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“True professionals rehearse so much that it looks like they didn’t rehearse at all.” – Jordan Harbinger

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Starting over requires channeling frustration into focus.

Instead of thinking of “the past” as a object to cast aside, remembering the struggle can enhance performance—to create something bigger and better.

On today’s episode of Steal the Show, we are joined by Jordan Harbinger to discuss how he recently started over. In 2006, Jordan was one of the first to podcasting, co-founding the very popular show, The Art of Charm. Just last year, Jordan parted ways from that team to start his own venture, The Jordan Harbinger Show. In the 11 weeks it’s been on air, his new podcast has received over 3 million downloads.

In this conversation, we unpack everything from what makes a great public speaker to how working is the best form of recovery during times of crisis. Whether or not you’re starting over, tune in to learn these lessons so you know what to do in case that situation presents itself.

Learn more about Jordan and his new podcast, The Jordan Harbinger Show, here.

“You will drive yourself to the brink of exhaustion, burnout, and craziness if you try to do everything yourself.” – Jordan Harbinger

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Steal the Points

  • Emotionally positive people should be key supporters in times of crisis.
  • Simultaneously build technical and interpersonal skills; focusing on one will give competition the advantage.
  • Ignore the temptation to do everything yourself; instead, outsource tasks to save time.
  • Resist the temptation to seek out shortcuts that negatively affect quality.
  • Work ethic supersedes talent. The best performers are the ones who rehearse the most.
  • Be skeptical of the public speaking classes that don’t deliver results.
  • Craft is a mastery of skills, not a formula.
  • Transformation is normal when working with a master coach or director.

00:00 Jordan Harbinger: What bees will do is, you can go in there and you can drain everything they’ve worked for, for the entire season, and they don’t go, “Oh, shoot, man! We’re screwed! That’s it! Give it up!” What they do is, they go, “Hey! Someone took all our honey. Guess we gotta get back to work!”

00:21 Michael Port: Welcome to Steal The Show, with Michael Port. I’m your host, Michael, and I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s been more than a week since the last episode was released. In fact, it’s been over a year. We received, emails, thank you for them; calls, thank you for them; letters, thank you for them; and face to face comments, all asking us the same thing: “When is the podcast coming back?”

And for a while, I really didn’t know the answer to that. When I started the podcast, I did it specifically for the release of my book, Steal The Show, and I did not make any promises about continuing. I said, “If I like it, I’ll do it. But I’m not sure, because it’s just the beginning.”

But I really did like it, so I kept going with interviews and, after a while, I started to get a little bored. A podcast can be very time consuming. But Laura Bernstein, who is our director of communications, she really, really wanted me to keep going. But I was just concerned about the open-ended commitment of something like a podcast. Because, if I’m going to do something, I do it fully.

So she suggested something different. She said, “What about seasons?” So, welcome to Season Two! And I’ll interview performers, I’ll take questions and I’ll give answers to some of your biggest performance questions, and I’ll have lots of surprises for you.

In fact, later in this episode, I have got a special announcement. Something we’ve never done before, and I’m actually surprised that we’re going to do, but we are. And I’m excited to tell you, but I’m not going to do it until the end.

So, to help us start over, Jordan Harbinger is the perfect guest. Not just because he’s one of the most popular podcasters in the world, but because he, as a podcaster, as a performer, recently started over from scratch. And I’ll let Jordan fill you in on that.

Jordan Harbinger has always had an affinity for social influence, for interpersonal dynamics and for social engineering. He’s helped private companies test the security of their communication systems, he’s worked with law enforcement agencies, and he did all of that even before he was old enough to drive.

Jordan spent several years abroad, in Europe and the developing world, including South America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and he speaks several languages. He’s also worked for various governments and NGO’s overseas, travelled through war zones, and has been kidnapped twice. And he’ll tell you, the only reason he’s still alive and kicking is because of his ability to talk his way into and out of just about any type of situation.

Jordan, we’re on a podcast. What’s up, buddy?

03:28 Jordan Harbinger: Hey, man! Thanks for having me back on. We are on a podcast. I thought you had left the ecosystem, and here you are, you’re back.

03:35 Michael Port: Now, you know, when I first did Steal The Show, as a podcast, it was just to help promote the book, Steal The Show. So I did fifty episodes, and then I released them over the course of five weeks, and it was a great way to promote the book. And I said the whole time, I said, “If I like this, I’ll do more. If not you’re going to get all of this, you know, all of these fifty episodes now.”

And I really did like it, so I continued, but I much prefer doing it in batches, so I really like the idea of a season, so we can have a clear focus for that season, and then do another season next year. And you are the first guest on this season, because we’re going to focus on starting over. What it means to start over, and all of the exciting experiences that we may have, both peak moments and pit moments, during that process of staring over.

Because you started over your podcast, as well as many other things, recently, and so I thought, “Who better to speak to this issue than you?” And because we may have to start over in lots of different aspects of our life. Even just a new keynote is starting over on a new set of material. And sometimes some people are starting over, leaving one career and going into speaking. So, it’s the perfect opportunity to talk about starting over.

I’d love you to tell them your story about starting over recently. Why did you start over? What did you leave? Why did you leave it? And what did you start where you’re going? So, those are the areas that I want to cover. Sound good?

05:26 Jordan Harbinger: Sure! You’re going to have to lead me down that path, because I, in typical ADD fashion, I already forgot what the first thing was that you said.

05:32 Michael Port: Oh, I don’t even remember any of the myself.

05:35 Jordan Harbinger: Okay, good, good, well we’re on the same page, then.

05:37 Michael Port: And, look, you know, the wonderful thing about doing this kind of work with you is, you’re a professional podcaster. Anything I know about podcasting, I learned from you. You started podcasting in 2008, I believe?

05:50 Jordan Harbinger: 2006!

05:52 Michael Port: Six! Wow! And so, you built one of the biggest podcasts in the world, frankly, and you became a master at the art of podcasting. But you no longer host that show. So, let’s talk about that. Why don’t you host that show any more? And then we’ll move into where you’re going.

06:12 Jordan Harbinger: Sure! So, I actually had series of disagreements with my business partners, that really showed us, “Hey, look, we’re envisioning our company going in two very different directions.” I wanted to focus on interviewing amazing people, getting great guests, studying their thoughts, their actions, their habits, creating worksheets based on what they were teaching the audience on the show, and really creating a discreet set of skills.

Like Larry King coming on, talking about conversational skills, a CIA agent coming on and talking about how they read and get information out of people. And my business partners were like, “Actually, let’s focus on our own products, services,” and this made sense for the business as they saw it, and what I was doing made sense for the business as I wanted it to be and for my own career. And so we negotiated an amicable split late last year. And then that split, that amicable split, didn’t work out as planned, and I found myself suddenly on the outside of the company, I thought, with nothing.

