0:00:02 Michael Port: Welcome to Steal the Show with Michael Port. This is Michael. Today’s guest is Jordan Harbinger, great friend of mine, some time student, and some time teacher. He’s the co-founder of the Art of Charm, and the host of the Art of Charm podcast, which is one of the most popular, and that it is not a hyperbole, one of the most popular podcasts in the world with over two million downloads, every single month. Now, that’s nothing, I get two million every 10 seconds. But he’s gettin’, he’s catchin’ up, he’s getting there. So the Art of Charm has been covered by Forbes, NPR, the Today Show, Esquire Magazine, Saturday Night Live, and MSNBC.

0:00:44 Michael Port: Jordan was a Wall Street attorney, but we will not hold that against him. And he spent several years abroad in Europe and the developing world, including South America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, and he speaks five languages. He’s worked for various governments and NGO overseas, he’s travelled through war zones, and he’s been kidnapped twice, which is true, but I will not ask him to tell us about those stories because we have better things to talk about. What’s up, buddy?

0:01:12 Jordan Harbinger: Hey man, thanks for having me on. That’s a good intro. I wish everybody could do that, ’cause a lot of people just kind of monotone read the bio, and you’re like, “Where’s the hammer?”

0:01:22 Michael Port: Well, I was trying to do it like an average person.

0:01:25 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, well…

0:01:26 Michael Port: I was trying to tone it down.

0:01:26 Jordan Harbinger: You failed. You failed.

0:01:27 Michael Port: I failed? I did?

0:01:28 Jordan Harbinger: You did it really well.

0:01:30 Michael Port: Oh, alright. Thanks, buddy, appreciate that. But you are… We’ve become good friends over the last year, and we’ve spent a lot of time together when you were taking the Heroic Public Speaking Graduate Program. And you spent months and months working on your performance on stage. And when you first came to work with us, I was surprised because you’re a performer, you are a host of a remarkable show, and you record many episodes every single week, and you’ve been doing it since 2008. So you know performance. So, what I’d love for you to do is talk about why you felt you needed to work on your public speaking in person, even though you’ve had a lot of public speaking experience behind the mic.

0:02:24 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I can do that, because I think a lot of… Well, first of all, a lot of people in the class were like, “Hey, don’t you… Seems like you should be naturally good at this,” and I laugh, ’cause I don’t think anybody’s naturally good at this, or at least I wasn’t. As evidenced by my earlier shows, I can’t escape that fact. It’s out there for the world to know how bad I was when I first started. And I think that a lot of people have that reaction to coaching in general. It doesn’t even have to be about something that you think you’re already good at for a good reason, right? A lot of people might go, “Well, I’ve done a lot of live radio and satellite radio, I’ve done a lot of podcasts, so I can naturally present things and it’s just gonna magically translate to the stage.” And it’s not true. And I think a lot of people make that same mistake, even when they look at coming to your program or my program, at the Art of Charm.

0:03:14 Jordan Harbinger: They’ll go, “Well, I don’t need to learn how to network and develop relationships because I’m a pretty charming guy, and I have a lot of friends.” And I’m thinking, “Well, that has nothing to do with your networking skill. Just ’cause the people you work with now like you, or your friends from high school still talk to you, has nothing to do with your ability to translate that into the workplace or into your romantic life, or your relationships in any other setting.” And that was the same for me when it came to presentation in person. I didn’t think I was a bad, terrible public speaker, but I knew that if I wanted to get better gigs and be able to present really well in front of groups and be able to kind of improv, teach things in a really good way, and have a keynote speech, not just the kinds of keynotes that you see when you go to events that everyone’s cringing, ’cause the guy’s famous and has a book and he’s like, “What do you guys want me to talk about?” right? When he gets up on stage, and you go, “Oh my God, that’s gonna happen right now?”

[laughter]

0:04:15 Michael Port: I realize that even people who are “famous” are not immune to this. And I decided to hit it off with the past, because there’s kind of no point, for me, getting booked to speak a bunch, and going up and practising all the mistakes that I’ve been teaching myself by winging it, when I can get a coach and learn the right way and then take these events and practice my skill set. Does that make sense? You can always… Unlearning stuff is so hard, that you might as well learn the right way before you’re thrusted into the limelight.

0:04:47 Michael Port: Yeah, often, we can help somebody progress much more quickly when they have no experience. Often, we have to beat up… When we were with A-listers who were doing $30,000 a speech, $40,000 a speech, sometimes we need to beat them up for a little while, break them down, before we can help rebuild. But sometimes people come in with no experience whatsoever, and we can get them really good, really fast as a result. So, I’m with you on that for sure. So what’s the difference between podcasting and speaking? Are you able to identify different skills for the different mediums?

0:05:22 Jordan Harbinger: Definitely, yeah. To give you a little bit of props, one of the reasons I took the program from you in the first place was because I saw it happen on stage. I mean first of all, when we first met, I think I was like, “Oh, do you know anyone that teaches speaking?” And it just happened to be an amazing fit. I was talking with Amy, and she was like, “Yeah, we used to run these master classes, but we kind of don’t anymore.” And I said, “When’s the next one?” And that’s when you invited me to Florida, and I saw with my own eyes, somebody who wasn’t that great on stage, made huge strides, to the point where I was like, “This is fake.”

[laughter]

0:05:55 Jordan Harbinger: “This is fake, and this is like a plant.” And then I talked to other people in the audience that were really normal, and then the next day, somebody would go up and I’m like, “Oh I know that guy’s not fake. I know that guy from before this event, and he would go up and make strides.” I think Clay Hebert went up there and I was like, “Okay, this isn’t fake. This is totally real. He actually just did that.” And so, I realized that now, a lot of the people in the class with me who didn’t have as much experience presenting things, they got better… Their learning curve was much more steep than mine. By that, I mean they learn faster. And that’s because they didn’t have bad habits like I do from presenting on a microphone for a really long time. And, unfortunately, the things that translate from podcasting to speaking on stage are usually the bad habits, where, yes, maybe I speak clearly, but also I have verbal ticks and things like that, and little motions…

0:06:45 Michael Port: Yes. So what are some of those bad habits, do you think? Not your bad habits necessarily, but some of the things that might work well when you’re podcasting that if you try to employ them when you’re speaking on a stage or in front of a conference room, might not help you, might get in the way.

0:07:02 Jordan Harbinger: Sure. Well, first of all, podcasting largely is a conversational medium, same with radio. When I was doing live radio, it was the same thing. It’s not a monologue that requires pausing and… For one thing, here’s a huge habit that I don’t think most people see. On radio, if you have multiple co-hosts or guests, especially if you can’t see each other, you don’t want a lot of pauses because those are what’s called “dead air”. And if you’re talking with me on radio and you paused a little bit, I might go, “Well, I got to jump in right now,” because my timing is completely different on radio than it would be on stage, where a pause on stage might be really nice to leave a cliffhanger or let a punchline, tension for a punchline build, or let something sink in, or let people guess and go through dialogue in their own head. None of that exists on the radio. You don’t want people doing that. You just want as much talking going through the waves as possible. Does that make sense?

