188: How to Get out of Credit Card Debt | Feedback Friday

Transcript for How to Get out of Credit Card Debt | Feedback Friday (Episode 188)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger and 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 David Smalley talking about his quest to rid the world of bad thinking. He's actually an atheist and a super sharp guy when it comes to rhetorical arguments and logic. We also had my friend Hal Elrod talking about the magic of consistent effort over time and his amazing recovery from dying twice, dying twice, and recovering from a super rare form of leukemia. I also write every so often on the blog. The latest post is 10 important things I've learned from interviewing over a thousand people. I basically went through with a Gabriel and went through all of these older episodes and tried to find some patterns in the thinking of successful people that I've had on the show, over the past 12 years and probably tried and failed, but at least tried and put forth a great effort to distill that into 10 discrete ideas. That's at jordanharbinger.com/articles. So make sure you've had a look at that article and a listen to the earlier episodes from this week.

[00:01:08] Of course, our primary mission is to pass along our guests' experiences and insights to you as well as our experiences and insights to you. In other words, the real purpose of the show is to have conversations directly with you. That's what we do every Friday here on Feedback Friday. You can reach us at friday@jordanharbinger.com.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:25] So how's it come on with prepping for the baby? Are you getting everything in order? Is your studio dismantled for the new crib that's going to go where your microphone used to be?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:34] No way. I'm not moving anything.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:36] Babish maybe.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:38] Babish maybe. No, that thing is sleeping probably in our bedroom for several months, right? Isn't that how it works? And then you do some sleep training, which I know nothing about, and that's going to go in the office area. And I'm just going to always work from either downstairs or in my studio. And Jen will probably work right next to the baby as the baby sleeps and poops and cries, whatever babies do.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:02:02] Poor Jen.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:02] Poor Jen. She'll love it. I think we're safe for a minute on that. I have a feeling she's going to be pretty busy. So I'm letting her dictate this. But no, I've got at least one room in the house where I can do whatever the hell I want. It's a little small because it's the studio, but I'm like, "Okay, I need to put a chair in here where I can put like my Xbox or something, you know, I don't know. I need someplace where I can decompress.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:02:29] You need your man cave.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:30] I need a man cave. Yeah, exactly. And we may even move now, not now, but we may be moving soon, buy another house, which is always really fun and easy here in Silicon Valley. Just throw a couple of bajillion dollars down and pick up a new pad that you have to then tear down and rebuild. So yeah, we'd like to pile it on all at once here at the Harbinger household, moving, having kids, building a business, you know. What else can we throw in there?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:02:57] I think you might want to go back and re-listen to our podcast with the minimalists because you definitely like to pile it on.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:04] That's right. That's right. Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:03:07] Triple J, I've been thinking about telling my family about my debt issues for the last few months. I'm currently carrying about $13,000 in credit debt. That's barely going down with every month's payment. It got bad during the time when my wife was in graduate school and wasn't working, so my credit card took the hit. She's helping, but it still isn't totally manageable. I don't expect my family to step up and give me money, but the peace of mind knowing that I'm not hiding my problems seems it may take some weight off our shoulders. We seem to be in an unmotivated funk because this debt is crippling our newlywed lifestyle. Thanks for your show and I can't wait to hear your thoughts. Signed, Indebted Debtor.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:43] So debt is always so stressful. It really limits your freedom. It's a huge pain. I totally get it. I feel your pain here. I would say telling your family really depends on the family. Will they add to the stress or will they be understanding? And it seems like they'll be understanding or you wouldn't even be tempted to tell them. Because I feel like people whose family is not understanding, it's like, "I can't tell them it's going to be horrible.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:04:08] Yeah, I've got, you know, probably $80,000 in debt, and if I told my family they would be on me every second of every day. "Get it paid down, get it done, get it, get it taken care of." It would add so much to my stress. So it definitely depends on the support structure of the family.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:24] You have $80,000 in debt.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:04:26] Yeah. Yeah. Stupid, stupid decisions when I was a contractor and the IRS really just likes to hate me right now. So what are you going to do?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:35] That is crazy. Wow. That's a whole subject for not on the show.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:04:40] Yeah. Well, if you ever want to talk about how to get out from under the IRS, I can tell you how not to do it. I've got 20 years of experience on that one.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:48] On how not to get away with it.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:04:51] Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:51] Oh my God, I have very little debt. Not to rub it in your face --

Jason DeFillippo: [00:04:54] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:54] But, you know, I don't know anybody. No, I have a mortgage and things like that, but I don't have any credit card debt and I never have. I just was always so afraid of it. But I understand his situation here because your wife wasn't working and she was in school and you had to survive. I mean, I don't want to rationalize or justify anything, but sometimes people have a decent reason for going into it. I would share with the people who care. That's always good if they're supportive and who knows, your family might give you a loan to pay it down over time. You might have somebody who says, "Hey, look, you know you're going to inherit this anyways. Here you go, pay me back $1,000 a month or whatever you can do." You never know. It's also possible that they'll just lend an ear which makes things less stressful and more manageable. And many of us have our own debt stories, Jason, obviously. I used to have, I think, like 168,000 in student loans in my 20s and early 30s which obviously took a lot of effort to pay off. And on a tactical side, I'm wondering if you've called the credit card companies to ask them to lower the interest rate and waive fees with the idea that you are repaying them. As often we can simply tell them we're trying our best to send in regular payments and any help you can get in making this more manageable would be amazing. You'd be really surprised how often you can turn or they can turn 22 percent into 14 or 15 percent just because you asked and you told them you were drowning in it.

[00:06:14] Because credit card companies like to retain their customers because we customers are actually pretty expensive to acquire. And that's something we don't think about. We think banks have all the leverage. Credit card companies have all the leverage. They have leverage, but really they want to keep you around because it can cost them like 500-plus dollars to get a qualified customer that stays with them for 10, 20, 30 whatever years they, they've calculated all of this and they figure that into what they're going to give you. That's why places like American Express will be like, "Oh, you lost a thing and it was the $3,000 well you're a platinum member so we're going to write it off." That that is cheaper for them to do.

