1083: Mike Rowe | Rethinking Success in an Uncertain World

1083: Mike Rowe | Rethinking Success in an Uncertain World

This transcript is yet untouched by human hands. Please proceed with caution as we sort through what the robots have given us. We appreciate your patience!

[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional arms dealer, fortune 500, CEO.

Hollywood filmmaker or tech luminary. I, I know I say Tech Luminary a lot. There's not that many tech luminaries on the show, you know, a few and counting, but I feel like they're getting outsized play here. I'll, I'll have to remedy that. If you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it.

I suggest our episode Starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like Persuasion and Negotiation, psychology and Geopolitics, disinformation China, North Korea, crime, and Cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today.

A little something different for you. I'm being interviewed. Well, it's a conversation with, I should say, the one and only Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs Fame. We talk about. But the economy, decision making uncertainty and a whole lot more. This is actually from his show. The way I heard it, it aired several months ago if you heard it and you gave us nice feedback.

Thank you very much. If you haven't heard it, now's your chance. We're gonna replay it here. Thanks to Mike Rowe for having this conversation and allowing me to post it as well along here in my feed for you all to enjoy. Alright, here we go. With myself and Mike Rowe.

[00:01:35] Mike Rowe: Say, action or begin or, off we go.

[00:01:38] Chuck Klausmeyer: I said, gimme a minute. And you were like, let's just go. So is this a good time to announce your new show? Pass the Buck?

[00:01:44] Mike Rowe: That is not a new show. That's, Hey, um, first of all, thank you for returning the favor. We first met 20 17, 16, something

[00:01:52] Jordan Harbinger: like that. You know, that's a good question.

I should have looked this up. I came unprepared

[00:01:55] Mike Rowe: as usual. Well, the first time we met I had like, like 102 fever. I do. Came over to one union recording. Mm-Hmm. In San Francisco. Where I had to talk like this about crab fishermen. Mm-Hmm. For about three hours. And then you came in and we did our thing. And driving home, I said, I have absolutely no idea how that went.

I had already started to forget it. You know how you get in that fever state? Oh yeah. And then a couple years later you came back. Mm-Hmm. Skinnier. You're fitter, skinnier. Yeah. I was skinnier. I was fitter. I wasn't sick. And we had a great conversation. Yeah, that's right. And now here you sit at Microworks World headquarters.

I have so many questions for you.

[00:02:35] Jordan Harbinger: It's a we've come full circle. Yeah. I should have come with a fever. I'm sorry guys. Once again I'm unprepared. Don't

[00:02:40] Chuck Klausmeyer: worry. I have typhus. So you'll have one when you leave.

[00:02:43] Mike Rowe: Yeah. He's got the whooping

[00:02:43] Jordan Harbinger: cough. Yeah. How's the missus doing? Great. Sheila of course, always keeps up with your stuff.

Like she's like Matt, his dad's got a whiskey. You gotta mention the whiskey. Yeah. And went in the office and saw the whiskey, the sign bottles of whiskey. Mm. Yeah. It's a good idea.

[00:02:55] Mike Rowe: I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, I, of course I do. It's an honor to sign a bottle. Yeah. For somebody who wants to share a weed ram.

Sure. Uh, with me in, in memory, my granddad. But yeah. Man, it's a strange thing to write your name on glass. Mm-Hmm. Or paper or anything glossy. Mm-Hmm. Then hand it to people. I mean, are you dealing with that now? Have you signing autographs everywhere you go?

[00:03:16] Jordan Harbinger: Rarely. Some people will want to take a selfie and I love that.

It happens just enough where it makes me feel important, but not so much where it's like I can't eat lunch somewhere. Yeah. I'm not Shaquille O'Neal or Mike Rowe.

[00:03:28] Mike Rowe: Well, no. Uh, and I never will be. You know what's funny? I met Shaquille O'Neal. Yeah. In one union. That place where you came to interview me. Yeah.

Have you ever seen him

[00:03:35] Jordan Harbinger: in real life? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's been on the show. He's been on your show. He was on podcast one My network for a really long time. You'd just see him in the studio and you are like, so he'd see him all the time and Yeah. He is. Take selfies all day.

[00:03:46] Mike Rowe: It's foolish to say, boy, he's big because Right.

People understand that. Right. But until you shake his hand, until you like have a meal with him or something. Right. You don't understand every single part of his body, his fingernails. Mm-Hmm. Are like the size of my ears. Yeah. His fingers themselves are like forearms. His forearms are like thighs. He loved dirty jobs.

Mm-Hmm. And he came up to me the first time so friendly and he kind of hugged me, which is super awkward. Mm-Hmm. Because my head goes into like his navel. Yeah. Right. And then I laughed and I must have said something funny 'cause he bent down and he put his arm around me and he stood up. I say it that way deliberately 'cause it didn't feel like he picked me up.

Right. It just felt like he stooped and then stood again and suddenly we were at eye level and he was holding me like two feet off the ground. Like it's like Darth Vader,

[00:04:36] Chuck Klausmeyer: like Right.

[00:04:39] Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. He had these shoes. I don't know if I can mention the brand, but they're very specific kind of club. Go ahead. Tom's shoes.

Remember these cloth ones? Sure. And it's like he bought a pair and a kid in Guatemala got a pair of shoes. Yeah.

[00:04:49] Mike Rowe: Yeah.

[00:04:49] Jordan Harbinger: So he is wearing these and I go, how big are your feet? He's like, oh, size 27 or whatever. Sort of like ungodly. And I go, I'm surprised they make Tom's shoes in that size. And he goes, yeah, they don't.

So I met the guy, Blake McClusky, the founder at a party and I said, Hey, I want those. And he is like, we can't make those. Like can you make me a pair of those shoes? And he goes. The smallest run we can do is a thousand. They all have to be the same size and color. And he goes, great. I want red. So he has 1000 pairs of Tom's shoes in size 27.

So he's like, yeah, I just wear 'em. And then if they get dirty, I just donate 'em. And I'm like, well, you're donating 'em who's Yeah. Who's gonna wear them? What? They turn 'em into a planter?

[00:05:25] Mike Rowe: No. Like Yeah. Who's gonna live in 'em?

[00:05:26] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exactly. You know the old woman in the shoe? Yeah. That's the shoe I hear.

She's got a lot of kids, so That's right. It her summer home,

[00:05:32] Mike Rowe: Chuck send a built to Blake McCluskey over at, uh, Tom's shoes. Sure. Just call it a, uh, oh. How would we put this branded segment? Branded, uh, spontaneous mention. That's right. First 10 minutes. Uhhuh, uh, that went on for, yeah.

[00:05:47] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah. Done.

[00:05:48] Mike Rowe: Okay, good. Are you making a lot of money on your podcast?

[00:05:54] Jordan Harbinger: I do. All right. I think that's the polite thing you're supposed to say, right? Is that what you're supposed to say? I do. You're getting by. You buy, I'm getting by. Yeah.

[00:06:00] Mike Rowe: Yeah. What did I read? 11 million monthly downloads. Yeah.

[00:06:02] Jordan Harbinger: I mean, now the, you're kicking my ass, I'll tell you that. Really? Oh, well. We'll have to get into that, Chuck.

I'm confused on how that works. Yeah. You know how that stuff goes though? It fluctuates and then Apple makes a change and you just cry yourself to sleep. Yes. What happened

[00:06:16] Mike Rowe: in October? Because Chuck started, um. It began with, it looked like a twitch. The twitch just under the eye. Mm-Hmm. Uhhuh and then some stammering, and then the Tourettes came in.

Yeah.

[00:06:25] Chuck Klausmeyer: Like

[00:06:27] Mike Rowe: the numbers

[00:06:28] Jordan Harbinger: are now.

[00:06:29] Mike Rowe: Yeah. So like, what's going on with the numbers? So

[00:06:31] Jordan Harbinger: Apple made a change in their app, which is the majority of podcast downloads, where instead of automatically downloading the next episode of shows you like, you have to tell it, Hey, for the way I heard it, for the Jordan Harbinger show.

Yes. Automatically download new episodes. Otherwise it just says play. And if you push play it streams. Mm-Hmm. Otherwise, it's not downloading to the phone. And unfortunately for guys like you and I, and especially for Chuck,

[00:06:55] Mike Rowe: there's no one like Chuck, by the way,

[00:06:57] Jordan Harbinger: the, the downloads that was like 30% of of most people had that thing on.

Some people had 40 and 50% of their downloads go down the tubes. Younger Gen Z audiences that mostly listen on Spotify, their downloads are fine because that was already sort of pushed to like on demand, if you will. Yeah. Pushed to stream. And so yeah. But the number of people that are hearing us didn't go down.

The number of people that were getting, let's say, something automatically delivered to their house, for example. Mm-Hmm. That went down. So it's like if you had a monthly subscription to toothbrushes, it's not like less people are brushing their teeth. It's just that less people are getting, oh man, here's another one of those toothbrushes I gotta cancel.

I forgot about these. And then they put it in the pile with 30 others. Yeah. So the audience didn't decrease the amount we get paid, unfortunately did. And I'm like, oh, the CPM, the cost for the ads is gonna go up because now our audience is, no, the advertisers didn't quite follow that argument all the way there.

No. Yeah.

[00:07:51] Mike Rowe: This topic comes up from time to time and I used to worry that it was a little too inside baseball. Mm-Hmm. For the average person. Like who cares? But yeah, when you think about the number of entrepreneurs and small business people out in the world trying to make a go of it Mm-Hmm. In all these different vocations.

The thing that is relevant to me is that there's a list of stuff in your control and there's a list of stuff that's not in your control and the stuff that keeps you up at night.

[00:08:15] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-Hmm.

[00:08:15] Mike Rowe: Right. It shouldn't be the stuff you can't control. Right. Because let go, let God. Right. What are you gonna do? The sun also rises, but

[00:08:23] Jordan Harbinger: that's true.

[00:08:23] Mike Rowe: It seems like people spend a lot of time worrying about stuff they can't control. For sure. When the stuff that's right in front of you, like this is a great example too. I have yet to ask you a really prescient question and I have so many, but I'm defaulting to what I prefer to do, which is just have a conversation I can control.

How long this goes on. Mm-Hmm. Or how

[00:08:44] Chuck Klausmeyer: can you swish

[00:08:47] Mike Rowe: or how, how good or bad it ultimately is. But why do people do that? Why do we focus on the stuff that we just can't do anything about?

