340: What Jobs Will Exist in the New Economy? | Feedback Friday

Transcript for What Jobs Will Exist in the New Economy? | Feedback Friday (Episode 340)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:03] Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host Jordan Harbinger, and I'm here with producer Jason DeFillippo. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. If you're new to the show on Fridays, we give advice to you and answer listener questions. The rest of the week, we have long-form interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, to thinkers and performers.

[00:00:35] This week, we had Ozan Varol. He discussed how principles of rocket science and science, in general, can be applied to business and life. And I think you'll really appreciate the way he thinks about problems. I don't want to say backwards, but maybe with the end in mind among other unique methods of thought that I think are very practical and useful for those of us that are trying to solve problems in our own lives and in our own businesses. We also had one from the vault with Michele Rigby Assad. She was a spy deployed abroad and she's got quite the story or set of stories and I enjoyed hearing about those and I think you will too.

[00:01:07] I also write every so often on the blog. The latest post is about how to stay productive under quarantine or of course in this lockdown, but I've been working from home for 13-plus years. Jason, you've been working from home for 20-plus years.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:01:20] Yeah about 25.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:21] So, I wanted to do this piece based on some of the advice we talked about last time. We did a Feedback Friday about working from home. Because there are so many pieces online about how to work from home, and they are clearly written by people that always work in an office and then Googled other things about how to work from home. Or have been working from home for five days and they're like, "I've found that I need to get dressed in the morning." It's like, okay, that's a good tip, but there are about 20 other things that are probably more important than that now. It's a lot of armchair quarterbacking. Look, this is black belt work-from-home stuff, or at least brown belt work-from-home stuff. So we put that into a piece and posted that on the blog at jordanharbinger.com/articles. So make sure you've had a look and listen to everything we created for you here this week.

[00:02:02] Of course, our primary mission here on The Jordan Harbinger Show, we want to pass along insight, whether that's from our guests or from us. We want to have conversations directly with you, and that's what we're going to do today and every Friday here on Feedback Friday. I just want to place one brick in the structure that makes up your life and that's what this podcast is about. You can reach us at friday@jordanharbinger.com.

[00:02:23] By the way, I want to congratulate everyone on getting a PhD in epidemiology in the past three weeks. Have you noticed that Jason? Everybody's a virologist now.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:02:31] You don't have to tell me, man. You don't have to tell me.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:33] People are like on WhatsApp groups and they're like putting in some -- what are those like Latin, those Greek symbols? What's like the mu coefficient of this virus? And I'm like, "Don't worry about that. Just stop going to Chipotle for lunch every day."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:02:46] Yes, seriously, just stay home and read a book.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:48] Yeah. Don't worry about melt-blown fabric for DIY mask filtration systems. Just stop going to the grocery store every three days and buying toilet paper.

[00:02:57] Yeah. Well, I'm not sick of working from home. I'm not sick of staying in the house. I'm sick of armchair quarterbacks. Oh man, Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:03:07] Hey, Team J. The world has been changing rapidly due to the technological advances and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic organizations have been trying to keep up and some have been lucky enough to operate mostly online and digitally. As a prospective graduate seeking to enter the job market, are there any particular skill sets you would recommend I gain to stand out in the job market? Also, what sort of industries do you believe will now more than ever be needed in society? Thanks. Planning for the Future.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:33] This pandemic has been a forcing function for many companies to create more robust online systems wherever possible. In other words, since they didn't have to do this before, a lot of companies that have been really lagging behind like, "Oh, should we get our meetings up and running virtually?" "Nah, we don't really need to do that because the only person that's missing is somebody who got pregnant or is out sick and they're just going to dial in on our crappy speakerphone." But now that everybody is at home, companies have had to go, "Oh, okay, I guess we'll work on this virtual teleconferencing system that everybody's been talking about for 10 freaking years already." So it's going to cause many industries to stop using humans where robots might be more resilient. That's the other sort of prediction that I have.

[00:04:14] A lot of people are out of warehouse jobs and manufacturing jobs. The thing is, that's tricky. I think a lot of people, maybe laypeople, think, "Oh, we can just automate this. We can automate that." You'd be surprised at what can be automated, but you'd also be very surprised at what cannot be automated. It's really kind of counterintuitive a lot of the time. Right now, companies that would be doing well would be the ones where they're most automated and most able to work remotely. I mean, you could probably do a lot of car manufacturing just over the internet, but there are other parts of putting panels on cars and making the interiors and stuff that just isn't done by robots anywhere. It's done by workers, and you're not really going to automate that anytime soon, at least not efficiently. If you run a company that develops software, you can probably do almost everything you were doing before from home. In fact, you might even save money on office space and office rent.

