Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] You don't really follow your passion, you sort of bring it with you to whatever you're doing. And science shows that people are happy doing something that they are good at.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:16] Welcome to From the Dorm Room to the Board Room, a podcast where we provide insights, tips, and inspiration for college students and young professionals, so they can make a really successful transition from college life to the professional world and beyond. My name is Andy Molinsky, and I'm your host. I'm also a Professor of Organizational Behavior and International Management at Brandeis University's International Business School, where we record and produce this podcast.

Andy Molinsky: [00:00:54] Okay. So, today's guest is Jordan Harbinger, who is a Wall Street lawyer turned interview talk show host. He's also a communications and social dynamics expert. Jordan has hosted—continues to host a top 50 iTunes podcast for over 12 years and receives over 6 million downloads per month - that's a huge number - making the Jordan Harbinger Show one of the most popular podcasts in the world that I'm guessing that many of you have listened to it or listened to it regularly. If you haven't, you should. The show was awarded Apple's Best of 2018. It is one of the most downloaded shows per year.

Andy Molinsky: [00:01:33] On the Jordan Harbinger Show, Jordan deconstructs the playbooks of the most successful people on earth and shares their strategies, perspectives, and practical insights with the rest of us. Jordan spent several years abroad in Europe earlier in his career and in the developing world, including South America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He speaks a number of languages. He's worked for various governments and NGOs. Lots of interesting stuff, very interesting career and career transition. So, I'll stop there, and I really want to hear from you, Jordan. Thanks so much for being on.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:07] Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. As you can hear, I'm a little bit—a little bit under the weather. So, this is important for me to do just because I love being able to speak to young people or non-young people, but people going into a career transition because I made a lot of mistakes in that area of my life early on. And I think they were all pretty darn avoidable.

Andy Molinsky: [00:02:28] Awesome. So, we'll love to hear from those. But let's actually start—I mean, I basically said what you do now, but can you just—I mean, if you had to describe what you do now to someone who really doesn't know anything about what you do now, what would you say?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:40] What I do is I'm an interviewer, sort of full stop, really. I started off, of course, interviewing for a different reason and creating a podcast for a different reason. We can get into that in a little bit. But what I do is I, essentially, talk to people that I find interesting and get them to teach something to the listenership, the audience of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:01] And that sounds very simple because it really is. And I think a lot of people tried to over—they try to complicate what it is that they do, especially in media or in the creative field because they want to seem like they're different from everyone else. But at the end of the day, since it's a personality-based business in a lot of ways, you know, if you don't like my personality, you probably won't like the show, and that's just the way it is. So, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I really do just find really interesting people from Dennis Quaid to Dennis Rodman, right? And find out what they know that can help someone who's listening and have an interesting conversation about that.

Andy Molinsky: [00:03:40] So, that's super interesting. And I want to get into, sort of, how you got into this. But just before we do, it just popped into my mind as we're talking, what tips do you have for interviewing people well? Probably something I could learn from as well.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:56] Yeah. You know, everyone goes, "Wow! Your interviews are so in-depth. You always get things that nobody else got. How do you do that?" And the truth of the matter is, it's just a matter of the work ethic that goes in beforehand. So, people say, "Wow! You know, you have all these interesting questions that nobody else thinks of. And it's just you're just naturally curious," or whatever sort of label they put on it. But I'm not sure how true that stuff is. I mean, there's got to be some of that, right? You don't even—you don't do interview talk show if you're not naturally curious at some level. But really, the so-called clever questions that I come up with a lot of the time, they're the results of spending 10 to 20 hours preparing for each interview.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:37] So, if I'm interviewing Dennis Rodman, for example, I'll read his book that he wrote in the '90s. I'll watch five or six hours of his interviews on YouTube. I will try to find people that played with him, and I will talk to them if I can, things like that. And if I have a scientist on the show, I'll read all of their books. I'll watch all of the TED talks, you know. And I come up with questions based on that. I'll listen to 10 interviews they did over the course of their career.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:07] And so, a lot of people will say, "Wow! This is the most in-depth interview that I've ever done." And it's not because Jordan Harbinger is so smart. It's because I've got the most input from them of their work. I've got the strongest footprint, the strongest amount of content that they've ever created. And then, I've digested it and created something really useful out of that because, of course, when I'm listening or watching to their stuff, or anything they've created before, or has been created about them before, I am taking notes, right? I'm taking notes. I put them all in a Google doc. Then, I go through the notes later. And I essentially ask myself questions about the notes that I have.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:47] So, in a way, it's a lot like studying for a test if the test was something that you were really, really interested in, and there was no grade. So, that's kind of the way that I look at it, is I have to know—I have to have a degree in this person, right? I've got to be an expert on this particular individual. And the test is, can I hold a conversation with them for an hour, hour and a half? That would be a kind of conversation they would have with a really close friend, right? And if I can do that, then I do well.

