Jordan Harbinger's Recent LinkedIn Posts

Before The Jordan Harbinger Show reached millions of people… We were in a basement in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Specifically, my buddy’s basement and I was basically living down there. And this was winter. Now, if you’ve ever tried recording a podcast with decent mics, you know that furnace noise is the enemy. So we’d turn the furnace off before recording. Start drinking. Do the show. Then maybe go to the bar. Maybe hang out, watch a movie. And then we’d go to bed. And… totally forget to turn the furnace back on. Around 5 or 6am, my buddy or his girlfriend would wake up upstairs freezing. They’d walk downstairs into what was basically a meat locker. Turn the furnace back on. And in the morning, go: “Jordan… are you okay? It was see-your-breath level cold down there.” I’d go, “Yeah, it was so cold!” They’d go, “Yeah. We forgot to turn the furnace back on again.” Happened at least three times a week. And I wouldn’t trade those days for anything.

Never did I think I’d be the guy who drops $4,000 on an Apple Vision Pro. And yet… here I am. A few weeks ago, I went down the rabbit hole. I started with the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses (which I love for casual use/wear), but they were too limited. Then I tried these Chinese ones called RayNeo but the battery lasted about 30 minutes. After that, I gave XREAL glasses a shot. Not bad for watching movies, but they’re not goggles. So I did what I always do: way, WAY too much research. Everyone kept asking, “What’s your use case?” If you want an AI assistant whispering in your ear, get the Meta Ray-Bans. If you want to navigate around using AR in-vision, wait for Google. But if want to watch movies and actually get work done? That’s when I came back to the Apple Vision Pro. I bought it, fully expecting to return it after a few weeks. But it’s insanely useful for working on my computer. I’ve got Messages open. Google Docs off to one side. A movie playing in front of me. (For work, of course) Sometimes I’ll throw on an audiobook. (no, not along with a movie) Maybe I’ll float a New York Times window nearby if I want a break. I can set up as many desktops as I want, anywhere I want. It's AWESOME. (Shit, I might have just self-diagnosed my ADHD) But honestly, it's the best way to watch a movie and take notes at the same time without going crazy switching tabs. Now I can sit anywhere in the house, not just chained to my office chair. It's also insane on airplanes. You're basically in a huge office environment, while stuck in economy-plus or business if you're feeling fancy. I put on the headset, open all my apps, and I’m good to go. Yes, I’m the guy sitting alone in his house with goggles on. Don't judge. No this is not a paid ad. I'm just a friggin nerd.

Girl Scouts (I.E. - 6 year olds) might be the best salespeople in the world. One knocks on our door the other day. We had six boxes of cookies at home. My wife’s like, “We do not need more.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I know… but look at her. She’s so nervous and polite and breathless.” Her mom’s beaming. The kid’s trying her hardest. And I’m standing there like, “Do I need two more boxes of cookies I’m not going to eat?” No. Did I buy them anyway? Of course I did. I delegated the “no” to my wife. She said no and I still felt bad. That’s how strong the guilt-to-cuteness ratio is. And look, I don’t even like the cookies. I think most of them taste like sugar-coated cardboard. But it doesn’t matter. These kids are good. They're natural closers. You say no to one and you feel like a sociopath. Cookie season isn’t some cute little fundraiser either. Estimates put it around $800M a year and roughly 200M boxes sold. These girls are out here running an eight-hundred-million-dollar sales engine… in a sash. There’s a lesson in here somewhere about how sales actually works, but I’m too busy trying to figure out who I can give these extra boxes to.

I think the ROI on flashy events is worse that companies think. I'm talking about the kind where a record label rent out some swanky club, pays Paris Hilton to DJ, and fills the room with people who all look like they just walked the runway. It looks great on Instagram. But after… there's nothing. There's no follow-up or strategy. It was just a very expensive way to say, “Look at us- We’re cool." Now contrast that with how PodcastOne does it. They once invited me to a private dinner in New York at one of those restaurants you hear about but can never get into. Michelin-starred, intimate, and somewhat mythical. Their message was: "Hey Jordan, we've got 5 seats at this incredible restaurant. We're inviting two of the top podcasters that we want to join our network. The CEO and the Head of Sales will be joining, and we would like to invite you as our fifth. Can you make it?" I showed up. These podcasters are some of my favorites. People I was just genuinely psyched to get to know. Nobody pitched anything. We just talked and ate this incredible food in this beautiful ambience. Eventually, these creators were having so much fun that they started asking me what it was like to have your show on the network. And I gave them my honest assessment - they treat me like family. That one dinner generated multi-seven-figure revenue for PodcastOne. Probably a lot cheaper than hiring an internet-famous celeb to play a Spotify playlist and pretend to DJ, and the ROI was a multiple of that.

