14: I Will Teach You to Be Tall on the Inside | Feedback Friday

Transcript for I Will Teach You to Be Tall on the Inside | Feedback Friday (Episode 14)

 Jordan Harbinger:       [00:00:00] Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. I'm here with producer Jason DeFillippo. I love Feedback Friday, man. It's a fun time. Here on the Jordan Harbinger Show, as much as we love having those conversations with our fascinating guests, the primary purpose is to pass along their and our experiences and insights to you. So in other words, the real purpose of the whole show is to have these conversations directly with you. And that's what we do here on Feedback Fridays. So in other words, you can write us and then we will attempt to answer your query and you can reach us at friday@jordanharbinger.com.  That's how you do it. It's an email address. And so what that means people is don't send it to me in a Facebook message. Don't tweet it to us. Don't tell me at a party after I've had three whiskeys and then expect me to remember it.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:00:47]  You know who you are. All right so before we dive into the mailbag, a lot of people have been asking us what's been going on with the split from the other show, from the other company. Look, a lot of people are angry with me and you, Jason, for not saying anything.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:01:00]  Me?

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:01:00]  Yeah. You're so innocent. You realize that this is a legal dispute, right? So we can't say certain things. It's just bad for them. The other thing is, you know, the more this goes on, the more I'm like, look, we walked away, so to speak, from field business, and I'm excited to move forward. We've gotten so much support that I'd be a jackass, even more of a jackass, I should say, than I already am, to ignore that. Every single person in the inbox is excited for us. The whole team is excited.

[00:01:32]  So I'm excited and I'm already seeing the rebuild happen right before my eyes. And it's incredible and it's so much faster than I thought it was going to be. And now I'm looking back and I don't want to say that the things I was worried about before are silly. They're legitimate concerns. You know, a lot of people on the team are working for less money than they're worth.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:01:53]  Tell me about it.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:01:54] I don't know what you're talking about. Their revenue model, you know, skewing in a different direction. We're doing things that we thought we already had handled, like rebuilding our social media accounts, rebuilding our website, SEO, shooting products. We can make the choice whether to look at that as, “Oh my gosh, I already did this. I thought I had this handled.” Or I can realize, “Look, sometimes the rug gets pulled out from underneath you and it's a great opportunity to test your metal to rebuild.”

[00:02:17]  Because I'll tell you right now, I'm glad this happened when I was 37,38 -- because my birthday was last week on Monday. No big deal.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:02:23]  What? Happy birthday. Jesus! I didn't even know that.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:02:26] I keep it a little bit of a secret, which is why I just announced it to a million and a half people on this podcast. But you know, I just --

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:02:32] Happy birthday! I didn't get you anything. Now I feel like a schlub.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:02:36] That's why you feel like a schlub. But you know, I'm glad this happened when I was 37, 38 instead of when I'm 47 or 57

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:02:48] or 46, like yours truly.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:02:50] That's right. I got the hustle. The hustle is still here. The grind is still here. I still have just as much, if not more energy than before. And I'll tell you, it's so nice waking up and knowing that this is my boat, my ship, right? With the team and the crew intact. We didn't lose anybody. That's the thing. We lost zero people. Sanderson is sort of in a life raft drifting behind us for now.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:03:12]  He'll be back, he'll be back shortly. Please bring him back.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:03:14] Yes, yes. But it's a great way to be. The show has been really fun. Rebuilding the business is really exciting. I'm just not even thinking about those guys that much anymore. All right. I was never thinking about those guys. I'm not even thinking about the old company that much anymore. I was mourning the loss of the back catalog, which is still around. It's just something that I moved past so much faster than I thought. And it's not that it's over by any stretch, otherwise I'd have a full version of accounts for you. There's literally no motion at all on the legal stuff, which somehow is also fine. I just don't, can't worry about it. And care far less about looking backwards in the rear view mirror than I do about looking forwards, if that makes sense. So if you're upset that we don't have a full accounting of all the drama, I highly encourage you to not worry about other people's drama and seriously, and if you're one of those people that said, “I think I might unsubscribe because I don't know what happened”, I would say, “Go ahead. Because the value you get from this show is knowing about what's going on in the legal lands and the drama between two companies. Then you are not getting the point of this show. So maybe you should unsubscribe at that point.”

