10. Jordan Harbinger,
"The larry king of podcasting"
Eric: Hey there, everybody. I'm Eric Mueller, and I am excited to welcome you back to The Eric Mueller Show. I cannot wait for you to hear from our interview guest this time around. Jordan Harbinger is a Wall Street lawyer turned interview talk show host. He has an approachable style and a knack for securing high-profile guests.
As a communications, social dynamics and networking expert, he has hosted Kobe Bryant, Mark Cuban, Matthew McConaughey, Dennis Rodman, TI Harris, Ray Dalio and Tony Hawk to name a few. His show, The Jordan Harbinger Show was selected as part of Apple’s “Best of 2018.”
On the Jordan Harbinger Show, Jordan deconstructs the playbooks of the most successful people on Earth and shares their strategies, perspectives and practical insights with the rest of us. He has hosted a top 50 iTunes podcast for over 14 years and receives over 11 million downloads per month making The Jordan Harbinger Show [00:01:00] one of the most popular podcasts in the world.
Get ready to learn from one of the best podcasters to ever rock the mic. Let's go to the interview.
[EDM music begins playing and then fades-out]
Jordan: Yo!
Eric: Jordan!
Jordan: How's it going?
Eric: Good, man. Welcome to The Eric Mueller show.
Jordan: Thanks. How's that closet? How's that, you know acoustics.
Eric: Yeah, man. I mean welcome to The Eric Mueller show Studio, you know closet central.
Jordan: I don't need these man. I don’t want to make you look bad. Take these down.
Eric: I gotta get a new web cam, I mean the Mac FaceTime camera really isn't good. I mean obviously I don't have.
Jordan: Yeah, it's not the Mac FaceTime camera. It's like it's just, it's so small that it can’t take in light, you know and then when you're in a closet, yeah, there's no light. Yeah, you know, [00:02:00] yeah, but if you had like a DSLR, it would probably look fine because you have a lens that’s so big, it would you know take in a lot more light.
Eric: For real. Yeah. Yeah, you know starting from humble beginnings, starting you know in the closet studio here in Iowa.
Jordan: Well, you know, you got to start somewhere. I was in a basement wasn't even my basement. I had to had to borrow a basement to start my show.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah, and I mean you being the host of The Jordan Harbinger Show. So, you know first and foremost. Thank you for being on my podcast, appreciate that. Yeah, but man 11 million downloads per month, an award of Best Apple Podcasts in 2018. I mean, wow! How did you build such a strong listenership of your show Jordan?
Jordan: You know, it actually comes down to this is going to sound so not brilliant. This is going to sound so pedestrian that it's almost going to sound insulting and cliche but going to try anyway.
So I when I first started podcasting I was thinking [00:03:00] what do I want from people? I want free shit. That’s what I was thinking. I want free books, I want free coaching, whatever and I started that way and it was okay, it was 2006, it worked and then as I started to get more involved in podcasting, I started to follow my own interests, but I was thinking like, what would I want to hear?
And now I only think about what's good for the audience basically. Like I'm not trying to create for everyone else. I'm still creating for myself. Like I still create things that I'm interested in. I'm having a conversation for myself in a lot of ways, but every single minute that I'm recording something, I'm pretty much thinking like who's listening to this? What do they want? What do they care about? And I don't think about myself at all.
And so that makes a huge difference because if you look at a lot of these clown ass suckers on podcasts, right? Like if I look at all these like, I’m gonna teach you how to make millions of dollars in real estate. Okay, that sounds like it's about the audience but it's really about that fake [00:04:00] ass guru trying to make money online
Eric: Sure.
Jordan: So that stuff doesn't have legs. You know, it doesn't keep you listening for 5-10 years. It keeps you listening for like five or ten weeks until you're like, oh well that didn't work for me. So now I'm on to the next scammer who's talking about dropshipping fidget spinners from Amazon, right? So I'm thinking what's good for the audience. I'm playing such a long game that I don't have to build 10,000 new listeners per week because I can build 10,000 new listeners per year. But I keep it going for 15 years, right?
That's how this is built up. It's been a snowball ball, one flake of snow at a time versus trying to get a rush on it so that I can get my 15 minutes and then monetize it. You know, I'm like, I'm not thinking about that.
EricL Yep. Yep. So kind of boiling that all down what advice would you give someone aiming to build and grow their own podcast?