Andy Molinsky: [00:06:22] Yeah, yeah. That's so interesting. And as you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, imagining you in college, and I know from reading your bio and doing a bit of research about you, you didn't launch this right after college, right? So, tell us a bit about your college experience, where you went to college, what you majored in. And then, you know, what was that experience like leaving college and going to the professional world?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:47] Yeah, well, I didn't launch it right after college because podcasts didn't exist, just to make me look even older. I mean, I'm 39. I'm not that old, but I assume people listening to this are in their early 20s mostly. So, when I was in college, nothing quite fit for me there either because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I "grew up." And I think that's pretty normal. I think a lot of people have no idea what they want to do. And I don't even think that you're supposed to know that. I do think it's really tempting for people to beat themselves up about that. I think a lot of people want to to think that everyone in college should know what they want to do.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:28] And I don't really know where that notion came from. That might be like my parents' generation where they go to college because they want to become an engineer or something along those lines. And that's just not the case anymore. People go to college because they don't know what else to do with themselves. And I was definitely in that bucket. I mean, sure, if you're in college because you already know what you want to do, that's a huge advantage. Good for you. I'm jealous. I went because that's what you did after high school. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:57] And in college, nothing quite fit for me. So, I started taking languages and other things like that because I already knew German pretty well, having been an exchange student in Germany in the late '90s. So, I took German because I could do well there. It was like, "All right, I'm gonna get A's in this, so that's going to round out my GPA a little bit.".

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:16] And then, I found that every degree, and I don't know why professors do this, Andy, but every degree has these—I think we call them like weeder courses. I don't know if this rings a bell at all. They're just these super difficult classes that are designed to make sure that if you wanted to be an accountant or go to business school that you were going to hate every second of this class. And it involves complex math, and it was on a curve, and they were huge courses, and everyone hired a tutor, and then like just scraped by with a B-minus or something like that, just barely got through. Made your semester a living hell because you had 10 hours of work every day. It was just terrible.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:58] And I realized that these were kind of a trap, and they were designed to get people out of certain majors who "didn't belong there." And I didn't like that idea. And I thought, there's got to be a way around this, especially around things like math requirements for people who want to go into business, because I knew, from my entrepreneur friends and business owner friends, and I only had a few at the time, I was like, "You don't use any of this stuff."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:24] And so, I went to my advisor and I said, "Look, I want to study different things like languages, but I don't want to be a German major because that's ridiculous. I don't want to have—I don't want to write a thesis on Foust, but I want to learn German, Serbian, Spanish, Russian, or something like that and tie it all together with economics and political science. And there's just nothing—no way to do that."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:48] He said, "Actually, every year there's about 5 or 10, at the most, people who create their own degree. And you have to petition the Academic Standards Board or something like that," I can't remember now, "about doing this. So, it's a huge pain, but it's doable. And I think you have a good shot at doing it because the people they don't want to do that are people who are just going to choose the same degree as everyone else but just cut out all the hard classes. But if you do something really unique, especially languages, because nobody does it in languages, you know, you can have a good chance at getting approved." And I said, "Great. Let's do this."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:26] So, I created my own degree based on several languages, political science courses, and economics. And it was called Integrated International Commerce, which was very fancy sounding, and that was by design. But I wanted to do something where it was like, 'All right, I'm going to study the political climate, the cultural climate, economic climate, and, of course, the language of several target countries that are now entering the world economy." So, Spanish was in there because of South America, sort of like that large—it's not a country as you know, but it's just a large economic zone. And Russia was a hot topic in 2003 as they were just sort of coming out of their malaise. And then, I had a couple of other smaller languages in there that I wanted to sort of pepper in there. But I've really focused on those two languages, and then economics, and political science.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:23] And it was great because I got a chance to—and this is what I think college largely should be. I don't know if you agree. I got to study what I was interested in, and I got to go in-depth on those things, but I didn't have to make myself miserable taking these weeder courses or like knocking down math requirements that were for certain majors, Like for an econ major, you had to know all this advanced calculus at the University of Michigan, which kind of makes no sense, because if you're not doing economic models, and even if you are frankly, you don't need to be able to do this stuff on paper. So, it was actually a really useful degree for me, and it was really interesting.

