Freedom_Fast_Lane_-_Jordan_Harbinger_-_The_Art_of_Charm.mp3

Foreign.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran. And it has been a while, eh? I have really missed this. I've missed connecting with you here on the podcast. I've been working with new members of the tribe, which is our entrepreneurship mastermind, and we've also been planning out the next stage of what Freedom Fast Lane looks like and planning out our events for next year. That's right, events. We're going to be having several events next year, and I hope to see you and work with you at one of our upcoming events. Of course, I'll have information about that as they become available in the next few months. Since it's been a while, I wanted to kick things off with a bang. We're back here in full swing on the podcast, but I wanted to lead with some of our best stuff, if you will. I was very privileged to be able to have George from the Art of Charm here on the podcast, and he came over here on Freedom Fast Lane to share his entrepreneurial journey. The Art of Charm is one of the biggest podcasts on all of itunes and it has a huge following. They have tens of thousands of listeners every day. And Jordan's the host over at the Art of Charm. It's one of the standards in podcasting that people like myself look up to. And if you're looking to upgrade your life, the Art of Charm is one of those shows that you've just got to listen to. And I wanted to have Jordan on the show because I know that his. His journey wasn't always easy. We hear so much about the entrepreneurial successes, but Jordan is quick to point out that it was not always an easy journey for him as an entrepreneur. There were times that he was sleeping on the floor making 20 grand a year, and he left really cushy job to be an entrepreneur. So I wanted him to be on Freedom Fast Lane to share his experience and also I wanted to dig in and find what were those points that really took him from sleeping on the ground and making 20 grand a year to having one of the biggest shows in the history of the Internet and being incredibly successful. I will digest them for you at the end of the show, but you'll also hear them sprinkled throughout this interview. So enjoy this chat with Jordan from the Art of Charm. Hey, everybody, this is Ryan from Freedom Fast Lane, and today I'm joined by Jordan of Art of Charm. Jordan, thanks for hanging out with us.

Hey, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Hey, Jordan, you have one of the top podcasts on all of itunes. And so the first thing I want to know as a podcast owner, as an entrepreneur, is I'd like to know why do you think that your show has been so successful and what do you think it has been about the message that you bring that has been so popular with people around the globe?

Yeah, I mean, the first quality that makes my show popular is that I cram it down people's throat constantly. And but other than that, I've been doing it for eight years. Right. So I've had time, three and a half of which was spent doing a similar show live on Sirius XM satellite radio that I'd gotten after the podcast. So I've been broadcasting both live and pre recorded media for eight years and just a little bit under eight years as of right now. Right. So in a month, actually it'll be eight years. And so that's a long ass time to do anything. And I don't have 10,000 episodes of the show, but I've probably got thousands of thousands of hours of recording time under my belts. And that doesn't even include camera time from television and other things like that. So knowing how to think on your feet and deliver something in an entertaining and fun way is actually the key to keeping people engaged. Additionally, thinking for your audience. I mean, there's a lot here and we can deconstruct all this if you want, but thinking for your audience, what would they want to know? Talking about things you're interested in so that you're having a real conversation and you're not presenting content like somebody's show and tell and honestly, keeping a pause on what's cool, what people are looking for, and trying to get esoteric knowledge and bring it into the light. So if you combine all of those things, you have a successful show. And then of course, we have a crazy awesome team here of people who produce and things like that and help us market. That really helps. Honestly though, the show would be even larger if we had marketers all along, but we just never intended for it to be a business.

Well, Jordan, I actually think you answered the question within like three seconds. And that was the fact that you've been doing this for eight years. You know, here on Freedom Fast Lane, we, we love entrepreneurship, we love business and investing, but so many people, even though they've been listening to my show for a long time, still have this idea that success comes quickly. So I'd like for you to, before we talk more, I'd like for you to talk about those initial couple of years Was it always this big? Was. Do you always have this big audience, or was it a struggle when you first started?