Jordan: I would say think about what's in it for the audience. Like I'm a lawyer by trade [00:05:00] right, was I mean technically still am but I don't practice. I am in a, as a lawyer you are an advocate for your client, right? So you are like you don't tell the client what you want to do. You tell the client what you would do if you were in his situation and it was you right? You have a fiduciary duty.
So think about your audience like that think about your audience like, alright, do I want this sponsor of whatever vitamins? No because if this is garbage, and I recommend it, I'm going to lose trust. So you turn down the short money to play for the long money. And you do a lot you do that with your guests. Ah this person's really hot right now, but they're kind of an a-hole. Do I have them on the show? No because you're not doing your audience any favors by bringing that person on right?
Eric: Sure.
Jordan: Unless you can turn it into something useful. And so I notice that there's a lot of these guys that burn really hot, but play the long game. Play the longest game possible right? The podcasting [00:06:00] game is a game of inches, you know, you're not trying to be influence overnight leave that shit to YouTube, Instagram. Those people flame out, right? They get big, and they flame out.
The biggest sort of like the guys to our ballin’ out of control that were huge 10 years ago, they're not even around anymore or you never hear about them because they're running shitty events on Zoom or like in a hotel room somewhere. You know for 20 guys like that's what they're doing now. The best successful people, they are slowly building and doing what they know and doing a good job the whole time and not cutting corners.
Eric: Okay, yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. I think to I've learned or you know, what I've read that podcasting is that long game and you're playing that you know, you want to think forward 5-10 years and you're not going to go viral with a podcast as well.
Jordan: There's no such thing as viral. So like yeah the key is to like stop doing that and then a lot of these influencer guys, they're like, oh well, you know you can go on one platform [00:07:00] and build a huge following and then you convert them over here and da-da-da. It’s and that's just not really the case, you know, a lot of these people that's try to build 2 million followers on Instagram. They can't convert them to podcast followers. It just doesn't work. So you have to pick a lane and sort of stay in it unless you're trying to become an influencer which to me is like a joke and not a real thing, not a real value giving job. It's like a vanity project for empty, hollow people that need attention.
Eric: Yeah, so touching on providing value. So you have had success with your podcast and gaining listenership, but you've also had success in monetizing your endeavors. So, you know in your history you formed a coaching business early in your career, which helped people grow their social networks and build relationships. And now with The Jordan Harbinger Show you're bringing in seven figures in revenue yearly.
So kind of piggybacking off of that you're providing value once you know that you're providing value and doing the right thing in that way. How do you then go out and market your business and you know, you have any tactics that have been most successful for you in doing that?
Jordan: Marketing in terms [00:08:00] of like marketing the show or promoting the show. Is that kind of what you're talking about?
Eric: Yeah. Yeah kind of how do you get, you know, if you're gaining traction, how do you continue to get the word out and continue to build you know that 10,000 a year? Whatever number that might be.
Jordan: Yeah. So look I can I'm probably gaining a lot more than that, but I'm just doing you know right now I've got 11-12 million downloads a month. So you can't really gain 10,000 new listeners each year may each month, right? And that's a great pace. I'm probably realistically gaining quote-unquote only 5,000-10,000 new listeners per month, but bear in mind I'm doing paid ads on other shows. I do other people's podcasts all the time as appearances like the one I'm doing now, you know.
Eric: Thank you.
Jordan: Like there's a lot, a lot, a lot of that and that's the quote-unquote grind. Now I enjoy it, and I have a good time doing it, but that's the consistency there and like a lot of these guys that want to start doing stuff and they're like, I'm gonna go on a hundred shows in a month like it doesn't work, you know. That's why I was always saying it's like consistent. [00:09:00] So I have a pretty chill schedule of like going another people shows. I have a pretty rigorous ad buying, aggressive like growth schedule when it comes to ad buying. You know, I've got a good marketing budget each year.
So I'm buying a lot of ads on other shows that convert at like maybe like half a percent, you know, but you buy a few million impressions a month, half a percent of them convert. A certain percentage of those people stick around for a long time and spread the word to others, and you're just building that core fan base over a period of you know, 5 or 10 years.
Eric: Yeah, and with your show, you know, you said 11 million downloads a month and gaining followers a month. It's not surprising to me that you've interviewed some very famous individuals. You know Kobe Bryant, Dennis Rodman, Mark Cuban, Matthew McConaughey. Leah Remini, I saw you just did her that was
Jordan: Yeah.
