006: Going Pro on Podcasting with Jordan Harbinger

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello my friends. I am so excited. I've been counting down the days to have this conversation with my guest, Jordan Harbinger. So long overdue. But you know what? I am thrilled that Jordan is here helping launch this new show because he is one of my not only friends but friend tours. From afar I listened to all of Jordan's interviews. Jordan, I've taken all your online classes.

Really loved watching. Well, I didn't love what happened when you had to pivot into your own new show, but just watching you take your new show so seriously. It's not new anymore. The Jordan Harbinger show was selected as Apple's best of 2018 and Jordan is just all pro when it comes to podcasting. Fascinating conversations, super interesting guests and I am thrilled here that we can get into some of the nitty gritty of the behind the scenes of it all. So welcome.

Yeah, it's going to be fun because I'm curious to hear about how you think about running a Business. Because I. Starting my new business, starting the Jordan Harbinger show, which isn't new. I mean, I've been podcasting for 14 years, but I had to sort of, like you said, pivot and reinvent myself. And when you're doing it on the fly, you're often not thinking, like, here's the kind of team I want. You're like, let's not go broke and live in an alleyway. Right. Like, that's what you're thinking when you have an emergency pivot, which I think a lot of people are doing right now because of the circumstances of the economy. So it's going to be fun for me to hear about what it's like when you actually think ahead and you have the luxury of planning.

Yeah. Well, this is what I want to ask you about, because you had such a unique situation. First of all, I'm glad you said it. You were an OG in the podcasting space when no one knew what the hell was going on, what a podcast was. You were there, and you did Sirius for a while. You.

Satellite radio.

Yeah, yeah, satellite radio. And then with your former show, you did hundreds of interviews. Your show, among every single show I did, which was dozens and dozens, sold more Pivot books during the launch week. And I had more people talking to me about having heard that conversation with you. It was such a gift that you gave me at that time in 2016. And so when you. When you launched your new show, I think what impressed me the most was you were just not. You just took it so seriously. Like, when I say not, I was going to say not willing to fail you, I think more than anyone I know have treated podcasting like a business. And it was just so interesting to see you go, okay, I'm starting this new show. Yes, I have listeners and people who know and love my work, but. But you kind of did have that opportunity you just described of. I can't call it building from scratch because you're an incredible person and host and you have such a network. But what was your thinking at that time in terms of how you were going to launch this new. Let's call it the new name of the show and actually break through and get traction and take it seriously as a professional podcast and as your main source of income, no less?

Yeah, I felt like at the time, I didn't have the luxury of planning. I had the luxury of having the opportunity to reinvent myself, I guess you would say, because I didn't have much choice, you know, to give people the short version of the story. I ran this one show for 11 years, had a split with my business partners. We negotiated a nice amicable split, and then they were like, wait, what if we just take everything? You will have to sue us with your own money. You'll never get ahead. And I was like, oh, no. You know, like, sort of backed into a corner. And what happened was I started the Jordan Harbinger show, which is the current podcast that I run, and I was able to, thankfully, having done 11 years of what I'd like to think is pretty good work, the audience followed me, which my business partners somehow had not anticipated would happen. And so I ended up building, quote, unquote, overnight, what would have taken me a decade to build in terms of the size of a podcast. And that was fortunate, but I didn't know that was going to happen. Right? Everyone said, oh, your listeners will follow you. And I was like, really? Is that really going to happen? You know, so you don't really know. So I had the luxury of reinventing and rebranding and things like that, but I did it from a place of, like, an emergency, let's not go broke and lose the house kind of perspective. And I will say thank goodness for my team, which also left the old company and came with me, so I didn't have to rehire. So that's why it's not really from scratch. I had a brand in the podcasting space, had a large audience that Googled what happened to Jordan Harbinger? I remember I used to type in, like, what my name, and it would be like, top searches. You know, Google sends you those trends, and it would be like, where is Jordan Harbinger? Was like, the top one for. For, like, months. Because people were catching up on my old podcast and hearing these two random dudes who'd never done a podcast before, and they're like, wait a minute, where. Where's Jordan Harbinger? So I created a bunch. You know, I hired an SEO team to, like, handle that. But I did. I didn't have to rehire. I brought the whole team. I had the audience, I had the branding. That's huge. That's why when people are like, how did you build a podcast in such a short time? It's like, well, I really didn't. Like, the heavy groundwork was done. It's like when people say, how did you build a house so fast? They don't see the part where you, like, dug a foundation and got permits and that and got inspections. And then that took, like, eight months, right? They see the three months or the four months where people were hammering things and they're like, man, that was fast. You know, so it's not really. It's the iceberg phenomenon. And so I don't want, I, I always say that because I don't want people. There's a lot of people on the Internet looking at businesses and they see the tip of the iceberg or they see what other people are doing and then they see what other people are doing on social, which is like this self aggrandizing crap. And they go, oh, I'm never going to be able to do that. Or I didn't, I didn't do that with my own business. What am I doing wrong? And the answer is you're not lying to people about how successful you are and how quickly you did it, which is like what all these Internet marketers do for the most part.