Actually, that's a great question, because nobody really asks me that stuff. They always go like, what are your top tips for launching a show? And I'm like, well, first of all, start in 2006. That's my number one tip. Because the competition level back then was pretty low. And once you. Once you think about this, right, like, you're looking at all of these people trying to start a podcast now, I think there's 225,000 or something. I'm sure there's more now, right? But in the itunes store, when I started, I think there were 800, and it was like, oh, man, there's 800. No one's ever going to find our show. That's impossible. It's impossible. You know, we're not even going to be in the top 200, which is what iTunes had, or top 100 or whatever it was at the time. I think it might have been 100, because why bother with two? Now it's 200. And I'm sure they're probably trying to figure out a way to display, like, the top 500 or something, or the top 300 whenever they can figure out a way to make that workable. And. No, I mean, we. For when. When we launched. When AJ And I launched the show the Art of charm, back in 2006, early 2007, we were super stoked. We had 24 downloads in one day of people that we didn't know. Right. That weren't from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and where we were. And we started looking at the map, and it was cool. And we saw a person from South Africa had found it, and. And then we were looking at, like, wow, you know, a couple of weeks or months now. Memories fuzzy into the whole experiment. It was like 800 downloads a month. Like, dude, this is crazy. Now if I get less than 40,000 downloads a day, I assume something is broken. And that's very unusual. That's been climbing steadily throughout the last 18 months. But really the sort of tipping point, there's multiples, but tipping points for me were when I learned how to release regularly, produce something of quality. That helped. But even in the last 12 to 18 months, we've seen something like a 6x increase in audience. Part of that is due to production. Part of that is due to release schedule. Part of that is due to guests and things like that. And part of it is just due to the fact that now there's so Many people looking for quality podcasts, and a lot of people are finding a lot of crap and eventually the word of mouth spreads that they try enough that they find us and then they stick.

Well, I'm Freedom Fast Lane. We talk a lot about Amazon businesses and Internet businesses. We don't talk a whole lot about podcast businesses because my podcast really isn't a business. I do this for my audience, even though it's grown to the level that it's at. But I notice what you're saying is the same as the other businesses that I teach, where there seems to be this point at which there's a tipping point for, to use the common term, in Amazon businesses. It's like a year to a year and a half in all of a sudden, people start making all of these sales. But yet so many people quit in that time when it's hard. So for you, when you've got 24 people listening and there's a guy in South Africa, nobody wants to sponsor your show and you're not living off that income yet, what was it that kept you going through those times when it wasn't always easy to go produce content to the point where now you've got 50,000 people a day listening? It wasn't always like that. So what kept you going in those early stages?

Yeah, I mean, we, again, you know, we weren't looking at it as a business. It was a cool thing that we did for a long time. And then our client business kicked up at the Art of Charm, the coaching business kicked up and we didn't really. We weren't really, again, still thinking about the show as a business in a lot of ways. So we started recording it. We kept recording it rather, and, you know, people kept coming in. It was fun. It was great. It was all fun and games, right? And we were coaching and working on that a lot. I. I finally quit my job on Wall street as an attorney because things were turning up really well and I didn't look at our download stats. You know, I wasn't overly worried about it. And I'd check in here and there and it'd be like 70,000. And then it was be like 140,000. That'd be like 90,000 up and down, up and down, up and down per month. And this is. That's crap compared to where we are now. But that was what it was up until a few years ago, and I started focusing on metrics that mattered without obsessing over them. And there's a difference, right? Because if you try things and you say, oh, my metrics went up this way. Oh, my metrics went up that way. Oh, this is keeping people more engaged. And you can test them as much as you can. That's much more helpful than just what most podcasters, for example, or most businessmen in general do, which is obsess over the metric but not do anything with it or do anything about it. Right. It'd been really easy. And I see this all the time on these podcasting classes and stuff where I guest lecture or whatever, where it's like, oh man, you know, this is, this, I'm getting this. How do I get more downloads? Why, why do you need more downloads? Are you making money off your show? Well, no, but, you know, it's fun. Stop worrying about it then. If it's not making you 10 cents per episode or something like that, then, then screw it, you know, it doesn't matter. If the Art of Charm is making me a nickel for every download because of the advertising and the ROI, I'm going to start worrying about 500 extra downloads a day. I will. And I know that this converts for sales for us, for our programs and products at the Art of Charm. So it's important to me, especially because our live training product is so high end that 500 more people listening is tens of thousands of dollars. But for most people it's just kind of an attention game and it's a waste of your energy. And so until I, we figured out that the podcast listener base was the chief metric that we should be worrying about. And then of course a little while after that, because we're slow learners, we didn't really worry about the stats and we didn't worry about the numbers.

So for you, the downloads is a metric because it leads to dollars, which is of course the most important metric. Am I understanding that thought flow correctly?

Exactly. And oh, to your point, that's what kept me sane for a while, because I wasn't thinking, oh my God, you know, if we don't get more downloads, we're gonna go out of business. And I wasn't worried about that. Granted, there were plenty of mornings where I woke up and I was like, screw it, I'm gonna get a job at the post office. Those guys are never stressed. Right? Which is a lie. But I thought plenty of times, I mean, I remember times when I was driving down the road thinking, look at those construction workers. They're just outside, they're in the sun.

I hate where I am right now, you know, because the stress levels were just through the roof. But I also knew that I was probably gonna be a terrible construction worker. And I really didn't like the other options. And, you know, inertia combined with blind confidence, just delusional levels of confidence in what we were doing eventually paid off. But not. Not everyone can or should expect that.