[00:08:55] Jordan Harbinger: Sure. So humans crave certainty, right? That's one thing that any psychology book will sort of tell you is almost the reason that people come up with these ridiculous conclusions.

We ruminate on things. Uh, we focus on what we can't control, in part because they're the things that we actually can't control. And often also, the things you can control are scary. So focusing on something you can't control is sometimes easier. But really we crave certainty and that's kinda the bottom line.

It also this thing that happened in Baltimore with the ship hitting the bridge, right? Yeah. Terrible. I. What was the first thing on Twitter? This can't be an accident. Ships have backup systems. Yeah. Look at how he steered into the bridge and then the smoke came up at the LA and it's like, no, they reported the engine problem.

They tried to get, as far as I understand, stopped traffic off. They should have got the workers off the bridge, but they didn't do that, unfortunately. But the ship didn't crash into the bridge on purpose. And also, oh, it's the infrastructure. No bridge in America is gonna withstand a 120,000 ton direct impact.

[00:09:56] Mike Rowe: At eight knots. At eight knots. I mean, that's fast. Yeah. The odds of that ship hitting that support are no different than the odds of it hitting any other space. Mm-Hmm. In the open space, right. Of the same dimension. Right. It's like it had to hit somewhere. It had to

[00:10:13] Jordan Harbinger: hit something. Yeah.

[00:10:13] Mike Rowe: And so our minds do have a way of immediately.

Tell your brain what to look for. It'll find it.

[00:10:19] Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. It's called Patternicity. Humans worry of hardwired to look for this stuff. So there's a psychologist named Michael Shermer, and he came up this example. He's been on here. Oh yeah. Okay. Love Michael. Yeah. One of his examples is, right, if you're the caveman and you hear the rustling in the bushes, you think lion or leopard or whatever, danger.

But if you're the caveman who hears the rustling and goes, huh, that's probably nothing you're done. You're not gonna be a

[00:10:40] Mike Rowe: caveman for what the gene

[00:10:41] Jordan Harbinger: pool has eradicated you or you've eradicated yourself. So we look for patterns that aren't there. And if you look on Twitter, you'll find the best examples of this, because there was one tweet I saw earlier today, and it was something along the lines of, Hmm, this ship.

Had a white lion as a flag from the country that it was flagged. And Barack Obama has a documentary where the ship is named White Lion, and also this women's volleyball team has someone on there whose last name is Baltimore. This can't be a coincidence, and it's like, actually, that's the definition of a coincidence.

[00:11:14] Mike Rowe: Sure it can. Yeah. Okay, so we crave certainty, right? I get that we look for patterns and maybe if we focus on the things we can't control, are we giving ourselves a built-in excuse?

[00:11:26] Jordan Harbinger: I think there's some of that too, although I don't know if it's consciously elevated to that level In most people's heads, it's sure if you're saying, you know, my business didn't work out because of the recession.

Okay, maybe that's true. In fact, it is true for a lot of businesses, but it could also be an excuse. I don't know if most people are self-aware enough to go, well, I'm focusing on this thing that I can't control, and the reason I'm doing that is because if I fail, I don't wanna feel bad about myself. Like that usually comes with hindsight, if it ever comes at all.

[00:11:51] Mike Rowe: Yeah, yeah. Well

[00:11:52] Jordan Harbinger: then what about uncertainty?

[00:11:54] Mike Rowe: Don't we crave that? Oh, I equally,

[00:11:57] Jordan Harbinger: I don't think so. I think humans are terrified of uncertainty. I think not knowing what is gonna happen is super scary for most people, which is why we tend to find conspiracy theories everywhere. Patterns that don't exist, connect dots that aren't there.

And. It's scary for people to, to face uncertainty. The rewards for facing uncertainty are enormous, however, so Okay. Entrepreneurs and people who aren't starting a business should probably look where there is uncertainty because there's a lot of reward there. Financial markets have uncertainty. Those guys I used to work on Wall Street get paid, I would say a disproportionate amount for the level of effort that goes into what we do.

A lot of the time

[00:12:34] Mike Rowe: you got a front row seat, right? Financial crisis,

[00:12:36] Jordan Harbinger: yeah. I was a lawyer on Wall Street in the financial markets real estate in 2008, so I was like

[00:12:42] Mike Rowe: Mortgage-backed securities.

[00:12:43] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I was doing mortgage-backed securities. I wasn't a first, second year associate. I was part of the problem, but it was like, so it's not your fault, fault entirely, right?

No, I didn't have no, just a tiny sliver of, it was my fault. It was a cog in the machine. But I talk about a front row seat. I mean, I, I was the guy at the boxing match who could touch the ring if he really got too drunk and decided to do that. How accurate

[00:13:02] Mike Rowe: was the big short,

[00:13:03] Jordan Harbinger: I would imagine that was quite accurate.

The movie itself, I don't remember all the details, but I do remember partners in my law firm going. So, uh, you guys probably heard about Bear Stearns or the other banks, the investment banks that we're all going under and I, yeah. What percentage of our business is that? Well, let's just say it's a double digit percentage of our business.

Okay. Yeah. Both banks put together, or each bank, uh, each bank, and it's like, oh, so is there work for me? Not right now. And then after a few weeks, are you certain about that? Yes, I'm certain about it. Speaking of uncertainty. Then after that, I remember coming in for a few weeks and one of the guys comes in and goes, knock, knock.

And I'm like, oh yeah, got some work. And he goes, no, I'm just coming in to say like, you don't really need to show up anymore if you don't want to, like, there's no work for you for the next several months. We'll just email you guys. And I'm like, but you're still gonna pay me and all that stuff. Yeah. But you should maybe look at other career choices because we're not sure when this is coming back.

Yeah. And it never came back.

[00:14:00] Mike Rowe: Okay. So when I talk about uncertainty, you immediately go there. Yeah. Right. Which makes sense because we're back to the category of things we can't control.

[00:14:10] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-Hmm.

[00:14:10] Mike Rowe: But I think also for a lot of people, like I think of uncertainty also as a kind of variety.

[00:14:17] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-Hmm.

[00:14:18] Mike Rowe: And I think of uncertainty as unscripted and my life is unscripted.

Mm-Hmm. This podcast is clearly unscripted in spite of That's just what I wrote you to say. Not a

[00:14:28] Jordan Harbinger: script inside.

[00:14:29] Mike Rowe: Right. And so that can be scary. Mm-Hmm. Especially if you're trying to pretend that you know what you're doing when you don't. I think we talked about this, we may have talked about the submissive posture and the importance of admitting when you're scared.

I agree

[00:14:43] Jordan Harbinger: with

[00:14:43] Mike Rowe: that.

[00:14:43] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:14:43] Mike Rowe: Right. But what if uncertainty is also variety and what if we need the certainty of knowing the sun is going to rise? Mm-Hmm. Or at least the earth is gonna spin in away that creates the illusion of a moving sun. Not to say the sun isn't moving, expanding universe. We're all moving.

But you get the idea.

[00:14:59] Jordan Harbinger: I get the idea. Yeah. So we

[00:15:00] Mike Rowe: need the certainty to know that tomorrow is coming. Mm-Hmm. Vis-a-vis sunrise and or sunset. But if the sunrise and the sunset always looked the same, if there was no variety.

[00:15:09] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-Hmm.

[00:15:10] Mike Rowe: If there was no variety in the weather, if there was no variety in the night sky, if there was no variety in the clothes we choose to wear.

Then we would, I think, probably start to really get bored.

[00:15:24] Jordan Harbinger: I agree. But also look at the perspective we're coming from. Right? I think a lot of people, well we know humans crave certainty, but entrepreneurs and whether or not you sort of identify as that, I would put you in that category. And creators for that matter.

Uncertainty's great. It's the spice of life. And we sort of e like you just did equate uncertainty with variety. And that's sort of maybe philosophical in nature, but I think we would feel different about uncertainty if we were like, gosh, I wonder if I'm getting paid next month.

[00:15:53] Chuck Klausmeyer: Hmm.

[00:15:53] Jordan Harbinger: I don't know where I'm gonna, I'm gonna feed my kid.

If you got a job and it ends, you know, like you're working in Hollywood and the movie you shooting ends and you don't have anything and you're thinking, oh, what if it takes me like three or four months? Do I have enough in savings to sort of bridge that gap? And your kids are going to college and you're thinking Uhoh, uh, I wonder if I can second mortgage my house.

That kind of uncertainty is not. Adding beneficial variety, I think, to people's mental landscape.

[00:16:19] Mike Rowe: Probably not, but because we're adaptable creatures. Yeah. Right. I mean, he and I used to have a shorthand years ago. Basically the question was, how many squares you're in November? How many squares did you fill?

Or how many squares are filled? Because most months started with 30 blank squares. And that is terrifying. If you have no safety net, it's terrifying if there's no other certainty in your life and you're just living in this completely kind of random universe, but it also builds something like resilience and hope.

[00:16:49] Jordan Harbinger: I agree with that. Yeah. Right. Of course.

[00:16:50] Mike Rowe: I mean, I've listened to a lot of what you've said over the years, and to me it just seems like the great balancing act that people are constantly trying to navigate. Mm-hmm. Is the certainty, uncertainty principle.

[00:17:02] Jordan Harbinger: It's absolutely correct. Yeah.

[00:17:04] Mike Rowe: And the headlines today, talk about our country for a minute.

What are you worried about right now vis-a-vis the level of uncertainty? And is that informing some of the, uh, the headlines and the drama?

[00:17:17] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I think it is. I mean, first of all, no surprise, and this is not going to, I don't think jar anyone, but media, big mainstream media, and I hate that term because it makes me sound like a kook on the internet, but they have to use fear-based headlines to grab attention.

And okay. That sort of worked in the eighties when you had a limited number of news outlets. But now that we're bombarded by this stuff 24 7, it's not good for our brains to be constantly worried about something and then have multiple different takes from people who are just making it up. Like the conspiracy theory about the boat, hitting the bridge, for example.

[00:17:51] Mike Rowe: Mm-Hmm.

[00:17:51] Jordan Harbinger: We don't have any sort of authority anymore, or experts that are universally trusted because the media has done a good job of shooting themselves in the foot, reloading and shooting themselves in the other foot as far as credibility. And that's dangerous because now people choose what to believe and they don't know how they're making that choice.

