAKER_00
empty bromides about how to work hard or live your passion or I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I can t even I can t stand this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I can t even remember like the most common catchphrases.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I m talking about that self help that s taught by people whose only followers are other people who want to teach self help.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, totally.
4
SPEAKER_00
Which is like the biggest
4
SPEAKER_00
red flag is yeah and it s kind of a mystery unless I m just completely underestimating people s intelligence these days like why do these people have such big follow overestimating maybe people s intelligence I guess overestimating because like how else do you explain why people are so susceptible to that
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think there s a few things going on here.
4
SPEAKER_01
I love the word bromides, because it is really just like these empty, meme-y crap that s really easy to share.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s funny, because when we look at long format work, like the Art of Charm podcast that you re listening to right now,
4
SPEAKER_01
This takes a lot of time, a lot of prep.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s hard to share, kind of.
4
SPEAKER_01
It requires an investment from the listener.
4
SPEAKER_01
It requires an investment for you to convince somebody else to invest their time and effort listening to it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Then you gotta go and apply it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But what requires no prep, no investment, and almost no work whatsoever is a picture of somebody on a beach with their laptop with a frickin  quote that s misattributed to Roosevelt or Mark Twain or yourself.
4
SPEAKER_01
written on it that says do what matters or live effectively or just whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
Published on a website that tells you at the top this is a two minute read.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, or Instagram or whatever, which is even faster, like these little bite sized empty calories of self help.
4
SPEAKER_00
What I don t quite understand about it is that people clearly respond to good self help, like self help.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s a negative connotation to it, but it s there s so much good stuff out there that it s just crazy that all this other stuff is what gets momentum.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you have a sense of why people don t see that weird like Ponzi scheme of self help gurus whose clients are self help gurus?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, why is that working?
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not totally sure why people don t see it.
5
SPEAKER_00
a lot of it has to do with the epidemic lack of critical thinking that people are now seeming to exhibit, that everyone is seemingly guilty of.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I ve lambasted this on social media and on the show as well, where there s just empty quotes that people put up there, the same topic essentially.
5
SPEAKER_00
So there s a lack of critical thinking, but there s also a plus.
5
SPEAKER_00
factor of wishful thinking involved too, where there s the dream of being, insert sort of buzz phrase here, digital nomad, entrepreneur, self-employed, mobile, whatever, you know, I just travel and I work from a laptop.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s apps that show you how to work hard from different places, and I love those things if you have a business going, that s great.
5
SPEAKER_00
but there s this sort of dream of escaping the nine to five that is a lot of fun because millennials, technically speaking, really don t like the idea of somebody else being the boss and somebody else having to work for somebody else.
5
SPEAKER_00
They don t like the lack of freedom, and I understand that.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not saying grow up, everybody.
5
SPEAKER_00
I totally get that.
5
SPEAKER_00
but what I think happens is there s an element of shame of having a real job.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s why people won t admit when they have friggin  side jobs and they ll pretend that that s their whole job when they have a real job doing something else.
5
SPEAKER_00
Why is that a secret?
5
SPEAKER_00
Why are you pretending your side hustle is your full-time job?
5
SPEAKER_00
This should not be something that you re ashamed of.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s almost Yeah, you re right.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s almost become a shameful thing to have a traditional job after we ve mythologized the magic of startup life, which we know is not magical, which is brutal, which is a path where most people fail.
5
SPEAKER_01
But there s still something where it s like, Oh, yeah, no, I mean, I work at a Procter and Gamble.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m a marketing director.
5
SPEAKER_01
And everyone s like, Oh, you re just a marketing director.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s too bad.
5
SPEAKER_01
Why aren t you living in a hostel in Bali doing graphic design, and sending out a newsletter to people, you know, whatever that is, you can
5
SPEAKER_00
teaching yoga all day, which is awesome.
5
SPEAKER_00
Hey, that would be great.
5
SPEAKER_01
It would be so great.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now you re saying and I m like, I want to do that.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I guess it s just funny that like, you don t hear from the guy who s in Bali, working from his laptop, who, you know, doesn t have an apartment who s has graphic design clients all over the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because that guy s too busy doing his job.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re hearing it from these people who s are in Bali, because they re selling it to other people selling it who want to fantasize about that
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
So they re selling a dream, but the problem is they haven t accomplished the dream.
5
SPEAKER_00
So they re effing unqualified to give you this advice.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s really funny to see you get worked up about it because to me, the exact opposite of that is what you do.
5
SPEAKER_01
What s been cool about watching you work on the podcast for so many years is that I ve seen it go through a few phases now.
5
SPEAKER_01
like you were already doing it when we met but I think it was probably at the tail end of that first era totally art of charm where it was like totally an experiment you were probably doing episodes somewhat irregularly I think one a week and then one every other week and then three and then you know it was like sort of that thing and then
5
SPEAKER_01
It s been cool to watch you think of it as a craft where you re like, okay, this is a tool for the business, it helps us build the brand.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I personally want to become a great interviewer, I want to find out the answers to these great questions that I have, like, I take this seriously, because I m excited about it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that is harder.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s totally different from this version of self help that we re talking about right now.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s completely different because a lot of people who I think, again, just don t have very developed thinking skills, they re the first ones to kind of jump out and say, well, what about you?
5
SPEAKER_00
You teach skills that are supposed to be helping people find the life that they want and accomplish things.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m not saying AOC s the only company that does this, but the difference between us teaching you tangible and soft skills in terms of networking and relationships is
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not teaching you to be a teacher of networking and relationships or to be a podcaster, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Or to be a broadcaster or a writer, whatever the things we do.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m teaching you these skills so you can apply them in your own craft, in your own world, in your own life.
5
SPEAKER_00
When someone is teaching you how to be a digital nomad or they re teaching you how to be a guy, girl who makes money from home or some sort of online thought leader personality, they re selling you a dream.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what are they doing?
5
SPEAKER_00
They are an online thought leader personality who sells
5
SPEAKER_00
marketing stuff so that you can be an online thought leader and personality.
5
SPEAKER_00
One sells marketing stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s called a pyramid scheme and you do that in any other niche.
5
SPEAKER_01
How interesting that they never sell a dream that s different from the one that they re trying to live themselves.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I ve never really thought of it that way but that s such a good way to think about the red flags.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like if somebody isn t selling you a set of skills or a set of like a point of view about the world but they re selling you a specific way of life.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
5
SPEAKER_01
Then it doesn t mean that s necessarily BS but like
5
SPEAKER_01
Just look out, because that s strange, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Look at it very closely, and I think that it s very tempting to look at that and say, I m gonna learn from this person, but bear in mind, let s say I m teaching you how to make money online.