I think that's phenomenal advice because so many entrepreneurs worry about metrics that do not matter. They worry about things that look cool, cause they think it's growth, but it's not what I call result driven activity. Participating in that activity doesn't produce a measurable result. And what Jordan's saying is, find out those activities that actually increase the goal that you are working towards. So if it's dollars, what are the activities that increase dollars? If you find that downloads drives dollars, then what do we do to increase downloads? For somebody like me, I know that where I rank on Amazon or how many new sales are coming through my funnel, these are the things that I need to measure. And so those are the things where we put our emphasis, Jordan.

Exactly.

I'd like to ask you about that transition where you made, where you were an attorney on Wall street and you started having this thing to. It was starting to grow some success, that transition into dollars. Of course it's easy now. You can. You have a large audience and everybody says it's easy for Jordan. He's got a huge audience.

Yeah, I love that.

But it must have been difficult for you to make that transition where you were out earning a Wall street job. So let's talk about what it looked like when you started taking dollars from the Art of Charm.

Sure. So we were. I worked on Wall Street. I had a great job as an attorney. It paid more money than both of my parents combined at the peak of their careers. My first year out of college, not including my. So just to sort of put that in perspective, right. I was sitting pretty. It was easy because you're a junior associate, you're working a lot, but your stress level is pretty low because no one expects you to know what the hell you're doing anyway. And I remember running the show, getting clients, hiring coaches, and being like, this is fun. It's a bunch of my friends, we're making a little bit of money. It's really interesting and fun. And so I started to focus more on the business. Economy hit a wall. I had a bunch of money saved up because I wasn't a knucklehead with it. I invested into the art of charm. Miraculously, we survived for a long time due to the. A little Bit to that investment, but also the fact that we had AJ on board, who's really smart, Johnny. The Art of Charm team, as it now stands, whoever's left standing anyway is still here. And we worked really hard, and we still do. And we started to make money doing that. And for a long time, though, we weren't really making a living wage. It's funny you should mention this, because the timing is great. I just got something from the Social Security Administration in the mail. Something like where it's like, hey, by the way, this is how much you paid on your income towards Social Security last year. And you'll. You'll. You'll get this. And it's funny because Jenny looked at it. She's a cpa, my girlfriend, and she's like, oh, my God, there's so many zeros. And I'm like, yeah, it starts in 1996 or something like that, or 94, when I was, like, 14 years old. So of course, I made no money. I paid no money. And then as I get into college and things like that, and my first summer associate thing, and that'll. Summer jobs. It's like $16,000, you know, and. And then after that, it goes 16,000 bucks, and then it says something like 30 to 40,000 bucks for a summer spent on Wall street in London. And then it goes up to, like, 160,000 bucks, and then it goes down to $21,000. And that's what I was making in Manhattan when I was working at the art of charm. $21,000 a year for a long time. And you didn't think about it because, yeah, you didn't have a whole lot of money, and you had to eat a lot of Chinese food and stuff. But we were having the time of our life. It was fun. We worked with our friends. But a lot of this is a combination of a really, really great product, really, really hardworking people, and also a lot of luck. I mean, we dodged a lot of bullets. We had a lot of bad employees we were able to get rid of. We had a lot of people coming after us, which we eventually were able to shrug off. I mean, we're some wily sons of bitches over here at aoc, and it took a long time and a lot of hustle. But I think the reason most people quit is because when you wake up and you're like, I'm going to cry myself to back to sleep for another couple of hours, and maybe I should look for a job at the police department sweeping the floors, that's Not a fun feeling. And it's certainly, it's even less fun if you have a law degree and your friend's going, hey, why don't you come work for me, man? I can't pay you Wall street money, but I'll start you off at 85. That's about four times what I was making. Right. So that was tempting. And that specter was always there. And AJ my co founder, he is a cancer biologist by trade, so he's not exactly struggling. And he's also very smart, so it doesn't make any sense for him to sit there earning $20,000 a year in Manhattan, racking up credit card debt just to eat, you know, it just doesn't make any sense. And so that's when people quit their entrepreneurial venture. I totally get it. And it's not because we weren't seeing a return and we were just waiting for something to pop off. It was just a lot of work and we just didn't make that much money. So I think if you're looking at this and you're like, no, eventually this is going to pay off because Jordan struggled through the diploma. I'd say, are you, are you making any money? Because if you're not, then, then you should probably quit. Unless you're pretty damn confident. But don't be, don't be, don't be cocky and arrogant to the point where you think, well, if I just work hard enough with zero return, eventually I'm going to get in the New York Times and I'm going to get a return. I mean, it's just not, not real.