[00:06:55] And frankly, you need a plan of attack to get rid of this debt. One, figure out which card if you have more than one, has the highest interest rate, and Ramit Sethi, a good friend of mine, from iwillteachyoutoberich.com. He says, “Don't use your cards.” Literally, put them in a plastic bowl of water and then shove the bowl in the freezer so you won't be tempted to use your cards. And if you are, you'll have plenty of time to think about why you want to use them when you're chipping them out of an ice block. Look, I'm sure there are less dramatic ways to do this. This is obviously the funniest, so I implore you. Freeze your credit.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:07:32] Literally freeze your credit.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:34] And this is also my favorite part. I've got a script here. This is also from Ramit Sethi. Follow this script to negotiate a lower interest rate. It can save you thousands of dollars. Not many people realize this. You can actually save thousands of dollars in interest with a single five-minute phone call. You essentially are lowering the APR on your credit card, which puts a lot of dough back in your pocket because $13,000 if you do the minimum payment over time, you could pay 30 grand on that easily.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:08:00] Easily.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:00] Yeah, you could pay 20K in interest on that over time. I like negotiating interest rates wherever possible and it's crazy simple. So here's a word for word script courtesy for me. So Jason, let's, let's put on our Shakespeare hats --

Jason DeFillippo: [00:08:15] All right.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:15] -- and act this out.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:08:17] Let us act some for Ramit Sethi.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:19] Of course, act one.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:22] Hi, I'm going to be paying off my credit card debt more aggressively beginning next week and I like to lower my credit card's interest rate.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:08:28] Uh, why?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:29] Well, I've decided to be more aggressive about paying off my debt and that's why I like to lower the interest rate. I'm paying other cards that are offering me rates at half of what you are offering. Can you lower my rate by 50 percent or 40 percent?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:08:43] Hmm, after reviewing your account? I'm afraid we can't offer you a lower interest rate. Sorry.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:47] Well, as I mentioned before, other credit cards from your competitors are offering the zero percent introductory rates for 12 to 18 months as well as APRs that are maybe half of what you're offering. I've been a customer for three years -- or however many years -- and I'd prefer not to switch all of my balance over to a lower interest card with a competing bank. Can you match the other credit card rates or can you go any lower?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:09:13] Hmm, I see. Let me pull something up here. Fortunately, the system is suddenly letting me offer you a reduced APR, that is effective immediately. How about that?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:23] Yeah. How about that? Right. I know we're dramatizing this, but here's the thing. They have a note in their system or some supervisor knows that if you call and you go, "Cool, what I'm doing is leaving," because they think you don't know that you can leave. They think you think and you might, that since you owe them money, you don't have a choice because you can't leave. You owe them money. You can pay them off by taking a loan from somebody else that offers you a better interest rate and somebody else is probably going to be a competing bank that would rather have you as a customer. That's why they do zero percent API cards. They know that if they loan you money for free, they could have made X dollars on that money, but it's cheaper than paying to acquire you as a customer in another way. So that's why they offer these offers. You can take that same balance and transfer it over to another card. They have to let you do that. They cannot force you to stay a customer. They force you to pay the money back, but how they get that money back, whether it's from a competitor or whether it's your hard-earned dollars coming in overtime, they don't have a choice in that. That is not legal for them to inhibit or control in any way. So they know that when you call and you say, "I've got another offer in my hand that allows me to transfer that balance that I owe you for zero percent interest for 18 months, can you lower the rate?" They'll go, "Oh crap, we're going to lose this guy." And that's how you go from 22 percent to 11 percent or whatever in five minutes, well, plus your 25-minute hold time. Right?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:10:52] Exactly. Yeah. You're 60, 90 minute hold time. I've actually done this. When Ramit's book came out, I followed this script, his book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. I used to have a 37.5 percent APR on my AmEx cards because I missed a few payments.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:07] Dang bro.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:11:08] Yeah, so I called them up. I'm like, "Look, I've got an offer from another card zero percent APR with a balance transfer. What can you do for me? Because I like having my AmEx card. It's great for my points. And they went from 37.5% to 14% with a phone call. Boom. Easy enough.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:26] That's really impressive. And I think about this. Yeah. It's annoying. Yeah. You've got to figure out how to get to the right person and you've got to stay on hold and there's social pressure and you've got to use this negotiation script. Think about the hourly payment though. Like, let's say that you're nervous about this for a full hour while you prepare your shaky mess or even a whole day, right? It's ruining your day. You just saved like 20 grand. You could let it ruin two months of your life. It's still worth it.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:11:56] It's so worth it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:58] So go and do it. Just suck it up and do it. Here's the worst-case scenario. They say no and then you go online, they can't raise your interest rate, they can't do anything worse to you. So then you go online and you just look for a zero percent APR credit card offer and you call them and you go, "Can I do a balance transfer? I'm getting hosed by this card." And they'll be like, "Yep."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:12:16] Yeah, there'll be like welcoming you with open arms and be like, "Come on over buddy."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:21] "Oh, you got zero percent APR for a 12-month offer." "Can I have 18 months?" "Hold on. Let me see if I can ask my supervisor." "Oh gee look, we can do 18 months."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:12:29] Yup.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:30] You know, you'll be surprised. You should be able to pay this off theoretically with not really any more interest or at least a significant reduction. What I don't recommend doing because I know what some of you creative mofos are thinking, "What if I just do a balance transfer to one, pay a little bit of it off, do a balance transfer to another, pay a little bit of it off." You don't want to do that because you pay a fee for balance transfers and it's a certain percentage. I can't remember off the top of my head what it is, but it's certainly cheaper than 22 percent compounded overtime. It's cheaper by thousands of dollars, tens of thousands potentially. So you don't want to keep paying fees on the money that you've borrowed. You want to get rid of the debt, especially because it does damage your credit score to have outstanding debt for that long, but you certainly don't want to be freaking bailing water out of a boat that's taking on more water every single day and compounding. Now you're just treading water while adding weights and that's not a good way to live. It's going to stress you out. I hope that helps.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:31] All right. What's next?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:33] Dear Triple J. My wife recently had surgery for the removal of a seven-pound ovarian tumor and hysterectomy. The doctors have found no additional signs of cancer after her followup, but even going into the followup, she was convinced she had stage four cancer throughout her body. The doctor finally diagnosed her with stage one and is continuing to monitor her on a quarterly basis. Now, every other pain has been diagnosed by her as cancer. None of the other doctors have found anything wrong with her except for a 14-pound weight loss identified post-surgery. Seven pounds of which probably was the tumor. How can I encourage my wife that every pain she has isn't cancer? I've recommended therapy, but she refuses to go and I can't take the stress of her feeling pain everywhere and no doctor finding anything even after extensive testing. Any ideas on how to get her to think more positively about aging pains. Thank you. Living with a Hypochondriac. PS for Jason, Deliveroo, trying to end on a positive note.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:31] Why is that so ridiculous and funny every time. All right.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:14:34] Yup, it's just one of those things.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:37] Deliveroo was the name of that company where the driver got attacked.