5
SPEAKER_00
How did I make my money?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, teaching other people how to make money online.
5
SPEAKER_00
So then how did I make my first dollar?
5
SPEAKER_00
Did I do it doing something else online, so I learned how to make money online, and now I m teaching you how to make money online?
5
SPEAKER_00
Or did I make my first dollar online
5
SPEAKER_00
telling other people how to make money online because that s the case for most of these people.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that means by definition that their first sale was based on a lie.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I m gonna teach you how to make money online.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, have you done it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m doing it right now by selling you this product.
5
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of people
5
SPEAKER_00
do that, a lot of people do that.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that becomes very problematic because it s really easy to look at somebody who s been doing this for years and just say, well, yeah, you know, Gabriel Mizrahi is great at teaching people how to make money online, but they never think about how this person learned it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Their origin story turns out to be complete BS.
5
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for plugging my product, bro.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, right, exactly.
5
SPEAKER_01
I got this weekly newsletter that teaches you all about that.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it s true, and you see things like make money off of Instagram, and it s like, well, okay, but you re not making money off of Instagram, you re making money telling people how to make money off of Instagram.
5
SPEAKER_00
So theoretically, much of what you teach is not based on what you actually do, and that s a huge problem.
5
SPEAKER_01
in the moments when things got hard at AOC, and maybe they didn t, I don t know, I m getting the sense, to be honest, I know that it wasn t, you know, smooth sailing 100% of the time, it never is.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I m kind of getting the sense that things have worked out quite well for you guys by following what it is that you guys loved, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
I know that there were hard times.
5
SPEAKER_01
So when those moments came along, like what carried you through?
5
SPEAKER_00
we had a delusional sense of self-confidence, but we also were very focused on making our clients and students happy and focusing on putting out good shows, like this, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So the quality.
5
SPEAKER_00
The quality, because we just figured, and this is also a bit of naivete, that if you put out really good stuff and you create really good stuff,
5
SPEAKER_00
eventually enough people will start to find you and see it and you ll get word of mouth.
5
SPEAKER_00
That was sufficient for survival, thankfully, but it s not sufficient to thrive, especially in this noisy marketplace where people who know how to, let s say, leverage Snapchat or some other sort of weird online BS.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not saying Snapchat s BS, but I m saying people who know how to make themselves look really great when really all they do is kind of like the same thing as many other people.
5
SPEAKER_01
Who have the tools to do that, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
They can build a huge business based on fluff.
5
SPEAKER_00
They can actually build bigger businesses based on fluff than you can on quality, but here s the thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can t scale that high if all you have is fluff.
5
SPEAKER_00
You have to eventually come up with something, and I m a firm believer that it takes a really long time to create and maintain, build, and sell a quality product like our boot camps or like this free podcast.
5
SPEAKER_00
This takes a long time to be able to create things like this.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s faster to create the fluff and the marketing of online business that gets the word of mouth around and gets people to buy things.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that does two things.
5
SPEAKER_00
One, that s the reason that tons of people get obsessed with it because that s the easy part and it s the part that feeds the ego the most.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I could work on my product, but I d rather get 100,000 Facebook followers and Twitter followers and Snapchat followers that are hitting me back and making me feel cool and liked.
5
SPEAKER_00
that s easier and more fun than, hey guys, we need to spend like the next six months to a year working out the kinks in this application that we re running, pitching investors and really busting our asses.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s really, really hard.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s really easy to make a better website.
5
SPEAKER_01
It feeds the ego for the person who s selling that product to get that kind of following on the easy stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s also tapping into the ego of the people who want to hear it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s just ego feeding on ego.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think you re right.
5
SPEAKER_01
If there s any silver lining to this, if that s the right word, then it s that it really can t go all that far in the long run.
5
SPEAKER_00
It ll be tough.
5
SPEAKER_00
Every sort of flash-in-the-pan online marketer, and I won t name names, just think about the people you saw selling crap online three to five years ago if you ve been around looking at the scene that long.
5
SPEAKER_00
Where the hell are most of those people?
5
SPEAKER_00
They re still up to their old tricks, but they re not a big deal anymore.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of them are speaking for free or in exchange for book sales at lame-o events that I end up going to, and I m like,
5
SPEAKER_00
man, you re doing this now?
5
SPEAKER_00
I remember when you were such a big deal, and you had this book for sale, and you were the guy when it came to this weird social media trend, and now you re just this divorced, pathetic soul who s got a funnel squeeze page on his website that hasn t been changed or updated in five years.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the funny thing is that if there were any self-help, like some Medium article that told you what to do when things got hard that just said, keep making something awesome, nobody would read it.
5
SPEAKER_01
No.
6
SPEAKER_01
they d be like, great, what do I do with that?
6
SPEAKER_00
But the fact is that that is the real thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s also incomplete advice though, because I know a lot of people that create really good things, and they re terrible at marketing it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes they eventually do get discovered, which is why we re even talking with them now.
6
SPEAKER_00
For example,
6
SPEAKER_00
there s this guy Jocko Willink, who s a Navy SEAL that I interviewed on the show, and he d also been interviewed by Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan and Sam Harris, and he just exploded onto the scene.
6
SPEAKER_00
But he had written a business book called Extreme Ownership, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And that book made somewhat of a splash, but not nearly as big of a splash as his podcast tour had made.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now he s just,
6
SPEAKER_00
this is a multi seven figure business, I m sure.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s consulting and he s got just hundreds of thousands of followers online that are just incredible.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s a great guy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Had he not also done a little bit of the marketing or been quote unquote discovered by some of us podcasters, he might have just released a really good book that didn t really make much of a dent or that a few people read instead of 500,000 people or whatever who have now probably read this thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, I get what you re saying is that it s not enough just to be good or to make something good.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of other stuff that has to come into play.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there s no feedback really a lot of it or less feedback when you re making something really great.
6
SPEAKER_00
And three people tell you this is amazing.
6
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t feel as good as making something that looks cool on Facebook and having 300 people or 3000 people tell you that over the span of a month, which is the hall of mirrors of social media.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s creating that illusion.
6
SPEAKER_01
as you know, you re one of my closest friends.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you ve had like a front row seat, I write screenplays, right.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so much of that process is working on something and reworking it and reworking on it alone.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, if it s going poorly, it s going poorly.
6
SPEAKER_01
If it s going well, it s a private victory, like nobody knows.
6
SPEAKER_01
And even to this day, there are things I ve written that are sort of in the works.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I m excited.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m so excited about the day that people do get to see them.