So, you know, I'm looking for, I'm looking for something specific. And it's, it's that switch where you had, where you started to get focused on the dollars coming in. Because, because you were, you were getting downloads. Thinker things are starting to spread, but you guys were focused on dollars. Then there's the dude who you just addressed who's like, one day this is gonna pay off and there's no money coming in. So what, where was that switch for you? When did the money really start coming in? You mentioned that you've got some, you got high end stuff now, but at the time when you're, you're making 25 grand a year in Manhattan, where, where does that money come from? Where are you starting to have that shift where you're realizing we need to go after the money? There's, there's, there isn't another option here. We have to make this work. What do you do when you're put into that situation.

Here's why this situation is different, Okay? I was making $21,000 a year in Manhattan. But bear, 16 people worked at the Art of Charm, okay? And a lot of them made less. And some of them made a little bit, probably more when you do the cash analysis, because I wasn't taking a very large salary for a while. But, you know, when in our expenses in Manhattan were extremely high. So it's not like the company was making 12,030 grand a year. I mean, this is still a company that made 400 plus thousand dollars a year. And I think the reason is we, you know, we started to pay attention to that stuff. Even now, we don't have 16 employees working at the Art of Charm. We were bloated at least 200% back then, so we started to focus on the dollars and cents. When we sort of had a little bit of a company coup. A lot of people started stealing things from us and all that stuff. And we were like, all right, we're going to go back to the sort of la familia, right? The people we really trust that always had skin in the game, that are smart enough to get it, that care about the company. So we basically. What agent I did. I've never discussed this before. We fired everyone.

Wow.

Except for me and AJ and most of them went, fine, screw you guys. And they took intellectual property. They tried to steal customers. A lot of them are couch surfing or homeless right now. Literally. I'm not even exaggerating. And a couple of guys came back and went, whoa, why? Why am I fired? I care about this a lot. This is bs you can't fire me. I care too much about this. Not, you can't fire me. You'll never succeed without me. But I care too much about this. Let me, you know, tell me what I need to do to make this work. Those people are still here because they literally wouldn't let us fire them because they were like, no, I'm a soldier. I can put my head down and keep going. And they did. And that was what we needed to do because everybody else who said, oh, you know, you're gonna fire me and the company's in debt, and blah, blah, blah, well, I'm just gonna leave, and I'm gonna leave you guys holding the bag. And we actually so that our cash flow was so negative that we had our CPA come in and give a big presentation about how we were, like, totally screwed and going to be bankrupt and we're all going to be liable for a share of this debt. And da, da, da. And all of the rats just fled the sinking ship. And then we righted it over the next 18 months by getting rid of the debt, which, of course, was grossly inflated to scare the crap out of everybody who was just a leech. And it worked.

So you've done a lot of things wrong in your eight years.

Correct.

But you've got a couple things absolutely dialed in right. You've married a channel, which at the time wasn't huge, being podcasts, but you. But you built up your presence in that channel so much that now it's a lifelong supply of leads. The other thing is you've built real movement, both in the product you're producing and within the customers. I'm sorry, the employees that you're working with, meaning the employees buy into the message and the movement that you're building. And the third, you got obsessed with the metrics that mattered, and you went straight after the money, which means you didn't worry about things that were not producing money. You went straight after the money. I think that is why those are the three things that you've absolutely nailed that have made it possible for you to ride out things that maybe you do differently. In retrospect.

Yes, 100%. I literally couldn't have said it better myself. You heard me, just try, and I failed. So you said it better. But the truth is, you know what? I did go straight after those metrics, and everyone's going, cool. All right, cool. Go after the metrics that matter. Chase the money. Oh, wait, which metrics matter? Here's how we figured those things out, right? Because in retrospect, hey, Jordan took eight years to figure, you know, six years to figure out that podcast downloads. Equal leads, equal conversion. Yeah, you're a real smart cookie. Moron. You know, but here's. Here's the thing, right? We were testing, inadvertently, a lot of things, and we were working on a lot of things. So back in the day, the conventional wisdom was, build it, and they will come. If you put out awesome content, you know, people are gonna find it and download it. And that worked for years, and then several years went by where our downloads stagnated. Granted, you know, they might have been still six figures or close to it each month, which, to a newbie podcaster, sounds like a lot. But for us, we were like, why aren't we, like, growing at all? And then I see my friends, like Lewis Howes, for example, and he's like, yeah, I'm getting this right now. And I'm like, what? You just started? This doesn't make any sense. So I decided, all right, you know, maybe the paradigm has shifted. It's hard. Discoverability is a new game that's changed completely. So we started focusing on that. And yes, that worked. But a lot of the discoveries of the metrics that matter came from doing stupid crap, like, screwing around. Like, all right, I need to get a lot of Twitter followers and a lot of people who are in social media just to use Lewis Housen as an example. I remember being like, dude, you know, he's at my house. Dude, you got like 100,000 Twitter followers. That's insane. And he's like, yeah, I came in early, I tweeted a lot. I built, you know, became obsessed with it. But he's not gonna go. And I make tons of money off Twitter. It doesn't matter. It's a non converting thing. It looks cool. I think he's got a blue check mark. Yeah, it's. It's neat, but it's. It's not something where he's like, this is my lead base Twitter sales. It's. It's not a thing. But he sure as heck tested it. And, and he tested it probably just because he thought it was cool getting a ton of Twitter followers. I don't think he was doing any math behind it.