Eric: That was awesome. You know just walk me through a little bit if you can how do you land such notable guests for your show Jordan?
Jordan: Yeah, you know, that's always a fun kind of question [00:10:00] to answer because there's not really like a cool. I don't really have like a cool trick, you know. I do teach networking, and I have a free course that doesn't require any payment because people ask me this stuff all the time, but honestly the same strategies you got for going after a job, keeping in touch with old friends. Like those are the strategies that I have in that course, and we can plug it later if you want, but I really focus on a few things.
One, relationships. So the networking thing I kind of just mentioned. I'm in touch with a lot of folks that book guests for shows or that are working at a publisher or work at a creative artists agency or an agent of some kind or a manager of comedians, you know. Like all these types of folks. I'm constantly in touch. I helped them out a lot. I introduce them to other people that can help, I pay attention to when new books are coming out. I pay attention to when people have projects coming up like a new TV show and you just pitch, and they say no 40 times and then once, you know one time you pitch and they go yeah, you know what Leah Remini has a new game [00:11:00] show coming out and it she's doing media this week, and you go great, and then you talk about scientology for an hour and you never mention the game show. Whoops.
You know, like come on you mentioned it at the end.
And that's how this works for everyone. Like Matthew McConaughey was doing a tear of podcasts. His people emailed me because I was probably in the top, you know iTunes 100 or whatever at the time and that's how a lot of that happens.
Kobe. This is a classic example of just keeping a lot of irons in the fire. What I was doing at the time was I was booking. I'd read emailed a buddy of mine at an agency like a talent agency. And I said do you have any clients that are a fit? He said yeah. This guy Jim Gaffigan is a comedian, and I said sure let's do it. And then I think like I want to say a few days later. I said, what's the deal? I didn't hear from you about Jim Gaffigan and he said, oh man, I've been trying to figure this out. I wanted to email you, but I haven't been [00:12:00] able to do it. I kind of messed up his schedule, and he doesn't have any availability and I said yeah, that's fine. Don't worry about it. And he goes I know that you already booked a flight to LA. Could I find somebody else for you here? And I said yeah, I mean, I guess. You know, I wasn't super stoked about it because I planned on Jim Gaffigan.
And he goes, how about Kobe Bryant and I went great. Yeah, let's do it. So that was my consolation prize from this other comedian whose name I had to think about in order to remember because I don't watch any of that stuff.
Eric: Yeah!
Jordan: So that worked out and that was because he had made a mistake, he knew I was a good dude, you know, we worked together on a bunch of other projects, and he wanted to fix it. So he offered me Kobe fricken Bryant instead.
Eric: That’s wild.
Jordan: Yeah, like you can't really beat that. Yeah.
Eric: No, not at all and I mean and obviously rest in peace Kobe and, you know wouldn't have thought of how things would turn out but to look back on that and how you've dissected Mamba mentality with him. I mean, that's incredible man. Congratulations on that.
Jordan: Thanks.
Eric: I'm very happy for that.
Jordan: Thank you.
Eric: So kind of the backbone of my show, the backbone of The Eric [00:13:00] Mueller Show what I see it to be. I really want to explore what makes any successful person's inner clock tick so such as yourself a podcaster and CEOs and different types of individuals.
What would you say, Jordan is the one single driving force that keeps your inner clock ticking towards success?
Jordan: Interesting question. I mean, I don't know, I don't really think I'm not like a bigger and better and more kind of guy with a lot of stuff. A lot of my entrepreneur buddies are constantly accusing me of leaving a lot of money on the table because I don't sell products, and I don't sell consulting, and I don't have a mastermind. I don't want one, you know.
I read books and talk to smart people. That's it, and that's a good way to live. I've got a kid now, so I'm designing a lifestyle where I don't work 24/7. I play with my kid every day. Once he's a little older, we can go on a lot of trips and do a lot of fun stuff, and I don't have I'm not going to be the dad that is a conference call in the middle of a Disneyland vacation. You know what I'm saying?