I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got to start over, basically by myself! This is going to be terrible! I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I’d spent eleven years running the other show, which was called, The Art Of Charm, at the time, or still is. But I now do the Jordan Harbinger show, and it was the first few days, I remember really, really well, and then the rest of it has been like, building brick by brick.

And we can disassemble this a bit if you want. Because I think a lot of people go through stuff where they think, “Oh my gosh, I just got hit by a truck! What do I do now?”

07:45 Michael Port: Yeah. So, what did it feel like when you realised that you were going to need to start over? Because most people, I think, would make the assumption that, given your experience, your skill level, your connections, your reputation, et cetera, that you’d go, “Oh! Yeah! No problem! I got this, I’ll just do X and I’ll be fine.” Is that how it felt, or did it feel very different?

08:15 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, well! It did not feel that good.

08:17 Michael Port: Well, yeah, I know, I was there, I know you well. I know how it felt, so I just kind of like, I know the answer to the question, but the audience doesn’t, so I try to set it up as, “Oh, I’m asking this question,” but no, I know the answer. What is the answer that you want to share with them?

08:34 Jordan Harbinger: Right, sure, I mean, we could just play them a 20 minute voicemail of me crying into your phone or something. That may or may not exist. No, what actually happened at first was, it was just modified stages of grief.

So what I mean by that is, there’s all these stages of grief you go through when somebody passes away and it’s like, shock and disbelief and then anger and all of this stuff. It was modified because I don’t have as much of that anger, or I didn’t have as much of that anger in the beginning.

It was a little bit like, “Oh, no, we’re going to figure something out. This is just an emotional decision,” and da-da-dah. I started to be a little bit bummed about it, a lot bummed about it, like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve worked so hard on this other business, and I got all these great guests and I built all this thing and I really worked hard on this for eleven years,” and what snapped me out of this downward spiral was a few things.

One, my wife was really positive about the whole thing.

09:30 Michael Port: As she tends to be.

09:32 Jordan Harbinger: As she tends to be, right. That she’s a good fit for me in that respect, because she’s so positive.

The other thing is my team. I ended up with, the vast majority of the team came with me in my new venture. Which was really not to be underestimated. Because when you feel really lonely, or alone, I should say, not lonely. But when you feel alone, moving forward, and then thirty people say, “Actually, we’re going to work with you now,” that’s really amazing.

It’s kind of like, you’re exiled from the city and you look back and the army’s behind you and they say, “What now, Boss?” That’s kind of how it felt, it was kind of like Jerry Macguire in a way, although I left the goldfish.

10:10 Michael Port: And although only one person came with him.

10:13 Jordan Harbinger: Right, yeah, good point.

10:15 Michael Port: The one with no experience, who had only been there for a few days, I think.

10:18 Jordan Harbinger: So, inverse Jerry Macguire, how’s that?

10:20 Michael Port: Correct.

10:21 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, inverse Jerry Macguire. So I felt really supported by that, and I got a lot of emotional support, and that really helped starting to turn things around. I still felt really sad about the transition and leaving everything behind, and it wasn’t as much of a ‘can I do this again?’ it was kind of like, imagine spending weeks or months building a sculpture out of glass and then you knock it over one day, or somebody else knocks it over and you go, “Wow! I just need to process this,” right?

So, I’d built this business with my partners over eleven years, and then it was suddenly like, “Yeah, we’re just going to take this and you can go do whatever you want.” And it’s like, “Oh my goodness!”

So, I wallowed in it for a while, while leading as best I could in that particular state, and I had some great advice from really supportive people, like you and a lot of other people that were really supportive in the beginning, including the owner of my network, PodcastOne, who said, “Look, I’ve been in radio for forty, fifty years, whatever it is, I’ve seen what happens when these splits happen. You’re going to be fine, but what you need to do is get back to work immediately.”

And not only did getting back to work make me feel better, and I don’t recommend that for everyone. I think a lot of people need to go to Hawaii for two weeks, which is what a lot of folks recommended I do.

I can’t do that, I needed to get back to work and move forward, I needed to focus my energy forward, not let it explode all over the place while sitting on a beach. Not that I’m judging people who need that, I just can’t, I’m not that guy.

And so, I worked really hard on moving forward, with the support of my network, who immediately signed me to a new deal, immediately shuffled the sponsors over to the new show, from the old one, because they were in charge of those deals, and made sure that I was going to be housed, fed, had the team, had the support I needed, had the cashflow that I needed.

So, I got support early on and the way that I did that was by not trying to hide what was happening. And I think that’s really tempting, for people who get smacked in the head or in the gut, or in the junk, maybe, in my case, because, especially guys, I think, are prey to this. We fall down and we go, “Oh man, this is embarrassing!” or, “I’m embarrassed and humiliated. What are people going to think?” That’s the wrong mindset to have.

I had that for, like, five minutes and then I went, “You know what? This happens to everybody,” because I started to realise this isn’t unique to me. Duh. And one thing that was really helpful is, I made a list of about two dozen people that I could call and tell about this and vent a little, that also were entrepreneurs.

So I used my network, initially, in that way, and that was very helpful. Because, I called the owner of my network, PodcastOne, and he told me, “Don’t skip a beat. Get after it. We’re behind you 100%.” I called my friend who was the COO of 1-800-GOT JUNK? and had left that company after making it into this huge beast, and he told me that this happened to him. And I called a bunch of other folks that had similar experiences, and I called you as well, about this.

And people were like, “This isn’t unique, and the way to get around this is to move forward, and the way to get through this is to look at this as the best thing that’s ever happened to you, because, in a year or two, you’re going to realise that it really is. I already see that for you. You just don’t see it now, because you’re in shock, you’re in shock.”

13:44 Michael Port: Sure. And, yeah, you know, you mentioned something that I want to touch on. It almost sounded like there was a slight surprise, just a little surprise in your voice when you were talking about how many people said, “I’m going to support you. You just tell me what you want me to do, I’m going to do it.” Thirty of the team said, “Jordan, we want to work with you. What should we do?”

And I think there’s a reason that so many people had your back. It’s because of who you are and the way that you comport yourself, and here’s one thing that’s really important: I think it’s sometimes even more important to end something even better than you started it. And that’s not typically how most people operate.

If something, you know, everyone starts something like, “Yeah! That’s going to be great!” All gung ho, everyone’s fired up and it’s high fives, and then, real work needs to happen. And down the road, maybe, it needs to go in a different direction, and maybe one person’s comfortable with that and maybe another person’s not comfortable with that. And so if the other one’s not comfortable with that, they may prefer to create conflict, which would mean not ending better than you started.

And you are the kind of person who has always, and I’ve known you for years, now, you’ve always done what you said you were going to do, you finish what you start, and your intention is to end as well as you started. And that’s why people go to bat for you.

I mean, one of the things that you teach and speak on, is networking and developing relationships over time that are meaningful and significant and because you do that, you reap the rewards of it.