But really the way they are making that choice is what do I kind of already agree with? Or what do I already understand or think I understand? And that's a terrible way to make decisions. If you're making a decision based on what you think you already know. You're not learning anything else most of the time.

Mm-Hmm. Which is really bad. If you are, let's say you're a, a middling IQ like myself, right? Solid one 10, right? 1 0 5 high double digits. That's good, right? What if you're basing that based on what you can just understand? Well, that's not good either, because then I'm going, that's really complicated. That can't be right because I can't process it.

This other explanation is really simple and simplistic. That one kind of makes sense to me. I choose to believe that that's terrible because that means anybody can basically feed you something that you can understand and you decide to believe it. And we see that in our elections now. We see that in our media consumption, and now people are catering to that, like TikTok or whatever, bite-sized stuff that has no nuance because people go, oh, well I can understand that.

And also I just watched 13 of those in four minutes. Yeah. While waiting for the elevator. Must true.

[00:19:18] Mike Rowe: If people crave certainty, and of course they do. The media knows that. Mm-Hmm. So the media is very long in certainty, and that's why you have a lot of certain sounding people Mm-Hmm. Who all kind of sound the same when they tell you the news.

Right? Yeah. And then they're all doing their thing. They're all in their trope and they're all feeding that need to feel certain. But when you're certain, there's no need to be skeptical. And if you're not skeptical

[00:19:40] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:40] Mike Rowe: Right. Then you'll buy anything. That's right. If you stand for nothing, you'll what?

Fall for everything. Fall for anything. Yeah. And so I think that the country right now is really, really wrestling with this because, well, I'll just name some names. Sure. Because Anthony Fauci sounded really certain. Mm-Hmm. Because every elected official during that time sounded certain, there was a lot of nodding and there was a lot of soothing tones, and it was a kind of infantilizing.

Mm-Hmm. Yeah. That's a great word for it. That's how I felt. It was like, suddenly I'm surrounded by people. In charge of our most important institutions who are talking to me like I'm 10. What is happening with that?

[00:20:21] Jordan Harbinger: They understood correctly and unfortunately that humans crave certainty. So they couldn't come on.

I assume the decision was, Hey, what we should do is say, we think it might be this, but we're not really sure and we think masks might do this, but then we're also not really sure. But also we really need those masks for people who are like working in hospitals, right? So we should probably tell, so what they did is say, don't buy masks.

They don't do what we think they do anything. Yeah. Yeah. And then it was, Ooh, actually, now that we've ramped up production, you should really go buy those and everybody should wear 'em. In fact, if

[00:20:49] Mike Rowe: you don't, you can't come in.

[00:20:50] Jordan Harbinger: Right? And then it was, you know, we know that this is how this transmit. Well, but you okay?

But you said a different thing before, so which one is true? And they knew that if they came in with all that nuance, early people would go, oh my God, they don't know anything. Right? What do we do? They don't know anything about this. We're all gonna die. So I understand that tension. But I think they aired on the wrong side because when they had to switch horses midstream or in a different stream, I'm, my analogies fall apart all the time when they had to switch horses, they realized, oh, now we're just telling them a different thing and kind of hoping people forget.

So then when of course they had to say something really important, like, Hey, we have a vaccine, and don't worry, it's been tested. People go, okay, but you said this thing about the me, you said that, but this is going inside my body. So I don't know if I, and that created all sorts of, it's the boy who cried wolf of, as you may have noticed, conspiracy theory of this is the largest conspiracy theory of the last century, aside from, uh, I don't know, JFK almost said RFK, JFK.

Um, it's not over. We all know one or two people who can't stop talking about the vaccine. And it's like, I, I know I'm probably that guy for your audience. I swear I'm not, but you go this, your whole identity is this now. And that's because of the uncertainty. They just can't let it go. It's like they've broken their brain on this thing.

[00:22:02] Mike Rowe: Yeah. It's also attached to every other thing. Everything becomes a talisman, right? It's not just a mask. Mm-Hmm. If you're wearing one, you believe in these other things. Mm-Hmm. It's all tangential. Right. And if you're not, well, then somehow or another you're a climate denier. Right. In fact, you can just put denier.

Yes. After everything. What used to be thought of, I think as kind of a skeptical take. Mm-Hmm. You know, Michael Shermer. Well, I mean, he is a skeptic society, right. I mean, his whole worldview is rooted in Yeah. I doubt that and I'm gonna doubt it until I don't, and maybe Mm-Hmm. You can persuade me and maybe you can't.

Well, that attitude today is that just makes you a denier.

[00:22:43] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah.

[00:22:44] Mike Rowe: So again, if certainty and uncertainty get too far out of balance, then the inertia of all of it kicks in. I agree. And now suddenly nothing can be trusted over here. And. Maybe that's not so bad for knuckleheads like us, I who are podcasting and sub stacking and

[00:23:01] Jordan Harbinger: strong opinions.

Weekly held is where I'm at, right? Like, okay, I believe this, but then when I get other credible conflicting information, I change my mind and it doesn't mean that I'm some kind of moron for doing so. And I think that's the problem is we have ego attached to the conclusions that we've drawn based on these really arbitrary things.

So, and I hate bringing this back, but it's a really sort of current example. Early on it was like Covid didn't escape from a lab. That's ridiculous. And it's racist if you say that. And it's like, but there are actually a lot of lab leaks. I did a whole show on lab leaks. Had nothing to do with covid, was just about laboratory leaks.

Journalists was like, Hey, level four labs. They leak stuff all the time. And I started to see more and more and more of this. And then they did an investigation. It's like, oh, it could have happened. We don't know either way. We'll probably never fully find out unless somebody straight up admits it or whatever.

But that's fine. And I'd mentioned, Hey, I'm, I kinda changed my mind and I used to be, oh, if you think this. Then you're not looking at the evidence and now there's new evidence. And instead of people going, Hey, you know, that's good that you changed your mind based on new information. What I got was, aha, you're such a moron.

I told you three years ago that this, and I said that you also said the moon landing was fake. Okay, so like Right. Eh, broken clock twice a day. Something. Something.

[00:24:09] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah.

[00:24:09] Jordan Harbinger: And so we don't wanna do that to each other, first of all. But you shouldn't also do that to yourself. Changing your mind based on newly available evidence is something that we should all actually be doing and that almost nobody does.

Isn't that how science works?

[00:24:22] Mike Rowe: Yes. Right. And certainty is the enemy of that. Absolutely. That's right. That's the biggie. It's like the minute you feel the comforting wash of certainty come over you, whether it's the climate, whether it's your elected official of choice, whether it's, it just doesn't matter what it is, right?

But the minute you start to really feel sure, the genuinely interesting and curious person goes. What am I missing?

[00:24:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yes, thank you. If I'm a hundred percent positive about something, there has been a problem in my thinking.

[00:24:52] Mike Rowe: Yeah.

[00:24:52] Jordan Harbinger: Most of the time.

[00:24:53] Mike Rowe: So when's the last time that you really affirmatively changed your mind in a way that like you heard your mind go, oh mm-Hmm.

I was very sure and now I'm very wrong. And now, yeah, that's

[00:25:10] Jordan Harbinger: a good question. I mean, there's some things that the sort of lab leak theory stuff was one of the more obvious ones. 'cause I mentioned it on the show and so many people gave me feedback that was like, oh yeah, that's cool that you changed your mind.

But so many more people were angry, which I found surprising, but I probably shouldn't have been that surprised. Other times I changed my mind are just smaller sort of things like throughout the day and it's really hard to say if there's another good example that anybody could possibly relate to. I don't know.

I feel like I should have come prepared or found something that's a little more obvious.

[00:25:44] Mike Rowe: Well actually, like the reason I'm asking you is because I think you're really having a good time doing what you're doing.

[00:25:50] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-Hmm.

[00:25:50] Mike Rowe: That's my impression of it. Yeah,

[00:25:52] Chuck Klausmeyer: sure.

[00:25:52] Mike Rowe: Right. And part of the reason I believe that is 'cause you're still doing it.

We were having this conversation the other day, the separating of the wheat. Mm-Hmm. From the chaff in podcast Landia. Hmm. It's happening now. Right. But five, six years ago, like when we met, it was so nascent and it was growing so fast that you could really suck and still somehow find an audience. Yeah.

People were just coming to it and there it wasn't so noisy. And it wasn't so crowded. And today it's a very different deal and like I have to figure out, am I gonna put my big boy pants on? Mm-Hmm. In this space we get our share, you know, people like the show, but I do it once a week and I do it because I like it.

Mm-Hmm. And I enjoy talking to people. But you're at a whole nother level. How many shows do you do a week? Three. That's a lot for a long form. Mm-Hmm. Right. Yeah. So the reason I'm asking you about this is you've interviewed how many people?

[00:26:42] Jordan Harbinger: Oh gosh, it's probably close to a thousand over the last 17 years.

[00:26:47] Mike Rowe: And not just random Joes big thinkers.

[00:26:49] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. You're up to episode 9 69 on the current show. And I had another show before that that was 720 something episodes long.

[00:26:56] Mike Rowe: The show that we dare not speak its name. That's right.

[00:26:58] Jordan Harbinger: The show We dare not speak its name. Exactly. I don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah. It didn't exist. Anyway, change the subject. It's, yeah, the, the, uh, it's existence free. That's, I believe you brought it up. Sorry. Good

[00:27:07] Mike Rowe: point. I'm certain he did

[00:27:10] Jordan Harbinger: craving that myself about that, thinking about it. I do change my mind on a, a whole lot of things. I mean, the topics of the day are things that I'm always thinking about 'cause I'm being bombarded with media.

Immigration was one thing where a lot of people think they have a black and white sort of answer about what it should be. This is one of those onions where the more you investigate it, the more you're like, well, I. But we also have like this thriving worker account. Well, maybe we should make that legal for hard workers to, but then also this, and then people throw out these weird red herrings, like, but the drugs.

And it's like, you know how many backpacks you need to run across the border to bring in all the fentanyl or whatever we got in this country? Mm-Hmm. It's like 62,000 per year. That's how many kilos they estimate of? Fentanyl. Fentanyl. And it's like, that's a lot of backpacks. It's probably not that the way they intercept this stuff is proving that it's not coming into the backpack.

