 This is the art of charm learn everything you need to know to crush it in business Love and life the art of charm is where ordinary guys become extraordinary men Welcome to the art of charm. I'm Jordan Harbinger If you're new to the show, but you want to know more about what we teach here at the art of charm Check out the toolbox at the art of charm podcast comm slash toolbox. I'm looking forward to meeting all you guys here at the art of charm All right. All right. Welcome to episode 300. We're talking to James Althusser. He's a great guy Good friend of mine really love some of his writing not all of it. I'm just kidding James. I really love his writing We're talking about Podcasting audience building should you attend or send your kids to college? Academic versus practical knowledge what we can do instead of college and we're gonna give you some alternatives there The death and rebirth of the American dream I know sounds very heavy and heady and it is u.s. Economic history in three minutes. Don't worry We keep it to three minutes how net worth equals self-worth in America and how he lost dozens of millions of dollars multiple times How to stay emotionally and spiritually healthy day-to-day why it's important to quote-unquote choose yourself every day Living life like it's everyone else's last day and we wrap up with how James stopped a multi-million dollar financial fraud By accident, so I hope you guys enjoy this one It's a little bit of a mini celebration episode 300 of the show We've been doing this for seven and a half plus years And if you guys have noticed downloads are faster the quality of the show just the pure audio quality Not just my skills. I'd like to think but the audio quality itself is doubled The downloads are super fast no matter where you are in the world because we got a new content distribution network That is a professional level it solution where we're just cruising and of course now The news that most people will actually care more about is we have apps on all platforms So if you have an Android you can go to the art of charm comm slash Android and download the Android app It's free. It's a great player. We can throw bonus content in there It works really well a lot of people like it more than their Android based players And we have a new iPhone app the art of charm comm slash iPhone We're gonna be consistently updating that and it's actually to the point where it is better in performance and Features than the native podcast app that comes with your iPhone because we actually had the senior developer of iOS 7 from Apple create the app himself because he's a good fan of the show So a lot of the cool stuff coming together for this one I really hope you guys enjoyed this one as much as I've enjoyed recording it And I hope you're here with me and the art of charm for another seven and a half plus years So enjoy episode 300 with James Altershire I've been doing this for seven and a half years I feel like I finally just starting to get the hang of it here. I mean, we're doing episode 300 That's what you and I are doing right now and to be honest I only take sponsors where somebody is either at the very end or beginning is like hey this random website bought our Bandwidth for this episode say thank you and go check out their Facebook marketing thing if you want this show doesn't make money from Add dollars from sponsors. They don't get to pick the topics or anything and they shouldn't influence the content The money isn't making sure that they love listening to the show. You've got a solid operation I was really impressed with your prep questions like you prepared more than anyone else has ever interviewed me I appreciate you saying that as well because Guys like you guys like Pat Flynn guys who are I consider to be towards the top of the totem pole when it comes to like Guest caliber they get the prep and they go this is great and they do it and it's great And it's timely for the most part and it's fun And then I get these guys who've made like, you know, 10 grand in the last three months from their podcast And they're like listen, I'm a professional. I don't need this You know, it's funny because when I was live broadcasting on satellite radio for so long All of the professionals and I mean like from rock stars to movie stars to the like the real pro broadcasters Like Howard Stern and stuff. Those guys are preparing like crazy But I just watched Howard Stern interview Amy Schumer And so I'm sure he's familiar with Amy Schumer. Just like, you know, she's a comedian I'm a big fan of her so I've seen everything and I could tell He wasn't a hundred percent familiar But I could tell he was a hundred percent prepared like he had watched everything in the past day You could tell this guy works hard The amateur level people who think they're pros or they want to be pros They're consistently talking about how they don't need to prepare and how they can cut corners Now they can hack the format and things like that And I'm all about efficiency and things like that But I think there's a line at which when you see true professionals You find that there's just so much more work involved The thing is they make it look easy because they've practiced it a bunch like somebody walking a tightrope They might make it look really easy In fact, I know that some of these like Cirque du Soleil acrobats When they're doing things like tightrope walking and they'll pause in the middle of the rope for dramatic effect But they could probably basically jog across that rope. It's just less impressive You know, nobody in the right mind is in the audience going I could totally do that They're thinking that's amazing But when you do something like talk into a microphone and have an intelligent conversation A lot of people go, oh, I'm fully capable of doing that because I'm so smarter You're not going to do the prep. Well, the show's not going to turn out as well. And trust me, I've measured Prepared versus unprepared and it's not just me, you know, myself prepared guest unprepared Both guest and host prepared or just, you know, just the guest preparing or whatever more so than myself And there's just a very obvious difference in show quality And people have asked me before as well on this show, how do I prepare or do I just walk right in and it's never the case It's a flattering thing to ask because it means that I basically make it sound like I just turn on the microphone and go Hey, what was your name again? Reading a bunch of stuff looking at a bunch of stuff and I've got an assistant producer that like He'll read all of the guests books and create summaries for me that I then read And he's got questions that he would ask and I throw in my own and that's how we create the stuff here I mean, there's if you count up the man hours It's probably more than 10 to 15 hours for some of these shows that we create that are 45 minutes long I think for anything it takes five years So that doesn't mean it takes five years to be a great podcaster It takes five years to build an audience if you're starting from scratch So whether you're blogging or going on tv or Podcasting it's going to take you five years before you have the audience that you're meant to have Like before you reach your potential And that's provided you're actually doing something I've been doing this for seven and a half years and honestly For probably four to five years in between there. I kind of was like I'm just going to put this up on the internet I didn't even look at my statistics for I think three to four straight years and that was in the beginning I was obsessed with it Then I just started making it for the love of creating it and then I more recently probably within the last two years Started even looking at my monthly downloads. I didn't even care before I realized that once I started to focus on those they grew because I focused on promoting the show But I think at the same time People go, oh man, if only you've been doing what you're doing now five years ago And I'm thinking if I'd been doing now what I did five years ago I think I'd just be getting So much hate mail because maybe the promotion would have worked But I think my show was probably kind of crapola all the way back then Some people loved it, but the quality wasn't there and I was green I think everything probably happened for me at the right time, but you're right I think it takes you a lot longer than you think you're going to need to get good at this and even Having been a professional broadcaster on satellite radio live radio where you can't make mistakes because everything's real time I mean that was a training ground that most people don't have that I find in retrospect was very valuable I always view radio because I've done a lot of radio myself as a little old school in that the real time Factor is so important that it gives an extra hype to the anxiety of doing it Yeah, I much prefer kind of the slower pace of a podcast But like you say, I'm sure it's an excellent training ground It's not even something I would recommend most people do but it did help me a lot and helped me and aj Get our stuff together, but you did all the prep and it looks awesome. I'd love to get a little bit of your story Oh, this james altered your guy thinks he's so freaking smart And he thinks that jobs aren't going to exist in the way that they do now in 50 years And that people shouldn't go to college and what a jerk and so I kind of want to focus on that because I'm in it right now with my girlfriend where I'm like, should we send our kids to college? I don't know. I went to seven years of college. I thought it was kind of a waste And I went to college in grad school and I'll just tell you that story well quickly I went to college very good college major in computer science went into about $70,000 in debt, you know, I paid for