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:14:41] Yes, so Deliveroo is a British delivery company for food. They have bike messengers driving around London and Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Sherlock Holmes was on his way to an award where he saw four guys beating up a Deliveroo driver and he jumped out of the car, beat off the drivers and saved the Deliveroo driver. And ever since then, every time we say Deliveroo on Grumpy Old Geeks I always have to say it in a British accent. So I was, "Ah, I would like some Deliveroo."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:07] Yeah.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:08] That's where it comes from.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:09] It's true. Because that does sound ridiculous. Objectively, like there's no scenario in which Deliveroo can't be said ridiculously and doesn't also sound completely British and silly at the same time. But how badass is it that Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Sherlock Holmes jumps out of, I don't know, a London taxi.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:29] I think he was in an Uber on his way to an awards ceremony dressed to the nines and it was right around the corner from 221 B Baker Street. And so everybody that saw it, it's like, "Sherlock Holmes is out here kicking some guy's ass right around the corner from his house. How cool is that?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:44] Yeah. Where are the cameras? It looks so real.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:47] Yeah, exactly. Are they doing a new episode? What's going on here?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:51] Who cast the Deliveroo driver? He's not really playing its part. He's just cowering on the ground.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:15:55] Yeah, that's really good looking blood that they've got going on there.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:59] It looks so real. Yeah. I can imagine like just being around that is so -- but what a badass. I try to think like what would I do if I saw somebody getting assaulted and I don't know if I'd be like, "Well, what I would do is jump out of my car in my tuxedo and getting in the mix, you know, take on two assailants." Like I'm not so sure about that.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:17] Well, since he's British he says I might have to resort to fisticuffs.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:23] They get that whole leprechaun looking, fighting stance with your fists faced upward, their palms up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:28] Yeah, knuckles front.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:30] Yeah, knuckles front. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, we just turned that darkness into light for a second.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:36] He did say he wanted to end on a positive note, so he did.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:38] He nailed it. Yeah. This is a shame though. I totally understand. I empathize with why she feels like her body betrayed her. Every little pain can be cancer. I think about almost dying or thinking about being under the knife and going through all that. That seven-pound is a massive tumor.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:55] It's huge.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:55] It's huge so I can understand. Maybe she ignored pain before she had cancer and then she blames herself for that so every little pain is like, "Are you sure I'm not sick? Are you sure I'm not sick?" I understand that 100 percent. Why does she refuse to go to therapy is what I'm wondering. I think maybe she doesn't want to admit that she might be overreacting. She doesn't want to be talked out of her anxiety on this because it's comforting to her. She's probably also had enough doctors and waiting rooms and all that other BS and doesn't want to be told that she's crazy on top of being sick. I get that. What I would do is recommend something like Better Help and they are a sponsor but they did not compensate us for this. If you use the code, which I believe is betterhelp.com/jordan if you use the code, they do like me more, so please do that and you do get something for free. Do we know what they get, Jason, for free?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:17:49] You get 10 percent off your first month.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:51] Okay. You get 10 percent off your first month. I do recommend using it. It's convenient. She can do it from home. There are no more waiting rooms. There's no doctor visit type stuff. It's more like a chat with a super qualified friend and that's recommended because she does need to get this handled. It's a tough one. And Jason you use Better Help, didn't you?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:18:11] Yeah, I've got, you know, my personal anxiety issues. I've got like generalized anxiety disorder, which I've talked to my therapist through Better Help with and I do the phone consultations and we've chatted a few times on text just to set up the calls, and then we just talk on the phone. And he's really helped me work through a lot of my issues without having to go anywhere, without having to drive and sit in traffic and sit in the waiting room. And the waiting room for me is my kryptonite. Sitting there with other people who are waiting to see the therapist is just like you're all looking at each other's side-eyed and going, "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, what's wrong with you?" You don't have that with better help. You can just make a phone call and talk to a super qualified therapist that is really good at your problem. That's why they have a survey at the beginning of the process where they match you with somebody who is qualified in what you want to talk about. For me, it's been fantastic. I have, you know, my anxiety is melting away with every call that I have with my therapist and I really, really can't recommend it enough. It has been fantastic for me personally. So if she doesn't want to have the stigma of going to a therapist, she can do it herself in her own time and nobody even has to know. But it's going to help her get past that hypochondria thinking that every little ache and pain is cancer. I think what you said before, Jordan, she may have ignored those aches and pains, and then she has gone to the other side of the spectrum after she did have this tumor and have it removed. It's like, "Okay, I ignored this my whole life. You know, I was a tough cookie. Nothing's ever going to bother me. Oh, it turns out, well, there's something wrong," and now every little ache and pain is turning into it catastrophizing the situation where it might not be warranted.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:52] Exactly. Yeah. I think it's tough. It will potentially solve itself over time as she begins to trust her body more and is less traumatized by cancer, which comes through therapy because waiting it out is like waiting for a broken leg to heal without getting a cast. And a lot of people are afraid to take care of their mental health. And for me, doing that as one of the best things that I've ever done for myself. You need to stay sane. You know, when you're going through a tough time, get therapy. I get people not wanting to go to doctors and waiting rooms, but now you don't have to do that anymore. So please keep us posted on how that goes and definitely try Better Help. I think they must have some sort of guarantee. I don't know if they do but betterhelp.com/jordan. We've gotten nothing but good feedback on this.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:20:33] And also you might want to try it yourself because you're having to deal with this and you might need a therapist as well just to like talk you through the entire process of what she's going through. So it might help you as well.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:44] Yeah, that's a good point. You know, you could both use it. I would imagine especially, and if you do it, she might be like, "Oh, well if you're doing it then maybe it doesn't mean I'm crazy. You're not looking at me and judging me. You're doing it yourself," that kind of thing.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:20:59] This is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:02] This episode is sponsored in part by Better Help. A lot of people have been emailing me and asking me about therapy. I highly recommend therapy for all sane people. I think it's a great way to stay sane and manage any kind of BS that's going on. And a lot of people can't get to therapy either because of price or because of time. And I totally get that. Better Help can solve this problem. They have licensed professional counselors, not freaking like random people who think they're good at giving advice. Licensed professional counselors who are specialized in issues like depression, stress, anxiety, relationships, sleeping, trauma, anger, all that stuff. There are all kinds of stuff that they can get real professional, qualified help to you with. You can consult your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment, so everything's confidential. Everything's convenient. You can video chat on your phone. I don't think people do. Do people even say video chat or we just say FaceTime, right? We just kind of use that. That's FaceTime. It's like the Kleenex of video chatting, I guess or essentially Skype. You can also text with your therapist. You can take phone calls. If you're not happy with the therapist or counselor, you can request a new one, it doesn't matter. I like this because it sort of lets you do therapy, you know, in your car, in the parking lot during your lunch break at work, instead of trying to figure out how you're going to make it happen and get a babysitter. Jason.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:22:20] Better Help is a truly affordable option and for our listeners, you can get 10 percent off your first month with discount code JORDAN. So get started today. Go to betterhelp.com/jordan and simply fill out a questionnaire to help them assess your needs and get matched with a counselor you'll love, betterhelp.com/jordan

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:36] This episode is also sponsored by HostGator.

