0:00

If you don't have a good show idea and your show

0:02

idea is just this vague I'm going

0:04

to talk to interesting people because it's fun for me . Go

0:06

ahead and do it , but don't

0:09

trick yourself , don't delude yourself

0:11

into thinking I'm going to monetize

0:13

this and I'm going to be able to quit my job

0:15

.

0:22

All right , I'm here with Jordan Harbinger . Jordan

0:25

, you are the host of the Jordan Harbinger show

0:27

. Your podcast was best

0:29

of 2018 by Apple and

0:31

you've quickly grown to over 6 million

0:33

downloads per month . While interviewing

0:35

people like Kobe Bryant , malcolm Gladwell , chelsea

0:38

Handler , neil DeGrasse Tyson , you

0:42

are at least like . Sometimes I go to podcasts , but

0:44

you're like podcast royalty . You are

0:46

the podcaster OGs . Yeah

0:49

, it's kind of funny .

0:50

I mean there was no such

0:52

thing as the podcasting industry when I started really

0:54

. You know , there was like a couple of small

0:57

, small , small , basically hobby

0:59

businesses that later evolved into

1:02

hosting companies , but there were no networks

1:04

to be had . There was nothing like that . There wasn't even YouTube

1:06

. So nobody was thinking about repurposing

1:09

content when For what Twitter ? I

1:11

mean there was nothing that was going to happen and

1:13

a lot of people who were podcasting called

1:16

the internet radio and other

1:18

people who were podcasting were just

1:20

like this is where I upload my talks

1:24

from my journalism course

1:26

or whatever right , or my IT course . Like

1:29

there wasn't the concept that you would

1:31

have a show like a radio show that was

1:34

designed to be downloaded later and never

1:36

livestreamed . That was kind of brand new back then .

1:39

Yeah , you actually started podcasting in 2005

1:41

. So , depending on

1:43

when you started in the year , that

1:45

might mean that you actually were podcasting before

1:47

iTunes even had podcasts , right ?

1:51

I think when we started it was , it did have podcasts

1:53

, as far as I know , but it was all

1:55

a text navigating . It

1:57

was a text directory . You couldn't just like type in something

1:59

into the search bar At least

2:01

I don't think so and you , if you did it , you

2:03

had to match like an exact title and

2:07

then all there was no cover art or anything like that , like album art , that you

2:09

wouldn't see that for podcasts . So it would

2:11

be like you'd click on podcasts and it would open

2:14

up this little sheet

2:16

that'd be like arts , entertainment news , what's that ? Like Entertainment news

2:19

, whatever , and then you'd click on that and then it would sort of

2:21

like go into the next thing . It was really

2:23

just a text based .

2:25

It was just a tree where you kind of directory tree

2:27

that was the word .

2:28

I was like it was a tree and you'd

2:30

have to dig seven categories

2:32

deep in the tree and there I

2:35

don't even know if there were rankings or anything like that

2:37

back then . There was just a list of available

2:39

shows and there were like five in the category

2:41

that I was in five .

2:43

That's incredible and you've actually

2:45

got some super interesting stories

2:47

of . When you launched , you were

2:49

like you weren't on a hosting platform because there was pretty

2:51

much nobody around . You were doing this all

2:54

yourself on like an FTP server .

2:56

Yeah , we had a shared GoDaddy server

2:58

that was like a virtual server , which is probably

3:01

, you know , like a 486 or something like that or

3:04

quad core , whatever it was back then

3:06

, and I remembered like the downloads were

3:09

slow because the internet was slow and most

3:11

people still had dial up anyway . And

3:13

you know , we'd just put our files

3:15

up there on what was essentially a web server , that

3:17

we didn't have CDN hosting

3:20

platforms or anything like that . We would

3:22

just put it up on the same server where we'd be running I

3:24

guess it was WordPress even back then or

3:28

whatever the God was it WordPress

3:30

, whatever it was back then and then you just link

3:32

the MP3s and the MP3 files would be in the same directory

3:35

as , like , all the images for your website

3:37

, that's crazy . Yeah , it was

3:39

wild , and people would be like , hey , this is going really slow for

3:41

me , and you'd be like , oh , I'm kind of out of bandwidth . It's

3:43

the end of the month , try trying three days

3:45

.

3:47

Oh my gosh , that's awesome . I definitely

3:49

remember those old days of downloading podcasts

3:51

and you're putting them on to your iPod

3:54

and then you go out and you listen to them for a while , and

3:56

it was definitely just a different world

3:58

, cause if people listened to podcasts

4:01

which almost nobody did , it was like the

4:03

same three podcasts that you were listening

4:05

to at the same time .

4:07

Yeah , pretty much . Yeah , there were . There were so many people

4:09

that told us well for Well , first of

4:11

all nobody knew what podcasts were , and then it was

4:14

like people listen to something with

4:16

tech , and then they'd have like one

4:18

or two other shows and there

4:20

were a lot of like gimmicky video

4:22

podcasts back then too , with people making

4:25

drinks or like ask a ninja , where

4:27

there's , like you , some guy in a ninja suit

4:29

just filming himself in his garage

4:31

or whatever , and he would give ninja

4:34

answers to whatever question . And

4:36

it was just bizarre because like that was huge

4:38

right . And I remember hearing that that guy

4:40

had gotten like thousands of downloads

4:42

and I was like mind blowing oh my gosh , that's amazing

4:45

. But like I don't think anybody

4:47

sponsored it or anything , it just kind of slowly died

4:49

, you know .

4:50

Yeah , I've totally forgot the days

4:52

of where it was like cool to talk about ninjas

4:55

and pirates and the early 2000s

4:57

. So you've seen podcasting

5:00

grow from when you started like a thousand

5:02

podcasts to now we are at like 1.5

5:05

million , and I

5:07

know a lot of our audience are new podcasters

5:10

or people who are just about to launch a podcast

5:12

. Is there still space

5:14

for these people ?

5:16

Yeah , I think that there is , because , look , everything

5:18

starts off hyper niche . The Jordan Harbinger

5:20

show is not very niche anymore . One week I

5:23

have like a mafia enforcer , and the

5:25

next week I've got some retired general

5:28

who's talking about cybersecurity and cyber warfare , and

5:30

then the week after that I've got somebody talking about election

5:33

interference , and then the week after that I've

5:35

got a celebrity on or some kind . So

5:37

it's very much a variety show . I don't necessarily

5:40

recommend people do that . That's too general . That's

5:42

a personality driven show which you

5:44

get . You kind of build the ability to

5:47

do that over time , right ? So

5:49

like that's the same reason I named it the Jordan Harbinger

5:51

show , people go , oh , you should have named it something

5:53

descriptive . People are actually

5:55

doing enough searching for Jordan Harbinger in I

5:58

to or in podcast directories that it makes sense . But

6:01

if you're just starting out , you shouldn't have

6:03

the John Doe show , because no one's really searching

6:05

for that . You should have

6:07

the indoor interior

6:09

decorator show or whatever it is that it's

6:11

about , because and that's what

6:13

you should generally stick to doing . So , yeah

6:15

, there's a million and a half podcasts , but there's probably only

6:17

a handful about

6:19

pickling vegetables or

6:22

beekeeping or whatever , and you can compete in those

6:24

niches .

6:26

So how would you tell people to pick

6:28

a topic ? Because you started

6:30

out in an issue where you were kind of doing just

6:33

like relationship advice and you were kind

6:36

of talking about psychology and talking to people and networking

6:38

and then you rebranded

6:40

from the old show to the Jordan Harbinger show . How

6:43

did you decide to make that move and like

6:45

how can people kind of follow that when they are

6:48

trying to pick their own topic ?