And, well, there's just, there's so many people who try to complicate it, just like we're talking about right now, when really the thing that you've discovered after all this time is it comes down to leads, and it comes down to sales and the activities that drive those two things. What drives more leads and what drives more sales? Now, Jordan, I want to switch gears just a little bit because you're in a unique position where since you have one of the best and most downloaded podcasts ever, you've interviewed some very interesting people, myself included, of course. Now you've even interviewed entrepreneurs and people who are incredibly successful in their own right. I want to know. You know, I talk about one of the ways you can biologically hack your success is to get around extremely successful people. You've done that in a really cool way. What are some of the lessons and some of the things that you've discovered about really successful people that you would not have learned had you not had access to interviewing hundreds of them?

You know, that's funny because it's one of the reasons we started the show. We thought, hey, if we start this, we have a reason for these people to reply to our Email. And once those people reply to our email and then we interview them, they're going to see that there's value here. Especially if we are able to really crush a show for them. And then, you know, we're going to have all these cool pseudo mentors to bounce stuff off of. It's going to be awesome. You know, that's going to be phenomenal. And what I've learned now, I just. It's funny you should ask that because I just flew back yesterday night from New York City where I went to something called the Influencers Dinner. And it was a very small gathering. Afterwards, there's like a salon where people perform and stuff like that and talk and mingle. But I was eating dinner with one of the most famous photographers in the world, a really well known children's author. Bill Nye the Science Guy was there and you know, a bunch of other folks, like I'm sitting there, we're cooking dinner together, right? And you're not allowed to ask other people what they do until late in the meal, like right before dessert, because they want you to get to know each other without being kind of nervous about it. And so I found out that the girl who I made guacamole with is a really famous singer songwriter who's got a bunch of hits. And I made brownies, not even kidding with the co founder of Public Enemy. So I'm sitting there making brownies with the co founder of Public Enemy, not knowing who he was. And we're, you know, we're trying to, we're tested the chocolate and everything. And it's just, it's a really funny event. And I'm washing dishes with Bill Nye the Science Guy, who I knew looked familiar, but I didn't. It's been years, right? So he's explaining how the soap is breaking down the grease and the oils. And I'm like, oh my God, that's where I know you from. You're Bill Nye the Science Guy. Because he introduced himself as William. Because that was the idea is like if he introduces himself as Bill, even if you didn't recognize him already instantaneously, you'd be like, oh yeah, that's Bill Nye the Science Guy. So the reason I bring this up is not to sound like, oh, look at all these cool things that I do. The reason is because I flew from San Francisco to New York City for dinner. There's not a restaurant in the world I would fly out of state to go eat. Except the point is, people who go to these events like that. Not everybody was from New York City. Value. The value of connecting with other people at a high level is so high that people will fly across the entire planet to be at a great mixer networking event. I hate those words that are both awful and they don't do it justice. But any kind of event where there's high level connecting happening is completely worth it. One of my good friends, Jason Gaynord, runs an event called Mastermind Talks and it's invite only and it's like five grand for a ticket and it's like two or three days long and it's curated connecting and networking and is worth every single cent and it's probably worth twice as much.

Well, in that case, I'll see you in April.

All right. That's right. But you know what I'm talking about, right? It's absolutely massive. And that's what I've learned from connecting with all these high level people. If I had to pick one thing, it's, it goes along with the, the old thing that you kind of touched upon, which is you only go as high as your five closest friends. Not only that, but these aren't just the guys you grew up with. You know, you grow up with people, you're on somebody's floor in college, that's great. That's most people's friends now. And kudos for keeping in touch that long and having these cool friends, but most people, they're friends with the guy in the cubicle next to them. That's not how you get ahead. How you get ahead is by being having this massive network of influential folks, most of whom value the connection they have with other people more highly than you would than you could possibly imagine. That, at least that I imagined when I first started doing this deliberately.

