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Time for Fan Mail Fridays, where we ll be answering your questions and concerns and queries and dropping some knowledge and feedback to help you kick the weekend off right.
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If you re new to the Art of Charm podcast, this is not a great place to start because much of our content is more in-depth and longer format, so check out the best of at theartofcharm.com slash best.
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We recently updated that literally the other day, and that s not that precise.
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We literally updated that yesterday.
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How s that?
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So the Fundamentals Toolbox also is at theartofcharm.com slash toolbox.
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Lots of stuff there for you to begin.
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And that s where we ve got the fundamentals of body language and nonverbal communication, attraction, negotiation, networking, and everything else we teach here at the Art of Charm.
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By the way, I got a piece of fan mail today that said, hey man, I m new to the show, why do you even have fan mail Friday?
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You should just have that as a separate podcast.
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I wasn t going to say anything about it, but I don t think that that makes sense at all.
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I think people listen to Fan Mail Friday because it s in the Art of Charm feed, and he said, well, it s not really that useful for me.
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But I m curious, if you think that Fan Mail Friday, or you thought that Fan Mail Friday wasn t that useful for you because you were kind of new, and now you love Fan Mail Friday, I want to hear from you.
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We get feedback on a lot of things, but I m very curious what veteran AOC listeners think about Fan Mail Friday, as well as what people who just kind of joined the fray think about Fan Mail Friday, because I bet there s a divergence of opinion.
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I know some of the super old school AOC listeners, they don t necessarily like Fan Mail Friday, because they re like, oh, we just want to hear dating stuff.
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And some of the super old school guys go, great, finally you re answering some real coaching stuff.
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So, there s so many opinions out there, and we want yours.
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All right.
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First things first, Jason, let s do this.
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All right.
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Charlene writes, regarding Jack Donovan, keeping women at home is the same as keeping black people slaves.
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I mean, let s just start with the most controversial one, shall we?
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First of all, no one is keeping women at home.
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So let s straighten that out.
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Nobody even advocated, quote unquote, keeping women at home.
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At least I didn t.
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Maybe I misread or misheard what Jack said, but I don t think anybody suggested that women need to, quote unquote, only be allowed at home.
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Further,
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No, it isn t.
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Women are allowed to work at home voluntarily.
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Many people love working from home.
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It is not the same thing as slavery, and I can only assume that Charlene, who wrote this, knows this, but could not resist the hyperbole.
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I just think hyperbole s not that helpful in debates.
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Also, it may suit any agenda you have of your own, Charlene, but no, it s not the same.
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It s not even close.
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Thanks for being a fan.
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Rachel writes, episode 443 was satire, right?
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Thanks for the belly laughs, and no, I don t think the loss of machismo is a bad thing.
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It s the distortion of what masculinity has become through popular media that is causing the kind of issues like the shooting rampages in movie theaters and groups like ISIS are fueled by this kind of false masculinity.
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That was a funky sentence.
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Yeah, it s a long one, but I m going to kill.
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First of all, ISIS is not fueled by false masculinity, but let s move on.
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True masculinity is not about being able to do more push-ups or climb bigger mountains.
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True masculinity is to leave the world a better place than you found it.
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Episode 443 totally missed that point.
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Coal miners, gang members, and racists will take Jack Donovan s message and fill your comments section with hate.
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Is this the audience you are trying to attract?
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So here s the thing, Rachel.
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I m not sure what this has to do with blue collar workers or racism other than serving your penchant for dramatic comparisons, stereotyping people you see as different from you, which ironically seems like what you re trying to complain about in this very email or something else entirely.
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But I will have you know, all of you, in fact, including you, Jason, that many women loved this episode, as did many men and many others of both sexes really hated it.
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But I ll tell you what, the people who hated it most
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Dudes.
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Certain dudes that I view as sort of social justice warrior types who get offended on behalf of literally everyone they can.
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Those are the people that hated it the most.
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But I digress.
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Whenever we label something as so vile that it must be only for X, Y, and Z and insert whichever group you look down upon here, we miss the point.
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which is that people have different opinions.
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And just because we disagree with them or even find them reprehensible, it doesn t invalidate those opinions, nor does it make them evil.
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In fact, it often has to do with something that triggers our own insecurities, which is why we see emotional reactions from a lot of people about this topic.
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You know who loved this episode?
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Women who ran companies, women who were at stay-at-home moms, women who were on the board of directors for corporations.
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In other words, a huge mix of women.
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It s not men as an establishment who are oppressing you.
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It s Todd, the guy who made that nasty comment in the break room and tried to smack you on the ass on the way to the copy machine that s oppressing you.
