47: How to Set Boundaries and Stop People Pleasing | Feedback Friday

Transcript for Feedback Friday | How to Set Boundaries and Stop People Pleasing (Episode 47)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. I'm here with producer, Jason DeFillippo. Here on the Jordan Harbinger Show, we love having conversations with our fascinating guests. And this week we had Ryan Holiday talking about how to solve for what you want in life. He’s a guy who seemingly just figured out what he wanted to do right away and ended up doing it at a young age. Amazing. But that's not quite the whole story. So we got the whole story from him there and Fab Morvan, he is half of Milli Vanilli, and we go through the rise and the fall, and the mindsets that it takes to survive something is publicly humiliating and traumatizing as what happened to him.

[00:00:34] Of course, our primary mission is to pass along there and our experiences and insights to you. In other words, the real purpose of this show is to have conversations directly with you, and that's what we're going to do today here on Feedback Friday. You can reach us at Friday@jordanharbinger.com. So Jason, what's going on? I was in New York for 11 days. I come back and our download numbers are through the roof because of all the media that we're doing. So thanks to everyone who's coming back. But now we have our work cut out for us, man. We got to impress a hell of lot more people.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:04] Yeah, man, I missed you. I hate when you go on those vacations. It's no fun around here.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:08] Oh yeah. Nobody to talk to you, huh?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:10] Nobody to talk to.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:11] Just to talk to sitting in the garage, working on the audio all by yourself.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:13] Editing away. Yeah, edit, edit, edit. That's what we do around here when Jordan is gone to play. But man, you've been killing it. How many shows have you been on since we started this now?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:24] 75.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:25] Insane.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:26] In four months.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:27] You are a machine.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:28] That's almost one every day. Yeah, it's every day except for the Saturday, Sunday basically.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:34] Oh man. And the other people that can't even get on like one or two shows, and you're out there doing 75 in the few months that we've been doing this. That is the power of a good network inaction right there, people.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:44] That's true. I hadn't thought about that. I had not thought about that. Speaking of networking, let's teach these people some skills. What's the first thing out of the mailbag?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:51] Hey, Jordan and Jason. My question is about relationships. In the last year and a half, I've lost two close friends and a mentor. These were all relationships that I'm better off without is they were very selfish and were just using me for some reason or another. For all three of these relationships, I knew the end was coming, but I wasn't able to communicate with the other person in a way that could have either saved the relationship or ended it sooner without a bunch of resentment. These hard conversations are almost impossible for me as I always freeze up whenever I'm going to have them. And when I do manage to get into one of the conversations, I'm unable to express my true feelings and always sugarcoat everything to the point where I can't even get my point across. I'm currently in to relationships that are headed down this road, one with my girlfriend and one with my boss.

[00:02:35] With my girlfriend, I feel like I'm on a very short leash and we often get in a lot of small, stupid arguments over little things due to this tension. Things like her getting upset when I don't spend the night at her place, or when I have other things I need to do, or honestly just when I want to go home and relax by myself. My current boss is super nice, but the job is very boring, and I'm planning on going back to grad school. I've taken off a few days to visit grad schools, but have lied about it each time. Today, I scheduled a meeting to tell her, but once again in the meeting I froze up and talked about something else instead.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:04] Oh man.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:03:05] I'm not quite sure what's causing the problem or how I can fix it. I've just tried saying, “Hey, I'm going to have more tough conversations,” but I always chicken out when the chance comes, or I talked myself out of it by saying that it's not that important or not the right time to talk about it. I'm beginning to realize this is holding me back immensely in my relationships, and it's hurting not only myself but the people around me. Do you have any tips or books or previous podcasts I can listen to in order to help me with the issue? Non-confrontational yours, People Pleaser.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:35] So this really is about people pleasing for sure. Nailed it on that one. Look, it's normal to be afraid of disappointing people. What we don't see is that lying or avoiding the disappointment leads to more disappointment and broken bridges in the long-term. So we're sort of trading short-term wellbeing like, “Oh good, I didn't have to deal with that.” For long term problems, this is a common human thing to do. The real solution to this issue involves things like setting firm boundaries, practicing these boundaries as a habit, and potentially going through this type of thing with a therapist if it starts to creep into most of your relationships. Because earlier he says, “Oh, I've had two close friends that I lost and a mentor that I lost, and now I'm going to lose my relationship with my boss and with my girlfriend. There's a common denominator here.

[00:04:23] Look, maybe some of these people were using you, but you're the common denominator here, man. That said for the time being, I'm going to give you a little hack that has worked for me and others in the past, and I think will work well for you here as well. Before you go into a situation where you need to have a tough talk, send an email with the agenda. It doesn't have to be as formal as it sounds. For example, draft an email to your boss. Tell her you'd like to talk to her about taking some time off to study for the GRE or whatever, grad school entrance exam, and go visit grad schools, then send the email. Now, once you've done this, you've let the cat out of the bag and you can't chicken out because she's going to bring it up instead. If there are consequences to be had, you'll have them, but mostly you'll just feel relief. I mean, you're going to feel stressed before because you're going to, when's the shoe going to drop? She is going to yell at me. She's going to hit me in the head with a trophy when I walk in to her office.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:05:15] Because her boss always keeps trophies in her office just for beating up her employees.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:19] Right. You know those commemorative plaques you get, like salesperson of the year. It's like the stupid glass thing on a crappy form mica base. That's what you're going to get hit with. You'll feel like you get hit with that and then she's just going to bring it up and you're going to go, that wasn't so hard. For your girlfriend. You can email her what you'd like to discuss and then do it. It's a bit awkward because she'll probably ask why you didn't just tell her in the first place, but that's okay. You can tell her why you're emailing because you don't want to chicken out of the conversation while trying to spare her feelings, and do not text this stuff instead of email. I know you're thinking, I'll just text my girlfriend, it'd be different. Obviously, you wouldn't text your boss anyway. You might try to substitute this with the girlfriend. Do not do that.