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Jason DeFillippo: [00:24:03] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. And if you'd be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and review on iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really helps us out and helps build the show family. If you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Now let's hear some more of your questions here on Feedback Friday.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:28] All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:24:30] Hi, guys. Four months ago, I got dumped. My ex was battling depression in the last six months of our relationship. He's had episodes before and dealt with him by either waiting it out or seeing a therapist. I did what I could to be there for him and his kids from a previous relationship through that whole process. It was hard on all of us. I went to a psychologist to cope with his depression while simultaneously being in a challenging job situation myself. I felt like I had failed him when he's dumped me. I was embarrassed to talk about it to others and developed social anxiety because I couldn't deal with people bringing it up without me bursting into tears, which heavily affected my work performance and still is, although it's getting better. We own a house together that we're renovating, although I chose to keep it. I'm mad at him for leaving me in this mess. The house needs so much renovation still, and the whole project is just overwhelming, especially since I don't really have anyone to help me out. We're also fighting over how to manage this whole process of me taking over the house and buying him out, which also makes me feel bad, but again I don't want to be nice when he's asking me to buy him out for more than the house's worth since it's literally an unfinished mess. I assume there's no right answer for this, but it feels like I've painted myself into a corner. I'm ridden by feelings of wanting to blame him, blaming myself for not being good enough, and struggling to see what I can learn from this situation. I feel like I've wasted years of my life and that I'm failing on managing my life. In general. How do you deal with blame and taking responsibility after a breakup? Any advice on how to move on is very much appreciated. Kind regards, Breakup Blame.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:59] This is a big mess. You are correct. Woosah. It's important to realize though that depression isn't something we can fix in other people just as we can't fix it if they get any other disease. Even if this was fixable, it wasn't your responsibility, and this might seem callous, but what I mean is that you're shifting all the blame for his condition onto yourself and I actually wrote an article about blame specifically at jordanharbinger.com/articles is where you can find the articles. I think I mentioned that earlier in the episode. The article is called how to stop blaming other people when things go wrong. And we'll link to that in the show notes, but it's all about the idea of balancing accountability/blame. The idea, of course, is to achieve that in a proper way and I detailed that in the article. This piece was really helpful to a lot of people. We got a lot of great feedback on it so I do recommend that you read it. It'll help you realize what type and amount of blame you can accept as well as how much you should accept so that you can move on in a healthy way.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:59] As for the trauma and anxiety seek therapy, I'm not going to go into the whole betterhelp.com/jordan thing because we did discuss it, but again, try Better Help and at least have someone who can start you working towards balance. Now, what you're feeling is pretty normal and it makes sense that people asking about it would trigger you and get you upset. I would make it clear that you don't want to talk about that with certain people. You can literally say, "I really don't want to talk about this. It's really upsetting. I'm still upset about it." You could say that it's fine. You can lean on your friends as well. It might actually help to get some of that off your chest like, "Hey, look, I know you've been asking me about this. We got to talk about this, but in private it's really upsetting. I'm going to cry." You know, you will know which friends can handle that. Nobody should be making small talk about it and if they do, you can just change the subject and they should get the hint, but you might want to get some of that off your chest with your close friends. It is healthy to do that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:51] As for the house, that is really a cluster whose name is on the house. That's the first thing. If both of your names are on the house, stop putting money into immediately and consult an attorney. If your name is on the house, stop putting money into it and consult an attorney anyway, because if there's any sort of like, "Well, it's half his and dah, dah, dah." You could lose the investment. You need to have someone mediate this dispute before it gets out of hand. If what he's asking for is unreasonable, then stop building the mutually owned asset ASAP. This could really escalate. You could lose the investment, you could end up having it tied up in some sort of mess legally. I know you're worried about being nice or being too nice, but one, this is a business transaction. Time to put on your cold-hearted bitch hat and get a deal done. And if you need to have an attorney do the talking for you because you're non-confrontational or something, then do it. That's fine. Also, remodels are a pain. I get it. Tell the contractor your situation, see if slowing things down is even possible and would be helpful and advisable in terms of managing this. You know, they might say, "Hey, if you want to not do the bathroom right away or you want to stop doing that or just start doing this." They should understand and I know you might have deposits in and stuff, so talk to them and tell them what's going on and talk to an attorney at the same time. You need people in your corner on this, not in the dark.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:12] Last but not least, are you taking care of yourself? Like are you working out? You need to be. When I hit the wall early last year with the split from the last business, which was totally surprising in a lot of ways --- still continues to be super unfair and ridiculous. I took walks, I talked to friends, I hit the gym. I got as much sleep as my body needed/could get and sleep is harder to control. I know you're busy, but you need to at least hit the gym for 20 minutes and take a walk each day. Trust me. It'll improve your mood. That'll make dealing with everything else a ton easier. And you might want to talk to your boss about this. This way she sort of knows what's going on. If you seem out of it or you seem distracted, most people are sympathetic, and now is the time to rally your support network. Make it a point to do therapy, get exercise, and talk to a friend at least even five minutes a day if you can. You've got this, it's a trying time, but you've got this and if you're going to buy him out, you need to do it properly and make sure that you're not building up the asset in the meantime. Because there might be a situation which you need the house appraised and then you're like, "Oh, well I already paid for this renovation." And they're like, "Yeah, that's going into the appraisal." Because you just did that. You're like, "Yeah, but I paid for that." And they're like, "Yeah, but it's still going to be this," and then you've got to take that to him and go, "Well, it's worth this much except for I paid for this renovation. So you've got to subtract that." It's just making it more complex. So talk to professionals on this. You can do this and look, it sounds kind of rough, but you're better off. I know you said no one's there to help me. If he's that depressed, he's not going to help you anyway. You are better off in this situation without him. You can't be responsible for him and you and the house and everything else. You just can't do it. You're taking on too much. Read that article. I'll link it in the show notes. Next up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:31:02] Hey Jordan. I remember on an episode you mentioned a cool way to visit another country was to hire a local to hang out with you and show you around. Please remind me how you found someone to take you around. Was it a specific website or some other way? Thanks in advance. Looking for a Local.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:16] Cool. Yeah, so what I do, what I've done in the past, I went on couchsurfing.org. It is a non-profit website, a non-profit organization, and you make friends with people, tell them you're coming to their area. A lot of them will either let you stay there and/or you simply say, "Hey, actually I want to just meet up for coffee or a drink." And you could say something like, "You know, honestly, I'm looking for somebody who can take me around and I'm willing to pay for the privilege because I know that you have to work or you're a student, you have other things to do. I would love to be able to pay a daily rate to go around with a local." And you know, I would try to maybe at least start with -- you could either pay a couple which should be really cool or you know, like a husband-wife type situation or two students. You could pay them, you'll get twice as much fun out of it. Or hire someone at the same sex. The reason I tell you that is, look, I know how nice it might be to go around with somebody exotic from another country. It's possible that this could happen. What's more likely is they assume you're trying to get it in and they're like, "Okay, I don't know about this," and/or they chicken out at the last minute because they think you might want something and their friends are telling them not to do it. You could hire a group of people to take you out. It doesn't really matter. You can also hire freelancers on a site like Upwork and you can post the job on Upwork and say, "Look, I, this is an unusual freelance or requirement. I'm going to be in this country. I want somebody who can show me around and help plan activities and things like that." Most of the people on there are like, "I'll fix your XML feed. I'm a Microsoft certified whatever," but you should check the terms of service because there are occasional gigs like that. I would choose something like Upwork over something like say, Fiverr, which is much more sort of random guy in a Bangladesh-type situation.