You mentioned your team. I would love to know either exactly when you launched the Jordan Harbinger show, what was your team set up? Tell us exactly, like, who did you have on board? Who did you know you needed to have? Because I do think that I mentioned to you this phrase before we hit record of delightfully tiny team. There's a certain, if you try to go completely solo, especially with a podcast, it is a crushing amount of work. And so I, I loved seeing how you did bring your team over. And so tell us what the setup was at that time and if it has. I know maybe the people on your team have changed, but what roles you have in place today, like, has anything changed in terms of your team setup?

Yeah. So when I started, I had my producer and I had an audio engineer that I put on furlough because he was like an added expense. And my producer was able to do a lot of the show editing and.

Tell us, tell us what a producer even does.

Right, So a producer, it depends. Like, that's one of those flexible roles. But a producer typically will, they'll edit the show, they'll upload the show files to the Internet, they'll make sure that the show notes are in place from the writer, et cetera. My producer was mostly just editing the audio files and I eventually rehired my engineer who was originally doing the editing, and I hired him. And then I now have my show notes writer who crafts the notes for the show, obviously, and manages the website. I now have him putting the files up on the Internet. So I sort of eliminated the producer position or combined it with the engineer position. And then I had my administrator or my coo slash wife who does all of the show booking and the logistics and pays the invoices and keeps our books and cuts checks and makes sure the taxes are done. Like, you need someone like that. And if you're doing that yourself, I get it, you often have to do that. But that's one of those things that takes a major. That's a lot of heavy lifting, you know, that's. That's one of those positions that you. I feel like any good entrepreneur, especially somebody who's a creator, has to fill because it's death by a thousand paper cuts. If you're like, okay, I need to read this book by Jenny Blake and then I need to go and take notes and record the podcast. Oh, but I have to file my taxes and I need to 1099 this vendor and. Oh, right, that's right. I need to submit receipts to this and I've got to pay my AMEX bill. Like, by then you're just done and it's 5pm and you're like, I don't have the energy to read this book and take notes. And then the next day it starts over. Right.

So, yeah, death by a thousand cuts is the perfect way to put that.

Yeah.

On all sides, you can have death by a thousand cuts of booking, scheduling, rescheduling, prepping. I mean, so does Jen help you reach out to the people you want to book, or are you still sending the messages? Because I know you're big on your network and how you connect with people is. Do you give any guidance of can you go reach out to this person or are you still sending those?

I'm pretty much still doing it. Jen, by the way, my wife slash, assistant. Wife, assistant, CEO.

I feel like CEO is a really great title.

CEO. She really is the CEO. But yeah, people get confused and they're like, wait, do you host the show? And yeah, she really is the CEO slash, coo. I guess I make the decisions and then she like tells me that it's a bad idea and then we don't do stuff or tells me how it's going to be really hard or how it's going to be done and then does it. So it's. It sort of depends on, yeah, she does need the COO title at the very least. So I reach out to people initially, but then usually they'll reply and they'll go like, okay, looping in my assistant. And I'm like, great, looping in mine. And then Jen will be like, hey, I booked a studio. It's in New York. Is as close to you. And then, you know, here's the logistics, blah, blah, blah. Set up the time, set up the software to record. So she does all that. I do typically do the outreach part. And I still answer the majority of my email, unless it's something that's going to go directly to her, in which case I forward it, you know, like that kind of thing. I don't have a thing where like no one can reach me because I'm important. I still reply to all the messages that I get in some form or another or make sure that they get replied to in some form or another. But she does a lot of heavy lifting. Like she probably works 20 hours a week, which is part time technically because we have a baby. But the amount of work that she gets done, it's like the taxes are done, the software is set up, the person does have a studio to go to, they do have the driving directions for or whatever. I do have the book I need to read for next week's show saved on a hard drive somewhere. My calls are all scheduled for me. You know, like that kind of thing is all done. And that's the most important position in the company. And I, I, I think like, if anything really happened and we were like, our income got cut down, you know, 80% or something like that, she would still have to work with me and I'd have to do a bunch of other work, like edit my own show and things like that. But it doesn't, there's no, I can't imagine going back and having to do all this stuff myself because it just wouldn't be possible, you know, like, yeah, even if I could make the time and I was working 60, 80 hour workweeks, you, no one has. People think they can just like work longer, but you can't because of course your performance degrades. So I try to look for those places where performance degrades and then I try to outsource those things like I was having Jen do. Hey, can you upload the episode to Descript and get a transcription? Can you then take the transcript and then put it on the YouTube video? And then can you do. And she's like, ugh, this takes so much out of me. So she hired an assistant of her own. So now you get people delegating and a lot of folks have sort of argued, like, aren't you just delegating everything? And I'm like, yeah, you say that like that's not the best thing in the world, you know, to be able to delegate anything that Drains you.