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: I'm just [00:14:00] not going to do that. So I optimize my entire lifestyle around, look I couldn't pay attention in school, like a lot of people, and I thought crap I'm unemployable. Well, it turns out I'm just bad at focusing on things that I don't really want to do and don't see value in. So I don't want to run live events. I don't want to create courses and market them all over the place. I don't want to have masterminds and clients and all that stuff. I just want to read books and talk to smart people, and in order for that to be a good living, I have to get it to a certain level. Where it is now really.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: But it's really easy to go. Well, if you're making X dollars a year doing this, why don't you work 1.5 times as much and make twice as much money because that looks like a good deal right? Work 1.5 times as much, make twice as much money. But then you go wait, make four times as much money, but work twice as much. Yeah, I'll do that. And then suddenly you're at 80-100 hour work weeks, [00:15:00] and you're making 5-10 million dollars a year, and your kid’s like, Yeah I think I have a Dad, he lives in the basement where his office is.
You know, and it's like to what end? So that you can leave your kid with a bunch of money and he's like, you know fatherless-rich guy, like, what the hell are you doing? So for me. I'm like, okay, I've got to rein it in, and it's easy for me to be really good in one lane where I'm like, alright, make the show, make it great, make it big enough so that I can work half as much in five years; make the same amount of money.
The trick is going to be, the trick for me is not getting so intense where I'm working 24/7 on something. So I've really purposely limited myself and what I'm willing to take on and do because I love a challenge and love figuring things out. Burning the midnight oil, but I'm also like is this the life I want to build for myself? Not really, and I know a lot of guys that lived that way and then burned out. And they’re like rich, single, not super healthy, trying to make up for 20 [00:16:00] years of damage, and I'm like not doing that to myself.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah, you touch on your work life balance and you know not wanting to work 24/7, but I'm curious. When you produce like you produce three episodes per week for your show currently.
Jordan: Yeah.
Eric: How much time goes into each one of those episodes? I know I've read you do a lot of research on your guests, you know, maybe 8-12 hours of that. But just in total, can you put a number on how much per episode?
Jordan: Yeah, I would say for me each episode takes some like somewhere between 8 and 10 hours right?
Eric: Okay.
Jordan: For me personally, but then it gets handed off to an editor and then there's a show notes writer, you know, like there's other people working on that stuff that work with me. But for me, each one is like 10 hours. So I'm working let’s say 20 hours a week plus on the interviews. I've got my Friday episode is advice. So that's a little bit of a different time commitment, little bit less.
Eric: Sure.
Jordan: And then the rest of it is like me reading. Well, I guess you'd count those on the 10 hours. Me doing other people's shows, me doing stuff like I answer [00:17:00] probably hour, hour and a half worth of fan mail every day. DMS, all that stuff. I like to go outside and walk and work out. I study Chinese right? So I do a lot of that stuff and it seems like I'm busy, but I was talking to my wife and I was like, she's like, you're so busy, you can't do this. Oh you're so busy, we can't do that, and I was like, you know, I can cut back on a lot of stuff. I just need to fill my day up because I'll go f-ing crazy if I don't you know.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: But I don't have to do all of the things I do every day like I don't have to take Chinese lessons. I don't have to answer fan mail for 90 minutes a day. You know, I don't have to have a workout that day on a given day. Like I can always take time off. I don't have to go on other people’s shows.
So if you cut that stuff out, I've got a pretty reasonable work schedule, you know, and I get a lot of ROI for my time.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, most definitely, and I love how you touch on the you know, I mean just goes back to that balance like you want to you want to produce quality content, but you don't want to over, you [00:18:00] know, encumber yourself, and you want to be able to spend time with your wife and your child, and I appreciate that you've, you know built staff that can help you with those ancillary pieces of your podcast.
Especially, I love your album artwork that you have for each guest and episode. I think that's really unique and cool.
Jordan: Ah, thank you.
Eric: How did you come up with that idea like who creates it for you?
Jordan: So I was posting photos of me with the guests and I was like, these are so stupid. It's like me looking awkward and tired and then there's like a guest and we’re in like some office, you know environment. I'm like this stinks, and I hired a photographer sometimes to do the photos, and they looked great but then COVID comes around and I'm like, what am I going to do like the Zoom snapshot?
And then I noticed that a lot of YouTube shows they do those thumbnails, and as soon as you see the thumbnail, you're like, oh that's the episode of that. That's an episode of that show, right? Because they're all similarly formatted. And I thought well, I can't really do that because I don't, I'm not sitting in front of the person. What if I have an artist just draw the guest? And I saw some pretty dope like [00:19:01] who's the guy? Shepard Fairey, you know that artist?
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: Obey was his thing. He drew the Obama poster. I was like, I want like that kind of thing. So I looked that up, and I found an artist in Lithuania that was like a couple, like relatively affordable, hand-draw, responsive, can do it in like an afternoon.
