SPI 346: Booted out of His Own Business & the One Thing Jordan Harbinger Did to Survive

Jordan Harbinger: It would be kind of like if it was illegal tomorrow to be doing anything Smart Passive Income related, and you weren’t allowed to touch any of your existing platforms, and you weren’t allowed to teach any of your existing courses. You’d just kind of be like, “Okay. I’m Pat Flynn, family man, got a great family, great kids, but what do I do? I’m not allowed to speak. I’m not allowed to write. I’m not allowed to teach. What do I do?”

Pat Flynn: That’s insane.

Jordan Harbinger: You’d have to kind of figure out what you were gonna do . . .

Pat Flynn: That would be a truly nightmare situation if, for whatever reason, I wasn’t allowed to do what I’m doing right now for you. This is my business. This is my identity. This is who I am. This is exactly what happened to Jordan Harbinger, who you’ve heard on the store before. He had a show called The Art of Charm. That was his business. That was his life for ten, eleven years. Actually, those were some of the most popular podcast episodes here on the show, because they were very actionable. He talks a lot about how to build good relationships, how to network properly, how to do it especially if you are an introvert, and those kinds of things.

Well, his business partners kicked him out of his business and are using his brand, even using his last name in the artist’s name of the show. It’s just kind of insane. Jordan was kind of left to figure out how to survive, and he did. He’s bounced back even stronger with The Jordan Harbinger Show, which I highly recommend you check out and subscribe to. It’s funny. When you go to the reviews for The Art of Charm now, you’ll see all the most recent reviews are one star reviews. They’re all missing Jordan. They all just aren’t happy with how things went down, and I’m not either, but we’re gonna talk about exactly how Jordan survived today. This music is really scary, so let’s just get right into the theme music, and let’s get started.

Announcer: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. Now, your host—he secretly wishes to own a professional esports team—Pat Flynn!

Pat Flynn: Hey. What’s up? It’s Pat Flynn here. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. Today, we have Jordan Harbinger on the show to talk a little bit about his story of what just happened since the last time he was on the show, but more importantly, things that you can take away from that situation and actually exercises that you can do right now, thought experiments and just ways of thinking so that you could potentially survive a situation like that. Jordan talks about the one most important thing that he’s done over the years that has really saved him this time around. We’re gonna get right into that right now.

Jordan, what’s up, man? Welcome back to The SPI Podcast. I’m glad you’re here.

Jordan Harbinger: Hey, thanks for having me on, man. Yeah. I know. It was funny getting this thing scheduled, because I saw the calendar entry come in for 7:00 AM, and I was like, “All right, this is my people right here, getting up early, getting after it.”

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Getting things going, starting off the day right. I’m glad we’re having this conversation today, because it’s been a while since you’ve been on the show. You’ve been on the show twice before; you had a lot of things happen since the last time you were on the show. I think maybe a few of you in the audience right now listening may know the story and just, I kind of want to address this upfront so people know what happened. It does kind of relate to what we’re gonna be talking about today, which is the importance of building your network.

A lot of people, like we were just talking about before hitting record, a lot of people do things backwards. We build our brand, our business, our website, our social media accounts, and then we kind of network afterwards. But you want to have people approach it the opposite way. We’re gonna talk about that, and techniques, and some drills that you can do to really maximize the relationships you have. You’ll get into why that’s important, based on this story.

Tell us really quick—in as much detail as you can, because I know there’s some legal things that stop you from talking about everything— what happened, bro?

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. I was in the process of splitting from my old company, my old show, which was called The Art of Charm, and a lot of people I know listening to SPI used to listen to that show. We had negotiated an amicable split to get everything down the middle, and I was gonna take the show and continue doing that, and the other guys were gonna teach. They were gonna continue to teach like, how to meet women, which is kind of what was going on with them and what they were interested in. I was more interested in doing the show, doing interviews, and teaching some of the skills like networking and relationship development, persuasion, body language, things like that.

I think due to . . . I probably shouldn’t speculate due to what, but at some point my other business partners were like, “Actually, we’re just not gonna give you anything. We’re gonna lock you out of everything. We’re gonna get this going in a lawsuit.” I was just like, “What the heck?” Talk about not practicing what you preach at all. At that point, I did the Hal Elrod, give yourself five minutes to feel really sorry for yourself, and then after that you have to move on, and so I did just that. Maybe I used fifteen minutes or so, instead of five, but I’d been working on that business for eleven years. I’d really been the face of that brand for the whole time, and so I had this identity crisis.

It was like, am I still the same? This sounds ridiculous verbalizing it, but I think a lot of people will understand. Am I still the same person? Am I still valuable? All of these little doubts creep in. It would be kind of like if it was illegal tomorrow to be doing anything Smart Passive Income related, and you weren’t allowed to touch any of your existing platforms, and you weren’t allowed to teach any of your existing courses. You’d just kind of be like, “Okay. I’m Pat Flynn, family man, got a great family, got great kids, but what do I do? I’m not allowed to speak. I’m not allowed to write. I’m not allowed to teach. What do I do?”

Pat Flynn: That’s insane.

Jordan Harbinger: You’d have to kind of figure out what you were gonna do. Luckily, it wasn’t that severe, right? I don’t have some sort of non-compete where I can’t run a podcast, so I do The Jordan Harbinger Show, which I literally started on the advice of Norm Pattiz, who owns PodcastOne. He’s been in the radio business for probably forty plus years, and that’s my network, PodcastOne, which is just like a TV network, which The Jordan Harbinger Show is on. He said, “Look. I’ve seen this a lot in show business. You have to keep going, because if you take a break or if you try to work this out beforehand, your career as a broadcaster, your career as—” whatever it is that we call our careers, Pat, I’m not even sure “—It could stall out, and you’re gonna run into problems getting the momentum. It’s all about momentum.”

My old show ended on a Thursday. I did my last interview, aired it, and on Tuesday as scheduled actually was the first episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show. I called one of Adam Carolla’s guys in studio and I said, “Who can you get me as a guest for episode number one?” They gave me Mark Geragos, who’s a really well known celebrity attorney who handles all sorts of crazy cases, like Michael Jackson, you know, those kind of cases, those crazy, high profile things. He literally walked into his office on a Saturday morning at like 9:00 AM and was like, “Hey, Jordan. A lot of stuff going on with you.” I was like, “Yeah. Let’s do an interview, and I’ll tell you later.” So, we did that, and I released it later on that day to be published on Tuesday with my . . .