So, there’s really no question in there at the moment, but I just wanted to acknowledge you and your way of being, and demonstrate to folks that are listening, that if you approach the world from the perspective of relationship developing, doing for other whenever you can, at any possible moment, going out of your way to make other people feel better and special, that’s what develops your relationship over time. I mean, excuse me, your reputation over time.

And that’s why anybody will, you know, with one quick phone call, anybody will do anything you ask of them.

16:25 Jordan Harbinger: Well, I appreciate you saying as much, and I would love to say, “Yeah, dig the well before you’re thirsty. I knew that the whole time and that’s what I’ve been saying for years,” and et cetera. And it’s true, I have been saying, “Dig the well before you’re thirsty,” so, create those relationships, starting right now. Don’t procrastinate, like most entrepreneurs do, create those deep and broad rapport with everyone that you can.

But the reason that I did that was not because I’m so pressy and thought, “This is going to eventually happen.” We say, “Dig the well before you’re thirsty,” because that’s what we teach at my new company, Advanced Human Dynamics, and what I teach on the Jordan Harbinger show, and it’s a good idea.

But the thing is, most people who are digging the well, kind of, in the back of their head, go, “Well, I’m never really going to be that thirsty, but I’m just going to do it anyway.”

And I think that’s what keeps people from doing it, because they go, “You know, it’s all fine and good, I know I’m supposed to do that, but I need to get my website first, I need to get some business cards, I need to get my prototype up, I need to organise my event, I need to shoot my product.” This stuff is foundational, it’s not an add-on, it’s not a bonus skill set.

I really did it because I realised it’s fun, I like making friends, I like helping other people because it feels good, but I never thought, “One day I’m going to be out on my ass, and this is all I’m going to have left.” You know, that’s not…

17:42 Michael Port: Of course, of course not, yeah.

17:44 Jordan Harbinger: Not in the plan. And that’s the point, no one ever thinks they’re going to be thirsty, so they sort of secretly de-prioritise this. They put it in the back of their head that they don’t really have time for this, but they know it’s important, so they’ll do it later. And that’s a big, big problem.

It’s like putting a spare tire in the trunk of your car. You know it’s got to go in there and then one day you get a flat and you go, “Oh, yeah, I’m too late for this.” And that’s what happens to a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs. They go, “I’m finally ready, because I just wrote my book and now I got to launch it,” and then they reach out and they go, “Man, it’s hard to get people’s attention.”

And I go, “Well, wait a minute, you didn’t go to the conferences, you didn’t respond to my e-mail, you didn’t check in on me, I haven’t spoken to you in three years. Of course you want something from me,” and then you can only hope that you’ve got other champions inside that person’s network.

So, you really do need to focus on this stuff. And I understand that a lot of people think it’s hard, or that you have to be born into it, or that some people are better at it, and that you’re an introvert and so you have a medical excuse that you can’t do it. But none of that stuff is true.

18:47 Michael Port: [Laughing] I’m sorry, I’ve never heard one before, “You have a medical excuse.” Oh my gosh!

18:56 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah! You’d be amazed, man! When I go speak about this stuff, especially in Silicon Valley, I’ll go, “Who here considers themselves an introvert?” and, like, 90% of the room raises their hand. In fact, the only room where more than half didn’t raise their hand, was a sales convention for medical devices, and I was like, “Who here considers themselves an introvert?” and it’s like, one guy in the back, who was manning the camera, was like, “Me.”

Because they’re all sales people that go on sales calls all day, selling some sort of blood pressure equipment or something. But every other room I’ve been in, they’re like, “Yeah, I’m a computer programmer, I don’t run rooms. What are you talking about?”

So, people go, “Well, I’m introverted so naturally I’m not good at this, so there’s no point in focussing on it. I’m just going to focus on my technical skill set.” That’s a huge problem, for everyone who thinks that way. It’s a big, big problem. Because eventually, somebody who has a similar technical skill set, even if they’re 10% worse than you, but they’ve built up this “weakness” into a competitive advantage, is building relationships, maintaining relationships.

You’re going to start wondering why people you had a hand in hiring three years ago are your boss, or are running projects, or got in charge of XYZ division, and the answer is probably going to be, because they have been building social capital over time while you were doing what you thought was right, by keeping your head down and turned out to something that bit you in the butt.

20:12 Michael Port: What moments most surprised you about having to relearn vs what did you have already dialled in? Because for many years, you worked in certain aspects of the business, and others, other people took care of. So is there anything that surprised you, like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I have to relearn this. I’m not even sure I know exactly how to go about it now.”? And then, what are things that you felt were really dialled in?

20:44 Jordan Harbinger: So, fortunately, the team members that I was able to take with me, and work with me, are all very skilled in areas that I don’t plan on interfering in. So, like, writing sales copy, things like that. Very fortunately, I haven’t really had to learn some sort of new skill set, other than maybe a little bit of project management, which, thankfully, my wife is really good at, so I sort of delegate that stuff to her.

I really was able, I mean, more able even now, to focus on what I was good at before. I actually have less, sort of, crust, that I have to take care of, that’s outside my competency. I’m really able to focus now, because I don’t have to worry about a lot of the fires I used to put out in the old company. I just don’t have to worry about them at all any more. So, it actually turned out to be, now I have less responsibility in a certain way.

I think the one thing I do worry about more is, now I’m solely responsible, or at least in the last few months this has changed, but in the beginning, I was solely responsible for generating revenue and taking care of the team. Which I hadn’t been in a long time. However, I used to do that for my old company, sales and controlling finances.

I actually have played every single role in the old company, as well as the new. I’ve never really been siloed for a long period of time where I would forget something. So, that was a huge advantage. I had to learn sales, I had to learn how to sell events, I had to learn how to sell products, I had to learn how to write copy.

Doesn’t mean I was great at any of those individual things, but going back and thinking, “I need to relearn something,” – not really. I was actually able to go, “I’m not doing this any more. Let’s find somebody who’s genuinely really fantastic at this, and delegate that to them.”

Because it’s very tempting for people who have to start over, for any entrepreneur, but especially for people who have to start over, to go, “Well, guess I got to do everything myself, now, because we don’t have revenue. ” Or, a lot of entrepreneurs don’t want to delegate anything anyway, because we’re all control freaks and/or we don’t want to pay for something, out of pocket, that we think we can do, so we end up doing every job in the company, poorly, ourselves, or not sleeping.

22:56 Michael Port: Yeah, I don’t think of that person as an entrepreneur. I think of them as a business owner who created a whole bunch of really tough jobs for themselves.

23:07 Jordan Harbinger: For themselves, yes, I agree with you there. Maybe I’m using the word ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘small business owner’ interchangeably where I shouldn’t, but I avoided that mistake this time. My wife was going, and she’s sort of new to the entrepreneurial gig, she’s been working with me for a while, a few years, but she worked inside the company, now we’re more or less partners, if you will.