0:07:57 Michael Port: Yes.

0:07:57 Jordan Harbinger: There’s no pausing.

0:08:00 Michael Port: This is something that I feel… I’ve done a lot of interviews, and I’ll tell you, it’s really tough, especially when you’re working with inexperienced hosts because, if you pause at all, they’ll jump in there. And if you don’t have a relationship with them in such a way that they know your rhythms and your timing, and you know theirs, often, it’s very difficult to pause, because they’ll cut off the point that you’re trying to make before you actually get there. So what I do sometimes with hosts that I know aren’t particularly experienced, is I tell them, “Listen, I may pause every once in a while for effect because I think that our ideas are only as good as our audiences’ ability to consume them. So if don’t give them some time to consume them, then some of the ideas may just go over their head. They may not be able to process them.” So what I might say is, “Listen, when I finish, I’m gonna say… I’m gonna ask you a question. So, does that make sense to you?” Which I normally wouldn’t do with an audience, but in that case, I might. It’s just like what the reporters do. They say, “Okay, back to you, Phil.”

0:09:11 Jordan Harbinger: Right.

0:09:11 Michael Port: And then this way, they know that they’re done. You and I have a relationship. We know each other. I understand your speech patterns, and I can, I think, we’ll see at the end of the interview, I think I can pick up where your pausing and when you’re done. And then sometimes, of course, there are times when a host needs to jump in and cut that person off and take them somewhere else. And this is an area that I’m less experienced and I’m now learning about how to be a host. But you, you’ve been doing this for about as long as anybody in the podcasting business.

0:09:47 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It’s tough because, even in that sentence alone… By the way, if you’re a broadcaster of any kind, go back one minute or whatever, and look at all the places where you would have jumped in to interrupt Michael Port right in that very… That last thing you just said was rife with pauses that were great for effect, and that an inexperienced host would have jumped right in and gone, “Well, what about this?”, and then the whole point is annihilated, right? That’s very normal. So what’s that trained me to do, doing interviews with inexperienced guests or experienced guests and other hosts, both varying levels of experience, I speak a lot faster. I was giving an interview with somebody I can’t even remember a couple of months ago, and it was one of those where there’s a live chat stream after, or during. And I looked at that afterwards just to make sure that somebody wasn’t like, “Hey, email me this,” or “I was confused about that,” and one guy wrote, “Dang, man, how do you get in so many words per minute?” And he was kind of like, “That’s really cool!” But for me, I went, “Oh man, I need to slow down.” People shouldn’t go, “Dang, this guy talks like the Micro Machines guy.” That’s not a compliment when you’re a presenter.

0:10:56 Michael Port: So the Art of Charm started as a show for guys; how to build relationships, how to network, et cetera. And over the years, it’s become so much more than that. It is really such a broad-based show for a very large audience on lots of different, really relevant issues for lots of different people. And it’s not something that’s easy to do to be able to grow a program like that that was very niched early on. And Art of Charm is interesting because charm is something that some people might feel is inauthentic. “Oh you’re just charming, it’s not real.” And the same thing happens when I bring up performance. Sometimes people feel that performance is fake or phony. And of course, I have a particular take on how and why it’s not. And I’d love to hear your take on authenticity and performance as it relates to charm and connection.

0:12:05 Jordan Harbinger: Sure. It’s a really common question and I can see that coming up with you, too, now that you mention it. The idea behind what we teach at the Art of Charm is that we subtract. It’s a subtractive process, not an additive process, and what I mean by that is, a lot of people who try to teach charm or social skills, they do it in this… Even advanced social skills like we teach, they do it in this weird way where it’s like you need to have interesting stories that make you look cool, and you need to have… You need to dress a certain way that you never normally would that’s not really reflective of your personality. And there’s a million other little rules like that. And those are not helpful. And that’s the inauthenticity that people are talking about, and that’s additive. You’re adding layers onto someone’s personality. And what we do is what we call the subtractive process at AOC, and what that means is, everyone is doing something, has some actions, some way of speaking, some way that they move their body, different eye contact, vocal tonality, and a lot of it is based on our own insecurity.

0:13:08 Jordan Harbinger: So if we find ourselves… It’s hard for us to make eye contact with people at a higher level than us at work or at school, or if we find our body language becoming small when we’re around people that dominate conversations, or we get really quiet when we’re around people that we think are smarter than us, there’s a million little quirks and [0:13:25] ____ flavels that people have depending on their level of confidence and insecurity.

0:13:31 Jordan Harbinger: And a lot of people who think that they are very secure do the opposite. They over-compensate in a certain way. They take up way too much space. They’re kind of louder than they need to be. They don’t listen to other people’s ideas and they act arrogant. So we subtract all of those things by pointing them out, shining a light on them and going, “Okay, what is it that you’re doing? Why are you doing it? Alright, let;s rewire that.” So it’s actually, when we’re done with you, essentially, or when you’re done with yourself, you’re more authentic than you were when you came in, because we’re taking away the acting and the social persona and the mask that people put on so that other people will like them, which is actually a really dislikeable trait to have, or dislikeable mask to have on, because nobody like the guy who comes in and is like, “I’m so cultured and smart. Let me interrupt you and tell you about things that make me sound smart.” It’s really annoying to be around those people.

0:14:24 Michael Port: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like we wrap ourselves up in fat layers of persona that we think are gonna protect us, but they’re just like parchments, where people really… I suppose that you feel that they’re just like parchment, that people are gonna come poke holes in you so you puff yourself up and make yourself seem like something that you’re not, which then is the kind of phony performance that people might associate with charm.

0:14:56 Jordan Harbinger: It is. So charm is kind of this double-edged sword in a lot of ways, at least as far as the definition of the word, because you get people going, “That’s manipulative!” And it’s like, “Well, it’s not, really. At least not the way that we do it.” Because we’re taking away those layers. What’s actually manipulative is when you’re acting a certain way because you think you have everybody fooled but yourself, and then you go, “Well, alright. I just need to be this person forever.” That ruins relationships because the persona that you put on evolves over time or degrades over time, or people see through it over time. So it can ruin your intimate relationships. Chances are, it’s driven away friends. And frankly, high quality individuals both in business and in your personal life are not gonna be around somebody who’s constantly… Or want to be around somebody who’s constantly projecting their insecurities; somebody who isn’t treating other people well, or is putting on airs. It’s not attractive, it’s not fun, it becomes tedious and stressful. And people who have kind of evolved past that phase of their life, I would say we tend to have very little patience for that because it’s not pleasant to be around.

0:16:04 Jordan Harbinger: So if you’re doing that, you may think you have everybody fooled, but if you look at relationships that have disintegrated in the past, people that don’t really like you and you don’t know why, chances are, the reasons lie in what you’re doing now that you think makes you look cool and fun and high value socially. Chances are, it’s doing the opposite.