Right? Yeah. But I also understand both of these arguments on different sides, so I won't say flip flop, but it's so nuanced and people hate that stuff, man. My brain doesn't like it either, but I realize that's kind of reality. People's brains, we don't like nuance. We like to be able to compartmentalize something after having decided it and put zero brain power on it after that, for sure.

Supporting this podcast is a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Jasper. Let's talk about indoor air quality. It's one of those things you don't really think about, kinda like flossing until something makes you painfully aware of it. I used to assume the air inside my house was pristine because, hey, I live in California.

Turns out not so much. After doing a little research and testing our indoor air. I discovered that outdoor pollution and everyday household stuff stick around way longer than you think. The outside air was actually a lot cleaner than the air inside my house, which I didn't see that coming. That's why we love our Jasper air purifiers.

Jen's here to stake. This thing goes into turbo mode. One time it detected smoke from a house fire blocks away long before I ever heard sirens. And that's when it hit me that we're breathing in this stuff all the time without even noticing. And of course, like you do all these things to keep your kids safe, you phone 'em up, everything, and then you let them sleep in a room with some dirty ass air.

Now we've got these Jasper bad boys stationed in every room of the house, quietly working their magic. Now it's one of our can't live without 'em products. Right now they're running a really good deal. $400 off at the code. Jordan, you cannot get that discount anywhere else. Here's the best part. It is stackable.

So if you want to outfit your whole house, you get 400 off each unit. Head to jasper.co and use code Jordan, JASP r.co. Use code Jordan. Your lungs will. Thank you. This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. If you've ever thought about hosting on Airbnb, but felt like it might be too much work, check this out.

It's actually easier now than ever before. You don't have to do the heavy lifting yourself at all. If you're heading out on an extended trip or you have a vacation home just collecting dust, your place shouldn't just sit empty. Such a wasted opportunity. Airbnb's co-host network, our experienced local, and they handle everything for you.

Airbnb's co-hosts are pros who take care of the listing. They manage reservations, they communicate with guests. They even do onsite support. They'll create the whole experience so you don't have to worry about a thing. Plus, some of these co-hosts are fantastic with design and styling, so they can spruce up your place, making it even more inviting.

It's like having a business partner, but you don't have to be there. Let's say you wanna spend the summer working from Spain while you're far away. Your co-host is there to make sure the whole experience for your guests is seamless. Instead of leaving your place empty, let a co-host manage it for short-term guests.

No need to lift a finger while you see that income. Roll on in. Find a co-host at airbnb.com/host. If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every single week, it is because of my network, the circle of people that I know, like, and trust. I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself.

I know you're not booking for a podcast, but hey, they always say it's all about who you know. It's time to make that your unfair advantage as well. We're teaching you how to do it for free over@sixminutenetworking.com. It's not cringey, it's not gonna be awkward. It takes a few minutes a day. You're gonna be a better colleague, a better connector, a better friend, and a better peer.

And many of the guests on the show already subscribe and contribute to the course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Once again, six minute networking.com. Now back to Mike Rowe.

[00:31:04] Mike Rowe: This whole idea that two things can be true at the same time is vexing. It's vexing. It's like for me, since you mentioned immigration, you know I talk a lot about the skills gap in this country.

There's not a single construction company that I know of, and I know a lot of them. I. Who aren't behind in every single project that they're working on. Mm-Hmm. And they're behind because they can't staff up, you know, for every five tradespeople who retire to replace 'em every year, that's been going on for decades.

Well, 15, 16 years. Wow. And if you took the immigrants, if you took the illegal immigrants Mm-Hmm. Out of the equation, it would be much worse than it's Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. And so what we're left with is this really uncomfortable kind of thing. Mm-Hmm. Right. And I'm, you'll find no bigger fan of the working man.

No, of course. Or skill traits of, that's my jam. And I'm sincere about it, but there's no getting around it. It's not just a skills gap. It's a will gap. Oh yeah. And it's,

[00:31:59] Jordan Harbinger: it's funny you mentioned that and, and

[00:32:00] Mike Rowe: we're just not willing to take advantage of the opportunities that so clearly exist. Mm-Hmm. That's a real problem.

You know, I think I've changed some people's minds. Definitely. When I talk about, listen, this is not an ephemeral. Topic. This is your house, right? This is supply chain. This is where our food comes from. This is where our energy comes from. So riff on that, if you will, because I think it impacts everybody.

[00:32:26] Jordan Harbinger: Okay? So stop me if this is something that's been said on the show 8,000 times before, but, uh, stop. Stop.

[00:32:31] Mike Rowe: Okay. No, go.

[00:32:32] Jordan Harbinger: So everybody I know who owns a company, my, you know, you know, more contractors than I do. One of their chief gripes is they'll hire somebody who graduated from college or just graduated from high school to do, let's say roofing.

And after half of the first day, if it's raining, they're done. If it's sunny, they're done. Basically, if it's not 65 degrees with a nice breeze and partly cloudy, they're not doing it. And these guys will just say, okay, screw it. And they'll hire an undocumented group of immigrants who are just showing up, just roasting in the sun and getting drenched in the rain and working and then saying, call me on Sunday if you wanna finish this faster.

And it's like. This work ethic gap. I don't even know if it's something we can close. Like look, I don't think people should work 365 days a year just so they can feed their kids. That's extreme. But if they're willing to do that and somebody else is not willing to complete half a day of work, we got a gap that we gotta figure out what to do with that.

That's not sustainable

[00:33:31] Mike Rowe: and we have to figure out how to talk about it. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, Bernie Sanders put a 32 hour work week bill in front of Congress. Mm-Hmm. Last week, or maybe it's week before with no drop in pay. So this is an extraordinary thing. Mm-Hmm. Right. And when we started Microworks 16 years ago, the first little umbrella under which we all tried to come around, the first thing we could agree on was work is not the enemy.

Mm-Hmm. But it is, man work has become the proximate cause of people's misery. And I'm not saying that all jobs are pleasant, I'm agreeing violently. Mm-Hmm. With you. But it just seems like it's back to the infantalizing, it's like. We need people to save us from work so we can retire sooner. Retire from what?

[00:34:16] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-Hmm.

[00:34:17] Mike Rowe: What happens when you retire? I mean, not a single study indicates anything. Good. Talk about changing your mind about something.

[00:34:23] Chuck Klausmeyer: Mm-Hmm.

[00:34:24] Mike Rowe: If you can get the masses to think differently about the benefits of retiring, everything would change. Yeah. But that's a neat trick and that's gonna be hard to do because we're certain that retirement equals happiness.

Mm-Hmm. And we're certain that hard work leads to misery.

[00:34:44] Jordan Harbinger: Part of this is the lack of purpose that I'll, I think a lot of people have. And I understand that if you are roofing and you don't think that this is your calling, I get that. But why does that mean that you shouldn't do it at all for a few years?

Or why does that mean that you can't figure out another thi like you say, you bring your passion with you. I worked at a movie theater when I was in my teens. I wasn't like, man, I have made it. I'm making 5 25 an hour, killing it a couple times a week. I clean up barf. I scrape gummy bears off the screen that kids have thrown and stuck there.

There's other things I won't even mention on this podcast 'cause they're more suitable for an episode of Dirty Jobs. You know, these kinds of things that happen at movie theaters would shock you so many fluids. And that's

[00:35:26] Chuck Klausmeyer: on a, and in so many, that's best scenario, many surprising places. Yeah. But it's, it's

[00:35:30] Mike Rowe: incredible where you can get

[00:35:32] Chuck Klausmeyer: your

[00:35:32] Mike Rowe: fluids really.

I mean, if you're focused on it. That's true. That's true. It's amazing. But

[00:35:36] Chuck Klausmeyer: Jordan, it won't surprise us because we worked at a movie theater when we were kids, teenagers. Yeah.

[00:35:41] Mike Rowe: We each did our time at United Artists. Oh, nice. Yeah. It was one of the first multiplexes in the country. Golden Ring Mall. So yeah.

Concessions, tickets.

[00:35:50] Jordan Harbinger: Ushers, those are the glam jobs at a movie theater. Man. If you only had to touch money, you had it made.

[00:35:56] Chuck Klausmeyer: Oh yeah.

[00:35:56] Jordan Harbinger: It was on the days when there was other things that you had to touch. Sure. That was, uh, those are the bad days.

[00:36:01] Chuck Klausmeyer: It just, you know,

[00:36:02] Mike Rowe: you put a bunch of people in the dark Yeah.

And throw some suggestive images up on the screen. Yeah. You know, you reap what you sew. Yeah. What was your first job? The movie theater. Yeah. That was the first one. That was the

[00:36:12] Jordan Harbinger: first job. And

[00:36:12] Mike Rowe: what did you learn doing that job that you still use today?

[00:36:17] Jordan Harbinger: Oh man, so much. First of all, the bar is so low for what passes as good work.

And not that anyone should aspire to, just barely meet the bar. But I remember, you know, you show up on time and you clock in and you go downstairs and you get your shirt tucked in and you pick up the broom in the little, I forget what it, like a dust pan with the extended handle. Yeah. I guess it's probably just called a dust pan.

You're walking down and you sweep up the popcorn thing that's on the floor. And I remember my manager going, you know what, I like that. And I go, what? And he'd go, you're ready to work, you're clocked in and you're already doing something. You're not waiting for me to tell you. And I'm like, well, but you told me weeks ago, I just have to, you know, I'm gonna sweep the floor.

So there's this. And he's like, no, that's what I'm talking about. And my friends started working there and they would clock in and they would dilly dally in the break room and they would wander down. Their shirt would be untucked in the front, maybe completely untucked. And then they would be chatting with each other, kind of hiding in the back hallways.

And the manager would go, is your shift started? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's three 30. When's your shift start? Three. Well, okay. What have you guys been doing? Well, we did. Nobody told us to do anything. And I'm thinking like, come on guys. This is some kid stuff. And we were young, but I think everybody who owns a company has dealt with one or two of these people.

And grown adults are doing this. And I saw that at the movie theater as well. There'd be a guy in there who's 30 and I'd go, wow, he's doing the same job as me. That's maybe not a great sign. I. And they would get fired after two days. 'cause they would be sleeping in the theater. Yeah. And trying to get away with it.

Or they'd leave and come back and the manager would go, where have you been? Oh, I was here where? And it's like, they have cameras, man. And this is in the nineties, they had cameras. Now of course they know where you're, and it was just like, you guys are not doing it. And I thought, huh? So when I get a real, real job, like a adult job because I'm 16 at this time, if I show up on time and I sort of pretend that I'm the owner and what would I do if I was the owner or the manager, I'm gonna be at the top 1% of employees.