[00:05:05] If you're in manufacturing, though, as I mentioned before, you might be kind of screwed. If robots do 99 percent of the manufacturing, you might be okay, but that one percent is pretty crucial. Nobody wants to buy a car without an interior. And you've got to get the cars to the right place, and sometimes that requires you to drive them there. And also, I'd like someone to test the car. I'm just going to throw that out there. I'd like someone to just take that thing for a spin for a couple of miles and make sure the wheels don't just fly off.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:05:29] That would be nice.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:30] That's kind of where I'm at with cars.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:05:31] Seriously.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:32] When I was younger, my dad worked for Ford before he retired. And he had to put demo miles on cars and he was on team Mustang for a while because that was, I guess like, "That was where all the cool kids work," towards the end of their careers. All the like 60-year-old dudes driving around orange Mustang, Cobra GT convertibles. So every day or every few days, we had another Mustang, which was kind of awesome, back when I was 16, 17 years old because obviously, I wasn't supposed to drive it, but how do you think I learned how to drive people? I learned how to drive in a pumpkin, orange Mustang, Cobra GT convertible.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:06:04] Now you don't drive at all.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:06] And now I don't drive at all, right, exactly. But if you want to bulletproof yourself for the future, either program, create, design, maintain or control these automation systems or these online communication systems. You might not be an autoworker or you might be an autoworker now, but that's not to say you can't learn how to create -- Jason, what are those giant robot arms called that take huge half-ton door chassis things, lift them up and slam him down like they're nothing. You know what I'm talking about?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:06:35] Detroit killers.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:36] Yeah. Is that what those are called?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:06:38] No, I don't know. They just killed all the jobs in Detroit is what I was thinking.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:42] There those huge like robot-mecha arms,

Jason DeFillippo: [00:06:47] Yeah, those big robotic arms are what they are.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:48] You got to fence them off because they don't have sensors, so if you walk next to one, it'll just hit you in the head and you die or get severely injured.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:06:55] People have been killed doing that by walking in the wrong spot. I remember a worker in the Volkswagen factory in Germany got killed by one about two years ago I think.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:03] I mean, they just have a crap ton of force and they don't really go like, "Oh, someone's pushing against this. It's not an elevator door." So if you learn how to build those, make those, control, those -- what's the analogy I'm looking for? It's the picks and shovels thing, right? During the gold rush, the people who made the most money, supposedly -- this is apocryphal of course -- but the ones who sold the picks and shovels, most people made nothing because they were just panning for gold and they didn't make squat. It was the people who sold the picks and the shovels and the equipment that almost guaranteed got rich. That's the business that you want to be in now. Control, maintain, design, create whatever the systems that are going to create and enable, I should say automation versus trying to figure out what jobs have not yet been automated.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:07:43] Right. We talked about this on Grumpy Old Geeks a lot. Like the jobs of the future are basically going to be robot mechanics.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:48] Yeah, exactly, robot mechanic or like robot design improvements and marketing, of course, because there's still going to be human decision-makers that say like, "Hey, these are the robots we want and because I'd like this colorful brochure with a thick paper or whatever, you know, it looks great on my iPad 27."

[00:08:05] I also think trades will become more important as the economy mercilessly crushes people who have loads of student debt but are mostly unemployable because they studied something that makes them unqualified for pretty much every job. If you're wondering whether to go to college right now, I'd suggest going to a trade school unless you have a very firm idea of your path already. Trades and yes, law, medicine, those are trades. I'm talking about plumbing, electrical, coding, network engineering, any engineering for that matter, et cetera. All that's going to stay in demand for the foreseeable future. Of course, you know, AI, blah, blah, blah -- it's going to destroy everything. Got it. No plumbers getting replaced by AI anytime soon. At least not the guy who shows up to your building and fixes the leak. There's no robot that's going to do that anytime soon.