my entire college myself Then I went to graduate school for two years in computer science at one of the let's say It's the third ranking grad school for computer science in the country and then I got a job as a programmer and I was so bad that My employer actually had to send me to a remedial school for programming for two months Just so I could be at mediocre level at programming at the job I mean, I really consider myself like I had put my 10,000 hours in but I had put my 10,000 hours in At college and grad school and it just wasn't worth it Right and I still owe the $70,000 and I lost, you know, five years of my life Right because you started studying Australopithecines and anthropology and stuff like that instead of just coding whereas if you just spent five years coding You would be a freaking genius with that stuff before you even got your first job If I had been coding real code instead of like academic code because there's a big difference No matter what you're learning college is going to be like 10 years behind the real world Because all the teachers did their phd's 10 years earlier That's a really good point that I hadn't thought about Law school is even more famous for this They say listen, you know, you're at a top law school professors I had a professor joking about this, but it's not funny in retrospect You know the difference between us and and professors at a lower ranked law school is All of those people practiced law for a while and then became professors Whereas we've been theoretical for our entire career and I remember thinking So what you're saying is you've never really applied any of this stuff You've just written papers about people who maybe have And it's like, yeah, that's exactly it. You know, it's funny So my old um amount modder Came to me asking for a donation because that's what they do with alumni I of course said look, I don't even believe kids should go to college But I'm happy to donate my time So I'll come up to the school and I'll give some lectures And so while I was there, I ran into the professor of entrepreneurship that I had studied with maybe 23 years earlier And you know, here I've started like tons of businesses since then I've failed. I've had successes I've I'm invested in like 30 different startups You know and look 30 years later or 23 years later this guy's still a professor of entrepreneurship I don't know what like what does he know about being an entrepreneur in today's world? Like I've had to deal with some real difficult issues even in the past year And it's hard to be an entrepreneur. You kind of have to rejuvenate yourself every month to do it again I don't know what people get in school. I tell my kids like one of my kids a 12 year old girl She wants to be a fashion designer. Now, of course, she's going to change her mind. She's only 12 years old But I said, okay, don't go to a school where you're going to take all these different courses You know, I'll go to the library if you want to read books and I'll help you find an internship I don't I'm not connected or networked in that space at all But I'll sit down and we'll go through and I'll teach you how I would network and how I would find an internship in this space And then you can see if you really want to do it and if you really enjoy doing it Now, I don't know if she's going to listen to me or not like I think my kids their form of rebellion is going to be to go to college You know, unfortunately, they're going to go into debt for it So I hope it doesn't hurt them too much It is funny because I think the same way and I did a show with a guy named Charlie tips He's not famous or anything but we titled the show raising young millionaires and he had Raised essentially this these groups of kids who are really amazing and for went if I can use that word high school To do like film development and the kids won two emmy's and he's like 29 or something like that I mean, it's just it's amazing And I look at this stuff all the time and I'm thinking people go if you had to do it all over again What would you study or if you had to do it all over again? Would you change in your business and I'm thinking if I had to do it all over again I probably would have Finished high school just because otherwise my parents would have had a heart attack or something like that But I probably would have studied abroad more and gone to a boarding school And then after that I would have gotten as organized as humanly possible and become an assistant to somebody who's doing Something important like a ceo Even if all I had to do was a lot of his errands and dictate things or whatever like take notes at meetings That would have been far more educational than most of what I did in undergrad and even in law school for that Matter. Oh my god. The first year I actually had a job I learned so much. You know that feeling you get when you're on like this super steep learning curve I've only had that feeling Outside of college like after college when I was on either jobs or starting businesses Or involved in other activities. I have changed careers like five or six times I've never had that learning curve in college because college is just an extension of high school anyway And I've only had that learning curve outside of college And by the way, I consider myself a big reader All of the reading and writing I've done has been after I finally left grad school Nothing I've ever learned in college or grad school. I've ever applied maybe not for everybody I'm I never give advice by the way. I only talk about what works for me So for me, it was such a waste of time and I could explain why in detail And then I can go over all the numbers and economics of it in detail And then anybody else they can decide to do what they want to do But the economics don't work and it didn't work for me So before we talk about everything that's wrong with college and how much it costs and how the economics work What I try to do on this show as well is not just be like this whole thing is broken, you know, a la conspiracy theory Let's cry about america types of I like to give at least some hope of a solution So have you thought about what people should do it aside from college? Because yes, you and I would probably become an executive assistant or you and I would have started reading and writing stuff and creating content on our own What about people who either aren't interested in that or have you thought about other alternatives for college? I agree with you. I can't stand the people who say Oh, it's just bad or the country's going down the drain of education or You know, don't go to college without giving the alternatives because the reality is Things are pretty good for the people who don't go to college So I wrote a book and I'm giving it away for free and if you go to 50, that's the number 50 50 alternatives to college Com you can get my book for free and it gives all sorts of things you should do Instead of going to college now. I'm not necessarily saying never go to college But sending an 18 year old to college is like sending an 18 year old to vietnam They're being put into a situation that they have no clue why they're there But they're given all sorts of Mythological reasons why they need to do this and yet they're going to ruin their lives destroy their lives Obviously with vietnam, there's many reasons are obvious reasons why their lives have been destroyed But with college, it's not so obvious that you're going to spend So much more money than you need to to get an education You're going to get into debt for the next 30 or 40 years, which is really unpleasant Like you should not get into that debt. It's not necessary And finally there's opportunity costs the average student spends five years in college So but let's just say four years You're going to spend four years wasting your life away doing stuff that bores the hell out of you when you could have been Doing things that you actually love and want to learn and have passion for and believe me You'll get such a head start over your peers who went to college You'll get such a better network. You'll get such better experience the statistics sort of prove this out so i'm on the board of a billion revenues company that's in the employment business So I basically know everything that's going on in employment in america and some other countries as well And I can tell you going to college doesn't help anybody You know going to medical school will help you get a job as a doctor. That's true in this country And maybe going to law school will help you get a job as a lawyer But there's already too many lawyers. It's actually hard to get a job as a lawyer, you know, most people Probably shouldn't be going to doctors as much as they should be anyway There's a lot of evidence of that as well Well, they certainly shouldn't be going to lawyers as much as they are Yes, going to law school will probably help you become a lawyer if you really really want to do that And a lot of the aoc alumna the guys who come through our programs and graduate They'll ask me like hey, I'm trying to give them law school Will you write me a letter of recommendation? And I said Have you gone and worked at a law firm first because I did not do that One guy was like yes, I have and I said and you still want a letter of recommendation Why do you want to go to law school? He said my mom's going to kill herself if I don't get into a good law school And I said that's a really terrible reason to go to law school I will write you the letter but I feel bad doing it the other person said no I didn't I just want to become a lawyer because you know, I thought it would be great And also my dad's a lawyer and I said I'm not going to do this because you need to get experience Working at a law firm first even if it's just for like a month or two during the summer So he did