- In this video, I interview Jordan Harbinger,
who's interviewed over 700 people
and has over 200 million podcast downloads.
And we talk about his tips for how
to do better interviews, his advice
for leveling up your content,
and his tips for body language
so you can crush your on-camera presence comin' up.
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by LearnVideo.live, a free, one-hour,
online training on how to grow a highly influential
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To get free access, just go to LearnVideo.live.
- Hey, what's up, guys, Sean here with video influencers,
help you build your influence, income and impact
with online video, and I'm super pumped
to be standing here today with Jordan Harbinger.
How's it going?
- Good, man, thanks for the opportunity.
- Pumped to have you on the show.
We're here at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego.
And we're gonna be talking
about how to level up your content,
and, really, actually, with some body language
things and also how to interview people better.
Jordan's done over 700 interviews.
He's actually had one of the longest-running
interview shows, over a decade, and over 200 million
downloads on his podcast.
So he knows a lot, and I'm pumped to be learning
from you today.
- Yeah, I'm excited to be here, man.
There's a lot of stuff I've learned through mistakes,
and I would love to share a lot of those mistakes.
- I'm pumped.
Well, let's talk about content first.
- Sure. - Because, you know, we've
all heard the phrase, content is king.
- Yes. - You're a content creator
yourself, but not all content is created equal.
Not every interview show is
created equal. - That's true.
- And you've learned a lot about content.
I was even listening to your show recently,
which is great, and we'll talk about that later.
But you were talking about also how much
effort you put into it.
So break down some of the things you think
that makes great standout content.
- Sure.
When I first started interviewing,
I thought, you know, I'm totally faking my way through this.
I'm entertaining a little bit.
I feel like I'm kinda smart, so I can wing it,
and I'm doing a really good job winging it.
But one time years ago, I read the book
for the guest and then I read another one
of his books, and I thought this is a really good writer.
I'm really enjoying this.
So I did an interview with him,
and he said, "Wow, this is one of the best
"interviews that I've done in years.
"Why did this take so long?"
And the answer, truthfully, was,
well, I didn't feel like I could
do a good interview, 'cause I never
read any of your stuff.
I didn't tell him that, but then I decided,
I thought, look, if I read all of the books
and I go through the Wikipedia and I've researched
the guest and I go through their bio
and then I look at other interviews that they've done,
I can do a better interview than anyone else
has done, because I outworked them.
'Cause I used to think, uh, it's talent.
It's just working hard.
You gotta be funny or entertaining.
No, you can outwork people,
and then you can create something better.
The problem is, most of us, we don't really
want to outwork people.
We just kinda wanna put more content
out there, see what sticks to the wall,
and then rinse and repeat until we are internet famous.
- That's powerful.
So you just thought I'm gonna put more work into it.
- Yeah. - I'm not just gonna
wing this.
I'm gonna do my research.
I'm gonna go deep.
Well, that's awesome, but let's actually
take a step back because I want to get
your tips on interviews, but how did this
whole thing start for you?
What was your story of getting into interviews
and even getting to where you are today?
- Yeah, so I used to be an attorney,
and that was as exciting as it sounds.
And I knew that I wasn't,
speaking of outworking people,
I knew I wasn't the smartest guy at that law firm.
I was trying to outwork people,
but now I'm at Wall Street at a law firm,
everybody's working 20 hours a day.
I'm not outworking these people.
I'm not gonna make myself smarter fast enough
for my career to take off.
And then I thought, wait a minute.
If I don't have a competitive advantage,
probably gonna get fired.
And so I wanted to work from home
because I thought if I work from home,
they won't know that I don't belong here.
So one of the partners was never in the office,
and I thought, okay, I'm gonna ask this guy
how he got to work from home,
'cause he's never in the office.
So I cornered him one day.
I was like, hey, Dave, how come you're
never in the office?
You know, do you just work from home a lot,
thinking I'm gonna get the secret phrase
you tell the rest of the partners
so that you don't have to come to the office.
And he goes, "No, I'm bringing in deals.
"I'm creating relationships."
And then I thought well, if I can learn
to do that, I'll have a new competitive advantage,
so I decided to go out and practice body language
and psychology and all these books that
I was reading on networking.
And I started working on that stuff,
and I started teaching other people that stuff
because they were interested.
And then I was burning CDs.
This is how old this was.
Burning CDs, putting them in my pocket,
and when someone would go, hey, how come
you seem to know everybody at this bar?
Or how come you got this offer for this cool thing?
I would whip out one of my fancy burned CDs
and hand it to them.
Then one time, a friend of mine goes,
"Why don't you just put this up as a podcast?
"I heard this new thing about podcasting.
"You should try it."
I went to the iTunes store,
and there were 800 shows in there,
and I went, 800 shows, no one's ever gonna find this!