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And it s a double-sided issue.
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Plenty of men wrote in and loved it, also for different reasons.
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Many because they felt like they no longer needed to feel ashamed for being a man in what they consider to be a female environment, either at work or even in their own house.
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Most of the people who wrote in to complain about this episode
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also made a note that Jack, quote-unquote, must have terribly dysfunctional relationships, limit experience with women, et cetera, and that they felt sorry for his girlfriend.
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I don t know about either of those claims, but I do know that you don t need to feel bad for the women Jack dates because he s gay.
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So maybe chew on that one for a second.
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Next.
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I ve been listening to your podcasts for a few months now and have found them to be generally helpful, if a little too set in pseudoscience for my taste.
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However, your most recent interview with Jack Donovan crossed so many lines that I m not even sure where to start.
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To be fair, some of what he talked about, the need for male bonding and surrounding yourself with people who you feel are better than you in order to better yourself, can be useful.
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Nevertheless, his views on women and the gay community are incredibly outdated and full of bigotry and hate.
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Claiming that women are naturally more suited to staying in the home to raise children and would really prefer not to work at all sounds like something out of a 1950s vacuum commercial.
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If he had a poll or some type of statistic to back up this claim, that would be one thing.
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But just to pull it out of his ass is abominable, sexist, something you, as an interviewer, should have called him out for.
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Obviously, I can t do much to stop you from bringing on bigots like him to your podcast, and I certainly don t have the time or energy to stop him from spewing his particular brand of bullshit across the interwebs with a Z. But I can unsubscribe from your show and give you some bad reviews, so that s what you ll get.
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As a show and an organization that prides itself on helping men figure out what it means to be men in the 21st century, you should be professionally embarrassed to have promoted such a Neanderthal.
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And as a man, you should be personally ashamed for not challenging him on his misogynistic views and for praising his interview as one of the better shows that you ve done.
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All the best, and I truly meant that.
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I hope you learn from this mistake and realign yourself to the good work you were doing before.
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Ben.
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You know what s funny about Ben?
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He listened to hundreds of hours of The Art of Charm and then he unsubscribed because he got butthurt that we interviewed somebody whose opinions he disagreed with.
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I m just going to let that sink in for a minute.
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He unsubscribed and wrote bad reviews based on this one episode.
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Now, does that really mean that this episode did so much damage to a cause he cares so much about that he felt the need to do that?
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Because it s not actually changing anything.
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I think this struck a chord with Ben that was so personal that he decided that he needed to unplug from us.
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Because here s the thing, look.
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I have plenty of people on the show that people don t agree with all the time.
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In fact, there s tons of contrasting viewpoints on this show every single week.
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Things that contradict this person, contradict that idea, people who have controversial ideas, people who have ideas that make no sense, that get challenged, and some that don t.
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And maybe he s right.
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Maybe I should have called Jack out on some of his ideas that some people consider misogynist.
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That might have been good.
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Maybe I should have been more hard on him.
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But here s the thing, unsubscribing, burying your head in the sand is such a low value, such a wussy move, and I hate this word, but it s such an unmanly, an unhuman move in so many ways.
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I don t want to use unmanly because I feel like women are generally also really good, especially the AOC female fans, really good at looking at something that challenges a viewpoint and going, huh, this made me think.
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In fact, they re better at it than a lot of the guys are that write in, but everybody
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is better at it than you, Ben.
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Burying your head in the sand, hating on the show that brought you so much of this, and then saying that we should be professionally embarrassed for doing it, I think it says a lot more about you than us.
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I actually did tons of research on this subject.
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His controversial views are one reason I brought him on the show in the first place.
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I love stuff like this that gets people talking and thinking, and frankly, I m surprised more people don t.
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So if you re gonna unsubscribe from a great show because you re offended by one episode, I would say that you re being the one who is immature and unprofessional in many ways.
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I looked at his job title, I won t spew it across here, but it is relevant.
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I also think that that s really unfair to you to unsubscribe and give a bad review.
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Not only is it unfair to us, I can get over that, but you re being unfair to yourself.
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I don t think it was a mistake to have someone on the show with different views than most.
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I really don t.
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If you re the type that does bury your head in the sand every time you hear something you don t like, I actually feel bad for you.
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I was hoping this was more emotional than anything, and I d love to have you come back as a fan, because we need all of our fans.
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But further, guys and gals listening, this is why we need reviews in iTunes and Stitcher.
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We have to be able to counteract the folks who only review when something gets them all crimped up, and that s who s usually emotionally stoked up enough to write anything.
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So those of you sitting quietly by while we eat tons of bad reviews on iTunes from unreasonable people like Ben,
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You re letting that happen by appreciating the show in silence.