6
SPEAKER_01
But until that day comes,
6
SPEAKER_01
it s still going to be this incredibly private thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
And the reason I bring it up is that you and I have talked about that of that obsession with craft of getting good at something.
6
SPEAKER_01
But so often, getting good at something is a private experience.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s something only for you.
6
SPEAKER_01
And
6
SPEAKER_01
If you re obsessed with becoming good at something because you love getting good at the craft of it, then that can be insanely fulfilling, and it will carry you through.
6
SPEAKER_01
But in those moments where you hunger for somebody to notice you or you know, like give you 100 likes on Facebook for doing the thing that you say you re doing with your life, or you know, you need that validation, like, when that stuff starts to creep in,
6
SPEAKER_01
Then I think that s where you can start to get hungry or susceptible to the version of self help that we ve been talking about.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Do you have any advice or do you have any thoughts for people who are working or should be working on something where the payoff is over a long time, you might toil in obscurity for a while.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I m asking you that as a podcaster has been doing this for
6
SPEAKER_01
Nine and a half years.
6
SPEAKER_01
Nine and a half years.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I would argue in the last year has really, really hit his prime in terms of quality of the craft of being a great interviewer.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, what is the recipe for becoming great at something and dealing with the moments where you re not getting recognized?
6
SPEAKER_00
I m like, yeah, the reason that this stuff is also top of mind, because I ve been thinking, I ve been doing this for so long, and then I ll go speak at an event, and there s another guy that s got a major online footprint, and a thriving business, and he ll say something like, we ll be chatting at a dinner, you know, a speaker s dinner or something, and it s, yeah, I blogged for two and a half years, and then I wrote this book, or my blog just started getting really popular, because it got mentioned by a few influencers, and now I ve got this great business,
6
SPEAKER_00
but you re kind of just selling the same rubbish, or it s not that unique, or it s just kind of your personality for sale, and you got a lot of Snapchat followers, and all the guys are really young, or whatever, and I m not hating on the audience or anything, I m just kind of like, oh, Art of Charm has created amazing products and amazing boot camps, and what I like to think are amazing podcasts, but,
6
SPEAKER_00
there s somebody else who just really focused on Twitter, Facebook, and then Snapchat, and YouTube, and it s just, everyone s like, oh, dude, can I take a selfie with you?
6
SPEAKER_00
And that used to grate on me a little bit.
6
SPEAKER_00
Not to the core, not like, son of a bitch, you know?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I realized what we re doing is important.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I kind of thought, well.
6
SPEAKER_00
geez, what s happening here?
6
SPEAKER_00
So I started to study these things more in depth, and I started to look at people I think are actually real success, they have lasting success.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I m looking at people like Steve Jobs, Mike Rowe, folks like that, and I start to read and research them more than most people will.
6
SPEAKER_00
And what you see, and this won t surprise anybody who s a listener of the show, that we re looking at the tip of the iceberg, in very much a metaphorical sense here, because
6
SPEAKER_00
you look at guys like Mike Rowe and you think, oh man, yeah, he got tapped to do dirty jobs, then he got another show, and he s a really likable guy, and he does this charity and all this stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well yeah, but he was on QVC for years before that, and he was auditioning for stuff, and then before that he was like a trained Broadway singer or something.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this person has been putting in their 10,000 hours, which we know is not necessarily true here, but they ve been putting in the time
6
SPEAKER_00
for years and years and years and years and years.
6
SPEAKER_00
Now they ve got lasting success, but you know, what, at age 42, he started in the big time?
6
SPEAKER_00
He dipped his foot in the Discovery Channel or Learning Channel waters in his 40s?
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s much, much different than the 27-year-old fitness guy who made a YouTube channel, got a couple of viral videos, and is now on top of the world.
6
SPEAKER_00
Those guys fade.
6
SPEAKER_00
because they re very replaceable.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the truth is that I ve found is anything that you do that isn t something that s so uniquely you based on thousands of hours of expertise is a commodity at some level.
6
SPEAKER_00
It would be impossible, nearly impossible for someone else to replicate the Art of Charm podcast quality and the amount of content that s out there, the boot camps that we run, the products that we create.
6
SPEAKER_00
It would be very, very hard next to impossible because it took us so long.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if you judge people on that narrow set of things that you can see, then yeah, you could be like, but he has so many followers, or people are talking about him on Snapchat or whatever.
6
SPEAKER_01
But if you look under the hood, and you re like, what is really happening here?
6
SPEAKER_01
And, and really, I feel like it keeps coming back to this thing of the craft of it.
6
SPEAKER_01
It is, you know, I remember you got an email, I m trying to remember if this was the one, it might have been the one we did together a few weeks ago, the fan mail Friday episode where the guy wrote in about having worked in different sales organizations.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was like you could hear a little bit of how this guy was, even though he worked as a sales guy at a company, he was thinking of it as like, no, I m, I m working on my craft, like, this is my craft, my set of things.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you don t hear people talk about that, that often, because again, I think it s back to that version of events that gets packaged and sold.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, just to underline this a little bit, I still think that the sort of repackaging of fake success and people selling you this dream and stuff, I think it s not like, beware, they re all scammers and all just blood-sucking leeches.
6
SPEAKER_00
that s only like 50%, maybe even 30% of the story.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think it s just the way human nature works is you repackage your history and you say, and dot, dot, dot, this is what happened.
6
SPEAKER_00
And even with Art of Charm and some of our shows and things like that, I m still ironing out, I m sure, just based on the psychological principles that we ve studied here.
6
SPEAKER_00
some of the ups and downs that I ve forgotten, and I m sure if you got me, and AJ, and Johnny, and everybody else that was around in the beginning in a room, we would all have a different version of how this thing kicked off, with different ups and downs.
6
SPEAKER_00
Some of, of course, which would be very similar, but also, it would start to look a lot less like a smooth trajectory, and a lot more like what it really was.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m so glad you said that, because I think there might be people listening to this being like, I hear that, I agree, and you re kind of doing it right now.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m doing it right now, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so, yeah, you re right, we should call that out, because
6
SPEAKER_01
there s just something very satisfying about being able to package in that way.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I also think that if you did Jordan want to sit down and catalog all of the minute successes, and all of the like weirdly detailed failures along the way, I feel like at a certain point, people would just be like, this is not that interesting, or even not as helpful as I wanted it to be.
6
SPEAKER_01
So
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t know where that leaves anybody who wants to learn how to become a success, because you know where it leaves you?
6
SPEAKER_01
It leaves you with go out and try it, and do it for yourself, and go find out.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because even if I could do that for you, and even if you wanted to hear it, then what?