Eric: Wow!
Jordan: So I was like, all right. I want to do this. Then I can take the head shot of each guest which is never formatted the same, never looks the same, and I can actually create like solid branding across the whole catalog of shows just by having that so I've got branding that works there. The guests are like, whoa, that's cool. I'm going to share this because it's so unique. People start to recognize, oh, this is the guy, this is the show that has the drawing of the guests right? And like they, so it becomes a thing that people can see on social media.
So it actually worked out really well and it makes my website look better than just a bunch of random photos with like different lighting and different clothes and different [00:20:01] everything.
Eric: Yeah. I think it prevents the problem of posting that same stock photo that you might see if this person's been interviewed a ton of times like Matthew McConaughey or something. You don't, you know, you fall by the wayside. It looks generic. I mean not you know, the following like yourself it probably wouldn't, but I do know I appreciate opening your Instgram stories and seeing your post of your episodes and that unique artwork always sticks out to me. So I think that's really awesome that you have that working for you.
So you also touched on you’re a reader, you like reading books that is how you spend some of your free time. Do you have a favorite book or do you have one that's inspired you the most throughout your career and life?
Jordan: I mean, I wouldn't say inspiring me the most per se. I mean, they're kind of like the OG Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People that has some advice that I wish more people practice generally, but you know, there's a lot of, books are always of course about different things.
So like the book that I use in my inner personal life. Let's say it's Dale Carnegie or like something along those lines. It's going to be different than a book that I use in business mostly or that I refer to most of the time in business. So I mean it sort of depends. [00:21:01] I don't have like a general book that I recommend to everyone. That's kind of like when people say, what's the best food? You're like, well, what do you mean? Like my favorite? Something that I think you'll enjoy? What do you mean like or what's the coolest art or like the best art? It doesn't make sense like you can't really ask that question right? So it sort of depends on context.
I always recommend Extreme Ownership from Jocko Willink because I noticed that a lot of people make excuses, and I worked with business partners in the past and all they did was just make excuses and blame people, and as soon as I read that book and I stopped doing it, I actually separated from those business partners and was like, okay and now I take responsibility for everything in the business.
And in three years, I built The Jordan Harbinger Show to what took us previously 11 years in the past business. So that to me is the power of:
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Working with people that don't blame other people and just look for excuses and
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Just taking full responsibility [00:22:01] yourself for what happens.
Eric: Yeah, and just touching a little bit for the audience that you know, maybe is not as akin to your career previous to The Jordan Harbinger Show, walk us through just briefly, you know, you go to law school. How do you go from being you know a practicing lawyer, I know the financial crisis did something with your job there, but how does how does it go from that to then becoming a podcaster and a radio personality, to landing on SiriusXM with a show and then later, you know leading on to some coaching businesses? Just walk us through that a little bit if you wouldn't mind.
Jordan: Sure. So I started off as a Wall Street attorney. When I was working on Wall Street, my boss at the time was a partner that was never in the office and I was like man, you know, how do we, how do you not have to come to work? You know like that? I think that was kinda like my main question. I was just like wait, how is it that you just don't need to come to work?
And it was kind of like this amazing [00:23:01] moment where I looked at him, and I thought like if I cannot come to work, then I won't get fired for being a dumbass who doesn't necessarily belong here. You know, that was kind of like my imposter syndrome talking. So what I did is I tried to figure out how to work from home.
Turned out, he wasn't working from home. He was bringing in business for the firm, and I was like, oh that's obviously the key to that. That's the key to becoming a partner early, not getting fired, like bring so much business that they can't fire you if you're a moron because you're bringing in business. So I started to learn networking and relationship development. And that was the beginning of me studying all these things like body language and vocal tonality, and I was teaching it at the law school.
I started teaching it informally. I started recording my conversations teaching this to other people, put that up in a podcast form in 2006 that got popular. Turned it into a dating and relationships focused show because I was more interested in that stuff at that age anyway, and then that [00:24:01] grew into a pretty large coaching business, and then that was the business where I was like, alright, I kind of need to bounce from here. I have you know, I moved to New York, took the job as the attorney full-time still working on the podcast, picked up by Sirius XM satellite radio that that you know helped us grow this coaching company, and that's the company that I left, and I was like, okay now I'm going to simplify.