6:50

Yeah , picking a topic was tough . Early on

6:52

, I was actually teaching a course about networking

6:54

and I kept having new people

6:56

show up and I was like , all right , I need a way

6:59

to get them the old lectures , basically . But

7:02

I'm not in a classroom where these can be filmed . I

7:04

don't have any resources for that . Why don't I record

7:06

them ? So I was recording them , but

7:08

there was no way to distribute them , so there

7:10

was nothing really for me to do , so I burned them to CD . I

7:13

was giving away the CDs , asking for the CDs back . People

7:16

weren't giving me the day in CDs back . So then I was like fine

7:18

, they're five bucks and you get your money back if you

7:20

bring it back . And then people were like great , I need seven

7:22

. Then what do you need seven for ? I want

7:24

to give one to my brother , my roommate . So then I was like okay , I'm onto something

7:26

here . So I raised the price to 20 bucks . People

7:29

kept buying them and I thought I'm not going to get rich 20

7:31

bucks at a time . What

7:33

I need to actually do is give this stuff away for free and then charge

7:35

for more advanced coaching and things like that . So

7:39

I started uploading the files

7:41

to create what became the podcast and

7:44

that was the beginning . And

7:47

then that was like the very , very start

7:49

of what became a lead generator for my business

7:51

. And

7:53

then I became essentially a coach for dating and relationships

7:55

and networking and things like that . And

7:58

then as the show evolved and I got sick of that stuff because I was engaged

8:03

or whatever , or dating somebody for years

8:05

on end , or just sick of it Because

8:07

you know you grow out of that stuff when you're in your mid to late thirties

8:09

or early thirties , whatever it was . I just

8:12

started getting other opportunities where people would

8:14

go . You know it would be cool . My friend does this really cool

8:16

thing . You

8:18

should try to test a new episode like that . And

8:21

I remember interviewing this guy that I knew who was

8:23

a drug , a former drug smuggler , not smuggler

8:25

, but he grew marijuana . And then he got

8:28

caught with like a huge amount of

8:30

marijuana and

8:32

then he told the story and people were like mind blown

8:34

. They'd never heard anything like that , because you

8:36

didn't put stuff like that on TV . It was too racy , certainly

8:39

wasn't on the radio . There was kind of no

8:41

place for people to tell those kinds of stories . So

8:44

I was having them on my podcast and

8:47

then I quickly found , when I asked people what they'd loved about the show , they

8:50

like I like episode this , this , this and oh my God , the one with a guy who

8:53

grew the marijuana and then barely got away with that was so interesting

8:55

. So then every month

8:57

or so I would have one of these sort

9:00

of offbeat shows , and with a gang

9:02

member or something like this , and people were like these are

9:04

so cool . And

9:06

then I sort of lost interest in all the dating and relationship

9:08

stuff and I just became

9:10

more interested in talking about whatever it was that I wanted

9:13

to discuss with the guests , that I wanted to have

9:15

in . The audience started to grow and

9:18

I started to get a nice diverse group of

9:20

people and I kind of lost 10

9:23

or 15 percent of people too , because they were like , oh , this used

9:25

to be about dating and now it's like kind

9:27

of a Popory and I'm not really into that . But

9:29

I noticed that far more people were like hey

9:32

, this is really interesting now that you have

9:34

just more going on , because sometimes I don't want

9:36

to hear about dating , relationships , networking

9:38

. I'm just kind of in for whatever you

9:41

want to do . You know , surprise me , jordan

9:43

. And then it was like okay , now I've

9:45

earned the right , I've got enough interview skill after

9:47

at that point . You know a few years in

9:49

when I can make a lot of interesting

9:52

. I can find interesting people using the networking

9:54

skills that I'm teaching , like I still teach on the Jordan

9:56

Harbinger show . So finding people and

9:59

then getting them to open up and tell their story , that alone

10:01

was a skill . So I was like this is a perfect medium

10:03

for this . And now we find that to

10:05

be true with podcasts in general . Right , people love

10:07

telling stories and getting stories out there . Back then

10:09

they're just kind of wasn't a place where you

10:11

could hear a drug dealer candidly tell his story

10:14

because you'd Might

10:16

get something on TV and then they black

10:18

out their face . But with podcasting I'm like I'm

10:21

just recording your voice and they're like well , in that case

10:23

, let me tell you about being a cartel hitman . You're

10:25

never gonna find me . I'm not even telling you my real name

10:27

. So I get stories like

10:29

that and people would just share them and I

10:31

realized my audience was going way up . And

10:33

then , when I would hit those same new people with

10:36

dating and relationships advice , they were like whoa , that's

10:38

really interesting , how do I buy your products and

10:40

services . So that became

10:42

a really good lead gen source and I

10:45

did that for years and made a lot of money doing it . But

10:47

then I kind of realized I'm not just doing

10:49

this for lead gen . Lead gen is like the

10:51

least favorite part . Sales Marketing

10:54

, these courses , doing all these workshops that's actually the

10:56

part that I like the least . I really like doing

10:58

the lead gen . And then my partners and I slowly

11:00

grew apart up and until I was like , hey

11:03

, I really just want to leave . And then

11:05

we had a split and

11:07

I started the Jordan Harbinger show , basically

11:10

from scratch , but not really , because I had my network

11:12

, my skills , my guest roster , you

11:14

know things like that . So now I

11:17

I'm unchained , I'm unplugged

11:19

, no strings attached .

11:21

I Love where you're talking about . It

11:23

was always to serve a purpose that

11:25

you got into podcasting . You were

11:27

trying to figure out a way to get a message out

11:29

to the world that people are obviously already interested

11:32

in . They wanted to buy the CDs , so you

11:34

went , okay , it's easier to get this up

11:36

on a website , maybe . It's kind of like , and it

11:38

was what became podcasting . And

11:40

then you were like , oh , I'm just testing

11:42

out new guests , so then eventually

11:45

that turns into the Jordan Harbinger

11:47

show . I Think one

11:49

of the red flags we see a lot and I want to

11:51

hear if this is what you think is a red flag is

11:53

people go . I'm gonna do a show like

11:55

Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss or Jordan

11:58

Harbinger and I interview the world's

12:00

most interesting people . I mean , who

12:03

are the people who shouldn't be starting a podcast ? Maybe that's what

12:05

I should ask .