And would you venture to say that one of the reasons why you've been able to get in this around really successful people is because you approached all of these other successful people with a value based approach, saying, I want to share your message with my audience. So many people approach mentors or wherever it is by saying, what can you give me? How much will you pay me? Can you give me this? You came on and had a little bit of a different approach. You said, I want to share your message with my audience. Do you think that's one of the reasons why today you've been able to build up so many success, successful relationships?

Oh, totally, yeah. Because before it was like, will you please come on my show and deliver some value? And most people were like, no, I'm an Important Internet marketer, I don't have time for you. And then we sort of slowly built that up. And what we realized was there's so many people who, especially at the top levels, get it. They want to deliver their mess. That's the most important. That's what they live for, delivering their message to the most important people. Think about it. Bill Nye, the Science guy, yeah, he made a lot of money doing television, but really he just wanted to spread the word about science. And that's what he's doing now in a totally different way. Another girl who was there was from the New Yorker, of course, the children's author. Even when you think about the guy who co founded Public Enemy, he loved music. But why do people love music? Well, especially rap and hip hop, because of the message that they're able to convey over time in space. Right. To put it all, woo, woo. Metaphorical. And so if you say, hey, I've got this audience that would love to hear from you, oh, and by the way, it's frigging massive. Yeah, now I'm able to really wield a lot of influence, and that is very attractive to people who also have really important, powerful messages that they want to deliver to other people. Artists, thinkers, thought leaders of any kind are gravitating towards that. So now, you know, we've been doing this for eight years. It's just the beginning. Because now people don't go, what's a podcast? They go, oh, yeah, a podcast. That's great. Whoa, you're in the top 50. That's great. I think cereal is the most popular one. If there's 225,000 and you're 49 spaces away from cereal on any given day, that's phenomenal. Right? That's. They get that now. They get that. They understand now that their celebrities are making these things that they're able to do that. And so that's been really, really good for us. And that's the number one with a bullet takeaway is, yes, you only go as high as your five closest friends, but that, that's such a deliberate process and you should be spending hours per week connecting with other people in a very deliberate way.

I have a friend and fellow podcaster names Tai Lopez. He recommends spending 30% of your time with people who are 10 years ahead of you, 30% of your time with peers, and 30% of your time giving back to people who are not quite at your level. But, Jordan, in the last eight years, your quote level has elevated quite a bit. And a lot of People listen to your show or they're listening to Freedom Fast Lane and they're not at the level that either of us are at, or they wouldn't consider themselves at that level, or they don't have the contacts there yet. So they don't know how to approach people at a higher level with some sort of value that they can attract to bring that person into their life or nurture that relationship. They don't have an audience of 50,000 people a day that they can go to and sell a product or service or a coaching club or whatever it is. They just are getting started and they're listening to you and they're going, I don't want to sleep on the floor and make $21,000 a year. So what would you say to that? Person who wants to be an entrepreneur is hearing your story and hearing mistakes you made along the way and the sacrifices that you had to make to get to the level you're at. How would you address entrepreneurship today and those who want to get into it but are seeing the road ahead and can't see the path to getting to the level that a successful entrepreneur is at?

Geez. I mean, I recruit entrepreneurs like the CIA recruits special agents. You tell them how tedious it is, all the materials are in black and white and they're faxed and nobody returns your phone calls. I mean, it's, it's really, it's, it sounds so douchey. It's really more of a calling because you have to be able to put up with so much stuff. When people think entrepreneur, they're like, yeah, I'm gonna be like Mark Cuban where people are pitching me and I'm like, no, you can't have my money. You know, stuff like that. And they don't think about the times that you, that you rarely hear about on Shark Tank or that you know anybody else entrepreneur wise where you hear guys like, do you watch Shark Tank?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah. So, you know, like Damon John talks about how he used to sleep on the floor next to his sewing machines and get up in the morning before the Chinese ladies would come over to sew the clothes and he would just already be working. Yeah, yeah, nobody, nobody talks about that because they probably edit that crap out of the show because it's not sexy. And that's the majority of what you're doing in the first several years. And there's some stupid motivational meme that goes up whenever I go to these EO events. It's like an entrepreneur lives some of his way that most people, some of his life, the first few years of his life, whatever the way that most people won't so they can live the rest of their life living how most people can't.

Can I translate that for you?

Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen that, right?

And I just stumbled all over. Like an entrepreneur is someone who spends time, a year of their life doing what other people won't. To spend the rest of their life doing what other people can't. Right.