6
SPEAKER_01
Then you still have to go out and do it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And sort of in summary, I understand why people follow the advice that makes them feel the best, even though it s not the most effective.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just think it s human psychology.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think that our ability to think critically, which is a common theme on just about every single episode of The Art of Charm, the ability to think critically and realistically about what s actually working versus what feels good in the moment or is going to look cool, which it just goes back to feelings and ego,
6
SPEAKER_00
you re going to see a different trajectory for your business.
6
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of the mistakes that we ve made, a lot of the stupid, wasteful investments that thankfully were not company syncing investments, a lot of the ones that just ended up being idiotic, both time and money, always came down to, oh yeah, we wasted all this time with these morons because we thought they were gonna put us on TV.
6
SPEAKER_00
oh yeah, we wasted a bunch of money for this social media manager that ended up just like making us really well known for crap keywords that we don t even care about and we have crap customers.
7
SPEAKER_00
as a result that I just saw a company that did that, that they just optimized for easy keywords that would get them a ton of traffic, and they have a really popular website that s about jack shit, and so they can t do anything with it, but they look great on paper, and they have lots of engagement.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I even see these social media gurus with great quote unquote Facebook engagement, and half the comments are like in Turkish, or people are posting spam.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s not high quality stuff.
7
SPEAKER_00
Once you pull down the curtain and you see the Wizard of Oz or whatever, it s just not that freaking impressive.
7
SPEAKER_01
So when someone comes to you and says, I ve been working on my passion, whatever that is, and I know you ve gotten these emails.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, all the time.
7
SPEAKER_01
I see them all and I ve heard you talk about them.
7
SPEAKER_01
So like, you know, I love making violins.
7
SPEAKER_01
I ve been crafting the art of carving violins or whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
I know nothing about that field, but there s a passion for you.
7
SPEAKER_01
and I love it, but I haven t made money at it, it s hard as hell, my parents hate me for doing it, they think I should have a traditional job, and I honestly don t know if I should keep going.
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you have an answer for that person?
7
SPEAKER_00
It often is very personal, but I ll say the overarching concepts here, I believe very strongly that your hobby does not have to be your career.
7
SPEAKER_00
That just flies in the face of a ton of
7
SPEAKER_00
this sort of conventional follow your passion, self-help wisdom.
7
SPEAKER_01
You mean like that idea of like take your passion and then turn that into a job.
7
SPEAKER_00
Turn it into a job and do work you love and you ll never work a day in your life.
7
SPEAKER_00
Look, I love the idea.
7
SPEAKER_00
But isn t that true?
7
SPEAKER_00
Isn t that what you did with Art of Charm?
7
SPEAKER_00
It is, definitely.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I think if you can do that, then go for it.
7
SPEAKER_00
The pressure to do that.
7
SPEAKER_00
The pressure to do that is completely unnecessary.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s just as bad as the pressure of following a traditional
7
SPEAKER_00
Dig.
7
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
7
SPEAKER_00
So you can be doing a job that you kind of like for a corporation and you can have a great hobby and suddenly you can feel like a total failure because all of these mofos on Instagram and Facebook are telling you that if you have a day job, you re some kind of loser.
7
SPEAKER_00
so you ve gotta do this thing as a profession.
7
SPEAKER_00
But they don t tell anybody about how to get validation from the market, how to get external feedback and see if this is something that s feasible.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I see a lot of people go all in on their passion projects and they might even start making revenue, but then they re freaking miserable because they can t make ends meet and they think, but this is my passion, I can t quit because then I m giving up on it.
7
SPEAKER_00
when really what they needed was a balance of what pays the bills and what they actually love doing all the time.
7
SPEAKER_00
What I see as very unfortunate is a lot of people will semi-successfully turn what they love into their job for a little while and then they just start to hate it because whenever anything becomes your job, you have to do it.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s other whole different set of factors come into play about what you can and cannot do.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you like making violins that are for kids?
7
SPEAKER_00
Great, oh, but what if the market really is more for adult violins?
7
SPEAKER_00
Okay, well, you better make some of those.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you know what, you selling violins online?
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s great, man, you don t need a storefront.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m proud of you, you re making a thousand bucks a month.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, but now it s your job, so you better figure out how to do keyword SEO, search engine optimization for Google.
7
SPEAKER_00
You need to learn how to buy Facebook ads and retarget people so they buy stuff.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna spend more of your time doing that
7
SPEAKER_00
and yet feeling all the stress of a startup in order to make violins some of the time.
7
SPEAKER_00
When all you really loved was the violins.
7
SPEAKER_00
When all you really loved was the violins.
7
SPEAKER_00
And if had you kept your freaking day job, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
You could still love violins.
7
SPEAKER_00
You could still love violins.
7
SPEAKER_01
So the risk of turning your passion into your job is that you invite all this other stuff into this pure little space of your hobby.
7
SPEAKER_01
But the flip side of that is that if you do want to turn your passion into your job, like if you want to spend all day with violins, or you want to start the art of charm, then you have to be willing to risk that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like I know what brought you into the art of charm was this desire to figure out what is the psychology that drives us?
7
SPEAKER_01
How do we influence people?
7
SPEAKER_01
How do we travel and learn like you all these burning questions on your part?
7
SPEAKER_01
But if somebody had sat down and been like, yeah, and do you want to figure out how to do a budget for the following year, you want to build the financial model, you want to figure out how to plug the holes when expenses are through the roof, because you re trying to answer these questions for other people, you might have been like, let me really think about that.
7
SPEAKER_01
So sure, it s good to go into that wise wide open.
7
SPEAKER_01
But isn t that just the price you pay or the risk you have to take if you re going to do that?
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, in a way, you have to be willing to let
7
SPEAKER_01
your pure little hobby be tarnished a little bit the moment you make it your life s work.
7
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, you have to be willing to do that and I think most people just don t understand what that means or they think they re going to avoid it somehow because they read a book and they re like, I m gonna outsource all that to India.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I m gonna hire an assistant.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I m gonna hire people to do my marketing for me.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, to the extent that they re even thinking about it, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the truth is, it took us nine and a half years to find the right marketing team that we were willing to partner with that so far hasn t screwed us over, hasn t ended up driving our brand into the ground or into doing something bad.
7
SPEAKER_00
We ve had all of these people that we tried to outsource things to screw with our brand, screw with our business partnership.
7
SPEAKER_00
We ve had, I mean, there s been years where AJ and I had gained tons of weight, AJ, my business partner, and the other co-hosts on the show often,
7
SPEAKER_00
we ve lost hair, we ve lost friends, we ve gained weight, we ve repaired all of that stuff, but we went through these insanely stressful times.
