Follow these Steps to Get People to Know, Like, and Trust You with Jordan Harbinger

Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast Show 401: The Weekend Edition.

Speaker 2:
People are always going to go to their stack of contacts. First, they’re going to go to people that they know, like, and trust. It’s more important to be trusted than it is liked, but obviously you want to do both. If you’re just only there when there’s an opportunity, you’re not going to build the relationships that big investors or big people in any field are going to want to deal with.

Speaker 3:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, a simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Stay tuned, and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com, your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon:
What is going on everybody? It’s Brandon Turner, host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Here with my co-host, Mr. David Greene. What’s up, David? Something feel weird today?

David:
You know, it feels like there’s excitement in the air. Maybe a little bit of newness, freshness, never-ending possibility, and entire road ahead of us that’s never been traveled.

Brandon:
That’s right. I wore a new shirt today. It is my dark blue shirt, not my light one. You know about that?

David:
Is that what it is, or is there something more?

Brandon:
All right. Today, you might notice that this show is coming out on a different day than usual. For the last eight years in a row, we have launched a show every single Thursday without missing one Thursday. We still plan to release one every Thursday without missing one for the future for the next hundred years. That said, we are going to be adding something a little bit different here. We’re going to add a second episode of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast every week. That’s right. More of the things you already love in real estate content.
But a little bit of a twist to that. We’re going to be releasing them every Sunday. That’s why this is coming out on Sunday. And the point of this new show, or this new twist on our show, is to really talk about the mind game behind real estate investing success. Now, explain what I mean by that. David, you and I talk about this all the time, right? The tactics like how to buy a duplex, how to buy an apartment, how to syndicate, how to house hack … those can all be found anywhere. You can read a book, and you can find that stuff. But it’s awesome and we love it. But there’s more to success than just the how to. Can you explain what I mean by that?

David:
Yes. This is such a big thing. See, Brandon and I brainstorm, and we often talk about how do we get the knowledge that we have in our heads into the listeners’ heads? How do we take what we know and get it into the minds of you that are listening, so that you can replicate the same success that we’ve enjoyed that real estate has brought into our lives? And what we found is that it’s more than just the blueprint. If the blueprint is in my computer and I got to get it into yours, we have to figure out some way to file share. And that file sharing system is often your mindset. The way you look at the world, the way you process information. And frankly, sometimes getting out of your own way. The hang ups that we all have in our own selves that keep us from being successful.
The more that we’ve talked about this, the more we realized it’s not just telling people what to do. It’s also sharing with them how they can sort of affect the way … the soil in their own mind that allows the seeds that we’re planting to get in there. That’s what the show is all about. We want to talk to people that are successful that can share the path that they walked, how they overcame obstacles, that you can take and apply to your own life so that you can start sharing some of the fruits that we all love. It’s the mindset battle that is half the battle, not just the information.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s so good. What do you know? David, with the analogy. I love it. It’s basically … yeah. We’re bringing our top performers to talk about what they’re really good at. For example, today’s guest is a guy I’ve looked up to for a long time. His name is Jordan. He is just fantastic. You’re going to love him.
Before I intro him, basically, there’s guys like Jordan … there’s other maybe political leaders. Maybe leaders in other industries. Scientists, keynote speakers, whatever. Just like people who are top performers in their field, and we want to bring and apply that knowledge to our audience, who are real estate investors out there that are trying to grow wealth and financial freedom through real estate. We’re going to apply that knowledge here on the Weekend Edition to the show.
I’m super excited about this. Again, how is this different from other shows that are out there doing success type shows is we are trying to take this and draw a direct connection, a direct line to real estate investing. Because again, it’s not just about: here’s how to buy duplex. It’s why didn’t you wake up early? Why don’t you say what you’re going to do? Why didn’t you go and talk to that person? What was guiding that? What’s the mindset and the actions needed for success in anything? And then we’re going to apply to real estate.
That is today’s kind of an introduction to what we’re doing here. We won’t normally give that long of an intro, but I wanted you guys to realize what we’re doing differently. Specifically, let’s talk about today’s show. We’ve got a guy I followed for a year. Super, super smart entrepreneur. A business owner. Again, not specifically a real estate investor, but this is definitely, definitely going to help your real estate investing. Because today we’re talking about connecting with people, networking, getting likable, having people like you. Because as we always say in the show, people like to sell to people they like. People like to buy from people they like. People like to work with people they like.
So, becoming likable and doing that in a systematized way is what Jordan Harbinger, our guest, today is going to talk exactly about. He is the guy when it comes to that conversation. Basically how to dig our wells before we’re thirsty, to use his analogy. That’s what we’re going to be learning how to do today. Before we get to our conversation with Jordan Harbinger though, let’s get to today’s quick tip.
All right, David. I developed a brand new acronym. You ready for this?