Jason DeFillippo:         [00: 04:23]  We're going to move on in a second and get to Feedback Friday, but I just wanted to say I love you all. You have been so fantastic and I'm getting feedback, which is amazing because I'm just the producer guy that's in the back that never gets any of the perks, but everybody's like…

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:04:36]  Oh, Oh really? You never get any of the perks? Who's got a whole crate of SmartMouth in their house? Not me.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:04:43]  I will trade you my crate of SmartMouth for your Wine Access crate any day of the week.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:04:48]  Uh, that's a tough one. But you might have a deal. I like the wine. Look, I love Wine Access, but I'll tell you, all right, we might have to do a trade.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:04:59] We're going to meet on the Spy Bridge.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:05:02] Yeah. We're going to meet in the middle of a bridge in Berlin. Do you have the goods?

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:05:05] Yes, I do. Fortunately we both get Me Undies.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:05:08] Do I need to count them? Let's start helping people because people who wanted to know that the drams, they got their fix and everybody else is like, “I hate you both right now. Where's Feedback Friday?” So let's dive into the mailbag.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:05:19] All right. Hi Jordan and Jason. I know the way that other people spend their money is absolutely none of my business. However, when I see people that are horrible with spending, always complaining about how broke they are, how they can't pay back any friends because they literally only have $4 in their bank account right now, I can't help but want to give them a smack down lecture about their spending habits and how a few small changes could get them into a way better situation, much better situation. I see them spend $40 on their nails every two weeks, eat up for lunch at $15 every day, buy a stupid expensive car that they can't afford, et cetera. And it drives me insane to see them so out of control and not realizing the consequences of their actions. And I really try to hold my tongue most of the time. How do I distinguish when someone is only complaining or when they actually want feedback in help for their situation? I'm in this weird situation where money has always been freely discussed in my life, so how can I fit in better in a world where money is such a taboo topic? How can I subtly help my friends stop being a victim to the outside influences and gain control of their lives without overstepping.  Any help or direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. None of my Business.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:06:32] Yeah, this is unfortunate. I understand where you're coming from. Money is very personal. I think this is from Ramit Sethi’s book  a million years ago, I Will Teach You to be Rich. We'll link that in the show notes. Great book by the way. People talk more about sex and other personal things than they do about money and I'm not sure where that factoid comes from, but it's certainly true in my experience.  I can talk to a friend of mine that I've known for a few months or a few years and I'll be talking about sex life with my wife, this, that, and the other thing. There'll be going off about that. But if I say, “How's your retirement?” I would never get asked but for some, but I would, I would never even ask this, but I could say something like, “How's your retirement saving going?” And the needle will come off the record. People will put their drink down and stare at me like I just, you know, there are a few things. There are a few topics that are more personal than money and sex isn't even up there. I think money has to be one of the most personal things. It just is.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:07:29]  I'm the opposite. I don't want to talk about my sex life, but I'm more than happy to talk about money and I'm the weirdo in the room.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:07:34]  Well, if that's not why you're the weirdo in the room. But yeah, I understand. I understand that. But you've got to set up. Oh, all right. I just keep it. I picked on you like three times today and it's only question number one, so I'll just stop now. But look, money is so personal. You have to set up filters for who you want in your life. And what I mean by that is, and this is a generalization, so don't jump down my throat here, but people bad with money can be bad to have close to you because they often will have similar money problems and they will likely come to you with those problems. Now, that's not true for all of my friends that have money issues. If you have a friend who got laid off or you know, he just had a child and then he started his own business at the same time, or his book didn't do well, this isn't somebody where you're like, “Hey, I'm going to cut you out of my life”, but the person in this example, “I literally only have $4 in my bank account right now, but I have bought this brand new car and I'm getting my nails done, and I went out to lunch yesterday”.

[00:08:31]  That's just straight up irresponsible. There's something else that's going on and you got to be careful because a lot of these people, their stress will be contagious. The stress on your friendship will be problematic. I've often had problems with friends who are terrible with money because a lot of times they'll come to me to bail them out or they'll do this thing where it's like, “I'm going to whine about moneys until Jordan offers some help and then I'm going to begrudgingly accept it”, and I don't mind doing that a couple of times over the course of years. But I remember there was a girl was like, “Oh, I'm having trouble making my rent.” And I was like, “Oh friend-who-I've-known-for-a-while, I understand that”, and then I'll be like, “Hey look, just pay me back next month.” And then the next month they were like, “I'm having trouble paying my rent”.

[00:09:12]  And I was like, “Why? How?” And then it was like, “You didn't lose your job.” But if she knew before, she would've said, “The next few months I'm going to have problems with my rent and other things. I was wondering if I could do this”, I would have figured that out. But if you're just figuring out that you can't pay your rent a week before it's due or less and then it happens again, you're not thinking and planning ahead. And the fact that she came to me both of those times, I was like, “Oh you are looking at, this is something that's going to just keep happening until I wise up.”