They're gonna love

[00:38:09] Chuck Klausmeyer: you. Yeah.

[00:38:10] Jordan Harbinger: That was it. You write

[00:38:11] Mike Rowe: your own ticket,

[00:38:11] Jordan Harbinger: man. And it was just like, I just remembered that going into every job that I had after that. And when I started my own company, when I was doing the Jordan Harbinger show, it's like, okay, I am the owner. No one's gonna pick up the slack.

And also I have to set the example for everyone else. And I also only wanna hire people who do the right thing when nobody's looking. That's really hard to hire for. It's impossible. It's very much impossible to hire for. So I consider myself extremely lucky 'cause my team doing the Jordan Harbinger show my team, they do the right thing when no one's looking.

I can maybe in a couple of instances over a decade and change have I been like, did you do this? Oh no. You know what? I spaced on that and I'm that you can chuck up to a mistake at some point.

[00:38:53] Mike Rowe: Tell me what happened when you left the show. That they're not speaking Spanish. Right, right. My previous. Right.

And you hung out basically a new shingle, which means you're starting from zero.

[00:39:03] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:39:03] Mike Rowe: So what did your team do at that point? Did you have to just rehire or, yeah,

[00:39:09] Jordan Harbinger: so I, it was interesting, right? Because I don't expect people to work for free. That's not a thing anybody should expect. In fact, you know those jobs where they tell you that you're all one big family, but then they treat you like crap every, everything else.

They treat you like Uhhuh. I didn't want do that. So. It's like, we're gonna treat you like family, but I'm also gonna pay you. And that's just how things are. So when I left my previous company, guys were like, can I go with you because I wanna work with you on the new thing. I had to have a really kind of somewhat humiliating talk where I said, so yes, but also I can't afford to pay you for some months.

And that sum, that number is completely unknown. And if we fail, I can never afford to pay you, so I don't want to ask you to leave. So what they did was, since they were all part-time, they basically are full-time, doing whatever you wanna count the hours. They kept their previous gig, and then they worked for me sort of after hours because they're freelancers, uh, most of them at the time.

And then they would eventually leave, or if they had savings, they'd go, eh, I'll just work with you. And I wanna say like six or seven months in my wife Jen, I go, okay, we're doing okay. It looks like we might survive. We gotta make everybody whole, we gotta just pay everybody what we would've paid them if we could afford to pay them back then and probably give them a nice Christmas bonus.

Because you know, they went out on a limb for us loyalty. And we did that and it was expensive. But you know what, it was the coolest thing ever because people basically worked for free because they believed in something that I was creating with them.

[00:40:43] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah.

[00:40:43] Jordan Harbinger: And that's the highest compliment. I think anybody can probably pay you.

But then of course there's a part of me that's like, I wonder if I could have just gotten away with, you know,

[00:40:53] Mike Rowe: there'll be no money.

[00:40:54] Jordan Harbinger: But being, being a scumbag is not exactly, uh, something, it's a skill that I have yet to build, I suppose. But it felt great to make everybody whole, man, those were like the coolest checks.

I. I ever signed, here's $36,000 for six months of work that you did that you didn't know. And I didn't say, you're gonna get paid tomorrow. I was like, just pay everyone. Wow. And people were like, whoa, I just got a bunch of money from you. Like, is this a mistake or did Jordan pass away? Is, you know, like, are you guys okay?

It was really fun. It was just a fun thing to do. It was kinda like, probably like it is when you go to Ed McMahon used to go to the person's house and hold up the giant oversized check with $10 million on it. That's kind of how it felt.

[00:41:33] Mike Rowe: Well, I mean, that's awesome. I can't, it rhymes in a weird way with your departure from Wall Street Mm-Hmm.

With your boss being like, eh, you know, maybe you, you don't have to keep coming in.

[00:41:43] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah.

[00:41:43] Mike Rowe: Maybe hoping that you still would like the whole notion of the slow No. Mm-Hmm. Is one of the great tortures in the universe, especially in an airport, right. When they push your flight 20 and then 20 Oh and then another 20.

It's funny. That's

[00:41:55] Jordan Harbinger: what happened to me on the way here.

[00:41:57] Mike Rowe: Oh man. It's just talk about uncertainty.

[00:42:00] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:42:00] Mike Rowe: I'm sure the plane's gonna take off. Mm-Hmm. I just don't know that it's gonna happen today. Yeah. And I would really like to know

[00:42:06] Jordan Harbinger: like it's out there and then they were like, all right, real talk. We're cleaning up the bathroom.

I was like, say no more.

[00:42:11] Mike Rowe: Get get it. I understand. And take your time,

[00:42:13] Jordan Harbinger: get that right. Do you need any more sanitizer? I got some in my backpack,

[00:42:16] Mike Rowe: but I wonder too, like your relationship to debt. Like how do you Yes. Feel when you owe someone, not just money, but something, because there are lots of people who sleep like a baby.

They've been at debt their whole life. They're so used to it and they don't think they're ever gonna get out of it, so they just adjust.

[00:42:35] Jordan Harbinger: It makes me feel itchy. Does that make sense? Totally. It's like an itch that you can't scratch. It's like knowing that you borrowed something from someone and they kind of want it back and it's sitting in your closet times a thousand.

When I was a first year on Wall Street, I was paying my student loans, which is always fun. You get a really nice reminder of how valuable your education was.

[00:42:55] Mike Rowe: Where'd you go?

[00:42:55] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, I went to the University of Michigan Law School and it's a good school, but it's very expensive. You get paid well on Wall Street, as you might imagine, but if you pay the minimum, your debt is gonna last till you're like 50.

And I said, alright, I'm just gonna live on the minimum and put like $12,000 a month towards these loans. And then my mom was like, well, I could help you pay off the high interest loans if you pay me back. And my thought was, I really don't wanna do that because I'll feel gross about it. And then she ended up.

Giving me a chunk. I put it towards the loans. And then I paid my mom back three times as fast as I would've paid those. I was eating ramen and my mom, this is how low the bar is for kids these days. I'm 44 now, but back then I was 24. She told all her friends, you know, I, I lent him money and he paid me back.

And her friends were like, oh my God, I can't believe it. Soly so, so old school. And I am like, well, why would you tell your friends that? That's so weird. And she's like, oh, well Peg left this money to her kid. And it never, she doesn't even come over for Christmas anymore. Right. And it's like, so my relationship to debt is I don't love it.

I understand the function of it. I had to borrow money for law school, educational debt. It was significant. I think I borrowed what you would normally pay for a home in the eighties to pay for that education. That was an, a very uncomfortable amount that nobody under the age of 30 should ever be allowed.

Well be allowed, quote unquote, to borrow. Because you just don't understand how much money that actually is. Oh my God.

[00:44:27] Mike Rowe: You, you'd better be certain.

[00:44:29] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

[00:44:29] Mike Rowe: you'd better be damn certain you're on the right path. Exactly. You, you, I mean, it's a big deal, but,

[00:44:34] Jordan Harbinger: so this is an ROI calculation, right? I went to, and people don't think of it this way, but law school is a trade.

We don't necessarily label it as such, just like medical school, because people go, oh, well if you're not banging a hammer on something in the, in the beating sun or biting the testicles off a lamb, it's not really a trade, but you know, law and medicine, it that is, you pretty much know you're gonna get paid back.

Now that's changed a little bit with law and possibly also with medicine. But you have a fighting chance in heck of paying that debt. If you are borrowing $170,000 for an English literature degree, and this is where you stopped me 'cause you talked about it on the show a thousand times, you might as well buy a lottery ticket because one of those two things, they have an equal chance of paying off college.

You might as well might borrow a

[00:45:16] Chuck Klausmeyer: hundred thousand dollars and buy a hundred thousand dollars worth of lottery. That's right. Yeah.

[00:45:21] Mike Rowe: At that point, I mean, it's not just a bad idea. There are plenty of bad ideas and you know, people make mistakes, but that bad idea is packaged as an investment in your future.

Right. It's not even discussed as debt. I mean, the pressure we put on kids to borrow more money than they're ever gonna be able to pay back when they are so profoundly uncertain. Absolutely. Of what they're You're a podcaster by way of a law degree. Mm-Hmm. With a pit stop in Wall Street. There's no major for that.

[00:45:52] Jordan Harbinger: No. As you know, studying creative stuff, I. You could just as easily have not done any of the stuff you've done with the educational background that you have. Right. I got a

[00:46:02] Mike Rowe: communications degree.

[00:46:03] Jordan Harbinger: You could still be selling Flex Ladders on home shopping network or whatever it was. You can see. Yeah.

[00:46:08] Mike Rowe: Yeah, man.

The health team. Infrared pain reliever. That's right. God damn. So how then do you think about debt forgiveness, student loan forgiveness. Oh, with

[00:46:18] Jordan Harbinger: the current sort of, yeah. Well look, is it good to figure out a way to make sure that people aren't crippled by debt? Great. But the problem is this does not solve the problem that we have.

Correct. The problem is college has become a country club where they compete based on amenities and the the prowess of the football team or the sports events that you have and how many pools they have on campus, instead of, Hey, this is going to equip you to get a better job. I made my decision based on I was gonna go to the cheapest law school.

There was one that offered me a full ride and they were very generous with it. And I said, great. I'm gonna gonna take a free education. That sounds great. My dad had me call another lawyer, and this friend of his was like, Ooh, but if you get into Michigan, you can get a much better job. I didn't know that.

I just thought they were all kind of created equal. And I said, how much better? And she told me what people on Wall Street make. And I was like, all righty, this is how the investment pays for itself. So I understand the value of not going into your life when you're 24 with owing more money than you're gonna make in the next decade.

Yeah. Of disposable income. However, the problem is college costs way too darn much, and then you get educated for a job. As you say, that doesn't exist. That's the problem. So if we're gonna take a trillion dollars off the table and put it into something, how about making education sustainable in STEM and making it so that those people can get an education in that and incentivizing people to do that.

What we've done instead is just gone. Oh, go ahead and study whatever useless crap you want, and we're just gonna kind of bail you out later. Maybe.

[00:47:49] Mike Rowe: What about the incentives too? That's terrible for the universities. Mm-Hmm. I mean, how is forgiving a trillion dollars in debt going to encourage universities to lower their tuition?