People always say, “You really prioritize your kids.” Yeah on purpose. I’m an only child, so I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. Money was tight growing up and my parents had to work nonstop. My dad worked at Ford and my mom was a public school teacher (and we all know how severely underpaid they are). If overtime was available, you took it. You didn’t say, “Nah, I’m gonna skip that and go build a Lego set.” So I get it. But I also remember what it felt like. We’d go on “vacation” to some country house with no TV, no other kids, nothing to do. I’d ask my dad to play and he’d be reading the newspaper. My mom would be reading a novel. They needed a break. So I’d just… wander off (and blow things up or light them on fire- but that was acceptable 'suburban redneck' behavior back then). Was it good for my independence? Sure. Was it also lonely? oh yeah. So now I do it differently. I'm currently writing this post from Tahoe. Theres two feet of fresh snow with peak conditions. I have an annual pass and everything but I didn’t bring my snowboard gear. My brother-in-law thinks I’ve lost my mind. And yeah, part of me wants to go chase powder all day. But my wife basically said, “You can disappear and snowboard, or you can hang out with your kids.” That math is easy. Work will always be there. Snow will be there next season. My kids wanting to go tubing with me? That has an expiration date arriving quicker than I'd like to admit. And once you’re financially stable, you don’t have to sacrifice family the way our parents did. My parents didn’t have that luxury. But I do. So I’m choosing differently.

When I was a kid, I ran a low-grade insider trading operation out of my backpack. Okay, not really, but kind of. My friend’s dad was a stockbroker in Michigan, and back then, getting stock quotes wasn’t easy. You either had to call a hotline, wait for the next day's paper, or pay tens of thousands for a Bloomberg terminal, if you could even get one (I can't recall if those even existed at that time). Meanwhile, I had early ‘90s internet access and a dot matrix printer. So my buddy's dad goes, “Wait… you can get me stock quotes faster than I can?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “How much to bike them to my office every day?” Boom. $50 a pop. I’d print the quotes, shove them in my backpack, bike to his office, hand them off to his secretary (who gave me a Cherry Coke every time - nice), and he’d be thrilled. Because even if the quotes were 30–60 minutes old, it was still faster and more convenient than whatever he had. I don’t know exactly what he did with them. Probably called clients and said, “Remember that stock I told you about? It’s up 12%. Want more?” Point is, there’s always a wave like this. First it was “how to get stock quotes online.” Then “how to set up a Facebook page.” Then “how to run Facebook ads.” Now it’s “how to use AI for your business.” Every time, there’s a moment where knowing how to use basic tools gives you leverage until everyone else catches up. The trick is to ride the wave early and know that eventually, it crashes. Your edge always erodes. So if you’ve got one right now? Use it before everyone else figures it out.

The most dangerous lie your brain tells you is, “Everyone thinks this.” A friend of mine was grinding like a maniac, building a business from $30 million to $130 million. He was working eighteen-hour days. The whole “I live here now” lifestyle. He was convinced he was crushing it because, objectively, the numbers said he was crushing it. Then one morning, on the way to work, the CEO calls him and goes, “Yeah… I’m gonna have to let you go. You’re not a good leader.” Just casually ripped his heart out. And of course his brain does what all our brains do in that moment, which is immediately accept the worst possible interpretation, “Oh my god, maybe I’m actually terrible and everyone’s just been pretending this whole time.” A few months later, he posts on LinkedIn that he’s building a new company. He has funding in place and he was hiring his executive team. And all the top people from his old company reach out like, “I’m in. Let’s go.” That’s when he finds out what actually happened: One toxic underperformer on his team, who didn’t want to do her job, basically ran a little back-channel campaign to paint him as the problem because he was pushing her to hit her numbers. The CEO didn’t bother to verify anything, didn’t do HIS job, and instead just took the gossip as fact and fired the guy who built the business. Why am I sharing this story? When something like that happens, when you get fired, your brain assumes you’re looking at a normal cross-section of humanity. You’re not. It feels like, “Wow, everybody thinks this.” But “everybody” is usually just “the loudest miserable people with the most time.” So before you let toxic feedback rewrite your self-image, check the sample. Are you listening to thoughtful feedback from people who matter, or are you letting one loud a$$h*le tell you who you are?