[00:08:50] We're building a house right now. I know great timing, by the way. And the bottleneck has always been that the drywall guys don't have enough workers, so they got to postpone the job for a couple of weeks. The roofers don't have enough workers. The plumbers don't have enough workers. The electricians don't have enough workers. So there's two guys doing a four or six-man job. Yes, these are hands-on manual labor jobs a lot of the time, but these are skills you can fall back on anytime. So if you become a journeyman plumber or electrician and you go, "You know what? I want to go back to school." Go ahead. You're still going to make a hundred grand a year doing that job while you go to school in the evening. Plus you get to learn on those jobs while getting paid apprenticeships. Those are still a thing and they're very useful and you're going to learn a real skill that's probably not going to be automated anytime soon. Believe it or not, legal work is much more likely to be automated before, I think, electrical work and plumbing.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:09:38] Yeah, and HVAC as well. My neighbor, he started out with one van.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:41] Oh HVAC, good one.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:09:42] He started out with one van doing HVAC work. He now has three vans, and he also has a new house in his backyard. He built a second house behind his house and two brand new Maserati's in the driveway. So it pays.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:53] Yep. Yeah. HVAC is a thing, man, especially commercial HVAC. Because there are so many regulations and all of them are expensive. And I know what you're thinking, "Well, I'm just going to call around," so you're going to call 20 places and they're all going to be busy until July. If it's like February, right? And there's going to be one guy who can do it in May, and you're going to be like, "Oh my God, fine. Fine, I'll take it." There's so much demand and it's, as the economy goes up and construction goes up, the demand for these goes up and as the economy goes down and demand goes down, all this crap still breaks, so you have to fix it and you can also move around if you need to. I've heard of guys in these various trades getting schlepped off to Dubai for some massive construction project and then coming back with like 200 grand.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:10:38] Yeah, they do a six-month project and then take six months off.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:41] Yeah. Yeah. It's not going anywhere. And if you've already graduated and you have a degree, but you want to make yourself more marketable, the best thing you can do is get experience and also make sure that you're great at building relationships and connections. I mean, that's Six-Minute Networking. That's why we created that. That's jordanharbinger.com/course by the way.

[00:10:59] Also don't be afraid to help the business do things that maybe aren't your core competency from the university. For example, a company may have hired you for IT support or for marketing or sales or something like that, but if you know how to set everyone up with online collaborative tools, secure video conferencing, you might carve out a niche for yourself that didn't exist before. That's going to make you much more valuable than before. Then if you were just the new guy in the marketing department during an economic downturn. You were first on the chopping block and then instead they laid off everyone else and they said, "Hey, well, you know, we're going to keep you around, but we're going to shift you to official -- let's make sure everyone has an updated version of Zoom and we don't have guys Zoom bombing us and also you figure out how to do Google Docs and then make sure everyone can get in the Doc." That could be your new role, and I know that that sounds easy to a lot of people who are, let's say under 40. If you're working in a company with a bunch of 40, 50, 60-year-old people, they need someone who gets how that works, can send them the links in an email that they can click on, get in the Docs, change the sharing permissions in real-time because you're having a meeting and Joe can't get in. That's going to be someone's job now. That was IT support before if your company has that, but if you're working for a small, medium-sized business and IT support is either outsourced or doesn't exist, that could be a great niche for you to be in. You might still be the marketing guy, but you might be so much more valuable than that, and I would start there because these skills that come second nature to a lot of people who graduated from college three, four or five years ago or less. People have no idea how to do this. You know people in companies that have been working there for a long time, they have no clue how to do this. You'd be surprised how many engineers have no clue how to use a lot of this stuff. So that's a valuable role. Jason, you were talking about cybersecurity roles.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:12:47] Yep. Don't forget cybersecurity because they have 100 percent employment rate right now and they need butts in those seats as fast as they can get them. That is a massively fast-growing opportunity right there. So I would definitely check that out because that's not going away anytime soon.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:02] So stay nimble, folks. "Skate to where the puck is going, not just where you think it is right now," as Wayne Gretzky once said.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:13:12] This is Feedback Friday. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:16] This episode is sponsored in part by Podia. There's never been a better time to launch an online business. A lot of people who are working from home now are forced to do so, or they're just taking their regular brick and mortar online. And from firsthand experience, I can tell you that one of the best ways to earn money from your expertise is by selling online courses, downloads, and memberships in any other thing you want to supply online, which is where people are shopping right now. The easiest way to do that is with Podia. Podia is an all-in-one platform that lets you sell courses, downloads, memberships. It replaces half a dozen tools for many creators by putting your products, payments, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and more, all-in-one place. Jason, tell them where they can try Podia.