and he hated it and now he's not going to be a lawyer and I feel like I saved him It's so funny because one of the alternatives I have to college is is if you think you want to be a doctor Then I really encourage you to be an intern in a hospital And believe me every hospital in the world would love to have you because someone has to clean the bedpans in the morning So if you could spend six months cleaning bedpans, and then you still want to go to medical school Then you know, I could see you have a lot of passion in you A lot of passion to heal and to help people then maybe that's another decision But you know, I just want to see you put in the work first rather than just say Oh, yeah, I see doctors make a lot of money and blah, blah, blah Like so many people have the wrong reasons for the jobs they want to do And anyway, like like I mentioned to you earlier, Jordan But I've changed careers like six or seven times if you're going to get Two or three hundred thousand dollars in debt going to college then medical school You better know what you're doing because you're not going to be able to change careers You're not going to be the government won't let you change careers because it's the one type of debt You can't get rid of in bankruptcy and it's very hard to renegotiate if you have a high-profile job like a doctor You're not going to be able to get a lower interest rate. So once you go to medical school, you're locked in for life It's like a tractor beam on you that's going to suck you right in Yeah, nothing with law school. Absolutely Guys, I want to take a quick break for a second now. You guys have heard me talk about boot camps a lot You've heard me talk about taking you the next level in life and at work and in your relationships And you've probably even thought to yourself. Yeah, I do want to do that eventually someday I'm probably going to do it and my guess is that you've been thinking about it for a long time So I want to tell you guys this stop thinking your chances now You don't need more time. You don't need more info You don't need to keep putting it off and planning for the perfect time You want to become that guy today because the truth is this You can be the guy who sits around and thinks about becoming better Or you can be the guy who decides that today is the day you're going to actually do it And I want that for you because you already have what it takes. Honestly guys, the potential is in there Even if you don't know it yet and I mean you everybody Always ask me. Oh, it's the worst client you've ever had honestly The worst client we've ever had is probably never going to come through because he doesn't believe in himself enough to actually put himself out there So join me and thousands of other guys who've taken actions in their lives at the art of charm Call or email us jordanh at the art of charm.com. There's a phone number right at the top of the website Just give me a call We'll see if the art of charm can help you with your personal relationship and business challenges And I'd love to hear from you and I'm looking forward to it All right guys help support the show and put your website to work while you play a website works 24 7 as you know So no matter where you are or what you're doing People can still find your business online or just you online So start building your website today at go daddy. It starts with a dot-com domain enter promo code charm 199 at checkout to get your dot-com for a dollar 99 Some limitations apply see the website for details and support the show while you get yourself a dot-com So until then let's get back to the show I mentioned this on my show before we call it the golden handcuffs on wall street Um, I don't know what if doctors have a similar thing I know a lot of doctors that don't want to be there anymore It's interesting because people think of course you hated wall street every but normal person hates wall street There's a lot of normal people. I know that hate medicine because it's not just helping sick kids It's like there's a lot of bs that goes along with it just like any job It's just romanticized more especially if you grew up with like indian parents or something right or asian parents That are making you do some profession because in the homeland It's the number one thing and they're getting respect because you're in med school for lawyers What the golden handcuffs are in case guys are new to the show and for your purposes if you haven't heard this is It's when you are working on wall street. You're fresh out of college I think our starting salary was I think I made like 160 or something plus a bonus which I average somewhere between 20 and 30 grand Right, so that's a lot of money if you're 24 25 26 27 however old most of these guys were And then you go well I'm going to go out a lot and you go out and you spend thousands of dollars every weekend at the club with your friends Because you only have one night off if you're lucky Or you can show up later on sunday to the office, etc And then after a while that gets boring. So you go, you know what? I'm going to get a summer home or maybe you start smaller and you get a $20,000 watch, which I never did I didn't do any of the stupid purchasing stuff and I quit before I ever really saw a lot of return on the cash But a lot of people go okay, and they get that watch and they're like damn All right I bought that but not really paying my loans And so I've got this watch thing that they either bought in cash with all their reserves or they're paying for that Over time and then they've got the newest entertainment thing at home a lot of new furniture They're still paying their student loans which are a hundred and twenty hundred and forty thousand bucks Because the law school they went to and then After a while they meet a girl and she's expensive, right? So they got to take her out and they got to buy her nice things handbags clothes all that stuff And then after a while she's like let's get married and you know, maybe she's Not a gold digger if you're lucky and if she is you're in trouble like everybody else In trouble like everybody else not a gold digger like everyone else. I'm not that cynical And you know you decide, hey, you know what? We're in the city a lot We're both working a ton We need to get a home outside so we can relax on the weekends And so you get something in the Hamptons is really common. It's cliche But it is for a reason and then you get that and you're paying that off If you buy or lease doesn't matter a rent and then you're like we want a boat there too because the family's there It's hectic. I need some alone time so they get the boat and then you're trying to run you go I don't really like this job anymore But it doesn't matter because you know you want to spend more time with your kids So the job's killing you but now you've got two mortgages or a mortgage in rent in Manhattan You've got a car or two. You've got a kid or two. You've got a boat There's no way you're ever going to be able to survive unless 25 grand a month or whatever you're making If not more plus you're still paying off your student loans So it's not even just the loans your handcuffed to that job And then you're just looking forward to the day when you make partner And maybe your hours are lesser and then you get a bigger fatter bonus check So you can pay off a lot of that stuff But at that point you're not thinking wow, I need to pay all this stuff off So I don't have any debt you're thinking what else do I need that might make me happy temporarily because I'm miserable right now You know all these higher degrees like law school medical school You get higher debt. You're wasting more of your beautiful 20s You know, this is the 20s when you should be out there with the most energy doing things You're wasting more of those years. Look, it's you're locking yourself into a career Like you say and that you have to figure out all these different ways to relax, you know doctors It's a real serious issue. They actually cover it in the journal the american medical association Doctors have the highest suicide rate of any profession. It's no joke. So this is graduate school We're even talking about college also, which is where we started at There are alternatives though and and really the best alternative is to start a business and people will say to me Well, oh, not everybody's an entrepreneur That's sort of true. Not everyone is an entrepreneur But it's I'm not an entrepreneur either. Although I've started in and sold businesses But I've also failed at many businesses I've never learned as much in college as I've learned from failing at a business So if you're not an entrepreneur then by all means start a business because you're gonna get a really good education You're gonna build a network. You're gonna learn some skills that you would never have learned otherwise And you're gonna start to figure out what it means to make money and the value of money Which of course you can't possibly learn about if you're going to college because College costs have gone up faster than inflation Every single year for 40 years in a row. So anybody going to college has no clue yet about the value of money That's unbelievable. Yeah, and it's so true. I had no clue I mean if There's sort of two sides to this right because it's really hard to go back to college after you've worked And my mom told me that and I realized now if somebody told me to go back to college now I never would No, but I think you have nightmares though where you wake up and you like We're back in college and like miss some test or something I have nightmares about that my recurring one that I've shared with a lot of people And my mom has something she calls the blue book dream because like up until at least a few years ago I had this dream where I was like, no, no, professor. Listen. I