Well, oh, yes, I harp on that all the time. It's so crucial because especially, and this is the whole premise of this show, it's freeing up your time, your mind and your team. And that can mean freeing your mind. Like you, Jordan, so much of what you do is based on your intellect and your presence and your in the moment intuition about what to ask and what to follow up on. And that is a skill that you've honed after almost nearly 15 years of interviews that you're still honing. You know, I love hearing you talk about how you're constantly learning. And this is why I think it's so important what you just said and how you're describing your team and that even giving then Jen to say, okay, whatever drains you, go ahead and delegate that. Why not? Why should anybody be doing work they can't stand or working these crazy hours where if you're tired and you have a baby at home, both of you, it's like, if you're tired, it's. I know for a fact I lose my words when I try to interview when I'm tired. And some days that's just how it goes. But if I'm. The temperature in the room isn't right. If I haven't gotten enough sleep, it's not nearly the quality of interview or conversation that I know it could be.

Exactly. And I think a lot of people, look, it depends on your business, but if you're in the podcast slash radio business, it's a performance any way you look at it. And if you think about other performers, let's say like a ballet dancer, no one's like, hey, these women are all here from 9am why don't they set up the chairs? It's like, because they're gonna perform and we don't want them tired from cleaning the aisles of the theater. Are you kidding?

Nobody would ever have the singer of the concert help set up the chairs. No one's like, hey, Bieber, can you go grab that pallet of Coca Cola syrup? We need that in the concession area. Right. You want that person to be fresh because they have to be able to give their performance their all. But what I noticed with entrepreneurs who have podcasts or are doing videos or anything like that, or even just like focusing on their core content. And you've probably talked about this a million times, but I, I often see entrepreneurs go the. The worst thing. And I know I just sort of face palm. And I always think back like, okay, I used to do this when I see people will Text me and say, hey, Jordan, how do I get it so that on Instagram, the clip that I have has the words like subtitles, and I get those and post those. And I was like, I don't know why? And they're like, well, don't you do that? And I go, no, you mean like creating an audio gram or like a clip from your podcast where the words show up on the screen? He's like, yeah. And I go, why? Why are you. I don't know. Doesn't the who's doing this for you? Why can't they figure it out? And he's like, I'm doing it. I'm like, you're running a company that's about, let's say, cybersecurity, and you're asking me how to use, like, the Headliner app or whatever app it is that does that stuff. Why are you doing this? And they're like, well, it's not that hard. And I go, how long has it taken you today? Oh, like three hours. But I'm just figuring it out. And I'm like, there's no reason you should even know how that app works. Literally. Like, you should have no idea.

And unless you love new apps and you can't wait to go play around on it and in your free time.

Exactly. And look, and if you know how things work in your company, that's great. I do know how to do everyone's job at some level. Not well, but I do know how to do it at some level. So, yeah, I get it. But you shouldn't be thinking that. Like, the things they're asking me about, how do I change the text color? The answer is, who cares? Because this is not your job. And I find that there's people that think because something is or should be easy, that they should do it in their own business. And I'm like, no, you're totally discounting your value of your own time. And a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs do this. They think, okay, well, I. Maybe I'll edit my own show, because I can, and I know how to. Or, you know, maybe I should make the graphics for the posts. Maybe I should write the show notes. I get it. You can write. And you can type in English, great. You can draw. Great. You can. You know how to use apps and social media, great. That doesn't mean you're supposed to be doing that in your business, you know, and that's an important distinction. And a lot of people can't really wrap their mind around it. And for a while, my wife was like that. She would be making YouTube thumbnails, and I'd go, what are you doing? And she'd go, ah, this isn't even hard. And I'd come back from, like, the gym an hour later, and I'd go, what are you doing? She'd go, oh, I'm finishing up this thumbnail. And I'm like, are you kidding me? You've spent an hour doing this. You can go on fiverr and have this done for, like, 12 bucks. And she's like, yeah, but it's. It's. It's not that bad. And for a while, she would be like, there'd be like, 80 unread messages in the inbox, and. But she's got all the YouTube thumbnails done, and we had to have kind of a sit down and be like, you know, hey, this is bad for the company and for your sanity to. You should not be up at 3am making YouTube thumbnails because you didn't get to it during the day. That's insane. So as we started outsourcing things, by the way, this is how you convince somebody because you can't sort of talk them through this. What I did is I hired a virtual assistant for some other things that I knew she didn't know how to do. And then that person worked out really well. It was transcription. I hired her for transcription, and I was like, you. You don't know how to do this, and you shouldn't be doing this. So she's like, fine, I don't want to deal with that. Then she's like, oh, what else can she do? And so she started piling work on this virtual assistant, this transcriptionist, who then knocks it out while we're asleep for, like, $12 for the whole day or whatever, you know, they make in four hours of work.

Yeah.

And a lot of the time, 15. We're pretty generous, so we probably pay her 20 bucks. And she, like, loves us because she makes $5 an hour instead of two.

Right. I'm all about pain. Exactly. Like, paying people enough that they're excited to do the work, and it's not.

A meaningful difference in our bottom line to, like, double this. Her pay from elsewhere. And whenever we need anything in a bind, like on a Friday night, and she's like, it's my kid's birthday. We're like, hey, dang, we really need this thing done by Monday. And it's. She's like, don't worry. They're all passed out. They're gonna go to sleep and we're like, you don't have to do it now. We feel bad. She's like, no, I, I want to help. But meanwhile, it's also like, yeah, you're going to earn in two hours what you normally get paid in five from your normal gig. And so you should treat your team well. And it doesn't mean anything to us to like pay 20 bucks instead of 12. You know what I mean?