My parents were horrified when they found out some nonprofit CEOs make seven figures. They were like, “That’s outrageous. It’s a nonprofit!” And I’m like… okay, but that person could probably go run a Fortune 500 company and add a zero to their salary. But instead, they’re global logistics in disaster areas for one-tenth the pay they could earn somewhere else. They took the pay cut because they wanted to do something meaningful. That, or they're winding down from a big career and this is where they chose to spend that energy. I just don’t get the outrage. You want great people doing hard, important work… but you’re mad they’re not doing it for peanuts? Meanwhile, you wouldn’t do your own job for half your current salary. So what are we mad about, exactly? That highly-capable people aren’t willing to do something at a rate of compensation that we ourselves would never agree to? If someone took a huge pay cut to run a nonprofit that actually works, I consider that noble.

I don’t think I’ll ever build another keynote again, and it has nothing to do with stage fright and everything to do with how absurdly expensive “good” actually is. I built one keynote and it took me MONTHS. I took this class called HEROIC Public Speaking with Michael Port and Amy Port, and it was basically an acting bootcamp disguised as a speaking program. I thought they were going to be like, “Just breathe and look at one friendly person in the audience.” Oh no. They were nearly drill sergeants with some of this stuff- “Stand here when you say this. Move forward when you say that. Back up for this heavy part. Now you need a joke right here or the room is going to die. Let’s workshop the joke. Now do it again.” It was insanely detailed and intense. It was also expensive. I’m pretty sure it was around $20k (HUGELY expensive for just about anyone). And I had to fly out to Boston for several days at a time, month after month. It was a whole thing. Before that, I’d taken the normal speaking classes. You know the ones, it's only $3k, they teach you how to not puke on stage, and then they send you on your way like you’re ready to keynote TED when you're not really even boardroom-ready. Those classes are for someone who has to present quarterly results to 12 peers and is terrified. Which brings me to the common truth, most keynote speakers just aren’t that good. And when you see someone who’s actually great, you ask how long they’ve been doing it and they’re like, “This is my 18th year telling the same story several times a quarter.” Then you ask how often they change the keynote and they’re like, “Almost never.” Which makes sense. If you do the same talk every week for 18 years, you’re basically just performing a show. This beats the heck out of a PowerPoint deck every time.

How do I decide which podcasts to go on? Easy, I don’t. If you’ve got a podcast, whether it’s 10 million downloads a month or you record it in your mom’s basement, I’ll come on the show. But. There’s a catch. You Venmo me $550 for the hour… …and I donate 100% of it to charity. That’s the deal. I used to waste so much of my time trying to evaluate each offer. “Is this show worth it?” “How big is their audience?” “10,000 downloads per episode or per year… or total?” Forget all that. If someone’s willing to put real skin in the game to have me on, I’m in. And if that money helps buy a table at a charity gala for kids with leukemia, even better. This system saves me hours of back-and-forth, makes sure I’m talking to people who are serious, and raises thousands every year for causes that matter.

The year was 2006. The Jordan Harbinger Show was first getting started, we were recording in my buddy's basement. We truly had no idea what we were doing. We wanted studio-level mics and if you know anything about studio mics, you know they belong in a studio, not a basement. They were so sensitive. They picked up everything. Every single time a garbage truck went by, we’d have to pause. Motorcycle three blocks down? Pause. The furnace would kick on, loud as hell, turn it off, forget to turn it back on… freeze. All of this could have been avoided with regular dynamic mics. But at the time, we didn’t know that. We were kids. So after trialing and failing over and over again with the studio mics, we finally said, “Let’s go to Guitar Center.” Because obviously Guitar Center is where you go for podcast microphones, right? I remember going in, and they were like, “So you guys are starting a band?” We were like, “No, we want to record into computers.” And they looked at us like we were crazy. “How do you plug a microphone into the computer?” We pointed at the XLR cable. “This doesn’t fit into anything on a computer…” They had to look it up online. Eventually, they find this thing. I remember it very clearly. It was an M-Audio brand, and it was a USB interface. Special order. Come back in a couple weeks. It was this big box, the size of an iPad but WAY thicker, like, 3-4 iPads stacked on top of one another. It had two plugs, one per mic, a gain knob for each mic, and a cable that came out the back that plugged into a USB port on the computer. When we finally go to get it and go to pick it up the guy working goes, “Whoa. What’s this?” We go, “It lets you plug microphones into a computer.” "Why? Starting a band?" "Yeah man. Of course." :)