Andy Molinsky: [00:12:01] So, that is interesting. And it's interesting to me, as you sort of fast forward to what you do now. You know, you crafted your own major. You're crafting your own career, really. So, maybe you're a crafter.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:13] Yeah, good point.

Andy Molinsky: [00:12:15] Yeah. So, then, you came out of school with this degree. I know you went to law school at some point. Can you give us a sense of how that progressed, how you got into law, and then how you left the law?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:28] Sure. So, this is another—this is just another case of, "Gee, I need to go get more education because I don't know what else to do." And so, I wouldn't say that's why I went to college. It is one of the reasons I went to college because it was the thing you're supposed to do, but for grad school, after college, I went to the University of Michigan, right? So, at that point, I was fluent in German, Spanish. I had started learning Russian. I'd lived in like nine countries for an extended period of time. And I thought I was pretty qualified to start learning something, at least, career-wise. So, I started doing that. I started interviewing at places for that, I should say, without a hell of a lot of luck.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:14] And I got up one day, and I was like, "All right, I need to go to Best Buy because I've got like—I don't know, I needed a new Discman or something to sort of put a date on this thing," right? And I walked in there, and my friend is like, "Hey, we're hiring. You know, if you don't know what you're gonna do for the summer." And I was like, "Yeah, I'd love to do that." So, I literally took a job interview right there. And they're like, "All right. Well, you can put—" So, at the time, I could build computers by hand, and I had already done it, and I was great at taking viruses off people's machines, and all this stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:45] So, I had done a bunch of computer service, and I thought, "I'm going to do this at Best Buy." And they're like, "No, no, no. You get promoted into computer repair. You get promoted into customer service. You've got to start off in music. That's what we need you." And I was like, "Music?" At the time, there was a 17-year-old kid working in music who was like my college buddy's little brother. And I thought, "That guy is gonna be my boss. And I'm 24 with a degree from Michigan that I created. I speak three or four languages fluently at that point. What are you talking about? Music? Like, I'm not standing in front of a life-size cutout of Britney Spears for the next two years, so that I can get promoted into another job that I'm overqualified to do, in my opinion," right? And so, that was just not happening. So, I was like, "No, thanks."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:31] So, I applied to grad school, and I applied to law school. And I ended up getting into the University of Michigan Law School, which is, at the time, and still is, I think it's one of the top 10 best law schools in America. And so, everyone said, "Well, if you got into Michigan, you have to go, because this will base basically make your career. You know, you can write your own ticket when you go to a school like that." So, I said, "Great. More education is definitely the solution to this problem, you know?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:01] And that is not true at all now, and it wasn't true then either, but I think it's a forgivable misconception, because if you think, "Well, if I'm not qualified to repair computers at Best Buy, it must be because I don't have enough education." Forget the fact that they literally said everybody who works in customer service and computer repair has three to four years of experience working at Best Buy. I mean, that was the excuse given, but I thought, "Well, if I get a law degree, I can do a lot of different things that don't involve selling CDs." And so, that's why I went to law school.

Andy Molinsky: [00:15:38] Yeah, it's interesting. As I'm listening  to your career, it's almost like, you know, you're like—you're prepping yourself credential-wise for some future possibility that you're not quite clear on-

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:48] Right.

Andy Molinsky: [00:15:49] ... it sounds like. And then, if schooling is the solution, what's the problem? Is the problem how to get a prestigious career? Is the problem how to figure out what really is your passion? I imagine going to law school didn't help you figure that out, it sounds from your career progression.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:09] Right. You know, it's funny because you don't actually learn, or I should say I didn't actually learn anything about what I would be passionate about. You know, I just sort of went to school thinking like, well, you go to school. And then, at some point, during this experience, and it didn't happen in the first four years, but at some point during this experience, you get struck by lightning, and you go, this is my passion, and this is what I was born to do, and this is what I—but that doesn't happen.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:37] And that freaks a lot of people out. It certainly scared me because I thought, "Uh-oh, if I'm not going to find my passion here, then what am I going to do?" And so, I was like, "Okay. Well, if I go to law school, maybe I'll find it." And then, of course, law school starts, and I go, "This is interesting, but I wouldn't say I'm extremely passionate about it. Many people here already seem to be. So, what am I going to do?" And then, I went, "You know, if I just get this going, and then I'm a lawyer for like four years, and pay off my student loan." Ha ha, right? Four years. That's a joke now. But back then, I thought I could probably do it. Then, I'll have four years of experience. Then, I can—it's just more time that I'll have to discover what I want to do, but at least I'll be making six figures in the meantime, which is helpful when you've got student loans, and you don't know you're going to do, and da, da, da, da. So, who knows? Maybe I'll be a diplomat or something, you know.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:33] And all of that also made sense. So, in a way, getting more education, especially something like a law degree, especially at that time, it wasn't a bad idea, but it was just—I wasn't counting opportunity cost of losing all that time. I wasn't counting the amount of tuition as any sort of opportunity cost. I was just thinking, "Well, this is like the only option that's really laid out for me that seems clear." And that's pretty—that's not good.