never have been to your class I can't take the final I've literally never been to this class And then the evolution of that dream was I get a call from the university of michigan law school that says Your law degree is invalid and the reason that that's invalid is because your high school Diploma was invalid because you missed one of the exams that you should have taken So I have to go back to high school for like a thing and of course my the teachers they're like We don't want you here all year. You can stay for like 10 weeks So I end up in high school for 10 weeks and it's impossible and I can't do it. It's like so hard to fail Yeah, I kind of I kind of have similar, you know, I wonder if we there was such a high pressure situation for so little gain I wonder if it all got translated into our our nightmares Yeah, it's all like subconscious trauma although if I had a lucid dream where I could control the outcome they'd go I'm sorry, sir. Your law degree is invalid because your undergraduate degree is invalid because your high school diploma was invalid I'd go I don't care. Are you going to refund my money too? If not, it doesn't matter I'm doing my own thing. You can have the law degree. In fact, I'll mail you this piece of paper that I have I literally haven't even opened it. It's in a tube It's funny about the law degree. So I I'm obviously not a lawyer I never went to law school But I've now given talks at two different law conferences about the law like specifically about law where they were taking notes And I've consulted law firms about different aspects of the law So like the only reason you need a law degree, I guess is to officially charge a client That like that's the only legal It's a scam because it's the only legal way to charge a client for legal advice But I've given legal advice to law firms so they could then charge clients for the legal advice I've given them. Yeah, that's what paralegals do as well I mean, they're not consulting but they're doing all of the legwork and then a lawyer goes I'm going to look over this and supervise everything and then build a client for that And we have to bill for paralegal work and then we bill for ours. It's separate and that's a law But in California anybody can sit for the bar And there's this thing that this law that the new york bar is the hardest Because of course new york lawyers don't want as much competition They want to keep people out as much as they can and they only want to filter in the best because The firms only want to hire the best quote-unquote And then there's california where they say the bar is really hard But this lower this myth is based on failure rates and part of the reason that the failure rate of the california bar is so high At least at least this was true a few years ago when I graduated. It was because anybody Can sit for the bar in california without a law degree It's the only state that allows that as far as I know So of course what that means is you get a lot of these like old hippies that are like i'm going to be a pro bono lawyer I'm just going to sit for the bar how hard can it be and they get their ass handed to them And so it's like more than half the people in california failed the bar and it's like well Yeah, because people who are still in high school are taking the bar for shits and giggles and you know There's a lot of people taking the bar who've never even gone to college Which is fine, but if college teaches you one thing maybe you and I can agree on this It's how to take a standardized test because that's what you do mostly in college And as far as practical skills, I guess that's one of the only ones that you pull from a university And you never meet again like when do you ever take a standardized test again after that? No, you don't you really don't have to get professionally certified I think the last one I took was the driver's license exam in california, which by the way is pretty hard as well My license is suspended and then my next step is I have to take the test so Maybe I should have been better at standardized tests in college. I don't know. We'll see I'm just really lazy and bad at driving Okay, bad driver got it. I mean I've heard this during my my own research You think the economy is not the same as it used to be a big surprise I don't think anybody's gonna argue with that and that jobs aren't going to be the same What do you mean by that and how does that sort of relate to what we were talking about with college not being A good move for most people in the future Okay, you know, it's an interesting question and can be answered at like I think the economists that I've read about this They sort of only talk about 2009 on and what's happened to the economy since kind of the great crash of 2008 But the reality is There's kind of this hundred year trend That has just ended And I'm not talking trends like also how some economists talk about like weird numerical trends But we all sort of had this belief not in capitalism But in corporatism this idea that You go to college and then you get a job and you stay at the job for 43 years And then you have a party and you have a pension plan and you get a gold watch and you retire and enjoy your senior years That was kind of like the american mythology that we all believed in and the reality is It's never really been true, but for the past 15 years, it's definitely been over and what 2008 and 2009 did was sort of Give all the CEOs an excuse to finally fire everybody they wanted to fire They really wanted to fire everybody 10 years earlier, but finally 2008 2009 Gave everyone the excuse to just have massive layoffs without it really affecting their jobs You know if a CEO in 1998 Fired 60 percent of their employees. He would probably lose his job Also, it would sort of signal to the marketplace that things are going bad But in 2008 or 2009 you were a CEO you were allowed to fire all of your employees because you could just say Yeah, look everybody else is doing it. So what's happened is corporatism is over And there's a lot of reasons for it. Some of them are kind of ugly. Some of them are not so ugly Corporatism is what like being at the japan thing where you're at the job for your whole life And it's like ford might add work for ford. You start at ford. You start on the assembly line Dot dot dot manager retired pension everybody's happy Your benefits are through the roof and you're getting your salary till you die or whatever, right corporatism And when I graduated college I assumed okay, that's the thing to do you get a job somewhere and you stay there for life And so a lot of people who Graduated with me that was their hope and dream was to get a job at a big company and be a manager than a director Then a vice president and a senior vice president then maybe Higher and there was a reason for the dream. There's all sorts of historical reasons So but I'll start with world war two and I'll just go really quickly through it Men left the country on moss like just every 25 year old man Left the united states of america in order to like shoot people Somebody had to take their job. So women took the jobs and then when 80 percent of the men came back The men wanted their jobs back and the willman said no I have a job now. I'm free I don't want you to take this job. So now suddenly in the 1950s We had this boom because we have these double income families, which was great This was the last legitimate economic boom in the united states Everybody suddenly had twice the income in their household. They moved out to the suburbs. They bought houses They bought two cars. They had the white picket fence. They all bought TVs and phones Then they wanted more but there was no more money everybody in the house already had two jobs Lyndon johnson introduced a great society. He flooded the economy with money There was the vietnam war flooded the economy with money Nixon took us off the gold standard. So that allowed inflation to flood the economy with money and suddenly everybody felt Flush again and rich again. So and now they have all this extra money because of their inflation Then they needed more. So then reagan came stock market boom deregulation junk bond boom Stocks kept going Money flooded the economy. So everyone's happy. Then you had the peace dividend, you know, soviet union collapsed So more money in the economy then you had the internet boom, which artificially inflated the stock market Then green span Started printing money. We had a housing boom Finally, it all came to an end 2008 Everything all of these things I mentioned above corporations Housing boom stock market boom all that ended except for the government printing money And now I'm not going to go all tea party because I'm really thankful actually the government printed money because it got the stock market To boom again, which helped things but that was sort of really The last thing Keeping things up There's nowhere to go now except for the government printing money The only other place to go which I think is what will happen is at some point innovation has to happen again And uh, that's what i'm hoping happens over this next decade to kind of get demand for jobs up again I'm on the board of a company called corporate resources. We're about a billion revenues We're an employment agency. So what I see every company in the fortune 500 doing is systematically Firing all of their employees and then getting them back as part-timers or demoting them in some way You see that in the government numbers Unemployment might be going down because part-time employees is shooting up. So this is just what's happening in general in the economy Wow, okay, so My history lasted in three minutes and that's a pretty grim picture, right? I mean, it sucks for a lot of us being younger I do think innovation's happening like look jordan, you're doing a