[00:05:55] There's something about the asynchronicity of the email that makes this a one and done, not some sort of long drawn out text interaction where you end up chickening out anyway during the text conversation because you start like, “Hey, what's up? I have something to talk to you about. I want to go to Chipotle for dinner.” Right? You’ll still be working your way up and chickening out in the text. You've got to just do a one and done in the email. Just get it out there in the email. You will write an email like “I want to talk to you about something,” send, here's the other thing, send. You're just going to have to send it and there it is and then it's off the rip off the Band-Aid. Try it, rip off the Band-Aid. See that most of the fear around this is built up in your head. It doesn't exist in reality, the consequences that is.

[00:06:39] You'll also find that being transparent and upfront is a huge relief. This is a superior way to handle these types of situations moving forward. So give it a shot. Once a cat's out of the bag, you're going to feel anxiety and then when you handle it, you're going to feel relief and then you'll realize that you probably don't need to worry about this. And you might even not have to use the email trick anymore. But it's so nice because you just don't give yourself that out. You show up or you avoid that person and they're like, “Hey, you said you were going to talk about quitting, what's going on?” And there it is all on the table.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:07:15] Now one of the things that gets me about this is what people pleaser said that this is systemic, it's happening over and over again. Do you have any tips on how he cannot get into this situation going forward? Because it seems like he's just putting off even little conversations that he could be having instead of building up to the big one, which now he knows how to get into and make happen. But I feel like he needs to have little smaller difficult conversations along the way so he doesn't get to this point. Nibbling away at it, as it were before it becomes this giant thing that he has to deal with.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:45] Yeah. The before there's a Band-Aid that needs to be ripped off. There needs to be discussions about this. So this happens when you're putting things back and pushing things back and not being truthful about your intention. So the reason that this sort of Band-Aid trick works is because if this is easy enough, it's not going to be easy, easy. But if you feel the anxiety and you go and you do it anyway, and then you go, “Oh, that wasn't so bad,” then you're going to realize, well wait a minute, all of this pushing everything off to the last minute and then finally sending the agenda email, all that can be avoided if you get ahead of it. So this is kind of a baby step in that direction. So eventually you'll realize, “Oh, this confrontation thing, not that big of a deal.” Setting boundaries is a whole different animal though.

[00:08:27] You know, being upfront about what you want to do, what you want to say. I would recommend, there's a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. It's pretty old, but there's drills in there and one of the drills is writing down your boundaries. Like I will only spend the night at my girlfriend's house on weekends because you go to work tired the next day or whatever, write these things down. You can share them with other people. It's fine. This is a learning and growing process and part of this is you're afraid that people won't like you, if you have boundaries. And the truth is some people won't respect those boundaries or they'll try to push them away or break them. Your girlfriend might get really mad at you, that you want to have boundaries about this, but you know what? That stuff isn't going to work for you long term and it's better to come to that realization now than later on down the line.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:09:13] I found that when I exercise my boundaries and people know that I have boundaries, it gives me more, I don't know if it's respect in their eyes, but because I'm not a pushover. And when I push back on things that I just won't give in on it kind of, just sets the tone of the relationship and makes it easier down the line. And I'm like, “No, I told you I'm never going to Chipotle again.” That's it. It just seems like when you stand up for yourself early in the relationships, it makes things easier. So when you get to the Band-Aid moment it's like, “Ah, this isn't no big deal.”

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:43] Yeah, I agree with you there. I think setting boundaries does generally make this stuff a lot easier, and it's up to you to get there. All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:09:52] Hi, how are you supposed to act or what are you supposed to do on a date to change the atmosphere from just hanging out with a friend to a date? Cheers, Pivot from Powell to Party.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:02] Oh, man.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:10:04] What do you think of this one, Jordan?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:05] I'm surprised this one is in here. I feel like I'm back in time, going back in time. So I've thought about this a lot in my past life as a coach in this particular area, and the difference is sexual escalation. So there are different types of touch, there's different types of interest, and these are things I don't really want to get into here, especially on a Feedback Friday, but I will say that it's okay to say this is a date before you go out. I wouldn't spring it on somebody when they're with you and they're like, “Oh, what?” I would be really clear about it, and that's really a lot easier, especially if you're younger, which it sounds like this person might be like, “Hey, we should go out sometime. I'd like to get to know you better.”

[00:10:50] There are different types of touch, different types of interest. Again, I don't want to get into the weeds on this because this is not a dating show, and we're going to be doing more of that stuff with Marnie coming up soon on a Feedback Friday. Taking it slow though is fine. I would say that going along and just treating somebody like you're getting to know them is perfectly fine, as long as you are forthright about your intentions. Don't be too chicken about this stuff though or she will think you just want to be friends and then it's hard to recover from there. And I think a lot of guys go through this. They don't want to say that they're interested because they're afraid to get rejected, so then by the time they feel comfortable saying they're interested, the girls like, “What are you talking about?” I’m hanging out with you for like two years, you know? You never said a thing.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:11:32] Mr. Creepy now. Because from just the way that he worded this question, because I didn't edit this question. This is straight from the horse's mouth. It sounds like he's gotten her out on the date for any means possible. It's like, “Hey, just go get some wings,” and then it's like, “Oh, now that I've got her. How do I make it into a date?”