12:06

Yeah , that's really not a great idea

12:08

, because that's kind of like saying , I

12:10

just want to hear my own voice or use this as

12:12

a Conduit to talk to interesting people

12:14

. That is fair

12:16

in a way , but it's not a good way to

12:18

set yourself apart . It's not a good way to build value

12:21

for your audience . You know , when I first started

12:23

, if I wanted to use my podcast for networking

12:25

purposes which I did all the time Great

12:28

. But most people didn't know what podcasts were . They've

12:31

never gotten invited on to a podcast before

12:33

. It was a good audience for them to talk

12:35

to . Now you got people with

12:37

19 downloads an episode and , you

12:39

know , bless them , you got to start somewhere . But they're

12:41

going and trying to pitch Celebrities

12:44

and authors and they're like I have 4,000

12:47

downloads , you know , or 30,000

12:49

downloads , and they don't tell you it's 30,000 downloads

12:51

over three years , right ? They

12:53

tell you . So there's all this sort of misleading data

12:56

and they're not thinking my listeners

12:58

are going to love this . They're thinking I'm going to get a killer

13:00

selfie for the gram Yep , when

13:02

I meet up with Some sort

13:04

of you know , dwayne Wade or whatever , and

13:06

that wastes a lot of people's

13:08

time and sours them on this and it

13:10

also doesn't really do anything for you , because people think

13:13

I'm doing great networking with my podcast

13:15

, but if people don't have a good experience with you

13:17

or have a mediocre experience , or you commoditize

13:19

yourself by asking all the same questions They've heard everywhere

13:21

else , that person doesn't remember you

13:24

. They don't have a great experience . So if you don't

13:26

have a good show idea and your show idea is

13:28

just this vague I'm going to talk

13:30

to interesting people because it's fun for me Go

13:32

ahead and do it , but don't

13:34

Trick your , don't delude yourself

13:36

into thinking I'm going to monetize

13:39

this and I'm going to be able to quit my job

13:41

. Um , you may do that

13:43

, but it will take you seven

13:45

or eight years . At least the

13:50

first seven years that I did the podcast , I

13:52

don't think we had any ads Really . In

13:54

fact , I think the first eight years and some of that

13:56

was a function of there just not being any money in podcast

13:59

ads period . Now

14:01

, though , you still need something

14:03

like 5000 to 10,000 downloads an

14:05

episode before even the even

14:07

those like automated platforms will really

14:09

Put an ad on your show , because it's just

14:11

too much work for them to monitor any other

14:13

way . And bear in mind you know this

14:16

is no secret to your audience , probably . But you're getting

14:18

25 bucks cpm and

14:20

that's gross . That's gross . So that's like

14:22

what you share with the person who sold the ad , right

14:24

? So if you're getting 25 bucks , let's call it . You're

14:27

probably getting 15 . So you're getting 15

14:29

bucks . You need 10,000 listeners

14:31

to get 150 bucks for that ad . You're

14:34

not quitting . First of all , 10,000 is a lot more

14:36

people than it sounds like . It's not like getting 10,000

14:38

instagram followers . This is that . That could take

14:40

you years . Most people never even come

14:42

close to that . Uh , the top 1%

14:45

have 30,000 listener downloads per

14:47

episode . I think is the top 1% . And

14:49

so let's say you have 30,000 . You're in the top 1%

14:51

. Now you're getting 450 bucks

14:53

an ad . If you're releasing a weekly show

14:55

, you're not even probably paying . Your

14:58

mortgage depends on where you live . You're

15:00

probably paying your mortgage . That's great , but you're

15:02

in the top 1% . Imagine being in the

15:04

top 1% of basketball players . You're

15:06

making millions of dollars in the nba . You're in

15:08

the top 1% of attorneys . You're making a

15:10

huge amount of money as a partner at a major

15:12

firm , you know . So you have to be in the top

15:14

1% of podcasting to like break

15:17

even . Break over your hosting . Yeah

15:19

, to cover the hosting fees to

15:21

, and forget about having a co-host

15:23

, you know , and forget about like going out to eat

15:25

more than once in a blue moon , like this is

15:27

not a way to make a living . Very

15:30

much in the beginning , and I don't again . I don't want

15:32

to discourage people , I just want people to be

15:34

realistic because I think a lot of people look at Joe Rogan

15:36

and go , oh my god , a hundred million dollar Spotify deal , how

15:39

hard can it be ? He just smokes pot

15:41

and talks to people . I can do that .

15:43

I smoke . That's not quite what's happening .

15:45

Right , yeah , yeah , like that's not quite what's going

15:47

on there , you know .

15:49

All right . So I love you're already starting to kind

15:51

of hit towards this . Growing a podcast

15:54

to the level that you're at is

15:56

Remarkable . Most people

15:59

are not even within Two

16:01

standard deviations of this . I mean , you are

16:03

way at this tip and

16:05

you're six million downloads a month

16:08

. What should people be thinking

16:10

about ? I mean , I'd love to hear , like what are your growth strategies

16:12

? What have you done to grow the Jordan

16:14

Harbinger show ?

16:16

So I've done everything that you can possibly

16:18

imagine . I tried social ads . They don't convert

16:20

very well . You end up paying a lot for

16:23

like a click that maybe the person subscribes

16:25

or maybe they don't even download anything , they just go

16:27

. Oh , that tried to open , I don't know

16:29

this podcasting app on my phone , uh , close

16:31

, right , that's not what you want

16:33

. I've tried Going

16:36

on a bunch of other shows . That works , you know , going

16:38

on as many shows as possible , but it's

16:40

also not scalable , right , like , if I'm going

16:43

on a show , let's say , I get a hundred new listeners

16:45

every time . I go on a show that has Over

16:48

10,000 new listeners . I've

16:50

got to go on a show that's in the top

16:52

, let's say , 5% of

16:55

podcasts in terms of size . I've

16:57

got to do that . How often to get a hundred

16:59

new listeners ? I'd have to do that like twice

17:01

a day To get reasonable

17:04

growth of my show . That's really

17:06

really , really , really tough . It's not

17:08

possible , period , it's just not . You and

17:10

also you run out of shows that are willing to

17:12

interview people After a couple of

17:14

weeks at that rate , because you

17:16

know the logistics of hiring . So the thing I've really

17:18

settled on right now and this is not for

17:20

necessarily like beginners . Um

17:23

, the thing I've settled on right now is advertising

17:26

on other podcasts . That's

17:28

what I've been doing . Um , I actually

17:30

I wouldn't say I started an agency , but I have

17:32

a couple of big clients that are interested

17:34

in growing their show . But you do need a budget

17:36

of like $10,000 a month to really

17:39

move the needle in a way that makes sense to have

17:41

somebody like me Help you . But I use products

17:43

like chartable to track attribution . Um

17:46

, I buy and I negotiate bulk rates

17:48

on networks for my

17:50

clients , because if everybody spends big

17:52

, then you can get the cpms Down really low

17:54

. That's how agencies work . So

17:56

I've started doing that and at large scale

17:59

I realized , oh my gosh , if you get the cpm down

18:01

low enough , you can get 300

18:04

400 new listeners per day . And

18:07

if you get enough impressions going , then

18:09

you start to see a real snowball effect

18:11

and nobody else is really doing this

18:13

. Right , like that's some of the ways that I do . That is

18:15

quote unquote trade secret , but it's not rocket

18:18

science . I'll tell you it's been very

18:20

tough to get it going . The tools are really rudimentary

18:22

. Even things like that

18:24

I'm using to buy or track the

18:26

ads are not necessarily finished products

18:28

yet , but that's the stuff

18:30

that really works . And again , not for beginners , but

18:33

for companies and individuals who happen

18:35

to just want to grow their show . Like

18:38

, if you own a solar

18:40

company and you do lead gen with your

18:42

podcast and you can afford to make it

18:44

a loss leader , then growing with ads

18:46

, don't the whole like repurpose

18:49

content and post it on LinkedIn . That

18:51

is , it's a really small game . It sort

18:53

of works but it kind of doesn't . You know , you pay

18:55

1500 bucks a month to get everything

18:57

repurposed to Twitter , linkedin , instagram

19:00

, tiktok . You get a couple hundred listeners

19:02

for it . Just buy ads . You're gonna get

19:04

twice as much ROI . It's all trackable

19:07

and you don't have to have six interns

19:09

in Malaysia posting things and

19:12

making noise on social media , right

19:14

. So it's a messy

19:16

situation right now for that landscape

19:19

.

19:20

I , so I actually went and I was doing much

19:22

of research across social media . You

19:24

are not doing a ton . You're most active on Instagram

19:27

, but since , like the last

19:29

few months , you haven't been posting almost at all

19:31

. Is that intentional that you're just like

19:33

this ? Social stuff doesn't get a good

19:35

ROI in my life

19:37

, or for my podcast or any of my stuff . So you're just

19:39

taking a step back .

19:41

Yeah , I find social media largely

19:43

be a waste of time . I

19:46

like social media for the

19:48

one way communication I

19:50

guess it's two way communication that I get with show

19:52

fans . But I'm not trying to be

19:54

an influencer , because I know a lot of broke

19:56

ass influencers , you

19:58

know , and I know a lot of them that are making good

20:00

money but every day , every moment of

20:02

their life , is trying to figure out how to monetize

20:04

them . Going to the freaking dentist , you know

20:06

, and it's a game that you lose as you

20:09

get older , or you can't scale , or

20:11

the algorithm gods go , they look

20:13

left instead of right . And now suddenly you're de-prioritized

20:16

or you're demonetized because you said one thing

20:18

that a bunch of people

20:20

didn't like about something , and it doesn't

20:22

have to be anything serious . Or Google just

20:24

says you know , we don't really like people

20:26

that do selfie videos too much , let's try

20:29

people who are driving this

20:31

week . And then suddenly you're like why is

20:33

my YouTube channel basically dead ? I don't

20:35

get it . So , with podcasting , since it's

20:37

an open ecosystem and there is no algorithm

20:39

, yes , there's nothing that goes viral , but

20:41

there's also no , there's no

20:43

like , hey , the wind changed and now your entire

20:46

business is completely broke and useless and there's

20:48

nothing you can do about it , which is what I see

20:50

with people on YouTube or

20:52

TikTok the algorithm changes or

20:55

their audience just migrates to the next

20:57

, like funny guy who

20:59

jumps on tables full of food as a hilarious

21:01

prank , and now you're just a nobody

21:03

again and nobody sponsoring your stuff . And

21:05

look , if social media ads

21:07

were really that valuable , the

21:09

CPMs wouldn't be like three or four

21:12

bucks . Right , podcast CPMs

21:14

are like 30 bucks . I'm getting $30

21:17

, 25 , 30 bucks CPM , you

21:19

know , and then you get to give a cut to the salespeople . Like

21:21

I mentioned before , If you got Google ads

21:23

running and stuff like that you're getting , you're

21:25

lucky . If you get three or four bucks

21:27

, you need to have a YouTube channel

21:29

sorry , not even a channel , because subscribers

21:32

don't matter . Right With YouTube . Right With

21:34

YouTube , you have to have millions of people

21:37

watch every single one of your videos

21:39

to get even remotely

21:41

within the realm of the amount of profit

21:43

that a decent sized podcast makes

21:46

with like three people working on it .