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:09:46]  This is somebody who definitely ate the marshmallow in the test when they were kids. Yeah, because this is, I think what you're talking about here is short term gratification versus long term gratification. It's endemic in certain people. And I raise my hand right now, I'm one of those people. I have a hard time with money and I have a hard time was you know, short term gratification versus long-term thinking. I have almost no retirement fund and I'm 46 but I'm also thinking about it though and I'm fixing it and a lot of people won't do that. So I think that there are different, I mean people are different at different stages of life. Here's one thing that I know though. The one thing that I don't want from my friends is financial advice. That's the one problem, because nobody wants to be berated for the things that they want.

[00:10:32]  They just want a sounding board and you go, “Okay, great, you're broke. I'm not going to buy a lunch today, so I guess we're going to go to Taco Bell.” That's the way it goes. You punish bad behavior by going along with the fact that they're broke. You do not say, “Okay, we're going to go to this great restaurant and I'll pay for you this time.” Don't do that kind of thing and you want to jump in and get these people on track, but nobody wants your advice on this. That's the thing. They just want to vent, I believe, and make themselves feel like the victim. So everybody thinks that, “Oh, it's so bad that I don't have any money and I'm so poor”, and they just want sympathy, but don't give it to them in any way, shape or form.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:11:10]  That's interesting advice because from your situation. And the other thing is, you know, one of the reasons that we get along “despite this issue” is because we're in a situation where when we hang out, we can literally expense everything and would not make sense to not do that because we're exclusively working on this, well, “Hi IRS, we're exclusively working on business things when Jason and I hang out all the time. So it makes sense to expense everything.” However, if we just hung out casually as friends all the time, and if you were the type of person that could never afford anything, I'm not saying you are, but if you were that type of person, our friendship would not last. So we have a unique set of circumstances. We're friends, but we also can take the cash out of the equation because you get a check from my wife. And then also when we are able to hang out or do something together, it's always paid for by the business, I can't even think of one time where it wasn't.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:12:05] But I think here I just still think that nobody wants the advice of, you know, somebody who was successful with money. I think what you need to do is just kind of show them by example and say, “Look, this is what I do”, and just weave it into the conversation in a different way. Don't be like, “Oh, you should get an IRA, you should have your 401k going, you should have some stocks, you should have this, that and the other.” Say, “Oh, I just checked my portfolio -- it never say portfolio by the way -- I just checked my Apples up this morning. Woohoo. I made like 20 bucks by sitting on the couch”, and things like that that are like end arounds to the goal. Just don't hit it head on because it's like if you have a friend that doesn't shower, you know, you can't just say, “Damn man, you stink. You should take a shower”. It'd be like, “Yeah, yeah, we can't go out because they have kind of a dress code at this place and you're not going to fit and you need to kind of just, you know, spruce yourself up a bit before we can go” and that might get them on the track to get where you need to go. You see what I'm saying? I do. I'm not totally sure that I know of anyone that doesn't shower that would be responsive to that.

[00:13:06]  But then again, I don't maybe hang out with those types of people as much so I'll leave it there. But I'll tell you this, people who are really bad with money will sometimes have other problems caused by similar patterns of decision making. And this isn't necessarily something I see in your case, Jason, but I know people that are bad with money that constantly shoot themselves in the foot. They have bad interpersonal relationships, they have bad friendship issues, they have bad romantic issues, they have bad health issues sometimes as well. So you have to be on the lookout for that. It doesn't mean that everyone who is bad with money as a giant mess that you should immediately cut out of your life. What it does mean is that sometimes the being bad with money thing is a symptom, not a cause, and you have to look deeper than that.

[00:13:52]  What's going on? Oh, they always play the victim. Oh, well then the money thing is just one extension of that and it shows up everywhere. You got to be careful because that could end up being something that is a deeper cause than you expected and so when somebody complains about money, I will often ask them if they want help by learning how to better deal with money. Most of the time they'll say yes, but you have to be able to read their answer. Are they being truthful because they don't want to say, “No, I just want to complain.” If they say yes and they're into it, get them a copy of I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi. We'll link that up in the show notes. It's a financial management book. It's not about getting rich per se.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:14:28]  Such a great book. This book literally saved me tens of thousands of dollars, so I love this book.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:14:34] It's an oldie but a goodie. It's probably 10 plus years old and it's easy to learn. It's designed to help people with this sort of thing, but if they're not interested or they don't apply what they're learning in the book, you have my permission not to suffer their complaining anymore. Literally, do not let them talk about their money crap with you any more unless you want to let them vent. Because if they're not interested in fixing it, they're only interested in complaining about it, you have to decide how much complaining you're willing to take it.  And if it's a good friend, there's a certain amount of that. If it's not and they just want to look like a victim, you got to decide if you've got room for that person’s drama in your life, and don't be afraid to cut people out if they won't learn and they won't stop venting.