Exactly.

And just that spirit of generosity. There's been so many times where someone quoted me and I ended up paying more or I actually said, let me raise your rate, you know, and just how that starts the relationship on such a different frequency than. And I know that's not a favorite.

Word of yours, but like, you know me.

Such a different tone than haggling, you know, like the second you're haggling on someone's rates, it's like you're just not even. You shouldn't even. You don't even deserve to work with them, you know, and some people don't charge enough. And I know that. Okay, I really want you to want to do this work and show up for it. And this is the reason I was so excited to have you on this show, because we're talking about the importance of a team and not being, not going solo once you get to a certain point, obviously when everyone. People are starting out. You know, I'm six years into podcasting myself, 10 years into full time self employment. And I will say that when I started the Pivot podcast, it really was a hobby. I had no idea what podcasting was this 2014, 15. I just thought it would be this little side project to the book. And not only did it become the favorite thing that I do, but also the amount of work. I just couldn't even believe it.

It is.

A podcast is as much work as a full time business. I think if you really treat it that way and you have done that and you acknowledge that, and I think that's one of the reasons you're so successful is you actually aren't. I mean, you may do courses and events from time to time, but you're not. We both know you're not an online marketer type. Like, you treat podcasting as a business and you give it your full attention and energy and you have a team around you to help you. Jordan. Do what you do best.

Yes. And I think people need to look at that, look at their business in that way. You know, like my earlier point with Jen wanting to do everything herself and then me finding Millie, our Transcriptionist, slash, virtual assistant. And then her finding out that you can outsource things like that's a breakthrough that took me probably a few years to make. And so I understand when people are in there now, I'm not like, oh, you're so stupid. I say facepalm because I did the same thing myself. Right? I don't think any less of anybody for having tried to do everything themselves. It is tempting, especially when you think, oh, that's $20 that could have gone in my pocket. At some point you have to stop optimizing for the amount of income that you're getting and start optimizing for the quality of your life. And I think that that point comes earlier than most people think. You and I both know tons of people that are just miserable and work like 80, 100 hour work weeks but make like $2 million. And it's sort of sad because you realize that that person could do half the amount of work that they're doing or less and make $1 million a year and never have a difference in quality of life or never have a negative impact on quality of life because of the amount of income. They don't have to work 10 years longer or anything. They're never going to notice the money, but they're going to notice the immediate bump in free time. And even for the most neurotic people that I know that love working a lot because they feel like they have to, I, I'll challenge them and I'll say, hey, man, outsource this, this and this. And then with all the free time and energy that you have that you're going to be beating yourself up for not working. Hire a personal trainer and then they'll work you out during the, that hour and a half every day. So I've gotten some of my friends in crazy good physical shape because instead of answering all their YouTube comments and editing their thumbnails and doing their edits themselves and managing their own website, they have like a personal trainer that they work out with every single day to burn off that energy and to take up that amount of time. Because some people are just workaholics. And that's like the thing. But nobody that I know goes, man, I wish I hadn't outsourced fixing audio flavors and editing my own. Man, I wish I hadn't outsourced creating graphics for my website and posting on social media. Nobody I know resents doing that. You know, it's, it's. And that's optimizing for quality of life. And people think like okay, I'll do that once I hit the seven figure mark. You should be doing that once you hit like the $50,000 a year mark or whatever in your business, you should be trying to outsource everything possible. You in fact, for people that have side hustles and also have a day job, they ask, you know, when should I quit and go all in. And the answer is pretty much never. Like that whole like quit your job now and go all in thing I think is massively overrated. And it's sort of put forth by like these Instagram Instagra influencers. I think you should outsource everything you can while keeping your day job. And only once you can no longer outsource anything else. And you're. And the, and the fact that you are doing only part time work is what's holding your business back. Then and only then should you even think about quitting your job. So in other words, if you're don't quit and then be like, okay, I'm going to spend four hours a day on Twitter trying to figure out lead generation. That's ridiculous. And I see people do that all the time. You should be outsourcing all your social media. Great. Okay, now, now I can spend my three hours, four hours a day after my day job working only on the product. Oh, you're packing orders and shipping them. Nope. Hire the neighborhood kid or your own kid to pack your orders and ship them and keep your day job. Oh, now you're spending a bunch of time buying supplies and moving them around and sourcing your goods to. I don't know, let's say you make something in your garage that you sell. Nope. Hire someone else to handle that for you. Hire someone else to process your returns. Hire someone else to do your books. Hire someone else to do all of these things for you. And then, and only when it's like you're, you just can't scale anymore because you're working four hours a day purely doing the creation of the product in your garage or whatever it is. Then and only then should you be like, hey, I think I can quit my job now. Right? That's because you've outsourced everything. What people do instead is they quit their job and then they're packing and shipping orders and they're making stuff in their garage and they're doing lead gen on social and they're doing their books, but they're still only spending four hours doing anything that they like. And the rest of it they, they kind of hate. Right? But then if Anything happens, they don't have to their business, they don't have the stability of their day job, they don't have their insurance from their employer. So I'm thinking that's backwards. You know, you should be maximizing doing what you love and keeping the stability of that income source and the insurance from your employer. And only when it's impossible to make more money or make more widgets in your garage should you consider leaving your job.