I don't need to coach and consultant and run live events and sell online products. Like this is what I like doing. This is all I'm going to do.
Eric: Thank you for sharing that.
Jordan: Sure.
Eric: I know that clears it up, the audience really appreciate that, and they can read more on your website. If you'll read, you know the about section on your website. I know you talked about that gentleman at the firm, Dave, and I thought that was really cool story how it kind of piqued your interest in that third, you know road per se.
So in being, you know full-time podcaster now and a radio personality. What is, is there a common myth that you want to debunk about podcasting itself or being on the airwaves?
Jordan: What like, can you give me an example because [00:25:01] I don't know if I have one now that you mention it, right?
Eric: Yeah, I think it probably goes along the lines with not you know, the viral aspect. I think people at least what I've read when someone builds a podcast who’s naive to it. They want to see it boom. They want to see it grow quick, and everything I've read, you know from whether it's Gary Vaynerchuk or you know, John Lee Dumas. It just does not happen, you know, it's months to years to do that.
So, I mean, I think that's the one myth I've heard some people say, I just wasn't sure if you had a different take on, you know, something else that people always say about podcasting that you're just like, this is not true man.
Jordan: I think a lot of people try and say that you can make a bunch of money podcasting, which I mean it's technically true, but it's also like saying hey, you know, if you want to get rich, go work in Hollywood and become a movie star because the odds are pretty much the same. Like I think the top 1% of podcasts, the top 1% right, of millions, have 40,000 downloads per episode. You probably aren't going to make a living if you have 40,000 [00:26:01] downloads per episode.
If you release multiple times per week, and you're somehow selling out sponsors. Maybe you've got a good niche, good sales team. You've got a good split that they're giving you, you might do okay, but you're not going to end up living, you know in Silicon freaking Valley, you know. You might be able to live in the Midwest, which is fine. I grew up there, but like you're not going to make big, you're not going to make like even engineer money or lawyer money having a podcast that size. That getting there, that’s in the top 1%.
Think about if you're in the top, are you in the top 1% of anything right now? Like not you personally but people need to think about this.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: So then the point 0.1% of podcasts, that's where like the real money is but that counts all the shows that are owned by fricken ESPN or celebrities that are already famous or giant networks that have true crime shows that are on you know, Dateline NBC, all the news programs that you see in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Those are counted in that 0.1%. There's 14 people [00:27:01] working on half of those things more.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: Right? So then you got to think okay. Well, they're getting X number of downloads. Maybe that's a seven-figure business, cool. But now you got 25 employees working on that. That seven figures ain't shit right?
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: Candidly like to say it like not sugarcoat it, so now you've got to have a huge ass show that's in the .01% or have a really small team that's really profit margin focused and effective and now you're making that lawyer money doing your podcast.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: So yeah, you can make money podcasting but it's generally crap money and you have just as good of a chance of making money podcasting is you do becoming a hit on YouTube right? Like or TikTok or whatever like it's not a good bet period, so I wouldn't take it.
Eric: Yeah, I like the example of move to LA and try to be an actor. I mean, I think or an actress. I think that's a great example. I mean you're throwing. Yeah, I think that's awesome.
Jordan: It's a difference between in like people go ah well, what if I start this or I'm either going [00:28:01] to do this or become a big podcaster. It's like you will make you have a better shot at making a living wage and surviving and retiring at a reasonable time. If you get a fricken job and you invest 15% a year or whatever it is in index funds and you go about your life, but people don't want to do that.
They want to seek ego and vanity, and what the irony is that a lot of people at the top of the podcast game, they don't care about that. Like Dan Carlin from Hardcore History is not sitting around here fanning his you know what because he's made it big. I don't really think about it that much. I'm not on Instagram. I answered by DM's there. I'm not trying to get big on TikTok. I don't screw around with Clubhouse. None of that matters to me.
Yes, there are influencers that run their big podcast or whatever but most of those guys are just selling courses on how to get big in podcasts, so that they can make more money and they can use it to fuel their influencer engine. Most of them are not creating anything worthwhile.
Eric: Yeah, and they're making their money on those courses about how to podcast rather than just the quality of the content and running ads. [00:29:01]
Jordan: Exactly right because their audience leaves after 10 weeks because they're sick of hearing the same shit.
Eric Yeah, yup.