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:33:14] Never try and find a guide in Fiverr. The cool thing about Upwork is you can find somebody in your field. So you have a common vocabulary and like they might be looking to fix your XML feed. But if that's what you do for a living, you can say, "Hey I don't need my XML feed fixed. But I'm guessing that we're kind of like the same kind of person. So can you take me around and show me the sites and you know, your favorite restaurants and things like that," because you can find somebody that has a cultural fit to your vocation.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:40] That's actually a really good idea. It sort of depends on where you're going, of course, because some of these people are freelancing professionals. But if you're going to a developing country, like if you're going to the Philippines, you can pay someone their full hourly rate because it won't be that expensive.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:33:55] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:55] But if you're going to Germany, yeah, you don't want to pay somebody who's like my sequel or whatever it's called, you know, certified and computer engineer.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:34:05] Yeah. You're not going to pay an $85 DBA to take you around and show you like the sites.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:12] Right, right. Yeah, but you can also say, I'm open to other referrals. You know, once you're getting in communication with them, you can say something like, "Look, you might not be a fit. Do you know any students?" And other options for this are calling language schools in that country and saying, "Here's what I'm doing. I'd like an immersion program, but I really want more sort of cultural stuff rather than language stuff." And again, it works a little bit better and more affordable in developing countries, but works everywhere. I've gone to a lot of places and they'll say, "Oh yeah, we have a family here," or you know, a teacher of this. Or yeah you can have a one on one teacher that takes you around and teaches you language. They have this for the Chinese, there's a program with my Chinese school and they'll take you around and they focus on teaching you things in the city. And if you're not really that interested or you're a beginner in that language, you can say, "Look, I'm not trying to become fluent in Mandarin or Tagalog or whatever, but I do want to go around with somebody who knows the area and has taken foreigners around and likes certain places." They will set this up for you. They'll structure it like an immersion language program. But really it'll be somebody taking you around all over the place. And I've done that a few times. Really, really nice. It should be shown up at a hotel going to the concierge and finding out that you don't know about anything and they're not telling you about the cool places because they're far away/shady/you can't get in with that local thing, that kind of thing. All right, next up.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:35:40] Hi, Triple J. How can I find a suitable non-nuclear solution for me and my longtime partner to travel together given our different work circumstances? I'm a full-time remote employee and she's a veterinarian in the Bay area. My job affords a lot of flexibility, so I've been traveling four to five times a year, two-ish weeks at a time with plans to travel for longer periods of time. Travel includes conferences abroad, working remotely, and doing my hobbies such as Brazilian jiu jitsu and snowboarding internationally. This is contrasted with my partner's job, which only offers seven days of accrued vacation per year with enough work to keep her busy beyond the normal working hours every day. She's fulfilled by her job, but I feel that she's increasingly getting burnt out. Because of her schedule, in the past three to four years, we've only taken one two week vacation and have another one planned in 2019 for another two weeks. But as you can tell, the cadence is very low. I feel somewhat guilty about traveling to do fun things without her, although she understands and we've communicated to each other that just because her circumstances don't work, it doesn't mean I should put my life on hold. Lately, I've been feeling like traveling more often and don't wish to dance around my guilt while traveling and settle for the cadence once a year only traveling with my wonderful partner. I want to experience these new locations with her. We've been together for six years. I'm 29. She's 30 and our relationship is stable, mature, and I would consider it to be pretty good aside from the not so great travel situation. We have no debt due to amazing, supportive family members throughout our education and have great financial discipline and savings. No kids, no mortgage, not much responsibility besides rent and living in the Bay area. Between the two of us, we have maybe $50,000 or $60,000 of discretionary emergency funds that can be used for travel on top of our retirement and all of our other savings. Sincerely, Grand, Not Guilt Trip.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:38] There are multiple issues that I see here. Obviously, I can't help figure out some solutions so that she can travel more. Most likely she could do something career-limiting like work part-time or seasonally, but that might not even help her and would certainly be damaging to her long-term career prospects. She might not even want to do that. What I think she could potentially do is negotiate more time off in her compensation package and she can do this by forgoing a raise. So here's kind of what I'm picturing here. She should value the vacation time by looking at potential salary negotiation like we teach with Alex Kouts, then figure out what the cash value is per day of time off, and then forgo a raise of that same amount and replace it with time off. So, for example, if she's supposed to get a $5,000 raise or she is going to negotiate a $5,000 raise this year, find out if that's like seven working days or something like that, worth time, whatever. Now, this won't be super easy, but if she's a star and they want to retain her, she can explain that she needs more time because she's burning out, but she does not want to leave. And this is the kind of the play I see here, so instead of getting a raise in cash, she'll say, "All right, I want, you know, seven more days off of paid time off." It's kind of the same thing to the company, right? Like they have less help but they end up losing productivity. But they might be okay with that if it means retaining a key or great employee. It's also possible that your lifestyles just don't match. But you know this already, you specifically said non-nuclear, so I'm leaving a breakup off the table. But you know, that's maybe the obvious solution that isn't great for anyone. Congrats to you on the financial stability and everything though. It's really great to hear. I wish more people were like this. Spending properly and budgeting for retirement and emergency funds doesn't sound fun, but it allows for greater options and freedom in life. And it seems like you're really a case study for this, you know, low debt, good savings, flexibility. So pat yourself on the back here, you deserve it. And I think hopefully with some skills she can negotiate more time off and I think that would be a really cool experiment. I'm curious how this plays out if she tries to do that because I might add that to some negotiation skills on myself here. I feel like that's a really interesting idea.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:40:04] We'll be right back with more Feedback Friday right after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:06] This episode is sponsored in part by NetSuite. If you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. But the problem growing businesses have that keeps them from knowing their numbers is the fact that there is a hodgepodge of business systems all over the place. And I know this firsthand, I mean we have like an invoicing thing and a bookkeeping thing and all this, all these different dashboards. There's one system for accounting. Sales is another one, inventory is another one for a lot of businesses. This big, inefficient mess. It takes up a ton of time and it hurts the bottom line and NetSuite by Oracle, the business management software, handles every aspect of your business in an easy to use cloud platform. So you get visibility and control that you need to grow so you save time, money, a lot of unneeded headaches by managing sales, finance, accounting, orders, and HR all from your desktop or from your phone. And this thing is popular as heck. I said world's number one cloud business system and a lot of my friends running scalable SAS businesses or other sorts of brick and mortar-type or dropshipper businesses, they all use NetSuite.