So smart. This is the smartest that I've ever heard somebody put it. Because not only. I mean, this is just brilliant, Jordan, really. And as someone that did quit and go all in.

What you're describing is, goes so far beyond just the capability of the business to succeed because this person would be building the habit of delegation from day one. From day negative one like day negative a hundred. You're building this most vital skillset. It's so crucial. I, I, I won't say wasted, but I spent years as the solopreneur doing it all. I hired a va, maybe five years in, so virtual assistant, and of course never looked back. I was willing to sac when I, when my business was and me personally in my apocalypse year 2013. Little did I know how 2020 would go. Yeah, the one thing I just was not willing to cut out was food, fitness and my VA and I became so indispensable. But I could have learned it years earlier than I did. So I love what you're describing because what you're, what you're saying is how to teach somebody to be in the role that they, and only they can do. None of the riff raff. And then by the time they do launch full time, you know, at that point they can no longer delegate that they're also so honed in on what they bring and their unique value. And I've heard you talk about not being a commodity. And in fact, I would love, I have so many questions for you. I want to put a pin in the email because you have some really interesting email systems that I think I just would love for you to share your approach. But before that, you have this very interesting philosophy on how to not be a commodity. And in a space like podcasting, I think part of the reason people are afraid to delegate and hire help is because it's so hard to monetize a podcast. Um, and in order to do that, you really have to differentiate yourself and not be a commodity. So can you, can you speak to that? Um, and also, I'm just curious, on the producer side, do you feel like it would be helpful for you to have a producer so you could just show up and. And have the conversation. Like, if you could just weave that in. Because I'm still curious about that role as it applies to you, Jordan, being able to do your genius.

Yeah. So right now I do have somebody that edits the show and takes care of everything and all the files are taken care of and everything like that. So I sort of split the producer role into different pieces. What I noticed that a lot of producers do, for example, at Sirius xm when I was on satellite radio, they help book guests and things like that. And that's sort of what Jen does. But a lot of times the producer works with the show host to figure out who should be on the show. And I realized I don't really need that because I can make those decisions relatively quickly. Now, if I had somebody who is just sort of a savant at finding interesting people and then reaching out to them, finding their contact information, pitching, following up and booking them, that would be great. But I've hired show bookers galore and unfortunately none of them can really do a good job with it because they would have to only work for me so that they know what the show is like and what the interests are. And I don't need somebody full time because I do two interviews a week. So it would be too. Too little work. So I'd have to have you have.

Someone taping live with you, like, while you're. I remember you used to have.

Okay, I used to have that. And I realized. And honestly, like, that person was helpful for a while, but there was a time that that person and I were having some drinks and he goes, I gotta be honest, I'm just checking my email during the show and I was like, oh, okay, well, then you're not contributing really in any way. And he's like, well, I'm making sure the tech doesn't fail, which is great, but, like, I can do that. You know, I'm not. I. It's not complicated anymore. They're not calling in on an ISDN line to some piece of gear I don't know how to use in New York while I'm in LA in a different satellite studio. This is Zoom, Skype, Zencast, or Squad Cast. You know, it's. It's designed to be used by one person and controlled by the person and then set it and forget it. So I don't really need that role anymore. If I had a producer, it would be a co host that is adding to the conversation you know, it wouldn't.

Be somebody who's like, right, like your Feedback Friday.

Yeah, I have that. On Feedback Friday, I have Gabriel helping give advice and reading the questions because I need two voices, you know, to differentiate on the show. And that works. That works well.

It works for him and his professional goals to do that.

Yeah, yeah. And that works well. But I realized a while ago that, like, there. I don't want to create a role where there doesn't need to be one. I want to outsource things that I'm usually doing, but I don't need to add more complexity. Right. So, yes, I outsourced the editing of the audio files. Then they get sent to the show notes or the website manager, whatever, you know, who puts them on the Internet, adds the notes, make sure that they're up in the system and get launched in the podcast feed. Like, I have that. But I don't want to add somebody else into the machinery that I have because, as you call it, delightfully tiny team. There's a lot of folks that say, like, oh, yeah, I've got 20 people working here. And I'm like, yeah, but what do they all do? And most of the time, they literally can't even tell me. And that's not a good sign.

And then that creates overhead of its own of managing the complexity of a team that size.