[00:15:10]  It's cold, but this is how you avoid getting sucked into other people's money drama. And I'll tell you right now, that gal who kept trying to borrow rent money did not last long. And that was the end of our friendship. It was really sad. We were friends for a long time and then it was like one month rent and then it was like the next month I was like, “Oh, goodbye forever.” And it didn't have to be that way.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:15:29]  That's sucks. That really sucks.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:15:31]  It sucks. But I felt like it was her choice. And you know what though? It was my bad for not looking deeper because later on I found out, “Oh, she's got serious drug addiction issues that she was in recovery from, so it didn't show up as much.” And then I heard, she was like, “Oh, I relapsed.” I was like, “Relapsed, then what?

[00:15:49]  Oh my gosh, this, Oh that is back.” And then mutual friends are like, “Oh, did you hear about Jamie? She's, you know--”, and I just went, “Oh my God, I'm so glad that I'm not involved with this person anymore.” It just turned out to be a symptom of something so much greater. It's not always the case. Some people are crap with money because they've had bad examples. It doesn't reflect on their character. So you have to be careful not to label somebody who just is a bad saver with somebody who is a drama queen and is going to ruin their life and yours. Right. They say there's a giant gap between those two things.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:16:23]  Yeah, so take it on a case by case basis and just really kind of figure out where they're coming from with this mishandling of money.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:16:32]  This episode is sponsored in part by SmartMouth. Man, this stuff came in handy. I was at a conference which I feel like is the usual for me, but I was at a conference and I was wrecking smart mouth twice a day because you only need it twice a day. I had mints, I ran out of SmartMouth actually Jason on one of the days and I didn't have a chance to go back and get more because I wasn't in the hotel and I had to go buy these mints from Starbucks and I was housing this package of mints and they would 20 minutes later if that they're dead. SmartMouth is lasting the whole time. That's what I love about this stuff. It gets rid of the bad breath. It does the minty thing for a while, but then for 12 hours, the sulfur eliminator which inhibits slash demolishes the bacteria’s ability to create sulfur gases, which is what creates stank mouth, which is the medical term for what a lot of people at that conference had and it inhibits that so you don't have to worry about it.

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Jason DeFillippo:         [00:19:42] What advice would you give a 20-year-old? -- Shortest question on Feedback Friday ever?

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:19:47]  Thanks for the super vague question. I actually get this question in one form or another all the time. So look, I'm going to go for it here because I think Jen probably, when she saw this carved out a lot of fluff and this wasn't a one line email, we'll see. So my advice to generally for a 20 year olds here is find someone you want to emulate based on their success. Might that be their business, their personality, et cetera. Become their assistant. Step two, right? Become their assistant. Lots of ways to do this. That's a whole course of study. I'm not going to get into here. I feel like I should make a product that has to do with this, because I answered this question so much at events. Three, even if you've got to carry their stuff around, film them, or create social media posts, you can do simple tasks like drive them to the airport, et cetera.

[00:20:33]   Now this is good for you because it's completely “unskilled”, right? Or  it's sort of like, “Oh, I need millennials skills. You know how to use the Instagrams?” And you're like, “Yeah, I know how to do that and I can drive a car.” “Great. You're my social media manager and my driver.” And now a friend of mine did this with Tony Robbins every time he came to LA, he just was Tony Robbins LA assistant for a long time until Tony Robbins had his own cadre of people that followed him around through his jet. You know, these are early days. This is good for you because you get to have private conversations and access to these people that most people would pay a ton of money for. And now don't let them take advantage of you, but use the time you have with them to learn and apply what they're teaching you.

[00:21:14]   Getting a job that is close to the crown is what this is called in Silicon Valley, or at least, this is where I heard it. Close to the crown -- this is a good position to have because a lot of people will work at companies for years to get close to management, upper management, the C suite, you can start right next to the top. Not in the C-suite, but you're literally in the C-suite taking notes and creating presentations or helping people get logistics together. Even if you're just making sure the coffee's hot, you start right next to the top. You have access to people that most people cannot get at all. There are people directly under the C suite that have to wait weeks for meetings with these people. You're in the room, you're in the car. This is a shortcut to making yourself indispensable to the organization and if nothing else, even if you end up outside that organization later, you're building a great skill set