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:41:07] Right now, NetSuite is offering you valuable insights with a free guide, Seven Key Strategies to Grow Your Profits at netsuite.com/jordan. That's netsuite.com/jordan to download your free guide, Seven Key Strategies to Grow Your Profits. netsuite.com/jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:23] This episode is also sponsored by the Hartford.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:00] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going and keeps us on the air. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. We have a list of all of our sponsors that show up on all of the episodes so you can get links to all of those deals right there in one convenient spot. Now back to the show for the conclusion of Feedback Friday.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:42:23] This question is sponsored by our friends at the Hartford.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:42:26] Hey, as a career employee, I'm ready to start pursuing freelance and consulting work more seriously. I often do side work by referral and have gotten to the point where I want to set up a small business and some funnels which would theoretically provide side work more consistently. The goal being to eventually transition into entrepreneurship and quit being an employee. The problem is I work in an industry adjacent to software design. Online portfolios are a requirement in my current web presence that is tied to my name. I'd like to use my name for my freelance work as I feel it gives me some additional credibility, but I fear that if the side business doesn't take off that I would be compromising my prospects as an employee moving forward. My initial solution was to simply name my side business something else to avoid the scenario, but the type of work that I do makes it pretty clear it's a one-man shop. Creating a corporate presence feels like a waste of time at best, inauthentic at worst. You think you're hiring an agency, but it turns out to be just a guy. I've had some career success and I feel that it will be seen as a pretty big red flag at my current job and certainly would hamper other job prospects I'd have moving forward. In entry-level roles, it's typically seen as a sign of a hard worker, but at the level, I have achieved it’s seen as a distraction from the job. I realized most of my hang-ups are likely psychological, but I've been unable to successfully re-frame the situation. Honestly, I'm scared and embarrassed to admit it. Even writing this email makes my concern seem kind of ridiculous. Hoping a trusted third party in a similar situation, you all would be able to provide insight or advice. Thank you for everything you all do. I love listening each week. Signed, Employee to Entrepreneur.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:09] All right, well this is not that weird. I totally get it. When I was a lawyer on Wall Street, I was also running every Friday down to another building in Midtown Manhattan or up to another building in Midtown Manhattan and I would jump into SiriusXM Satellite Radio. And I was really worried like, "Okay, I got this other show, I'm sort of building this other brand." And HR was a little bit like, "What's going on with that?" And I was like, "Oh, nothing." And the partners knew about it because they would listen to the show, but I wasn't super keen because I had heard from other law friends like, "Well, we don't like this." And I was like, "Oh yeah, cool. I'm going to stop doing it. It's just a hobby," whatever, you know. I'm thinking like none of your business. I totally get why though. I understand it. And so what I did was I decided, look, you know I'm going to use my middle name and you're not lying about your name. If you use your middle name and if people call you that on the phone or in person, you know why they're calling you on the phone and email, et cetera. My dad did that for a long time. He had one name, first name at work, middle name at home, and with friends. And he had been called his middle name and home and with friends as a kid and he just brought, when he went to work, he just started being called by his first name and it turned out to be super convenient. Because it was like a call during dinner time. "Oh, who is it? Who's it for?" If it's for one name, "Nope," because that's the name on your mail, but if it's for the other name, "Oh, well this person must know me personally, I'll take the call." It was really convenient. Now, of course, you have cell phones and all that stuff, but it's very, very useful for being one person online in your freelance work. And another person in your professional life without lying.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:45:52] That's a really clever hack. I really like that. Except I hate my middle name, but that's a really clever hack.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:58] What's your middle name?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:45:59] Peter.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:01] You don't look like a Peter to me at all.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:46:02] Nope, I don't. And I was teased as a kid with the middle name Peter, so I just don't, I can't use that one, but maybe I'll change my middle name to something more exotic.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:13] Change it to whatever you want. It's your middle name. It's completely irrelevant in the scheme of things. Right?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:46:16] True. True.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:18] If you're like, "Oh, I hate my middle name." You could be like, "Cool, my middle name is Asgard now."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:46:23] Meulner. Let's go with Meulner.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:26] Meulner so that nobody can spell it. Right, but like, go for it. Name yourself thunder crotch. I mean, who cares? Maybe that's not good for your freelance career or your profession.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:46:35] Not good for the business. For the personal branding thunder crotch probably isn't what I'm going for.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:41] It depends on what industry you're in, but yeah --

Jason DeFillippo: [00:46:42] True, true. That is true.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:44] You can just kind of go with whatever. You go ahead. Look, if you don't want to legally change your middle name and you don't like your middle name, you can choose a different first name and it doesn't really matter too much. As long as you're not being like, "Hi, I'm Michael Stanton," and your name is Bart Johnson. Like it's totally different. If anybody ever finds you in one situation and sees you in another, people are going to be like, "What are you talking about?" That's creepy if it's too different. But otherwise, yeah, use your middle name. You're not lying. If people call you that, you know why they're calling. It's authentic. It's convenient. And look with the freelance thing that you're testing the waters here and it's okay if you do. I agree. I don't want your current employer to think you're distracted, you might be leaving, you've got this other thing going on that you care about more. If you quit freelancing, you also don't want your other professional name being floated all over the place by Google scraping it in the times of India and all those other weird websites that scrape sites. You don't want that name floating around. Or if you get some press for what you're doing freelance wise or from work, you know, then you've got these names being floated around. Once something's on the internet, it's not going anywhere. It's going everywhere, I should say. It's all over the place. It's almost impossible to get rid of it. So you're going to want to make sure that you have that separated and you don't want your name being floated around all over the place when you're focused on another job or another career, for sure. What's next?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:48:09] Hi, Jordan, Jen, and Jason. One of my best friends just told me he wants to get involved in local politics and asked me to be a character witness. My issue is there been various points in his past when he was the hard clubbing party animal as well as others, a responsible single dad and some of his social media posts from yesteryear reflect this. I've heard a few stories about people being embarrassed about posts they made six-plus years ago and wouldn't want him to go the same way. Are there any companies you can recommend who can tidy up old social media posts so that he's less likely to be embarrassed by people scrolling back through the years of social media? No clue what he's getting into. Thanks and kind regards. Asking for a Friend.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:48] Jason, what do you get?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:48:49] Well, here's the deal. Everyone should be using Tweet Delete. It's a service on a website. It's free. You can sign up for it and it basically sets a threshold of time for when your older tweets are deleted. There's another product that I recommend called Social Book Post Manager because they can't use the Facebook trademark obviously, so they go with Social Book Post Manager. That one is a Chrome extension where you can go back and in mass delete certain types of posts from your past, from Facebook without having to click through every single one. Personally, I use Tweet Delete to make sure there are no tweets of mine older than two weeks. Since Twitter is an ephemeral medium, it lacks context when you get outside of a few days' time horizon so people can, for example, take what you said about a current meme and warp it's meaning to advance their agenda. So it's an easy way to go back and kill those old tweets because they become out of context so fast because a lot of people can't see what your friends are posting and that's what your context is. Other people are just going to see what you're saying in the moment so they can take that out of context very easily. And since he's going to be a politician, other politicians can take those tweets and they can warp it to their agenda. Hands down, recommend everybody kill old tweets. It's just a way to keep yourself safe. Even if you're not doing anything, a new employer can go back and look at your Twitter feed and say, "What was he talking about there?" Even though you're talking about a cat meme, it can be taken out of context. Do you see what I'm saying?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:20] Yeah, that's, that's weird because you could be bantering with your friends and being like, "Oh yeah, whatever you do, make sure you don't vaccinate your kid. LOL." You know, like some joking thing and then it's like, "Oh he's an anti-vax guy now. Or something about vaccination. He's in the pocket of big pharma. In the meanwhile, they ignore of course the reply that you're sending to some joke that your buddy posted or something --