Except the problem is it's not a year. It's like a decade for a lot of people. And it's awful. And you wish you were dead some of the time. And sometimes you're damn close to doing it to yourself. And that's important to know because it's funny, right? But you know, a lot of people spend so much time blowing and not going through the right way, they sacrifice their family, their mental health, their physical health. It's terrible. The only people who are that I know who are just really kick ass entrepreneurs and really crushing it are people who just can't do anything else. I mean, I didn't know that I was going to run my own business. Even when I was 27 years old, I had the show running and I was like, whatever, you know, I worked on Wall street and I was like, I'm the worst employee. You know, I don't know what I'm going to do. I know I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm eventually going to get found out, they're going to fire me. You know, I don't belong here anyway. A little bit of imposter syndrome, but, but a lot of it was pretty accurate because I had no idea what was going on. When they were lecturing us about how our business worked, I would like tune out and go on my BlackBerry, you know, I just, I didn't care. And I was like, man, I'm in for a rude awakening. I know it. And I don't know how it's going to happen, but it's got to happen. And maybe that's what I need. Maybe I need a kick in the ass. Maybe I was a spoiled kid or something. I don't understand. And then when the market took a downturn and I was like, you know what, I don't want to get another job. I'm just going to focus on the art of charm for now because it sort of seems cool and fun and it's working out and I have some savings. That's when I was like, wait a second, I'm a really disorganized entrepreneur or small business owner. So when I got organized and we started making money as a result of all of us getting organized, it was like, oh, this is what I'm cut out to do. I'm cut out to get up early, go to the gym, spend 12 hours working, and have it go by in a flash because I barely notice. Do what most people do in a week, in a single day, productivity wise, and then do it all again six, seven days in a row. And then finally have to like, vacation is something that my girlfriend or family makes me do because I need it to stay sane and healthy and healthy, not, oh my God, I can't wait till my next vacation because my job is so lame. No vacation. And even when I'm on vacation, I'm like, cool. Who do I know in this town? What connections can I make here? What can I be doing? And you know, I'll be shopping with my girlfriend and you know, she wants to look at this and that and the other thing. So I'm sitting down and plowing through email or, you know, doing stuff like that. And it's not that I'm not present ever with my family and friends, don't get me wrong, but it's just that work, you know, and crushing things for Art of Charm is an addiction that is just really hard to shake. Fortunately, it delivers value for other people and myself and the Art of Charm team, but mostly for the guys and girls that consume the show and the Art of Charm products and services. So that's what I was cut out to do. I had no idea. So if you just think, eh, my job's kind of lame, or, oh, it's all right, I kind of like it, but maybe it'd be cool to start my own business. Maybe, maybe I shouldn't say this and maybe you're gonna skewer me, but I don't think you're an entrepreneur or a small business owner. If you're doing that, I definitely think you should start a side gig and test the waters. Dip your toes in, but don't quit your job and go all in unless you feel like you just cannot do anything else because the world doesn't get you. That's how we felt. We didn't even know we felt that way, but we felt that way.

You see, I have a little bit of a different perspective because I don't have that experience of having to sleep on the floor. I was pretty successful from the get go and I took the approach of I'm going to look at people like Jordan, I'm going to look at people who have already been successful, and I'm going to try and break down exactly what they did to be successful. And I noticed that you married a channel and got obsessed with it and went right after it. You created really, really good products, and you served a very targeted customer base. And if I just do those things, then I'll be successful. And are there days where I work 12 hours a day and can barely think about anything else? Yeah, today is one of those days. But I have a little bit of approach in the fact that I feel like if you're a new entrepreneur and you listen to people like you and I, who are eight years down the road and have made every mistake possible, there's little nuggets where we realize we got it right and we can share with those, with people who are just starting. These are the things we did right. Just do those things, and you'll have a much better shot. And I've seen you be one of those people where you've got a couple things right. You knocked in those couple things, and it's resulted in what looks like meteoric success, even though people don't see all those mistakes that happened along the way.

Oh, definitely. I think it depends on what kind of business you're building. If you're building some side income or you're building something that's just gonna sort of maybe pay for a little bit something here and there. You're toying with the idea of running a business that's cool. I mean, I encourage everybody to do that. I think you learn a lot about business. You learn a lot about yourself. It can be really fun. It could become your passion. Like the Art of Charm and the podcasting thing has become for. For Adrian and the Art of Charm team and myself. But I think for a lot of folks, it's not worth the stress, quite frankly. I just think for a lot of folks, just not worth the headache.

Interesting. So what do you. What do you think determines that in a person? Because there's a lot of people listening right now who've got an idea, and they've had an idea for, like, five years, and they're wondering if it's. If they've got it, if they have what it takes to make it in the marketplace, and they're not sure. What do you think are the differentiators between the people who can stick it out and the people that ultimately are going to be better off working for somebody else?