21:48

Yeah , I like to . I really

21:50

push this point all the time because we do YouTube

21:52

, we do podcasts , we do blog

21:55

, we do a course everything on

21:57

the same stuff . But I go to podcasts movement

21:59

and the only people who come up

22:01

and say I'm so excited to meet you

22:03

, you taught me how to podcast they

22:05

all listen to our podcast episodes

22:07

. Almost none of the people who've ever

22:10

watched our YouTube videos come up and talk

22:12

to me , even though those have 10 times

22:14

the plays that the podcast has . The

22:16

level of engagement there is a

22:18

total , another level . I mean it is something totally

22:20

different when someone listens to you for

22:22

10 , 20 episodes , versus

22:25

they were drunk on a Saturday and so they

22:27

just decided to scroll through YouTube

22:30

for an hour , exactly

22:32

like TikTok .

22:33

And I know these people that go dude , you gotta get on

22:35

TikToks , you gotta get on TikTok . I have 300,000

22:38

plays on my last few videos and

22:40

I go great , how do you reach those people

22:42

? Oh , I just make another video and they'll make

22:44

a course or something and they'll put it out in the video

22:46

and they're like dude , it's just like no

22:48

one cares . And I go of course they don't care , they're on the toilet

22:50

scrolling . They're not fans of yours

22:53

, they're literally the algorithm . Put

22:55

your crap in front of them because you said something funny

22:57

in a video once or because

22:59

, like you , had your cute puppy in the video

23:01

, no one cares about you

23:03

on here . But then you go to the podcast

23:06

and you put up your first 10 episodes and you

23:08

find people that have listened to you for 10 hours

23:10

and they feel like they've known you

23:12

for that long and they've got this parasocial

23:15

relationship with you

23:17

. That's sort of like a one-way friendship and they're

23:19

really excited to meet you . To

23:21

do that on YouTube . Not only do you have millions

23:24

of people literally competing with you for that

23:26

, but you've also got a much shorter

23:28

attention span . You've got a younger and less sophisticated

23:31

audience with social media and YouTube and

23:33

for a show like the Jordan Harbinger show . Yeah

23:36

, broker audience For a show like the Jordan Harbinger

23:39

show . I've got educated , affluent professionals

23:41

. You know I talk about global affairs , world events . I've

23:43

got great stories on there . I've got neuro scientists

23:45

and psychologists . Those are usually

23:47

like educated , affluent professionals

23:50

generally you know not everyone , but generally

23:52

and that's a much

23:54

more desirable audience than casting

23:57

as wide in it as possible . Also , there's something

23:59

that I've called the Jerry Springer

24:01

effect , where when

24:03

you're on YouTube and you're really sort

24:06

of subject to the algorithm and not YouTube but social

24:08

media in general I always use YouTube as the example

24:10

, social media in general you

24:13

have the Jerry Springer effect

24:15

, which is back in the 90s . I don't expect you

24:17

to remember this , but Jerry Springer was actually like a really

24:19

serious talk show host . He was really , really smart

24:21

. He was like well-spoken he

24:23

still is well-spoken when he wants to be and

24:25

he had intelligent discussions on his show . And

24:28

his daytime talk

24:30

competitor was this guy , geraldo Rivera

24:32

, who's just a Yahoo , who's on Fox News

24:34

all the time making up , you know , baloney

24:36

generally all the time and

24:39

he's just kind of like a professional wrestler of

24:41

journalism . He's not like a good journalist

24:43

in my opinion . And so

24:46

what Geraldo did was he had white supremacists

24:48

on and black panthers at the same time

24:50

and he got hit in the face with a chair and

24:53

his ratings went through the roof . And

24:55

it was totally unplanned , supposedly . And

24:58

then everyone watched Geraldo

25:00

Rivera and then he was like , oh , I'm only gonna

25:02

have a circus on my show because that's

25:04

how you get ratings . And then Jenny

25:06

Jones and Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake they

25:08

went from like serious , like good

25:11

talk shows , to crap

25:13

. Guess I gotta act like an idiot

25:15

and have dumb people on here who throw

25:17

chairs and like say you're not the father

25:19

or you are the father and do paternity

25:21

tests . Live , mori Povich . Like all

25:24

those people used to be serious . That's because they

25:26

have to follow the algorithm which were the Nielsen

25:28

ratings on TV . So they all

25:30

ruined their brand . And now I think , like Jerry Springer

25:32

was like I'm gonna run for governor and everyone's like , bro

25:35

, sit down .

25:36

No way .

25:36

Sit down . Yeah , sit down there , buddy

25:39

, not gonna happen . So that's

25:41

a huge problem for your brand and

25:44

unless you are willing to do

25:46

the professional wrestler thing and

25:48

be subject to the Jerry Springer effect , then

25:51

you should not be trying to compete on a

25:53

lot of these social media platforms . That's

25:55

why you see people who have really good it

25:58

start off really good on social media . Suddenly

26:01

you're like why are you just filming funny

26:03

, funny in air , quotes , things now

26:05

? Or why are you trying to do shows ? You

26:07

used to do shows with scientists and great thinkers

26:09

and now it's like out of work actor

26:12

, that's still good . Looking next week on

26:14

whatever talk show that I have

26:16

on YouTube . Or like next week another

26:19

influencer who has a lot of followers who

26:21

they will send to my channel Cool

26:23

, no one cares . Like people care for

26:25

a second , but you have to constantly be

26:28

adding fuel , throwing gasoline

26:30

on that fire , otherwise you crash . Or as a podcast

26:32

, you can say this is what I talk about . It's

26:34

smart stuff . Share it with people who like

26:36

smart stuff . If you don't like smart stuff , you're gonna be

26:38

bored . Leave and over time you build

26:41

very slowly a really

26:43

good audience . And then when you're like hey

26:45

, if you want me to keep doing this . You gotta buy a freaking

26:47

mattress or I'm gonna go broke . People are like give me

26:49

a mattress , right . So

26:51

they want that stuff because they

26:53

wanna support you . But if I see an ad on YouTube

26:55

, I'm usually like , eh , and

26:58

it's not that they don't work , it's just that you

27:00

need a hell of a lot more volume .

27:02

And look Also , if you don't want

27:04

and the way to get that volume is to be crazy and is

27:06

to be crazy Is to be crazy To put

27:08

up the next politics thing

27:11

or go and be as edgy as possible

27:13

, and I mean

27:15

you hit on this earlier . If there is an

27:17

algorithm between you and your audience

27:19

, that is not your audience . That is

27:21

YouTube's audience , that is Twitter's audience

27:24

, that's Facebook's audience , that's Snapchat's audience

27:26

or the actually the Chinese government's

27:28

audience , but all of those are

27:30

not yours . The minute that it's

27:32

not good for them to have you

27:34

be the person in front of this audience

27:36

, they will just switch it and they will demonetize

27:39

you or they will move on . And it doesn't mean you did something

27:41

terrible , it could just be . Your

27:43

interests are no longer aligned and

27:46

I think that's like one of the incredible things you're kind of

27:48

talking about for podcasting .