7
SPEAKER_00
And people often think, I m willing to do that.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s some quote, like, being an entrepreneur is living a few years of your life like most people won t, to live the rest of your life like most people can t.
7
SPEAKER_00
The truth is, you have no freaking idea what those years are going to be like, and there s no guarantee of payoff.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, you might think, I m willing to live down and dirty.
7
SPEAKER_00
You say that now because it sounds fun and it sounds like you re gonna be in the grind posting about being in the grind on Instagram and on Facebook, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
But really, the grind really can suck.
7
SPEAKER_00
It can suck.
7
SPEAKER_00
I remember hiring people who then stole from me, who I thought were close friends, and they freaking lived with me.
7
SPEAKER_00
I hired people that drove my brand to the ground.
7
SPEAKER_00
I hired people that conspired to fire me from Art of Charm, my own company, that I later had to remove to great personal costs, financial costs, and the cost of, part that I ll probably never get back, of my sanity, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
And that stuff is really hard.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m not saying those people are naive and that they don t see it.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m saying nobody knows what s in store.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it really comes down to personal traits like grit that most people like to think they have, but have no evidence for thinking that they have those traits.
7
SPEAKER_01
So given all that, I m gonna ask you again.
7
SPEAKER_01
I know it s a hard question, but let s say you get that email from that guy, the violin guy.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he went into this knowing that he was going to potentially risk his love for violins in turning it into a business.
7
SPEAKER_01
And now he s in the thick of it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he s having some success.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s not that he s not going anywhere.
7
SPEAKER_01
But he is thinking, should I really stick with this thing?
7
SPEAKER_01
Or is it time to call it quits?
7
SPEAKER_01
I still love violins, it still could work, but it still could not.
7
SPEAKER_01
Should I give up on it?
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you have an answer?
7
SPEAKER_01
Or is that something that you, even as somebody who s thought for years about that question still isn t really in a place to answer?
7
SPEAKER_00
I think I m only in a part of a place to answer, and I don t think anybody can truly tell you.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we ve seen Shark Tank where they re like, don t do it, and then the person becomes successful, but we ve also seen many more where they re like, don t do it, and the guy s like, I don t care, I m gonna do it, and it s just a nightmare to see this guy throw his family and house away because he s focused on light up badges or something stupid like that.
7
SPEAKER_00
But, I mean, you have to look at what s the market saying and also what are your responsibilities?
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you re 22 or 25 and you ve got no responsibilities, right, you don t have a ton of debt, you re just cruising around, you re willing to sleep on the floor of the workshop because you re gonna learn how to make handmade wooden furniture or violins, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Keep doing it, whatever man, are you having fun?
7
SPEAKER_00
Great.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you have kids though?
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you have a wife?
7
SPEAKER_00
Is she supporting you while you make violins and make empty promises and post on social media?
7
SPEAKER_00
Weigh the cost of your relationship damage because that s something that, you can t look to a meme when your wife says, look man, I m working my ass off and you re,
7
SPEAKER_00
not bringing anything, get a day job.
7
SPEAKER_01
So what you re getting into then is that everybody s circumstances are different.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it s hard to give them an answer.
7
SPEAKER_01
But someone could still come with you and tell you their circumstances and still look to you to give them an answer on that question.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I think if I m hearing what you re saying correctly, I think you re saying like,
7
SPEAKER_01
ultimately people can give you perspectives but ultimately nobody can really tell you for sure nobody once again if that were a self-help article on medium nobody would want to hear it and nobody would share it because that s not something you can do anything with it s nothing that you your mind can get around and start to turn it into something useful it s just like
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I m the only person who can answer this question for myself, ultimately, like, I mean, I m sort of assuming that the average person listening is in their right mind, they re saying they re not crazy or delusional or whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
But if you re a rational person, at a certain point, you have to be like, Okay, I can take in whatever data I want from the market or customers are the people I trust and like.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then I can listen to my own inner voice about whether what I m doing is worthwhile.
7
SPEAKER_01
But on the balance,
7
SPEAKER_01
nobody can ever really give you the answer.
7
SPEAKER_01
They just can t.
7
SPEAKER_01
They can t because you can t even possibly know and nobody s gotten the same answer.
7
SPEAKER_01
So in that case, it s almost impossible to not be kind of delusional if you re ever going to keep going forward with something, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
There s always some sort of willful delusion that takes place.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I think a lot of it comes down to the ego and it comes down to not wanting to do a day job or another job because the internet has made that into some kind of enemy, millennial enemy.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I ll tell you, if I had to do it all over again, I would not have gone to law school.
8
SPEAKER_00
Knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn t have bothered with college either, to be quite frank, but I don t think that s great for everyone either.
8
SPEAKER_00
I would have tried to become the executive assistant to some badass, which would have been really hard for me.
8
SPEAKER_00
Mr. I-can t-even-remember-my-keys-three-times-coming-out-of-the-house, because you have to be the opposite of that.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I think learning from people like that would have been... The apprentice model.
8
SPEAKER_00
the apprentice model would have been talk about getting a day job.
8
SPEAKER_00
Are you grinding it out just to pay the bills or do you feel like you re apprenticing?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s another thing with the day job.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you re consulting and you re learning a ton about this industry that you think is great, aerospace, whatever, and then your dream is to work for Elon Musk or something like that, you are on the right path.
8
SPEAKER_00
Don t dive out and start posting stuff online and selling how to get into the aerospace industry e-books on the internet.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, you re doing the right thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Stick with it.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re learning from people.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is good.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you re working at Best Buy selling CDs, you need to figure out whether or not you need that money.
8
SPEAKER_00
Usually, the answer is that you do.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I don t think anybody should quit their day job to do their business until the business is making them enough money to survive on.
8
SPEAKER_00
And also, and further, I think the only real time to quit is when you can t scale no matter what unless you do.
8
SPEAKER_00
So what I mean by that is you re making
8
SPEAKER_00
X dollars, you re barely scraping by with that, but you have this day job that pays most of your bills and you re pretty tired.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, do you need more time or are you going to spend that time getting social media followers or writing stuff that s gonna maybe market?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s not something that you should be doing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Hire that out with the money that you make during your day job.
8
SPEAKER_00
you can scale that, you can hire other people to help you.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s kind of what I didn t do because I got laid off, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
But had I been working on that law firm, what I would have done is try to hire out everything that I could for Art of Charm up and until they really just needed me, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
I just want to be really clear here.
8
SPEAKER_00
You should be the last person to quit your job.
8
SPEAKER_00
You should hire out whatever else you can because then if anything goes up and down in your business, or down anyway, you re fine.