Andy Molinsky: [00:18:03] Did you know going in that you—did you have an inkling that you might not like it? I mean, it's possible that, you—you know, in the story you're telling that you had a hunch you might like it. And then it turned out you didn't love it, which is unfortunate, but understandable.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:19] Yeah. You know, I thought law school was pretty cool because you're hanging out with smart people all the time, and you can't—I mean, you can't beat that, right? That's a fun environment to be in for a lot of people. In fact, it was more fun for me than it was for most people because I—at Michigan anyway, you grade was 100% your final exam, which for many people was terrifying, and it was for me for the first semester as well. But I realized, wait a minute, I'm not trying to be a Supreme Court justice, so I don't need to get all A's. I'm not trying to be a law professor, so I don't need all A's. I literally just need to pass. That's all I need to do. And I don't have to pass every class. I just have to pass law school. So, that was pretty cool for me.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:07] I went in there going like, "However I do is however I do." And I worked really hard. And I joined a study group with really smart kids, so they could teach me stuff before the exam. I mean, that's how I survived there. But I graduated in I think the top half of the top third even of my class. And I took a top market job on Wall Street. And it wasn't bad. You know, it really wasn't bad. You're an overpaid secretary for your first and second year as an associate.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:33] But it wasn't something where I was like, "This is phenomenal." You know, I was jealous of people who had a career plan. I was jealous of the older guys at the firm who seemed really interested in financial derivatives, and they were going, "And this is the cool part. We securitized these subprime mortgages into these different packages. And then the bank, our client sells them." And I'm just thinking, "Who cares? We're not doing anything. Nothing is getting built because of this. We're like moving papers around and legal structures. I mean, it was really just like talk about not accomplishing much of anything. Securitizing subprime mortgages, which later caused the financial meltdown of 2008 was hardly something to get excited about." And so, that, for me, was not too—I wasn't too keen on that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:23] However, after my first internship, my first summer associate gig in law school between—well, actually, let me back up a little bit. After my first summer in law school or first year of law school, in the summer, I didn't try to take a law job. I applied for a government grant, which is like kind of a Fulbright situation. If you don't know what a Fulbright is, you get—basically, I got a government grant to go abroad and study. And so, I spent that summer in Serbia where I had spent some time before law school because I had a gap year. I'd spent some time before there, and I spent some time in Serbia learning Serbian. It was great. The government sort of paid for it. Department of Defense sort of paid for that. And then, I came back out.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:11] Second summer, I had already taken a law job, and I came back, and I went, "Oh, my gosh, I am not cut out for this law stuff. You know, I'm not going to be a lawyer for long. But everybody here is really smart. Everybody works really hard." But nobody knows how to network or has any people skills. Not many people at this firm. So, I'm going to learn how to generate business for this law firm. And if I learn how to generate business for this law firm, then I can become a partner. And nobody will care that I'm not like a genius level legal brief drafter, whatever. You know, I'll develop a skill that a lot of these people don't have.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:53] And that'll give me another competitive advantage, because in high school, my competitive advantage was like teach myself the geometry the day of the test at lunch. The other competitive advantage that I had in college and law school was everybody's drinking every day. So, if I just do my homework, and show up to class, and outwork everyone, I'm good. But when I got to Wall Street, it was like everyone was smart, everyone was working hard. So, I thought my new competitive advantage is going to be that I know how to network and bring in business.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:21] So, I started studying psychology and started taking sales courses and things like that. And that was the beginning of a career that I have now because I realized, wait a second, these people skills, these psychology skills, these are—there's something really big going on here. And this is an area that I'm obsessed with. I love the psychology, and I love thinking of the way the human mind works and how we can sort of utilize that to our advantage.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:50] So, I started talking about that stuff nonstop. I was kind of annoying, I think, because I was so passionate about it. I just couldn't shut up. I should've got like a PhD in this, but I, instead, started talking about it. Then, I started teaching it to other law students. I started teaching networking. And most people didn't care, but there were a group of women that really did care, and they happen to be quite attractive. So, I would hang out with them like every day, and teach them body language, and non-verbal communication, and things like that. And then, a bunch of my guy friends who didn't care at all about networking before, they, then, were like, "Hey, what are you doing everyday going out with them?" Like "Can I come?" And I'd be like, "Yeah, but I'm teaching networking in body language stuff." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, I should learn that."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:34] So, then, this group sort of grew. I had an informal course going. And I got sick of having the same conversation every day when new people showed up. So, I started recording the conversations, burning them to CDs, and handing the CDs out to new people. And I'd say, "Go home and listen to this 10 hours of stuff I've talked about before. And then, you can join our conversations because you'll have a background." And people started taking the CDs and saying things like, "Oh, I listened to it all. Then, my roommate heard it, and he wants it. And then, I gave this one to my brother," and "Can I have another one? Can I have another one?" So, I started selling the CDs for like 20 bucks. And then, people like, "Great, I need eight. I need eight CDs."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:19] So, I started burning these CDs, and I realized I had this sort of business here selling this information, but 20 bucks at the time is not going to make me rich. So, I really realized I need a way to distribute these sound files on the internet. This is 2006. There was no way to distribute sound files on the internet. Just hilarious. So, that's what I was doing. I was distributing these CDs and trying to figure out how to upload this. And then, one day my friend goes, "Hey, there's this thing called podcasting, and you could upload the sound file to iTunes, and people can download iTunes for their computer and play it there." There was no iPhone at the time. Nothing. There was no smartphone. I can't believe it. And, now, talk about feeling old. There's no smartphone.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:06] So, we did it. We uploaded its iTunes, and we thought, "All right. Now, we can tell people that we need to go download these files," and they can because every college kid had iTunes. It's like every college gets a Spotify now, probably. So, we started doing that, and that was what took off. The show took off. And we started seeing downloads from places like South Africa. And I was like, "Oh, that must be a mistake," because everybody who knows about this should be in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and they weren't. And that's when I sort of realized the power of podcasting, and I was like, "Oh, my goodness, there's something here that is beyond what we had imagined." And that was when I got the taste of something I was really passionate about and that I was really interested in, and I just dove in headfirst.