27:51

Yeah , that's a really good point that if there's an algorithm

27:53

between you and your audience , it's not your audience and

27:55

people go oh no , well , they can subscribe to my

27:57

YouTube channel . Man , I know a lot

27:59

of people that have 4 million YouTube subscribers

28:01

and they get like 6,500 views per

28:03

video because now they're just filming

28:06

themselves , break dancing or something , because they're just

28:08

out of ideas . Or they

28:10

get 6,500 views per video because

28:12

their audience subscribed once when they had

28:14

let's

28:16

go back to they had Dwayne Wade on once

28:19

three years ago they got a bunch of subscribers and

28:21

then people went eh , I don't care about this guy's

28:23

content at all . You don't really have

28:25

that with podcasting , because nothing goes

28:27

viral . In the first place , people have to share

28:29

via word of mouth or via social media and they go

28:31

look , listen to the Jordan Harbinger show really

28:34

good stuff , here's a really good guess . Start with that

28:36

. And then people go , oh , that's cool . And

28:38

then it comes in their feed later oh , this person looks cool

28:40

, this person looks cool With YouTube . It

28:42

just doesn't really work like that , right , it

28:45

doesn't really work like that . People subscribe to 500

28:48

different channels , they go to their homepage

28:50

and they pick the thing on the top row and

28:52

that's it , and they just eat their cereal

28:54

and then they close it and go on with their day . There's

28:57

not a whole lot of following .

28:59

There are . There's so much more opting in for podcasting

29:02

too . I'm going hey , I'm going to go for

29:04

a run . I mean I did this today . I'm going to go for

29:06

a run , so I'm going to listen to the Jordan Harbinger show and

29:08

I downloaded a specific episode . I'm excited

29:10

about it and I go for the run and I listen to the whole thing , versus

29:13

the alternative , which is like

29:15

I'm just sitting around and I have nothing

29:17

to do . I guess whatever YouTube sticks in

29:20

front of my face is what I will get into

29:22

.

29:24

Exactly , exactly , and it's the same thing with TikTok

29:26

. It's the same thing with Instagram . That's

29:28

why I don't really mess with it . Like , I don't read my Twitter

29:30

feed , I read my DMs . I

29:33

don't look at my Instagram feed , I

29:35

read my DMs . I don't look at my LinkedIn

29:37

feed , I read my DMs . There are places

29:40

where fans can reach me and people go

29:42

oh , you're missing out . And I go look man

29:44

, show me the top of your funnel . Okay , you have

29:46

10 million followers on all these platforms

29:48

. Great . Why is your show smaller than mine

29:50

? Oh , because they don't want to go and listen to your

29:53

podcast . Why ? Because

29:55

they don't really care enough to consume it

29:57

. They don't . You have like a very shallow

30:00

audience that these people

30:02

won't go and buy your book when you release it

30:04

. They're not going to buy your course in high numbers

30:06

anyway when you release it , because they're casual

30:08

followers .

30:09

Yeah , there's that

30:11

great Kevin Kelly article

30:14

1000 True Fans , all

30:16

about . All you need online is truly

30:18

1000 people who truly care about

30:20

you . And just take those people and

30:22

if you can monetize them well and they actually care a lot

30:25

, you actually have a career . And

30:27

it's just a totally different world when

30:30

you go , hey , let's go on social media , I'll get millions

30:32

, I'll monetize people to the tune of 0.01

30:35

cent and then maybe I'll have a career

30:37

and really the math doesn't work

30:39

out as well .

30:41

No , it doesn't . And additionally , then

30:43

look at how many times social media platforms

30:45

have changed since podcasting

30:47

started . Which podcast builds brick by

30:49

brick , year by year . Okay

30:52

, instagram took over from what

30:54

I don't even know , facebook , which took over

30:56

from Friendster , which took over from . I

31:00

was on MySpace MySpace

31:02

, not Friendster . Friendster came before MySpace

31:04

. So people migrate and then those

31:06

things die . And now you've

31:08

got all these other , now you've got TikTok

31:10

, and so they're trying to compete with them . But like

31:12

these things sort of come and go , podcasting

31:15

doesn't do that and people might be going oh

31:17

, it's only a matter of time . No , not really . It's

31:19

an open ecosystem . It's not an app , so

31:22

people can't . Some rich billionaire can't

31:24

make one decision that screws the whole thing up

31:26

or change the UI for everyone and people go

31:28

. I don't really like this and

31:31

like remember when everyone's like you better be on

31:33

Snapchat . There were Snapchat influencers

31:35

. Literally no one talks about

31:37

it anymore , if it even exists

31:39

. Still no one talks about

31:41

it . So if you spent three years building

31:44

your Snapchat following , you are totally screwed

31:46

right now . If you'd spent that time building your

31:48

podcast and that's why I only

31:50

focus on the podcast , I just

31:52

focus on there . Yes , if I hired 20

31:54

people , I could hit every channel Cool . Then

31:57

my run rates $200,000 a month because I've

31:59

got to buy ads and have managers

32:01

on each channel Cool To then do what

32:03

? Monetize it ? 1% of the

32:05

amount that podcasting can be monetized . No

32:08

, focus on podcasting . When

32:10

you're digging for gold in the mountain

32:12

side and you find a bunch of , like

32:14

other rocks , you don't go . Hey , dude

32:16

, I found a whole lot of quartz down here , we should grab

32:18

this too . No , you just get the freaking

32:20

gold and the other stuff . You throw it down

32:22

the side of the mountain Right Like

32:25

you don't grab that other stuff . So I'm only

32:27

going for the gold . Podcasting is where the money

32:29

is . I'm not trying to get more TikTok followers

32:31

. It's a vanity metric and I don't care .

32:34

One of the other things that you have done , and

32:36

I wonder if this is like an intentional

32:38

growth strategy or if you even think this works

32:40

. A lot of times people say the way to grow

32:43

is by getting big guests

32:45

on your podcast . They just shoot their

32:47

shot and they send out emails

32:49

because they know that Seth Godin reads all

32:51

his emails , so they're like spamming

32:53

everybody . Have you seen

32:55

like you've landed guests like Kobe Bryant

32:58

, malcolm Gladwell , chelsea Handler , neil

33:00

deGrasse Tyson you just had a general

33:02

HR McMaster on the show All

33:05

of them like do you see them bringing

33:07

in a new audience ? And then , if they do

33:09

, to the audience day ?

33:11

No , they don't bring in a new audience . And with

33:14

certain types of people they

33:16

might bring in some audience , but no , they generally

33:18

don't stay . Like when I had Kobe Bryant on , I got a whole

33:20

spike , but it's only like a 10

33:22

or 15% spike . But

33:24

a lot of those people that's the only thing they ever listened

33:26

to and they did it because they love Kobe and somebody's

33:28

like dude , really good Kobe interview on the Jordan Harbinger

33:31

show . You got to check it out , right , or

33:33

it comes up in some search for something else , cause they're like

33:35

, oh my God , this guy interviewed Kobe , I was just doing

33:37

a report on him or whatever . That

33:39

audience very few stick around

33:41

. So whenever I see people go like , oh , stand

33:44

on the shoulders of giants , bring in all these great

33:46

people and then people will see you and then you'll have credibility

33:48

and then they'll stick with your show , it's

33:50

just not really realistic . You

33:52

can do that on other forms of social media

33:55

, like if you're a YouTuber and you do a collab

33:57

, you show up in search results and

33:59

things like that , and you've got all these other

34:01

people that like they promote you . Kobe

34:04

Bryant's not going to share your crap

34:06

, general McMaster's not going to share your crap

34:08

. Howie Mandel's not going to share your crap

34:10

, it's not , it's pointless

34:12

. Plus , you can so tell when

34:14

podcasters are doing something where they're like okay

34:17

, I just got to kind of like crap out

34:19

this interview with a I

34:22

don't even know Chelsea handler , right

34:24

Cause then I'll get all these followers . They're

34:27

not interested , they don't know much about

34:29

her , they just Googled some stuff . They're mailing

34:31

it in . You have to go with what you're interested

34:33

in and what your audience is interested in . The

34:35

idea that you're going to have all these high end people

34:37

on and they're going to grow your show is delusional

34:39

. It really is . The only time that

34:41

would work is if you are exceptionally well

34:43

connected . Like Dax Shepard is

34:46

a good talk show host . He runs a good show

34:48

, but also all his friends on his show are

34:50

, like these A list amazing folks

34:52

. So he's got millions of people or whatever is

34:54

listening to his podcast

34:56

. But that's cause he can call Ellen DeGeneres

34:58

, he can call Michelle Obama

35:00

, he can call all these super famous

35:02

people to be on his show . Okay , fine

35:05

, they're probably getting a bunch

35:07

of search traffic . They're probably maybe even sharing

35:09

it . That's great . I'm sure he's building his

35:11

audience that way . That's not going to happen for you . Don't

35:13

count on that . You're not even going to have . You

35:16

could interview a dentist in your area and they'd

35:18

be like I guess I'll tweet it , but it's annoying

35:20

, right . It's not really going to grow

35:22

your show and even when it does , the vast

35:24

majority of those people who listen for one particular

35:26

guest . They don't care about you , they're going to bounce .