David:
Yes.

Brandon:
Okay. All right. It’s in the new book, the multifamily book that’s coming out next spring. But I put it in there, and I realized it’s the on fire agent. In other words, an agent who is organized, networked, focused on network. They know a lot of people. Focused on you, investment savvy, responsive, and experienced.
I would actually consider you the perfect example of an on fire agent. I think you are all those things. That’s what we want to recommend people work with is go work with an on fire agent. How do you find such an agent? Well, how do you find a drunk? You go to the bar. How do you find a sports enthusiast? I don’t know. You go to the ball fields. How do you find such an agent? They’re probably hanging out on a real estate investing website like BiggerPockets. Go to biggerpockets.com/agent where you can search and sort from over 10,000 real estate agents who actively participate on BiggerPockets. Find somebody who is on fire so they can help you get on fire yourself. Like that?

David:
I love it. I’ll even add onto your quick tip. We’ll have a quick tip extension here. I am that agent Brandon is talking about. I’ve worked very hard to become that. It’s going really well, and I’m in that same place he’s talking about. I spend a lot of time on BiggerPockets networking with other investors, talking to people who have wealth building goes to real estate, and offering my services to those people should they want it. If I’m there, you should be there too. I’m the person who has basically bought a bunch of properties and I’m trying to help other people. If that’s something you’re interested in leverage BiggerPockets to help you achieve your goals better.

Brandon:
Yeah, so good. So good, man. Well, thank you David for doing the show with me as always. And now doubling up twice a week, we’re going to be spending a lot more time together. I love it.

David:
Yeah. So, on the real estate podcast, we teach you guys, you got to go network. That’s how you’re going to find deals. This podcast is going to teach you how to be good at networking. And so that’s really the one-two punch, right? One of them is what to do, the other is how to be good at doing it.

Brandon:
Yeah. There you go. Great way to put that. All right, David, let’s get into today’s show. You guys grab a pencil and paper out. You are definitely going to want to be taking some notes on this show. If you’re driving, please don’t do that. Now let’s get into the interview with Jordan Harbinger.
Jordan, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast, man. Good to have here.

Jordan:
Yeah. Thanks for having me on guys. I appreciate it.

Brandon:
Yeah. So, let’s dive into your story because yours is a little bit different than maybe most of our guests, which we do a lot of the real estate, how to buy a duplex and that kind of stuff. We brought you on for a little different reason today, because when it comes to networking relationships, all that, you are The Guy. If I think of The Guy, you’re The Guy. And so we wanted to bring on The Guy. Tell us about your background. I mean, have you always been the networking, goal relationship, [crosstalk 00:08:09]?