Andy Molinsky: [00:25:51] Yeah, it's an interesting story. And I want to ask you a couple of questions, you know, front from this point on in your story as well, but I do want to rewind for one sec. And you said something really interesting before or I thought was interesting about the idea of your competitive advantage. You know, it's kind of a term you often apply to businesses when you think about strategy, like doing a SWOT analysis, if you're familiar with business, but a competitive advantage. And you talked about your competitive advantage. 

Andy Molinsky: [00:26:23] I think you said in high school, it was that you could learn geometry at lunchtime. I think you said in law school, it was that you weren't like getting drunk, and staying out all night, and you did work hard, and those things sort of set you apart. That was your competitive advantage. And then, it sounds like in your first job, you saw your competitive advantages is starting to develop some expertise around building business, which is not something that a lot of lawyers have certainly come to very easily.

Andy Molinsky: [00:26:53] My question for you is, first of all, was this idea of competitive advantage something that you're sort of retrospectively making sense of as you think about your story, or is it something that you proactively, prospectively thought about as you were going on your journey? That's my first question. And then, the second question is, how does one find their competitive advantage? What advice might you give someone listening if they'd like to notice their own competitive advantage?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:24] So, my competitive advantage idea, that really was something—looking back at it now, I think I didn't really noticed in the moment, you know, it was sort of 20/20 hindsight. I did notice that—I noticed the fact that, all right, I'm able to teach myself the geometry on the quiz in high school. And then, college, everybody else is really smart. So, I have to outwork them. But I wasn't thinking in terms of competitive advantages.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:51] And then, when I started learning about the networking thing, I remember thinking, if I'm going to try to compete with people here, I have to get better at something that they're not good at. So, I guess I was thinking competitive advantage. but I wasn't really using that term. It wasn't really—it really wasn't something I was thinking about in those kind of terms, if that makes sense. So-

Andy Molinsky: [00:28:17] No, it does, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:19] So, that was something that came up. I don't even think I was familiar much with the term until economics in college really. But even then, I wasn't thinking about it in terms of people. But of course, you should be thinking that for sure.