35:28

So I feel like I know the answer . But for

35:30

you going ahead and putting together

35:32

like a headliner or a wave

35:34

or a Buzzsprout visual soundbite , that's

35:37

not even worth it . You wouldn't put that together and send it to

35:39

them , you just say they're probably not

35:41

going to share it and just move on .

35:44

If I posted on LinkedIn which is the only

35:46

platform that we've just started testing

35:48

recently just posting stuff on there because it does get

35:51

decent engagement , because people are willing

35:53

to sit down and listen to something , because it's LinkedIn , it's

35:55

more professional than just doom

35:57

scrolling , it's

35:59

doing okay , but I tag

36:02

them in that and then people will comment or they'll

36:04

try and reshare it on LinkedIn or something

36:06

like that . But at the end of the day , even

36:09

if something gets an amazing amount

36:11

of play like I posted a clip

36:13

from my Kobe interview and it got like 130,000

36:16

plays very few

36:18

of them went . Oh my gosh , I have to open

36:20

up my podcast app and

36:22

subscribe to this . They listened

36:24

to that clip or they maybe listened

36:27

to that whole episode . Very few

36:29

of them went and subscribed to the actual

36:31

show . On the other hand , when I go

36:33

on another podcast , people go and find the show

36:35

. They download five episodes that they're into and

36:38

then they listen and they go . God , I'm so glad I found this

36:40

. This is really great . You've got

36:42

to find people who are already in the habit of listening to podcasts

36:44

. There are millions of people listening to podcasts

36:46

. Why am I going to go out and try and educate these randos

36:49

on the internet who don't

36:51

already have the habit . Why am I trying to educate

36:54

the market ? It's completely pointless .

36:56

You're going to let everybody else get

36:58

their friends say , hey , the purple app , you've

37:00

not been paying attention to it . That's actually podcasts

37:02

. You can download these shows . Once that happens

37:05

, then you're happy to go . Hey , I'll

37:07

pay you for a little time on the show and

37:09

now you might come over and you'll now subscribe

37:11

to two shows .

37:13

Exactly that's why I'm appearing

37:16

on other shows and people go . Will you be on my YouTube

37:18

channel or whatever it's like ? I don't

37:20

really need to do that for the business , right

37:22

? Because if a bunch of people go and subscribe

37:25

to the Jordan Harbinger YouTube , I'll save you the Google

37:27

. It's pretty small because people go . Why

37:29

doesn't this have more views ? And I go because I don't care . I

37:32

want you to find the content . I'm glad that people

37:35

are watching , but at the end of the day , for

37:37

me to produce video is 10 times

37:39

harder and more costly than producing audio , first

37:41

of all . Second of all , if

37:43

you put one ad in a YouTube video

37:45

, people are like , ah , it's so annoying

37:48

, this ad is too long , what a bunch of A-holes

37:50

. You put four ads in an hour-long

37:52

podcast and people are like , great , whatever

37:54

, this is the price I pay for great content

37:56

. It's a completely different

37:58

mindset when it comes to the content and you

38:01

look at watch time versus listen time . You

38:03

see listen time is like 86% of your

38:05

podcasts are finished completely

38:07

by something like 86%

38:09

of people listen to the whole podcast . You look at YouTube

38:11

. I mean , good , watch time is

38:13

like two and a half minutes or something like that

38:16

, I think , and I remember seeing

38:18

my stats from my channel manager

38:20

he goes you're listening time or your watch time

38:22

is 18 minutes . And I was like , oh , that's awful

38:25

, my videos are like 40 minutes long . And he goes are

38:27

you kidding ? That's like nine

38:29

times the average watch time

38:31

of a YouTube video . And

38:33

I went , oh , so this is good . And he's like , yeah

38:35

, it's really good . It means a lot of people

38:37

are watching the whole thing . Some

38:40

people only watch a few seconds and skip and I go well , that's normal

38:42

, right . But most YouTubers

38:45

, like even friends of mine that make their whole living on YouTube

38:47

, they see my watch time and they're like , holy

38:49

crap , how is that even possible ? Their

38:51

average watch time , which is really good , is like two

38:54

minutes and 50 seconds .

38:55

Yeah , I think that that's such a good

38:58

metric because we really need to be

39:00

optimizing for attention and engagement

39:02

, and I mean true engagement , like

39:04

somebody actually paying attention to you . They would actually

39:07

remember listening to your show , versus

39:10

on a lot of channels , and people are

39:12

probably watching this on YouTube right now , so you're

39:14

kind of looking at us a little scant , but

39:18

on YouTube , there really it is . You get on

39:20

, you bounce . There's 12 things on the sidebar

39:22

always asking for your attention and

39:25

it's very hard to keep someone for a long time

39:27

. If I can , can I shift gears

39:29

for a second and just kind of pick your brain

39:32

about interview skills ? You've

39:34

done something like a thousand interviews

39:36

between your old show and

39:38

the Jordan Harbinger show and

39:41

you've done a ton of incredible

39:43

interviews . I mean , first off , who is your

39:45

most favorite interview ? Who are you most like

39:47

nervous to interview ?

39:50

It's always really tough . I mean I'm I've

39:52

never really nervous like beforehand

39:54

. I shouldn't say never . Rarely

39:56

am I nervous about the person . I'm always nervous about

39:59

the tech right . It's always like , oh , is this going

40:01

to crash , is this going to be unstable ? Did they

40:03

remember to bring their microphone ? Why aren't their headphones

40:05

working ? That's the stuff that makes me nervous . But

40:07

you know , if I got Malcolm Gladwell on there

40:10

, I'm not nervous during really

40:12

. I mean I'm ready . So

40:14

it's hard to say . I've had Mark

40:16

Cuban , kevin Systrom , founder of Instagram

40:18

, kobe Ray Dalio . I

40:21

just interviewed Steven Schwartzman from Blackstone . I've

40:23

got a lot of really amazing folks coming up . I've had

40:25

a lot of really amazing folks in the past . I think one

40:27

of the things that that maybe makes me okay

40:30

at interviews is that I don't really

40:32

get nervous because I don't care about celebrities at

40:35

all . They're interesting people

40:37

, but I'm not under the delusion that

40:39

I'm going to be homeboys with Duane

40:42

Wade or Dennis Rodman after

40:44

the show . So if I say and do all the right things , he's going

40:46

to be like bro , we need to hang out more . That's

40:49

not really in my list of things that I

40:51

care about . I want my audience to have a good listening

40:53

experience . So that's why

40:56

I'm never really that worried about the guest

40:58

liking me at the end . It's just like journalism

41:00

. They're not going to call me and invite me to a party

41:02

. It does happen but it's pretty rare . So

41:05

I don't focus or optimize

41:07

for that . And I think influencers who try to

41:09

do podcasts , they optimize for that because

41:11

they want the validation Once

41:14

we part ways in the podcast . Yeah , I want to be able

41:16

to call you next year when your new book comes out , but

41:18

that's pretty much it , right ? You

41:21

know that's pretty much the only thing , no-transcript

41:24

. It's better to optimize for the listening experience

41:26

of your listener than

41:28

to optimize for whether or not the guest really

41:30

enjoys being with you in that particular moment

41:32

. Yeah , you want them to be comfortable , you want them to think you're a

41:34

professional , but beyond that , that's it

41:36

. You just want them to go away going . That was pretty good

41:39

. You don't want them to . You're not trying to

41:41

impress them , you're trying to get them to like you . You

41:43

know you're there every week . Your

41:45

listeners are there every week . This guest is there

41:47

once . Who's more important , right

41:49

?