podcast, you know other people are building electronic cars People are selling information products Lots of people are doing the so-called, you know, lean startup. I think that's people are becoming solopreneurs They're opening up their own little stores. It's just not the same. It's just different now And I think there is enough innovation in the economy that you know, it's not over like i'm an optimist And I do think innovation is happening. America still has the biggest economy by far Uh, and that will continue That's good news because the rest of it didn't sound so rosy But do you think now so, yes, there's a lot of solopreneurs. There's a lot of people doing their own thing Should everyone do that? I mean, is there still room in the economy for people that just want to go to college and then get a regular job and You know work as an engineer or even is that even dying? I mean, do people then need to maybe just learn on the job are we going to migrate to trade schools? What would happen if you were king? Well, I think you just you combine two things just there You said should people go to school and and become an engineer and then you said should people go to trade schools Essentially an engineering school is a trade school and engineers still learn skills that are like the last Jobs left but middle management the entire category that the middle class has filled for about 60 years That entire kind of layer of the economy has disappeared I mean, it's bad for if you are in that job. But do you think that's a good thing as a whole for the economy? What do you think about that? It's bad if you were in that job, although to be honest Many of the people I know Year one, they're very upset and they're very panicked like it's hard not to be panicked If you lose your job and you have a family and and so on but People are resourceful and there is a lot of money in the economy that's kind of floating around And there is a lot of opportunities for people to get those creative skills going And become solo entrepreneurs, even if they've never been an entrepreneur before and where is this money that's floating around the economy? Well, now it's not only the government printing money, but because corporations have fired so many people Corporate profits are at the highest level ever and it's totally because they fired everybody But you know, the reality is there's more cash In the bank from corporations than there's ever been before This is a good thing because eventually they'll spend that cash and they'll spend it on the solopreneurs College has nothing to do with it. Nobody should ever go to college again because that was all part of the corporatism myth People didn't go to college before corporatism and they're not going to go to college afterwards They're going to slowly realize that, you know, I'll just tell you my own personal story So I went to college had a job Nothing was really working out for me. So I started a business which did work out for me And I sold it. I made a lot of money and then I So quickly lost all the money like I had no clue what it meant to make money I was like MC hammer on steroids or something like I just totally blew up I was the worst drunken rock star and I don't even look like a drunken rock star So I didn't get all those benefits either. What was the biggest waste of money that you had? First of all, how much money are we talking about and what was one instance where you went? I can't believe that I'd wasted it on that I'll tell you the final number I ended up with was on the my worst moment my ATM machine I probably had about a hundred dollars and and that was it like I was zero But I lost about 15 million dollars. It took about a year and a half all cash And the way I would lose it this was a while ago. I've done it more than once by the way I'm ashamed to say I've done it like about three times and The way I would lose it is when you make money. It kind of makes you think you're a genius Oh, I sold this business. I finished my job as a human being in America because it's all about money and you know Net worth equals self-worth in America. So I feel like I'm finished as a human I don't need to work on myself anymore and I would just follow pieces every addiction possible would hit me But the biggest loss of money Even at 15 million I'd buy a house I couldn't afford and then I would start businesses and invest in businesses with totally Not considering risk not considering that I might actually lose this money So I might put like two million dollars into a business Thinking oh, it's going to easily turn into a hundred million Not realizing that it could also go to zero and you do that 10 times over Then suddenly you're five million in debt. It's horrible Yeah, wow. So and that happened to you multiple times. And so finally I had to kind of say well What am I doing right what clearly I can do this for the second time around? I kind of proved to myself it wasn't just luck. So finally after like the fifth time around I said, what am I doing right when things are going well? It's like statistically significant at this point Like what am I doing wrong when things are going down? And the thing that I was doing right Was I was taking care of myself and so now I've kind of Quantified it to what I call a daily practice. So I have to do this every day Or I it's just a bad day for me like so a successful day for me is what I'm physically Emotionally mentally and spiritually healthy. So physically healthy means I've slept eight hours I'm eating well and I do some degree of exercise doesn't have to be a gym I'm never going to be like a muscular guy or anything, but I do some degree of exercise Emotionally healthy. I only spend time with people who I like and respect and want to support and who I think like and respect and trust and want to support me I've eliminated everyone for my life. I have a one strike in your out policy Mentally healthy doesn't mean about insanity or anything. I have a whole bunch of waiters pads And I write 10 ideas a day on these pads at least and it could be ideas by anything They don't have to be business ideas and they don't have to be good ideas In fact, I like it when they're bad ideas and just stupid ideas, but it just keeps my idea muscle Exercise so that when the good ideas come I'm right on there writing them down I'm not just I'm not just waiting for God to tell me. Oh, here's a good idea because that never happens I never have heard of a voice from above saying this is a good idea I have to be writing them down every day and then spiritually healthy again I don't mean get down on my knees and pray. I haven't done that since I was a day trader But it means I'm grateful. I'm creatively grateful So I'll wake up and try to think of throughout the day I try to think of things I'm grateful for that I have never been grateful for before So it's easy to be grateful for my kids, for instance But you know, sometimes if I'm stuck in a traffic jam, what can I be grateful for? I'm grateful for all these cars around so I can sit by myself for a little while longer and listen to music that I like So I always have to think of creative ways to be grateful I'm grateful to be doing this podcast with you And this is the first time we've really communicated outside of email. So I'm grateful for this I don't think of myself as famous at all or anything. I just I really like to be accessible I believe in this message. I call this my choose yourself message Like how can I find my passion? What goals should I have? And I say don't Who knows if you're gonna even be alive tomorrow Like every single thing we do today is something that somebody has died at at some point I'm sure in history Somebody has died while talking to each other like how we're talking to each other So you could die at any point at any age So I focus on just today Did I check the box? Was I physically emotionally mentally and spiritually healthy? And if I could check the box, then I had a successful day And the best indicator of a successful tomorrow is having a successful day today. That's it. That's the only thing Back to this sort of choose yourself Mindset, what do you mean by that specifically? I'll tell you like and then you know at one point I pitched a couple of tv shows Of course, I got the Hollywood treatment like uh, we love this. We love this We love you and then nobody would return the calls and I get really anxious Like why aren't they returning my calls? You know, I call up every day twice a day and stalk their houses and stuff This is a classic example where there's a gatekeeper And then I felt like I needed to be chosen in order to be Good in life. We all Put ourselves in a status hierarchy, you know, like you might say, okay Well, I'm up in my podcast rankings today So I'm feeling better about myself because you do honestly feel you put yourself in this one particular status hierarchy and Happy chemicals are released when you're higher up in the hierarchy. So we're constantly Putting ourselves in situations where we feel like we need to be chosen Whether it's chosen by a customer chosen by a woman or a husband, you know, man chosen For a job chosen by a big publisher to publish your book chosen by a big tv company to produce your tv show So I wanted to be in a situation where I'm choosing myself And part of that is about entrepreneurship, but even more importantly, it's really about Choosing yourself on the inside and again, I get back to that daily practice If you could do that every day Everything else will fall into place and you won't worry about the gatekeeper so much All right guys now I want to take another time out for a sec A lot of people think the art of charm live training programs are just about picking up girls And honestly, yeah, there's some of that a week with us. You're going to be rocking out in that department