Jason DeFillippo: [00:50:47] Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:48] -- a year and a half ago,

Jason DeFillippo: [00:50:49] Irony does not work long-term on Twitter. You know, because you could be doing wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and you just come off as an anti-vaxxer. Nobody wants to deal with those people.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:58] No.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:50:59] Yeah. And as far as his Facebook posts go and the photos, he can surgically remove the embarrassing ones. That's easy. But they're still going to be a record out there somewhere. Somebody's going to have this stuff. I think he should definitely have an analysis done on his outstanding posts that are searchable by the public to determine his fit for candidacy. There are many services out there that will do social media, like introspection to find out if your X for B, you know kind of thing, trying to figure out where you need to be, and have your social media profile for what you're trying to do in the future. If you're trying to get a job like say with the government, there are services that will say, "Hey, you might want to remove this post, this post, and that post because you're never going to get in with you doing a keg stand in your 20s."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:48] Really there's a service for that.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:51:50] There are plenty of services. I will dig some up and put them in the show notes for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:54] That's crazy. I never knew that there was a service that would do that.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:51:56] Oh yeah. There are plenty of them. You know, it's, it's kind of like if you want to have your credit cleaned, you know, they'll go back and clean up your credit. This is the same as social media.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:06] Huh?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:52:06] Yeah. There's a lot of this out there.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:07] I might consider doing that too.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:52:10] You might want to.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:10] There's so much old stuff in there where I'm like, wait, what? I can't even remember. I was looking for a photo of me doing something interesting and I was like, "Oh, let me go back in Facebook." There are pictures of me with like girls I met at some club in London in like 2004.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:25] Yup.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:26] And I've got like a freaking -- I'm sweating and like gross and like wearing douchey clothes that were cool in 2004 when I was 24 years old. And I've got like a freaking half-Mohawk type. It's just stupid. You know, it's kid stuff. I would keep the photo. There have been so many weird cases where I would say something and then some blogger who's like, "I hate Jordan Harbinger." And will go on some forum or whatever and they dug up a 15-year-old picture of me or even more depending on, I don't know, however long I've been on Facebook and they'll post that and it's like, "Oh, look at this guy. He has a 2005 cut." And I'm like, "Dude, it was 2005 or 2003."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:53:11] Yeah, exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:13] So yeah, go ahead poke fun all you want this person deliberately scrolled as far back on my Facebook profile as they could actually go and picked like a photo of me and Tucker Max drinking beer or something was like, "Look at this idiot bro." It's like, "Yeah, 15 years old." So imagine that times a hundred because somebody has it out for you and isn't just a turd on an Internet troll forum.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:53:34] Yeah, and a lot of these services, what they'll do is they'll just put in a lot of new posts and give you a lot more stuff that shows up on Google before the old stuff and just pushes it way down the stack. That's what some of them do. But some of them will go through and surgically remove them. And you can go through in your Facebook account, if anybody that's tagged you on a photo, you can remove that tag. They still posted the photo. It's still there, but you can remove anything that you're tagged on. So it doesn't come back on a search for that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:03] I would love to find out what that service is because I should audit my social media because I think about this a lot. I lost my Twitter account when I split from the last company and I'd built that up a bunch and I was disappointed. But now I'm like, "Oh good." Because there were 11 years of tweets from me in there.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:54:22] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:23] And I was like, God dude, who every argument or like weird, funny off-color thing that I'd ever said on Twitter was in there.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:54:32] Well, here's the upside. Now it's attributed to the guys who kicked you out so they are the ones that are going to look bad.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:36] Good luck. Now I'm like, "Oh that almost racist thing that I said back then. That looks like you said it now. Idiot." Yeah. So that's funny.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:54:45] Karma is a bitch.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:46] Yeah, exactly. Hopefully, I was decent there. But yeah, there's all kinds of stuff booked in there. Now I've got like a clean history. I wouldn't mind that for Facebook as well, especially because I've got a verified profile in there. I should probably clean it up. All right. What's --

Jason DeFillippo: [00:55:00] But just remember partying is not a crime. It might endear him to his younger demographic. And I mean even right now we've got a potential candidate for the presidency who was a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow Hacker Group. You know, up and coming, politicians are going to have to deal with this stuff. Like, you know, growing up in social media, everyone's figuring this stuff out and dealing with the fallout. So I wouldn't really get too worked up about it unless he did some really bad stuff. And then maybe he's not a good candidate, but in the worst case, you know, he goes nuclear deletes all of his social accounts and starts from scratch. But that is, I don't think that's recommended.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:33] Yeah, you shouldn't do that. Then it just looks like you have something to hide and people go fishing because they're like, "Wait a minute, he just deleted everything or deleted all of his old accounts. What's on there that we need to know about?" And then there'll be a picture of you having a wine cooler from 10 years ago and they're like, "See, he's an alcoholic, he's standing next to a child. There must be something weird about it. Or why did he remove it? Maybe he's a pedophile." Like you just don't want any kind of nonsense because once there's nothing, it becomes like, "Well, wait a minute, this person's fake."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:56:06] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That old picture of him with a Zima. I just wouldn't vote for him because he liked Zima but you know, that's the way things can be taken out of context.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:14] Look, when you're 15 you take what you can get. Right.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:56:16] Exactly. Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:18] All right, last but not least.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:56:20] Hi Jen, Jason, and Jordan when hanging out with two or more people, I don't have that gene that lets me know when is the perfect millisecond to interject a thought after someone said something and before someone else responds, but after it seems like I'm cutting them off. In fact, I suck at this. What generally happens is someone says something interesting, someone else responds right away, and sometimes I'll be around people that respond for 10 minutes, at which point the subject often veers off the original and it feels weird to say so back to what you said about X. Oftentimes I will miss out on the few subjects and play a passive role in the conversation. The issue seems like I'm not assertive enough in responding, but at times I may respond too early and it seems to throw off the speaker. Also, it may seem like I'm trying too hard. My default is to wait for a proper pause, but that pause sometimes doesn't come for half an hour. I also don't have a very projecting voice, so it's easy to talk over me, which may be part of the issue. Thanks for all you do. Le Spie De La Scala is my spirit animal.