0:16:22 Michael Port: Because everything we say tells the world something about us, and everything we do tells the world something about us. And you mentioned manipulation. Somebody once told me… I knew them pretty well, and then we had a slight conflict. And they were hurt by the conflict, and they felt that I didn’t trust them, and I didn’t. There was an issue that occurred, and they did something that I thought was disappointing, and I lost some trust. And they were very, very upset about it, and so much so that it was… To me, it seemed a little disproportionate to what had actually occurred, and so I worked really hard to try to get this person back to the table to work it out, to smooth it out. Even if we didn’t stay connected for years to come, at least we could just work through what had happened. And when we were talking, she said, “I know you, Michael. You’re a manipulator.” I said, “Really? Why?” She said, “Well, you get clear on a goal, and then you figure out a way of being that’s gonna help achieve that goal.” I said, “Yeah, that’s exactly right. How’s that manipulative?”

0:17:46 Jordan Harbinger: Right.

0:17:47 Michael Port: Because, I said, “Well, my goal is to try to work this out.” I’m completely upfront about my agenda, and I make very specific choices on how I should behave in order to work this out. So, for example, she had said something that I thought was a little bit offensive, but instead of taking issue with that, because it wasn’t gonna help us move forward, I just blow it off. So, the only thing that mattered to me in that situation was working out the problem. And, of course, that’s having an agenda, but it’s not manipulative. And then I saw that we were really on very different pages, and I had to continue to work to try to get us on the same page. But it’s interesting because sometimes we fault people for having agendas, like there’s something wrong with that.

0:18:36 Jordan Harbinger: Right.

0:18:36 Michael Port: But we have them all the time, don’t we?

0:18:38 Jordan Harbinger: We do. Yeah.

0:18:39 Michael Port: I go into the bagels shop, I want a bagel, and I want it fast, and I want cream cheese on it. That’s my agenda.

0:18:44 Jordan Harbinger: Shame on you.

[chuckle]

0:18:46 Jordan Harbinger: For shame.

0:18:47 Michael Port: So, all day long, that’s what we do. So, it’s interesting to me that sometimes people will fault others because they have an agenda, and I wonder if you have a perspective on that because this is part of performance as you choose an objective, and you play a role authentically that allows you to produce that result. And then if we know how to play the right roles in different scenarios, different situations, then we are much more flexible; we can move in and out of different groups comfortably. We’ll be accepted in lots of different places. So, what’s your perspective on that?

0:19:27 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You’re right. The agenda is everywhere, and the agenda itself is not the problem. The agenda only becomes a problem when it’s hidden inside something else, like what we would call a covert contract. For example, you and I are friends, right, and so if I said, “Hey, would you… ” Or you say, “Hey, let me come on the show. I wanna promote my book.” That’s not exactly how it went down; I more or less offered, but let’s say that you asked me, right?

0:19:53 Michael Port: Yeah.

0:19:54 Jordan Harbinger: And I said, “Yeah, sure. No problem.” And I do that because I’m your friend according to… That’s your interpretation of the events, but in my head, I’m going, “All right. So, what’s gonna happen is I’m gonna promote his book,” and then later on I’m gonna say, “Hey, why don’t you promote this other thing that’s totally not in line with your brand?” And you might say, “Well, it’s not really good for me to sell your ‘Get Rich Quick Overnight By Digging For Gold In Your Backyard’ ebook, Jordan.” And I go, “What the hell, man? I helped you with your thing! You don’t follow through on your obligations. We’re not really friends.” And you’re out at left field, you’re shocked, because my agenda wasn’t publicized, and therefore I was actually manipulating you into walking into that covert contract. And that goes…

0:20:40 Michael Port: It sounds like this has happened to you.

0:20:42 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. My “Dig For Gold In Your Backyard” ebook has just gone nowhere because of that strategy.

[chuckle]

0:20:50 Jordan Harbinger: But, it happens all the time in business, and it happens all the time in relationships, too. And one of the most common scenarios that younger guys especially tend to write in with, and women for that matter… Actually, I probably hear more about this from women than I do men. Guy are like, they’re driving the girl to the airport, and they’re being friends with her, and then suddenly out of nowhere, he has too much alcohol or something and he goes, “You’re such a tease, and I thought we were gonna… I’m the greatest guy for you.” And she writes in going, “Oh my God. I thought this guy was my best friend. Now, it turns out he’s got this secret pining over me since my divorce. This is awful. What do I do?” And the answer is never simple because that guy had a covert contract and a hidden agenda, and she didn’t know about either of those, right? By definition, she thought they were friends, and he thought, “If I just keep doing nice things long enough, even though I’m not really this nice guy, she’ll like me and I’ll get what I deserve or want.” And that’s very dangerous, and that doesn’t only happen in intimate relationships.

0:21:52 Jordan Harbinger: It happens in business, like the terrible example that I gave. It happens in families, right? These stories make news when football players’ mothers go, “You owe me a million dollars for raising you!” And everyone is so incredulous that anybody would ever think like that, and yet, then we turn around and pretend to be friends with somebody, or pretend to be in love with somebody, or pretend to wanna do business with somebody so we can get something that we want. And that’s manipulation in the negative sense of the word, not in the generic sense like a sculptor manipulates clay to make a sculpture. That, nobody would argue with, right? And that’s sort of the white hat version of charm, but it’s overshadowed by the dark stuff that we all experience in our lives. Like you experienced with this woman, and she showed her true colours by getting really upset disproportionately so because her covert contract was violated.

0:22:45 Michael Port: It’s very interesting. That’s an interesting term that you use, “covert contract”. I’ve never heard that. I imagine that’s something that you address in your work with your students a lot.

0:22:57 Jordan Harbinger: ‘Cause everybody has them, right?

0:22:58 Michael Port: Yeah.

0:22:58 Jordan Harbinger: “If I just work at this job long enough, they’re gonna see that I’m so great, and I’m totally gonna be promoted,” and then some other guy gets promoted over you and you go, “This place is BS, it’s unfair. They’re all out to get me.” And you might be kind of right, but a lot of times when people write in with problems like that, I say, “So, did you make your desire to be promoted known to your managers?” “Well, no. They should just know. I mean, I’ve been here so long and I do such great work. Well, what the heck?”

0:23:24 Michael Port: Well, one of our boys just had his birthday, and he’s at a new school this year, and the day before his birthday, he was saying to Amy, he said, “I’m really worried because usually people will decorate someone’s locker when it’s their birthday, and I don’t think anybody’s gonna decorate my locker tomorrow.” And at first, Amy was thinking, “Oh, I guess he’s worried about that because he’s new. He doesn’t have a lot of friends yet.” And so she said, “Well, have you told anyone it’s your birthday?” And he said, “Not really.”