[00:22:03]  before you move on to something else. If I had to do it all over again, this is what I would do, I probably wouldn't go to law school. It was all right. I was around smart people, made some great friends. I would spend those three years being the assistant, the right hand man to somebody who is just a badass or even being the assistant to that person's assistant would be a high performing position and I would've learned a ton of practical skills that took me years to develop on my own here in the business and entrepreneurial world.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:22:33]  Okay. My advice is a little bit different than yours. All right. You're the high-performer here. I'm going from a personal level. One thing that I noticed with people that are younger than me, they do not have any of the cultural references that I have. So what I would say is go to the top 100 movies on IMDB for the generation previous to yours and watch like the top 50. So you have some kind of cultural connection with the previous generation. So when you're dealing with people who are older than you, you have a frame of reference for conversation and that's just a kind of a life hack slash pro tip to get you into the club. So you can say, “Oh, I really like Curacao movies. Oh, The Seven Samurai was great, or I love Fight Club.” My brother's like, he's 26 now and he's still never seen Fight Club, believe it or not.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:23:20] Wait, who hasn't seen fight club? Now I feel old.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:23:23] My brother, he's 26 years old. My brother is literally 20 years almost to the day younger than I am. So I'm always trying to drag him kicking and screaming into the great films of my world. I look at art and popular culture is a way to make connections. Personally, that's how I do it because I come from a film world, so that's my advice to the 20 year old me.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:23:42]  Yeah. Who has to work with older people maybe. All right, I get that. Because at first I was like, your advice is watch 50 movies. You're fired, buddy.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:23:50] No, it's watch 50 movies that were important to the previous generation.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:23:54]  Yeah, you know, I get that.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:23:55] Because the previous generation are the people that you're going to be dealing with the most when you're moving up the ladder.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:24:00] That's true. I'll add to this. If you find yourself becoming somebody’s assistant or wanting to become somebody's assistant, and if you can get a dose of their work or if you know someone close to them, find out what their favorite books are and read them. The reason that's important is because they're probably using mental models from those books. They're using references from those books. And frankly, if someone says, “This book changed my life”, and you don't bother reading it, but you work with them, you're going, “Oh, that influenced you heavily? Yeah. I don't care enough to invest five hours in reading it.” That's not a good sign. So read those set of books, even if there's a bunch, just grab the audio and listen to it at the gym. It's really not that hard, you know? And I guarantee you, you're going to start to think like that person because reading programs how you think because it programs the language that's in your brain that you used to think right, that you use to articulate things that you use to process things. If you read and maybe even reread that person's top five or so 10 books, if they even have that many, you're going to start to think like them in a way where they're going to go, “Man, this guy is smart”, because they're going to see themselves in you. That is persuasive. All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:25:09]  Hi Jordan. I started listening to the podcast when I was 15 and having trouble making friends in high school. After learning the basics of body language and vocal tonality, I was able to make many friends and become very secure in myself over time. Now I'm 23 years old and about to start my career in engineering and the skills I've learned have served me well in learning to communicate with others. At this point with all of my schooling out of the way, I'd like to start dating seriously, but notice that I feel hesitant. After some thoughtful examination, I realized it's because a part of me feels of lower value to women compared to other men because of my height. I'm five foot five and have been so since 15. Typically, I'm very confident in my abilities, but I'm not overly outspoken about my confidence because I prefer to keep to myself in most situations.

[00:25:55]  This doesn't stop me if I'm interested in a girl though. I have no trouble flirting or talking to her. The problem is that most women, especially in the online dating world, want men who are much taller than me, even if I'm of a similar height to them. For awhile I felt that having my first girlfriend would make this insecurity go away, but after breaking up with her a few months ago and starting to think about dating again, I realized this insecurity is still there. How can I cope with my insecurity and where are some good places to meet women outside of the online dating world where height preferences can screen me out completely. Signed, Tall On The Inside.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:26:30]  Hey, Tall On The Inside. I like, in fact, I'd like.. Jason, did you pick the name Tall On The Inside or did he pick it?

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:26:36]  I picked it.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:26:37] Oh, okay. Shoot. I was going to say, “Hey, this is a really good mindset to have -- tall on the inside -- because although he doesn't have it, you do so. But the thing is, this is great. This is exactly what I’d prescribe, Tall On The Inside. So when I was younger, I always dated women that were taller than me. Not universally, but many of the women I dated were taller than me. I frankly didn't notice. And when I moved to Germany, my host brother, Florian, was always like, “Oh, Peggy's taller than you. Doesn't that suck?” And he made fun of me nonstop. He was just always pointing it out. And I started to get insecure about it because I thought, “Oh man, is this a cultural thing?”

[00:27:16]  You know the girl's supposed to be shorter than a guy. I didn't know that. I never thought about that. And he really got in my head and I realize now, 20 plus years later that he honestly was just projecting his own insecurity on me and I didn't have it. So I let him program me with this insecurity, just like Tall On The Inside has let society program him with this insecurity. Now some of this is evolved. It has to do with male and female gender roles and stuff like that. Some of it -- a lot of it is cultural, doesn't really matter which is which honestly in these cases. But what I would recommend, and this is how I got over it, granted my wife is like 5’1”. So I can't exactly say that I've overcome this completely because I married somebody who is smaller but I had no trouble.