Exactly.

[00:47:59] Jordan Harbinger: Now all they're going is, man, we had free government money before, but now it's free for us. And it's, we can sort of sell it as, Hey, it's gonna be free for you too, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. So you might as well spend as much as possible,

[00:48:09] Mike Rowe: and we might as well charge as much as possible

[00:48:11] Jordan Harbinger: and, and we can double our tuition.

[00:48:12] Mike Rowe: Oh, and by the way, Harvard, uh, 52 billion endowment right now. Mm-Hmm.

[00:48:17] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:48:17] Mike Rowe: $52 billion.

[00:48:19] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, but that's on, on

[00:48:20] Mike Rowe: paper. Mike, that's just on

[00:48:22] Jordan Harbinger: paper. Yeah. As a wall streeter, I would say paper sounds good to me. Sounds good to me. That works. We take paper around here.

[00:48:28] Mike Rowe: Pass the paper. What did you learn? On Wall Street, if anything that was as beneficial or more than those lessons learned, scraping up the unmentionable hardened fluids from the floor of darkened theaters.

[00:48:42] Jordan Harbinger: It was really the power of relationships. And I know that sounds corny, but the truth is, the partner that made the most money was never in the office because as it turned out, he brought in all the business to the firm, and so he was more valuable outside the office than inside the office. And that was the gig that I wanted.

I was like, how do I, they call 'em rainmakers. It was like, how do I bring in business? Because that just blew my mind. I was like, do you work from home? He's like, well, sometimes, but really, it's like he's playing what? It was a squash, juujitsu golf. And I'm thinking, but where's the work taking place? And he is like, I don't worry about billing 2000 hours a year because if I bring in a client every quarter, I get a fraction of that money.

And I was like, this is like, he's like a salesman. And he's like, yeah, I'm kinda like a salesman. He. For the firm and that just absolutely blew my mind because I'd go in there on Sunday to to show my office off to ladies I was dating and be like, yeah, I work in the skyscraper near World Trade number two, and there'd be people in there at 10:00 PM on Sunday, 10:00 PM on Saturday.

And I'm like, oh crap. What's he doing here? He's working. Dave wasn't even there on Tuesday at noon.

[00:49:44] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah,

[00:49:44] Jordan Harbinger: he was never there when we tanked, when that firm tanked in 2008, I remember I had a job at SiriusXM doing my show on satellite radio. I'd see him in the elevator and I'd go, oh, hey, you work? He is like, yeah, I'm a partner of it.

It's called Sun and Shine as a different law firm. And I thought, wow, you brought your book of business. You ended up maybe, possibly with a raise or at least an equal level kind of place at this other firm. And all these guys that were there on Saturday night trading time for money and billing hours, and that was their thing.

They retired early because they didn't have anything to fall back on. And I thought, okay, I. Relationships and connections and having people know, like, and more importantly, trust you to do the right thing and do a good job. Your reputation was like, it's like an insurance policy that you can't buy with any amount of money.

And that has lasted with me my whole life. It's like integrity again. Doing the right thing when the, when no one's looking, when no one's looking. I almost have when the lights are out. That's, it's a different podcast also, also important. It's very difficult to look when the lights are out. That's right.

[00:50:44] Mike Rowe: Unless you're in a darkened theater, scraping up fluids,

[00:50:47] Jordan Harbinger: stop it. Stop it. Just stop it. You gotta get in between the cushions. That really stayed with me forever. Not the fluids, the power of relationship that really stayed with me forever. And even now, somebody comes to me for help with something. I will introduce them to, to somebody that can help them with that particular problem.

Give a little bit of my time. You know? And I know people always have, they take issue with this. They're like, but I can't just help other people all the time. I have to look out for myself and. It's hard to kind of explain this to somebody who's young because I didn't get it at that point either. Yeah, you are looking out for yourself when you're building strong social capital.

You're investing in your network, you're investing in other people. You are looking out for yourself because if you give help and aid and advice and consult without the expectation, I should say, the attachment to anything in return, it doesn't matter if 99 out of those a hundred people never help you with anything again, because when you're really in it, the one person or the 10 people that you, that come outta the woodwork, those could be life-changing opportunities.

[00:51:45] Mike Rowe: Do you worry, you're in the advice business, you're coaching essentially, right? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. I mean, that's your real gig, right? Uh,

[00:51:52] Jordan Harbinger: sometimes I give advice on Fridays, uh, feedback. Friday episodes Tuesday, Thursday, I'll do an interview with a brilliant personality such as yourself

[00:52:00] Chuck Klausmeyer: too kind.

[00:52:00] Jordan Harbinger: And, and on Sundays we do Skeptical Sunday, which is where I say like, Hey, I.

Bottled water. What's the real deal with this or this kind of particular program? Like we'd sort of debunk junk science or Mm-Hmm. Or get into something like timeshares and it's like, look at how these work.

[00:52:14] Mike Rowe: So you bad changed people's minds? Yes. I'm assuming Schermer was a Sunday guest.

[00:52:18] Jordan Harbinger: Those are kind of like scripted with a collaborator who does a lot of research.

[00:52:22] Mike Rowe: Yeah.

[00:52:22] Jordan Harbinger: Schermer was a regular guest where I read his book and then had him, which book? Explain. Oh God, what was it? This is a couple of years ago now. Why people believe Weird. I think it is. Why people believe weird thing's. The one that's the one that got me in. Yeah, that's a big one. That's what I mentioned earlier, patternicity and how he was, yeah, that was like a Schirmer thing.

I believe.

[00:52:37] Mike Rowe: So do you worry about, not that you would give cookie cutter advice? Mm-Hmm. But you have a big audience. Yeah. And what's really true and really important for somebody to hear at any given moment might be really antithetical to somebody else who's in the same room. It's

[00:52:52] Jordan Harbinger: true.

[00:52:53] Mike Rowe: So like advice is a, you know,

[00:52:55] Jordan Harbinger: it's quite specific.

[00:52:56] Mike Rowe: It is very individualistic. But you're not podcasting to individuals. You're podcasting. That's

[00:53:02] Jordan Harbinger: true. You're

[00:53:02] Mike Rowe: broadcasting.

[00:53:03] Jordan Harbinger: I look at my relationship with the listeners as, in many ways, as a lawyer would look at a relationship with their clients, one fiduciary duty to do the right thing. If you ask me, Hey, do you use this product that you advertise?

I have to be able to say yes. So I unfortunately for my bank account turned down a lot of sponsors where I'm like, this is hot garbage. I am not going to endorse this. And I'm sure you're, we have, you've done the same thing.

[00:53:28] Mike Rowe: Yep.

[00:53:28] Jordan Harbinger: So, and unfortunately, that costs a lot of money because you know, there's a lot of stuff that's willing to pay out the nose for some capsule that says they're gonna regrow your hair.

And I'm not putting that in my body, so I won't endorse that. Also though, when somebody writes in and says, I think my sister is going to join this cult, or they're stuck in a multi-level marketing scam, I give that person direct customized advice, and we put it on the show. You'd be sur surprised, maybe you wouldn't be.

But I was surprised at how many people have a roughly analogous situation in their lives, right? When you have an audience of a certain size. There's a thousand people that have a sister who's joining a multi-level marketing scam. And maybe the minutia are not quite the same in terms of the circumstances, but the general advice that you give, even though it's very specific advice for that person, applies in many ways to those same situations.

And so I look at that as my relationship. I know Mike is a big fan of the free market and to honor that, here are some commercials. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by Progressive. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming. Like when your favorite podcast is playing, the person next to you is talking and your car fan is blasting all while you're trying to find the perfect parking spot.

But then again, sometimes multitasking is easy, like quoting with Progressive Insurance, they do the hard work of comparing rates so you can find a great rate that works for you, even if it's not with them. Give their comparison tool a try, and you might just find getting the rate in coverage you deserve is easy.

All you need to do is visit Progressive's website to get a quote with all the coverage you want, like comprehensive and collision coverage or personal injury protection. Then you'll see Progressive's direct rate and their tool provide options from other companies all lined up and ready to compare. So it's simple to choose the rate and coverage you like.

Press play on comparing auto rates, quote@progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust progressive, progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states and situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. This episode is sponsored in part by the defender.

We all have those big goals that seem just outta reach, right? But the truth is that's what keeps us moving forward. For the people who embrace challenges and explore their way, there's the defender. The defender is built to handle whatever comes its way with legendary capability on road or off. It's engineered with a tough, rigid body, tested to the extreme and built with durable, lightweight architecture for strength and confidence.

But it's not just about ruggedness, it's an icon reimagined with a design that feels modern, yet honors. Its adventurous roots. Plus, there's a defender for every kind of explorer from the defender 90 to the one 10, and even the one 30, which seats up to eight people. So whether it's just you or the whole family, there's a model for your journey.

If you're ready to embrace the impossible, the defender is your perfect partner, beyond capable and ready to go wherever you're headed Next, build your defender@landroverusa.com. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is to take a moment and support the amazing sponsors who make the show possible.

All the deals, discount codes and ways to support this podcast are searchable and clickable over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. You can also ask our AI chat bot, which is sort of always new and improved, but it's definitely for real new and improved this time. That's over at Jordan harbinger.com/ai. And hey, if you can't find something or the AI bot's giving you guff or it's just not working for you and you can't find it, email meJordan@jordanharbinger.com.

I am happy to surface those codes for you because it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, for the rest of my conversation with Mike Rowe,

[00:56:49] Mike Rowe: I wrote about it in my book. Mm-Hmm. But the business of being conned, the whole Madoff thing. Mm-Hmm. As a Wall Street guy. Yeah. That must have really chapped your ass.

And I've been in multi-level organizations. I've made some money, like

[00:57:01] Jordan Harbinger: multi-level marketing organizations. I

[00:57:03] Mike Rowe: have Really? Yeah. I sold. There's a company called NSA and it's not the National Security Agency, it's the National Safety Associates. And they make water purifiers and they make all different sizes.

These little thermo size things. They make big ones for your house. Mm-Hmm. But I think they were outta Nashville somewhere in the south and they, there's a huge organization and it's all built on a pyramid. Mm-Hmm. But I like the product. There was a lot of chlorine in the water in Baltimore. Mm-Hmm. You know, and I mean, you could really smell it.