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:53] I thought about that as well. I think you're right because the question is what are you supposed to do on a date to change the atmosphere from just hanging out with a friend to a date? So I could be reading into this too much, but if you've gone out with somebody and they don't know it's a date, you don't want to try to turn it into a date, because that's a problem. That's you hanging out with a friend and then suddenly you're like, “By the way, I have these secret intention.” So you should be forthright about it. You don't have to say, “I want to take you out on a date.” You can say, “I'd like to hang out sometime and get to know you better when there's not this huge group of other people and are, or hey, I'd like to hang out in a time and place where our friends aren't distracting me because I like you.”

[00:12:36] That stuff is ballsy and we'll set the stage and if she says, well no, that’s she's not interested. And if she blushes and says, “Okay, then you're good.” You know, this is something I wish I'd known years ago. Being upfront about your intentions, it's great because it puts the cards on the table and then you're not outgoing, “Am I just having wings? Is this a date? What's happening?” Transitioning from friend to romantic partner is fine. It happens all the time. You shouldn't be trying to do it in real time though, in the middle of a hangout session. All right, next step.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:09] Hi guys, I'm 22, and I have a good job that will be my lifelong career assuming nothing goes wrong.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:15] Okay, well, you're 22, so I don't know if it'll be your lifelong career, but that props to you for being in a place where you hope that that's the case.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:23] Yeah, positive attitude, man. Positive attitude. However, my two best friends are still stuck in a kid's mindset. They don't have jobs and just sit around smoking weed, which is illegal in our state, by the way, and playing video games all day. Neither of them have held a job for longer than a week in about a year. I try and set them up with jobs and keep him motivated, but nothing seems to work. I tried different angles, like talking about willpower and other stuff, but they always just say they lack the motivation to keep working or to do anything really. They live in the same house and they would often accost me for food. For New Years, I quit smoking cigarettes and have stopped letting them mooch money off me excluding special occasions. After a week or so, they realized it's not my duty to feed them in all of this back to normal.

[00:14:06] Our differing lifestyles are becoming more noticeable. If we aren't playing video games together or smoking weed, we'll often lapse into awkward silences because those things are all we really have in common now. We've been friends for about six years and we've all spent time and effort helping each other in the past. I even lived with one of them for a while, but can no longer trust him with money because he spends it as soon as he gets it. It was with your help that I quit cigarettes and started placing boundaries in my relationships. So I figured I should listen to your advice about the five closest friends’ thing too. Is there any advice you can give in this situation? I would love to find a way to help them. Thanks in advanced, Stoners Dragging Me Down.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:45] Ooh, this is awful. Yeah, so this is really unhealthy. You spend a lot of time around guys that mooch off of you that are going nowhere and that don't want to go anywhere. It's not like they're trying, they haven't had a job for longer than a week in a year. Why?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:02] How are they paying for weed?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:04] Yeah, who's paying for the weed? That's what I want to know. You can't force people to change. These two guys, by the way, they outnumber you while you're off at work or working on your career, at the gym. They're stone playing video games. That's it. They outnumber you man. Leave them alone to do their thing, but you could have an open door for when they're ready to change if that ever happens, but I think it's time to upgrade your friends. You're on the upswing. This is really not going to do well for you.

[00:15:31] They're going to try to control you with guilt at some point most likely. If you move too far away from them, they're going to weigh you down. They're going to bum money off of you. They're going to keep you smoking weed and playing video games, man. You let them mooch from you on special occasions. What special occasion is it that they can't pay for their own food? I don't understand. I get that they're broke. Why are they your friends? That's the problem. Yes, they helped you in the past. They're relying on that to keep you down now. I mean, I just don't get it. It's not like they're having a rough time and they need the help. They're just lazy. They're just lazy, they're not trying. So this is terrible. Go to advancedhumandynamics.com/level1, we'll link this in the show notes.

[00:16:10] This is where we teach a lot of the networking relationship development stuff. There's some drills reaching out to people, maintaining your network, reactivating dormant and weak ties. It's time for you to start hanging out with some other people. We're here for you, man. That's one reason we do this now, to provide the resources you need to move up and forward. So check out those Advanced Human Dynamics Level One drills, and get after it, man. Don't spend any more time with these guys and you have to.

[00:16:36] This episode is sponsored in part by HostGator. There's a mass Exodus going on right now from social media, I think I mentioned it before. I think maybe I just read it. Elon has deleted SpaceX, and everything from Facebook, because of that whole steal all your information and sell it to a the worst bitters possible scandal, that's no good. Your information's out there, but planning your flag on those sites and expecting an audience to just appear, that's not really a good way to grow a business either. You need to have a stable place on the Internet. You can call home and I know what you're thinking. I don't have a business. I don't need this. Do you want other people to be in control of your bio? Do you want the job that you got let go from to be the only results that has online for you? Do you want something that you did in college? I was Googling potential intern Jason, and all of the results were for stuff that he'd done in engineering school, which makes sense, but it kind of felt old. Granted he was fresh out of college, but I thought, I want something fresh from this person. Where's the up-to-date stuff? There wasn't any.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:17:37] You have to control your own narrative.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:40] Yeah, as best you can, and so people are going to be able to find you. It's just that you don't control that stuff and that's why we recommend HostGator's Website Builder. Create a professional looking feature pack website, no coding, mobile friendly. It's going to look good on phones, iPads and other tablets. Does anybody use a non, I don't even want to go down that road. I was going to say, does anybody use a tablet that's not an iPad? The answer is going to be yes. I'm going to get crazy emails about this. It'll look good on that too though, the HostGator. The HostGator build website. I promise you that. You also get 99.9 percent uptime. Support team is there 247, 365, and up to 62 percent off, all their packages for new users. So please support our sponsors, it's how you support the show. Go to hostgator.com/jordan right now to sign up. That's hostgator.com/Jordan.