Jordan: The trick is to make something good that people care about, not just hype people up into buying your seminar. That’s my two cents.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah provide value. Yeah, exactly. I think that hits the nail on the head there, and you know, so let's say you could shoot and try to be in the 0.1% of podcasts and 0.1%, you could put an actual number on that but generally speaking, do you have a particular definition of success? What you believe a successful person is?
Jordan: It's hard to say. I think you know happiness ,success, whatever. I don't know if they're exactly fungible. I mean, I think people should probably define success by whether or not that person is generally happy. I know a lot of people, especially like in the Midwest where I grew up, and I was always kind of and almost still am sort of envious of the friends of mine that graduated from high school, went to a local university, got [00:30:01] a degree in building engineering or something like that, got married when they were 23, had a bunch of kids. They're like, they're fine. They go on vacation. They go to Disney World. They go hang out. They can go to fricken Paris once or twice in the next 10 years to celebrate their anniversary with their wife if they want to. Their kids are happy. They live in a decent home in the area where I grew up, and they are like perfectly happy being done with work at 5:00-5:30 and watching TV at night.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: And I'm like, you know and a lot of people go yeah, that's the sheep, man. I'm like no, those people have it figured out dummy. Like they get it, you know, it's the guy who is insufferable and insatiable and is working in New York and has an office open on Christmas because he's got to do financial derivative shit to make his 10th million-dollar of the year, who has estranged kids and two ex-wives, but he's got a boat. You know, like those people are F-ed up and don't have anything really. So for [00:31:01] me, the successful person is the teacher who married another teacher and goes to Italy every year and drinks wine and eats a bunch of cheese because they have two months free right? Like those are the people that have that shit figured out.
Not the guy who's on YouTube making 20 million dollars a year but like has to numb the pain with opiates.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: That's not who I'm looking up.
Eric: Yeah, yeah a little bit of a tangent to that question of you know, just what success is, but do you think there is any sort of successful pattern or formula in terms of being an entrepreneur and what it means to be entrepreneurial? Do you think there's certain habits or traits you've seen in either yourself or other people that do that?
Jordan: Yeah. Yeah, there's consistency which is like, and focus. I mean consistency really is like what focus is right? Like I see a lot of guys, guys/gals, whatever people that they start off and they're like, oh this is going to be great. I'm going to do this thing, and then they flip flop to something else and there's a difference between testing something. You know, I owned this business, [00:32:01] and I really wasn't into it, so I sold it, and I do this.
There's a difference between testing things and just having shiny object syndrome and going from one thing to the next, and I noticed that people who are actually successful. They just sit down, and they write, and they published something on their blog, and then they write a book, and they couldn't really get a traditional publishing deal, but they like writing, so they write again, and then they write for their audience and they sell a thousand copies on their GoFundMe page or whatever, and then they write another one, and they come up with a course and it works, and then they pitch a traditional publisher with a lot of the ideas from the course and their previous self-published book, and the publisher likes it, and they get a small deal. And then they work their way up, and they work their way up and then suddenly they're killing it and making like ridiculous amounts of money from their book or their ridiculous amounts of fans, right?
But those people just they wrote every day for 10 years like those people are focused and successful. The people that don't seem to do anything are the people that one day own and ad agency, and the next day they own some [00:33:01] sort of growth hacking internet marketing bullcrap, and then the week after that or the month after that they run some sort of branding business. Like they're always sort of jumping ship because they don't care about business. They don't care about a craft. They just want to like make money, and they're just trying to figure out how to do it and those people they succeed sometimes but it's much more rare.
Eric: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that answer and I know we're getting short on time, about at 30 minutes. But yeah Jordan, I really can't thank you enough for being on here.
Jordan: Yeah man.
Eric: You know, I think you hit on it earlier that you read for 90 minutes a day, maybe a number that you read fan mail. I mean that's a large reason as to why I got in contact with you and you know connected through Instagram, and so I can't thank you enough for being on here and helping me early on with my show to learn about what should I be doing, what should I not be doing and also teaching the audience, you know I should be providing value to you. So if I'm not, you should find a different podcast to listen to.
Jordan: Exactly.
Eric: Yeah.
Jordan: Exactly. Well, thanks man. I appreciate the time.
Eric: Yep, Jordan. Absolutely man. Thank you so much and thank Jen as well for setting everything up.
Jordan: Will do. Take care, man.
Eric: Take care, Jordan.
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Voice audio: Written, produced and edited by Eric R. Mueller
EDM music: Produced and edited by Eric R. Mueller