So I uploaded the first episode of the podcast,
really enjoyed it, started interviewing
people out of laziness.
I was creating my own content,
and then I went oh, this is hard.
Maybe if I interview somebody,
they'll do the work, and I can just
sit there and go cool, all right, amazing, right?
And so I started doing that,
and I did that for years.
And people were like this is really interesting content.
I realized I was the weakest link
because I was good at finding guests,
but I wasn't really doing anything special,
and the competition was heating up
with more and more shows.
So I started to outwork and work harder,
because that was the only thing I knew how to do.
I don't know how to get smarter that much faster
than the normal pace, but I do know how
to outwork people.
And I figured if that's my competitive advantage,
along with the relationships that I'm creating,
then I can put that into a really good show.
And that's what I've been doing for the last
12 years, 11 years.
- Man, that's so powerful,
and as podcasting with the Art of Charm
and now the Jordan Harbinger Show,
you've interviewed over 700 people.
- Yes. - Let's talk about how
to do an interview show.
Obviously, we're doing one right now.
This is kinda meta.
- You're nailing it. - But there's many people
in our community that should be interviewing
guests, maybe already have interview shows.
What are some of the lessons that you've learned
and maybe some of the biggest mistakes
that people make when it comes to interviews?
- First things first, like I said,
it took me five or six years to realize
that I should know the guest's work,
never as well as they do, but damn close, right.
Read the freaking book, you know.
I know that sounds really simple,
but people are lazy.
They won't do that.
But here's the upside.
You don't have to have a PhD in whatever
they're teaching, you just have to know
it well enough to have an intelligent
conversation with them.
That will make you already better
than 95% of other content creators out there.
Then, once you read that, I've got a couple tricks
that I'll let you all in on on how
to get some inside info on a guest.
I go to Wikipedia.
Obviously, Wikipedia, wealth of knowledge,
that's not what I mean.
Go to the talk page.
Do you know what a talk page
is on Wikipedia? - I don't, actually.
- On Wikipedia, there's the article, right,
where it's like oh, Jordan Harbinger,
he's a lawyer, now he does a show.
Nobody cares.
It's like a two little bio.
There's a talk page, which is where the super geeky
Wikipedia people yell at each other
about what goes in the article.
And it's kind of all undercover,
and they're like delete this.
No, I heard this happened.
Where's the proof?
Oh, there isn't any.
Another guy's like I was there, it did happen.
It's not in the article, but you can get
these little bits of data that are just nowhere else.
- Yeah, that's awesome.
- And when you're reading the book
and things like that, if you can go
into the social media and look for the people
they thanked, search for the people they thanked.
And then search for that person's name together
and often you'll find some ancient video
on like MetaCrawler or whatever.
If that even still exists. - Sure, sure.
- Where it's like Gary Vaynerchuk,
and he's like 28, and he's being mentored
by some other random person.
No one has that bit of data.
You can write down what's in there,
and you can bring that up.
And once you trigger nostalgia in the guest,
they're gonna be blown away.
They're gonna want to open up,
talk about it, because they want
to relive those emotions.
And they're doing it with you on your program.
Nobody's gonna dig that deep.
If you can out-prepare 90, 95% of the people,
you're gonna do a much, much better job.
- That's so powerful and very tactical.
Thank you for sharing that.
Speak to some of the mistakes.
You have done 700 interviews.
Those first couple, you were mentioning some things.
You put a lotta work in,
but what are some other things maybe,
who knows, interrupting?
I mean, what do people do that,
or what are some of the mistakes that you make
that you hear other interviewers maybe
just irks you too.
- Yeah, so early on in the interview game,
I wasn't trying to do any sort of internet business.
I wasn't trying to be like internet celebrity
Jordan Harbinger, right.
I didn't care.
So the interviews were okay.
I was a beginner, but they were okay.
Then I went, oh, I need to brand myself.
I need to brand myself as an expert.
So instead of creating my own content,
which is what you're supposed to freakin'
do if you want to brand yourself as an expert,
what I was doing was going
oh, that's interesting, Sean.
Let me talk about myself for like 20 minutes
in the middle of this interview.
And I started getting feedback from listeners
that went Jordan, you're here every week.
We hear you.
Let the guest talk.
That's why they're there.
At first, my ego resisted that,
and I was like, it's my show.
I'm gonna talk about whatever I want,
and if that subject is me, so be it.
And then you see people go, cool, I'm gonna go
somewhere else where the guest gets to talk.
That's a hard lesson to learn.
A few years of doing that,
or a few months of doing that, if you're smarter than me,
which many people are, should teach you that lesson.
But later on, when you realize look, I am here every week,
if I'm gonna throw in an anecdote,
make it good for the audience.
So my rubric or measure now is
I'm an advocate for the audience.