If you can stand the idea of never making any money with your idea ever, and that's totally fine for you, because the idea is what you like doing, and you're totally content with it just being a hobby that you're obsessed with, then go for it. If you need monetary return on that idea, you are probably going to really regret doing this in the first place, because the reward may never come, or it might take a lot longer than you think. And sure, if you listen to shows like yours where you can sort of limit that downside and start to see the rewards earlier and things like that, then you might be much more encouraged to go the. Go the distance. But I think I'd mentioned this before. You know, we had so many people working here. Those people aren't entrepreneurs doing their own thing now. They're just. They're either hucksters, hustlers. They have regular crap jobs, whatever, because they didn't want to stick with the company and the idea. They just wanted to make money so that they could go around being flashy, or they just thought it would be easier than having a real job. That's what made those people want to do what we're doing. Once, once we hit a rough patch, like a serious one, they were out. You know, everybody who really believed in the idea, the cause, whatever, those people are still here now. They're wealthy now.

Jordan, your podcast is obviously something of that is born out of passion from you. All of your employees have bought into the idea and the movement. I told you privately once that I think in another life, I was part of what you've built because I so believe in the message that you're bringing. It's one of those podcasts that I just recommend everybody listen to. So, Jordan, why don't you take a couple minutes and tell us about the podcast and for those of those who will resonate with that message, how they can find you.

Sure. So we are the art of charm. You can find it on itunes, Stitcher, wherever you're listening to this show, it is free, all360whatever episodes. Also, theartofcharmpodcast.com or@theartofcharm.com podcast. There's a million ways to find it, right? You can just Google the damn thing. I don't really care. But check it out. It's all free. I'm not gonna ask anybody to buy anything. We have our live training program programs in Los Angeles. They're sold out far enough in advance that I think people should probably just consume the free stuff, see if it resonates with them. Tell their friends, you know, write us itunes, reviews, whatever you want to do. But if you are looking for something that's going to help you get ahead in every area of your life, that's what we've sought to create. Something that's going to give you that edge. And it's not for guys who tape their glasses and tie their shoelaces together. This is. These are for people. These episodes of the show. The Art of Charm is for guys who realize that a 5% edge in life or a 1% edge in life is worth tens of millions of dollars and is literally priceless due to the fact that your quality of life is the only thing that matters. So I know that sounds intense, but check it out. It's the art of Charm. It's really easy to get into and really hard to forget once you know it's there. It's kind of like the. What is that red pill? Once you take the red pill, you know, it's hard to go back. So enjoy.

Jordan, thanks so much for hanging out with us at Freedom Fastlaner.

Thanks for putting up with me.

You know, I found it really interesting that Jordan called entrepreneurship a calling. And we all know that there are stories of people sleeping on the ground and making 20 grand a year and eventually seeing success. And I think a lot of times we get afraid of that story of I don't want to sleep on the floor. Being in my cushy job sounds pretty good right now, but I'm actually more interested in what are the things that that person did to be really successful. What took them from sleeping on the floor to having one of the top shows on itunes or having a seven figure business? Jordan did it. Ryan did it. What are those things that are universal that created success? And in the case with Jordan, they are. He had a really great product for a very defined audience and married a channel for leads. That's business, guys. That's how you do business. Now, what did Jordan say? He said, we've tried a hundred different things that didn't work. But once we identified that podcast downloads led to leads and leads led to sales, everything changed for us. That is business. It took them a few years to figure that out. If you know what your product is and your market is and you know where your leads come from, you can skip all of that and just focus on those metrics. It's one of the reasons why my entrepreneurs that I teach to build Amazon businesses have been so darn successful because they know where their source of sales comes from. They know how to create a product because we're walking them through that training and they skip all of the stuff about where do I make sales and where does it come from? You put a product on Amazon, you've cut all of that out. For people who are information marketers. The reason why so many people have so much success selling information products isn't because there's some sort of magic to what they're doing or because they're exploiting a loophole. It's because you create a good product to a defined market and you sell it well, meaning in the information space. It's putting on clickbank, getting affiliates to sell it. Those are systems that are proven to work. You skip all of the necessary sleeping on the floor and making 20 grand a year. When you go straight after the stuff that actually puts money in your pocket, you figure out the metrics that are actually going to put dollars in your pocket and you can skip all of that hardship. In my opinion. This is what I have found. Successful entrepreneurs know those things and sometimes it takes four years to figure out that that's what matters. Or you can just listen to my passionate rant right now and trust me that if you figure out that those things are what matters, you can focus on those and thus have a successful business. Assuming you're on a channel that brings you leads, you have a great product that serves a defined customer base. That's when you have a real business and that's when you can have meteoric success. Thanks for listening to Freedom Fastlane. As always, I appreciate your reviews on itunes and I appreciate you making this official and you're going over to itunes and subscribing because that helps us share the message of freedom to more people. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next show.