She’s like, “No, I can edit the videos. No, I can do the social media,” and I’m like, “Look, I know that you can, but we’ve all made this mistake as business owners where we go, ‘Well, no, I can do sales. Well, no, I can do the writing. Oh, I can learn how to code a website, I’m pretty smart.’ Don’t do that to yourself!”

I know you think you don’t have any money and you can’t hire someone to do it. I know that you think it’s impossible to get anybody to work for you for free or for a payment later on down the line, et cetera. You will drive yourself to the brink of exhaustion, burn-out and craziness, insanity, if you try to do things yourself. It doesn’t matter that you can do all those jobs. That’s what I think a lot of small business owners don’t realise.

It doesn’t matter that you can do it all yourself. You’re not supposed to. You’re actually wasting your own cognitive resources if you’re going through and doing all your stuff, all your customer support yourself. It’s a waste of your time. You will move forward much more slowly.

And I learned that the hard way with my previous businesses, where we didn’t want to hire anyone, because we wanted to make more money for ourselves.

There are few things in the business world more pathetic than a rich guy who hasn’t slept in a year, and has a bunch of money and hates every minute of his life and then goes, “One day I’m going to go on a vacation. Let me get back into my LinkedIn inbox and figure out how to run ad campaigns on Facebook, because I’m too cheap to hire somebody to save me three hours a day. Right?

And we’re all, in a way, workaholics, so we think, “I’m smart, I’m capable, I’m gong to do this.” The mistake I avoided was that. I got the team together and I went, “Look, you guys are going to work for half pay or for free for a while, but you need to do this because this is what you’re good at and it’s going to be worth it later on.”

And some people went, “Go fly a kite,” and most people stayed. But the bonus here, was that I’m not staying up until 4 o’clock in the morning trying to figure out how to code a website. It’s not worth it.

25:17 Michael Port: Yeah. And I imagine this sped the process up, because you moved fast! You really did. You had a sense of urgency, and you moved quickly. So, a couple of questions about that. Number one: How long between when you stopped hosting your old show and launched the first episode of the new show, The Jordan Harbinger Show, how long was that?

25:41 Jordan Harbinger: I didn’t miss a single episode. So, the other show ended on a Thursday, the next episode was supposed to come out on Tuesday. I had gotten the boot on the weekend, and I released another episode the following Tuesday.

I called my network, told them what happened. They pulled out all the stops, they called a celebrity lawyer, called Mark Geragos, who works with Adam Carolla. He was Michael Jackson’s lawyer, Scott Peterson’s lawyer, he’s a well-known guy, and he went, “Jordan! Hey! Haven’t spoken to you in a while. I heard you need a quick favour. I’m going to be home on Saturday morning, why don’t you come by and record this?” and I said, “I can’t come by, let’s do it over the phone.” He said, “Great, whatever you want.”

I recorded a show with him, on Saturday morning and released it on Tuesday and it was just like, we didn’t skip a beat. We didn’t skip a single beat.

26:30 Michael Port: Wow!

26:31 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That wasn’t my plan, but my network went, “Look, there’s zero benefit to sitting around and going, ‘What do I do now?’ Your path is clear, get back to work.” And I did.

26:44 Michael Port: Wow! That’s fantastic! So you really were doing ‘just-in-time’ work. You didn’t say, “Okay, I’m going to take six months to rebrand and pre-record X number of episodes, and here’s the big marketing campaign we’re going to do around it.”

You said, “I’m going to do the best work I know how to do, just in time, because it is the time now where this needs to be produced, and then I’ll just keep building, one foot in front of the other.”

27:11 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s really what it was. And a lot of my friends went, “Hey, you know, episode one was a little bit outside your normal fare, you sounded a little tired,” and I wanted to be, like, “Guys, this is 72hours, no sleep, didn’t have much time to prep, called a friend on the phone, recorded it, turned it around, with my production team in three, four hours and posted it.” I mean, this was like, get it done. And I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like it, actually.

27:38 Michael Port: Well, I imagine, what my experience with you is, everything you do, you do at the top level. It’s go to be the best when you do it, that’s just the way your mind works.

And I’m really impressed that you said, “You know what? I’m going to put on an episode, because I know I can produce a great episode. It may not be the best episode that I’ve ever done. It may not be as clean as it might normally be, or I may not get some of those really probing questions that I often find when I do all the research, but it’s going to be great, I’m going to get it out.”

I’m actually proud of you for doing that, because, you had to sacrifice a little bit of what you would normally expect from yourself, but I think the big thing is that it gives you the psychological edge you need to know you’re still in the game. Did that happen? I mean, this is my impression, and I’m wondering if getting right back on that horse helped you psychologically focus on the work, rather than focussing on what you lost.

28:40 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man! Yeah! The best therapy that I had was, man, I cannot overstate this: the thing that made me feel better, the most, was not any ‘go for a walk, get some sun, get some exercise,’ that stuff all contributed, get some sleep, of course. The best therapy that I had was getting my head down and getting back to work.

Because I felt like I needed to make up for lost time, but I also realised that I have a ton of energy, and I had been kicked in the junk, and I was reeling, but I was going to either explode in all directions, or I could concentrate this stuff into a laser, and that’s what happened. And that’s what the team needed from me.

I got a letter from my producer, that was like, “Hey, man, go take the weekend, have your freakin’ panic attacks, or whatever you need to do, and then get back here on Monday and lead everybody to victory, because otherwise people are going to start to lose respect for you, or we’re going to lose momentum and people are going to start looking for other stuff to do.” He goes, “Get after it! We’re all ready, we’re all excited for you, we’re all excited to be on the train. If you don’t seem excited and you’re not taking this thing to the next level, people are going to start to wonder if they’ve bet on the wrong horse.”

That was tough love from my producer. But it was so necessary, and it was so great to have that come in and have the team be so excited about everything. It was really, really incredible. And getting back to work was by far and away the best thing that I could have done. I’m so glad that I did that. Because I instantly felt better.

30:19 Michael Port: So, how many episodes have you released of The Jordan Harbinger Show, and when did you drop the first one?

30:26 Jordan Harbinger: That’s a great question. It was sometime, February 2nd, or something like that, I think, was the first one. Or roughly thereabouts. I’ve gotten thirty-two episodes out as of this recording. And it’s been eleven weeks since then.

30:42 Michael Port: Wow! That’s fantastic! So, tell us, has it been as successful as you’d hoped? More successful than you’d hoped? How is it doing? Feel free to share, like, if you’re feeling proud, tell us, man! You know? Don’t be humble here.

31:04 Jordan Harbinger: Sure, so I’ll just log into my performance dashboard. So, in the last eleven weeks, we built, without paid acquisition, remember, I didn’t have access to my social media, I didn’t have access to any sort of e-mail list, I didn’t have access to any sort of website, this is solely based on people finding me and the promotion that I’ve been able to do on other people’s shows since restarting in the last ten, eleven weeks. Total downloads, 3.13 million so far.