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[00:15:32] Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. And if you'd be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and review on iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really helps us out and helps build the show family. If you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Now, let's hear some more of your questions here on Feedback Friday.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:58] All right, Jason, what's next?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:16:00] Jordan, I've just landed a new job and we'll be starting later in April. I feel very lucky to work in a counter-cyclical role. The job will be remote until COVID-19 slows down and it's safe to go back to the office. This will be a first for me not going to the physical office on day one. What advice do you have for networking in getting to know the team at a new company while being remote? Thank you for your time and cheers to the new beginnings and career growth. Signed, How Do I Bond in a Pandemic.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:26] I think this is a pretty simple answer, honestly. I think what you can do is look, people up on social media, look them up in their company directory if they have a bio or something on the company website. Look that up, read it. Maybe we take some notes and put them on a Sticky, so that you can see them either on your desktop computer or literally on paper, so that when you're talking with them, you can know things about them without having to go back to the bio or back to their Wikipedia or back to their social media. Make sure you know everyone's name and what they look like, of course, so that you can address them by name on the calls. And Jason, you had a pretty good idea of just looking them up and trying to schedule some one-on-one time. Why don't you throw that out there?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:17:02] Yeah. I would just say do a quick one-on-one Zoom call and say, "Hey, I'm new to the organization. I'm so glad to be here. I can't wait for us to meet in person. Until then, what do you think I'm going to be best at? Where can I put my energy and is there anything I can help you with? And can you just give me a lay of the land on how everything works around here? Because I'm not going to be available in the office to just walk over and answer questions. Just give me a quick rundown." Just take five minutes. And that way you can have a one-on-one chat with them, get to know them, learn their face, learn their name. And so when you do get into the office for the first time and everybody's back at work. It'll be like, you know, you've been there forever.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:37] Yeah. I think that's wise. Get everybody to give you a little FaceTime so that you're not just the new guy in the meeting that never talks.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:17:43] Yeah. You're just another name on an email list instead of somebody with a face and a personality.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:47] Right. That gives people an opening to give you suggestions later. So if you do the one-on-one Zoom call and it's five minutes long. They say, "No, no, just glad to have you here. I don't really have any feedback." Later on, they can give you feedback because I sure as heck wouldn't give some random dude feedback if I had it. If I'd never talked to them before, I wouldn't be like, "Hey, new guy, Tim here. You're really blowing it in meetings." You know, I would never do that. I would just be like, "Uh, okay. I guess, he could be better." But if they called me beforehand and said, "Give me the lay of the land, tell me if I can improve on anything." Then I might send the guy a quick email after our meeting and go, "Hey, you know, when you get called on, you need to be prepared. Everybody gets called on in meetings, especially marketing or especially the new guys, so make sure that you kind of know what's going on." Or, "Hey, we can totally tell that you're typing. We can tell because you're not really focused and we can see your hands moving. So don't do that. The manager hates that." Those kinds of tips are going to be career-saving potentially for you. So make sure you reach out to people, know a little bit about them, know their names, and then yeah, try and get five minutes with them on Zoom. Even if you can't because they're super busy. See if you can even just go back and forth on email at the very least to open up a channel of communication. And good luck. Good thing, you're in a countercyclical role.

[00:18:54] What would that be, Jason, what do you think that means? Is that like somebody who works at the unemployment office that's counter-cyclical?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:18:59] I have no idea, actually. I was trying to figure that out myself, so maybe he can let us know what that is in a follow-up email.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:06] I'm curious. I guess that means somebody who works somewhere where during an economic downturn, they're more busy until it gets busy. That's what I'm taking from it. That's what I'm taking from it. I haven't really heard that. Yeah. If sales are down, maybe he works in a return department for some expensive equipment or something like that. Who knows? All right. What's next?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:19:24] Hi, Jordan and Team. I pay all my bills with a credit card and pay off the balance at the end of the month. That's about $7,000 a month. Should I still pay off the full balance to avoid finance charges or should I hold onto the cash? Since we're in the middle of a pandemic. My fear is that credit cards will soon lower credit limits and I'll be without credit and cash. I'm very grateful for your insight. Thank you. Concerned About a Cash Crunch.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:47] I asked our finance manager about this, so to explain what's going on here. This person pays for everything with a card and is thinking, maybe I should let the balance hang so that I have cash in my pocket instead of going down to zero cash, paying off the card, risking them shutting off the card, and now, "I'm broke and have no recourse." So you definitely want to be conscious of cash, but on the other hand, you want to be very wary about the interest, especially in interest on a credit card because a 15 to 30-percent interest rate could just compound out of control extremely quickly. I would maybe see if you can cut the interest rate in half by calling them or you put half of your expenses on the card and keep half and pay the rest in cash.

[00:20:27] Conscious of your cash is key here. If people don't have revenue coming in, you've got to find any source of revenue, whether that be a business loan, the stimulus. Minimize what's flowing out, but definitely be wary of that 15 to 30 percent interest rate.