8
SPEAKER_00
You have a day job.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re good.
8
SPEAKER_00
You can lay off some of the people that you ve hired.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re not totally screwed.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is there any value in going all in on something the moment you decide that it s something you could see yourself doing all the time?
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t think so, and I think that that is what s romanticized online.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just, burn the ships, no plan B, you know, force yourself to go for plan A or bust, and I think that s a bad idea for most people.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think if you re 22 and you have no debt and you can live at your parents  or your uncle s house and get back on your feet and you got a job waiting, if you fail, sure, go ahead.
8
SPEAKER_00
But if you re 30, 36, you ve got a family, whatever, you ve got bills, you ve got people counting on you, no, don t go all in.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s the equivalent of when you see good guys in some movie and they re cornered and they re like, all right, we re just gonna charge.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they run head on and the bullets are missing them and they manage to kill the enemy leader and it s like, yeah!
8
SPEAKER_00
That s not real life, man.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
But that s you going all in.
8
SPEAKER_01
Why would you do that?
8
SPEAKER_01
But we know that it makes for great drama.
8
SPEAKER_01
So the story is what we want.
8
SPEAKER_01
But it s a smart way to think about how to build something without taking a risk you don t have to take.
8
SPEAKER_01
But we I think we just pretty much established that you can t give advice for everybody based on your own experience.
8
SPEAKER_01
That much is clear.
8
SPEAKER_01
But I can tell you that there was a time where I was kind of moonlighting on my writing the same way you were moonlighting on AOC when you worked at the firm.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it was good.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I was so grateful to have jobs writing jobs that would carry me through so that I could work for a few hours every night, or at some point during the day on my own screenplays before I was really making that my full time career.
8
SPEAKER_01
And there was a point about a year ago where I was like, What am I really trying to do here?
8
SPEAKER_01
Am I trying to be a writer who pays his bills by writing and then gets to toil for a few hours on the thing he really loves, which I m not really getting to put all my energy and my love into because I have this other stuff, or am I going to be this guy I want to be?
8
SPEAKER_01
And luckily I was smart enough to save a ton of money.
8
SPEAKER_01
So you prepared for it.
8
SPEAKER_01
So it s mitigating the risk, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And also you just proved my point by accident.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because you can t scale writing if you re the one doing the writing if you have no time, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
You can t hire a writer to write for you.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you re the one who needs to do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
So the reason that I would have quit working in my law job if we decided to scale the show up to what it is now, I would have needed
8
SPEAKER_00
all the time to do that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I would have had to.
8
SPEAKER_00
But if I was just the principal investor, which I was, and curating some online content for the company, I can do that in half an hour a day.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I can batch that in one day for the whole week.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t need to quit my day job to do that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I would have wanted to.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so that s why it s such a tempting thing online when someone s like, go all in, don t be a pussy, or whatever.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re like, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
This guy on YouTube told me I could go all in and I m really doing it.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just ego.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you think that applies to business as well as creative pursuits?
8
SPEAKER_01
So you think that like a writer or a musician could follow the same rules that you re talking about right now?
8
SPEAKER_01
That it s not like when it comes to art or something creative, you need to be all in in order to make it work.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, I think you can piece by piece do that.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it doesn t mean you can t have a day job adjacent to what you want.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think now it s just people go, I wanna be a rock star and play all my music all over the place.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, okay, so are you saying you d be unsatisfied if a hotel needed a cover band and you got to play music there but it wasn t your songs?
8
SPEAKER_00
Would you be unhappy with that?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because that seems like a really good way to get really good at multiple instruments and try new things.
8
SPEAKER_00
and make connections in an industry and pay the bills while you pursue this other thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t need to quit playing in the house band so that you can jam in a metal band and make a record.
8
SPEAKER_00
You just don t.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m sorry, you don t, and it s dangerous thinking to do that, and that s why you see a lot of people struggling much more than they really need to.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s interesting.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think it s so easy to think that when it comes to creative pursuits, the rules are different, but I think what you re saying is that you think they re not.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t.
8
SPEAKER_00
Look, I could be wrong on this, but I just, I think once we get rid of the element of shame for not going all in, and we realize there s nothing wrong with having a job, and we also realize that a lot of times you can have a job that is actually totally bringing you in the right direction towards what you might want to do later, what the heck, man?
8
SPEAKER_00
What s your problem?
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to have the immediate dream life that you think you want, that you don t even know about, Mr. Making Violins Full-Time, because of all the other things that are attendant to that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Why do you need that right now?
8
SPEAKER_00
Ego, ego, ego, ego, ego.
8
SPEAKER_00
It just comes back to that.
8
SPEAKER_00
It does.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was just talking with a young guy who quit his job as a server because he wanted to be a health coach.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I said, why did you quit?
8
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, yeah, I m just not making any money, but I just didn t like it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I didn t want to be a server.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I said, why?
8
SPEAKER_00
And he said, well, because that s not what I want to do.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I started asking the important questions, which are, who thinks that you re going to succeed and who thinks you re going to fail at this?
8
SPEAKER_00
And what ended up coming out was,
8
SPEAKER_00
He quit being a server, not because he needed the time to work on his business, but because his friends were saying, when are you gonna give up that stupid stuff?
8
SPEAKER_00
You re just a waiter anyway.
8
SPEAKER_00
So by quitting and going all in, he could point to them and go, see, I m doing this full time and giving it 100%.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that wasn t the right thing to do.
8
SPEAKER_00
He s struggling and he s miserable, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
He s hating every minute of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
But the reason he did it was so that he could show his friends how committed he was.
8
SPEAKER_00
Who the hell cares what they think?
8
SPEAKER_00
They re already naysaying you.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s another example of how so many of our reasons are just based on other people s reasons when you start to look into it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you feel as a coach as a host of a self help podcast?
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you find yourself like asking people about their lives a lot?
8
SPEAKER_01
Like do you find yourself getting curious about everyday encounters with people?
8
SPEAKER_01
Or do you feel like that s just taking work home with you and you can turn it off?
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t think I can turn it off.
8
SPEAKER_00
I do find myself, even at airport gates, when I see somebody that looks really together, and I have an opportunity to chat with them, I often will, because I m just like, huh, what kind of 60-year-old guy do I want to be?
8
SPEAKER_00
And when I see some guys fit, dress sharply, seems very kind, calm, and charismatic, I m like, what do you do?
8
SPEAKER_00
How long have you been doing it?
8
SPEAKER_00
What recommendations do you have?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because a lot of times those guys, these really sharp characters, they have really good insight.