41:50

Yeah , I think Cara Swisher puts it really well . She

41:52

says you should be mean to your guests

41:54

a little bit . She's like ask them the toughest

41:56

questions and you know what they're

41:58

probably gonna . If they wanna sell their next book

42:00

, they'll probably come back and talk to me because I'm Cara

42:03

Swisher and she's always optimizing

42:05

for her own shows , which I think is really

42:07

good . One of the reason things I heard

42:10

you talk about on another podcast was

42:12

not feeling nervous because of

42:14

the prep you do for all of your interviews . So

42:16

can you kind of dive into what it looks

42:18

like for you to prep for

42:20

an interview ?

42:22

Yeah , so I will , of course

42:24

, read the Wikipedia . I read the

42:26

entire book that the person has read . That

42:29

alone , put that , already puts you in the 95th

42:31

, 96th , whatever percentile of

42:33

all journalists or interviewers . Nobody

42:35

reads the book . Even the journalists

42:38

you think sound awesome . They're

42:40

reading a synopsis of the book . They're reading highlights

42:42

that they got sent by a publicist . Rarely do

42:44

they actually read the book . If you read the book and you

42:46

study up on the person , you

42:49

are already gonna jump . Nine

42:51

out of 10 interviewers . Additionally

42:53

, I look at the Wikipedia page . I

42:56

look at their Amazon reviews , the negative ones

42:58

especially . I look

43:00

at controversy that they've had in their life , news

43:03

results , especially old news results , not

43:06

just the latest craze , whatever

43:08

. That's the kind of thing that really

43:10

gets down to brass tacks . If you can find their

43:12

friends , that's really great . I did

43:14

a whole course on this . Actually it's relatively

43:17

affordable . It's

43:19

on Himalaya . I can bump it , unless

43:21

you don't want me to . If

43:23

you go to Jordan Harbinger JordanHarbingercom

43:26

slash how to interview , it'll

43:28

forward you to whatever page it's on , because it's got one

43:30

of those complicated URLs . But it's really

43:32

affordable and it goes through all my prep process how

43:34

to do it , how to conduct the interview . I did a bunch of stuff

43:36

on there several hours on

43:39

this , but I look up as many

43:41

info sources as I can . I spend 10 to 20

43:43

hours prepping for each guest . That's

43:45

what keeps me up there . It's not like , oh

43:47

, this guy's so talented . I had to say very

43:49

little of what I'm doing is talent . Most

43:52

of what I'm doing is outworking everyone else because

43:54

everyone else is thinking they're so talented

43:56

or they're going . I don't have time to read the

43:58

whole book . I'm going to read one of the chapters

44:00

or two of the chapters the intro and the close and

44:02

I'll be able to fake it . Well , maybe

44:05

you can fake it for some of your audience , but you

44:07

definitely aren't going to be as well prepared as me and it's really

44:09

going to show . It won't show if they don't listen

44:11

to an interview that I do with the same person , but

44:13

it will show . You will show your

44:15

ass . If you do listen to an interview that

44:18

I do with somebody and then an interview that somebody else

44:20

does with that person , you will be able to tell

44:22

and I'm not saying that

44:24

that's better or worse you got your own audience . Maybe you're

44:26

funnier than me , whatever it is , but

44:28

I'm not naturally funny . I'm

44:30

not naturally talented . All I can do is

44:32

outwork everyone . But honestly , what does

44:35

the audience want ? Maybe they want to laugh , maybe

44:37

they want to chuckle , but they kind of want to get out of reading

44:39

the whole book . Or they want to get such a good

44:41

taste of the book that they want to know

44:43

that it's definitely worth their time to

44:46

go and buy it and then read it and spend

44:48

10 hours reading it themselves . So if

44:50

they listen to me for an hour , they know I've read

44:52

it and if that content is

44:54

interesting there's more to be had in the book . And

44:56

if it's like that was OK , then

44:58

you've had your fill . But we

45:00

can always sort of tell when somebody's faking their way through

45:03

it If you don't really know what

45:05

it looks like . When somebody fakes their way through an interview

45:07

, watch a journalist on TV who

45:09

has like 10 minutes interview somebody

45:11

. They have no clue what they're talking about . They

45:14

ask super general questions why

45:16

is now ? Could tell him to write your book ? Why

45:18

is this book ? Why was this the book you needed

45:20

to write ? That's what they ask , because they can ask

45:22

that of anybody who's ever written any book ever

45:24

. And then the person tells two stories that

45:26

they tell on every show and those

45:28

are the sound bites . If you want to get a real interview

45:30

with somebody , you have to go beyond the sound bites .

45:33

I love when I hear you talk about that

45:35

. To me that's depot prep

45:37

. You're still an attorney

45:40

and you're preparing for

45:42

it Sounds like you prepare for a deposition . You've got

45:44

one chance to get the record straight with somebody

45:46

and you put those 20 hours in

45:48

learning everything so that

45:50

I mean this is this thing we always say when you're

45:52

doing cross examination on trial . You

45:55

say don't ask a question you don't know the answer to

45:57

.

45:57

Exactly .

45:58

Does that feel like how you're conducting interviews

46:00

?

46:01

Definitely , yeah , I rarely

46:03

ask a question where I don't know what they're going to say

46:05

and sometimes , look

46:08

, I haven't heard them tell the whole story . Or

46:10

other times they'll give me a different answer

46:12

, and there are sometimes

46:14

even in the interview I did today with Steven

46:16

Schwartzman from Blackstone . I'll

46:19

ask him something and he'll go oh well , I don't know

46:21

anything about that . And I'll go OK , here's a little

46:23

aside On page something , something in your

46:25

book . You talked about this and this . And he goes oh yeah

46:27

, ok , now I know what you mean . Yes , ok , and then I go

46:29

and keep going and my editor will snip

46:31

it because I had to remind him about something

46:33

that happened in his own life . Now that doesn't

46:36

mean he forgot it , just means that I

46:38

didn't queue him up well enough or whatever

46:40

it was . But sometimes there

46:42

are times where I'll ask somebody something and

46:45

they'll say oh man , I wrote that book

46:47

like two years ago . Remind

46:49

me again what that is . And I'll go . That's the time you went to the

46:51

bus depot and you met the guy who dressed in

46:53

the clown suit . And then they'll go oh right , right , right . And

46:55

then so we'll have to pick it up from there . You have

46:58

to know their content better

47:00

than they do . It doesn't mean you have to have a PhD

47:02

in molecular cellular biology like they do

47:04

. It just means you should be damn sure

47:06

that you know what's going to come out of their mouth If

47:09

the stakes aren't as high , if they say something totally different

47:11

, and it's good , keep it in the show . But I

47:13

know what the audience is going to want

47:15

, so I'm going to go and fish that

47:17

out . I'm going to go and get that out Again

47:19

. If I'm mining for gold , I'm not just digging in the

47:21

side of a mountain going gee , I hope I find something in here

47:24

. I know that there's stuff in there . I'm

47:26

trying to find it . I'm looking for a very specific

47:28

thing that is going to make this interview worth

47:30

my audience's time to listen to in the first place

47:33

. I'm not just fishing around hoping that

47:35

something happens . We know what those podcasts

47:37

are like . They're three hours long . There's

47:40

18 minutes of content interspersed

47:42

with a bunch of tangents and nonchalant

47:44

banter . That is not

47:46

really a good use of your time . Even

47:48

when professional comedians do it and the banter's funny

47:51

, it's like how much of this do I need

47:53

?