Yeah. And I think a lot of it's ego. People want to say, oh, I've got a team of 13, it's like, cool. But when one person's job is to, like, manage the office that you don't have anymore, and so, you know, you're kind of just creating paid roles for no reason. And I've. I found that a lot of these folks are like, they're doing all these things that don't generate any roi, and they're doing it because they want to say they have a large team or they want to appear larger than they are. And unfortunately, that's a great way to add all this complexity to your business and then not necessarily know where your money comes from. So people think that adding things is fun, and it's not. It can be fun, but it's dangerous because. And let me give you an example. There's a lot of people that say, like, oh, I know that I have to be on TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat, and I want to be on LinkedIn. I want to do this. But where does their money. Where do their leads come from? Okay, well, they sell. They sell some kind of T shirt or something. Right? Okay, cool. But then you might need Instagram because it generates leads. You probably need a website, E commerce. So you need, like, your Shopify and website guru, whatever, to handle that. You don't need to be on LinkedIn talking about your business, and you don't need to be on TikTok if you're not making any sales there. And this is just a hypothetical. Maybe TikTok's great for selling T shirts. What do I know? And I don't use it at all. And the reason for that is because all these things that look fun or make you appear bigger than you are, and you call it branding, it actually makes it harder to find the really useful data inside your business. So there's tons of podcasters that are like, on TikTok, on Snapchat, on LinkedIn, on Instagram. And I go, how do you get new listeners? And they're like, oh, I'm on social. And I go, but how do you know you get new listeners from it? Well, you know, once a week, somebody tells me that they saw a post on Instagram and then they went and downloaded the podcast. And I go, okay, so you know that you're getting one new listener a week, which means you're probably getting more, but you're paying, like, $10,000 a month for somebody to manage all this social for you. So if you hit a speed bump or we hit hard times, economically, you don't even know what to cut because you don't actually know what your growth channels are. But for me, I know what my growth channels are, which is why I don't post on Instagram, I don't post on TikTok, I don't care about LinkedIn, I don't post on Snapchat, I don't post on Facebook. And people go, you're leaving money on the table. And I always just sort of go prove it. And they never can because they don't have any clue how many people they're gaining from those platforms. They're doing it because some consultant who learned from another consultant said, hey, everyone's on these now. You're missing out if you're not. And I'm like, yeah, okay, cool. That person makes money posting stuff for you. Do you think you can trust their unbiased opinion on whether or not you need to be on all these social platforms? So I see podcasters doing that kind of thing, and they have so much noise because they don't really know where their traffic's coming from. They don't really know where their Sales of their, like, they're selling iPhone cases. They don't really know where those sales are coming from. They're only guessing. And they're on so many platforms, they're adding just a bunch of noise to their channels. And that's horrible for you. Like, yeah. These podcasters, for example, they have no clue what they can cut now. If they have to hit lean times. They have no idea what. What unplugging is. If you unplug this channel, is it going to ruin your business? They have no clue because they've just thrown things at the wall to see what sticks and they've never actually figured out what sticks. They just keep throwing things at the wall. That's why you see these guys on Clubhouse now. And I go, what's the ROI? And no one can freak 24 7.

And then going back to what we said earlier you mentioned, and I love the data perspective that you bring. Like, you don't know what's creating the leads, what's actually having a material impact in the business and the biggest levers that you have, not to mention your fractured time, energy and attention. So when someone is spreading themselves so thin across all these platforms, it's going surface level on all of them. Even Clubhouse, I am experimenting with it and kind of like. But I just see the same people and they're in there all day. And I'm thinking to myself, first of all, what I'm listening to has added no value so far. Like, I have not learned something so brand new that I wouldn't hear on a podcast. And secondly, oh, it's. I have so many thoughts on it, but it's like, here's another thing that is going to suck your time, energy and attention dry. And until you show me how it's different than the value someone gets from a podcast, which is at least asynchronous to you, Jordan, the creator's time. I'm not convinced. And I think people, it either needs to become way more intimate or way more kind of spontaneous or, I don't know, there has to be some reason for me with. With something new like that, because I'm always willing to try the new thing. I don't want to get us like on a total tangent about Clubhouse, but I'm so discerning about where I put my time, energy and attention for exactly the reason you said of going back to the performance and trying to really be special. And so can you. Can you tell us just briefly, your thoughts on how to not be a commodity at something like podcasting? So you're gonna go all in. How do you make sure you're not totally replaceable?

Yeah, that's. Being able to focus on something is extremely underrated. So I focus on growing the podcast and people go like, why don't you focus on growing social media channels? What? You know, why are you ignoring outlets like Clubhouse, stuff like that? The reason is because if I spend an hour chatting with strangers on Clubhouse, even if I'm getting good conversion to listeners, and those people are going listening to the podcast, I'm paying for, I'm paying my. My time is what I'm trading for that, right? I'd much rather trade money for that. But I can't outsource YouTube. I can't outsource Clubhouse. It has to be you, it has to be me. So I. Since I have no option to pay money for that, that same result in that app, I ignore that app. And the reason is because I want to be able to read the entire book or the two books that my guest tomorrow for this week's show or whatever have written that's gonna make for a better show. I wanna be able to focus on interacting with my fans on. In dms and in emails. That's what's gonna make for a more loyal audience, which shares the show, which makes my audience larger, which contributes to my bottom line. So when I look at something that doesn't have a direct influence on my bottom line, it ends up being just an excuse. It's an experiment. And if you think it's fun, cool. But I guarantee you, a lot of these people that live on clubhouse 24 7, they don't really think it's fun. They're just addicted to the limelight and they can't get away from it. And they. They're building yet another place where people can sort of worship them online. And it's unhealthy because I don't know a whole lot of people that are really good at what they do, that are everywhere all the time. I know a lot of people that are just like a lot of others and they're everywhere all the time, just like all those other people. But they're all a commodity, right? Because they can't focus on any one thing. They're not spending time getting better at interviewing. They're not spending time getting better at performance of whatever it is that they're doing. They're just expanding where they are, like you said, spreading yourself really thin. Anybody can spread themselves thin. Very few people can focus and get into the top 1% or 10% of performance in any given area. Like, we don't have. Let's use an analogy. If somebody says, yeah, I play football, baseball, and golf, we don't think, wow, they're a professional baseball player and a professional golfer and a professional football player. We don't think that, and there's a reason we don't think that.