8
SPEAKER_00
where they can tell you something that s not just a cliche.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I sat down a couple of weeks ago with the CEO of Ogilvy, which is the ad agency, and this guy is like frickin  sharp.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, he s writing a book, I don t know, he s probably in his 50s or maybe early 60s, I actually don t know.
8
SPEAKER_00
He wrote a book, it s really good, it s about careers, we did a show with him, and then he s also the CEO of this international famous company that just kills it, the modern day Mad Men,
8
SPEAKER_00
type of company.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so I m like, this dude gets it.
8
SPEAKER_00
He knows where the leverage points are.
8
SPEAKER_00
He knows how tons of places have failed.
8
SPEAKER_00
He knows how ideas that are good work, how he s seen a million bad ideas.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of wisdom here.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I want to talk with those people.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t care if I m tired.
8
SPEAKER_00
Sure, sometimes I m just too tired to do anything.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I ll tell you, no, I would jump at the chance to talk to people like that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it seems like it s a part of your life.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s not just like the show and then there s the rest of your life.
9
SPEAKER_00
Don t get me wrong, half the time I m talking with people, I almost want to drop an immediate recording booth around us and mic us up instantly so I can turn this whole conversation into a show.
9
SPEAKER_00
And it s crazy because I really have a passion for sharing this stuff because the insights that I get from people by asking the right questions are just life changing.
9
SPEAKER_01
But it s funny because I think when you re 60, I picture you at 60 doing the same thing with dudes who are 90.
9
SPEAKER_01
this mode of being a student that you re in is not a mode like it s part of your person.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s my it s my like something we share.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it s funny when I meet people who either aren t like that, which I guess I can understand because not everybody is equally curious.
9
SPEAKER_01
But it s interesting when you meet people who were like that.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then something happens.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, I remember thinking even when I was a kid, I don t think I could like articulate it the way I m articulating it now.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I remember feeling like even when I was like eight or 10,
9
SPEAKER_01
talking to adults and just being like, why are they kind of dead?
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, like, at what point did they just kind of calcify and they were just like, this is who I am.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m done learning.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m done asking questions.
9
SPEAKER_01
This is just the way it is.
9
SPEAKER_01
You notice that like most people after a certain age do become like that, if they re not willing to stay in that state of being a student.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I wonder, is that a mindset?
9
SPEAKER_01
Or do you think that s conditioning?
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, what is it that lets people stay in a state of like curiosity and wonder through old age?
9
SPEAKER_00
I actually don t know the answer to that question.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know that for me, I started learning Chinese when I was 32 or 33 or something like that, I think, right, just to challenge myself in that area, because apparently having enough sleepless nights from running Art of Charm with AJ and Johnny here wasn t enough for me.
9
SPEAKER_00
I like expanding my...
9
SPEAKER_00
capability in every different area.
9
SPEAKER_00
I just recently started power lifting for no reason other than it s kind of fun and cool and not super cardio intensive activity and seems to be working.
9
SPEAKER_00
I love learning new things like that.
9
SPEAKER_00
I started voiceover acting for video games and commercials because I already have a home studio and I m taking tons of classes for that.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m always working on stuff like this.
9
SPEAKER_00
Always, always, always.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know what that is.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think I was born with that because I ve always been searching for esoteric knowledge ever since I was a kid.
9
SPEAKER_00
But I think that curiosity was just insanely turned up to 11 for me as a kid and I just still have it.
9
SPEAKER_01
There s a willingness to have your ego be challenged.
9
SPEAKER_01
If you re going to live a life like that, like you got to be willing to struggle to find things difficult to step out of your comfort zone.
9
SPEAKER_01
And ultimately, I think to look silly, like, yeah, I don t think when you started Chinese, you were like, Okay, I want to learn Chinese, and I want to be pretty good at it.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I am not willing to be the white guy with the weird American accent trying to nail these Mandarin tones.
9
SPEAKER_01
You were like, I ll probably sound like an idiot.
9
SPEAKER_01
But as long as I m understood, and I m learning the language, then it s all worth it.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I wonder if that s part of it.
9
SPEAKER_01
And this totally connects back to the self help thing we re talking about where it s all egos tapping into egos.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying you have to renounce it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t think you need to be a Buddhist monk in order to learn new things.
9
SPEAKER_01
but you have to be willing to have your pride hurt a little bit or to be uncomfortable or to look silly if you re gonna live a life that s interesting and fueled by curiosity.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I wonder if that s what keeps most people from doing it.
9
SPEAKER_00
Maybe, although I also have that whole fear of being silly.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I don t practice Chinese that much even with Jenny s family or with her because it was like, ah, this is a lot of work, ah, I don t know the word for this, ah, I don t wanna look stupid in front of people.
9
SPEAKER_00
So that s still there.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s still there.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think I just, I don t mind looking stupid in front of myself.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like I m totally fine telling my trainer that I wimped out on a workout and I don t have a good excuse.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I m totally fine telling my Chinese teacher that I didn t do the homework and making a crazy, terrible mistake in my own practice or whatever.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I ve also got very good at calling myself out on excuses and rationalizations, which still strikes me as shocking that most people believe the voice in their head when the voice in your head is actually, the whole existence is predicated on bullshitting you.
9
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely, right the voice in your head that says it s okay to sleep in you don t have to work out Oh, you know what?
9
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t matter you re married or whatever that voice in your head is designed To protect itself.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s not there for you, man.
9
SPEAKER_00
Mm-hmm.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s not there to like make you better necessarily Yeah, no, it s there to keep you comfortable.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, keep you in the caves.
9
SPEAKER_01
You don t wander out and get eaten by exactly.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh
9
SPEAKER_00
All it knows is preservation.
9
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t know what joy lies on the other side of that thing you were going to dare to do.
9
SPEAKER_00
It just knows that if you do it, you re going to sweat and no thanks.
9
SPEAKER_01
I think that explains why it was important for you when you were younger to be so naive.
9
SPEAKER_01
Because you were probably not aware of it, but I bet that naivete was what allowed you to step into that
9
SPEAKER_01
uncomfortable thing when you know like it s like well if you don t know how scary it s gonna be and you don t know how much you might lose and you don t know how silly you might look when you make mistakes which you will because you re trying something new for you if you re not aware of those things and it s a lot harder for the ego to start being like don t do it or stay where you are or this isn t worth it and I just wonder it s almost like it really makes me curious if you can almost will yourself into that state of yeah naivete just to get through it I can t and I ll tell you whenever people go oh
9
SPEAKER_00
your business is thriving now.
9
SPEAKER_00
And we re like, well, yeah, we went through so much stuff earlier, blah, blah, blah.