Andy Molinsky: [00:28:33] Okay. So, what I noticed from what you're saying is that—I mean, you can have a competitive advantage, but what if you have a competitive advantage in something, but you're not passionate about it? Like, for example, you could have said as a lawyer that you have this competitive advantage in terms of social skills, but you don't really care that much about it. It's not like your passion necessarily.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:52] Right.

Andy Molinsky: [00:28:52] You love writing the briefs, but the social skills, which you're awesome at, you're not so excited about. You know, I imagine - I don't want to put words in your mouth - that the real key to building an interesting career where you can succeed and feel deeply engaged in what you're doing is to kind of marry that sense of competitive advantage with passion.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:12] Well, yeah. But I think—yes, that's true; however, you build both of those things, right? You don't necessarily—most of us, anyway, are not going to wake up and be like, "Oh, I'm passionate about this. So, I'm going to make that my career." And, you know, that's always nice if you can do it, but it's not necessary. You know, you don't really follow your passion. You sort of bring it with you to whatever you're doing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:40] And science shows that people are happy doing something that they are good at. So, there are people that are really good at—a friend of mine's really good at removing beehives from structures, from people's houses, or from commercial buildings, and things like that. He loves this job. But I don't think when he was young, he was like, "I want to remove bees from homes." But he loves this job, and he works seven days a week, and he makes a ton of money doing it, and he really enjoys it. And he'll post pictures on Instagram of stuff that he's doing. He's like, "Look at all the bees are stuck in this guy's garage wall. Unbelievable."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:16] And then, he'll be like, "I'll sell you the bees." And then, after work, he'll come over to my wife's—my brother in law's house. My wife has beehives in the backyard. And he'll bring new bees over, or he'll come over and help maintain those hives. So, he really loves beekeeping, but he started off as like an exterminator, you know. He was like, "This is a job I need because I need to pay for necessities in life," and he was poisoning all these insects, and he's like, "You know, I bet I could take these out of here safely. I heard bees are good for the environment." Then, he started maintaining the bees at his own house because he had no place to put the bees he took. So, then, he liked beekeeping, right? Then, he's like, "Oh, I can just get free bees because people are going to want me to take them out of their house or their garage." And then, he really started enjoying that too.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:02] So, he found his passion, and we started bringing his passion with him because he was already really good at insects' removal. And I know a lot of people are probably like rolling their eyes, but that's not so different from my career path, right? I started doing the legal thing, realized I had no competitive advantage, needed to try something else, decided to work on my social skills or whatever, so that I could bring in business. That was what was interesting for me. Started getting really into that, realized, "Well, all right, I can teach this." And then, realized I don't really love the teaching element. I like the interview and talk show hosting element. And then, over time, that evolved into me becoming an interviewer and, you know, dot, dot, dot. I've got A-list of celebrities on the Jordan Harbinger Show, along with scientists. And I have interesting conversations for a living. But that took a lot of time. I mean, I'm in year 13 of doing this show.

Andy Molinsky: [00:31:59] And for someone—and as we're talking, I'm thinking about the advice we could give to someone who's starting in a job that might be a first job, a second job they don't love. I mean, it sounds like the advice is not put your head down, have tunnel vision, try to be as absolutely successful and effective as you can at that job and thinking nothing else. Because it sounds like when you—you know, your exterminator friend and you who were kind of - I don't know - self-reflective, curious, you had - I don't know. You performed some thought experiments, some real experiments. Like, "Hey, would it be like if we did a little social skills group?" I mean, you know, what advice do you give to someone about sort of leveraging the experience of their current job for potential better future jobs?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:49] Sure. I would look at—first of all, I know this is sort of a cliche, but you have to be open to the idea that what you think you want to do might not be what you end up wanting to do. And this is actually—it's not limiting. This is actually—this should liberate you because a lot of people who thought, "I really want to be a lawyer. It's gonna be great. My dad was a lawyer. And, you know, lawyers make a lot of money," those are some of the people who held on the longest. And they're some of the people that now, you know, in our push—we're pushing 40, are like, "I can't believe I still do this. I'm looking for another job," or they do a legal job at a company, and they're like, "I really—you know, this isn't my passion. I'll tell you that. I'm not—I don't love it, but it pays the bills." Like those are the people that tend to be—had the longest—the largest amount of dissatisfaction because they're really glued to the idea that they're supposed to like this particular. And that's not healthy.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:44] So, for me, I was very open to everything. And so—and I wasn't really hooked on, "I need to be a lawyer. I need to be a corporate lawyer. I need to impress my friends and family." That kind of stuff, that wasn't a concern for me. So, you need to learn how to figure this stuff out, so that you're not glued in.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:01] And also avoid things like the golden handcuffs because—and what this is, is—a lot of lawyers have this. It's you become a lawyer and you realize, oh, "Oh, all right, I'm making a lot of money, but I don't love this. Oh, I'll have a better life if I buy a house in Nantucket and go there on the weekends," because that's what everyone does. They get out of the city. They go to this summer home. A lot more in the summer, of course. And then, in long weekends, they go to Nantucket, or wherever, the Hamptons, whatever it is. And they live there. Well, that's expensive. And then, they're like, "Oh well, I got to get a boat because everyone has a boat at their summer home." So, you know, they want to do that. And then, they get to send their kids to a private school because they live in Manhattan, and that's where all the other lawyers are sending their kids. So, they have all these bills.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:47] And then, when the time comes, and they get a job offer or possibly an opportunity to go work for something that they care about, they're like, "I can't leave. I can't take a pay cut. I'm barely—I'm paycheck to paycheck," even though they're making $30,000 a month, right? It's crazy. So, you have to be very careful here. You have to be very, very careful here. Otherwise, you could end up stuck in a way that's really going to screw up your life.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:13] And so, it's not just leveraging experience from one job to another. It's making sure that you have the freedom in place to move. That's where the biggest problem is. It's not just like, "Oh, how do I figure out what my next move is?" You figure that out by keeping an open mind and realizing that your career is not a set it and forget it, but it's an evolving pathway. A lot of people, especially when I was in college, I didn't realize this, I thought you got a job and you stayed there. That's not the case anymore. That might be really obvious to these students now, but it wasn't. 