[chuckle]

0:24:01 Michael Port: So she said, “Well you gotta let people know that it’s your birthday in order for them to celebrate you.” And then ultimately, he didn’t tell too many people. He was a little bit shy about it. But it’s a similar concept. We often feel very entitled. And he didn’t feel entitled at all. He’s 12-years-old. He just was nervous that he wasn’t gonna be accepted the way that other kids are typically accepted. But, we often do that, don’t we?

0:24:31 Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

0:24:31 Michael Port: We have these expectations that we set. Nobody else knows what they are, and then we feel entitled. And I think man, I think we gotta earn every bit of attention that we get. I think every single day, I’ve gotta earn my place next to Amy. I’ve gotta earn my friendship with you. I mean, this is a very different concept. To me, that’s part of performance. A performer needs to earn their place on a stage. You’re not entitled to be there. So how do you see that kind of entitlement show up when it comes to networking and relationship developing? ‘Cause that’s an area of absolute expertise for you. You’re one of the best connectors that I’ve seen. And, before I let you answer that question, I wanna make sure everybody who’s listening hears this. Jordan is a very unique person for a lot of reasons. He has a very expensive toilet.

[laughter]

0:25:33 Michael Port: That’s just one of the reasons. And I’ll let him tell you more about that later. But, also because Jordan’s very well-known in this industry. Again, as I said, he has one of the most popular podcasts in the world. And he has a very successful business. So his platform is great. And when he worked with us, he was working with other students that were newer to the business, and didn’t have that kind of notoriety, that kind of platform. And I was a little concerned. At the beginning, I said, “Well, how is this gonna work? How is Jordan gonna interact with them? Is it gonna be a little bit uncomfortable? Will he like interacting with them? Will he give them attention?” ‘Cause for us, community and connection is a very big deal. And supporting each other is a very big deal. But dude, you were one of the crew. There was never one second were you held anything over anybody. You connected with every single person, even people I wouldn’t think necessarily you would relate to that much. You took the time to connect with everybody. So that’s a long little soapbox about one of the reasons I like you, one of the reasons I think you’re great. But talk to me about that. Talk to me about performance in networking and connecting with others.

0:27:00 Jordan Harbinger: Alright, so I’m gonna back up a little bit and start with how I learned that lesson, because I didn’t… As many people who’ve known me for a really long time, my own mom might even be surprised by that story at some level, when I was… I took martial arts when I was kid, and I took it all the way to my teenage years and I got black belts and stuff. And I started to take this full contact stuff when I was about 20 years old. That was before it was even called MMA, it was called something in Japanese that nobody’s gonna understand. And it didn’t have as many rules as it does now. And I was working with a bunch of ex-cons and guys who were gonna fight for money, which is not what a lot of white collar kids were doing in my neck of the woods. And I would wear my same uniform, with the black belt and all the patches on it and stuff like that, because it was a similar school, and the teachers were from some of the old schools that I trained at. And one day, everybody came in in their different uniforms and I said, “I wanna get one just like everybody else.”

0:28:01 Jordan Harbinger: And they said, “Well, you gotta get batteries for the one you’re wearing now,” because it had all these different patches and colours on it. And I said, alright, these guys are making fun of me because they’re all tougher than me, and that’s what matters in this particular school of fighting. It doesn’t matter that I know all the forms and all the little Japanese terms for everything. That was kind of kid stuff according to them. So I showed up the next day in a brand new uniform that had nothing on it, no white belt, and the teacher said, “What the hell are you doing?” And then I said, “Look, if I’m gonna be just like everybody else, I can’t hold on to those old honours because it doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in the other dojo.” And I’m not a heavy martial arts guys now, but that changed everything, the way everybody related to me. I went from the guy who was ostracised in the corner, who clearly everybody sort of implied entitlement or arrogance, sort of attributed that to me, and I became one of the guys.

0:28:58 Jordan Harbinger: And that was a huge… I didn’t do it on purpose to achieve that. I just felt a little embarrassed, truth be told, wearing that other uniform. And so I realized, “Wait a second, everybody wants you to be accessible, and nobody likes to feel like somebody else is above them. And it triggers other people’s insecurities, or it makes people feel bad.” And I remember the first day of the class, when I was taking your course, somebody near me had said, “Wow, I’ve heard of your podcast. I’m surprised to see you here.” And it made me feel a little bad because I translated that in my own head to, “Oh, you don’t need this like the rest of us schmoes,” or something like that. And I don’t want people to feel like that around me. And it couldn’t have been further from the truth. I was there to learn like anybody else. And that’s much more of an effective way to learn, in my opinion, than it is to try to hold on to something that makes your ego feel good. And that’s a tough lesson to learn. You can either feel good and superior and above everybody else, or you can learn fast.

0:29:58 Jordan Harbinger: And if you’re paying the the rates that you charge, which are not bargain-basement prices, but worth every penny, I’ll tell you, if you’re paying that kind of money, do I really wanna pay that just so I can get pats on the back from people that I meet in the class? The answer is no. And so, it’s much more… It’s a much more worthy pursuit, in fact, and it makes other people feel good around you. And you develop real relationships and friendships with those people if you decide that you don’t have to be the cool guy in the room, or whatever sort of thing is going on in your own head.

0:30:30 Jordan Harbinger: And frankly, it’s never been worth it to be that guy. I’ve tried that before in the past when I was younger like, “Oh, look at my business and look at my this and that, or look at my Wall Street job.” And the truth is, the people who are your colleagues don’t care ’cause they have the same thing. The people that are doing better than you don’t care because they’ve been there, and they know that it’s not all that. And the people that are trying to get where you are, just think you are you’re kind of a “D-bag” and rubbing it in their face. There’s literally no upside to being that guy.

0:31:00 Michael Port: Do you think, Jordan, that your extensive travel and learning of languages helped you be make connections to people in ways that you might not otherwise have? Because different cultures have different social norms, and charm in America may not work in the way that you would hope it would in China. And I know you just took a trip to China. So, do you think that the exposure that you had to so many different cultures help you become better at connecting with others and seeing people as individuals?

0:31:45 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I think there’s something to that, because I started travelling when I was about 17, and I did a year in Germany, and it wasn’t… It was the former East Germany. So I thought, “I’m gonna go over here and everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, cool. There’s this American here,’ and I’m gonna be so special, and everyone is gonna like me.” And the truth was, they were like, “Oh, yeah. You’re interesting because you’re foreign, but we don’t really care,” because East Germany at that point was a little bit xenophobic. They were more experienced with Russians and Russian propaganda, and East German propaganda is what they’ve grown up with.

0:32:16 Jordan Harbinger: So, they weren’t super fans of the United States, and that made me kind of a cool, unique person in terms of like, what do you call, like a novelty, superficially for a few months, and then nobody cared anymore. And that was a tough lesson for me, and I had to then make real friends and become a real person. And that was a huge challenge. I couldn’t rest on being the new, different, cool guy or whatever I had going on to my head anymore.