Luckily, Pat, when I left the old company, my entire team came with me, which also goes towards what I’m gonna be talking about more today, which is the networking and relationships being actually the most important thing you can do, the highest leverage activity as an entrepreneur or as a small business owner in any capacity as any human, I would say. My entire team came with me, so I wasn’t trying to figure out how I was gonna get everything done. I mean, there’s always that as an entrepreneur, but I was just sort of like, “Okay, I’ve got everybody I need. I have to figure out how to pay them and how we’re gonna survive and everything, but I don’t have to train new staff. I don’t have to figure out how to do other people’s jobs,” because I literally told my team, “Hey. We all got the same letter today, which was basically like, ‘Tough kishka. You’re out of here,’ with no warning, but I’m ready to keep working with you. The problem is we have no revenue stream yet.” They all went, “Cool. Let’s do it. We kind of figured that this day might come, and also we’re not gonna stay with the old brand,” and so I took everyone with me, which was huge.

Pat Flynn: That’s crazy. I mean, I know the story. You called me when this was all kind of going down and asked for some advice. I know I wasn’t the only one, but my initial thoughts when I heard about this was just, I got really angry. If I were in your situation, I’d probably stay very angry for a very long time. I mean, I know you were upset, but how did you get the courage to just like, put that aside and then just keep going? I think most people would have just kind of been down in the dumps for a while. What was the real driver for you to just get up and go?

Jordan Harbinger: You know it’s funny, a lot of people had that same reaction. I remember you were angry. A couple of other people . . . you were actually one of the first, probably a dozen people that I called because I was like, “I need people who understand this, not just like my mom, who’s gonna be like, ‘It’s okay, honey. You’ll be fine.’ I need people who will go, ‘Here are the five really hard things you need to do.'” I remember you were like, “I’ll mail this out right now.” I was like, “Wait. Wait. Wait. Thank you, but I don’t even have any bullets yet or anything. I don’t even know what I’m gonna be doing. I don’t want you to do that yet.”

The reason that I wasn’t super angry was not because I’ve been meditating or something for twenty-five years, it was because honestly that’s part of the, I think stages of grief that comes later. The first thing is kind of disbelief. I’m getting these in the wrong order. I’m not looking at a chart or anything here, but the first thing was like, “This is temporary. There’s no way this is gonna work. The other company’s not gonna be able to continue if they do it this way. This is ridiculous. Why would anybody do this?” Then after that it was kind of like, “Okay, well, this is a huge bummer. I’m gonna feel sorry for myself for a little bit.” Then it was like, “Well, wait. That’s not really helping.”

The anger part, it sort of comes and goes, and even now I’m not that angry about it. I would say other people around me are angry on my behalf, like my wife was really pissed off for a while. Even she got kind of through it, and she’s super positive, but a lot of my friends were really angry. As evidenced by the iTunes reviews for the other show, a lot of the listeners are really angry. I kind of felt like the being angry thing, which was less productive, was being handled, and I also know that when you’re angry you make bad emotional decisions. If I spent a lot of time being angry, I’d be like, “How do I screw this thing up for them?” I realized that’s gonna get me kind of nowhere, because since I’m not racing against the old company . . .

I have the whole team. I have the show going. I have all the products and stuff like that in development that I could ever want. Any bit of trying to get after those guys like an enemy, other than hiring my lawyers to do it for me, which is working so far, anything other than that is just kind of a waste of energy and time. I got really good advice not only from attorneys, but from other small business owners and investors as well, especially investors who are old and salty and had been screwed over. They said, “Look. Just hire your lawyers. Interface with them, and then get back to work, because if you sit around trying to think of revenge plots, which a lot of people do, you end up bitter.” There’s that old . . . Is it like, a Chinese proverb, Pat, where it’s like being angry . . . It might be Buddhist. Being angry is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick, something like that. Have you heard this?

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm. I heard of something like that before. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I just thought, “That’s pretty good advice,” because trust me, I gave into the urge to be pissed off and angry here and there, but losing a night of sleep or going to the gym and using it as motivation, fine, but it never really did anything for my business, which never really does anything for my team, so I kind of . . . If I were a solopreneur, I might have gotten angrier, and I haven’t thought about this too much, but I might have gotten angrier, because I would have been able to indulge in it.

When I spend an hour fuming, I realize, “Hey, there’s a lot of people that are hungry mouths, that have their own dogs/kids/pet fish that they need to feed that work with me. Am I working towards getting revenue back up to where it needs to be to make these people comfortable, or am I indulging in this, ‘Feel sorry for me. Look what happened to me. Wah. Wah. Wah’-thing that’s not moving us forward and potentially moving us backwards, if my emotions get ahold of me and make me do something stupid?

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm. You have The Jordan Harbinger Show and it’s taking off. It’s doing really well, and I’m just so happy to see that happen. It’s really cool, because you came from this terrible situation and you’ve bounced back. I know these situations personally too, because I’ve had things happen in my past. Many people know my story, getting laid off. It just seems like, “Wow, the plan I had is not going well. What am I going to do?” You were able to make something happen out of it, so those times become blessings in disguise, but you don’t really see it often when you’re in the situation.

So, how did you know where to go or what the plan was, or did you just kind of go, “You know what? I’m just gonna see what happens?” Then, how are you able to steer the ship now into an even better direction?

Jordan Harbinger: The first thing was to realize that I had a lot of people on my side. What I did really was I absolutely made a bunch of phone calls. Like you know, you were part of that. I made a bunch of those calls, and got a bunch of advice, and let everybody know what was going on. I asked for a lot of help, and that help was highly valuable, because I’d been sort of banking social capital in referral currency or reputation currency, whatever you want to call it, for a while. What that really meant for me was I spent eleven, twelve years meeting people, helping people out with things, not asking for anything in return.