[00:28:00]  And I still, well I shouldn't say, still have no trouble dating because I don't date anymore. I'm married, but I didn't up until I met Jen, have any problem dating women that were taller than me. It doesn't make me insecure at all. I don't worry about it. It doesn't bug me. So what I would do is build social value in other ways. Stop worrying about how tall you are. You are never going to fix that. There's no way that you can get taller, that I know of. There's no pill for that. There isn't and it doesn't matter. And I'm not talking about, “Oh, you got to get Jack now so that you look tough.” You just have to not worry about it by building value in other ways. Build something that you're proud of. Learn a skill that you love. Learn how to sing, learn how to dance.

[00:28:36]  It doesn't really matter. You know, that type of thing goes a long way.  There is nobody that says, “Oh, Bruno Mars, aww but he’s short. Oh man, Justin Timberlake. Oh, too bad. He's so short.” That does not happen to those people. Bono. You know, we were talking with Joey Coleman the other day, Jason, and he's like, “Oh, I saw this shorter guy hanging around with all these tall, beautiful women.” Do you think they go, “Oh, Bono's too short for me.” That doesn't happen right now. These are A-list people, but you can build your own social value and you won't notice this. You're focusing on the problem. You're not focusing on the height itself. You'll get screened out some times you meet a college volleyball player. Yeah. Maybe she doesn't want to date you because of her own preferences. Some people want pizza. Don't try to sell them Chinese foods, it’s not going to work.

[00:29:20]  You're going to get screened out sometimes. You can screen other people too. You know you can screen other people too. Don't worry about, ”Oh, is she going like me? Is it going to be my height that breaks the deal?” No. Focus on building your own value in a real way. Be smart. Build a business, get a great career and get a life together. The height will be the least you won't care. People will chase you anyway. Having confident, non-verbal communication, the things that we talk about in other episodes, master those skills. Your height is one of many insecurities that you're going to face throughout your life. Do not let this be the defining issue that you have in your dating life. It's a really sad thing to get hung up on because you can't fix it and it doesn't matter.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:30:02]  Absolutely, and yeah, personality trumps height any day of the week. And Jordan, we've mentioned this before on shows, you're way shorter than I am.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:30:10]  Yeah, I didn't even notice.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:30:11] Way shorter than I am. By 2 inches.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:30:14]  Yeah, I was going to say, lean into it a little more.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:30:17] I'm trying to. You're shorter than I am and I never noticed the difference until we talked about this on the show because you pointed it out. You're 5’10”. I'm six feet and I'm just like, “Oh, I never noticed.” Period. Because personality makes up for height any day of the week and look at somebody like Fisher Stevens, the actor from Hackers, one of my favorite movies of all time. He has had some of the most beautiful girlfriends in the world, multiple Playboy playmates, and he's a tiny guy, but his personality is huge. You want to have a huge personality and I think that makes up for everything. So yeah, get good at the things that you want to be good at and it will overcome any height difference whatsoever. And by the way, you're all the same height when you're laying down.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:31:02]  Wow. That was deep, bro. “Hey, this guy dated a bunch of Playboy models. Oh, and also when you're laying down, it's all the same.” You're in a weird mood today, dude. It's funny.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:31:14] I am. I'm excited to do this show. Like when we started the show, I was like, you know what? This is my favorite show to do now. So I'm just in a happy mood.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:31:20]  I'll leave you with this. Before when I used to date women who are significantly taller, you know, like a gal who's six feet tall and then she’s going to wear three or four inch heels. What are those? Louboutin, those Christian Louboutin heels. And we'll go out and I'm just like now six inches plus shorter than they are. I remember tall guys would be like, “What are you doing with the short dude?” And then, you know, they'd be so insulted for me and I'd say something like, it depends on how they approach it, but I would always go, “Yeah, I'm really short. She's got a weird fetish, man. I don't know what to do about it.” And she would start laughing and the guy's like, “Wait, you just took all my power away.” You know, 6’4” investment banker guy comes up and is like, “What's up with your short little dude there?”