I'm not trying to be friends with the guest.
I'm not trying to get them to like me.
I'm not trying to make myself look good.
That will either happen over time
or it won't, but if you advocate for the guest,
you are their eyes, their ears,
you're asking the questions for them,
you're making sure they get value,
practical exercises, et cetera,
which I want practicals in every episode,
takeaways they can use.
If you're thinking about that,
you'll do a good interview.
If you're thinking about how to look good
or be cool or be friends with the guest,
you're gonna blow it because you're gonna
be thinking about what's good for you
or what's good for the guest
instead of what's good for the audience.
- Woo, some fire tips right there.
After doing all these interviews,
especially as it relates to,
especially building your influence and persuasion
and charm and things like that,
one of the things that our audience is doing,
of course it's on video, and they're trying
to come across, of course persuasively.
They want to have confidence.
They want to project, you know,
the presence they want to deliver,
but when you get in front of a camera,
it's intimidating.
- Of course.
- What are some of your tips when it comes
to body language and really having authority
and just being yourself but being your best self on camera.
- Yeah, so this took me a long time to learn.
In fact, even still, when I get a new mic,
I'm always like oh, hello there.
The nerves do creep in.
That's gonna happen.
That's gonna be normal for you.
Unless you are an expert video personality,
you're gonna have these issues,
whether or not you're just audio or even video.
So what I like to do is give people
the following drill.
This is called the doorway drill.
The reason this is powerful is because
if I'm trying to micromanage my body language,
I'm like oh, okay, gotta look relaxed right now.
Everybody relax.
- I'm not sure what to do with my hands.
- Good point, yeah. - It does not work.
So you have to relegate and delegate your body
language to the sort of subconscious level
so it happens automatically,
because otherwise, you go, all right,
I look good.
I'm standing up straight.
I look confident.
And then you go to a networking event
or something like that and suddenly
you just go back into computer-all-day mode.
And that's a problem.
You can't micromanage your body language.
It just doesn't work.
It's really hard to monitor that
and also be present in a conversation.
So every time you walk through a doorway,
in your own house, in your office,
whatever you do the most, straighten up,
so shoulders back, chin up, chest up.
I mean, you're already doin' it.
You're good, you're good, right.
- Okay. - And you don't have
to do this.
Don't do the Superman. - Sure, sure.
- You'll look like a weirdo.
- Just stand up straight. - Exactly.
- Get the hunch back up.
- Get the hunch back, and put a smile on your face.
It always helps.
It'll look a little plastic at first,
but you'll get used to it
as it becomes your default.
Now, the problem is, I can tell you
to do that every time you walk through a doorway,
and then you're gonna walk through a doorway
in two seconds and forget all about it.
And you're never gonna build the habit.
So get those little Post-It Notes, the tiny ones,
the green ones or the purple ones or whatever.
You don't have to write anything on them.
Put them up at eye level
in the doorframe at home, at work, in the office.
What that'll do is it'll pattern interrupt you.
So when you walk through the doorway,
you go why is there a?
Oh, right, there's a Post-It Note there.
- And you're gonna, yeah. - Oh, okay, right.
It's there because I need to straighten up.
So every time you walk through the doorway,
you're building that subconscious habit.
Then, when you do walk into Starbucks,
your next meeting, the boardroom,
some networking event, your body language,
by default, is upright, positive and confident.
And then you don't have to think about it.
Now, not only does that help you
become a little bit more confident,
it causes other people to treat you
in a different way than they would normally.
So if people are treating you in a different way,
that informs how you think about yourself,
which, of course, is a virtuous cycle
that lets you relax a little bit more,
be more positive, open and confident,
and then it's constantly reinforcing it.
Eventually, you can tear the Post-It Notes down
because you've essentially had a core
identity level shift. - Complete change.
- From freakin' Post-It Notes, man.
- That's super powerful, and then, of course,
that's gonna change your presence on camera.
That could definitely move the needle.
Man, that's a great tip.
Well, Jordan, are you ready for the lightning round?
- I am.
- Choo choo.
- Boom.
- Or slice maybe would've been better.
- Slice and dice. - That was not a boom.
That was not a boom motion.
(electronic beep)
- Coffee or tea?
- Coffee.
- Cat or dog?
- Cat.
- NYC or LA?
- NYC.
- Last song you had on repeat.
- Oh, God.
This is gonna be embarrassing.
It was probably, ugh, it was that stupid Friday song.
And I had it on repeat for a reason
that nobody cares about right now.
♪ Friday, Friday ♪
♪ Gettin' down on Friday ♪
♪ Down on Friday ♪
- All right, okay.
If you could only have one item
that you could grab or get in during a zombie apocalypse,
what would it be?
What would your go-to item or weapon be?
- I would say a machete.
- That's it?