[00:20:41] If you can, let's say it's American Express, call American express and say, "I'd like to move this balance. I'll pay it off now I've got the money, but I want to, instead of using a card, move this into a line of credit because I want the option of carrying the balance without getting penalized heavily." Call them up, say you've been paying off for X number of months, years, whatever. "I want to protect myself, even though I have the money now," and say, you can prove the funds, show your bank account, print off a statement that shows that you have it. Ask if they can move it into a bucket that maybe charges five to seven percent interest instead. This actually works really well because the company wants to get paid there. Contrary to popular belief, they're not out to be like, "Huh, you missed it, we're going to charge you a massive amount of fees and interest because we're out to get you." They know you're just going to go broke and never pay, so they want you to pay a little bit of interest instead of just never paying the balance off or never paying the other interest. Jason, isn't something like this happened to you a while back?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:21:36] Yeah, back in 2008 with the housing crunch. I had three American Express cards and I woke up one morning and all of my credit lines were cut in half with no warning, nothing. It was just like, "Hey, we noticed that we need to do this right now for no reason whatsoever." I'm like, "Okay, I've paid all my balance. I've always been a good customer and you still do this." I was like, "Yeah, we're doing this for everybody. Sorry." That's it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:59] Yikes.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:22:00] So that kind of thing does happen. So it is a valid concern.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:03] Yeah. That's scary because then suddenly the method of payment that you have for everything is just not working.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:22:08] Yeah. And it's your safety net too. That was my safety net because I'm a contract employee, so sometimes the checks don't come for a while, so I need that buffer on my credit card to be able to buy groceries and things like that while I'm waiting for checks to clear from deadbeat clients who are taking three months to pay. So once that comes in, then I pay off the cards and the cycle repeats again. I use it almost like a small business loan to pay payroll. It's kind of what I use them for. And so when that went away, when half of that went away, it was lots of ramen for a couple of months there or actually probably two years until everything snapped back.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:40] Wow. That's scary especially for people who are dependent on these cards. So make sure you work with your lenders, work with your credit card companies. If they're inflexible, you can either transfer the balance or just apply for a different card before it really hits the fan because right now -- look, I know it's an economic downturn, but credit card companies pay a lot to acquire customers. If they're not treating you right, just move along to somebody else.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:23:04] We'll be right back with more Feedback Friday right after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:08] This episode is sponsored in part by HostGator. I don't know about you, but there have been many times when I wanted to throw my computer out the window when trying to build my website and then I found HostGator, my technological soulmate. HostGator is a convenient and accessible website-building and domain-purchasing service. Not only do they make the job of website building super easy with drag and drop feature, they've got one-click WordPress installations and an easy to use control panel and tons of perks with their hosting plans. I know a lot of other website hosting services make you pay for fun extras, but HostGator doesn't do that. With every plan, you get unlimited email addresses, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, plus free SSL certificates, advertising credit, WordPress blog tools. It's the best goody bag ever. And if you ever find your old self wanting to throw your computer off your balcony again, HostGator is there to talk you down, 24/7 365 support. 45-day money-back guarantee if you aren't happy. So visit hostgator.com/jordan to get up to 62 percent off, hostgator.com/jordan.

[00:24:08] This episode is also sponsored by SimpliSafe. With all the uncertainty in the world, feeling safe at home has never been more important, especially now that we're there 24/7. SimpliSafe home security is the 21st-century security system. They're longtime friends of the show and for good reason, SimpliSafe has made it easy to finally get comprehensive protection for your home. There's no technician or salesperson that needs to come and disrupt your house. They're not going to be drilling landline holes in the wall. You don't need to pay an outrageous monthly fee or sign a two-year contract and get some 90s crap installed in your house, set yourself up in under an hour. Everything's already paired. Stuff works together normally. It's all futuristic looking and your home is protected 24/7 with emergency dispatch for break-ins, fire and more, and it's 50 cents a day. It literally is 50 cents a day. SimpliSafe did get the best overall home security of 2020 from US News and World Report. Jason, tell them where they can check it out.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:25:02] They can check it out at simplisafe.com/jordan and get free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee. That's simplisafe.com/jordan, S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E.com/jordan for free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee that simplisafe.com/jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:20] This episode is also sponsored in part by NetSuite. What companies like Ring, Hint and Tecovas I'll have in common? They all use NetSuite to accelerate their growth. So NetSuite is like a dashboard that has finance, inventory, HR, customers, and more all-in-one place. It works on your phone. You can run your business from anywhere, even if you're working from home, which all of you pretty much are right now. NetSuite by Oracle has all the tools to turbocharge your growth. You get a full picture of the business. You don't have 17 different dashboards you got to log into to get a picture of what's going on. NetSuite customers grow faster than the S&P 500. This thing is startup fuel. It's also a very established enterprise level stuff. A lot of people are using this and it looks awesome. It's really something that I thought would have existed before, and NetSuite seems to have just really cornered the market on this. So definitely check this out if you've run a business that is growing, a growth company. They are the number one cloud business system trusted by over 20,000 companies right now. It's pretty much the last system you're ever going to need. Jason, tell them where they can check out NetSuite and get their insights.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:26:20] Schedule your free product tour right now and receive your free guide. Six Ways to Run a More Profitable Business at netsuite.com/jordan. That's netsuite.com/jordan, netsuite.com/jordan for your free product tour in your free guide, Six Ways to Run a More Profitable Business.