I'm not one to read ads line for line, but when you tell me to be funny and then punish me for being said funny. I probably wont bless you with my humor again. A brand hired me for an ad campaign, they told me, “Do you. Be funny.” So I did this bit: “Looking for something sparkly? Try methamphetamine. Not into that? Try <sponsor>, they’re having a big Valentine's Day sale right now.” NOTE: At this point in time, BREAKING BAD was the runaway hit of the decade. They FREAKED out. “We’re not paying for that. Campaign’s canceled.” Three months later, I get an email. “Hey, turns out that was the top-performing ad of the entire campaign. Highest converting spot we ran.” Of course it was, and they didn’t even pay for it. I got stiffed. They came back, and renewed at a premium CPM to make up for the loss I incurred during the previous, canceled-but-high-ROI campaign they ran last time. I made them pay in advance this time (of course). And again, they said, “Be funny.” I said, “No. Last time you canceled.” They go, “Well… don’t do that… but be funny.” So I gave them the most vanilla, word-for-word, verbatim read of their script. They weren’t thrilled. I said, “Yeah. That’s what ‘playing it safe’ sounds like.” Safe doesn’t get you ROI, it gets you ignored. Let your people cook or stop asking for the meal.

I was invited to one of Dan Bilzerian’s parties years ago by a fan of my show. Now, before the LinkedIn community comes after me, yes, I’m aware of how much of a clown he is. But the girl who invited me said the parties were hilarious, and it sounded like a fun, weird experience. So I ended up tagging along. We stayed in touch over the years, and recently I found out her dad, who is a retired finance guy, had spent his career at Blackstone. I casually asked if she thought he could help me get in touch with Stephen Schwarzman. She wasn’t even sure who he was at first. She had to ask her dad, who kind of brushed it off: “Everybody wants to talk to that guy,” he said. But a few weeks later, she circled back. She’d followed up more seriously, and her dad ended up sending a note directly to Stephen. Then they just called me completely out of the blue. All because a connection I made years earlier quietly opened a door. This is why I always warn people: if you only connect with people who seem “useful,” you’re playing a short-term game. Some of the most powerful introductions in my life have come from people I met with zero agenda. Just good conversations, being helpful, staying in touch. That girl wasn’t trying to help me network. She was just a listener who liked the show. She’d introduced me to a couple of great guests. We went to a party once. That was it. Her dad working directly under the CEO of Blackstone was not on my bingo card. You never know what’s over the horizon. And more importantly, you rarely see it coming.

The people getting on some of these podcasts are getting ridiculous. Anything to expand audience reach. I feel like that is really short-term thinking. Early on, I’d bring on people I actually wanted to talk to, and a lot of them happened to have platforms. They’d share the episode in their newsletter or on their site, their audience would check it out, and some of those people would stick around. That’s the good version of “cross-pollination” because the overlap is they’re interested, you’re interested, the content holds up. Then there’s the other path, that I see everywhere now. This is the “interview any idiot grifter with a following” strategy. The host doesn’t care what the guest is saying. They don’t care if it’s accurate. They don’t care if it’s insane or even harmful disinformation, possibly even sponsored by another country's secret services. They care that the guest will blast it to their audience, the algorithm will pick it up, and their numbers will go up. They end up platforming people who talk like a fortune cookie wrote a medical journal. “Quantum healing.” “Manifesting.” “The secret THEY don’t want you to know.” It’s always some version of that, and it works (algorithmically at least), because nonsense travels fast on the internet. We all get it wrong sometimes, but for many, this is their key strategy. Personally, I'd rather my audience grow slower than platform some insane moron just because he has a YouTube following for saying crazy sh!t to rubes with 4 barely-functioning braincells. We have a responsibility to our audiences. Do better, folks.