Jordan:
No, not at all. So, I was a shy kid growing up, surprise, surprise. Middle school, high school were like a living hell. And I thought, “Okay, this is terrible. I don’t know how anyone lives like this. This is just awful.” And as I got older, I realized that a lot of the most successful people I knew, they had a lot of friends. That’s what it looked like. They always knew who to call. And my parents were kind of quiet people. They were hard workers, but they were more or less introverts. My dad’s probably not that bad, but he was always at work. My mom’s really quiet. So, I realized, oh, some of my friends’ parents, they have such cool opportunities and it’s because they’re outgoing and they know everyone, and I can never be like that.
When I started working on Wall Street as an attorney, I was actually doing real estate. So, there’s a nice nexus for BiggerPockets. I’ve realized, all right, I’m not the same kid I was in high school where I can show up to a geometry test and just do okay and go on with my life even though I didn’t study, because “I’m naturally so smart”. Once I got to college and law school, I was like, “Uh-oh, everyone’s smarter than me.” Now I recognize that as largely imposter syndrome, but it doesn’t really matter. I still had to outwork everyone. So, I got my work ethic going in college and law school, and that allowed me to outwork everybody there because they were like, “Oh, let’s go drinking in the afternoon. We’re all geniuses, handed down from our parents.” And I was like, if I’m going to float here or succeed, I need to work my butt off.
So, I’d work 10, 16 hour days, whatever. Then I got to Wall Street, everyone’s working 16 hour days. Everyone is really smart. And I’m like, “I’m going to get fired. I am done. I am so in trouble.” And one of the partners that was one of the guys who hired me, he was never in the office. And I thought, “Okay, he probably works from home. I need to figure out how I can work from home, because then if I work from home, I won’t get fired as quickly as if I worked in the office, and everyone was like, ‘this guy, why did we hire this guy?'” But if I work from home, it’ll take them longer to figure out I don’t belong here, at which point, maybe I’ll have figured out how to be useful to this firm.
So, I started asking that lawyer, “How do you work from home? How come you’re never in the office,” and all this stuff. Instead of telling me about how he worked from home in his home office, he was like, “No, no, no, no. I mean, yes, I do that, but I usually generate business for the firm.” And I thought, “Well, how do you do that?” And his advice was not that useful. He was like, “Just be cool and get to know as many people as possible.” And I was like, “Just be cool?” Yeah, I’ll get right on that buddy, right after get taller, and be more confident. It’s that non-actionable, fake advice. And what I realized he meant was he goes and does jujitsu. He goes on charity cruises and goes to dinner galas and he goes cycling. And he goes jogging on the West Side Highway with potential clients.
And I was like, it’s not just be cool. He has a ton of friends. And his value outside the law firm was actually more… He was more valuable outside the law firm than he was inside billing hours. And he didn’t worry about his billable hourly bonus or anything because he was just generating business. And if you take 5% of a million dollar law deal at a contract from an investment banking firm, you get more money than you do if you bill 2000 hours a year, which means working 4,000 hours a year at a law firm. So, he had figured out this hack. And I was like, “I need to do that if I’m going to make partner,” and I started learning about that and taking classes on that.
I found that all the classes were kind of garbage. They were like, “Look them in the eye and have a firm handshake,” and I was like, “Okay, but if I’m not getting a million dollar law deal or a better job, is it because I didn’t have a firm handshake and didn’t look them in the eye? Is that 1% of it or is it 99% of it?” It’s clearly just 1% of it. And I realized also, taking these classes, I’m not going to learn how to generate business for my Wall Street firm or get real estate deals, for example, for your audience. I’m not going to learn that from a guy with a sweater vest teaching classes at the YMCA on Tuesdays. That guy doesn’t know this stuff. He doesn’t get it either. That’s why he’s here.
So, I had to go back to first principles and I was like, what makes people likable? How come some people are known more than others? How come some people are popular and trusted? What’s the trick? And it turns out there’s not many tricks. It’s all very basic principles that are difficult because they require consistency. So, that’s what I tried to decode.

Brandon:
That’s awesome. Let me bring this into real estate for our listeners again, to reinforce why we want to do this. So, one of the best ways to find deals today is we call off market, right? It means they’re not listed with a real estate agent. You just get Uncle Jeb, or whatever his name is, he owns his house. He wants to sell it. You contact him, whether it’s through driving for dollars, we call it, or direct mail marketing, whatever. And eventually you get on the phone with this person, or eventually you get at their kitchen table and you’re walking through their property or whatever. What I found to be so true in almost every area of business is people like to do business with people they like. People like to sell to people they like. If two people offered me money for one of my properties and I liked one of them more, I’d probably sell to that person even if they offered me less money, to a degree.
Likability is so important in every aspect of real estate, is how do you get a seller to like you, how do you get a potential mentor to actually want to take you under their wing and help you get to the next level, how do you get a person to finance your next deal. I got an email yesterday. This email literally said the guy wanted me to put in $10 million into his deal. I’d never met the guy before. Cold email wanted me to put in $10 million and he was completely serious. I just delete the email, right? There’s just zero chance. So, this is why this show is so important today, is because we’re going to learn about how to get people to like you. And you obviously got a lot of those, like you said, not many tricks, but techniques that you’ve learned. So yeah, I don’t want to spoil that.