[00:18:26] This episode is also sponsored by Rhone. Rhone makes awesome stuff. I just got off the Rhone website here. Jason and I were taking a peek at some of the new stuff. Really good shirts, really good shorts, and what I thought was really unique and a great business idea, so props to you all at Rhone. They sell kits and I was like, kits, what's that? So I clicked on that. You can buy and they know guys, you can buy five t-shirts, all of the same type all at once. Different colors, you can even choose different sizes. I don't know why you would do that. I guess if you were sharing with someone else, but they know, they know how guys shop, right? I go to the store or I go online to rhone.com, which is where you should go R-H-O-N-E.com. You choose something you like, you got one, right? And then you come and you're like, “Oh, I like this.” You go on and you buy a ton more. That's how I shop. I just want a bunch of the same thing. Not Mark Zuckerberg style where I'm wearing the same color, but you can change the color. You can match it, makes a match, but you just get five at a time, and I'm like these guys understand it. They also have great exercise equipment. This stuff works. It's high quality. It looks great. It doesn't have a ton of branding on it, which I also really appreciate, really digging the Rhone stuff, man.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:19:35] I'll tell you what, man. Now that I'm back in Southern California, they have a new product that I'm going to be picking up. The commuter short.

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[0:20:13] Next.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:20:14] Hey Jordan, I'm a high school student from Australia. As common as it is in high school, I have trouble figuring out whether my friends are just hanging around me because it would be too awkward not to, as we've been seen as a group by everyone else in the grade or if they truly care and want to be friends. I'm the type of person that would much rather be upfront and transparent, but I understand not everyone is like that. My friends tend to make decisions about group activities without me. Even when we said we would plan things together and sometimes they don't include me, or even tell me the activities they plan. I guess this is because sometimes I can tend to be negative regarding certain topics such as grades, politics, and religion. It should also be noted that I have mental and family issues that affect me, but I'm trying my best to get better. So my question is, do my friends really want to be friends with me and knowing it's extremely hard to join into a new circle, what should I do? Yours sincerely, A Confused Student.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:10] This is interesting. I'm not really sure that it is hard to join a new circle. I mean I get that it's hard in general, but it's unlikely that people would be friends with someone they didn't like or didn't value. It happens, but it's rare.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:21:27] Very rare.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:28] It's really rare, yeah. And look, the value might be that you're the person that everybody can blame for something or whatever, right? There's different types of value. I don't see that in here, but it seems like they're not being mean or rude to you or pushing you away. They probably see the negativity and they plan without you, but it sounds like maybe it's more thoughtless than deliberate. It's hard to say again from the context here, but somebody planning without you and then inviting you along. It would be different if they weren't inviting you along, so it seems like maybe they just know you're not going to take charge, so somebody else plans and that's the way it is.

[00:22:02] The real problem here though is your self-esteem, and the other issues that you say are in your way. I would address those and not the issues you seem to have with external relationships, like your friends, you need to work on the relationship with yourself. I know that sounds cliché, but you clearly have something going on here. Your friends are not going to be the solution. This isn't the other people's issue. The friends’ thing is a distraction. You can't fix those relationships until you fix yourself or at least start to get that process started. And the more that you let this go, the more it's going to weigh on the healthy people that are around you. So I would get this going now. Don't wait too long. You don't want to be the person who's constantly dragging people down and then figure out you need to get this handled because nobody will call you back. So get it done now while you have a caring circle of people around you that still include you, that's a good foundation from which to heal.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:22:55] Yeah, the one thing that threw me for a loop here is when she says it would be too awkward, because they were seen as a group. That alone right there says, okay, they do actually care about you because in high school, and you're seeing like with people around you, if somebody didn't like you, you're out of the group, immediately.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:14] Yeah, especially women, man.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:23:15] Exactly. So since you are still in the group, that means you're in the club, you know. It's not that they're keeping you around because they want to be seen with you. That's not how that works at all in high school. And looking at it from the outside after going through it, you might see it since you are still on the inside, but that's really not how it works. If people are hanging out with you in high school, they want to hang out with you, period.

[00:23:39] Because if there's anything that they might be embarrassed by or whatever else, you're out of the group like that. So I would definitely do what Jordan says, look inside because they're cool with it. Maybe they just don't include you in things that in the past you've kind of covet about and you know were negative about and they're like, “Oh well you know, she didn't want to go puck, puck golfing before so we're not going to take her next time.” So we're just going to plant it, go and then you get jealous because they went and didn't invite you along. So look at the activities also and see if you in the past have kind of complained about that and maybe that's the activity. I'm just throwing things out because I believe that these people want you in the group, period.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:18] Yeah, it seems like that's the way it's going to be. If you're not in the group, you're not in the group. Like you said, you know, you nailed it there. All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:24:26] Hey Jordan, I'm a 25 year old single man with no children and a passion for the outdoors. I've wanted to work for the National Park Service ever since I graduated high school. I have no further education, which I plan on changing ASAP. In all of my work experience is from factories, retail, call centers, and one summer of being a trail guide on a horse ranch. Living in rural Kentucky, these are most of the options for someone in my shoes. I currently work at a factory making 13 dollars an hour. I've been there as a temp for four months in about to go full time with a pay raise to 16 dollar an hour. This is a decent wage for the area and I have a lot of bills. The only thing is I hate this job, and I've got nothing to gain from it besides a paycheck, the experience is even worthless.