There’s a book from Harvey Mackay called Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty. That’s exactly what I was doing, was trying to figure out who I could introduce to someone else or figure out how I could have people that I know help each other. That was novel at the time that I was doing it. One of the reasons I did it was because I was teaching a lot of networking skills and talking about it, things like that, here and there to students and things like that at my old law school. I thought it was good to practice what you preach, but nobody who’s digging the well . . . One of the reasons that entrepreneurs put this off is they think, “Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dig the well before you’re thirsty. I’ve heard that,” but nobody really thinks, “I’m gonna be thirsty in ten years when this horrible thing happens that you can’t plan for,” right?

That was actually in many ways lucky that I ended up practicing what I had been preaching. That, over time, built up so many people that were like, “Oh, yeah. You helped me launch my book. Oh, yeah. You gave me advice early on,” or, “Oh, yeah. You introduced me to this person, who I ended up hiring that ended up working out.” There’s all kinds of relationships like that that I had helped create just by giving value first; ABG instead of ABC. Instead of Always Be Closing, ABC, it’s ABG, Always Be Giving, or Always Be Generous, and helping other people without the attachment of anything in return. A lot of people don’t do this, because they want to find out what’s in it for them, because otherwise they don’t know if it’s worth their time. I really just didn’t focus on that. I focused on giving value first, which sounds cliché, but actually, surprise, actually works.

Those were the people that I called, the first few hundred people that I ended up calling. People were having me on their show, and they were spreading the word. Soon enough I was getting calls from people that I didn’t even know were connected to my community at all, old friends saying, “Hey, I heard that you left your old company and you have The Jordan Harbinger Show now. I can’t believe it. Word travels fast.” I thought, “No kidding. How on earth did my college roommate’s friend find out about this?” It really became a rippling wave, in part because it was really good gossip, and also in part because I think people were wondering what the heck I was gonna do.

The spotlight was really on me at that point to do something and make something happen, and so massive action was what I decided on, because action I found ends the suffering that I was going through. I was kind of like a blender with no top on. It was like the stuff in it was just flying everywhere, because I just had so much energy. I couldn’t sleep that well. It was just like, what’s gonna happen?

As soon as I started focusing on building the show again from scratch, building all my social media accounts from scratch, building my email and website from scratch, I had a laserlike focus, and I was able to work ten plus hours, twelve hours a day in actual focused productivity for weeks, and weeks, and months, and months on end. That was one of the reasons why the show is back on top, in the Top 100 or Top 200, depending on what hour of the day you look at iTunes, and in the past 30 days, over 4.1 million downloads just in the past 30 days.

Pat Flynn: Hey, man, well, congratulations on that. It’s so funny, because we often hear on podcasts the question, “Well, if you had to start over today, knowing everything you know, and start your website, and your podcast, and your social media accounts from scratch, what would you do?” Here you are actually talking about and doing those things, so you’re real life living that. You talk about with you, like that your network and making those calls . . . I went to a conference once where we had an exercise in the middle of this conference where we were tasked to write down a list of all of our champions in our life, and champion being defined as just somebody who would be there to support you in a situation like what you went through.

We spent a half hour writing these things down and I was like, “Wow. That’s a lot of time. I don’t know if anybody has that amount of people,” but I had actually written down, and I saw a lot of people around me . . . Maybe it was just because I was at an entrepreneurial conference, and a lot of us knew that networking was important, or else we wouldn’t be at a conference like that, but it took me the whole time to write down a list of all of the champions, the supports, the people who would be there for me in a situation like that. I didn’t even realize that there were that many people in my life that would be there to support me. It really made me feel great about, if something were to happen I would have some backup, or if I had a big thing that I wanted to push out there, like a book, I do have people that I could go to and feel comfortable asking for something. How important do you think that is for us to do as entrepreneurs, and how do you start building up that list if, you know, a person were to do that exercise and realize, wow, there aren’t that many people in their life right now?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I call this exercise Layoff Lifelines, because whenever I teach lawyers, or doctors, or whoever, this particular thought exercise—essentially imagine you get laid off from your job today, a feeling that you and I know really well. Who are the ten or fifteen or so people you’d contact to solicit their advice on what to do next? That works great for entrepreneurs too, like if you’re gonna write a book, or you’re gonna launch something, or your business becomes illegal overnight, or whatever the issue is that we’re talking about, who are you going to solicit? Maybe a dozen or so people. These are your weaker or dormant ties.

Make that list, and then reach out to them now. I would go the extra step. Instead of just making the list, reach out to them now, when you don’t have an agenda or need anything specifically. That sort of gets rid of a lot of the objections to networking or outreach, because a lot of people say, “Oh. It’s awkward. This is an awkward thing for me. I’m a little bit shy.” The reason that things like that are awkward are because people have an agenda. Yes, it’s awkward to reach out to somebody and say, “Hey, Pat. We haven’t talked in like four years, but I have this dog grooming ebook that I really would love to get out to your list.” You’re just like, “Hey. Where did we meet again?” Then that person’s like, “Oh. It’s so awkward. I hate outreach.”

Well, the reason it’s awkward is because you know when you call you’re going, “Oh, I’m asking for something I don’t deserve. This person’s not gonna remember me. I should have called them before, but I didn’t, and I was lazy about keeping in touch with them.” That’s why it’s awkward. It wasn’t awkward for me to call you, as a friend, and say, “This totally awful thing happened to me. What do you think I should do? Can you help me spread the word about the new show?” That wasn’t awkward at all. It was humbling, in a way, but it wasn’t awkward. The reason for that is because the last time I talked to you wasn’t the last time I needed something. It was probably some random text about, “Hey. I saw you and your kid on a vacation. That looks fun.” I don’t know. Who knows? I routinely keep in touch with people.

That kind of thing gets momentum going and ends the awkwardness cycle, but it also ends the cycle of procrastination to make this list and reach out to people when you’re agenda-free. Because I think one of the problems with small business owners, what we do is we have 100 things to do, and we kind of know how to do 99 of them—social media, email drafting, new copy for the website, take some photos, get a podcast going, that kind of thing—but we don’t have a game plan for the outreach. So, what happens? When we have 99 tasks, and one of them’s kind of a black box, and we’re not sure how to do it, well, that one goes to the end, because why should we figure out a new task when we’ve got 99 other things we kind of know how to do, and not enough hours in the day?