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:22] I've heard this before. What I would do is take improv classes. It's really nice. It's fun. It'll teach you to be more assertive. You can take some speaking classes if you want, but improv and speaking together will make you faster, more assertive. It's really helpful and in the meantime, just put your hand palm forward in the middle of the circle or between you and the other person to show that you want to interject. You have to do it quickly or anything weird. But second nature, people will look your way and you can go ahead. It's almost like raising your hand, but people know that you want to jump in and they will naturally feel pressure to slow down and stop. But that said, you don't always want to do that every time you want to talk, it'll look a little mechanical. So I recommend honing this skill set by taking improv. Improv is great for learning how to associate freely and quickly. It's used by comedians. It's one of the reasons that I'm quick on my feet. I practiced being on live radio, doing a podcast free association. I wish I could do more of it, but a lot of the improv classes around here, they focus on performance. So level one is always really good. I might just take level one again because level one, they just teach you how to freely associate. You play these really funny games. It's really good. Level two, three, four, they're all like, okay, and when you're doing a show and I'm like, "Hey man, I'm not trying to be on whose line is it anyway, I just want to get the skills." But a lot of people who do comedy improv, they want to perform. But I would take, you know, these really simple classes, they're taught all over the place and they will make you a better, faster, quicker thinker. So go for it. That's an easy solution. Trust me. Really useful skill set, especially if you consider yourself shy or quiet.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:58] Life Pro tip. Jason, you got it this week.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:59:01] Yes I do. I got two little quick helpful tips here. The first one is to always keep a $100 bill in your wallet or your purse, somewhere that is out of sight, out of mind, and only keep it there for emergencies. I've been in so many situations back in the days when I would go clubbing or traveling where I ran out of money. The ATM, there’s none around and I need to get somewhere. I need a cab, I need to pay somebody to just give me a lift. That hundred-dollar bill comes in so handy just as an emergency fallback when credit cards don't work. Cash is king still, believe it or not. And I keep that hundred-dollar bill very tightly folded in a doggie poop bag. And the reason I do that is because if you get stuck out in weather somewhere like a rainstorm hits, you pull out that poop bag and it is like a little a raincoat for all of your stuff, your wallet, which you don't want to get drenched your cell phone, your watch, anything that can get like you know, ruined or soaked. If you have an old Apple watch that wasn't waterproof, which I had back in the day. Those two things will get you out of so many jams. If it's just like, you know it's insurance. It's just insurance to be able to have the power to get something done with just a little bit of cash that you forget about. You don't pull it out when you're at the bar and the ATM is closed and you just like, "Oh, I just need this to have a few more drinks." No, it's not what it's for. It is only for emergencies. You get that mindset and you never touch it unless you're in the ish as the kids say. And it will definitely save your bacon when you need it. I mean, I also carry a lock picking set and handcuff keys in my wallet, but that's probably not relevant for most of the audience.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:39] No, that is some nerd shit right there, JPD, for sure.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:00:42] Yeah. Oh, you've taken the survival classes with me. You know what the deal is with those.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:47] I do. Yeah. If you ever need handcuff keys. I was like, yes, finally. All right.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:53] Recommendation of the week. This is kind of funny. It's a new Netflix interactive series, which I'm surprised they haven't done this earlier because you can basically play a show as a game in a way. You make key decisions to help Bear Grylls survive on You vs Wild. So he's completing missions in jungles and deserts and stuff. It's fun to watch with kids or a date and there are eight episodes there about 20 minutes each and it's like, should I go around the alligator or distracted with a stone or should I like jump down the mountain with this vine or should I try to cross it with a log? It's really kind of fun. I feel like I'm 12 when I play that game or that show and it's quick. It's kind of a fun party thing. It's unique and novel and I have a feeling a lot of TV and movies are going to go this direction at some point.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:01:46] This sounds like the technology that they developed for Bandersnatch, The Black Mirror, choose your own adventure.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:51] Totally.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:01:52] Oh very cool. I can't wait to try to check this out because I love Bear Grylls.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:01:55] That'll be fun. Yeah. It's what they did with Bandersnatch where you get to pick a different outcome. Like, what kind of cereal do you want for breakfast and you pick, choose your own adventure style. I have a feeling it has a little bit of minimal replay value because there are only two choices, probably the same thing with Bandersnatch but it's longer but it seems like a fun idea in theory. It might get annoying with everybody trying to do it but Bear Grylls does a good job with it. He's kind of a fun watch and like I said, any kid sort of 10 and up is going to love this.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:02:26] Very cool.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:26] Again, it's called You vs Wild. It's on Netflix and we’ll link it in the show notes.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:30] 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. We always keep you anonymous, of course. And a link to the show notes for this episode can be found at jordanharbinger.com. Quick shout outs to Melissa. She loves the show. When a new episode comes out, she downloads it without even looking to see who we're interviewing, which is great. I wish everyone did that, of course, and I really appreciate that vote of confidence because I don't people go, "Oh, I don't recognize any of the names on here." The idea is Jason, me, Jen, the whole team, we find people through you, honestly, listeners oftentimes, that are going to be amazing, that don't have to be famous. You know, maybe somebody who got stuck in a Pakistani prison is more interesting than somebody who's a famous athlete and I see a lot of podcasters just trying to interview famous people or YouTubers? And honestly, snore city, these are not intelligent conversations. They're not interesting or fun. They're just kind of, "Hey, look, I have search engine results for me and this person." We try to find better content and I appreciate the vote of confidence that you know, every episode is going to pique your interest at some level. So thanks, Melissa.

[01:03:41] All right, go back and listen to the guests. David Smalley and Hal Elrod if you haven't yet. And if you want to know why my network is full of amazing people, it's because I do deliberate consistent systems and tiny habits. I'm teaching you how to do that for free in Six-Minute Networking and you can find that at jordanharbinger.com/course. This course Six-Minute Networking replaces the old course that was called Level One. It's got a bunch of upgraded drills, a bunch of techs, a bunch of new systems. I left Advanced Human Dynamics. I'm no longer doing Level One at all. People are like, "Hey, I had a problem with this thing." Don't email me about Level One. I have nothing to do with it. Go join Six-Minute Networking at jordanharbinger.com/course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at @JordanHarbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show. Jason.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:04:27] My personal website is at jpd.me and you can check out my tech podcast, Grumpy Old Geeks at gog.show or your podcast player of choice and Deliveroo.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:36] Yes, this show is produced in association with PodcastOne. This episode was co-produced by Jen Harbinger. Show notes for the episode are by Robert Fogarty. Keep sending in those questions to friday@jordanharbinger.com. Remember to keep them concise if we can. It does help us get those questions on the air. Remember, we rise by lifting others, so share the show with those you love and even those you don't. Lots more in the pipeline. A lot of great stuff coming up in the next coming months here. 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.

Jason DeFillippo: [01:05:09] If you like our show, you're going to love Off Beat with Ricky Anderson and Mir Harris on PodcastOne. Join the head of A&R for the Kanye West founded label G.O.O.D. Music and the music executive turned activist as they sit down for strange stories and offbeat conversations with some of the biggest names in music, comedy, entertainment, and more. Download new episodes of Off Beat with Ricky Anderson and Mir Harris every week on Apple Podcasts and PodcastOne.