I definitely promise you that but as a guy it is very important to be awesome as well as well rounded And I don't just mean awesome with girls. I mean great at work Great at home great with your friends and family. You need to step it up everywhere That's why we call our company the art of charm It's that special something that gets you results wherever you go and you guys can trust me the results are real Every day I get emails and calls from the guys who decided to take our live training programs In fact, I'm going to share some of those with you guys really really soon We're getting those lined up. So you don't have to listen to me talk about boot camps anymore But you can listen to actual AOC alumni and what I hear is simply amazing weeks after graduating They land a promotion. They've got a new wolf pack. They start a new business or they even find a partner It's essentially a new life and it's not an accident If you guys are listening to the art of charm, you're the type of person who's already interested in improving themselves There's a lot of options out there today. I think you guys have already decided If you want to discuss your options for improving your relationships, career prospects and your entire life for that matter Send me an email jordanh at the art of charm.com or call the number at the top of the website When we can schedule a call to help sort you out. Hope to hear from you guys soon. Enjoy the rest of the show That's excellent because I think a lot of people worry about that incessantly And I know I did back in the day as well It was like, oh, you know what I luckily networked my way to this wall street gig And then it was like just work my way up to the top and I thought wait That's not how this works and that's what changed the way that I think about work and kicked me off early And then of course, there's a lot of people I used to live in Hollywood and the art of charm HQ is still there There's a lot of people that are kind of like waiting to be discovered Are there even the people that are going to auditions and stuff like that? They're like, I'm just going to work and do this until I do enough Little league type stuff that I'm starting to get into productions that important people are watching and I'm thinking You know, I've met some of these important people and they're like 32 year old 35 year old essentially kids like me Who got skyrocketed into a talent discovery position because they threw a combination of luck and hard work And they're not going to any of those things. They're not really discovering those people there either So it's it's just so much luck and I was actually Overheard a conversation with zack effron and even he was like I just got really lucky really really young and now I'm really really famous and I thought that was really interesting because I expected some line of like well You work and you network and do this and uh, and there's a lot of that but a lot of it is People really loved hit this 12 year old singing and dancing kid And so now he's a 26 year old singing and dancing and acting kid And you know and it's funny because this is where the optimism comes in is because there are so many routes now To being discovered it's not just five movie production companies for one thing There's so many rich people out there that they're now funding movies So there's lots of different ways to get involved in the movie industry, but even better There's youtube so take a look at a woman like michelle fawn, okay She's been doing makeup videos on youtube since she was 16 years old as far as I know She's never done anything else like I know she attended college for like a month or two But I don't think she has a college degree or anything She just kept on doing these youtube videos about makeup now. She's got six million subscribers I just saw a poster of her on some bus her company is valued at 30 million dollars where she sells her own line of makeup And my kids are her biggest fans and there's lots of youtubers like that There are a lot of self-published writers one of my favorite science fiction novels was written a couple years ago It's called wool by a guy named Hugh Howie. He's been on my podcast He was a clerk in a bookstore, but he just kept self-publishing in amazon No publisher would accept books from him and he just kept writing on amazon and now You know suddenly one of these books took off. It sold millions of copies Ridley scott has bought the movie rights. He never had to deal with the gatekeepers He just did it his own way and he no longer works as a clerk in a bookstore. You can say oh, these are just anecdotes It's not the average person There are a hundred thousand anecdotes like this now and it's getting bigger and bigger That's why i'm an optimist because if you're healthy it it all comes from the inside out and i've experienced this now If you're healthy from the inside out these things will have it's like magic and again I'm not giving it advice. I could just say from my own point of view My life is like almost a hundred percent different every six months because i'm doing this because I check the box on physical emotional mental and spiritual health and it all makes sense when you think about it Like if you if you hang out with people who you don't like or who don't like you or who don't support you You're not going to be able to come up with ideas Then you'll get sick and you won't be grateful. They're all linked together. It's all one thing You'll come up with great ideas. You'll be well rested have a ton of energy You'll be grateful for the abundance that you have and everybody's going to want to help you and support you to achieve Your dreams and your ideas One of the mantras of the show is you only go as high as your five closest friends and it really is It's all about absorbing those mindsets from people and of course like you do stay positive as well And one of the drills that I used to do and remember to do even to this day As much as I can that is is whenever anything goes wrong I try to think of three positives that came out of it and they can be really hard because it can be like You know somebody that you know is diagnosed with a really bad disease and you think well What positives come out of this and it's it's it's tough because it's almost insulting to think of it like that You're like nothing because this person could die and it's like well Now you're going to appreciate the time you spend with them even more reason number one reason number two If you tell your business partners or your boss you need to take a month off of a job You don't like because you're going to go on vacation with your best friend who might die They're not going to go no they're going to be like oh my god, of course Positive number two so you can you know not only can you spend more time with them You might be able to get your own thinking straight and then reason number three Is you can help this person get through this really trying time in their life and really show how much your friendship means I mean, it's yes, you have to reach for it But it can really be a great mental exercise to like you said be spiritually emotionally Healthy and choose yourself as well at the same time. It's totally true. And you know, it's funny You bring up that one example because in my um last book The power of no I write about you know, everybody says uh live life like it's your last day But I don't really like that philosophy that much although I could understand it and we spoke about it a little But I like to live life as if it's everybody else's last day. Listen to them a lot more I'll treat them a lot better. I'll really respect the time I have with them And I find that to be a much more comfortable way to live for me That's a good point because I'm not sure what I would do on my own last day I mean, it wouldn't be like this measured Expenditure of money or energy. I'll put it that way Yeah, yeah, you know, I I don't even know what it means live life Like it's your last day because does that mean you go have a wild party? Or does that mean you write your will or you know, I don't know what that means But I do know what it means It's a live life as if it's Jordan's last day Not that you're gonna die tomorrow But you know, it means I'm gonna listen to you and talk to you and have like a great conversation with you Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I think that's a much better way to go about it And so tell us then we had come up with some alternatives Instead of going to college because right now a lot of the people listening are like I'm thinking about going to college next year or I'm in college and it sucks But I don't know what else to do and you had a there's a there's a website for that Yeah, so 50 alternatives to college calm And that's all spelled out except for the 50. So it's 50 alternatives to college calm I give just give out the book. I don't even have this book on amazon I'll probably put it up on amazon in a month or so Is one of the alternatives thinking of a shorter domain name for that book? No, although, you know, there's a lot of stuff related to the internet because My 12 year old wanted a laptop for Christmas. She wanted specifically a chrome book for some unknown reason But and I said, I'm not going to get it for you unless you do these challenges So one of the challenges were she had to write a short story based on her favorite, you know, young adult book series And posted on fanfiction.net Another thing she had to do was take three courses on code academy dot com or whatever And then I had a bunch of challenges for her and she had to do just one of them She actually did about three of them. And so she got the chrome book. That's how people should look at things So alternatives are make a youtube that gets a hundred thousand views So because if you can