31:34 Michael Port: That’s eleven weeks?

31:37 Jordan Harbinger: Eleven weeks.

31:37 Michael Port: Oh my gosh! 3.13 Million in eleven weeks! That’s phenomenal. Congratulations.

31:44 Jordan Harbinger: And it feels good, but, you know, like any business that you’re rebuilding, I sure wish it was more, right?

31:52 Michael Port: Of course, of course, of course. Well, you wouldn’t be an entrepreneur if you didn’t want more.

31:57 Jordan Harbinger: “I’m satisfied, I’m done, let’s wrap it up and go to lunch.”

32:00 Michael Port: That’s not you, no. Not at all. Last time I had you on, which seems like a long, long time ago, we discussed a story about someone stealing a toilet of yours.

32:15 Jordan Harbinger: It was just the seat, but yeah, that was a discussion we had.

32:18 Michael Port: Okay, not the whole toilet, just the seat. And not from inside your house, from outside your house, and we’ll link to the show in the notes, so hop on over there, look at the notes and go pick up the show.

But, I was thinking about you coming on today and I was starting to think about other random things that might surprise our listeners. And one of them is that you and Jen keep bees.

32:44 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

32:45 Michael Port: So, what on earth prompted you to get into beekeeping? I mean, it’s not like you live out in the wilderness and need to keep bees to make honey so you have something sweet. How did you get into it?

And then, of course, more importantly, what has observing these bees and their performance, taught you about your own performance? And if it’s absolutely nothing, say, “I have no friggin’ clue!” But I’m just wondering, because when you keep bees, you really have to pay attention to the way that they behave, and I’m wondering if there’s any connection there to the way that you perform, and not just on stage, but in the way that you’ve been reinventing yourself and starting over.

33:33  Jordan Harbinger: Sure, well, this is a really good question, because I hadn’t thought about this, as you might imagine, but bees are very interesting. First of all, they work so hard. If it’s raining, it doesn’t matter, they’re going out there, they collect pollen and they bring it back home and then they mercilessly defend whatever it is they build, they’re willing to die for what they create.

They’re very altruistic as well. If they’re old and they’re not as useful, they will just sort of commit suicide for the benefit of the rest of the hive, which is incredible. It’s one of the few things in nature that people say is truly altruistic. I’m not altruistic in that way, but I thought that was super interesting and it gave me something to think about.

But what I really loved about this bee analogy that you’ve invited me to here, is, most people who keep bees, and I don’t do this, because I care far less about honey than I do about contributing to the environment, and my wife’s the real beekeeper. We don’t really need the honey, we have plenty of beekeeper friends who harvest. Beekeeper friends who take bees out of people’s homes and they have bees galore and honey galore, so we just eat that.

But, what bees will do is, you can go in there and you can drain everything they’ve worked for, for the entire season, you’re supposed to leave them something so that they don’t die over the winter, but you can go in there and drain it, and they don’t go, “Oh, shoot, man! We’re screwed! That’s it! Give it up! We’re in trouble now, we can’t do this.”

What they do is, they go, “Hey! Someone took all our honey. Guess we gotta get back to work!” And they go back to work the next day, just like you’re supposed to, and they start rebuilding this until they can’t do it any more. Until they die, or until, depending on what season it is, until there’s no more pollen.

So, it’s pretty incredible that they will just go ahead and rebuild from scratch, every single time. And you don’t find them complaining. You don’t find them taking days off and letting things emotionally process, because they’re insects. But it’s incredible, to me. It’s incredible to me that they’ve evolved over thousands of years, people have been taking honey and they just go, “That’s fine, we’re just going to keep going,” and they will rebuild it.

35:38 Michael Port: This is very, very similar to what you went through and what you did, frankly.

35:44 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I hadn’t really thought about this at all, but it’s true, it’s like I created something…

35:50 Michael Port: No, really, someone came and took all the honey. You said, “All my honey’s gone!”

35:54 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

35:55 Michael Port: “You just took all my honey. What do I do? Should I just give up, quit? Go back to being a lawyer?” No, you just started making more honey the next day.

36:09 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I don’t even think I took a day off. It was just, like, “What do I do?” I took a day calling friends or maybe a couple of days calling friends and asking for their advice and for their help, but their advice was all, “What are you going to do? Get back to work, let’s go! The sun is shining!”

36:36 Michael Port: Yeah, I did. I was one of those people, “You know what? Just take a couple of days off, because, you seem liek you haven’t slept.”

36:33 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I was a freakin’ mess.

36:35 Michael Port: But it was very clear to me, very quickly, that you were like, “No, not doing that. Not happening.” And I was like, “Really?” and it was, like, “No.”

“Okay, got it.” It just was clear you needed to work.

How is Jen feeling, by the way, after her incident with the bees?

36:48 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah, you mean when my wife didn’t wear the bee suit because she thought she was an expert and then ended up making a little mistake, getting attacked by hundreds of bees and then looked like an old Korean lady because she got stung in the face two dozen times. Is the the incident you’re talking about?

37:02 Michael Port: That’s the incident I’m talking about, yeah.

37:05 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so my wife is Asian, so that wasn’t nearly as against race as it sounds.

37:11 Michael Port: I was just going to say, “Korean?” Can you please explain, elaborate on that one, thank you?

37:18 Jordan Harbinger: Right, so, she is Asian, but she got stung so many times that her face swelled up to the point where she could not, I mean, she really did look like somebody who was much, much older and hadn’t been taking care of herself during that time. She couldn’t open her eyes and her voice was different.

It was crazy! She ran in the house and I killed a bunch of the bees, and her hair sounded like a bee-hive, because there were so many bees on her scalp. She ran upstairs, gets in the shower, turns on the water, that freaks out the bees and they start flying out of the shower.

So, I’m trying to kill them as she’s taking them out of her hair and out of her pants and they’re stinging her and they’re stinging her fingers as she’s taking them out, and they’re stinging me as they’re flying out, and then I’m killing a bunch of them. So, it took her four days to recover.

She was so swollen. She had to go to the hospital because she was so anaphylactic that we were worried that something might happen. So they were jabbing her with all kinds of stuff and she lived on Benadryl and slept for a while.

And so, I think that was kind of an important lesson, so if we’re going to go down the bee analogy rabbit hole, the analogy here is: You’re never such an expert that you don’t need to abide by the fundamentals, right?

When I do my show, I don’t go, “You know, I’ve been interviewing for eleven and a half years, I don’t need to read the book and do prep, I can totally wing it, I’m really good at thinking on my feet after all this time.” I tried that. You know what happened? I thought I was getting away with it, and my audience, went, “Oh, yeah, I don’t know. Something missing.”