I used to think “being present” meant blocking off time. But life doesn’t work like that. If I’m left alone for five minutes, I will absolutely start doing work. Not even important work. Just… work. I’ll be like, “Oh nice, a call got canceled. I was going to knock down ten emails from my pitch folder, but now I’ll knock down thirty.” Or I’ll start a book I wasn’t going to start until the weekend because suddenly I’m a new person who reads at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. Work is infinite, it will always accept more of your life. So when the kids are home, I’ve learned I can’t rely on willpower. I have to make it easy to do something with them by default. My dumb little hack is, I keep a stockpile of stuff I know they like. Legos are the big one. I like Legos, my son likes Legos, my daughter likes Legos. So when lego.com has a sale, I buy like ten things at once and hide them in my closet like I’m hoarding contraband. Then if I notice my kid is just watching the iPad because everyone’s busy, I don’t overthink it. I’m like, “Hey, do you want to build that recycling truck or that fire truck?” Sometimes he’s like, “No, I want to go for a bike ride.” Great. Or “I want to fly the drones.” Cool, we go to the park and do that. The activity doesn’t matter. The fact that I’m not waiting for some official scheduled “kid time” does. This happens constantly where I’ll have a free hour to review something for work that I don’t even have to do right then. Then my kids come in like, “Dad, look at our racetrack, we’re running a race around it.” And I just ditch what I’m doing and I go run the race. If I really need to review the thing, I’ll do it after they go to bed. Work will still be there later. The racetrack thing won’t. Dad's only "cool" for a few more years...

We’re in a new golden age where young people can charge old people exorbitant prices for their baseline understanding of obvious technology. It used to be building websites. Then it was using social media. Now it's teaching CEOs to use AI. Remember when every kid who graduated college in 2010 put "Social Media Ninja" on their LinkedIn? You’d ask what they actually do and they’d be like, “Oh, I made $1 million running Facebook ads for clients.” Cool. How do you do that? “Well, we split-test ads and pick the ones that convert better.” So… you literally just use the Facebook dashboard? “Yes.” And people paid how much for this? "$1M dollars!!!!" That's for 23-year-olds college grads to teach 50-year-old CMOs how to do things anyone could learn with a basic video tutorial. Now that same playbook is happening with AI. “I help companies streamline their ops with Notion and AI.” Awesome. What does that mean? “Oh, we ingest all your internal docs and create a chatbot so employees can ask questions instead of reading the handbook.” That takes about an hour, maybe less for someone who's got a decent workflow already. Look, I get it. New tools open up new lanes for consultants, agencies, and operators. There’s always value in showing people what they don’t know. But let’s not pretend uploading PDFs into ChatGPT is some elite technical discipline. It’s the same playbook with new buzzwords. It was Facebook pages. Then Facebook ads. Now it’s AI. Same hustle. Different platform.

At some point your kid is going to climb into bed and be like, “Dad, will you snuggle with me?” And you’re going to be sitting there doing something incredibly important, like watching Netflix or zeroing your inbox, and you’re going to be like, “Not right now.” Well in 20 years, you’re going to look back and realize that was the offer. That was the thing you can’t buy back. You’d pay an insane amount of money for one more hour of that. Like stupid money. $50k easily, probably more- for one night where your kid actually wants to be there and talk to you and tell you about their day and ask you questions and do that little bedtime ramble before they pass out. Meanwhile, right now, you’re trading that hour for what? A $500 opportunity? Some email you can answer tomorrow? The illusion of getting “caught up”? You can’t do the kid stuff later. The window closes. They grow out of it. They stop asking. They stop coming in. Everything else will still be there, but that hour won't. So just close your damn laptop, get off LinkedIn, and go be with your kids.