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:44] When I was—I came about—I came up in the time when our parents had worked for Ford or a public school district for 30 years and then done. Now, people switch jobs every four years. So, it might be really obvious now, or maybe people are still under the delusion that they're going to get a job and one career and stay there. So, you've got to realize that it's an evolving process, it's an evolving path, and change is supposed to happen. But you have to be ready for change.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:10] And that's going to be a competitive advantage that you have. If you don't have a ton of bills and you've paid off your student loans, you have freedom that other people do not have because you can move. You can work at a law firm for a while, and then join a startup for half the price or half the pay, but equity in a company that you think is a rocket ship. That's how people call in rich when they're 45, right? They do something like this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:39] And so, you have to be able to do that, because if you can't do that because your loans aren't paid off and you have a boat and a house, you're not going to be able to move around. You're going to get stuck, and you're going to have less satisfaction as a result.

Andy Molinsky: [00:36:53] So, as I hear this, I think of the student who or the young professional was a student who didn't have sort of the initiative to create his own major in college like you did, or maybe who is a bit anxious about stepping outside his or her comfort zone, or is—you know, he does care about impressing family and friends with, you know, the typical conventional achievements and markers of success in a profession but, at the same time, he is dissatisfied and doesn't have their passion. You've been able to pivot and create a very interesting craft, really, a very interesting career for yourself. What advice would you give to that person?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:43] So, they didn't have the initiative to create their own degree. And then, what was the second part of that?