“Yep, okay, back to reading the books and actually preparing.”

And when you look at real professionals and everything that they do, like if you lookk at Howard Stern, regardless what you think of his show or his sense of humour, if you look at his prep and the resources he puts behind the show, he doesn’t just show up and go, “Yeah, whatever, I got this, I’m fine.” He still does the work.

And I find that there’s this interesting gap in business owners especially. And creatives, too, but business owners do this, where they go, in the beginning, they go by the book, and immediately they start looking for shortcuts. Which is totally normal, and no judgement, it totally makes sense.

They start looking, we start looking for shortcuts, where we go, “Alright, I already know how to do this podcast stuff now. I’m going to be fine with it, because I’ve been doing it for a really long time. So I don’t need to have a checklist. I don’t need to have backup stuff, because I’m not going to freak out, I don’t freak out any more. I don’t need to really read the whole book, because I’m good at getting the gist and then doing a show based around that, or listening to somebody else’s interview of this person and then creating notes based on that.”

We think we’re getting away with that stuff, but really we do need that amateur perspective if we’re going to get something that’s going to be of value for our audience. So we end up going down this rabbit hole where we go, “I’ve got it all dialled in, I’ve got all the shortcuts.” And the quality of what you do suffers.

And so, I find that when you get back to being a professional once again, part of that is, going, “I still need the checklist of everything I want to do before the show. I still have to warm up my voice. I still have to make sure that my notes are in order. I still have to review my notes before the show, not thinking I can do it on the fly.”

All of that stuff is the mark of a true professional. Somebody who realises that there are shortcuts, but they’re not worth taking. Most of the time.

40:35 Michael Port: And you, of course, just beautifully demonstrated our philosophy at HPS. There’s lots of things you could wing your way through if you’d like, and if the stakes are not high, if it’s not particularly important, fine, you know? No problem. But if the stakes are high and you want to produce something that really is quite special, then it generally needs more attention than we give it. Generally, you know? Generally.

But it’s something that you know, of course, because you’ve been through Heroic Public Speaking Graduate School, you went to HPS Live, and I wonder, did the way that you prepared for or performed on your podcast change after you trained with us in graduate school?

41:30 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah, of course!

41:32 Michael Port: And let me just say, real quick, he didn’t come to grad school because he wanted to work on his podcasting. He came to grad school because he said, “Listen, I’m getting all these invitations to speak at these big events, and I’m behind the mic all the time and I feel really comfortable there, but the stage is a little bit different. So I really want to learn craft so that I can deliver on the stage, just as well as I deliver on my podcast.” So, just for some context for people.

But did it also influence the way you work on your podcast?

42:03 Jordan Harbinger: It did, yeah. So, what I learned from you and Amy at grad school, was that professionals, again, this is kind of what I just said before, that professionals don’t go, “Oh, look at all these shortcuts I have,” right? “Oh, yeah, I can do a talk, I don’t really need to rehearse, because I know this really well.”

“Oh, I don’t really need any notes.”

“Oh, I don’t really need to rehearse this.”

“Oh, I don’t need to worry about where I stand, It’s going to be fine. This is my area of expertise.”

I realised that true professionals, they rehearse so much that it looks like they didn’t rehearse at all. And that’s lost on a lot of viewing audiences, or non-professionals, or people that are not an expert in any particular given field, right?

So, if I watch somebody speak, and they knock it out, I just go, before attending grad school, I was like, “Oh, that person’s naturally charismatic,” or, “They must speak a lot so they get it.” I don’t think, “This person wrote this content over three weeks, rehearsed it for a month, walked around the stage and got to know everything where they were going and blocked off all their gestures and made them look effortless and non-robotic.”

You don’t think that. You think, “Oh, this looks so effortless, this is just natural.” And to an extent that may be true for some folks, but when I look at a lot of really good speakers, they are very, very well rehearsed.

And when I look at a lot of speakers that are not that good, and when I get a chance to talk to them, they go, “Yeah, it’s great, right? I didn’t practice that much, but I really think I pulled it off,” and I’m thinking to myself, “Yeah, but you can tell.”

And when I used to be… I’m an attorney, and I’ll tell you, when we used to do trials, or mock trials, there would be lawyers who were like, “Can you believe that was my first oral argument?” and I’m like, “Yep! Totally can. That was not that good. You think you did a great job, but no. It really wasn’t that good.”

43:49 Michael Port: Yeah. You know, the very first play I ever did was, The Grapes of Wrath, and I was in college and, you know, in theatre departments in colleges there aren’t a lot of guys, and there aren’t a lot of guys that look like young men, a lot of guys that still look young. But I was fully grown at thirteen, I had a moustache, I was shaving, I think, when I was eleven and that is just not normal.

You know there’s always one man child in every class. I had to bring my birth certificate to little league games, because they always said, “He’s not the right age,” you know?

44:20 Jordan Harbinger: “He’s stacking the deck.”

44:21 Michael Port: Oh, yeah, exactly. And I forgot what I was going to say there, I totally lost my train of thought. Hold on.

44:31 Jordan Harbinger: You were talking about how you were in little league and you looked too old and we were talking about how that relates to rehearsing, and/or being a professional probably? Something like that?

44:39 Michael Port: Yeah, I don’t know. It’ll come back in a minute. One of the things that I love is using that specific technique of, “No, it’ll come back in a minute,” because it always does. It might not be exactly a minute, might be less, might be more, but it does come back.

And I also wanted to bring up, I wanted to talk about Heroic Public Speaking Live for a second, because it’s upcoming in October, and you came to the very first one that we ever did. You were at that, and we didn’t know each other then. I mean, we knew each other, like, I think I maybe was on your show once, but we weren’t friends, I was just a guest. And maybe we had traded e-mails a couple of times, but we didn’t have a relationship, so we didn’t know, really, who we were.

I didn’t know who you were as a person, and you didn’t really know who I was as a person, so can you tell them what you first thought we were doing when we were doing those master classes, where we were coaching people live, on stage, in front of audiences? What was your first impression?

45:45 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so, you and I had gone to dinner with a group of people, and I remember, this is classic ‘Jordan being awkward’, too. What I said to Amy, one of the first things I said to her was, “So how long have you guys been together?” and she was like, “Oh, we’re just business partners and we just work on this stuff,” and I was like, “Oh, okay.”

Because, bear in mind, my expertise at that point was reading non-verbal communication and I’d been training military and stuff like that, and I just went, “Wow, I totally blew that one,” and then I was like, “Or, maybe not.”

46:17 Michael Port: No, maybe not, because we got married shortly thereafter.

46:20 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah, right, just saying. Just saying, maybe I saw something there.

46:23 Michael Port: You were on the ball, yeah, you were on the ball.

46:25 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I just didn’t mean to do it in front of a huge group of people where it wasn’t public knowledge. I just figured, “If you’re trying to hide it, you’re doing a terrible job!”