0:32:43 Jordan Harbinger: And then after that, I moved to Ukraine, and people really didn’t love United States there; same thing when I moved to Mexico. I worked in Panama. There were varying levels of “We like or don’t like Americans.” I mean, even on the building where I worked in Panama, someone had spray painted “Yankee, go home.” And it wasn’t for me, it was for a lot of other Americans working there, but I couldn’t help but notice that every time I walked in. I don’t know they didn’t get rid of that in the six months that I worked there, but…

[chuckle]

0:33:11 Michael Port: And that reminds me when I went to college, I was a man-child, so I was full grown at 13. I looked like I was 40 when I was 18. Someone wrote an arc on my door, he was just sure that I was a cop pretending to be a kid.

[laughter]

0:33:25 Michael Port: And there’s a theme that I hear that’s going through your language. It’s that we often make assumptions about other people based on, sometimes, misinformed preconceived notions. And people will do that about us, and then we need to overcome those, and then we will also do that about others. And, of course, as a result, then we might not see who that person really is. And if we don’t have ways of helping people overcome their prejudices of us, or preconceived notions of us, then we are not able to connect as well. This seems to be something that you really focus on. Is it intentional?

0:34:13 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it is. I just did a video about this exact same thing actually, and I posted it to my list, and on Facebook, and on the AOC blog, because it’s very common.

0:34:23 Michael Port: If people wanna see that, they can go to…

0:34:24 Jordan Harbinger: It’s everywhere.

0:34:25 Michael Port: Where can they go?

0:34:26 Jordan Harbinger: Theartofcharm.com/blog. It’s there, it’s called… Oh, man, now I don’t know it, but I’ll have somebody… I’ll look at it right now, actually. You have a…

0:34:35 Michael Port: Is it “The Power of Non-Verbal Communication and Emotional Filters?”

0:34:37 Jordan Harbinger: It may be that… It’s “Translating Non-Verbal Communication Feedback”, is what it’s called, “Translating Non-verbal Communication Feedback”.

0:34:43 Michael Port: I was just trying to demonstrate that I did my research.

0:34:46 Jordan Harbinger: Yes, well done. Well done.

0:34:49 Michael Port: When you think about that, was that a good hosting to do?

0:34:51 Jordan Harbinger: It was. That was really good hosting. A lot of people won’t do that. And we translate that feedback based on our own preconceived notions. Everything that you experience goes through your own emotional filters before it gets to you logical brain. So, you make these emotional decisions, and an example of this is, when I lived in Israel, there was this… This guy was so mean to me for no reason. This other kid in my program where I was learning Hebrew, which I don’t speak anymore at all. This kid was such a jerk to me, and I just didn’t get it. And one day, we were stuffed in some sort of assigned sitting and he was next to me, and he goes, “So, what frat are you in?” And I was like, “I’m not. I don’t like that stuff. It’s kinda those full of jerks, and I’m not really interested in that.” And he goes, “Oh, really?” And I said, “Yeah, I’m not really into that.”

0:35:41 Jordan Harbinger: And I started talking with him about things that I did like and things that he did like. And he realized that I wasn’t this stereotypical kid who is mean to him in school, which apparently he thought I was before. And we became a little bit more civil because of that, a little bit more friendly because of that, because I don’t know what it was, the way that I looked or dressed or act or talked or whatever, nobody else thought that. But it pushed some button in his mind that said, “Oh, this guy is the enemy and I’ve gotta take out my anger on him.” And this happens a lot, that’s why we have things like racism, for example, is very much a product of this type of thing, and you see a lot of really complex interactions where people will attribute a quality to somebody else that isn’t really there based on their own insecurity.

0:36:27 Jordan Harbinger: So I focus on that a lot because it’s very human nature to do that. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person if you make judgements based on appearance, it’s totally normal. The problem is when those judgements are erroneous and they don’t serve you well. And we might even do this in sort of a micro way in our own relationships.

0:36:45 Jordan Harbinger: You’re having dinner with your significant other, and she suddenly gets really quiet, and you go, “Oh, man, she’s mad at me. What did I do wrong? Let me think about the things I did today. Something’s wrong here.” Maybe if she’s quiet for a whole week, you think your relationship is in trouble. Instead of going, “Okay, wait a minute. What’s happening in their life that might be responsible for this?” We’re like children, where anything that happens is somehow our fault and we see this in children for real when parents get divorced and things like that. They often blame themselves because they don’t realize that external factors are the reason for most people’s actions. But that same mechanism in a child’s brain is still present when we’re adults, we just claim to know better even though our emotions don’t.

0:37:31 Michael Port: One of the tenants of improvisation is the concept of saying “yes and”, rather than saying no. If you and I are doing an improv scene, and you walk in and say, “Oh, my god, I’m in so much pain, I just broke my leg.” And I say, “Nah, I don’t think you did.” It’s over, it’s done. But if I said, “Yeah, that’s terrible, but your hair looks great,” I give you somewhere to go. I move the action forward. So, how do you say “yes and”? So how do you look at opportunities and consider them rather than having no as a default response? And I ask this because the more successful you get, the busier you get, the more requests you get, the more demands you have, and the more people are pulling at your sleeve. So, what starts to happen as you get this knee jerk reaction just to say no, no, no, no? But how do you continue to say yes? So that’s the number one question, and then the second follow-up to that would be, is there a time in your life where you wish you said yes to some kind of opportunity that might have given you a bigger platform and move you forward in some way, but instead you said no and you regret it?

0:38:51 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, those are really good questions, actually. I started saying no a while ago, and I did that because I read it in some business book or something where it’s like, “Your default should be no because your time is precious and blah, blah, blah,” and it worked really well for awhile until I realized that the effect it was having on other people was that it was giving them a negative impression of me that we were self-important and things like that. So a lot of it had to do with the way that I was saying no. So the way that I say no now is almost the same way that I say yes, where I say, “All right, let’s do this,” but I make other people do the work. So if somebody says, “I wanna work for you, I’ve got these ideas,” I’ll tell them to put it into play and I’ll have them execute it, and I’ll have them work the same thing, work the idea and let them prove the efficacy of their idea. I do this inside business and I do this with friends as well. I let people… New people in groups come along and hang out at events and I’ll give people a chance even to the point where a lot of my friends go, “You’re letting all these weird people hang out, what’s the deal?” And we’ve made some of our best friends that way.

0:40:06 Michael Port: “You’re letting that guy, Michael Port, hang out with you. What’s… ”

0:40:08 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. “What is the deal with that guy?”

0:40:09 Michael Port: “What’s the deal with that? What’s up with that?”

0:40:11 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It’s like, “Is that the guy from Sex and the City? What does this guy do?”

0:40:16 Michael Port: “He shaves his head. There’s something wrong with him.”