This kicks off the rust, the Layoff Lifelines list, and it makes things less awkward, and it gives you momentum. Frankly, as we sort of touched on before, this is the one area of your life or of your business where you can’t make up for lost time. By the time you need a network, it’s too late to go and build one. That’s the whole, “dig the well before you’re thirsty.” If you’re thirsty and you start digging, you’ve got a long lead time. So, just from a functional standpoint, it does not pay to sleep on this. It really doesn’t. Not only is this type of exercise really important, but it’s actually quite easy to do, because you’re making a list of a dozen people.

Then all of the objections about how it’s gonna be awkward, or you don’t know what to say, and all that, that all goes away because you’re not asking them for anything. You’re just reaching out to find out what they’ve been up to. This can be like the college professor that was always a good mentor, but you never caught up with, your old boss, some friends of yours that you haven’t talked to in five years. These are the people that you can ask for advice.

One thing I would caveat this with, is these are not people that you would ask for money if you ran out of financing. Because what I find is when I teach VCs, venture capitalists, and stuff like that here in Silicon Valley, they’re always like, “Yeah. I made a list of all these bank contacts.” I’m like, “Why?” They’re like, “Those are the people that can approve a loan.” I’m like, “Ah. We’re not talking about funding.” Yes, maybe one person is the person that can help you save your house, your mortgage, whatever, but it shouldn’t be twelve people who are gonna lend you ten grand. It should be people that are gonna give you advice or help you in some other tangible or intangible way.

Pat Flynn: Awesome. So we’re gonna get into a number of other things that we could kind of do and experiment with, be tasked to execute, but let’s talk about this first one in detail. For everybody listening, Jordan, what should they do specifically, line by line? Like, what’s the step-by-step?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I love this. Okay. I’m very big on specifics as well, and practicals. Essentially, get out a sheet of paper. I would get out a sheet of paper instead of putting it in a text-edit document, because writing makes you think a little bit more about what you’re putting down. It gets exciting when you can’t write fast enough. If you have trouble writing or something, or you can’t read your own writing, fine, use a text document. It’s not that big of a deal, but I prefer pen to paper, at least in the beginning. Then you can put it into text later. Start making a list, but where you start thinking about the list is don’t just think about the people around you now. You can start with them if you want to, but reach backward in time, as long as it actually makes sense.

For me, I went to undergrad like fourteen years ago, but I still might put . . . In theory, I could put a college professor in there, or an advisor, or something like that. Then this also leads to like, “Oh, yeah. My college roommates. I haven’t talked with them in a long time.” It doesn’t have to be ten to fifteen people. It could be twenty, if you really have a lot of great people that you used to be close to, that you are not anymore. You might think, “Well, I haven’t talked to that person in a long time. Why would I ask them for advice?” It kind of doesn’t matter what you’re gonna get from them specifically. You don’t have to know what you’re gonna get from them specifically. You just have to respect those people enough to ask for their opinion or to get back in touch with them. Don’t overthink it like, “Well, my college roommate, he’s a doctor. He’s not gonna know anything about running a small business.” Don’t worry about that.

Then go the extra step, after you’ve made the initial list of ten to fifteen people, and find the contact info, because the list doesn’t do much good if you’re listing people who you have no hope in actually connecting with because you haven’t been able to find out where or who they are. Remember, this is practical, and we’re actually gonna do that. So, if you put your college professor, go and search your university website. Find out if they still work and teach there. If they don’t, Google where they are now. Find their university email, and then actually add that to the contact info column of whatever list you’re making, because otherwise it becomes . . . If you don’t put contact info, this becomes an academic exercise, and that’s super unhelpful. We want to make sure that we actually have the ability to then email these people, and you’re not spending three hours on each one, digging out the contact. Find the contacts all at once if you can.

Then actually schedule time to do this. I think a lot of people, the reason we don’t get things done is we don’t use a calendar. My whole calendar system is probably another show, but my day is scheduled out from about 6:30 AM all the way until about 6:30 or 7:00 PM, in fifteen minute blocks. It doesn’t mean each activity’s fifteen minutes long of course, but everything is scheduled out. I don’t have these big gaps where it’s like, “Yeah, I’ll just do whatever I feel like in this hole in my calendar.” I actually have everything there. If I finish something early, I’ll crack a book and read, go for a walk, whatever, make a couple calls, but I will have everything, including my own showers, scheduled in there.

I highly recommend doing that, because otherwise any sort of networking activity will often fall to the wayside, because the results aren’t as tangible or as immediate. So, you end up with, “Well, I got to do my social media engagement. I’ve got to check my LinkedIn inbox. I’ve got to get to inbox zero. Oh. This Layoff Lifelines thing, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Then three years later your to-do list has stuff like, “write book, networking,” this just, little checkbox in your to-do list app. That’s not useful. Everything you do has to live in a space and time. This is no exception.

That’s what I would suggest people do, is schedule at least an hour to write the list, at least an hour or two to get the contact info, and then another hour to actually send the contact request. So, this is a half day-long exercise, but you’ll probably finish early. I’ll say that, because most of the time you can pop the list out really fast. You can actually then find the contact info really fast, because you probably have these people’s contact info, most of them, and the rest are a Google search or a Facebook search away. The trick is actually doing it. Most people don’t actually do it, and that’s why we end up with, “Oh my gosh. Networking is . . . I don’t understand it. Oh, it’s so awkward. Nevermind, I’m just gonna go back into my Instagram inbox.”

Pat Flynn: But for these people that you’re going to be reaching out to, this is—again, before you have to reach out to the–this is being proactive. What do you say to them? How do you communicate?

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. What I usually do, since we don’t need anything, since we’re digging the well before we’re thirsty here, what we’re doing with this exercise is we’re reaching out and saying literally some variation of . . . It depends on whether or not they’re gonna remember you. Your college roommate: “Hey, Mike. What’s going on? It’s been so long. I’ve been really bad at keeping in touch, admittedly. I’d love to hear what you’re up to. Let’s schedule a time to catch up on the phone on a quiet weekend. I’d love to hear from you.” That kind of thing is really easy.