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And I hate to pester people, but we need to put in five minutes and do this a favor.
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Email jordanattheartofcharm.com if you need instructions.
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I ll send you step-by-step how to write a review in iTunes or Stitcher.
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As far as being ashamed of ourselves for having Jack on the show, I will not go that far.
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In fact, Ben, I think you re the one that needs to do a little soul searching.
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Janice writes, I ve followed you guys for over half a decade.
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Usually AOC has some really great content, but I found that Jack Donovan s message is dangerous reaching men who think masculinity is about destruction.
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There were a lot of dog whistle messages in the episode that will resonate with sociopathic personalities.
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I m still a fan, and as someone who really enjoys this show, I had to speak up.
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Jack Donovan s message will resonate with groups on SPL Center s hate group watchlist, and I found that to be divergent from what AOC s core message of becoming a better person is all about.
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That s an interesting viewpoint.
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And to quote Brad from The Big Lebowski, that had not occurred to us, dude.
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Again though, controversial viewpoints are a necessary part of life even if we don t always agree.
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I think there was a lot to explore in Jack s episode even if some of it makes us feel uncomfortable.
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I m not sure it gets down to the level of racism however.
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Either that or I m still totally missing the point here.
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Janice, thanks for being a fan, really.
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I greatly appreciate the feedback, especially from our female fans, who we love dearly, as much as any guys who listen to AOC as well.
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Also, Janice, I want to say thank you, because after writing this letter, you wrote a positive review in iTunes, mentioning that you ve gotten a lot of value other than this specific episode, so I appreciate that, and I think it s interesting.
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Look at this really calm, well-reasoned response from Janice, and contrast it with Ben s emotional vomiting all over the place, and you see the type of stuff
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that we deal with mostly from men, really.
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The women have been far more measured in their reply, far more measured in their response to and reactions to this episode, and most episodes for that matter.
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One note I want to put into this, and I can dig up this study that shows this if anyone s interested.
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Content of the show is designed to make you think and grow.
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You don t always have to agree with everything, that s the point, right?
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And people unfollow or unfriend people on Facebook and other social media because they have opposing views and they quote unquote get offended.
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But what happens is when you end up curating people on Facebook that only think like you, it leads to the perception that everyone thinks like you.
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so that when you do hear outside viewpoints, you actually start to think that they re fringe, exception, and unusual, even if you re the unusual exception.
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So you need to be aware of this.
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Curating opinions so that you re surrounded only by people who think like you is actually really dangerous, and I m not talking about
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high achievers and only surrounding yourself by motivated people.
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I m talking more along the lines of patterns of thought when it comes to political beliefs, social beliefs, even economic beliefs, because when you start to only surround yourself with those types of people, you start to only see their perspectives, which reinforce yours, so that when you get outside information, it becomes really, really challenging to actually take some of it in.
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I think if we had shown this episode or had aired this episode to people in other countries, we would have gotten a lot of different reactions.
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Because some of the feedback I m getting overseas is quite different.
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I m getting feedback from women in Scandinavia that think, this is really interesting, thanks for that challenging viewpoint.
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But I m also getting feedback from people in conservative countries that think, what was so groundbreaking about this?
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This is how we live our lives.
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So it was interesting to see
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the really diverse mix of American feedback, because I think this is a much more contentious issue in this country than it is in areas where the roles of men and women seem to be a little bit more settled, whether they re very liberal or very conservative.
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Razvan writes, when can I quit my job for my entrepreneur gig?
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Hey, Jordan, I ve got a legit nine to five and it s been OK.
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Nothing much to mention.
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It s not my dream job, but pays the bills.
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Recently, I ve started a business, mostly online, and it s starting to pick up some steam.
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I want to know when I can safely quit my day job and focus on my side business.
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I can t wait to do it, but I don t want to be stupid and bite off more than I can chew or have to move back in with my parents, a fate worse than death.
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Any advice?
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Yeah, I hear you on moving back with the parents, Razvan.
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So here s the thing.
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I had to quit my day job as an attorney to focus on the art of charm, but I was pushed a little bit along by the fact that they were laying everyone off and I had a lot of advance warning.
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What you need to do, I ve asked a lot of really smart people this as well, including James Altshuler and Gary Vee and a few other sharp cats, what you need to do is understand what you need in terms of a monthly nut.
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What are you responsible for in your family?
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What about rent, food, bills, spending money that you re reasonably gonna spend?
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Don t do that thing where you re like, well, if I only eat SpaghettiOs for the next year and a half, I can actually afford to live on this.