So true. That's so true. And it almost makes it more valuable. Like, if you, Jordan, were everywhere, and every time I open my phone, there you are somewhere, it kind of dilutes your true gifts and the fact that you. Where do I find you? In my podcast app having really crazy, interesting conversations with fascinating people that you source that are different from everyone else making the PR circuit. And it's always a super interesting conver. An engaging conversation that you have put your time and focus into. And I actually think it would dilute exactly like you would become if you were everywhere all the time.

You.

It wouldn't be as interesting. And I wouldn't. My experience of you, Jordan, wouldn't be the same. I. I will say I listen to your podcast and I'll. I'll take your podcasting courses, and those are always fascinating as well. And otherwise, I start to feel like, oh, yeah, you're everywhere. And sometimes you're saying things that are interesting, or sometimes it's a Instagram Live, and now you're on Clubhouse, and now you're over here. It's actually a different experience of you as a listener and a friend. Then, wow. Every time I hear Jordan speak, he's saying the smartest things. It's just a totally different experience.

It is. I also look at the quality of the content in apps, and I go, look, nobody expects an Instagram Live to be as good as a television show or even a YouTube video for that matter. Right. And so why would it like Twitter is, to people who write books as clubhouses, to people who create podcasts or good podcasts.

Oh, Shazam. Quotable. I love it.

It kind of. I mean, look, it's kind of a zinger against Clubhouse, but whenever people go, hey, why aren't you on Clubhouse? I go, oh, so it's like a podcast, only too many people are talking. We're recording it with AirPods, and we don't really have a good plan. And then it's unedited. Right.

Same thought. Yes. As a listener, it's kind of intolerable. If you're used to podcasts, it's like, oh, what am I doing in here? It's like listening to call in Radio that goes on indefinitely so far. I mean, I'm waiting for someone to do something more interesting than that.

It's, it's like a talk radio show with non professional hosts who aren't quite sure exactly what they're going to be saying. And also recorded on crappy microphones. Yes.

Who want to be seen as a, like a really smart person or an influencer. Or try to get there early enough that they get the critical mass and the network effects being early. Jordan, I could really talk to you all day, but I can't let you leave you without telling us about your email system because you, I forget where I heard you say it. You have such an interesting approach to your email where you don't get overwhelmed, it gets handled. And you're still in your inbox. But it sounds like you've got this down. Could you just briefly tell us your, your approach, your systems for email?

Oh, yeah, sure. So I, I have a, I use Todoist, which is a to do list app. And every day, every weekday, I don't do it on weekends, but every day I will answer, let's say like 30 Instagram messages, which sounds like a lot, but really isn't. I will answer 10 starred emails which are like quote unquote, important emails that have been starred by me when they come into my inbox and I see that I need to reply to this. I will reply to.

10 or 20 fan mails, 30 LinkedIn messages. Right. And I have this counter app on my phone that counts down. It's just, I think it's literally called called counter. It's pretty basic and that, that makes it easy for me to not think about counting because that actually takes up. You'd be surprised at how much cognitive bandwidth it takes to, to count and then keep account in your head and notice how many messages you've answered, you know, over and above 5. Like it's harder to keep in your head. So I do that and that all that takes like an hour. Right. Which is not a lot of time. And when I'm done, I'm done. I don't have to worry about what's in my inbox. None of it matters. Doesn't matter if I'm getting dms and I start from the oldest to the newest. So if somebody messages me that way, because if you don't do that, there's going to be people at the bottom of your messaging and DM inbox that never get answered. So I just start from what this. And so what this does is important stuff gets Answered pretty much right away because I don't have, and I guarantee you no one here has more than 10 or so important emails in a given day. You really don't. You think you do, but you kind of don't. All these DMS and fan mail and stuff like that that I have, none of it is urgent. So doing X number of those each day, which adds up to like a hundred and pretty quick to answer, starting from oldest to newest is great. And yes, it takes me at that rate a few weeks to get to each one. And that's great because if you reply to those things right away, you start a conversation and then your email turns into like instant messaging or texting. And I don't want that. Right. I want to be accessible, but not so accessible. People think they can fire off anything at any given time and get a response in an hour or even within the same day or the same week. I don't want to be anyone's urgent emergency call contact that I don't know in real life, you know, don't you.

Do something interesting too with I thought I heard you saying and I wish I could find where I wrote this down because I was walking the dog. So it was like on the go where you have batching of some kind or you respond to friends within the week and you try to delegate whatever you can as soon as you can. You have some interesting way that.