[00:25:10] I was going to stay with this company for a while until I got an email from the National Park Service regarding an application that I filled out a few months ago. It said I was qualified for a cave guide position. Awesome, right? It's totally awesome. And they were referring me to the hiring manager at the National Park close to my town. I feel like this job could be life changing for me, is the big break, some might say, but I'm afraid that they'll offer me a job. If that were to happen, it would only be a six month contract until they hire again, when the season rolls back around. The job would be like 13 dollar an hour, like I'm currently getting paid and doing fine with that. But I will miss the 16 dollars that I will be making soon. I want to go to school and study forest management regardless. A federal job would look great on my future resume as well. I'm lost on what I should do. Should I accept a life changing offer, put in a two week notice and then get a different job during the off season, or should I play it safe and stick with my current unfulfilling job, stacking boxes until I one day finish college? Sincerely, A Factory Worker Stuck in a Machine.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:11] Oh man. So this is a hard choice, but you should always build your skills for the future. Always. The money's good. I get it. I get that you're going to make more doing the other thing. The money is good, but the difference in pay after taxes is minimal and is the equivalent of frankly just a few luxuries. You don't have a wife, you don't have kids. You're able to be as Spartan as necessary, and if you like things like being a cave guide, I have a feeling that you don't need to have every fancy gadget in your house just the stereotype here, that I hope is accurate. Get job at an outdoor store or something else during the off season, or go back to the factory if you can. If you really need to doe, but experience like this, it builds skills. I call them bricks on the show.

[0:26:54] What you can then take with you towards your goal of being a park ranger in the future. So the best way to get a job is to get the job. What I mean by that is you having a federal government job in a park is a much bigger step towards going to become a park ranger than a factory job that paid 4 dollar an hour or more really. So anything that takes you away from the job, like a bump in pay at that factory could actually take you further away from your long-term goal, even if it seems more comfortable in the short term. And people realize this in other industries. That's why there are things like interns at radio stations, or at startup people that intern for big tech companies and things like that. These are positions where you go, all right, I'm probably going to get hired out of this. You have a better chance of being hired at the equivalent of an internship as a cave guide then you do being hired, having done another type of job, unless it was the actual job that you're looking for.

0[0:27:55] You're right adjacent to what you want to do career wise. Don't let money keep you away from that. Look, I know that's easy for me to say, but frankly, what he said is it's a, what does it afford? It's a 3 dollar an hour, 3 dollar an hour pay difference. Yes, that adds up, but that said, it's not like, oh, I can be an unpaid cave guide, and then I'm closer to the job or I can eat and survive at this other job. This is a minimal difference. That's probably the diff worst case, even if you're already super Spartan, this is the difference between driving and riding the bus every month. This is that for a short period of time.

[00:28:33] And if it's not that, it might be video games. This could be, I guess I can't replace my laptop. I mean there are things that you can do to make up the difference. Even if it means that next time you have off time, you're busting your tail working as much overtime as possible at either the factory or a sporting goods store, saving up living Spartan, and then doing this job, and then making up for the lost income and savings. There are ways to get around this. I highly recommend doing that instead of going for the money, especially when the money is just a tiny, tiny little difference.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:29:05] Yeah, for me, this is a no brainer. Take the job immediately, if they offer it to you. Take the job because there's a couple of other benefits that Jordan didn't mention here, is one is you are going to be in the system. You're going to learn how the system works and you're also going to find out if the system is where you want to be. You've had a dream of working for the National Park Service but you've never worked there so you don't know if that's where you really want to be, and this will give you the chance to get in the system and see if that's what's really right for you. I mean you're 25, so you had the dream for a long time. But get in there, make the relationships and out if it's right for you, and if it is right for you, maybe in the off season you'll meet some people that will have other opportunities that you can work for because since there is an off season, other people that work for the same system are off as well, and may be able to take you with them for the off season jobs. And you're just going to learn everything that you need to know if that's what you really want to do for your career, but it get in the system immediately if that's what you've dreamt of doing that. The three bucks, yeah. It's nothing. Jordan, nailed that on the head. That is after taxes, it's literally like almost nothing. You can just switch to one meal a day for ramen, and that'll take care of it, but yeah, take the job, dude, immediately.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:21] That is not nutrition advice, by the way, just so you know. But yeah.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:30:25] Yeah, you don't look for me for nutrition. I'll keep you alive, but I'm not going to give you a six pack, how's that?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:32] Yeah, yeah. There you go. If you're really starving, email me. I've got meal replacement bars coming out on wasu, you can have some.

[00:30:41] This episode is sponsored in part by Legacybox. This is such a freaking cool idea. If you're like me even you've got shoe boxes or giant boxes, bins, whatever, full of old video tapes. You got your film reels, depending on how old you are. Photos, cassettes, you know that wedding videotape that you took back in ‘94 or your brother-in-law did. What about those dance recitals? Maybe a little piano action, some ballet, football games, Christmas morning with the kids. Yep, Uncle Jerry never quite learned how to water ski, looked pretty funny. Where is that tape? Find it. Send it to Legacybox. What this place does, Jason, is they send you this big envelope full of stickers.

[00:31:22] Actually it's a box, full of stickers, and then of course, naturally the box itself. You find all this stuff, you put the stickers on the media that you find, you shove it all in the box, and then later on you get a link and you just go on their website or they'll mail you a DVD or a flash drive if you want to rock that way, and you can play these things, they'll digitize the whole tape for you. It's crazy. So there's all this footage of like Jen playing the piano when she was, I don't know, six years old. And I've got to go to my parents’ house and grab a bunch of this stuff, because we have VHS galore. I don't even know if it's even still good because you now it degrades over time.

[00:32:00] So you don't really want to wait too long. It's already been 30 years for many of you. Go to legacybox.com/Jordan, you'll get 40 percent off your first order, which is a really good deal. So with that deal, Legacybox starts at like 45 bucks. Or if you want to go whole hog because you've got years of videos, you can save up to 200 bucks on that kit too. Legacybox.com/Jordan, really worthwhile. I thought this was a great idea. It just turned out to be so fun. It's hilarious. We've been sharing the videos with everybody. The whole family is really excited about it. And they can take anything, I think there's like reel-to-reel digitization available. There's cassettes, like I said, VHS goes without saying. There's even media I haven't heard of that they take and they can pretty much do anything with it. Legacybox.com/Jordan, save 40 percent off at the code Jordan.