do that You've learned video production. It means you've learned how to make something go viral It means you're actually saying something meaningful that people want to listen to It means you're probably networking with other youtubers. It means you can probably Do another video and start making some money for it with sponsorships or whatever or you can Do consulting to companies that want to make a youtube with it's not easy to make a youtube with a hundred thousand views I've never made one things like that where All the alternatives are something that could lead to a career that will show you an underline Why you didn't need to go to college That's fantastic. And I know we're going to get a lot of flak for Telling people not to go to college and I think some people who do give me feedback on that have valid points But more often than not it's just people who are obsessed with this Tell me some of the points because I I do go over what I think are every objection But maybe there's an objection. I haven't heard her point was Listen, I know that you're anti college But you're kind of like this born Entrepreneur and you didn't know it for most of the time But not everybody's cut out to start their own business and furthermore There's a lot of positions in the economy for people who just want a regular corporate job Which is like something you annihilated during the show. So that's over. So she's wrong there And also I we annihilated the not everyone's an entrepreneur like it was michelle fond Doing makeup videos was she an entrepreneur? Maybe she is like a naturally born entrepreneur But the reality is whether you're a natural entrepreneur or not You can still learn by starting a business. That's an entire college education starting and failing at a business You know Then maybe you'll get a better job by failing at a business because you're going to also have a bigger network than if you had gone to college and it's going to be a network made up of people Not just 19 years old. So when you go to college, you still only know people your age Like jordan, how many friends you have right now who are your exact age? Very few actually they're all younger or significantly older My wife is my age and then I don't think I know a single other person who's my age So like everyone is like 10 years older or 10 years younger or you know somewhere in the middle It makes perfect sense because college is the final blow here One of the things that college I noticed about it when I was there is it was kind of just like Here's a bunch of people that are the same age as you whose parents made them able to Go to the same school as you and it's like Now the people that I'm hanging out with though It's like these are the people that worked their butt off started a milton million dollar companies So they happen to like go to a lot of the same events or clubs that you do And here's a bunch of people that you know started a business And so now they're teaching at the same event as you or something like that it's it's much more of a gathering of Peers than the other stuff that I've done Another objection that people have is this is your last chance to learn the liberal arts You know like reading books and so on that's just garbage because For me I was a computer science major so I never had to read a book But it's only after I left graduate school that I finally started reading now. I'm a voracious reader I'll read every novel fiction nonfiction out there because I'm not held down by College when reading all these boring like the canterbury tales or whatever Like every whatever I want. I read beautiful books Here's one that I always tell people when I'm talking about this in a crowd Every year of high school and some years of college We learn about charlemagne and you learn about him because he's the most important emperor ever in europe Like in european history. He essentially was the only guy ever to consolidate all of europe I always ask people tell me within a hundred years From when he was born and I even wrote about this in my book And while I was doing the audiobook I said I can't remember when he was born even though I had just written it So then I Googled it and then I did it for the audiobook and only when I was listening to the audiobook later I was over a hundred years wrong Unbelievable. Yeah, people can't remember facts. So let me ask you George. Don't google it. When was charlemagne born? I have no I mean guess just guess within a hundred years 1200 Okay, I can't tell you also within a hundred years, but you're probably about 500 years off And again, yeah, I will guarantee you. Here's the real bet Jordan. I will guarantee you in one hour You won't be able to remember within a hundred years No, it's completely irrelevant to my existence really and their studies show that if you're just told facts Then you're gonna forget within 45 minutes and that's what we're told most of the time in school People remember how you make them feel. They don't remember facts that you tell them Of course, that's like the Maya Angelou slash principle of ever selling anything right make people fool stuff Don't just tell them the facts Most people can't even remember the facts about things they use every day like their computer They just know that it's cool because it's a chrome book that their dad got from because they made a youtube video I got a hundred thousand views I just want to mention my latest book the power of no That's really my that and choose yourself are really my pride and joy in terms of what I've accomplished in the past few years What's the power of no give us give us a little Basically most of us are the type of people who we're happy to provide value That's why we're entrepreneurs or artists or whatever We're happy to provide value and to give but it's very hard when someone asks something of us It's very hard for us to say no it takes up so much energy to say yes to everybody You're essentially inheriting Other people's problems like jordan a quick example very basic example Let's say you asked me to pick you up at the airport. You're coming into new york asked me to pick up you at the airport I'd feel bad saying no to you. I would say yes So or you know if I didn't have the power of no, let's say I said yes you now I've just inherited all of your problems. So I have to find the car for you I have to fill it up with gas for you I have to figure out where your baggage claim is instead of you having to figure it out because you don't figure it out automatically Now I have to figure it out. So whenever you say yes to somebody you've inherited all of their problems And I corrode the book with my wife and we sort of go through all the different levels And some of those levels are societal like how do you say no to corporatism? For instance, we go through all of these levels that you learned to say no Wow, that's liberating Except now people hate you because you won't drive them home from the airport. Well, look, I've lost friends I've said no like somebody asked me to a wedding in hawaii Now you would think that's a great thing, but I live in new york So why am I going to take a 10 hour plane ride? Then you've got to spend a week then You know and it was july 4th. I wanted to spend the time with my kids actually at the time that happened I was going through a divorce from my ex-wife. So I said no And I lost those friends you will lose friends, but but then you find out who your friends really are Yeah, I think that's unreasonable I mean, I won't go off on the wedding tangent here But I won't go to even close friends weddings unless they want me to either stand up in the wedding Or they're like we really want you to be there because you're going to spend this actual personal time with us afterwards Then I'll go because then it's going to be a special thing But otherwise I'm going there to hang out with their extended family that they don't even like and that'll never see again And it makes no sense Because they live in new york, and I'm literally just going through great expense and opportunity costs And I don't even get to see them really and think about it We just went over two really basic examples, but in like Real life like I hardly ever get asked to pick up someone at the airport Or I hardly ever asked to go to weddings But I am asked every single day to do things I don't want to do and when you say yes To something you don't want to do you're going to end up resenting the person who asked you You're going to end up doing a bad job You're going to end up wasting energy that you could have been putting to better use elsewhere And it just spirals down from there. So learning to say no Actually gives you so much more energy and strength and creativity and opportunity and ability to do this daily practice that I described You could totally reinvent yourself on the backs of the no's that you say I appreciate you saying yes to coming on my show in that case I was happy to but I researched the show beforehand. I was really glad to come on. I'm really glad you asked me I know a lot of guys are going to not go to college because of it and it's going to injure Yeah, me too and it's going to get a lot of that feedback like some people should go to college You jerk face and I'm going to be looking forward to that too. I oh, let me tell you one story actually about Oh, yeah, please do Okay, so I get this death threat after I went on to yahoo finance once and uh did a video about don't go to college I got an actual death threat and I tracked it down And it turned out to be from a student who was attending Brown university. Wow, and uh brown university is the most difficult school in the country to get into You know, I wouldn't normally do this but it actually was a very specific death threat Like he knew my address and everything so I call up the head of security