47:54

Yeah , that's when that becomes filler

47:57

content that you're putting on in the background

47:59

while you're doing your manual labor

48:01

job and you want something to listen to . Very

48:04

content you're seeking out . You're actually kind of

48:06

happy it's three hours long because you're like I'm

48:08

going to be here for eight . So I might as well listen

48:10

to a couple episodes of this super

48:13

long podcast .

48:14

Exactly , and that has its

48:16

place . But if you think you're just going to go

48:18

ahead and do that , great , now you're competing

48:21

against people . Well , now you're competing against

48:23

Joe Rogan . Ok , when you can do a better

48:25

job than him , then you can do a three hour long show

48:27

about nothing . But until then

48:29

you're going to play Second Fiddle and

48:32

you're always going to be your commodity . How

48:35

many ways are there to fill three hours

48:37

of your day ? Infinite ? How

48:39

many ways are there to learn from TI

48:43

or Mark Cuban or Malcolm Gladwell or Ray Dahlio

48:45

? In a very concentrated format that's Q&A

48:47

. Not many man , not

48:49

many . And of those

48:52

, mine will be the best prepared and executed

48:54

.

48:55

I love it If you were to give anyone

48:57

, like maybe a final

48:59

interview tip . I mean , you

49:02

ask some of these questions . I know you

49:04

don't really care if the guest

49:06

is going to be a little bit annoyed . So you asked

49:08

Dennis Rodman like what's up with all the

49:10

crazy man , and actually got like a

49:12

good response out of it . Yeah

49:15

, how do you prep those questions Like

49:17

, do you ever feel nervous that you're going to like annoy

49:19

? I guess enough that it's over .

49:22

Not really , because , again , I don't care if they like me

49:24

and also it looks so bad when somebody

49:26

walks out of an interview . Also , I

49:28

do plan those questions

49:30

in . So , yes , maybe the first thing I thought

49:33

of when I was going to interview Dennis Rodman was what's

49:35

up with all the crazy man ? But I

49:37

probably didn't start there and if it was

49:39

, even if that question was early on in the interview

49:41

, I probably , like , went downstairs

49:43

, had lunch with the guy first , chatted

49:46

about nothing , chopped it up with his team

49:48

a little bit , got an introduction in

49:50

the first place through a buddy , and then

49:52

sat him down , had

49:54

a diet coke and then said , all right , let's

49:56

roll , and then went . Okay , so the question

49:58

that's on everybody's mind what's up with all the crazy

50:01

man ? And he probably just started . I don't remember it , but he

50:03

probably just started laughing or something like that . Exactly

50:05

. That's because I didn't . He didn't step off the elevator

50:07

, sit down and go okay , are we doing this ? And then I go why are

50:09

you such a weirdo ? Right ? That's not a good

50:11

way . I built rapport with him first . There's

50:13

other things that where I'll ask a guest and

50:16

it might be the first question I thought of , but I put

50:18

it towards the end of the show because I go . I need him

50:20

to sort of like trust me before

50:22

asking him this or I'm going to get a garbage

50:24

blow off answer , or they're just going to go . Oh

50:26

, is it going to be one of those ? You don't want that

50:28

, so it's it's . It's all in how you structure the interview

50:31

. But you develop rapport with the guests

50:33

. They trust you to do the right thing . Again , being

50:35

trusted and liked , not the same thing . Being

50:38

trusted to do your job well , be professional

50:40

, represent them well that's

50:42

one thing that is completely

50:44

independent of whether or not they like you , and

50:46

you shouldn't care if they like you . You should care

50:48

if they trust you .

50:50

Man . I think that's really good . Example

50:53

, though , from your Dennis Rodman

50:55

interview . You started out by asking

50:57

him hey , you're a unique person

50:59

. I see a lot of people are trying to be more true

51:01

to themselves . You were doing this in the nineties , though

51:04

, and it was not as common , and you

51:06

brought it out as a very like you

51:08

are true to yourself . That's a positive

51:10

. Got that going and then

51:12

ask the question everyone wants to ask in

51:14

the way everyone wants to ask it , and

51:17

so , with that context , he knew you

51:19

weren't just hating on him , you were saying you're actually

51:21

interesting .

51:22

Exactly . Yeah , like you have to . There are

51:24

ways to massage questions

51:26

that are more awkward into something that

51:28

is more palatable . You

51:30

have to be careful , like you don't want to turn it up

51:32

too much . I heard him interview with Matthew

51:34

McConaughey in . This woman was like you're so

51:37

beautiful , oh my God , and I just thought you're

51:39

. I turned it off because I go . You have

51:41

no idea what you're doing . You've alienated

51:43

him . He already feels weird . You're making

51:45

it weird . You're just kissing his ass . There's never going

51:47

to be any content in here . You're not going to challenge

51:49

him on anything . All you know is that he's hot

51:51

and you can't control yourself . I'm out , click

51:53

delete .

51:56

Oh man . Well , I want to be respectful of your time because

51:58

I know we only had you for an hour . Can I ask one final

52:00

question ? If

52:03

somebody was a new podcaster , what

52:05

is the one piece of advice you want to give

52:07

them ? If they're starting a podcast today , they're

52:10

not already famous . They're not going to have access

52:12

to big guests , they don't have a big budget

52:14

. What would you tell them about starting

52:16

a podcast ?

52:18

Just work on your skills for the first few years . Don't

52:20

try and look at it as a business . Don't try and worry

52:22

about monetizing it . That all comes

52:25

years later . You need a huge audience

52:27

to be able to do that . Treat this as a hobby

52:29

. The best way to ruin a hobby is to try and

52:31

monetize it and turn it into a job or a career

52:33

or a side hustle . Just do

52:35

this . If you enjoy doing it and

52:37

work on your skills for the sake of getting better

52:39

at your craft , then you

52:41

will find yourself in a position to

52:43

monetize it . Everybody who tries to monetize

52:46

early ends

52:48

up trying to figure out hacks and they end

52:50

up monetizing too early , ruining

52:52

the product , getting sick of not making any

52:54

progress and not making any money , and they

52:56

quit . A lot of people won't listen to this advice

52:58

. That's fine . Those are the people that are going to quit

53:00

, but the people who are really going to stick with

53:03

this . You start off just doing

53:05

it because you like it and then one day somebody says , hey

53:07

, you could probably get an advertiser and it would pay for your hosting

53:10

bill and maybe the drinks you have every week

53:12

on your show . You go oh , that's cool . Then

53:14

your show grows and grows and grows . Then you go

53:16

, hey , this kind of pays for

53:19

my vacation money now

53:22

. Then you go , maybe I'll do this other

53:24

. Then it grows slowly . People who try

53:26

and turn it into a business right away , it's

53:28

pretty much universally a disaster .

53:31

One of the stats I pulled for earlier

53:34

in this interview was only 23%

53:37

of all podcasts that are out there . There's 1.5

53:39

million , but only 23% have

53:42

10 episodes and have

53:44

released something in the last three

53:46

months . We

53:48

think of this massive world of podcasting . This

53:50

is actually a ton smaller when you get people who are willing

53:53

to stick with this for two and a half months

53:55

and just consistently put out episodes . If

53:57

you do that , you're in the top quarter of

53:59

people . If you do that for a few

54:01

years , a lot of great things can come

54:03

your way .

54:05

Yeah , think about how low that bar is . Just

54:07

not quitting in under

54:09

90 days or whatever it is . When you're

54:11

releasing one a week , just don't quit

54:13

within the first three months of doing

54:15

something . If you tell somebody that's advice

54:17

for any other thing , they're like I want

54:20

my money back from your coaching . How do I

54:22

get better at soccer ? Just don't quit within the first

54:24

three months . Okay , dude , I'm out . Give me my

54:26

money .

54:27

Jordan , thank you so much . I really appreciate

54:29

you being on the show . I'm excited

54:31

to share all of these growth tips

54:33

and all of your thoughts on podcasting

54:35

with our audience . Hopefully

54:38

, we'll maybe get to catch up with you again sometime

54:40

when this COVID thing

54:42

is over and we're back in person .

54:44

Looking forward to it .

54:44

Thanks for the opportunity .