[00:32:53] This episode is also sponsored by Skillshare. This is an online learning platform. Think like pro level YouTube but with much better content written by or filmed by people that know what they're doing. 20,000, more than 20,000 classes in business, marketing, technology, design, and more. It's actually that's an unfair comparison. This is a really in-depth and nice learning platform. You can take classes in social media, marketing, data science, web development, you name it, they got it. Whether you're trying to deepen your professional skillset, start a side hustle, explore new passion. Skillshare is there to help keep you learning and thriving. Jen has been just diving into this stuff. She got up, I'm not even kidding, bookshelf organization was a class on there. There's all kinds of graphic design stuff. She learned Adobe Illustrator. She learned how to do all these different sort of audio video clips for the show that we post to social media.

[00:33:47] So if you're following me on Instagram @jordanharbinger, sometimes we post these little audio clips or little video clips. You learned about how to use that software from Skillshare. Really, really useful. Really cool.

[00:33:58] Join the millions of students already learning on the Skillshare site today with a special offer. Just for my listeners, get two months of Skillshare for 99 cents. That's right. Skillshare offering the Jordan Harbinger Show listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for 99 cents. To sign up go to skillshare.com/jordan. That's skillshare.com/jordan, to start your two months now. Give it to us one more time, Jason.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:34:23] Oh, Jordan. I do believe that skillshare.com/Jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:27] Correct.

[00:34:29] All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:34:31] Hello Jordan, Jason, and team. I'm an entrepreneur that started and grown three successful companies over the last 12 years. Sounds all well and good except that I'm dying on the inside. I've tried for the last couple of years to leverage my current situation into something that's more fulfilling and not so toxic for me. I'm not going to waste time flushing out the specific problems of why things suck at the moment. Just know that I'm aware that happiness and fulfillment are not a place or a situation, but rather are what you make of your place and or situation. Although I'm going to continue working on myself to optimize my power over these things, it doesn't mean that I have to remain where I am to do so. I can optimize both and improve both my situation and perspective. This is the crux of why I'm writing a podcast for help.

[00:35:14] As I see it. My problem is twofold. Hurdle one, I'm 36, and I've not had a boss, nor have I been reviewed by anything but the markets since I was 21. My resume consists of strengths and relevant accomplishments whereby I'm the only one who can back any of it up. My previous two ventures were self-funded and my current business is backed by an investor that will not be happy to know I'm leaving. Hurdle two, I'm looking for advice on how to reach out to relevant actors or leaders in my fields of interest to gain insight on potential career paths not widely known to the general public, whereby I could potentially utilize my existing business acumen. I could cold call, but I'm not sure that would be the best approach. I've maintained a fair amount of relationships with successful professors from university as well as some industry professionals, but it feels like a big ask for introductions to people they may not even know out of the blue, should have maintained those relationships a little better. I know. Yep. He's listened to the show before.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:11] Dig the well before you're thirsty, man. Got to do that.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:36:13] You're right. FYI, I have a degree in political science, and I'm trying to move into a position more routed in my degree, international relations, international trade or commerce, food security, national security, et cetera. The end goal is not so important here, but you get the idea. This ultimately feels like a framing or legitimacy issue coupled with impostor syndrome. Hurdle one, into networking or leveraging social capital problem. Hurdle two, genuine love for all you do. Wish you were around in my 20s. Signed, Political Exile.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:42] Wow, this is a good question. Really detailed, but not so detailed that we had to spend 20 minutes reading it, you know who you are. So congrats on the successful businesses and things like that. Look, yes, you should have maintained those relationships earlier, you got to start now. Best time to plant a tree was a hundred years ago. Second best time is right now. Make a list of the connections that you think you will need. Do that first. Make a list of those connections. Who do I need to meet? Why do I need to meet them? Who do I think might know them? Then reach out to your network and ask, yes, even reaching out cold is fine because your other option is not reaching out at all, which is not good, and use the level one re-engagement techniques for the next several weeks. What those are, I'll go over those here, but the full drills are at advancedhumandynamics.com/level1.

[00:37:34] The first one is texting engagement. Open up your iPhone or your Android, open up the text program. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of your texts. Those are the people that you haven't texted in a while. Go through in text, like 10 of those people, “Hey, it's been a long time, haven't spoken to you in a minute. Hope all is well.” Sign your name so that they don't say new phone who it is, and say no rush on the response because then they know you're not going to try to sell them something. Do the same thing with email. Go in your email program, type in some random letters. You'll see names that you spot, do this when you're in line for coffee, right? You type in AD, and it's like Adam Franklin. Oh, I haven't talked with him in a while. Send them an email. Same script as before. Been a minute. How you doing? What's the latest? No rush on the reply. Sign your name. And do this lay off lifelines exercise where you make a list of connections that you haven't spoken to in a while that you think are high value.

[00:38:24] Re-engage with those people now before you need anything. Because you kind of do need something now, but I would reengage and start sort of fomenting those relationships once again. Start implementing this stuff now. This isn't going to be an easy fix because you've let all of this rust for so long, but start by leveraging your skills as an entrepreneur to get back into the corporate world. Maybe you could work for one of your suppliers and investor, a customer of one of your existing businesses. Those people already have a relationship with you. They probably already look up to you.

[00:38:55] Those are some of the best places to start with this while you reengage those dormant and weaker ties. Now, best of luck with this. This is as good a time as any to learn that you need to dig the well before you're thirsty and to get started doing this. So if you're listening to this also, and you haven't been working on maintaining your relationships because you think you won't ever be thirsty. Take this guy political exile here as an example. Successful at age 22, now trying to get back into it.