You smell it. And this was just a simple, it's like Michigan. Yep. Simple charcoal filter with a little silver stuff added to purify it and whatnot. Anyway, it made my water taste good. So I just, I got into the organization just to retail the product. 'cause the wholesale difference was significant. Sure.

And I made money doing it. Mm-Hmm. And then some friends came in and they made some money, but. Yeah. You peel back the layers and there are a lot of people who really are just moving thousands of water purifiers from one garage to another. That's right.

[00:57:59] Jordan Harbinger: And if you do the math on an MLM, I've done whole episodes about multilevel marketing.

Yeah. If you do the math after like X number, like a single digit number of layers, you just run out of people on earth. Yeah. That you can sell this thing to quickly,

[00:58:11] Mike Rowe: very quickly. The airplane game.

[00:58:13] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yes. Oh, the airplane game. I've heard of this too. Yeah. Oh yeah. And it's just, you think, who's doing this?

What kind of nonsense is this? And they're preying on desperate people in many ways.

[00:58:22] Mike Rowe: Well, in many cases, but not dumb people in a classic sense. Hmm. Greedy people for sure. Yeah. Impatient people,

[00:58:29] Jordan Harbinger: that's for sure. Yeah, for

[00:58:30] Mike Rowe: sure. People who can tolerate huge levels of uncertainty. Yeah, for sure.

[00:58:34] Jordan Harbinger: I will say one thing that really disillusioned me for the multi-level marketing thing, uh, there was the math, right?

The math didn't work. What really caused me to investigate it though, was when I. Guys would write in and go, Hey, I love your show. I run this company. And I'd look at it and I'd go, oh, it's multi-level marketing. It's not for me. And they would go, all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're actually gonna put you at the top of this thing.

Yeah, yeah. And all these people are, and I go, but I isn't the whole thing, like, you have to recruit. And they're like, but you don't have to do that. And I go, all right. But all the people that were at the top before, they had to do all that work. Right? And I'm just like, above them 'cause I have this large audience and they're like, exactly.

And I thought to myself, if you can just do it like that. And it's totally unfair to those people. That's not really honest in any way, shape, or form. No, of course not. I'm just getting paid for doing nothing. And they're like, oh, but you're not doing nothing. You're lending us your credibility. And I was like, ah, that's really gross.

I definitely don't wanna do that.

[00:59:26] Mike Rowe: Yeah,

[00:59:27] Jordan Harbinger: that's the problem is you're gonna use me. Yeah. You said the quiet part out loud. Yeah. You're gonna use me to scam other people. That's like the worst thing I could possibly do to my reputation. Speaking of the power of relationships is the worst thing you can do for your reputation.

[00:59:39] Mike Rowe: Well, look, I mean, last thing I wanna do is make unnecessary problems for us, Chuck, but Oh, oh geez. Well, look, I make my living in advertising. Oh, we got,

[00:59:49] Jordan Harbinger: well, same here.

[00:59:49] Mike Rowe: I mean, I sold out before I had anything to bargain with. QVC was the ultimate, and I got my start in TV on a 24 hour. Commercial, I understand the transactional reality of, of things.

Right. And I, I personally find it adorable when actors will refuse to associate themselves with a, who was it? I think it was Bill Peterson who's great. Who did what, great actor years ago. And I like NCIS or one of those shows. Mm-Hmm. He's in a shot and the Chevy pulls up. Oh,

[01:00:21] Chuck Klausmeyer: right, right, right, right, right.

And the

[01:00:22] Mike Rowe: camera actually tilts down just a little bit to hit the logo. Mm-Hmm, sure. On the grill. And Bill was like, what the hell's going on here? And they was like, well, it's nothing Bill, sorry. He said, you know, Chevy's a sponsor and Mm-Hmm. And he's like, well, I'm not gonna have anything to do with this.

And it was like, well,

[01:00:38] Chuck Klausmeyer: that's weird.

[01:00:39] Mike Rowe: Yeah. But you know, the sponsors are paying the network and we're paying you and Mm-Hmm. And look, if that's too much, you know, I mean, we can, we'll do the shot again. But he is like, no, I'm not gonna be anywhere in this shot if that truck's in the shot. Right. So Integrity.

Right. But come on man, you're in commercial television.

[01:00:56] Jordan Harbinger: Right? I don't understand his argument.

[01:00:58] Mike Rowe: Right. Because the difference between commercial being in commercial television, being in a commercial is no different. Sorry. Mm-Hmm. It's not. And so it's interesting where you make your stand.

[01:01:09] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah.

[01:01:10] Mike Rowe: And in podcasts, Landia, I've struggled a little bit because it seems like the entire ecosystem is fueled by a certain kind of call to action.

[01:01:22] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. There's direct to consumer.

[01:01:24] Mike Rowe: That's right. Marketing. And like in seconds you'll hear an ad and I'm gonna invite you to go somewhere and there'll be a promo code like Mike. Mm-Hmm. Now I don't mind it because people need to know how they're doing. But I'm curious for you, like how did you navigate that world?

And I know you only work with sponsors that you use. Yes. Same here. But how do you find them? Do you approach them?

[01:01:45] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, my network does all that podcast one does all the sales. I mean, brands also approach me and say, will you do this? And. I would say it's 50 50. I have a little nice little carve out where I can do direct deals with certain sponsors at a certain volume.

A lot of the ones that don't go through my network are also like, Hey, if you do this, we'll pay you a commission on this, and I'm not fully comfortable with that. Yeah. One because you lose sales if they don't use the code Jordan or whatever, but two now, they can't tell if I'm telling the truth about the thing because I have to sell the thing hard to get 'em to use it.

If you pay me a flat fee and somebody doesn't go and buy that level of insurance. Okay. I mean, sorry that didn't work for you, but I got another sponsor in the pipeline. Sure. No skin off my nose. But if I only get paid, if I tell you that this pill is going to do something to your another regions,

[01:02:28] Mike Rowe: because

[01:02:28] Jordan Harbinger: it did it for mine.

Because it did it for mine, even though I didn't take it. But you're offering me a lot of money to say that I did. I draw the line on things like that.

[01:02:34] Mike Rowe: Good for you.

[01:02:35] Jordan Harbinger: Got kidnapped a couple times. I did. Yeah. That's always fun.

[01:02:38] Mike Rowe: Yeah. Third time's the charm. I've been

[01:02:40] Jordan Harbinger: twice so far, knock, knock.

[01:02:41] Mike Rowe: Chuck's Hayden that I'm opening this door this late in the show, but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, did you learn anything from getting kidnapped other than it's probably not great.

Yeah, you avoid it.

[01:02:50] Jordan Harbinger: It's funny. The first time, this is kind of right up your alley, I think the first time it was in Mexico and I was 20 years old. I got into a taxi that turned out to, it was either a real taxi that was kidnapping me or a fake taxi that was kidnapping me. Didn't really sort that out at the end of the day, but the only reason that I ended up not probably getting either taken to a bunch of bank ATMs to withdraw money and or chopped up into little pieces in a basement in Mexico City was because.

There were no mobile phones at this time. It was a year, 2000. I mean, people had 'em, but I sure didn't. I was 20 years old, right? Cabby didn't have it. So I didn't distract myself looking at social media, I remember looking out the window and going, am I being kidnapped right now? I can't open the door. The guy won't stop the car.

I'm pretty sure I'm being kidnapped right now. And my my mind goes, well, this has never happened to you before. Why would it be happening now? Well, that's not really a good argument. Brain

[01:03:39] Mike Rowe: pattern. Brain.

[01:03:40] Jordan Harbinger: And I thought, I should probably do something about this. Try to open the door. It doesn't work. You know, convince the guy to stop.

It doesn't work. If I'd had my phone with me, I would've gone, ah, I'm just gonna look at Instagram for the next 20 minutes. And then when they stop, I'll figure it out then, because this is uncomfortable. And now whenever I don't want to think about something because it's uncomfortable, or I don't wanna do this sort of internal math or the soul searching, or whatever it is that is required, I find myself reaching for my phone or wanting to call someone or checking my email and the, and I go, oh, I'm doing that thing.

Where I'm avoiding this uncomfortable feeling because I have to make a real call here. That's my signal to leave my phone at home and go for a walk and go, okay, I need to work this thing out in my brain. I need my brain to have no choice but to do this. And you make some pretty difficult decisions doing that.

Whether it's letting someone go or signing a big deal or having a third kid or whatever it is. If you just distract yourself constantly, which our brains love to do right then we will never be able to to make those decisions properly.

[01:04:46] Mike Rowe: How'd you get outta the car?

[01:04:47] Jordan Harbinger: What happened was, like I said, he wouldn't stop.

I couldn't open the door 'cause he had trimmed the lock so that when you locked it, it fell below the window and you can't get your fingers there. I don't know if this car had a child lock or if he'd installed something where just the handle was disconnected. So when he finally stopped, and I knew we weren't where I was supposed to go, 'cause I wanted to go to the center of Mexico City.

There's lights, there's a presidential palace in a statue. This was a neighborhood with center block houses with no roofs. Half the time. So when he stopped, I said, don't get outta the car. And I was 20 and all I was doing was eating carne asada and working out at the gym twice a day. And this guy was probably 50 something and all he was doing was sitting in his cab and eating food, junk food.

I slid over behind him and I put my arm between him and the door and he didn't notice that. I said, don't get outta the car, just drive somewhere else. 'cause I knew this was the place where no one can hear you scream. Yeah, I'm like this. Nothing good happens here. He's gonna go out and get his friends, or I'm gonna get dragged out.

Then he made a fast one for the door because again, he didn't know my arm was there. And so I just leaned my chest up against the back of the seat and reached this arm around his nose with my forearm and this arm around his mouth with my, and I just squeezed as hard as I could and he eventually passed out.

And then choked him out, the choked the backseat. I choked him out through a car seat, which actually I've tried to sort of reenact this with friends, like, Hey, the, the, just for fun, I've never, car's not moving, never in the car with you, Chuck. Can I get a ride back to Chuck? Yeah. Quick

[01:06:05] Mike Rowe: ride. That's how this episode ends.

[01:06:07] Jordan Harbinger: But then I still couldn't get outta the car, so I have to figure out how to do that. So I opened the door and I tried to squeeze between these two seats, the passenger seat and the driver's seat, and I have to push this guy out of the car and then I try to drive the car, but it's a stick shift. And uh, it was also an old car.