Yeah, I triage my email in the inbox. I don't reply to things in the inbox. So if I look at an email and it's from you, I know that it's going to get starred. Probably are already automatically starred because we're friends. So those things get starred and I know that I will answer it later. What people do is they go in their inbox, they read something, they mark it as unread, they go back, they read it again 90 minutes later, they mark it as unread. You know, they're not triaging anything. Anytime something comes in the inbox, if I'm doing my email at that point in time during my only block during the day where I do it, which is this 90 minute task block that I have in the morning or the afternoon, those are the only times I'm checking my email generally. So if it's something that Jen needs to handle, it gets forwarded to Jen right away. If it's something that I need to reply to, I do not reply right away. I star it and then I will do it during my email block. Right. That's so triage. Is separate. What most people do is they never triage, they just do email. And that's how you get sucked into having 30,000 unread emails. And some of them are important and others are newsletters from Crate and Barrel or whatever the hell. Right. That you've got in there. And everything is a mess. And so the triage, what it does is, is, is it really helps. Like I have, there's a newsletter inbox that only has, you know, Google Drive alerts and things like that. There's the important inbox there stuff that has to do with me buying ads for the Jordan Harbinger show or helping with some of my consulting clients. That's a totally separate inbox. I've got a fan mail inbox and I've got a guest booking inbox and I can really, I can really separate and triage all of these messages and then answer them when the time is planned out on my calendar and I can forget about it for the rest of the entire day. I never have to look about it, look at it or think about it because I know it's going to get handled based on that system. And that's extremely important. Because most people I know, they go, oh my God, I have so much email. And I go, yeah, but why are you looking at it right now? It's 8:00pm you know, you looked at it this morning, don't look at it now. It should be a non issue. You have systems that will make sure that it gets handled at some point, that is reasonable and that's all you need to do. Otherwise you're just beholden to everything coming into your inbox at all times. And most people who think that something is important, most business owners, you really don't realize how not important most of this stuff is and how not urgent. And people will also conflate urgent with important. I have a lot of important emails. They're not urgent. So I answer them in the start during the time where I have, where I answer important emails. Right. But people think, oh, this is important. So they'll do it right away, even if they're over their lunch block with their kids. And it's sad because that isn't that vendor didn't need an answer until next Monday, but you did it right now. Why? Oh, so I don't forget. Why would you forget? You have systems you're not going to forget. But if you're just marking everything as unread and you've got 13,000 unread emails, yeah, it's a real danger that you Might forget to do this because you're, You're. You don't have a system, and it's a disaster.

I love, I mean, you're such a great systems thinker, and so I just love the way you describe that of triage separate from email. And as well, it's so easy to see yourself like, oh, my job is responding to the email. No, it isn't. Your job is the system, the triage, getting the emails where they need to go. And then, like you said, these very distinct task blocks. I just love how you describe that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your strategies for that. So, last question. If you could give listeners, let's say, people who either have a podcast or want to start one, as within their business, permission, so permission to start something or permission to drop something, what would it be?

You have permission to not do everything yourself. Right. I. And that's what I talked about earlier is look for things that you can outsource. And here's something that I think will get people thinking. If you look at something that you can outsource, but you kind of don't want to do it because you think, oh, this is so easy, I can just do it myself. I would ask yourself if it really needs to be done in the first place, right? And also ask yourself what you're really getting from something. Dropping social media for me was really hard. I still answer DMs and Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, things like that. I do answer those DMs from fans, and some of them are from friends and family on Facebook, of course, but I don't post. And it took me a while to sort of get over the fomo, but I realized no one cares, you know? And it was something that I sort of was doing myself. And I thought, okay, I'll outsource. It was costing me thousands of dollars to outsource. And I realized the reason I felt like I had to do it was because of fomo. Fear of missing out. And the reason that a lot of people like social media, myself included, at that point, was because it feeds your ego. And once I went, you know what? I don't care anymore about that, I realized that not only was it not helping my business, it was detracting because it was breaking my focus, costing me money, costing me headache. Now that I'm officially off of it, when people go, why aren't you on Clubhouse? And I go, same reason I'm not on TikTok, which is the same reason I never got on Snapchat, which is the same reason I stopped posting on Instagram, which is the same reason I stopped posting on Facebook. And now I literally have hours more than my competitors every day to work on the core business. And those guys are going to man, how come this and that and this and that are so much better than what we have? Who are you hiring for that? And I go, no one. It's just that I'm working on this while you're farting around doing live chats or Instagram lives for five people. You know, I just decided to not do that. I gave myself permission to not care about things that truthfully don't matter. And if you can't measure the results from something, there's a really good chance that it's not doing anything.

So well said. I'm smiling ear to ear. I'm jumping out of my chair. Brilliant. Jordan, thank you so, so much. Thank you for sharing your philosophy and giving us permission to stop doing so many of these things that don't even impact the bottom line. And focus. That's the big thing I'm taking away is smart systems and the power of focus. Thank you so, so much for being here and for being such an ongoing inspiration and friend from near and far.

Well, thank you very much. It's a fun conversation.

Yeah, thanks, Jordan.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

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