Owning Your Network & Building Business Karma Jordan Harbinger #548

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is going to help you biohack the secret of charm. Now, it turns out that charm has more to do with personality than looks. And there's a specific trait that's common to all charmers. They actively listen to people and that helps people feel an immediate connection and make them feel welcomed and embraced. And another trait that's really high on the charm eater is that they remember details, from names to family stories to job specifics in previous conversations. Names of people's kids and charmers can do this because they're authentically empathetic and make people just feel at home. A lot of them are really good at sales. So there is definitely a science to knowing how to just be nice and be memorable and authentically care about other people, which I think matters a lot. And it's something that leads you to have a greater sense of community. One of the laws that came out in my new book, Game Changers, is all about how important a community is. After interviewing 500 people on bulletproof Radio, asking them what matters, including Jordan, you've been on before. And answer that question. Question at the end of the show, three most important things. By the way, I just told everyone I'm doing Jordan Harbinger. Sorry, we're doing this.

You probably saw it in the show title.

Yeah, that's a fair point. But anyway, this is Jordan Harbinger you're listening to, who's a great friend. And I was just talking about in Game Changers, this idea that building your community is something that came out from these interviews with people saying if you're hanging around with the wrong people or your community doesn't support the kinds of relationships that you have in your life, that you will not achieve the things that you want to do in your life. And Jordan, since you've been on before, I just wanted to be able to pick your brain about the latest things that you're working on and get an understanding, because you've been on now actually three times. Neuroscience, you've talked about get in stage harming, and I've learned a lot from you. And we see each other, social events like this. And you've started a new podcast. That's right, the Jordan Harbinger show. And you've been doing phenomenally well. Interviewed some people like Robert Green, who I phenomenally just. I love the guy. His work changed my life. His 48 laws of power and his really probably his opus just came out a couple months ago. And you've actually interviewed him. I haven't interviewed him about that yet. So I wanted to get you on, because how many episodes in total in your life have you recorded?

Oh, man. Probably over a thousand.

Okay, so I'm at about 550.

Yeah, it's a lot. I think after 500, you kind of. Maybe there's a little bit of a.

But you keep learning. So in terms of getting wise, for me, I wanted to structure the wisdom, but no one's called me the Larry King of podcasting.

Yeah, you're the Larry King of yak butter coffee.

There you go. I'll take that one. Now, the thing is, you're a lawyer. Before that, your background was you were a Wall street lawyer.

Outed. I just got outed as a lawyer. Yeah, it's true.

And I noticed I felt kind of sweaty when you walked into the room.

Yeah, we're recording the mycotoxins lawyers carry.

Nice. We're recording live down here in la. We're both here for the Summit conference, I think. And I want to understand, how the heck do you go from being a lawyer to being the Larry King of podcasting? What kind of path did you wander to just leave Wall street and all that?

Yeah. What happened was I initially was working in school like every other kid, and I thought, this is not that hard. I can teach myself the geomet. The test. And that was kind of school for me. And then when I got to law school, it was an entirely different ballgame. I was definitely not the smart kid anymore. I was maybe at the bottom of the pile, but luckily everybody was kind of drinking all the time, and I could just outwork everyone because they were still kind of coasting on their smarts. Then, though, I got to Wall street, and everyone was a hard worker. Everyone was really smart. There was no more competitive advantage. And one of the guys that had hired me, he was never in the office. And I thought, huh, he must work from home. So if I get to work from home, they won't figure out that I'm the least qualified guy at this Wall street law firm. And then it'll take them longer to figure that out and fire me. So I remember asking him, I said, dave. His name was Dave, too. How do you work from home so much? And he was like, why do you think I work from home? I said, well, you're never in the office. And he explained that he was actually generating business. He was doing jujitsu. He was going to golf games. He was doing charity events, he was all over dinners and things like that. And basically if there was an investment banker in the city of New York that had a day off or an afternoon off, his job was to go play squash or do a bike ride with that guy or gal and get their business. And I thought, this is what I need to learn because I can't really make myself that much smarter that quickly. As a first year, second year associate, I'm probably not going to be able to add more work hours to the day because it's Wall street. Everyone's already working seven days a week, 16 hours a day. What I can do is figure out how to create these relationships like Dave's doing. And by the time all of my peers figure out that they need to be networking, I'll have a five year plus advantage on them and be good at it. And maybe I'll figure that out before they figure out I don't belong here and get fired. So I had imposter syndrome plus kind of a lucky break of finding a new competitive advantage that I wanted to work to develop. So I developed that and then that evolved into my studies through that evolved into the show.

It's funny, you reminded me of something. Early in my career when I was maybe 24, my first job in Silicon Valley, before I went to the company that held Google's first servers and all, I had this guy who was probably about 50 who just worked in IT. I was in an IT department at a company called 3Com. Big networking company.

Yeah, they made those little car modems and stuff.

Yeah, modems and all. We bought Palm Pilot, claim to fame. And this guy didn't do anything you're supposed to do in it. All he would do is go out and meet with vendors. And he saw that I understood the technology, said I need someone who gets the tech to come with me. So I got to follow this guy around. His name was Klaus. He'll probably hear this and like, hey. And he literally showed me how that side of business happens, even though I wasn't in a sales role or anything like that. And learning how companies help each other really did change the trajectory and the scope of my career. But they don't teach you that. Certainly not in computer science school or even in business school really. So you were fortunate. You had someone who kind of took you under his wing and showed you how it worked and you just did it.

Oh, I wish he took me under his wing. He was just kind of like, you'll figure this out eventually. And he had the same sort of networking advice as everybody did in law school, which was, you guys will be fine. You just need to put your time in. And that's not true. No. That's kind of like saying you're going to get healthier if you just keep showing up to the gym or something. It's not necessarily true. I mean, you will definitely get somewhere by working out every day, but whether you get to just joint pain and fatigue is the question. Right. So you have to learn this stuff on your own because nobody really can teach you. I, in fact, tried to learn this, and I.