[00:26:37] Thank you for supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. Now back to the show for the conclusion of Feedback Friday.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:52] All right, Jace, what's next?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:26:54] Hello, J Team. I love the company I work for. There are 11 of us, including the owner, so it's tight-knit and very much a family. While we don't make a fortune and we don't have benefits, our owner gave us two-weeks paid time off during this pandemic so we could focus on staying healthy and not have to worry about the bills. At work, I'm treated like a human, and I can't say the same about many other jobs I've had. I could go on and on about the esprit de corps, family attitude, love and camaraderie but I'll get to the point. I may be very happy here, but I don't make a fortune. Last week, a friend of mine called to chat. While we were catching up, he told me about the company he's working for. He's a journeyman plumber, makes over a hundred thousand dollars a year, full benefits 401k the whole nine yards. All things I'll never have at my current job. He then told me that they would be looking for an apprentice soon. He said he knows how hard I work, how smart I am, and thinks I would be a good fit for the job. A job that would provide me those same benefits that he has in just a couple of years. To me, this seems so cut and dry, but I can make an equally compelling case for either side of the coin. I love every aspect of my current job, even the not so fun part and could consider this job a childhood dream come true. On the other hand with the apprentice position, I would be well on my way to financial independence. There are two things, in particular, that guide me to this new job. One, I would be making triple what I'm making now and two, I would have health insurance. Both are things I won't have where I'm at. I'm turning 26 this year, so I won't have health insurance without a change of employment. I'm not worried about retirement. I have a healthy 401k and have several other assets in my portfolio. I could go on and on with different pros and cons for either side and still get no closer to helping myself come to a decision. And well, I don't have to make the decision now, I would like to have every credible opinion I can when the time comes. Thank you for your opinions, insights, and experience. I hope all of you are safe and healthy in these trying times. All the best. Possibly Pursuing Plumberhood.

[00:28:48] So Jordan, this ties in nicely to what we were just talking about.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:51] It does tie nicely into the whole plumberhood situation. It really is impossible for me to make this choice for you. You do need to obviously weigh the costs and benefits of making more money. And that's obvious. Most people do this wrong though. Follow Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So the first question you ask yourself is:  Will this make me more secure than I am right now? In other words, health insurance, money for a rainy day, a healthier retirement. It sounds like it will make you more secure than you all right now. Now you might not need that security at this point because you're doing okay, but the problem is when you get older, is there upward mobility? And we'll get to that in a second. The second question is:  Will this make me more competitive? Is this fun job with great people, but no benefits? Is it teaching you a ton about some field that will allow you to move upwards someday, or is this kind of the top of the mountain and you're probably never going to get a raise and you're certainly never going to get insurance, et cetera? That's a problem. Three, then and only then ask: Will this make me happier? Happier than you are now in your current line of work. Is it going to be the same? If it's less interesting to be a plumber, but it's much more secure and you're going to need that security, that's the key if you're going to need it. Then I would say take it. If you hate it and you don't need the money, you can go back to doing something else.

[00:30:07] It's easy to take an opportunity and then decide you don't like it later on and then go back most of the time. It's unlikely that this company that has no benefits and low pay is going to say, "You can never come back." It's not really that sweet of an offer for most people, so it's not going to be that competitive. Becoming a journeyman plumber and getting an apprenticeship that's a little bit trickier. So I would say, unless you really hate the idea, go for it. My gut here says you won't know until you give it a shot. I can't imagine plumbing demand decreasing anytime soon as I mentioned before. To the right person like me, it would probably be an interesting gig. These are skills that you can take with you later on as you grow into your 30s as you start a family. That's something to consider as well.

[00:30:48] When I was 26, 27, I didn't have a care in the world. When I was 36, 37, I had stuff going on. I had a house. I was married. I was having a kid. Like life gets much more complicated. The last thing you want to do is find out you don't have health insurance and that you don't have enough money to pay the bills. In simple terms, take happiness over money, but you got to take a better look at the money if the next gig is something you can get yourself interested in. If the money's great, but the job stinks. Move on. I learned from doing real estate finance law that some jobs just are not worth the money no matter how much they pay you. Is that what plumbing is for you? Or will this be something you learned to love that kicks off the rest of your life and provides for you for years to come? There's really only one way to find out. Also in this economy, again as I mentioned earlier on the show, you might want to dig into plumbing because the other job you're in right now, that might not even be around in a few months.