0:40:18 Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. But that’s another reason that I’ve made on some of the friends that I have, because for one thing, I rely on other people saying yes to doing that. I mean, we met because I think John Corcoran invited me to a dinner. He’s the ultimate “yes and” guy. He invited me to a dinner with you, hoping that I wasn’t gonna embarrass him, probably.

[chuckle]

0:40:41 Jordan Harbinger: And I’m not sure of what the outcome of that was other than you liked me enough to invite me to Florida, so that was cool.

0:40:48 Michael Port: No, yeah, I thought you were great. There are certain people that are “yes” people. John Corcoran is one of those people. He finds ways to bring people together. That’s saying yes to lots of different people, and not worrying about whether or not they’re gonna get along and saying, “They’re adults, I’ll let them connect. If they connect, great; if they don’t, they don’t. It’s not my fault if they don’t.”

0:41:09 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I think the answer to your second question is a little tougher because 20/20 hindsight, I kind of look at a lot of our past decisions that have ended negatively and I go, “Oh, man, I wish I’d said no to that,” but I think that’s kind of maybe my nature, or maybe human nature. There’s a lot of other areas that I wish I had said yes to. For example, when I first started the podcast with AJ, we got in touch with these marketers and they were like, “Oh, we do this thing called affiliate marketing.” Now, remember, this is 2005, 2006, so this “affiliate marketer” was telling us how it worked. “You need to collect emails on your website and you can send people something every week and just write a newsletter or something and people will be active on your email list.” And I thought that’s stupid. I don’t wanna do that. It sounds like a lot of work. This is a hobby, it’s not a business. I’m not really gonna bother with this.

0:42:00 Jordan Harbinger: And he told me over and over again, “Do it, do it. You should do it. You should try it. You don’t even have to mail every week. You can do it every other week. You can just send them one thing. You can just send them the podcast link that you’re already creating, anything.” And I said, “No,” ’cause it seemed like a lot of extra work. And now, looking back, this business would have been in a totally different place had we started actually actively email marketing since 2006, instead of when we did start it, which I wanna say was like 2010 or 2011. Some way, way later, if we’d started that back in the day, I can almost guarantee you, we’d be two or three times the size we are now.

0:42:37 Michael Port: You wouldn’t be talking to me right now. That’s what it is.

0:42:39 Jordan Harbinger: We’d be having this conversation and I’m like…

0:42:40 Michael Port: You’d be on Fiji, on your island in Fiji, just chilling, sipping a Mai Tai, hanging out.

0:42:46 Jordan Harbinger: Maybe. Yeah, there is a good chance that we’d be having this conversation on one of our boats.

0:42:50 Michael Port: That’s right. I’m actually waiting for some information right now because I maybe getting a new boat, and…

0:42:57 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that’s what you need. I was wondering when you were gonna get another boat.

0:43:00 Michael Port: I know. And you… This summer, you’re coming out. You know what I’m gonna do this summer. I’m gonna have a little get together for couples that work together.

0:43:09 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that sounds great.

0:43:11 Michael Port: Isn’t that cool? ‘Cause there’s a whole group of us that have our partners in our business with us. And there’s a certain lifestyle that you live, when you work with your partner.

0:43:22 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, tell me about it.

[laughter]

0:43:23 Jordan Harbinger: I mean, sometimes it’s great. Usually, it’s great, I should say.

0:43:27 Michael Port: It’s fantastic. Is she sitting right there?

0:43:29 Jordan Harbinger: No, she’s not. I got my studio. She knows she’s not allowed to come in when I’m recording. And I often come in here when I’m not recording. [laughter]

0:43:35 Michael Port: I gotcha, you just put the little recording light on?

0:43:37 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah, it’s on. It’s on. “Are you still recording? It’s really late.” “Yep, I’m definitely not taking a nap.”

0:43:42 Michael Port: Oh, man, that’s really funny. Okay, so when you’re networking, it can be a little bit anxiety-provoking because you’re constantly trying to think of what to say. And maybe you think, “I’m not really good at small talk. I don’t have any questions to ask, I don’t know what to do,” is what goes through people’s minds sometimes. But staying in the moment is so incredibly important, because if you’re thinking about what just happened like, “I just screwed up, I shouldn’t have said that thing,” then you can’t stay present and respond to what’s actually happened. And then the same thing is true if you’re thinking about what you’re gonna say, because then you’re not present in the moment responding to what’s actually occurring. So do you have any advice for people on how to stay in the moment when they are, say, at networking events or parties, dinner parties where they’re meeting new people?

0:44:31 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It’s really tough to do when you’re trying to micromanage a lot of different things like you said. It’s not just reactive where people go, “Oh man, I shouldn’t have said that. That was so stupid.” That’s very common, and I’m guilty of that occasionally myself, especially in the past before I learned how to manage it. But I have seen it in sort of a general way, a more general way when people are first deciding, “Alright, I’ve gotta go meet people. I’ve gotta go network. I’ve gotta expand my reach.” They’ll try to turn on a persona when they leave the house. And it can be really tricky to do because they wanna stand up straight, and smile, and look people in the eye, and shake hands, and be funny, and charming all while trying to pay attention to what other people are saying, so they can be of interest or help those people out. And it’s really tough to do that. There’s a lot of work involved in multitasking that much.

0:45:29 Jordan Harbinger: So, what we teach at AOC, just the bare bones beginning stuff is some body language techniques, and things like that so that you don’t have to think about the way that you’re physically presenting yourself when you go out, or when you’re networking at all. And then also, I think a lot of people, what they do is they go, “I’ve gotta be interesting. I’ve gotta scream for what I want.” And the real strength in networking or relationship development isn’t that, it’s looking for ways to help other people. Speaking of a guy like John Corcoran, he will meet a bunch of people, and he will look inside his network, and see who he can plug in together. I often get, and I’m sure you do too, I often get emails from him that say, “Hey, I was just hanging out with this guy, and it seems like he would be a great fit for your show.” And for you, it’s probably for, Book Yourself Solid or something like that. And I’ll say, “Sure, make that introduction,” or, “Actually, I already know that guy,” or, “Oh, my gosh. No, not that guy again.” I mean, that happens rarely, but it happens.

0:46:29 Michael Port: Yeah, I know. I mean, that’s exactly right. And it’s interesting because John… This program is gonna become about John, so let’s… I’m gonna title it…

0:46:36 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, this is his real plan. This is his agenda, to make everyone talk about him.

0:46:39 Michael Port: That’s right. He shot you an email. He’s like, “Hey listen, dude. When you go on Port’s show, can you just talk about me?” [laughter]

0:46:44 Michael Port: We’ll title it like, “All About John Corcoran.”

0:46:47 Jordan Harbinger: John Corcoran, yeah.

0:46:48 Michael Port: But John is a little bit like Dorie Clark, actually. They came on the scene, and within a year and a half, they knew everyone.

0:46:56 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, everyone, everybody.

0:46:57 Michael Port: I literally never have seen anyone in our industry become connected as fast as the two of them. And it’s in large part because they do that.