Jordan:
Yeah, and principles. And it’s funny because I will go and train real estate investors all the time. I trained military special forces intelligence agents, and then there’s also real estate people. And I’m like, that’s so weird that I have this strange, satellite niche, sub-niche and it’s because of what you said, they’re always saying, “Hey, the best deals are not listed in some computer, they’re not on Craigslist. They’re not on these websites, generally.” People are always going to go to their stack of contacts first. They’re going to go to people that they know, like and trust, and it’s more important to be trusted than it is liked, but obviously you want to do both.
And, if you’re just only there when there’s an opportunity, you’re not going to build the relationships that big investors or big people in any field are going to want to deal with. It’s sort of the cliche, like guys playing golf and going, “How about the Henderson account?” “Yeah, yeah, we should get on that, right after I school you in hole number 17.” There’s a lot of truth to that, honestly, and it doesn’t have to be an old boys’ network. It can be anything that you want it to be, but you have to build it yourself. And it seems like there’s certain people that are just, this goes apropos our conversation that we just had offline, but it seems like there’s certain people that are born into better circumstances, and they totally are.
I’ve got a buddy who, his family owns an island, speaking of real estate, off of the coast of Maine. And I thought, “There can’t be that many of those. You guys must be doing pretty well.” If you own an island in America, wow, with one or two big houses on it that they own. That’s incredible. And I thought, “I’m never going to be as well connected as my friend.” His name’s Tim. But then, as years went by, I realized I know a lot more people than Tim does. He’s not a lazy guy. He’s a hard worker. He works at a big tech company. He’s a really smart, likable guy, but he didn’t think, “I better be building these connections.” He just did what everybody else does, which is sort of coast through. This is a tortoise and the hare situation where if you know what you’re doing and you have your foot on the gas, over the next five or 10 years, you can know anyone who’s anyone in your niche or industry.
You can have deals coming at you at an unstoppable clip. And you do that because you’ve been consistent about literally spending five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, on relationship development and systemizing it. And that will be the difference between somebody who’s making a couple thousand dollars a year, a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year, or millions of dollars a year, because those people are getting access to different deals. It’s just like investing in tech. All these big VCs, the reason they spend money on advertising, branding, they’re on podcasts, talking about stuff, giving talks, they don’t have to do that.
They have hundreds of millions of dollars. Why is Marc Andreessen on podcast? Why is Ben Horowitz on podcast? Because the founders go, “Oh, man, I would love to be associated with this guy, see and hear on all these different shows, and that gave a talk at Stanford. They’re the best.” So the best deals go to them first. It’s a branding play. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re networking. You’re essentially creating a really strong, personal brand where everyone’s like, “Well, I want to be in on the ground floor of Brandon Turner. That’s where I want to be. I want to be on the ground floor of BiggerPockets, deal with those guys. I don’t want to just float out there.” That’s dangerous because you provide familiarity and certainty.
So there’s a huge advantage to this. And a lot of people go, “Oh, it’s all about who you know,” but they put a little stank on the end of it. If it’s an unfair advantage, make it your advantage. Don’t just whine and complain about how other people have this advantage. You can build this. It takes a lot of work and it’s done consistently over time, but make any unfair advantage that you can, your “unfair” advantage because your alternative is what? Whining about how opportunities don’t fall in your lap? I mean, that just sounds exhausting, boring and a little depressing.

Brandon:
Yeah. That makes sense. Hey, I want to go back a second to a phrase you said that I think a lot of people might found weird. You said, “Systematize relationship building.”

Jordan:
Yes.

Brandon:
That sounds like… Most people are like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Relationships are organic. They’re natural.”

Jordan:
Authentic.

Brandon:
Yeah. Authentic. Yeah. I don’t want to be… What does that mean to systematize relationship building?