But what happened was, then you said, “Hey, why don’t you…” It was just pure good luck, because I went, “You know, what I’m looking for, is someone to teach me how to really be good on stage,” because I’d taken all these really bad speaking classes where I go, ‘Look, I’m trying to be really good on stage, I want to be really charismatic and outgoing and I want to create a really good impression.'” And I would go take a $4,000, three day speaking class, where the person teaching it had never spoken in front of a large audience.

And every single other person in the class was like, “I’m afraid to talk in front of people and my boss sent me here, because if I don’t learn how to run meetings with eleven people, I’m going to get fired,” or something. And I’m, like, “I want to speak in front of thirteen hundred people, I’m not afraid of going up on stage at all, and I want to take things to the next level.”

And I remember thinking, “Every single person who’s teaching these speaking classes, they’ll take my money, but then when it comes time to get the delivery, it’s just not there.”

And I told you and Amy about that, and she went, “Well, we run these master classes, but we don’t really do it any more.” So I said, “Uh, that’s a bummer.” And then you had said, “Why don’t you come to Florida? And come to our event, we’ll do a little bit of coaching, maybe we’ll get you up on stage,” and I went, “Oh, alright.”

And I never really do stuff like this, but I went to the event because I really did want to learn more about speaking. And I thought it was pretty good, and I learned a lot, but then you started bringing people up on stage. I didn’t actually go up because I probably chickened out or never raised my hand, or whatever, but you started bringing people up on stage and I went, “Oh, this is kind of like a scam.”

These people are going up on stage, and you’re saying, “Okay, give a little bit of your pre-arranged key note,” or something like that. And then somebody would do that and this very mediocre speech piece and then I thought, “Oh, okay, this isn’t that good.”

And then you would be like, five minutes later, “Okay, do this and try this other thing, and when you do this walk to this part of the stage, and then stand up this way and then gesture this way,” and then the person would go and do it half right and then you’d tweak a few more things and then they’d go up again and nail it.

And we’re talking, like, fifteen minutes on stage, then they would give the other bit, their same bit and it would just be a 100 times better. And I would just be, like, “Oh, okay, so this is fake.” And then you started bringing my friends up on stage, and doing it.

And I went to lunch, with Clay Hebert, actually, out mutual friend, and I went, “Hey, look, man. Tell me the truth. You’re sort of lollygagging and then you’ve got to do a better job the next time or you’re warmed up or something?” And he said, “No, those tweaks are really good.” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is like a sales thing, right? You’re laying in on thick, you’re really hamming it up, up there?” And he’s like, “No. No, I’m not doing that.”

And then I think you brought up Derek Coburn, another friend of ours. And I went, “Okay, so this is real,” and he’s like, “Yeah. It’s just that it’s really good coaching. He’s a really good coach.” And I still kind of didn’t believe it, but then you offered this grad school program, and I went, “I’m going to buy this.”

And I remember asking the person who was selling it for you at the time, I go, “Look, if the first few days, this isn’t for me, what’s your refund policy?” And he’s like, “Well, if the first few days it’s not for you, then fine, leave and we’ll give you your money back.” And I thought, “Alright, I want that in writing.” And I think I got it in writing, and I went and took the class, and I was just blown away, because I thought I’d never really seen anything like that, that was real.

I’d never really seen anybody get coached for fifteen minutes and do that much better. And I thought, “If this is fifteen minutes, what am I going to be able to do in,” I think at the time it was a 20-day class. I think you came to your senses since then.

50:10 Michael Port: Oh, no, it’s actually a 20-day class. We used to do five days in a row, now we do four days in a row. So, three and a half days, and we do it over four months. So, it’s pretty close to that, but the five days was gruelling. That was too much.

50:25 Jordan Harbinger: I agree. The last day I remember being completely useless, and I think a lot of people didn’t even make it, because they were like, “I’ve got to go back to life, and I can’t think.”

50:31 Michael Port: Exactly, right. So, to me, I’m so proud of that. That, I just think, is so cool. A, because you’re harder to win over than the average person.

50:50 Jordan Harbinger: Well, first of all, I’m skeptical, man.

50:51 Michael Port: Yeah, that’s what I mean.

50:53 Jordan Harbinger: My job is, “I don’t believe what I’m looking at, at all, I want to test this.” And especially because I didn’t know you. It would be different if you brought somebody up and you were like, “Stand up straight and then walk to the left and then speak louder,” and they were better. I’d be like, “Duh, okay, fine.” I still probably would have bought the coaching.

But the tweaks you were making made no sense to me in the moment, because I thought, “What difference is it going to make if this person is thinking about speaking to the back of the room, like, ‘Don’t look at the front row,'” I thought, “Well, that’s a weird tip I’ve never heard.” And then I was like, “Oh, man, if you don’t look at the front row, and you look towards the back or the middle, it really is a different impression.”

And I was like, “Okay, these are these five tricks you got, maybe these are the only five tricks.” And then you’d give five or ten more to another person, five or ten more to another person. I’d never seen anybody give coaching like that, that wasn’t just total BS.

It was, and I’m trying to make this digestible for the listener here, because it was akin to watching somebody roll up on a wheelchair and then the pastor’s like, “Can I get an ‘amen’? Hallelujah!” and the person stands up and is like, “I’m healed,” and I’m like, “Okay, that’s obviously fake.”

So, when you see somebody who can’t really speak that well, but isn’t necessarily dying of stagefright, and then they increase their prowess within fifteen minutes, a 100% or 200% for that little segment of their talk, it just gives you an eye for what’s actually possible. And like I said, if I didn’t know those guys personally, I probably would have been, like, “Oh, these are his stooges.”

But I knew Derek Coburn and I knew Clay Hebert, and I think it was Ian Altman or something that went up there, and I knew those guys. And there were a lot of others that went up, but I knew those guys weren’t going to lie to me about this. They would have avoided the question if they were really planned audience plants.

And then I went and got coached myself, and I thought, “Oh my gosh, this stuff actually works!” I didn’t know it was going to work.

52:38 Michael Port: And, you know, it’s interesting, because you mentioned the word, ‘tricks’, and there are certainly lots of techniques that are helpful, but ultimately, what we’re talking about is craft. And craft is a mastery over a set of skills, not a formula. And what you’re doing when you’re on stage performing, is a form of art.

And most people don’t think about it that way, because they’ll be, “I’m the subject matter expert, I’m just talking about my stuff, that’s it,” but really, you’re creating a theatrical experience for people if they’re sitting in chairs, watching you on a stage, that’s a type of art.

And so there isn’t one way to do it, and there isn’t one formula to follow, and so, one of the reasons it’s often surprising to watch us do that coaching is because, every single time we do it, something new is revealed. And so it seems like, they go, “Oh my gosh, there’s like, seventeen thousand things that they know, or tricks!” But none of them are tricks.