[00:32:02]  And I'm like, “I don’t know, man, she's got a fetish or something”, right? And then it's like, “Oh shoot! I just turned this into that being an advantage”, and now you're tall. Your height, Mr. Tall Guy is a disadvantage for you. Now what are you going to do smart guy? Right? And then he's got to be like, “Oh yeah. Well, you know.” I remember there was one guy who came up worked for Goldman Sachs, he was Irish. He had an accent. He was probably 6’5” and he came up to me and my girlfriend at the time, Laura, who is this tall blonde gal wearing, you know, like four inch heels like I said, and we walked into this bar and he came up and he was like, “What are you doing with the short guy?” And that was when I said that and he just would not leave her alone, but they were old friends apparently.

[00:32:44]  And he was just wasted and really kind of disorderly. And I said, “Are you okay?” And she's like, “Yeah, no, it's okay. We went to school together.” And I went, “Oh, all right.  I'll wait for you inside so you guys can catch up.” And she was, I was like, “okay?” And she goes, “Yeah, yeah, that's fine.” So I walked in, got a table, got us some drinks, sat down, she came in and I realize this isn't something where I need to stand there and defend myself. She knows this guy. It's a guy who’s she's known for a long time. I'm going to let him embarrass himself. He's already embarrassed her. So when I came in, this was probably our second or third day, she goes, “Oh, I'm so sorry.” And I went, “Oh, for what?” She's like, “Oh, that was so rude.”

[00:33:20]   And I went, “No, I just feel bad for you. That was a little embarrassing for you.” And she's like, “I know I feel terrible.” So it turned into a thing that was not about me. Okay? And I highly encourage you to do this because whenever somebody screens you out because of your height, it's not because of you, it's them. Okay? And if somebody is making fun of you because, “Oh, you're dating a taller gal, or you're too short”, that has nothing to do with you. It literally has nothing to do with you. And the sooner you can internalize that mindset, the better off you're going to be because my gut says you're not going to get any taller. All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:33:50]  Hey guys, I'm a 24-year-old I.T. professional with a degree in computer hardware and repair coupled with a stack of certificates from everything from IP security to flash animation. -- Sorry about that last one, my man. Flesh be dead. Yeah. -- My question stems from the fact that the past four jobs I've applied for have gone through at least to the first interview, only for them to tell me I'm too young or they are afraid my age does not reflect the level of maturity they're looking for. I'm looking for any advice on what to do in these situations and or how to prevent them in the future. Thanks in advance. Too Young To Be This Old.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:34:25] So here's what I think is probably happening in this situation. And Jason, you've had more real jobs than I have, so maybe you can opine here, but they're not allowed to ask your age when they recruit you. And I don't think they're allowed in the United States. I know this is different in Europe and other countries. I don't think they're allowed to ask your age on the resume or birthday or anything like that. Right? So --

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:34:45] But in the interview they can see that you're a young guy.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:34:48] Right? So what's happening is they're looking at the resume and they're going, “Great, wow, this guy knows a lot of stuff. He's probably like 35 years old.” Then you show up and they go, “Oh, we're looking for more experience. But we can't say that because you have the experience on your resume, but really this office has a bunch of 40 year olds in there and you're probably not going to be a good fit. And we can't say that you're too young to fit in because that's an actionable lawsuit. So they say, ‘uh, well, you know, maybe dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. We're looking for this and that.’ They’ve even on defence saying they're afraid your age does not reflect the level of maturity they're looking for. That in itself says that their HR and legal department might want to have a conversation with them.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:35:32]  That's an actionable offense, honestly.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:35:34]  Yeah. Although that said, I don't know how I wouldn't sue a company for hiring me and not hiring me if I'm not a fit. They're really doing you a favor. This is a good thing for you. You're not going to be able to relate to your coworkers. That's what they're afraid of. And if I were you, you're 24 and you're this qualified, try a startup. Be young while you can or, or a funded startup that can pay you. You don't have to be underpaid, but you should work somewhere where you're going to be able to rock those hours and get it under your belt. So I think they're probably doing you a favor and I think probably they're not expecting you to be as young as you are when you show up.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:36:08]  There's a problem in tech right now where older guys like myself, find it really hard to get jobs. So you're going against the entrenched old boys club. This is going to be a factor in his niche for what he's doing with hardware repair and he's got some software certifications and things like that. Those are really entrenched groups, especially if he's going into a big company. They want to give their jobs to the older guys because it's really hard for us to get jobs right now, which is why I left, but here's the other issue, startups are not going to be a great fit for this space because doing I.T. in hardware for most of them, they're just going to be laptop maintenance because everybody gets a new laptop on their first day and nobody's running their own server rooms anymore, which I think is what he would really be good at because he's in the computer hardware space.