[00:39:23] Networking is not for people who lack options, it is for everyone, and if you find out the hard way it's going to hurt. So go grab those drills, advancedhumandynamics.com/level1, or go to advancedhumandynamics.com, and click on level one, and get started. Those are up now. I put a lot of work into those things, you can't tell because I'm crap on camera but I'm happy to be there for you guys. I'm working on level two soon. These are really good man. This is some of my best stuff. It's free. It's not a product. It's free. It's there because if people knew this stuff, the world would be a different place. I'm not kidding. All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:39:56] Hey, Jordan and Jason. I'm 44 years old, married with four kids and have a stable, responsible job that I enjoy in our family business. I own my own home and generally can't complain about my life. However, there is one thing that I've always struggled with. I'm a shy, softly spoken person by nature, and at every stage in life, whether it be school, work among friends, my running club, et cetera. I've had the issue of not really standing out in the crowd. I'm the person who in a group tends to be ignored when they talk or even get spoken over top of. I'm only a short guy, and since I lost a lot of weight a couple of years ago, I've lost the feeling of having any sort of presence in a group at all. Being a healthy weight for the first time in my adult life is great, but it only adds to this issue it seems. Given much of my job is to build relationships with our suppliers and manage staff. I need to make sure I make a positive and memorable impression and speak with some authority. Do you have any tips on what I can do to try and achieve this? Thanks in advance for your help. Regards, The Invisible Man.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:56] Huh, interesting question. Okay. So the shyness, yeah, okay. It could be a lot of things. We'll start with some presence here. You're probably used to hiding because of the fact that you were smaller, well you were overweight but you were a smaller, shorter, shy and overweight. So the first thing, this is not an easy fix, but the first thing that I can say presence wise is to speak in statements. I know that when people talk over top of other people, one of the things that we teach at our live program for Advanced Human Dynamics is we often will teach people to speak in statements. And what that means is instead of where do you want to go for lunch guys, you say, where do you want to go for lunch, guys? That's still a question, it’s just a more dynamic, and I don't want to say forceful but more dominant and I hate that word. I hate it way to speak, and we're not dominating other people, but when we speak in questions, where we speak with that upward tone, a lot of people actually make statements in that tone, which is not good at all.

[00:41:59] So if you speak in statements, even when you do questions, you will break or at least start to break the habit because I bet that you speak in question tone a lot. A lot of people do this, especially people who get talked over or ignored. Now, the second thing is use a little bit more touch to get attention in groups. Somebody just recently asked me in an email, what was that thing when people are talking in a circle, how do you get in the group? You put two fingers on the shoulders of two people in the circle who you want to get in between. So just the left hand out, right hand out, almost like you're going to type but only using two fingers on each hand. And you just put that on the person's upper shoulder blade where they can feel it, and people will naturally turn towards that. Both of them will turn towards you at the same time because you're doing this at the same time, and they'll open up and then they will let you in to circle. It's like magic. And then as you're in the circle talking, punctuate the conversation with touch. Your hands in front of you when you're talking. In fact, if people are talking and talking and talking, they're not giving you an opportunity, but one of your hands in front of you, not like a raised hand but straight out in front of you, Palm down. People will naturally look at that. And it sort of signals subconsciously that it's your turn to talk.

[00:43:11] So if you punctuate the conversation with touch, you use your hands a little bit more. You speak in statements. That is going to get people listening to you and giving you a chance to speak because it will increase your presence. This is really hard to diagnose without seeing you, which is why we run events where we see people in person. But give this stuff a shot and it should improve your situation quite a bit. Then keep in touch with us and let us know how it works out. All right, last but not least.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:43:39] Jordan, one summer when I was home from college, a few high school friends and I all picked winners for the college football bowl games and had a competition to see who could get more correct with a point system attached. It gradually grew, and one year partially out of necessity, but partially as a lark. My good high school friend James created a website to manage the pool. Today, we've got over 300 people participating annually and I use the event is a way to maintain contact with weak ties. Not consciously at first, but it's definitely part of why I keep it going. The problem I have is that the site hasn't been updated in years. We've had plenty of fixes and upgrades. We've collectively identified over the years, and I want to get those changes made. With my friend is the site designer, however, I'm stuck asking him to do it.

[00:44:23] If he just said no, I could move on, hire someone and not feel guilty, but every year for the last four years, he said yes, agreed to a specific of changes and then just not followed through. If I hire someone, I'm worried, I defend his sense of ownership over this thing we've done together and damage to the friendship. If I offer him money to do it, that also feels like turning a fun quote unquote “friend thing” into something transactional. If I just ride him and guilt him, however, it's still uncomfortable and never gets done. Advice for moving forward separately, if you think I should find someone suggestions on how to hire a freelance web person to execute the vision I've got at a reasonable rate for a zero income site. Thanks in advance, Football Fixer Upper.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:04] All right, so keys to something like this is you have to give them a way out. So here's what I would say. We're all too busy to maintain this thing. Let's just chip in and hire it out, and what he's going to do is probably object and say, “No, I'm going to do it. I know. Yeah, it's taken me forever. Everyone's so busy, but no, I'll totally do it, man. I'll totally do it.” Which he hasn't done, which he's been doing for years, right? So then when he does that insist on paying him. I know that sounds weird, but insist on paying him. You can say, “Well, I want to make sure that you get paid so that everything is fair because we don't want to take advantage of you.” This way, either he agrees to get it hired out or he agrees to take the money. At that point, he's accountable.