0:47:09 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that’s true. It’s probably the number one with a bullet reason. The other reason is they actually do it, speaking of agendas, without any kind of expectation of anything in return. Dorie will call me and say, “Hey, I’m in your neighborhood. Do you wanna have dinner?” She doesn’t do that because she wants me to promote her next book. She does it because we’re actually friends. We don’t even really talk that much about business when we hang out. Sometimes we do, probably, but it doesn’t feel that way. Same thing with you and same thing with John. John’s like, “Hey, I’m going to visit my in-laws, they’re in your neck of the woods. You wanna grab some Mexican food?” It’s not, “Hey, let’s talk about my affiliate program over lunch.” And the difference is, it’s genuinely like that. I could probably call John Corcoran and say, “I’m stuck at the airport. Can you pick me up?”, and he wouldn’t go, “Great. We can talk about my affiliate program on the way from the airport.” He would be just like, “Yeah, I’ll do this.”

0:48:01 Jordan Harbinger: This is something that’s gonna happen, and I think putting friendships and relationships over immediate business needs is very important. And I wanna be really clear here. I still do business with a lot of my friends like that. I just don’t value the business over the relationship itself, because over the long-term, your business will be better served by creating better and stronger relationships. The only people who look at these sort of transactional relationships are looking for short-term gains only, and that limits their ability to grow in their business itself. And of course, it makes them a huge pain to deal with.

0:48:42 Michael Port: Yeah, that’s true. And Dorie, John, or any of us, we’re developing these relationships with people that are in our industry, and are relevant professionally to the kind of things that we wanna do. So, when we are developing the relationships, if we care more about people than things, we develop real friendships with people that we really resonate with, and we really are curious about. And, at the same time, we’re not just randomly picking people to do that kind of relationship development with. So, we all know that it’s better for us to be friends with each other than some dude who works somewhere that has nothing to do with anything that we wanna do professionally. So, there’s that element, too, and we’re all aware of that. But it’s very different than, “Oh, I’m gonna be friends with Jordan, because if I’m friends with him, then he’ll bring me on the show.”

0:49:47 Jordan Harbinger: Yes, exactly. And I knew that was a pause, and I jumped in anyway, and it’s a habit.

[laughter]

0:49:50 Jordan Harbinger: I think people… Leave that in when you edit, because I think people should catch that. That was a mistake that I made, that I knew I was making right when I was doing it, and it’s because of the difference in our speech patterns. [chuckle] It’s kinda funny, it illustrates what we talked about before. I think you’re right, and I think a lot of people who are critics are gonna go, “Wait, but that’s the inauthenticity peeking through. You’re picking your friends, based on who you might be able to do business with at some point.” And I wanna say, “Look, that’s not completely absent, but it’s also not completely true. I’m sure both of us have friends that have nothing to do with our business, and never will, but all other things being equal, it makes way more sense to speak to people who are doing something in an industry or a tangential industry, not just because we may at some point do business together, but because… We have more in common with those people.

0:50:41 Michael Port: That’s exactly right. That’s the other thing is that, one of the things that was interesting about Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, “The Tipping Point”, among many interesting things, was that they found that people become friends more because they have a lot in common with each other, interests than similarities in personality. So, I’ve got a whole bunch of friends that I boat with, and you would not put us together outside of boating. You wouldn’t say, “Oh yeah, yeah, Harry and Donna, and Michael and Amy are really good friends.” You just wouldn’t see it. But we’re really close because we share this interest, and then we develop a relationship. We have different views and values on a lot of things, but the interests really make a difference, and that’s initially what people connect around. And then if you have fun with each other [chuckle], that helps, too.

0:51:29 Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

0:51:30 Michael Port: But it’s the interests that are important.

0:51:31 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it happens a lot, because I thought about this too, and I thought, “Am I just choosing friends based on people I’d do business with?” And I realized, “Wait a minute, no.” Because even my personal friends that I don’t work with, and never do, were still really similar. They’re finance guys, or they travel a lot, or they have some other common interest that’s really similar to what I’m doing, even in the business angle.

0:51:54 Jordan Harbinger: I’ve got a buddy who does something that, business-wise, will never intersect with The Art of Charm ever, in a million of years, and we’re really good friend because we just have that entrepreneurial mindset, and that goes a long way. But yeah, I would say to people, “Be careful of labelling yourself as inauthentic, and especially others,” because there’s sort of a wide swathe of labels that people give themselves and others, that are unhealthy, and there’s a lot of things that people do to sort of… Again, attributing values to… Or I guess personality traits to others that are not necessarily accurate, and they’re only based on your own insecurities. So I say, I think as a practical takeaway, whenever we go, “Well, look at that guy, he’s doing this,” we should take a good look at ourselves, and think, “Why does that bother me?” And, “Is that necessarily true, or is that an assumption based on my own filters? And how have those filters been serving me?” And I know that sounds a little woo-woo, or esoteric, but it doesn’t have to be, because I know every time I look at somebody and make a judgement, it often has to do with something that I feel bad about, or that I think I need to work on. And very rarely, it has anything to do with them. Simply because I don’t know them that well, if at all.

0:53:08 Michael Port: So, let me ask you this. In closing, two questions. You’re ready?

0:53:13 Jordan Harbinger: I’m ready.

0:53:14 Michael Port: Alright, number one, what do you think makes a great guest on a podcast, and do those qualities also… Are those qualities also what make them successful professionally, or could they be two different things? That’s the first question. And then when you’re done with that, I’ll give you the second question.

0:53:32 Jordan Harbinger: Okay, yeah, they can be two different things. I know a lot of people that are successful professionally that would be terrible guests on the show. And I screen them all the time. Authors are a classic example. No offence, you’re obviously the exception. But I’ve talked to a lot of really popular authors, whose writing is simply brilliant, but when it comes to articulating that in a radio format, it is a nightmare, and it is virtually impossible for some of them to do.

0:54:00 Michael Port: Hence, the need for public speaking training.

0:54:02 Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, oh yeah, sure. I mean, if they would take the course that you offer, I think they would be great. And when I look at things like media training, usually they give media training to people who need polishing and tweaking, they don’t give media training to somebody who’s totally never gonna make it on camera or on the radio. And I think that looking at somebody who’s a good performer, there’s a lot you can do with that. And I’m not just talking about television and radio, performance skill sets translate through sales skill sets. They have a lot in common with people who are successful professionally. I just think that there’s… There are definitely large [0:54:38] ____ swaths of people, large groups of people who are not suited to performance that are really good at computer programming and writing, for example.

0:54:48 Michael Port: So what are some of the good qualities that make a good guest? What are some of your favorite guests? What are… How do they behave on the show?