If it’s a college professor who’s never gonna remember a random student, you can say, “Hi, Professor Dworkin. This is Jordan Harbinger. I do not expect you to remember me. You taught me political science 207 fourteen years ago. I’m glad to see you’re still in the business of educating young folks. I really had a big impression made by your course,” and then don’t ask people like that to catch up on the phone, because of course they don’t have time, and they’re gonna wonder what’s going on. You can literally just reach out and say, “This is what I’m doing now. I’m putting your skills into use in a very unusual way,” things like that, and just show them a little bit about what you’re doing. You’ll probably get a short response, if any, and it doesn’t really matter.

The idea that you’re gonna get a response is great, but you’re not counting on it. Part of making this list is finding out who actually still has your back and still remembers you after all of this time. These weak or dormant ties that are important to you, you’re not always going to reactivate all of them, but the reason that that sort of, quote-unquote, script is important is you’re signing your name. You’re showing people what you’re doing recently, and if it’s appropriate, you’re asking for some time to catch up and make up a little bit for the fact that you haven’t kept in touch over a period of time.

One thing I will mention, is in any communication with a weak or dormant tie, someone you haven’t spoken to in a long time, always say, “No rush on the reply. I realize you’re probably very busy.” The reason we do that is because it breaks urgency, because when people are trying to sell something, they build urgency. “I would love to hear from you really quickly. I have a really exciting opportunity. You’re never gonna believe what’s going on right now. I’m looking forward to hearing from you as soon as you can.” That kind of thing, that’s dangerous and will demolish your reply rate.

The reason for that is if somebody reaches out from your deep, dark past, Pat, and they say, “Hey. I’ve got this great thing that’s going on. Get in touch with me right away,” I don’t know about you, but what I’m thinking is, “Okay. Is this Herbalife or Scientology? Which weird pyramid scheme thing are you going to ambush me with when I reply? What self-help seminar did you go to that’s gonna have you admitting some sort of weird stuff to me during this interaction?” Those people who are trying to sell things, amateurishly especially, they build urgency. So, if we say, “No rush on the reply. Everyone’s busy, I totally get it, still looking forward to hearing from you,” you destroy urgency, and that, subconsciously anyways, signals that you don’t have some sort of hidden agenda.

You can even, if it’s really random, if it’s been a really long time, you can even call it out and say, “I know this email is so random, but I wanted to get in touch because I’ve been thinking about writing a letter for a million years, and I just realized I’ve been terrible at keeping in touch and I want to remedy that.” That way people go, “Yeah. Fair enough. I feel like I’ve felt like that too. Alright. What’s going on, Pat?” That’s a lot easier to swallow, and they don’t feel like, “Oh. If I call him back, what’s gonna happen? What’s going on here?” That’s important for your response rate. I’ve found that destroying urgency takes your response rate on stuff like this from around the 40 or 50 percent mark upwards of the 70 percent mark when I tested it.

Pat Flynn: That’s awesome. Thank you for that. Now, beyond the Layoff Lifeline, which I really like that term by the way, what are some other things we can do to build our network and secure our future through the connections that we have? I know you have a number of exercises. Every time you come on the show I love it, because you give us these thought experiments and tips. Last time it was about body language, when you’re with people in person, how you can say things even without saying things out of your mouth, based on the way that you walk in the room and how you approach a person, all those kinds of things. Those were really interesting. What about,specifically for building our network, whether that’s in person or online? How can we kind of grow that? How can we get better at that?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. What I love to do is some version . . . This is similar to Layoff Lifelines in that it re-engages people, but it’s a lot easier and it requires no scheduled time. So, some tiny habits that I do pretty much every day. One is . . . I don’t have a fancy, cool, alliterative name for this one, but I just call it text re-engagement. Basically what I do is I grab my phone some time before lunch, not at 7:00 AM like you and I are chatting, but usually—

Pat Flynn: Sorry.

Jordan Harbinger: —some time around 9:00 or so, because then it’s a reasonable time on the East Coast. It’s a reasonable time on the West Coast, even for the late risers, night owls. I scroll in my text app all the way to the bottom. You’ll know, probably from experience, that the texts at the bottom are like, “Hey, I went out for lunch with this person once at a conference two years ago, and this is the text from somebody in a group that said, ‘Everyone meet at 1:00 at Café Gratitude in San Diego,'” right? That’s the text that’s at the bottom. I’ll go in there, and I’ll say something along the lines of, “Hey, guys. Jordan Harbinger here. Been a long time. I don’t think I’ve caught up with a lot of you since this actual lunch. I’d love to hear from you.” Especially if it’s one-on-one, you can use the same thing, “I’d love to hear from you. What’s the latest with you? No rush on the reply.” Then again, you sign your name.

Of course the reason you sign your name is so you don’t get, “New phone. Who dis?”, or worse, “Oh. I’m embarrassed. Who is this person? I don’t have their number saved. I’m gonna ignore this, because I don’t want to showcase that I didn’t save this person’s number.” You sign your name. You break that urgency, just like you did before, and you also make sure that you ask for just, “Hey. I’d love to hear what people are up to.” A text is so easy to send. We also know from marketing statistics that something like 100 percent of text messages are received within ten minutes, or read within ten minutes of receipt I should say. That’s a much higher percentage of somebody getting back to you, for the most part. You know, there’s some people that don’t answer their texts. Those are few and far between.

We can do this in the coffee line at Starbucks. You don’t have to schedule this. All of us have the old, “Oh, man. This is a one person bathroom, and I’ve gotta wait, because someone’s in there.” We have that kind of time at the office, on our way to the bus in the morning, we’re sitting down—there’s all kinds of time. Airport gates is a great time to do this. This is a really easy, tiny habit to cultivate, this text re-engagement. If you’re not a texter, you can do something called Gmail roulette, which is really similar. It’s basically that, but with email. The only difference is you probably don’t have to sign your name because it’s in your email address.