What we’re doing is, we’re simply seeing, in that particular individual, what’s possible for them and then giving them specific technique that is based in hundreds of years of craft, theatre craft and stage craft, to actively affect other people. To get them to them think differently, or feel differently, or act differently.

And so, I love that that was your first experience with it, and then eventually you went, “Holy crap, this is real!” And, of course, if you never experience that, it does seem unreal, or seem almost magical. But we came from the theatre, and so transformation is normal. It’s completely normal to work with a master director and with a few notes from that director, make massive transformational changes in your character, or in the quality of the performance.

So, that was very normal to us, in this world that we’re in with public speaking, it’s not typical, it’s not normal. People haven’t experienced it before, and so it’s hard to imagine that it’s actually happening, until you know that it is actually happening. And so I like to make this distinction between ‘craft’ and ‘tricks’. They’re two very different things. Once you have craft, well then you can handle almost any situation that you’re in. And, of course, experience helps as well, and through experience you tend to build more craft.

But not always. Because you can keep doing something and get lots of experience, but if you’re not developing masterful craft in the process, then you’re not actually going to get better, you’re just going to reinforce the same habits that you already have, which may not be at the level at which they could be for you.

And so, I saw you, over time, just get stronger, and have a natural ability to entertain, to communicate. You’re a fantastic story teller, you’re a good writer, but yet, still, I saw you get better and better and I saw you continue to get better and better.

So, what’s next for The Jordan Harbinger Show? And what’s next for the business? Are there any plans that you have that you could reveal?

56:03 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so we actually are planning live events. The first one is going to be in August, most likely in Las Vegas or San Diego, and we’re going to be teaching networking, negotiation, there’s going to be several other topics involved, but those are the two that we’ve outlined so far. So, networking, building business and professional, personal relationships, for that matter. Verbal and non-verbal communication, negotiation are going to be sort of the starting points for that.

It’s going to be for men and women, unlike some of the stuff I’ve been doing in the past, which was only for guys. And we’re also shooting products that have to do with networking and negotiation as well. So, I’m really focussing on those topics, because, first of all, most people who are developing relationships for personal or business are making really simple mistakes, such as not digging the well before they’re thirsty, that kind of thing.

I’ve got a lot of systems for that, that make it so that it doesn’t take up a ton of time. And negotiation, because at the end of the day it’ll make you money. I mean, you and I talked about this when I recommended a book to you a long time ago, and you used it to save, I think, six figures, on a purchase, possibly more.

And I just realised, you know, we’re negotiating our salaries if we work for another company, we’re negotiating contracts and deals all the time, these are foundational skill sets that come with the result of having opportunities, which we get from creating the network, so, if you combine those two things, there you go.

57:25 Michael Port: I actually just, I just used one of your techniques when the publisher from Audible, who is doing the audio version of the third edition of Book Yourself Solid, was offering me my reading fee, and they doubled it, as a result of that, so thank you for that.

57:44 Jordan Harbinger: You’re welcome.

57:45 Michael Port: But, yeah, so is there is place where people can find out more information about that? Do you have anything up about that yet?

57:53 Jordan Harbinger: Yes. If you go to advancedhumandynamics.com, the one thing that’s going to be available there, starting immediately, is level one, which is a bunch of videos that I’ve done that teach people a lot about networking, outreach, systemising, that kind of thing, without looking smarmy or fake, and then that live event info is going up very soon.

So, depending on when this comes out, it’ll be up already.

58:17 Michael Port: Great. So, jordanharbinger.com.

58:19 Jordan Harbinger: Advancedhumandynamics.com.

58:20 Michael Port: Ah! So, jordanharbinger.com would be all the podcasts stuff, and then advancedhumandynamics.com?

58:29 Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. The podcasts and stuff are at jordanharbinger.com, that’s where a lot of my writing is as well, but at advancedhumandynamics.com, that’s where you’re going to find a lot of the event info as well. But, yeah, I would love it if a lot of people who listen to this podcast also subscribe to The Jordan Harbinger Show, because that’s where I interview incredible people and create all that great content on a three times a week basis.

58:50 Michael Port: That’s fantastic! Well, I tell you what, I’m going to check my calendar on your event and if I am free, and Amy’s free, we’re coming! We’d love to be at your first event, that would be fantastic.

So, hey, Jordan, I love you, man. You’re just such a delight. I know my audience appreciates you tremendously. I do, I’m so proud of you. I love your show. I listen to it regularly, and every single time, I learn something. And every single time, I’m surprised by what I learn, and it’s, in large part, because of the way that you organise those interviews and really drive the guests to delivering ideas and advice and information that they don’t usually address. And, as a result, it’s very refreshing. So, thank you for that, Jordan.

59:43 Jordan Harbinger: Thank you, I appreciate that. That’s very kind of you. And pleasure’s all mine. We’d love to see you at the event, of course, and otherwise I will see you hopefully before that as well.

59:52 Michael Port: Alright, my friend. Thank you so much, Jordan.

59:56 Jordan Harbinger: Thank you.

59:58 Michael Port: Okay, remember how I said I have a special announcement? Well, here it is. In celebration of starting over, we want to help you find your voice, too. So, I brainstormed with my team, and we came up with something that we’ve never done before, and we’re really excited about it. We think you’re going to like it.

We’re hosting our annual conference, Heroic Public Speaking Live. Now this is not the thing we’ve never done before. This is something we’ve done before and we do it really well. It’s October 1st, 2nd and 3rd, in Philadelphia and this week only, for the launch of season two of Steal The Show, if you buy one general attendee ticket, you get one free. Yes, that’s a first for us. You buy one ticket, you get another, free.

So go to heroicpublicspeaking.com/live and sign up there. And if you already bought a ticket, you’ll receive an e-mail from us, giving you a chance to invite the person you think will benefit most from HPS Live. And you can let us know who you’re bringing this time around. Offer is good until this Sunday, May 20th, 2018.

Thank you for listening to Steal The Show with Michael Port. I’m your host, Michael Port.

This podcast was produced by Laura Bernstein, with sound production and marketing by Kast Media, music is mixed by Shammy Dee, and we recorded today’s episode at Heroic Public Speaking HQ, the most impressive public speaking facility in Lambertville, New Jersey, and, perhaps, the world.

Special thanks to our first guest of the new season, the debonair Jordan Harbinger, and to you, for listening and learning how to be a better performer in your spotlight moments.

Make sure to reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook, @heroicpublicspeaking, and let us know what high stakes performances you’re currently crushing. Like Matthew who listens to our podcast as he trains for an ultra marathon this summer. Let us know your big performance achievements, at questions@heroicpublicspeaking.com. I can’t wait to hear from you.

Oh, and make sure to visit heroicpublicspeaking.com/live, and make sure you buy one general attendee ticket and get one free. Promo ends Sunday, May 20th.

I love you. But not in a weird way.

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