Andy Molinsky: [00:37:49] Well, they're just someone who doesn't seem to have the fluidity that you described that's been critical to your career, the ability to be able to, you know—well, as you talk about the advice of shedding your expenses in some ways, becoming, you know, flexible to be able to pivot, to notice in a job what what they like, what they don't like, and then start to experiment with things that might enable them to transition, and so on, and so forth. There's a lot of fluidity, creativity, craftiness, and proactiveness in your story, but not everyone's like that. What advice would you give to someone who sort of doesn't necessarily innately have those qualities but still wants to build a meaningful career?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:36] Sure. I mean, this isn't—there's nothing sort of—yes, I definitely was crafty in terms of making my own degree, and things like that, and studying abroad and getting grants, and all that stuff, but none of that requires any sort of genius level of craftiness. What you really need to look for are opportunities that are not whatever one else is doing. That's all I was doing. I would ask around and say, "Is there any scenario in which I can study economics and political science, but I don't have to do all the classes that I am dreading? Is there a way for me to make my own path?" And that was what prompted the idea that I can create my own degree. That was what prompted the idea that I can craft my own way.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:17] And as for having freedom and being able to sort of leave situations that I'm not interested in because I have that freedom, you can build freedom. Just pay—it's really as simple as don't take on a bunch of extra expenses thinking they'll make you happy because they won't. So, rent your home. Don't buy one if you're not sure of where you're going to live yet. Don't buy a summer house and don't buy a boat. Spend that money on your student loans and pay them off 10 years before everyone else.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:46] I paid my student loans off in my mid-thirties, and I had $168,000 in student loans because I had undergrad at Michigan and then law school at Michigan. So, I focused heavily. I mean, I was—I think my student loan bill was like a few hundred bucks a month or a thousand bucks a month. I remember putting some months, I put like $12,000 towards my loans. So, I would spend like my entire paycheck, you know, after taxes paying off my student loans, I did that regularly. So, that was great.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:20] And then, I, eventually, had student loans [indiscernible]. And you pay off your highest interest loans, right? If you have a loan that's at 3.1, and you're getting—your savings account is giving you 3.8 in interest, don't pay off that loan, pay the  minimum amount. But if you've got a loan that's 5%, pay that thing off immediately. Pay it off as quickly as you can. Even, hell, if you're really stuck, borrow money from family and friends if you have that option, and pay that loan off, and then pay that money back to your family and friends at a low or no interest for those of you to have that kind of opportunity. I did not have that opportunity, but a lot of people do. Spend that. Spend it on that. Don't necessarily—you don't need to buy a house in the Hamptons, you know, first, or you don't need to buy a really cool car. None of that is required. That limits your freedom. Being debt-free is freedom for you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:08] And if you can get that freedom in your 20s, early 30s, then when you get that job offer for something else that seems random and spontaneous, you could actually take it because you're—the amount of money you need to live is lowered by the amount of your loan payment that you no longer have.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:22] So, you don't have to be crafty. You just have to—you have to shed weight. And it's really not that hard to do because when you're in your 20s and 30s, the only weight you have is the weight you've voluntarily taken on yourself and your student loans. So, if you've got your student loans, which many of us didn't have a choice of about taking, pay those off and don't take on additional weight. Don't spend money on your credit card, and then try to pay the balance off later. You know, keep a zero balance. These are really, really easy and practical things. Don't buy a house. Don't buy a car, if you can get away with it, don't spend money you don't have. It's really simple. That's how you stay free. That's how you get free.

Andy Molinsky: [00:42:00] Yeah. Set yourself up for that opportunity when it comes along.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:05] Yeah. It's not about finding magical opportunities. It's—I mean, of course, you have to do that, but you're going to see a lot of opportunity that other people won't see because they think, "I can't make less than $12,000 a month. How would I survive?" And you're going, "I need $2800 a month to survive," right, because, you know, you paid off your loans. So, now, you could take a 50% paycut and you're like, "Well, bummer. My savings goals are a little—I'm a little behind on that, but not the end of the world." The rest of what you have is freedom.

Andy Molinsky: [00:42:37] Yeah, interesting. Very wise advice. And a lot of people don't think that way, but I like that. You've given us so much, and we're really at the end here. And I really thank you for coming on. I think people get a lot of what you've said. And I do want to direct them to hear your show or anywhere that you'd like them to go. So, where can people find out more about you and what you do?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:00] Sure. I host the Jordan Harbinger Show. It's a talk show. I give advice every Friday. But I have two interviews a week is really interesting people or, at least, in my opinion, really interesting from Dennis Quaid, to Dennis Rodman, to scientists, and other really, honestly, great thinkers. And that's what will help you spot opportunity as well. Learning how to think is a great skill that you can never be too good at. And that's really what the show is about, making you a better thinker. So, if you enjoyed this at all, and you think there's any sort of wise advice here that you might apply, check out the Jordan Harbinger Show anywhere you listen to podcasts. And you can also check me out at jordanharbinger.com. And I'm @JordanHarbinger on all social media.

Andy Molinsky: [00:43:42] Awesome. And I would strongly recommend the show as well. We'll have the link in the show notes. So, thank you so much again for coming on.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:49] Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Andy Molinsky: [00:43:53] Thank you for listening to From the Dorm Room to the Board Room. If you're interested in learning more about the work that I do in helping people step outside their comfort zones and transition successfully into the professional world, please visit my website, www.andymolinsky.com. That's A-N-D-Y-M-O-L-I-N-S-K-Y dot com. And also feel free to email me directly at andy@andymolinsky.com with any feedback or ideas for guests for future podcasts.

Andy Molinsky: [00:44:24] This podcast is brought to you by Brandeis University's International Business School. By teaching rigorous Business, Finance, and Economics, connect students to best practices and immersing them in international experiences, Brandeis International Business School prepares exceptional individuals from around the globe to become principled professionals in companies and public institutions worldwide. Thank you so much for listening.