I met one of the most important friends/mentors in my life on a food tour in San Francisco, that my wife booked for me and my parents (yes- random). Just to paint the picture here, I’m standing there trying to enjoy some overcooked cod fritter, and this friendly, chatty guy next to me is asking what I do. I tell him I run a podcast. He lights up, “Oh cool, I love podcasts!” And I can tell instantly: this guy is a nerd. The good kind. Like, “at some point has built servers in his garage for fun” nerd. It was just us, his business partner, the partner’s girlfriend (or wife?), and my parents. Not exactly a high-impact networking event. But we stayed in touch. Eventually, he brought me on as an advisor to one of his companies. A story for another time, but his business partner tried to rob him blind. He bounced back and sold the company for like $4 million.) Later I find out, oh yeah, this dude was early at Google. Like, 90s Google. Now, I run everything by him, investing, media, business. He’s seen the entire evolution of tech and content over 30 years. The guy’s a human cheat code. Here’s why he’s my go-to "mentor": 1. He doesn’t need anything from me. He’s got dat Google money. 2. No ego. He’ll tell me when something sucks without flinching. 3. He already listens to my show, so he’s genuinely invested. 4. And he has Tourette’s, which he jokingly uses as an excuse to say whatever the hell he wants, which means no sugar-coating (see #2 above). “This ad sounded disingenuous as f**. Hurts your brand.”* “Damn.” “Sorry, Tourette’s.” Right. Totally the Tourette’s. That combo of someone who’s seen it all, has no agenda, and cares enough to be blunt is extremely rare. And when you find them, hold onto them and learn everything you possibly can.

I normally charge $25,000 for a keynote, but there is a caveat. A long-time listener reached out and said they really wanted me to speak at their event, but my full fee wasn't in their budget. I asked where their event was happening. San Diego. I'm like, "Damn, I've been promising my kids we go to Disneyland anyway. The world has a funny way of working." They paid for my flight and hotel, and I agreed to a reduced speaking fee. That's my caveat. My speaking fee is $25,000 unless by some miracle you happen to line up with my family's vacation plans. In which case, let's talk. Don't be demotivated- Nebraska people. I hear the sledding is awesome. Shoot your shot.

I recently did a sponsored episode on red light therapy. I’ll be honest: I’m always a little skeptical going into these. And as always, I make it clear up front when something is sponsored because trust with the audience matters more than anything. Going into this one, I wasn’t particularly sold. A lot of health trends can feel overhyped, and this one definitely triggered my internal “is this actually legit?” filter. But after digging into the research and having a long conversation with FlexBeam founder Bjørn Ekeberg, my perspective shifted. There’s more substance here than I expected, especially around areas like skin health, recovery, and some emerging research in other areas. It ended up being a genuinely interesting conversation, and one I’m glad I had. That’s kind of the point of doing these episodes this way: - The audience gets a real, unscripted conversation - I ask questions I actually care about - And I go in with a healthy amount of skepticism Yes, it’s sponsored, I'm super upfront about that (it's disclosed in the first 5 seconds of the audio and every commercial break during the show), but the goal is still to make a fascinating episode worthy of your time. Just because someone is the CEO of a company and paying for placement, doesn't mean you can't learn from them. And if you’re a CEO who wants to have a thoughtful, transparent conversation about what you’re building, I’m always open to it. That said, I reject most of these, so no crypto bros, investing/financial products or kooky nonsense, please.

I figured out my old neighbors were Nazi's... the real kind. I once met the nicest old couple in an old apartment building I was living in. The woman had an accent, and I asked where she was from. “Croatia,” she said. So I started speaking Croatian with her (this was back when I still remembered more of it) and she lit up. Told me it was so nice to hear someone speak the language well, etc. Later, I run into them again. Her husband’s accent didn’t sound Croatian, so I asked, “Where are you from?” “Germany,” he says. Okay, no big deal. Then I tell my wife about them and she goes, “Oh yeah, he used to be a professor at <a large local university> but retired because people thought he might’ve been a Nazi.” Uh… what? I’m sorry, but nobody “retires” because people think you MIGHT HAVE BEEN a Nazi. That’s not usually how that works. You retire because people found out you WERE ACTUALLY A NAZI. And then I remembered: Croatia during WWII… also not exactly on the winning side of history. Next time I saw them, I asked when they moved to the U.S. “1946 or so, just after the war.” Oh. So now I’m sitting there realizing I may have had a very pleasant conversation, in Croatian, with two people who were potentially fascists that dipped out post-war and started a new life in LA. Anyway. Fun little memory I can never un-know. (The irony is not lost on me that one of the most liberal colleges in the world hired a Nazi to be on its faculty. I'm actually more surprised he got shit-canned.)