[00:31:39] Something tells me whenever anything is really low paid doesn't have benefits, those people don't really have job security, right? There's a reason that it's low pay because it's probably low value. No benefits, it's because they're not required to give you any rights. So it's very easy to get laid off during an economic downturn. But again, pipes are breaking no matter what the national debt is or the rate of hiring or the unemployment rate. People are always going to get clogged toilets and you're always going to have buildings that need new pipes, period. So I think it's just a safer bet.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:32:09] I have a friend who's a plumber who helps us around here when things go wrong because we had a pipe burst back before Thanksgiving last year. I don't know if I talked about that on the show, but we had to have our whole house redone. He loves plumbing because it's problem-solving for him. He comes into a place and what's the problem today in every house is different. So for him, he enjoys the problem-solving aspect of it. You know, he knows his craft very well. So when it comes to a new challenging thing, he loves it and he's been doing it for 15 years. I know he didn't go to school for that, but he stumbled into it and is happy as can be.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:41] I think another good idea is not only to ask your friend what the job is like but maybe shadow him for a couple of days. I say a couple of days because if you shadow for one day. You know you start a little later, he picks you up, do some jobs, you go out, you have a nice long lunch. He tells you about the job, wrap up a little bit early because you're kind of dead weight. But if you shadow him for two or three days, you're going to be like, "Wow, we are stepping in a lot of turds. You know, we're dealing with a lot of stinky situations. We're in a lot of people's bathrooms or we're in a lot of dealing with a lot of commercial managers that aren't nice to us or whatever." You're going to get a much more realistic feel for the job and it's easy to put up a nice front from your friend for the first day that that's what the job's like. But it's kind of like take your kid to workday. You remember that, Jason? Do you ever do that?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:33:24] Uh, no. I remember --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:26] You didn't do that?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:33:27] My situation was different. I didn't really have anybody that I could take to work with, but all the other kids did. And it was always interesting.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:32] Yeah, it was interesting, but I remember going to work with my dad and it would be like, all right. Yeah, you're there for a couple of hours. He's letting you play on the computer systems that they have at Ford. Then you go see the assembly line and he points out how everything works, and then you go to Pizza Hut for lunch and you have a bunch of pizza, and then you go back to work and your dad's like, "Look, I can't do a whole lot with you here." And then you go home at three o'clock. So that's not a real day at work. A real day at work is getting up at the crack of dawn, going down to Ford, eating really quick lunch because you have a ton of stuff to do and sitting there and doing a bunch of checklists and paperwork or whatever the hell he was doing. I don't know. I was too young to understand. Like that's the real thing. You want to get the real thing. You don't want to get the take-your-daughter-to-workday experience. You want to get the full Monty. You want to get the double dose, the real dose anyway, and then you can properly start to evaluate whether or not this is going to be for you.

[00:34:22] Life Pro Tip of the Week. If you're worried that your favorite restaurant's going to be hurt by slow business due to coronavirus, buy a gift card from them now and use it later. It's like a loan. And me and Jen have been doing a lot of takeout from our favorite places, but we've also been saying, "Hey, do you have any gift card deals?" And a lot of restaurants have some pretty good deals where you spend like, I don't know, a hundred bucks on gift cards and they give you a bonus, 25 bucks or like you bring that gift card with you for the next year and you get a free dessert with everything you buy basically, with every entree you get. So there's a lot of good deals, but you're also supporting them because they really need the money to pay for their staffing right now and for everything else.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:34:58] What I found in my neighborhood, there are a couple of restaurants that are actually letting you buy lunches and dinners for first responders and they will deliver them to the emergency rooms in the local hospitals. So I've been doing that a lot. It's an easy way to keep your restaurant open and still give back to the people that are on the frontlines. And I wish more restaurants did this. If every restaurant in my neighborhood did this, I would just go down the line until I get to the end and start over again and just buy a meal a day from everybody. It helps keep the restaurants in business and it helps keep the people that are keeping us safe, fit and fed. Because there's nothing worse than being on a 12-hour shift and then getting off and then figuring out how you're going to have lunch.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:33] Yeah. That's interesting.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:35:34] It makes everybody happy.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:35] That's a really cool idea. And kind of pop by and pour down some money for some pizzas or something like that or for some noodles. I don't know. Be kind of cool. Be kind of nice to find out that somebody bought your lunch or your dinner after a 12-hour shift too.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:35:48] Yeah. You come off the line and these people are letting you add notes into it. So you know when they get the meal, you can say, "Thanks for everything you're doing. Stay safe and we're thinking of you."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:57] Yeah. Yeah. "Next time you pulled me over for expired tags, remember who bought you this spaghetti." No, I don't think that works, but if only, if only. You need a little note in the car that says like -- or a big receipt that's like, "Free meals for first-responders receipt," like right on the front dash of the car. Like, "Oh, sorry, was that not my driver's license? Oh, sorry about that. It's a donation receipt."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:36:20] Yeah, if you're giving to the cops, on the note, just put your license plate number.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:24] That's right, that's right, there you go. Yeah. Pumpkin, orange Mustang, Cobra GT convertible 6JC7YX.