I actually do both Gmail roulette and the tex re-engage, which is . . . In the Gmail roulette, by the way, you just type two letters in the “To” field. Usually you’ll get a suggested list of drop-downs, and you just pick names you recognize. So, it’s not as, quote-unquote, scientific as reaching out to the people that you haven’t texted in a while, but you will find people that you never speak with. This is important, because most of these people, probably half in the beginning, until you get better at what you’re saying and how you engage, will not respond, or they’re respond with something short like a thumbs up emoji or like, “Hi,” and then something really short, but you’re engaging twenty people a week if you’re . . . twenty-five, sorry. My math is not so good this morning. You’re engaging twenty-five people if you do this every working weekday. If you’re doing it on weekends, you’re engaging thirty-five people a week.

That’s a lot of people every month, 100 plus. Out of those opportunities and those re-engagements, you’re gonna find that most of them, there’s not a whole lot, just general sort of small talk conversation, but out of those 100 plus conversations, you’re gonna find some gold. Some examples of this are, recent examples of this for me are texting somebody who then later on says, “Funny you should text me. I’m about to walk into a meeting, where we’re gonna pitch the keynote speakers for our corporate retreat. Do you still do speaking?” Me: “Yes,” and then hours later ending up with, “Hey, I pitched you. I think we’re gonna pick you to keynote our event in April,” that kind of thing. This is a paid speaking gig, right?

Other things are, “Hey. So funny. I was talking about you a few weeks ago. My friend has a big podcast, and he’s looking for great guests. Would you like an introduction?” You’re thinking, “Yeah, right. This person was not gonna introduce me, because I hadn’t talked to them in a while. Suddenly here I am in their conscious brain this morning, fresh in front of their computer, ready to make that email introduction.” Other people say, “Hey. I just ran into this really well known author who I think is a fit for your show.” I’ve ended up with guests that way, speaking gigs . . . I mean, this, at the end of the day, is a lucrative and interesting use of literally four to five minutes a day, and I think it’s extremely important to do that kind of thing, because it doesn’t really cost you anything. This is literally Instagram time that you’re spending doing something better.

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm. I mean, it’s kind of similar to one thing I do every single month. A lot of people know this; I talk about it every month. I reach out to some random people in my email list—so these aren’t previous contacts that I’ve been in communication with, but people who I know have kind of followed me or at least subscribed to my email list very recently, and I reach out to them and try to get them on a Skype call. The opportunities that open up, the conversations that happen, you can’t even predict how great they can be, but the fact that you’re doing this opens up the opportunities for things like that to happen, so it’s pretty incredible that you’ve got speaking gigs and even seen some literal ROI from this, even though that’s not what it’s about.

It’s funny, because you’re not even asking for anything, but I like how you said now you’re on top of mind, and that just adds a lot of value to kind of what could possibly happen. What would you say to somebody to who’s just like, “Jordan, I just don’t have the time for this. I know, four or five minutes a day, but then that turns into conversations, and then I’m worried about my schedule, and kind of things getting out of hand”?

Jordan Harbinger: I totally get that, and I do get that concern a lot because people go, “Four to five minutes a day to send the messages, and then I got someone texting me all day.” “Were it so easy,” is what I would say to that. There’s a really good chance that somewhere around 30 percent to 40 percent of people who you text are just not going to reply because they don’t care, they don’t like their text, they don’t remember you, they’re not interested, they’re bad networkers—whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter.

And even when people do reply, I think everyone kind of realizes how busy everyone is, so my conversations via text when I’m doing this particular thing usually are a few hours later. Someone will say, “Hey, really good to hear from you. What is going on? I’ve been working really hard. I had a kid. Here’s a picture of my kid that I’ve been sending to everybody, because everyone’s got pictures of their kid on their phone. And yeah, I got married to Angela. I think you met her at that lunch. Good to hear from you. What’s new in your neck of the woods?” And then you say, “Yes, I started a new show, work on this . . . Let me know. I know you like podcasts.” And then they say something like, “It’s so funny, I’ve been reading a lot of audiobooks. Gonna subscribe right now. Looking forward to hearing it. Let me know when you’re in San Diego next.”

That’s pretty much the end of the conversation. It’s not like, “Oh man, I was texting for two hours after I sent these four texts.” That has never happened. People are in the middle of their work day, they’re kind of going back and forth with you politely. You re-engage them, you find out where they’re going to be speaking next or where they’re going to be next, or in your neck of the woods, when you’re going to be in their neck of the woods, and you say, “If you’re coming up to San Francisco to do X, give me a buzz. I’ll give you some restaurant recommendations, and if you have time I’ll come join you.” That’s pretty much it.

We’re talking three to four, back and forth. I almost never get into something where I’m like, “Wow, I’ve done twenty back and forth text messages with this person.” Very, very rarely. And what you can do is, if you find that there’s a lot of interactions that are getting verbose, you can say, “I’m not a super verbose texter. I usually focus on what I’m doing during the day, but you did pop into my head. Shoot me an email, or I’ll shoot you an email,” and then you’ll get their email address and then you can go from there, and then you can batch your emails just like you batch your emails normally, versus being interrupted. Because a lot of people go, “I don’t want to get texts during the day.” Well, fine. Turn your phone on airplane mode after you send the texts and answer them after work. It’s really not going to take that amount of time.

I would love it if I got a 100 percent response rate and everybody wanted to have a more involved conversation, but that’s just not how this shakes out ever.

Pat Flynn: Cool, thanks. The two exercises we just talked about kind of rely on the fact that you are reaching out to people that you’ve already had contact with. What about those of us who want to grow our network and we don’t have those people? How can we kind of expand our network and create these lifelines for us that . . .

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that’s a great question because I think a lot of folks are like, “Since I don’t know anyone, where do I begin? I’m pretty new.” I would say, of course, events are a great place to go to but never—one caveat to this, never go to an event that isn’t curated. And what I mean by that is—and Pat, I don’t know about you but for me, I started going to these meetups ten years ago or whatever it was, and it’s like, “I’m here sitting in a circle of folding chairs while some guy in an ill-fitting suit at the YMCA serves us stale cookies, and everyone introduces what they do and what they’re looking for.”

As soon as the room is allowed to get up and walk around, you get approached by a bunch of people who are like, “Next time you need a financial planner, give me a call. Here’s a card I got off of Vista Print that melts when you put it in your hand because it’s so thin.” Right? Like, there’s tons of those, and that’s a non-curated event. What happens is you go to that event and you go, “These suck. I hate networking. What a waste of time,” because everyone is a taker, because a non-curated event is full of either new people who haven’t developed connections, or people who are takers who go, “I just want to meet people who want to network, and then sell them used cars or bad financial products.”