0:54:57 Jordan Harbinger: They know their content back and forth, and they’re not trying to wait until their next opportunity to give a sound byte. For example, somebody like Gary Vaynerchuk, he’s been on a lot of different shows and it’s easy for him to slip into autopilot mode when he’s talking. But if you can break him out of autopilot, which we did in our episode that we did with him, you hear that he knows what he’s talking about so well that it still flows as if he had not rehearsed it in a canned sense, but that he knows it well enough to present and think on his feet. And that’s very important, because I like to poke holes in things and ask questions about things that are not necessarily something that they think about everyday. I want the quest to stop and go, “Huh, let me think about that for a second. I think it’s like this,” and then deliver the answer, not just a clever sound byte that them and their PR person thought up before they started doing their PR tour.

0:55:54 Jordan Harbinger: So, being able to think on your feet is a great attribute, and that comes from knowing your content so well back and forth, that you can deliver it. And the other element is playfulness, and that also comes from comfort and practice, because someone who’s not playful and is just trying to get everything out, they might know their content really well, but they might be nervous in the presentation thereof, and that’s not as good as somebody who can come on and shoot the (bleep)… Can I say that or…

[laughter]

0:56:25 Michael Port: It’s okay.

0:56:26 Jordan Harbinger: It’s not as good as someone who can come on and shoot the breeze and make it light-hearted and fun. Because that’s something people want to listen to, even if somebody’s an expert, the number one expert in their area on a certain subject, if it’s too heavy and not fun and not playful, there is a certain element of the audience that’s just not going to want to tune in.

0:56:46 Michael Port: And what about me, as a host? How did I do? That’s my second question. ‘Cause you know, the first 45 episodes of Steal the Show was just me, and I’ve been doing that kind of thing for a long time, and I’ve been a guest forever on shows and the radio and TV. But hosting, it’s new and it’s different. So how am I doing so far?

0:57:08 Jordan Harbinger: You’re doing really well so far, and I’ll tell you why. The thing that I’ve noticed is not only are you prepared… And part of this, I’m having trouble deciding if you’re doing really well because I already know you, or if you would do this while it’s somebody you didn’t know at all. I’m not sure what the answer to that is, and I’ve been thinking about it during this conversation ’cause I’m like, “Okay, you’re asking difficult questions that are things you know I know the answer to, but are not the same thing that I talk about all the time on my own show or in other appearances. But do you know that because you’ve done so much homework and you’ve researched everything, and you’ve listened to a bunch of them, or do you know it because I’ve hung out with you so much that you already know me?”

0:57:50 Michael Port: Let’s go with the former.

0:57:51 Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

0:57:51 Michael Port: Let’s just go with the former.

0:57:52 Jordan Harbinger: That sounds good.

0:57:53 Michael Port: Well, we’ll see, my audience will be the ones who decide, ultimately. I just did an interview, I haven’t published it yet, with the woman who was gonna teach the voice work at the event in February.

0:58:09 Jordan Harbinger: Oh good, I need that.

0:58:09 Michael Port: We’re bringing a lot of new teachers into it. And she was Amy’s voice teacher at Yale. And I had never met her before, so it was totally new; first time I ever talked to her. And we’ll see if the same experience holds out. But it’s, I think easier to be a guest than a host.

0:58:28 Jordan Harbinger: It is. It’s much easier, and I don’t think people appreciate that as much until they try to host themselves. And even then when you’re first starting, you think, “This is easy,” and… And by the way, Amy’s voice teacher is coming… Last time, you had one of your teachers come to the HPS event, he took his pants off on stage. I just wanna highlight that for everyone.

[laughter]

0:58:46 Michael Port: He’s coming again.

0:58:48 Jordan Harbinger: Oh good, something to look forward to.

0:58:49 Michael Port: And we’re selling sponsorship for his underwear, so we’re trying to get Calvin Klein… We’ll see who’s going to pick that up.

0:58:57 Jordan Harbinger: You can get MeUndies to do it, they’re pretty good about that stuff.

0:59:00 Michael Port: MeUndies, okay, that’s my next call today.

0:59:03 Jordan Harbinger: Yep.

0:59:04 Michael Port: I thought you were going to say your… I thought you’re talking about your undies. I said, “What?”

0:59:07 Jordan Harbinger: Oh no. Yeah, no, that’s a little creepy-sounding. No, it’s a company that sponsors Art of Charm, and they’re… They’re funny, and they… Hey, it’s a quality product. If you’re going to take your pants off on stage, hopefully what’s underneath is high quality and comforty, and wicks away the moisture that will arise from being stared at by 1,000 people.

[laughter]

0:59:26 Michael Port: And on that note, Jordan Harbinger, thank you so much. Of course, Artofcharm.com/blog, it has so much content, so much information. You’d be out of your mind not to subscribe to Art of Charm on iTunes. I listen to it. One of, I think, honestly, and not because Jordan’s my friend, Jordan, he’ll be the first to tell you that I’ll… If he did something that I thought was crap, I would tell him. I think that it is one of the best shows on, really on any topic, and one of the reasons is because Jordan puts so much effort into the show. He prepares for these shows in a way that I rarely see people prepare. So that is definitely something you need to listen to. And, of course, if you… There’s a lot of things to do over at The Art of Charm that I think could be helpful to you. And I’d love, Jordan, just if you would, just give them a little bit of an overview of the kind of programs that you offer, because I know you’re doing a number of different things now.

1:00:28 Jordan Harbinger: Sure, yeah. We have an online program called Social Capital that teaches men and women both how to network, develop relationships, connect with others, introduce people to others, to sort of gain… Not necessarily just influencer status, but to enhance their personal relationships, their personal magnetism. And that’s, of course, available at The Art of Charm. And we have our live programs in LA, which are focused on men in general, because we get guys to open up quite a bit, which can be a little bit scary for a lot of folks. And those are live, week-long programs in LA, that are residential, where you live with the coaches and the other students. And it’s a lot of fun. We’ve had guys in there that are 21, and we’ve had guys in there that are 68. And it’s a really… You can imagine what that kind of mix looks like [chuckle] in person.

1:01:17 Michael Port: And those are events that sell o
always.

1:01:19 Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah, we’re sold out five, six months in advance, generally. And we run them every week.

1:01:23 Michael Port: Wow. Hey, buddy, you’re the best, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here.

1:01:27 Jordan Harbinger: Thanks for the opportunity. Hey, you know what we didn’t explain?

1:01:31 Michael Port: What’s that?

1:01:32 Jordan Harbinger: The toilet thing.

1:01:33 Michael Port: I know, we didn’t. We didn’t do the toilet thing.

[chuckle]

1:01:35 Jordan Harbinger: People are gonna be like, “What was the comment about an expensive toilet? That was so weird.”

1:01:38 Michael Port: Okay, you know what I’ll do? Let’s do a part two, and we’ll just do the toilet thing.

1:01:41 Jordan Harbinger: There you go.

1:01:42 Michael Port: And, everybody, I love you, and not in a weird way, but I do. I love you for being big thinkers, for giving me the opportunity to be of service to you. I never take it for granted, and I appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next time. Bye.