Here's why most companies suck at marketing. Decision by committee. Big ideas can't be shared unless the language has been pre-approved by a 27-person steering committee of dodo-bird corporate wonks who are FAR more concerned about playing it safe than about creating something effective or unique. What's their main motivation? Don't rock the boat. Don't take any undue risk. Don't put undue pressure on engineering. Don't have customers ask why the feature they heard about isn't available. Then you have Elon, love him or hate him. I know he's a cliche example, but he's in a league of his own. Guy makes crazy announcements all day about shit that his engineering team never agreed to. For example, I have the Tesla Model X with the falcon wing doors that I absolutely friggin' love! Best invention on a car ever, especially if you have kids in car seats. Apparently, Elon announced that they would be available in all Model X's before his engineering team had ever figured out how to do it. Suffice it to say, they were probably pissed. He goes, "Well, I already announced it, with a launch date, so figure it out." That's why Tesla is worth $1.5T. And Ford is worth $55B. (Well, that and all the hype and other nonsense...)

Want to quietly ruin your reputation while thinking you're the most helpful person in the room? Start sending blind intros. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every “Jordan, meet Mike” email that hit my inbox with zero context and zero warning, I’d have a yacht named “Unsolicited Intro.” I'm not being a jerk either. Best-case scenario: Someone intros me to someone I already know. "Jordan, meet Dave. Dave runs X Corp.” Yeah, no kidding. We talk weekly. Thanks, though! Worst-case scenario: Someone intros me to Bob, who works at some podcast ad network I’ve spent three years dodging. Now I either ghost the thread (awkward), reply and pretend to care (worse), or nuke my inbox (tempting). All of this because someone thought they were being helpful. And look, if you do this more than once, you become “that guy.” The guy who lobs introductions like dodgeballs and never checks if anyone wants to play. And people stop replying to you. Here’s the fix. It’s actually quite simple. It's called the double opt-in: “Hey Jordan, want to meet Mike? He does XYZ.” I reply, “No thanks, not a fan.” Cool. Crisis averted. OR I say, “Actually, yeah, I’ve been meaning to connect with him.” You go to Mike: “Jordan’s in. He’s excited to meet.” Now we both reply instantly, because we’re expecting it. That's how everybody wins. And yes, this is from my (free, zero-shenanigans) 6MinuteNetworking course at 6MinuteNetworking.com which you should absolutely be doing if you're sending the intros above (and probably even if you're not.)

If I were an advertising executive, I’d mandate my team stop sending podcasters 60‑second scripts where 48 seconds are “mandatory talking points,” verbatim. My view here is simple: My audience (and most podcast audiences) can smell a “read-this-exactly” ad from a mile away, and it instantly pulls them out of the show. Here are the alternatives I’d use instead: 1) Give the host a few bullets + the offer, then let them make it their own 2) Share guardrails (“don’t lie about the product,” “stay positive,” “don’t mention X”) instead of a script 3) If you need word-for-word compliance, just run a pre-recorded spot voiced by someone else. 4) Don’t have an intern tell ChatGPT to “write this in Jordan’s voice” and think it's going to be "custom to me". It just comes off as a super cringey imitation. The host knows how to read an ad to fit her show. That's literally why you pay them. It’s why someone like Bill Burr can riff on a sponsor (“that sounds like something serial killers use…”) and the ad still kills-because it’s real, funny, and on-brand. Stop turning hosts into teleprompters.

People always ask if there was some big Hail Mary move that made the show take off. Like, did we discover some secret Apple email that if you hit them up, they feature your show and boom, you’re famous? Nope. It wasn’t like that. All of it was consistency. I remember staying up really late every night emailing people. I had made a huge spreadsheet of every blogger who talked about dating and relationships. This was back in the blog days when people actually wrote blogs and people actually read them. And I’d email them and go: “Hey, I have a podcast on a similar subject as your blog. If you link to my podcast, I’ll link to your blog.” And they were like, “Oh, okay.” Everyone said yes. Well, almost everyone. Because it was like, “You’re gonna link to me and I’ll link to you?” That’s what you did back then. Early Internet days. You link to them, they link to you. So people were like, “Oh, a podcast. That’s pretty neat. I’m gonna go download that using my iPod or play it on iTunes or like, burn it to a CD.” So it was just these little consistent steps over time that worked really well. No big breaks, no epic wins. Just consistency over a ridiculously long time (19 years and counting)