[00:36:33] Recommendation of the Week. Dirty Money Season Two, Dirty Money Season One is really interesting, Season Two is no exception, man. Some of this stuff is just -- it's infuriating.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:36:43] Yeah, it is.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:44] Have you seen Dirty Money Season Two yet?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:36:46] I watched the first one with Jared Kushner and it's just like I needed a bath after that. It was just so gross.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:52] It is. It's bad. And then the one about Wells Fargo starting up, all those accounts, and then the CEO just being like, "We didn't know. It was a few bad apples," and then they showed the stats and it was like 6,000 employees were doing it at different locations around the country.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:37:05] Yeah. That was just a corruption inside Wells Fargo, which is why for sure I won't bank there ever.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:10] Yeah, I know. It's unbelievable. I have one account there that has like some money in it for some reason, and I've been too lazy to go in and close it and I'm thinking about going in there and they're like, "Why are you closing your account?" And I'll be like, "Because you're a bunch of criminals. Not you poor guy at the bottom of the food chain, but pass this note up to your boss's boss."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:37:27] Or you go in to close your one account and they're like, "You have 12 accounts. Would you like to close them all?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:31] Yeah, exactly. "Are you going to close your 17 debit cards that you have with us too?" "What?" Oh, no wonder. You know why that account exists. I started it to fund cryptocurrency accounts and literally, no bank would allow you to do it except for Wells Fargo, which now totally makes sense.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:37:46] Yeah. They're like, "We'll take any money we can get."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:48] "Yeah, we'll do anything. We don't care. Our rules are completely flexible." Every other bank was like, "Ooh, we don't touch crypto anything." Wells Fargo was like, "Bring us all your crypto money-laundering operations."

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:01] "You can talk to our crypto officer over there in the corner. He will tell you if you want Bitcoin or Ethereum or whichever coin is a coin of the realm today. Would you like some Whopper coin from Burger King? We can do that."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:11] Was that a thing? Was that a real thing?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:13] That was a real thing. They did it in Russia. They did a Viper coin. You could buy the Burger King cryptocurrency and pay for your meals in it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:20] Unbelievably useless. Well, I guess it depends on how often you go to BK, right?

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:23] I think it was more of a marketing stunt. It was pretty funny.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:25] Yeah. That sounds about right. Hope you all enjoyed the show. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. Make sure you're practicing safe six. See what I did there?.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:38:32] Oh, dad joke.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:34] Yeah, never going to stop. A link to the show notes for this episode can be found at jordanharbinger.com. Quick shout out to Angela Hodges. She's been listening for years. She used some of the advice she's learned on the show to create a Facebook group page where they're sewing face masks for healthcare workers in New Jersey, which is pretty cool. She's an out of work personal trainer and decided to use the motivation and teaching skills to help create some frontline health care protective masks, which is an honorable way to spend your time. So applause to Angela Hodges for that.

[00:39:06] So go back and check out the guests, Ozan Varol and Michele Rigby Assad, from this week if you haven't yet. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great guests, it's always about the network systems and tiny habits, make up the course of your day here. This is what you have to do to systemize this. Create a network from scratch if you need to, but ignore this at your own peril. That's all for free in Six-Minute Networking. jordanharbinger.com/course. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at @JordanHarbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show. Videos of our interviews are at jordanharbinger.com/youtube. Jason.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:39:40] You can check out my now seven-year-old tech podcast, Grumpy Old Geeks. Yes, we just passed the seven-year mark believe it or not. We discussed what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame along with the cybersecurity apps, gadgets, books, and more. That's Grumpy Old Geeks.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:54] This show is created in association with PodcastOne. This episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, edited by Jase Sanderson, show notes for the episode by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola. Keep sending in those questions to friday@jordanharbinger.com. Our advice and opinions, and those of our guests are their own, and I'm a lawyer, but not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing things that you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found this episode useful, please do share it with somebody who can use the advice that we gave here today. We've got lots more in store for the rest of the year. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

Theo Rossi: [00:40:36] [00:40:36] Hey, I got a new podcast coming. It's called THEOry. This is Theo Rossi. Our world is changing. For many of us, it will never feel the same. The important thing to remember is that we are all in this together and that's some of what I want to talk about on my new show THEOry. We're going to discuss the things that no one ever does. The real talk, the sacrifice, and the struggle to everyone goes. My life has kind of put me in a unique position to say things honestly. This is Theo Rossi and my new show THEOry launches on April 8th officially on Spotify, PodcastOne, and Apple Podcasts.