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You need to figure out what you actually need to live on,
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and add let s say five to 10% more for incidentals like exploding car tires and people in parking lots not paying attention to where they re going and nights where you go out to the bar and forget how much you spend.
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Those types of things do happen and you don t want them to upset your entire life.
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So you need to understand what you need each month, and once you have at least half of that, of your monthly net coming in, then you can start to think about leaving.
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So once you have about half of what you have coming in from your business, plus a six-month emergency fund, quote-unquote, so that you can live without any income for three, four, five, or especially, ideally, six months, then you can think about what you re doing to leave.
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This key here isn t just what you have in the bank and what you have coming in.
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What you need to know about scaling is that you need to be able to outsource everything first that isn t just you.
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So basically, you have to know when you leave that the only way to scale your business is you.
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It s not about avoiding the pain of going to your day job.
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That s why most people quit their jobs, and that s why they do it early.
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They get really optimistic about their side gig, and they start to think, well, you know, I could probably quit my day job and just focus on this, and then they quit, and they spend their time farting around on Twitter, farting around on Facebook, and social media, and stupid meetup networking events that don t do anything.
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You need to figure out
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how much you can outsource.
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Outsource everything else first.
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You know, hire a VA, hire coders, hire everybody else, even if you have to use your work income to do it, and that will put you in a place where you re getting in a really good habit of outsourcing everything you can t do.
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And that s great, because most companies operate at a loss, which is why they seek funding, so that they can hire these people.
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You re going to do the same, but you re going to subsidize it with the income from your regular job, if that makes sense.
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So you get in the habit of outsourcing, which is the skill you ll need later anyway, delegation, which you ll need later anyway, and you ve got another income that you can use to supplement growth during this phase.
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Once you hit a plateau where the only thing that s gonna cause you to scale is more of your time, like if I needed to do more episodes of the Art of Charm podcast and I couldn t because I had only so many hours in the day with my day job, then yes, then I could quit my day job, apply myself to that lever,
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and end up with a higher revenue for the company.
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So hopefully that makes sense.
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Do not quit your job until you absolutely have to because right now that income is huge.
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Don t quit just because you don t like it and you want to focus on your side gig.
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Only quit once you realize you have enough income to survive and the only thing stopping you from growing is the fact that something that you are doing in that business needs more of your attention and no one else s.
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Marlon writes, dang big homie, sorry to hear about your loss.
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I agree with you 100%.
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We take life for granted and many times don t realize how soon it could end.
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Nobody knows who the death angel has next on his list.
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And because of that, we should enjoy every moment, every breath, every relationship, and most importantly, us as unique individuals.
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I recently moved from Rangoon to Shanghai to Egypt.
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Ton of work, but I m pretty excited about the doors that continuously open for me, black guy from the hood growing up in poverty.
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If someone would have told me this a couple years ago, there is no way in hell I would have believed them.
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I ve recently decided to go back to school to get a master s in educational leadership.
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SPEAKER_00
I figured if I m going to achieve greatness, I might as well run shit.
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SPEAKER_00
Teaching is cool, but it s time to move up the ladder.
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I remember sitting in my living room on the couch, smoking the air, ice bathing in gin and tonic, enjoying your podcast, feeling like I m in the basement sitting in the same room.
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I can t stress enough the great work you guys do on a massive level.
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All the best.
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I love this, this is from Marlon, and the reason I wanted this on the show is because Marlon grew up in the hood, kind of not a whole lot of prospects for upward mobility, we can say, and this is one reason why we do the show.
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Now Marlon works in Asia, the Middle East, because he decided to get the hell out and hustle.
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So he did it, and he uses the Art of Charm resources to make it happen, and I love this.
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I ve talked to Marlon when he was in Burma, which is where Rangoon is, Yangon,
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He moved to Shanghai and Egypt.
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I mean, imagine this dude from the hood traveling across the world, hustling, getting jobs, teaching, really doing stuff.
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I mean, his family, they look at him like an alien.
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It s just, he completely broke out of not only the mold, but he got out of their orbit entirely.
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It s amazing.
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Much love to you, Marlon.
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And he included a picture of him riding a camel in front of a pyramid.
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He probably never thought he d be doing that when he was dodging gangbangers in Texas.
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Thanks a lot, Marlon, for this.
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Definitely a great reminder of why we do this in the first place.
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Hope y all enjoyed that.
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Don t forget you can reach us at Friday at theartofcharm.com.
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I read everything and I d love to hear from you.
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More from the Art of Charm at theartofcharm.com.
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Now have a great weekend.
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Get out there and connect and leave everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the art of charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and everything for the extraordinary man at theartofcharmpodcast.com.