So not only is it a stick shift, which I wasn't used to at the time, but every old car has a trick, right? Like, oh, you gotta wiggle the clutch this way. And if you do it up and down instead of left and right, the thing won't shift. And when you're vibrating with adrenaline dump in a conflict situation and you're in Mexico City and you don't know where you're going anyways.

Yeah. So I took the keys outta the car and just chucked them so that when he wakes up in 30 seconds, he can't just drive after me and run me over. I ran and ran and ran at least I would say, a mile before hitting a major ish road where of course nobody's gonna stop because I'm this white dude with short hair in Mexico City.

And at the time I think I had like a blonde streak in my hair 'cause it was 1999 or 2000. That was cool. So, and I'm wearing like Banana Republic Chino. Was it? Was it

[01:07:09] Chuck Klausmeyer: cool? Mm,

[01:07:09] Jordan Harbinger: thanks Jock. Okay, is that recording? Do we know? We'll, we'll find out later. And I'm wearing like Banana Republic Chinos and a blue button down shirt.

And I'm sweating through this thing. Sure. 'cause of anxiety and the fact that I just ran a mile. So people are driving by and they're like, you can just almost hear him go, hell no I'm not. No this guy not, not out here. And then finally this guy stops and he is like, what are you doing? I said I got kidnapped by a taxi.

And I was like, I'll ride in the trunk. Just get me outta here. And he didn't want to. And that's how you got kidnapped. The second that's,

[01:07:44] Mike Rowe: this is not your day, gringo. This is not your lucky day.

[01:07:49] Jordan Harbinger: That's funny. I man, that's good. Chuck, you're on fire, man. Um,

[01:07:54] Mike Rowe: oh God. I wish this was recording. Be Yeah, if only we'd hit record on this podcast.

[01:07:58] Jordan Harbinger: The guy didn't make me ride in the trunk. I got in the car, turned out to be a doctor, and he is like, are you hurt?

And I said, no. And I said, take me to the police. 'cause he is like, where do you want go? I was like, the police. He was like, let me explain something. You don't wanna go there. You just told me that you possibly killed a cab driver and you're foreign and this guy tried to kidnap you, but you're not totally sure and you don't know if he got up or if he's still laying where you put him.

I don't think you wanna go to the cops and tell 'em that story. Additionally, this is Mexico. It's very possible that that guy either was a cop or that the cops know about this and that they're just gonna drive you back here. Your best case scenario is getting arrested for whatever happened. Your worst case scenario is, so he goes, well, if I'm you, just get outta here.

And I was like, all right. So he drove me to a metro station. I went back to where I was living, packed all my stuff, and I left and moved. I've never been back to Mexico City, if this is 24 years, hence through the podcast and doing the Jordan Harbinger show. I've, I've met like the DEA liaison to stuff and I'm like, can you check something for me?

Is my name showing up in any kinda databases of things in me? So, thankfully not, which hopefully means the guy just woke up and was like, wow, that was the wrong guy to nab. And that's the end of the story. Wow.

[01:09:13] Mike Rowe: You dodged the bullet, obviously.

[01:09:15] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Maybe literally in fact in

[01:09:17] Mike Rowe: this case. Yeah. So do you think of it often?

Does it inform conscious decisions today?

[01:09:22] Jordan Harbinger: Well, I would say with the phone thing, the distracting myself from difficult decisions. That's the sort of daily takeaway I would say. When I get into an Uber, I'm not like, huh, does this door on, can I tuck and roll Right. If I need to. Right. Because it's a, we're in a different place.

The app knows where I am, there's safety things and usually the lady driving, Consuela driving the Uber is not in a position to probably fight me off. Yeah. To

[01:09:46] Mike Rowe: don't, don't judge me if it ha, you never know. That's so,

[01:09:49] Jordan Harbinger: I don't live in fear because of that, and I don't think anybody should. But I will tell you when I, I've been to Mexico since after I've made sure I wasn't gonna end up getting arrested at the airport.

And I do use like. A driver that I hire, that's a person who is trusted by somebody else. I don't just like jump in random cars like you do when you're 20. Yeah. And hope that it's actually a taxi.

[01:10:09] Mike Rowe: Yeah. Back when you thought you were truly bulletproof that and it'll never happen. It'll just never

[01:10:13] Jordan Harbinger: happen to me.

That was one of those moments where I was like, oh, I'm not the main character in whatever movie I think this is. Hmm. I could actually die.

[01:10:21] Chuck Klausmeyer: Yeah.

[01:10:21] Jordan Harbinger: I remember this very thought where I go, you know when you think you're gonna rise to the level of your expectations, oh yeah. That's not really what's gonna happen here.

You're gonna fall to the level of your training or habit. And if your habit is reaching for the phone and going, I'm probably not getting kidnapped, that would be weird. No. Who gets kidnapped in a car? That's what's really gonna happen. So I had that moment where I was like, no skydiving. Probably should be really careful about walking around dangerous areas at night.

I grew up in a sort of uncomfortable way. I think that weekend I.

[01:10:53] Mike Rowe: Well, this is how we land the plane. We, and where we began with the incident that probably did more to inform your thoughts on uncertainty. Mm-Hmm. Than anything else. Because even in a foreign country that Patternicity, that Schirmer talks about, it's so rooted in us that even though we're surrounded by new things, Mm-Hmm.

It's still never gonna happen to us. That's right. It's never gonna happen. And when it does, you're right. You're not the star of the show. Well, or maybe you're not the hero,

[01:11:24] Jordan Harbinger: it makes you think, huh, okay. So if that happened to me, maybe I should not smoke things or eat bad things all the time, or drink too much.

Because if that can happen to me, that means all these other negative outcomes that weren't ever gonna happen to me,

[01:11:37] Mike Rowe: anything are on the table. Every single thing is always on the table.

[01:11:42] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You can be certain of that.

[01:11:45] Mike Rowe: Listen, I mean, I feel terrible not asking you about your second kidnapping experience, but when you come back on the show That's right.

We can say which you're gonna do. Yeah, absolutely. We start there. We pick up where we live there. I would love that. We'll start there. That's what we call tease my Friends. By the way, how many podcasts have you been a guest on at this point?

[01:11:58] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I should figure this out. I actually have no idea. It's gotta be in the hundreds.

Obviously this is the best one, but I don't know the number. Be

[01:12:06] Mike Rowe: serious. How are we doing? Good. I mean, my feeling is, 'cause again, this is not the big rock in my world, but I'm right. I still struggle with this. Like, you've got such sides, you've got sides on your podcast, you've got a purpose. Mm-Hmm. And I think I kind of do.

'cause I kind of tried to have a conversation about work ethic and debt.

[01:12:23] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I

[01:12:24] Mike Rowe: tried to slip that in there.

[01:12:25] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I like that.

[01:12:26] Mike Rowe: But fundamentally, it's either a conversation or it's an interview.

[01:12:30] Jordan Harbinger: This is a conversation which I appreciate. I do conversational interviews and I don't know, I haven't really gotten into the philosophy of like, is this more of a conversation or more of an interview and people who write in have different opinions, right?

Sure. Aside from that whole maybe not hitting the record thing, I think this went pretty well

[01:12:45] Mike Rowe: and the bowel movement you had, and I didn't want to be too specific, but Yeah, someone's gonna, you were gone break enough him up with a plunger, right? So it's big boy in there right now. Taylor, when you get back, could you, there's a plunger and just, we got a harbinger in IL two.

Big harbinger. Yeah. Look at the size of that. A harbinger.

[01:13:03] Jordan Harbinger: Um, I would, this episode sponsored by, um, probably shouldn't say what we're gonna have for lunch fiber. Oh, that's, it's Chipotle folks. It was,

[01:13:15] Mike Rowe: it's a short term rental.

[01:13:19] Jordan Harbinger: I would say your side hustle is my main, uh, stable of income. So that must be nice for you.

I'm still waiting for my TV show on discovery.

[01:13:28] Mike Rowe: Hey, you know what I mean? Anybody can get one. That's what I, that's what it looks like. I what I'm telling you. It ain't that hard. It ain't that hard. Hey, you were terrific. Much. Thank you for coming by. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Really good fun.

Chuck. We're gonna have to let you go. Oh, thank you. Alright. Not this week. Maybe next week, folks. Damn it. Tune in and see what happens. See you. Bye.

[01:13:51] Jordan Harbinger: You are about to hear a preview trailer of our interview with Mike Rowe, host of Discoveries, dirty Jobs, and returning the favor on why the advice follow your passion is complete.

bs

[01:14:02] Mike Rowe: Follow Your passion as a bromide is precisely what 98% of the people do who audition for American Idol. And they're lined up thousands of people who have been told. If you believe something deeply enough, and if you want something bad enough, and if you truly embrace the essence of persistence and your passion, if you let your passion lead, you stick with it.

Well, following your passion is terrific advice if the passion is taking you to a place where opportunity and your own set of skills will be able to coexist. Passion is something that all of the dirty jobbers that I met possessed in spades. They just weren't doing anything that looked aspirational, so it was confusing.

Took a guy in a plaid shirt sipping a cappuccino. That doesn't make sense. Well, guess what? Neither does a septic tank cleaner worth a million dollars.

[01:14:57] Jordan Harbinger: That guy had a million dollar

[01:14:58] Mike Rowe: business. I actually counted him up once. I could be wrong by a couple, but I put over 40 people that we featured on Dirty Jobs as multimillionaires.

Passion isn't the enemy. It's just not the thing you want pulling the train. But look, I don't say don't follow your passion. I say never follow your passion, but always bring it with you.

[01:15:23] Jordan Harbinger: For more with Mike Rowe, including a behind the scenes look at some of his shows and why we shouldn't view a blue collar career pursuit as a cautionary tale.

Check out episode 2 64 right here on the Jordan Harbinger show. Once again, thanks to Mike for having this conversation and my friend Chuck over there, his producer. You guys are awesome, and thank you for letting me post this on my own feed. I know. I really appreciate that. I love this conversation. All things Mike Rowe will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com.

Advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter wee bit wiser. I'd love it if you check it out. The idea behind the newsletter is to give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes.

It's really a quick read. We do that on purpose and if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six Minute Networking as well over@sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn in this show. It's created an association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends. When you find something useful or interesting, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about.

So if you know a Mike Row fan or somebody who would love this conversation, definitely share this episode with him. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.