9
SPEAKER_00
They ll say, well, it was worth it though, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, yes, but I don t think that right now I would be able to do it all over again, knowing what I know now about.
9
SPEAKER_00
Sure, now I can start a business and it would hopefully take off a hell of a lot faster than
9
SPEAKER_00
This did, I mean, of course it would.
9
SPEAKER_00
Why would it not?
9
SPEAKER_00
I have the benefit of learning from my mistakes.
9
SPEAKER_00
But if someone was like, look, Jordan, we re gonna put you back 10 times, 100 times higher than you are right now, but you still have to go back and be broke and poor and sleeping on couches and have people steal from you and mix friendship and business.
9
SPEAKER_00
do all these other things for nine and a half years, grinding, grinding, grinding for the first six, seven, eight, whatever it was, on your way up to where we are now, where we re still, in my opinion, grinding and working, I would not sign up for the seven year, six year, whatever period.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was just, I don t have it in me anymore, now that I know, because the naivete protected me from that.
9
SPEAKER_00
The naivete protected me from thinking like, well, what if this fails and we re all screwed, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
It was like, why would we fail?
9
SPEAKER_00
We re super smart.
9
SPEAKER_00
We got cool friends that are gonna help us.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
We re not gonna fail.
9
SPEAKER_00
That s what we were thinking at the time.
9
SPEAKER_00
That got us through it, but it wasn t because of that that we didn t fail.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was because of that we were able to trick ourselves into going through with it, but it wasn t because of that that we didn t fail.
9
SPEAKER_00
We didn t fail for all the other reasons we talked about earlier.
9
SPEAKER_00
you know, the hard work and going through it and testing the market and doing all that other stuff.
9
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of it was freaking luck.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I know that and that s why I would never do it again.
9
SPEAKER_01
You re speaking now is who you are now knowing what you know, which is a weird position to be speaking from.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I guess at the end of the day, it s a good thing you didn t know all that stuff.
9
SPEAKER_01
It is.
9
SPEAKER_01
you have to be willing to do it without knowing every horrible thing that s gonna take.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
9
SPEAKER_00
And so with episodes like this, we re not trying to break the naivete.
9
SPEAKER_00
We re trying to break the cycle of mistakes.
9
SPEAKER_00
But if you ve got that naivete and that delusional confidence and you re 23 or five and you have no frickin  responsibilities, now is the time.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, just before we wrap up, I mean, I guess the last question then is, what is the line then between delusion and just pure grit and willingness to keep going?
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if there is a line.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think those things go hand in hand.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think there s people that are delusionally confident and fail because they don t have grit and there are people that are delusionally confident and they have enough grit to withstand the crap that happens when your delusion crumbles.
9
SPEAKER_00
So you think delusion is part of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think it s part of it, but I think without grit, you re totally screwed.
9
SPEAKER_00
So delusion is not seeing a brick wall ahead of you.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s driving blindfolded, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
And grit is making sure that you can survive whatever you crash into.
9
SPEAKER_00
Or climate or whatever.
9
SPEAKER_00
Or climate, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
But you won t know if you have grit until you test it.
9
SPEAKER_00
So what we see is a lot of delusional people that don t have the grit to withstand and they quit.
9
SPEAKER_00
But what I also see are a lot of people that think they have that grit and they re delusional and they view that as an asset, but instead of testing their grit, they go, I m just gonna post this meme, or I m just gonna write something on Medium instead of creating something real.
9
SPEAKER_01
Which is dangerous because that can give you the impression that, oh yeah, no, I do have grit.
9
SPEAKER_01
And this is working.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m still going, it s still, it is working, exactly.
9
SPEAKER_00
That s why those people don t create things that matter.
9
SPEAKER_01
And that s why the world, I think, is set up to some degree to hold up a mirror to you in ways that might not always be helpful.
9
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
9
SPEAKER_01
So, it s just interesting.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I guess that s where that inner voice comes back in.
9
SPEAKER_00
It is indeed.
9
SPEAKER_00
And that s all I got, man.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for having me on.
9
SPEAKER_00
This was fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think you had me on my show here.
9
SPEAKER_00
I totally did, but it was good.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Great big thank you to my man Gabriel Mizrahi.
9
SPEAKER_00
He really did a great job on this.
9
SPEAKER_00
Kind of almost an accidental decent episode out of this one.
9
SPEAKER_00
And if you enjoyed this one, you can get a hold of me.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m at The Art of Charm on Twitter, or more importantly, perhaps, you can get a hold of my friend Gabriel Mizrahi.
9
SPEAKER_00
We ll have his Twitter linked in the show notes as well.
9
SPEAKER_00
And if you re listening on your phone, you can probably just tap your screen when the phone s unlocked and you should see those show notes right there.
9
SPEAKER_00
Boot camps.
9
SPEAKER_00
Those are live programs.
9
SPEAKER_00
Those are at bootcamp.theartofcharm.com, the information anyway.
9
SPEAKER_00
I really love doing these programs.
9
SPEAKER_00
The team loves doing these programs.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re phenomenal.
9
SPEAKER_00
The growth we see is just, it s unbelievable.
9
SPEAKER_00
I really, really love it.
9
SPEAKER_00
It keeps us in the game sometimes.
9
SPEAKER_00
We do them every week, but we do sell out a few months in advance.
9
SPEAKER_00
So if you re thinking about it, or we got your curiosity peaked, you can give us a call.
10
SPEAKER_00
our phone number, of course, you can go on the website, talk to the gals there in the live chat, or you can just email me, I m Jordan at theartofcharm.com, happy to point you in the right direction.
10
SPEAKER_00
I d also like to encourage you to join us in the AOC Challenge.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s at theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or if you re located here in the States, you can text the word charmed to 33444, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444.
10
SPEAKER_00
The challenge is about improving your connection skills and your networking skills and inspiring people to develop relationships, both personal and professional, with you.
10
SPEAKER_00
We ll also email you our Fundamentals Toolbox, that s what I mentioned earlier on the show.
10
SPEAKER_00
I also do regular videos with drills and exercises, very practical stuff to help you move forward.
10
SPEAKER_00
It ll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or you can text charmed here in the states to 33444.
10
SPEAKER_00
For the full show notes for this and all previous episodes, head over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
10
SPEAKER_00
This episode of AOC was produced by Jason DeFillippo.
10
SPEAKER_00
Jason Sanderson, he s our audio engineer and editor responsible for this buttery smooth voice you got here.
10
SPEAKER_00
Show notes on the website, those are by Robert Fogerty.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
10
SPEAKER_00
Go ahead, tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or just share it on the web.
10
SPEAKER_00
So stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
10
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
10
SPEAKER_01
Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.