- I like it up close and personal, man.
- You know what I'm saying?
- Yeah.
- If you look back and you think about maybe
a past failure or mistake that you made
that led to your future success,
what would that be?
And do you have maybe a favorite failure?
- Yeah.
When I started the Art of Charm a long time ago,
I let people get away with little things
that I thought oh, eventually we'll fix
this because we'll make more money
or we'll improve this or we'll work
this out together.
But instead of handling the problem
in the moment, I just kinda pushed it off
and thought later this will be something we can fix.
And those rifts grew so big
that eventually it was kind of like
you leave the cap off the toothpaste
and somebody's gettin' stabbed.
Handle problems early.
Make sure that you nip 'em in the bud
because they will get worse.
Money's not gonna fix it,
a bigger presence, a bigger audience
is not gonna fix it, scaling up
is not gonna fix it.
Handle it early.
One of the reasons I split from the Art of Charm
and started the Jordan Harbinger Show
was because all of these little problems
grew for so freaking long that by the time
the last straw broke the camel's back,
there was just no way it was gonna get repaired.
- Favorite quote or maybe a phrase
that you think about often.
- Leave everything better than you found it.
- Love it.
No-miss morning ritual.
- Oh, man.
No-miss morning ritual?
I go for a walk for like an hour every morning.
It gets the blood flowing.
Sometimes I'll make a phone call
or listen to an audio book,
and, even if it's freezing, you know
you're gettin' your 10,000 steps in,
and then you don't feel like crap during the day.
- Yeah, I love that.
Favorite or bingeable Netflix show that you love?
- Uh, shoot.
Game of Thrones is not on Netflix,
but it should be.
- There you go.
That's a good one.
And then, finally, what is one book
that you recommend every influencer watching should read?
- I love the, well, this is cliche,
but screw it, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Look, that thing was written in like 1938.
The principles are still solid.
Forget all the examples are about like
typewriter salesmen, go read that book
and realize that that was the beginning
of people going hey, you can learn to sort
of change your personality in a way
that will make you more effective.
And when you get to the root of that,
tehre's been very little that's been
iterated on since then in a useful way.
That was kinda the oh gee, you can change
yourself for the better book.
Well, maybe not the oh gee, depending
on which sort of faith you follow, but that was
one of the ones I picked.
- Awesome.
Well, Jordan, thank you so much
for being a part of the show.
What do you have going on?
And of course we're gonna link everything
up in the description below,
but where can people find you,
and what are you up to?
- Sure.
I'm at JordanHarbinger.com, but I do
the Jordan Harbinger Show.
It's a podcast that I am growing
out of 11 years of experience.
I interview everybody from CIA agents
to teach you how to read people,
body language, et cetera, all the way
to persuasion from hostage negotiators,
Larry King-type talk show hosts
and a little bit of a deep dive
into how I'm recovering from a business split
that I never thought I'd go through.
So there's a lot of really brutal honesty
that includes insight.
And I think that hopefully that's really
useful for people, especially in this line of work.
- Absolutely, and, actually, I'm a listener myself,
so I highly recommend the show.
Definitely jump on iTunes or wherever
you get your podcasts and subscribe
because I believe, you know, we want
to help you build your influence
here on this channel, and that is a great
show to check out.
Jordan, as an entrepreneur, you've definitely
been up, you've gone through some ups and downs.
You were mentioning even currently.
That's just the reality for any of us,
whether we're just starting.
There those times when we grind,
and this stuff is hard. - It is hard.
- And it can be discouraging.
Can you just share some final maybe
encouragement for our community
and any parting wisdom for those that
are influencers and entrepreneurs
to just keep going?
- Definitely.
When we look at other people doing
their thing on the internet like you,
me, whatever, one of the reasons I think
that recent episodes of the Jordan Harbinger Show
were powerful was because I shared
a lot of mistakes and failures.
Not in the way where it's like oh,
10 years ago I made this little mistake,
and now I'm rich and famous.
No, that's not what I'm doing.
I'm doing it in real time.
And the reason that that's worked out really well
is because I think that we often compare
our blooper reel, personally, to other
people's highlight reel.
It's easy to go, oh, this person
on Instagram, they're doing all this cool stuff.
I'm never gonna get there.
But what you don't see is they had
the flu last week.
They blew their latest product launch.
They're not talkin' about that
because it's not good for business.
So when you look at other people's businesses,
realize you're getting a curated feed.
I know that we know this consciously,
but we gotta realize your blooper reel,
what's going on up here most of the time,
do not compare that to what other people
are putting out there as a business advertisement.
And when you realize that everybody has
a blooper reel, you're gonna start
to feel a little bit better
about actually making mistakes and having
real failures that you will later learn from.
- I love that.
My man, - Thank you.
- Appreciate you.
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