Jordan:
Yeah, that’s a good question. People think authenticity and systems aren’t compatible, and that’s really not true. If you’re systemizing… There’s a difference between being a robot and so being inauthentic, and systemizing something. So, if you wake up every morning and you’re a runner and sometimes you don’t want to run, but you decide, “I’m going to put on my running shoes and my running pants and then go outside, and if I still don’t want to run, I can turn around and go back into bed,” that’s a system.
If you use an alarm to wake up, that’s a system. Nobody goes, “But I should just wake up authentically.” Right? I mean, it is better for you to wake up naturally, but some people need an alarm because they need to get up for work if they have a day job, that kind of thing. There’s nothing wrong with this. Usually the systems are scaffolding that goes around a habit. So I have systems, but it’s not because I want to send automated emails to everybody saying, “Hi, friend, what is new with you?” For me, I, on this date did this thing, and some algorithm in automation is plugging all that in.
No, my systems are like, “Did you contact somebody that you haven’t spoken to in at least six months?” And if the answer is, “No,” and it always is because it’s like 8:00 in the morning when that pops up in my calendar, I go in my phone, I scroll all the way to the bottom of my list of texts, and at the bottom of that list of texts, that’s where you have people that you had lunch with them once at a conference three years ago and you never followed up. And you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I should reengage that people.” So I call and connect four, because I do it four times a day. And I’m reengaging four people who are weak and dormant ties in my network.
Yes, I also reach out to friends. I mean, I reached out to… I think the reason this happened is I reached out to you guys, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, what’s up with this BiggerPockets, guys?” Because I probably saw your show somewhere or an ad somewhere, and I was just like… Instead of going, “Oh, there’s an ad for that show with those guys I know.” I was like, “All right, there’s an…” The habit that the scaffolding is around is, it goes, “Okay, I see that. I’m going to pick up my phone and send an email right now.” Most people never use those cues.
So, instead, we use systems where it’s in my calendar and it says, “Reach out to somebody who you haven’t spoken to in this long.” Or I have a CRM, and your audience probably knows a lot about CRMs because it’s largely a real estate thing, like contextually and stuff like that.
That’ll pop up and say, “Here’s somebody you haven’t talked to in 90 days, or 120 days,” whatever it is. Those are systems. But nobody who’s in sales goes, “Oh, I don’t want to use systems. It’s inauthentic.” Salespeople, they survive on systems. Fire extinguishers and fire alarm systems, those are literally systems by name. Nobody goes, “Yeah, but you know, I want people to yell fire authentically.” No, you have systems to remind you to do things automatically for you. You step in and you make the communication authentic, so you don’t automate that last mile, but you should still have the system in place.

Brandon:
One example of… I’ve had people who gave me flack for this, but I have a system set up to take my wife out on dates. I actually track the number of dates my wife and I go out. And people say that… They’ve teased me about that being inauthentic, or it’s very robot-like. I’m like, “No.” It’ll go three months and I’ll be like… I mean, how many people listening right now, has been three months since you’ve been on a date with your spouse? Because it just happens. Life gets in the way. So when I have this reminder, oh, yeah, here’s where I am on the year. I want to hit 25 this year. Where am I at? I’m at 18, I’m at 12, whatever. Then it’s a system, but it then forces me to actually carry out the act. Which the act is what matters, is going on a date with my wife that matters. So I don’t care if I have to remind myself to do that.

Jordan:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Who cares if it’s not perfectly off the top of my head, random.

Jordan:
I agree. You know what, I think a lot of people who think, “Ooh, this is inauthentic,” okay, great. Do you have as good or better results than me with these types of interactions? Because if so, then that’s great. I want to learn from you, how to do that.
Here’s what I found. This is one of those imaginary problems where people go, “Ooh, I want it to be authentic,” and I go, “Great. How often do you re-engage someone new? Is it 20 times a week? 5 times a week? 100 times a week?” They’re like, “Oh, I do a lot of this naturally.” That’s a common excuse I hear from people when I teach this, and I go, “Great. Let’s break down how you do it naturally.”
You know what we find? One time, four weeks ago, they sent a text to somebody they haven’t talked to in a long time, because one of their friends mentioned that person was sick. That’s it.