And so, don’t go to events that aren’t curated. Go to events that are for a specific niche, like if you’re in the financial blogging thing, go to FinCon. If you’re into podcasting, go to Podcast Movement. It’s not that they don’t let in new people and that people aren’t being smarmy there, it’s just the percentage is much lower because it’s not this totally hodgepodge, non-curated networking event at the local learning annex or whatever. And if you can’t go to an event that is curated, especially if there’s an event that requires an invite for a specific reason like, “I’m really interested in building a business in this, and all of these high level people are going to be speaking there, and I bought a ticket and it’s the best one that I can afford,” that’s curation at some level.

But if you can’t get to that, create one of your own. What I mean by this is, one example is you can have dinner parties that involve . . . You invite, say, three people that you know, and you’re asking . . . This can even be friends of yours at first, and you say, “Please invite someone that I don’t already know.” That should be a pretty easy task for most us. You can say, “This is a dinner party. The value add is that I’m going to be teaching basics of cryptocurrency, and so people who don’t really understand what this is but would be interested in what this is, not buying a product on it, not getting into trading it or whatever, just wanting to learn about it, they’ll be interested.”

So, there’s some value add. Like, “Hey, it’s a dinner party, but also this guy is going to be talking about why Bitcoin is the future,” or whatever. You get people interested in that kind of thing. That sort of self-curates, along with your friends having made the invite, and then you’ve got a small event. I know someone who started off doing this, and now he’s got this massive sort of crypto dinners thing, where all of the who’s-who from all around his area who are interested in cryptocurrency are kind of jonesing to go to these events, and each time someone else is the quote-unquote teacher, right, so . . .

He taught the first one. The next one, his friend gave a lecture on some sort of dark cryptocurrency, and then after that it was, “We actually have the COO of this new coin coming out, and they’re going to talk about why their product is different, and they’re going to teach some basics of why this is going to help people’s pension funds.” So this became a whole thing, and now this guy is the center of these quote-unquote crypto dinners, which I think now are not even dinners because there’s dozens of people at each one and they have venues for it.

The beginning, though, you can curate this in your own house, because what I don’t want to happen is people go to these non-curated events, they pay twenty bucks for stale cookies and cold tea, and then they go, “This sucks. I had to find parking, I spent two hours getting here in LA traffic or whatever, and I have a bunch of stupid business cards of people I’m never going to email, and now I’m on seventeen people’s email newsletters that I didn’t sign up for because I went to this event.” It’s actually better to just start off small than it is trying to get into high level stuff right away, or trying to meet people aggressively. Does that make sense?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, it totally makes sense. I would reiterate the importance of, if you can’t find these little events that you want to go to, whether they’re big conferences or even small meetups in your area—Meetup.com, those are curated in the sense that you’re going to be around people who are interested in similar topics. I created my own in San Diego, here. It’s San Diego Entrepreneurs Group, we meet every first Wednesday of the month at the downtown WeWork, and it’s been great. It’s funny because you might be like, “People are only showing up because you’re there, Pat.” Maybe, but I also know a lot of people who go and say, “Pat, I’ve never heard about you but I heard about this thing. My friends came the last time, they said it was great.”

And this is just something that regularly happens, so now I have a place where San Diego Entrepreneurs—and a lot of people who are not even in San Diego or live in San Diego who just happen to be there come to these as well, but people go because they’re there with other people like them. So you don’t necessarily have to be the center of attention at these little things that you put together. You can be, like you were just talking about, but you can also create them because in your space people want to meet and see other people just like them.

When you can facilitate that, it helps your brand, and obviously now that you have this meetup that happens and you happen to be the organizer, now you have all these contacts who are there and kind of see you as the person to go to if anything were to happen or if something happens in the industry, or if you wanted to reach out back to them—I mean, they’re going to pay attention because they remember you in that capacity.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. Exactly. It sort of puts you at the top, after a while, of that particular niche, which is really interesting. And there are tons of ways to maintain networks, there are tons of ways to reach out to people, there are tons of ways to make sure that you’re continuing to expand your network . . . I have taught in the Level One class, which is sort of where I assembled all of these drills, I have things even regarding starting conversations and body language—one of which I may have mentioned the last time I was on the show. But non verbal communication, all of these play a part in making and creating relationships, so I’ve assembled them all in one place.

But I really think that if people start off with Layoff Lifelines, making that list, and then start actually scheduling time to go and make those connections in real life, keep up with people that they’ve already met, those weaker or dormant ties, and spend the literally four to five minutes a day texting and re-engaging people that way—that might sound like a lot. It will take you just a few hours all together for everything, and then four to five minutes a day.

You will see . . . I feel we don’t have to sell it after that, because after the first week people go, “Oh my gosh, I got a job offer. Oh my gosh, I got invited to this thing that sounds really awesome. Oh no, I’ve re-engaged my college professor, and it turns out he works for the company that I’ve always wanted to work for.” I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff like that that happens where you just have to get the snowball rolling down the hill. Just that push is all you need.

Pat Flynn: Love that. You mentioned something called your drills and Level One. I remember you saying you had a link for that, that we can go to, to kind of check more of that stuff out.

Jordan Harbinger: I do, yeah. [Editor’s Note: This link has changed, and so we have edited the transcript to reflect the correct link, which is more current than what is stated in the audio.] So Six-Minute Networking is the training company of The Jordan Harbinger Show. It’s sort of the arm of that. https://jordanharbinger.com/course is where it’s at, and Level One because, of course, it’s sort of the basics of all of this. But it includes Layoff Lifelines. It’s a series of videos. Layoff Lifelines, some nonverbal communication stuff, the texting re-engage, the Gmail roulette, some common principles that I had mentioned and some that I haven’t. Of course, as well, starting those dinner parties and things like that, as well other systems for maintaining your network that I’ve used over the last ten to fifteen years.