at brown College campuses are the only places police aren't there if they have their own Private security, which is why things like rapes are under reported and so on I called the head of security and he said oh, yeah, we know about that guy He threatened a librarian a few months ago and I'm like, oh really you should do something about him That sounds pretty creepy. Yeah, and the guy's like listen I could do something but he's graduating in two months. Do you really want to affect the guy's career like that? I said, yeah, I would like to yeah, no kidding because now he's going to be giving his boss and his co-workers death threats Yeah, exactly. And you know, I actually don't know what happened after that I you know, I suppose I could have called and followed up but the head of security was just so not interested in doing anything I figured much more opportunity for me to make just a fun story about it Yeah, unbelievable. And you know, we're going long here, but I don't care. I really want to hear There's a story I read a long time ago How about how you stopped this financial fraud and it was just totally random coincidental But it's kind of interesting Oh, it's funny you mentioned that because I have to give this Ted X talk in a few months You know Ted X San Diego and I'm like trying to figure out what should I talk about And my wife said, why don't you talk about that fraud that happened? It was really interesting I so I don't know if I am or not, but here's the story So this guy calls me up and I knew the guy. I knew he was a legit person So he was like a broker, but he knew somebody who knew somebody who was essentially middle eastern royalty And I did Kind of a simple background check and it really was like the child of A doctor of like the king of some middle eastern or the sultan of some middle eastern country So he was a legitimate guy with like a lot of money He had 20 million shares of twitter and this was before twitter IPO'd So he wanted to know if I could find a buyer of his 20 million shares So I did so I found a hedge fund that was willing to buy it The terms were outrageous and the guy agreed like 18 interest rate Basically, we would lend the money and the shares would be collateral We would also get some shares upfront that were just ours And it would be 18 interest rate for like three years So it was just this ridiculous deal and the guy said yes to it. So we figured out this is great But the hedge fund this guy named josh He was like, ah, it almost seems too easy. So it's funny, you know We have actually almost as many neurons in our gut as we do in our brain So when someone says I'm feeling sort of uneasy about this They're feeling it in their gut brain like this kind of a million Brain that we have there that we've had for millions of years So he was like, look, let's just call twitter and see if this guy's really on the cap table We tell them we're gonna call twitter And so the guy gave us a number we called who we thought was twitter and the guy said, oh, yeah, this guy He's got 20 million shares. No problem And you have our permission to do this deal and they even sent us an official document permission granted to do this deal Now it turned out just by coincidence I knew the guy who signed that official document. He was a friend of mine who works at twitter So I said to josh, look, we got this document and josh is like, yeah, but you know the guy, right? I'm like, yeah, but he's a busy guy. I haven't talked to him in a while and josh is like, well, let's just I'm still feeling uneasy. This feels a little too easy and the deal's too good Let's call the guy and you'll see if you recognize his voice, right? So at this point, you're just doing a personal favor because in order to move that many shares of a privately held company That's hasn't yet IPOed, right? You need permission. It's like the terms were outrageous And so the guy must have desperately needed the money Plus the fact that twitter was just like Sure thing and they weren't like, well, wait, who's buying? We need to like qualify the buyer because that's the whole point of Not going public because you can make sure that the people who own your stock are like there for the long haul, etc Et cetera, right, right. And the key thing is this wasn't like the typical Nigerian royalty scam like I knew All the people in the middle like and actually I knew the cfo of a major fortune 10 Company actually did buy some of this guy's shares. So we knew that also So a lot of due diligence had already been done Josh calls the number that the middle eastern royalty guy gives him and you know, he talks to the guy and he says Oh, by the way, I have your friend James on the line And then suddenly there was a click the guy hung up and I'm like, oh, we've got this connected. I'm an idiot So Josh says to me James, we got disconnected because this is a total scam I'll bet you within one hour the middle eastern guy is going to call you up and threaten to sue you because you got in the way of This deal sure enough. That's what happened And sure enough I called my legitimate friend at twitter like I called twitter's office number and and got him on the phone He said, okay, I can't talk to you anymore about this, but don't do anything And later on I found out like the police got involved the fbi got involved It became a whole thing while they were trying to track this guy down I never got involved again, but we did basically stop what would have been something like a 30 million dollar fraud That is insane. So you never got any sort of resolution on like who it was or how it turned out No, although I did find out later though that The one person did fall for it and I knew the name is a famous name and I was incredibly surprised Because it was somebody who should have maybe known better, huh? Someone who should have known so much more than me or my hedge fund buddy not to do this Jesus there's a lot of scary things going on in the world You know and every time you kind of touch evil a little bit It's like a scary thought like I had to leave that phone conversation and go to my kids play Before the play started I was calling up everybody involved and saying hey Don't ever talk to these guys again or else you're going to be in big trouble And I was like shaking like these guys were like evil guys They had set up a fake twitter office and put a guy in there And I even googled like where the phone number was it was like a block away from where the real twitter is And they had it all down Yeah, this is like an nation state level con like these guys are all professionals They all have financial education They might have added inside man at some of these companies that could like provide letterhead documentation I mean the stuff looked legit Unbelievable and it all just because you just happened to kind of be around Yeah, I mean I get calls like this all the time and so seem like a realistic deal Because I knew everybody involved this seemed like a realistic deal that I could help put together But it turned out to be a total scam and what solved this You know, I could claim I have a little bit of help in solving it He didn't have an intellectual reason But he had like kind of this gut like queasiness in his stomach He even like referred to his stomach like my stomach feels funny about this So people should realize you have neurons in your gut You have neurons in your heart and you have neurons of course in your head And they all need to communicate and that's the reason also why my daily practice I referred to before helps Is because it helps all these neurons communicate with each other Yeah, this is very Malcolm Gladwellian right like the guy in blank who looked at the statue and said it's fake And all the experts were like you look at this for two minutes and you say it's fake We carbon dated everything We've studied this like crazy We know what's real and then it turns out later on it was fake and they still don't even know what this guy And even he didn't know he was just like something's up and it was like a fingernails or something I think part of the lesson is with a lot of these If something's too easy or too miraculous, then it's probably not true things take hard work and they don't just happen So damn interesting. Well, thanks so much James much appreciated and uh great stuff This one was all over the place, but I don't even care. I think there was a lot of juice in there Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on take care James. Bye Guys packed episode ran long. Don't care. Well worth it Really interesting question. Do you go to college? Do you send your kids to college? Should we be focusing on academic versus practical knowledge? Obviously that sort of answers itself The death and rebirth of the american dream and how your net worth equals your self worth somehow here in the west And america is not the only one guilty of this Staying emotionally and spiritually healthy day to day and while you need to choose yourself every day And of course living life like it's everyone else's last day a lot of good stuff covered here guys Thanks so much for being with us for 300 plus episodes and please stay with us for at least 300 more And enjoy the show give me some feedback I'm jordan h at the yard of charm dot com if you want to email me or just give us a call in the office I love hearing from you and I will continue to create this stuff as long as you guys can stand listening to it Until next time Special thanks to you guys for listening show feedback and guest suggestions We rely on you guys to help keep our finger on the pulse So if you know someone who's a good fit for the show Let me know jordan h at the yard of charm dot com and of course boot camp details there as well Go ahead and email or call me honestly. 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