Brandon:
Yup.

Jordan:
I’m thinking, so I do more interaction and re-engaging in one day than you do in two, three months? Who’s getting better results, Mr. I Do This Naturally? Or Oh, yo man, you don’t have a system because you’re more authentic. Great. You are 5% more authentic with one person every 90 days than I am with 100 people a month or more, 200 people a month, 100 people a week.
Tell me who’s going to get better results. Nobody has ever gone, “Jordan, I like talking with you, but this seems really inauthentic.” I’ve never gotten negative feedback. Usually what happens is people go, “You’re the only person who keeps in touch with me regularly. Oh my gosh, this is amazing.” I go, “I’m using this system that I teach. It’s free. You should do it. It’s really not hard.”

Brandon:
Last night, I was hanging out with Josh [Dorkin 00:23:08] for a few minutes. Right? We both know Josh well.

Jordan:
Yeah.

Brandon:
I told him I was working with you, and he’s like, “Oh, I love Jordan. That guy’s awesome, man. He hits me up every few months. We just like chat for a few minutes, or we either text.” And was like, “He’s one of the few people that just keeps in touch with me.” That’s what he said. I think this perfectly applies to what you’re saying.

Jordan:
Right. He didn’t go, “Ah, but it’s just so inauthentic because I know it’s in a CRM and he’s such a jerk for having a reminder.” He knows that I use that, doesn’t matter.

Brandon:
Doesn’t care, doesn’t matter.

Jordan:
Why I don’t even think of my own parents as often as I probably should, right. I have a tiny baby. I’m thinking about him and my wife. My wife goes, “We should call your parents like every weekend.” And I go, “Oh yeah.” Maybe I’m a selfish prick, there’s an argument for that.
But if that’s the case for you, then you need these systems really bad. If you’re the type of person who naturally reaches out to four or five friends per day, I would assert you still need this systems to reach out to people that are not that close to you.
You need to be reaching out to people to develop, deal, flow and things like that. That stuff is so important. And I just don’t know anybody who’s immune to this. When I teach this to Secret Service Central Intelligence Agency, MI6, on the rare occasions that I get to go teach this. They don’t go, “Look, man, we’re international clandestine service operators. We don’t need this.” They go, “Okay, our lives depend on this. I’m writing down everything that you are saying, because it’s important.”
I find it ironic that people who could die if they do this wrong are taking furious, copious notes. And somebody who’s whining about how their business isn’t where they want it to be is like, “Ah, but it’s just inauthentic and it’s so much work. And like, I have to set reminders in my calendar.”
I’m just like, “Okay, but the people who literally have been trained by the US government and spent millions of dollars training, each of these guys, they’re writing this down and paying attention. Why aren’t you?”
So, the authenticity thing, if you’re thinking about it and you go, “Ooh, I don’t want to be inauthentic.” Don’t worry, you won’t. Because you’re not going to automate the last step, which is the actual written communication.
But for everyone else, if you’re saying that it’s inauthentic, I would examine, is that an excuse? Because you don’t really want to do this because you feel like you’re shy or you don’t want to put the systems in place or you feel awkward doing it.
Because if that’s the case, then that’s even more reason why you should definitely do this. If you feel like, “Oh, it’s awkward to reach out to people.” That type of limiting mindset is going to screw you long-term. You will not be successful if you have that kind of mindset, you just won’t.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s so good. One common trait I see among every… Like the top real estate investors, I mean, the guys that I know that are buying 10, 15, 20 houses a month, I mean like even my own Open Door Capital team, not myself included in there, but like the guys that are running my acquisitions, like his name is Walker and there’s Ryan. These guys are so good at that CRM systemized follow-up with potential clients.
We have a set, we call this list of brokers every single month. And I know the best agents, the real estate agents, that a lot of agents listen to our show as well, that’s probably the number one different differential between a good agent who makes a ton of money and everybody else, is their use of the follow-up.
And David, I know David’s one of the best agents that I know. So David, I wonder if I can throw it to you real quick. How do you see this in your life and other top agents, how they use this whole system of follow-up?