And again, to be blunt about it, this is the stuff that saved my behind when I had to start from scratch, so imagine what it will do if you’re starting from scratch yourself. Or, if you’re not starting from scratch and you already have a lot of momentum, this is going to be gasoline on that fire. So I highly recommend this; this is the highest leverage activity that you can do as a business owner, because it’s the one thing you can’t make up for lost time with, relationships. And in addition, it’s just something that most people do not do correctly. So if you’ve got it, you’ve got a superpower, and I can’t emphasize that enough.

Pat Flynn: Love it, man. [Editor’s Note: This link has changed, and so we have edited the transcript to reflect the correct link, which is more current than what is stated in the audio.] So that’s jordanharbinger.com/course, and The Jordan Harbinger Show. Go check it out on iTunes and wherever else you might listen to Podcasts. Anywhere else that we could go and say hello on social media? What are your social media handles now?

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. I’m @JordanHarbinger on Instagram, Twitter, et cetera. Yeah, I’d love it if people would check . . . Message me on social media or check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. Today . . . Actually, I shouldn’t date the show, here. One of the recent episodes that we released is I interviewed this guy who escaped from North Korea. He’s twenty-four, and he escaped from North Korea two times, which is kind of crazy because if you get sent back, you’re in deep trouble, and he actually did get sent back. I’ve done episodes, and everything from psychedelics to cryptocurrency to negotiation, which has been a huge hit. The negotiation ones are just—I think, a million people have downloaded these things so far.

Pat Flynn: Have you interviewed Chris Voss?

Jordan Harbinger: I interviewed Chris Voss, but I also interviewed, and he’s coming back, but I interviewed Alex Kouts, who nobody has heard of. He teaches negotiation, but he does so for . . . In government and in politics, and he has the best stuff. In fact, Chris Voss has even said things like, wow, this is stuff he hasn’t necessarily thought of, because Alex teaches this and does so in the government and for companies in Silicon Valley and beyond. The stuff he teaches about negotiation is probably responsible, at this point, for millions of dollars in raises that companies have had to give for people that have used this.

But he negotiates everything from cars to mattresses, and he lays it out in a three part series that we have on the show, and so it’s pretty incredible. Alex is just a next level thinker.

Pat Flynn: We’ll check that out for sure. But hey man, thanks for coming back for the show. I’m so glad to hear things are going well. Everybody go check out The Jordan Harbinger Show, and we’ll hopefully chat with you again, man.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Thanks so much for the opportunity, man. It’s always good to talk to you.

Pat Flynn: Absolutely.

Awesome. Wow. I’m still kind of just dumbfounded about the whole situation, but so thankful that Jordan was able to bounce back and create something even stronger. So make sure you subscribe to his show, The Jordan Harbinger Show, and also check out his website. He’s got some great articles there as well: JordanHarbinger.com. Jordan, man, thank you for being here and being open and honest and vulnerable with us. Really inspiring to see that, despite probably the most nightmare situation that could ever happen in a business, you were able to bounce back super strong, so thank you for that.

If y’all want to check out the show notes and the links to everything we’ve mentioned in the show, all you have to do is go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session346. So, again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/session346. And if you would like to leave any comments, you can leave them there as well.

And hey, you know, I’ve mentioned several tools here and resources on the show, a lot of guests come in and talk about things that they’ve used to help them in their business. I’ve talked about things that I’ve used as well, and I wanted to talk really quick about one that I absolutely love, and that is AllGravy.io. If you have an online course with a subscription plan, if you have a membership website where you’re asking customers to pay month over month, or perhaps a software or a recurring monthly coaching program, those kinds of things, one thing that you may run into is failed payments. Actually it’s very common and most people don’t even know these things exist. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

There are thousands of dollars being lost as a result of not even paying attention to that. And yes, there are what’s called dunning tools in a lot of these programs which will sort of, in an automated way through email, try to capture that information that is the reason why that customer failed their payment, to try and get them back on. But that is nothing compared to what AllGravy.io can do. I signed on with AllGravy over a year ago. Casey Graham is the founder, we had him on the show before. He’s amazing. I was introduced to this tool AllGravy.io from a good friend of mine, Amy Porterfield, who you know and has been on the show several times. She’s like, “Pat, you gotta use this because it will help you recover your failed payments, and it just works on its own, and what’s amazing about this tool is it’s not a software. It’s not something that just kind of automatically does it.”

Casey has hired an amazing team to act on your behalf to recover these failed payments in your business. Really friendly people, not like a payment collector who’s gonna threaten to take somebody house if they don’t pay kind of thing, but more of like a, “Hey, we are a part of your team and we’ve noticed that there was a failed payment. What could we do to help you?” And they create like, these customized plans with these people if there’s any issues. It’s amazing. You have to check this out, especially if you are an entrepreneur who wants to make sure you succeed and you have these kinds of programs. So if you want to see what’s available and schedule a call to see if this is a right fit for you, all you have to do is go to AllGravy.io/pat. They’ve helped me recover over 70 percent of my failed payments from my online courses and it just literally pays for itself. So AllGravy.io/pat. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

Super quick before you go, three things for you. Number one, make sure, if you haven’t done so already, hit Subscribe on however you’re listening to this. If you happen to be listening to this on the website, there’s various ways you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, Overcast, what have you. Castbox . . . However you choose to listen to podcasts, you can find me there, The Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thank you for subscribing.

I also have another show called AskPat, where every single week I invite a business owner like you on, and I coach you through a process. Sometimes they’re beginners, sometimes they’re advanced, but we do a one on one call and I coach that person through a pain or problem that they’re having, and y’all can listen in on that. I’ve been saying y’all a lot, for some reason, I think. I don’t know. I don’t know why, but I just am.

And then finally, the third thing that you can do is make sure you head over to SmartPassiveIncome.com/live if you haven’t already. There, you can register for some of my monthly trainings that happen. Sometimes they happen with just me and I train you on various things like how to start a podcast, how to do affiliate marketing, those kinds of things. Other times, they’re partnership trainings, where I might combine forces with somebody who can teach you how to build an awesome online course or something like that. So, if you want to check that out, the upcoming live trainings are available at SmartPassiveIncome.com/live. You can see what’s coming up soon, and I’ll see you there, hopefully. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and I’ll see you the next episode. Bye for now.

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