[00:45:53] Don't take no for an answer here, because it's easy enough to force somebody to take money, right? It's hard to be like, do this and do it now. And he's like, “Man, it's free, man. You're taking advantage of me.” Insist on paying him, because this time it's not because he's disorganized. It's not because you know he's not getting it together, blah, blah, blah. You're giving them a way out. It's because you respect his time. You don't want to ask too much of him because you know he's so valuable. That's what you've got to do, because there's no scenario here in which he says, no, I don't want the money and agrees to do it and then doesn't do it. You're insisting on this. You can shove the money into his hand. You can send it to him via PayPal, and either he'll get the hint that it needs to get done. It’s very unlikely that he'll take everyone's money and then just never do it. That would be surprising. How does he hire this freelancer, Jason? You're experienced in this world?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:46:46] Well, yeah. If he needs to hire a freelancer for his friend's not going to do it, even though you shove a bunch of cash in his hand, get a referral through him because he works in the business, he's going to know people that can have his same set of skills, you know? That's the best way to do it because that's the way I do it, and that's the way everybody I know in the web biz does it. Now, if you do have to hire it out and he doesn't have anybody that can do it. First things first, set your budget.

[00:47:13] No one cares if it's a no income website. You need to have professional work done, so be prepared to pay for it. You don't hire a plumber and say, look this, this is a low income toilet. It doesn't really make me any money but it's not working, what kind of deal can you give me to fix it? And website people hear that a lot but once you set your budget, double it, because it's always going to go over budget because your friend to built it. He knows how it works, somebody coming in does not know how it works, and there is going to be a ramp up time. Most people don't budget that into their budget, and that's when things go over budget. So double your budget because your friend is going to low ball it because he thinks he can do it for cheap, but he doesn't understand that somebody else is going to have to learn what he does.

[00:47:59] Now, the other thing is break the project up into single milestones and you don't want to have this big monolithic redo with all of the things that you guys have put together for four years and then go over budget and not be able to pay the guy. Then you don't have your updates and you're out the money and everything's a mess. Just break it down into small tasks, so the new programmer can do them one at a time and you pay them one at a time. So if you run out of money, you've at least got some updates done, the programmer's done, and you can move about it. And then next year when you guys have more money, you can hire somebody back to do more updates.

[00:48:34] But breaking it down into discrete tasks is important and is for finding someone else who's not a friend. I asked all my friends in the business, the only place that I found that everybody agreed upon was a site called Upwork. Now, you're going to have to do your own due diligence on the programmer that you bring in. But from all of the research I've done, because I researched this for two weeks, to try and find anybody like Elance, or any of the other companies out there. This is the only one that people have recommended constantly. So I would try Upwork, and that's how you hire a freelancer and get your site fixed.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:08] You know the CEO or the founder of Upwork listens to the show.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:49:13] I'll be damned.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:14] I know, I know I can't even believe it. Recommendation of the week. Jason, okay, this is weird AF. I'm just going to throw that out there. It's called Tickled. This is not on Netflix. It's on HBO. If you have that HBO Go or whatever, the app is where I found it. Okay, I'm already kind of regretting recommending this, but Jenny found it. I'm just going to throw that out there. It's this guy was hiring people to make these like tickle wrestling videos, which is like super weird homoerotic stuff, okay? And these guys were getting lured into it, these college guys. But then he was kind of being weird and twisting around, and using it to sort of blackmail these guys in a way. And so this documentary gets into like what is this all about? And then starts to try to chase this guy down and follow him. And it turns out that he's like this weird old money guy who gets off on the whole power, it is so weird. But it is worth the psychological exploration of what this is. It's called Tickle. Just bear in mind. It is super bizarre.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:50:25] You know when this first came out, a bunch friends of mine were talking about it because I think it was on Greg Barron's old podcast because it was a tickly podcast. It was as part of the joke about it, and I think that they were in it for a little bit. But yeah, it turns out that it is not what you think it is when you read the title.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:41] No, it's not. I watched it and was just like, what is happening right now? What did my wife give me into? 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 to get your questions answered on the air. Happy to keep you anonymous, of course, we always do. A link to the show notes for this episode can be found at jordanharbinger.com. And don't forget our Alexis Skill, jordanharbinger.com/alexa. It gives you a little daily briefing, little flash briefing clips from the show, things you can look forward to from the show, or a little reminder of something from a past episode you may or may not have heard.

[00:51:18] Quick shout outs to CastBox team out in San Francisco. One of the best ways to listen to podcasts, the CastBox app for Android and iOS. Snd Steve Davis, he had surgery in his binge watching the documentary recommendations from Feedback Friday. Get well soon, Steve. And Jason, did we make a page for all the documentaries that we recommend? I thought we did.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:51:37] Yeah, we've actually got a page up right now. Go to jordanharbinger.com/movies where we list all of the documentaries and other things that we found that we talk about on a Feedback Friday here.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:48] Nice. Jordanharbinger.com/movies, jordanharbinger.com/alexa for the other stuff. Show notes of course, also at jordanharbinger.com. I'm on Instagram and Twitter @jordanharbinger. Great way to engage with the show. Jason, where are you?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:52:02] I'm on Instagram @JPD, Twitter as jpdef, and you can check out my other podcast, Grumpy Old Geeks every Monday, and all my other links in blog posts are up over @jpd.me, revamping that right now. And hopefully have some good stuff up there soon.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:15] Nice. Keep sending in those questions to friday@jordanharbinger.com Share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got a lot more in the pipeline. We're excited to bring it to you. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

[00:52:32] Hey, if you liked this podcast, check out the Dennis Miller option. Everyone, it's not an option of our podcast. He’s got a show called The Dennis Miller Option. I know that's confusing. Everyone's day at PodcastOne, the snarky king of comedy is back to provide his no-holds-barred opinion on current events, politics, pop culture, and whatever else is on his mind. Check out The Dennis Miller Option at PodcastOne and Apple Podcasts.