David:
Well, the first thing I learned when I got into real estate sales was that I knew more about real estate than every other agent that was already in my office. Day one as an investor, I knew way more about it. And they were crushing me.
And I had this idea that the guy who is the smartest, the best attorney who knows the law better than everyone will make the most money. That’s how most of us think. And Jordan realized the same thing as me, the guys that are like idiots are out there riding their bike and posting these pictures that people want to see. And they’re getting all of the leads and they’re making way more money than the little genius that knows the law inside and out and is just furiously scribbling away for 14 hours a day on his typewriter, knowing the law.
So I had this paradigm shift that I had to accept. In my law enforcement career your gregarious, charismatic ability was worthless to you. It just did not matter. Rarely ever would it help. It might help if you were talking to somebody in a bad situation, you could calm them down, but most of us could step it up when we had to in that moment.
Overall, that really friendly, popular cops were not the people that everyone respected. So you didn’t get special assignments that didn’t help. In this sales world totally different. It was a skill that I had to develop if I wanted to be the best. And I was probably the least likely person to do this. I’d tell people, me having to learn to be personable was like a bodybuilder having to go take yoga and Pilates classes. I was so rigid, it was terrible for me.
And it took about four years to get to the point I’m at now. But now what I’ve learned is the agents that are making all the money are not the smartest. They are just the most liked. They know everyone. And everyone says, “I want to work with Mary because Mary is so friendly and nice and fun that people feel comfortable going to her.”
Or they subconsciously want to get her approval, so they bring their deals to that person. And I’ve been working on doing that. And in that process, I learned an incredibly valuable thing that Jordan just said, and I want the audience to make sure they don’t miss, that people who catch the fish, who get the lead will always be inherently more valuable than the person they hire to clean that fish.
But most of us have only had jobs that we clean fish that somebody else caught, it’s all we know, it’s all we know how to think. We can’t get out of that mindset. And I hear people all the time say, “Why am I only getting half the commission if I’m doing all the work? And it just reveals, you’re not doing all the work, you’re doing the easiest part of the work. You’re a house cat and someone’s handing tuna to you and you just have to eat it. You’re not hunting. You’re not putting a marketing plan together. You’re not like Jordan said, “Systematically going out and building relationships to make somebody come to you.” That’s the fish catcher. That’s the highest skill role.
And almost every job we’ve had was working for a company where somebody else was catching fish. Your first job was hot dog on a stick. You didn’t have to go find clients. You worked at a restaurant. Someone brought them in the front door and then a hostess literally walked them to your table and sat them down and said, “Sit here and order something.”
All you have to do is say, “What do you want?” They’ve already decided that they want it. And when I grasp that the one who controls the lead, I think, Brandon, we just did an episode with someone where they said, “Every job you have is you doing something somebody else didn’t want to do anymore.” That’s all it is. That’s all that a job is. When you grasp that, it changes everything. When you get the deals, you can hire the rehab person, hire the property manager, hire a person to even analyze that deal for you. But getting the lead is the most valuable thing you can do to build wealth. Jordan, I saw you’re ready to jump.