[00:36:56]   If people had their own server rooms anymore, fantastic. You know you've got to maintain those PCs, keep those disks spinning and all that stuff. Smaller shops like ad agencies are a great place for young I.T. guys to like cut their teeth totally because they have a massive amount of turnover because it is, honestly, a tough and crappy job. I've been in many ad agencies and the I.T. staff rolls over all the time, but you will learn a lot about network systems and you will also learn a lot about how to deal with people because dealing with people is half the job of I.T. and you have to go deal with everybody. It's like, “I clicked on this link in my email and now I have to pay 50 Bitcoins, what the hell?” And then you have to restore from backup and do all that stuff.

[00:37:42]  But the dealing with the people is really important because nobody likes that neck beard jerk I.T. guy. You've dealt with them, we've dealt with them, you know, everybody hates that guy. That said, you're only 24 and tech savvy with multiple certificates, which means you like to learn and study and right now there's a huge need for cybersecurity professionals, which just a few months you could rack up a ton of certifications in that area and the job market will welcome you with open arms. Get into things like Metal Split from Rapid7 and the Social Engineering Toolkit from our friend Dave Kennedy. And then just go down that rabbit hole. Those will open up a huge industry that is desperately looking for young talent, so you're not going up against that entrenched old boys club, but you're looking for people who are really looking to dive into it.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:38:29]  Wow. There was a lot this week that we're going to have to push to next week, but I'm fine with that. I thought this was a fun episode. Did go a little long in the beginning but hey look, you all are the ones that wanted to know the ins and outs of the split and see what was going on with that and of course better a longer answer that's more complete and better than one that is too short and doesn't help. Recommendations of the week. Darren Brown, The Push. Jason, you put me onto this. Why don't you talk about this?

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:38:54] Oh my God, Darren Brown is just a phenomenon. You know, we've talked about trying to get him on the show and he's an enigma wrapped in a tortilla in a fortune cookie that we can never find. But this new show, The Push on Netflix originally aired on the BBC in 2016 but has now been coined a Netflix Original and is out to the world on Netflix. And it's about, if they can socially engineer or just persuade somebody with persuasion tactics to commit murder. And I'm watching this just thinking the entire thing is BS, the entire time because I'm like, it's reality TV. This has to be BS. And then, by the end, the unbelievable ending. I don't, I'm not going to spoil it for anybody, but the ending will, you know, just twist your mind. And then I did research afterwards and it turns out all the people that they did have on the show are just regular people. They did not bring in actors to be the people on the show. You watch this, right?

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:39:55]  I did. It was insane. I mean, Darren Brown is always, always, always amazing. He really is. But this was especially cruel. It's about persuasion. It's about compliance. I mean, he is a master of manipulation and showmanship and this was just a masterpiece. So watch it. It's on Netflix, it's called The Push and it's from Darren Brown. And if you have any connection to Darren Brown, a lot of our friends have tried to get him. Show bookers have tried to get him. Publicists are trying to get him. But if you're like, “No, no, no, no, I can do it.” He's probably number one or number two on our list of dream guests for the show here. So if you can pull that off, we have something special for you.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:40:41] And specifically when you're watching the show, pay attention to the words that the celebrity guests are saying. That's a real hint about what's going to happen. Because I was listening to them talk over and over again. I rewind did it a bunch of times because everything that's said in the show is important and you have to pay attention to it and it's just, by the end, you're going to be gripping the cushions on your couch.  I was literally grabbing the cushions on my couch. It's that good.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:41:08]  Yeah. I love this. Me and Jen were like, “Oh my God…” It was, yeah, we can't rave about this enough. This is really right up there with the best of them. Hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. Don't forget, you can email us friday@jordanharbinger.com. Make sure you've deleted any contact info from us from the old show and you're only emailing us at jordanharbinger.com because we don't get the other stuff. We are not in that system and you can get your questions answered on the air. We'd love to do that. Our inbox is quite full but we're always surfing through there looking for the good stuff. We're happy to keep you anonymous of course and we love, love, love hearing from you. A link to the show notes for this episode can be found at JordanHarbinger.com/podcast. Quick shout out to the fans that I met at Social Media Marketing World 2018, a lot of support there.

[00:41:57]  A lot of people making a big deal out of unsubscribing to the old show. I'll put it that way. And subscribing to the Jordan Harbinger Show, which for me is pretty funny. It feels good to have the fans migrate. If you know someone who listens to the old show, have them come on over to the new one and if you've got some social media love for us, we'd love that too. I'm on Instagram and Twitter, @JordanHarbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show there. And Jason, you're on socials as well. Yeah.

Jason DeFillippo:         [00:42:21]  I’m on Instagram @JPD. In Twitter as JPDef. That's J P D E F and you can check out my other podcast, Grumpy Old Geeks.

Jordan Harbinger:       [00:42:28] Keep sending in those questions to friday@jordanharbinger.com and we'll see you next time.