Jordan:
Yeah, I’m just going to say that’s a perfect example of why you have to dig the well before you get thirsty, to coin that old sort of self help trope, or whatever. It’s very apt because people will say, “Oh, well, you know, he just has a great network and brought this person in.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay, great.” And they’re like, “No, no, no, I was trying to belittle his contribution.” You know, like that’s what they’re trying to … And it’s like, “No, no, no, come on.” You have to dig the well before you get thirsty. If you are not able to generate leads, then you can’t complain when you don’t get work or you don’t get a deal, or something like that.
This guy, Dave, who hired me at that law firm, when our law firm hit the ’08 crash and we were over leveraged in mortgage backed securities and things like that, he just left the firm, took all of his book of business and went to another firm as a partner. Everyone else “retired”, which means lost their job, because they were like workhorses. And when the market contracts and you don’t need that many workhorses, you just take the people who are generating business. So if you’re focused on just your work product at the expense of your network and lead gen, you will run out when times are tough. But right now, if there’s a market contraction, people who are getting deals, their network is getting them even more deals because all these other players are knocked out of the game.
So if you’re well connected, the network does the work itself, right? Because other people are out there generating leads or generating network connections, and you’re a hub in that sort of hub and spoke web or hub and spoke network. So you have to worry about this, you have to do this. And to your point about charisma and charm, a lot of people are like, “Crap. I’m not charismatic. I’m not outgoing. What do I do?” You don’t have to worry about that. It’s not a matter of like, this person is so funny. If you have that, great, leverage it, use it. But if you just reach out to tons of people, keep in touch with tons of people and you help them get what they want, so instead of ABC, always be closing, it’s ABG, always be giving, or always be generous. If I’m like, I can’t help David with his new website, but I know a web designer and I know a graphics person and I know a conversion optimization person, and I know somebody who can run that email backend. Why don’t I introduce all of them to David?
Now David’s like, “Jordan really hooked me up.” No, no, no. I made you four or five email intros. I didn’t spend 50 hours working on your stuff, but I have the same level of reciprocity, that same feeling that like I owe Jordan one, as would happen as if I’d built the whole damn site myself. Because I used my network as a value add to give you something. So, not only are you grateful, but the web guys, he’s grateful, the conversion expert’s grateful. So now I’m building this social capital and these people are like, “Hey, if you ever need anything, let me know.” You’ve got tons of social capital in referral currency that you’re building through making email introductions. It’s really, it’s scalable.

Brandon:
This is so important. Social capital, I love that phrase. Where a lot of people getting this wrong idea of networking. Like, “Hey man, I’ll introduce you to a graphic designer I know, but I’m going to need this from you. I want to come on your podcast. I want you to have a lunch with you. Hey, I’ll trade you this thing.” Why do we look at that as like maybe the wrong approach when the social capital, what’s the difference there? [crosstalk 00:33:08].

Jordan:
Yeah, so there’s transactional networking, which is bad. So, let’s say I wanted to, I’m trying to think of something that’s obviously transactional. Let’s say I said, “Hey, do you know this such-and-such guest who wrote this book?” And you’re like, “Yeah, I do. He was on BiggerPockets.” And I’m like, “Would you mind making an intro?” You know, since you and I know each other, I would be shocked if you were like, “Well, I’ll do that, but only if you introduce me to Mark Cuban.” And I’m like, “Oh.” I might even say, “Okay”, but it would make me feel weird because it was entirely contingent upon me being able to do something for you. So I would realize that, Oh okay, you only want to do something for me if I can do something for you immediately. Which means, here’s the signal that you don’t want.
And most people are like, “So what? It’s an even value exchange.” And to a degree, I agree with that, okay. But the problem is that that says to me that if I ever don’t have anything to offer you and like, maybe I’m screwed. Maybe I got crushed and a bunch of my units burnt down and I don’t have my funding. That if I reach out to you for help when I need it, when I need it need it, you’re going to be like, “What have you done for me lately? And I cannot count on you.”

Brandon:
That is why people feel that’s inauthentic. That’s the inauthentic part, not using the CRM to make the call.

Jordan:
Right. It’s not the systems, it’s not the scaffolding, in the reminder, it’s the transactional nature that people find inauthentic. And I agree with that. If you reached out to me and said, “Hey, Jordan, BiggerPockets is having a huge problem with a podcast and only your expertise can solve it.” And I’m like, “Great, $10,000 an hour.” You might be like, “Here’s your 10 grand you P-O-S.” Right? You would reluctantly do it because you need me. But then what? When I ask you for something, you’re going to be like, “Now’s our chance to get that 10 grand back that we paid Jordan for this simple task that only he could do for us. What a jerk.” You want your interactions to be building goodwill and referral currency, social capital if you will, not turning into some sort of short term gain for you.
And when I started the Jordan Harbinger Show, when I was like, “Oh my gosh, I started my business over.” You know, I had another big podcast, I had a separation from my business partners. I made a list of like 100 or 200 people, and I reached out to them. All, but a couple, and I mean like two or three, just said, “Yeah, I’m going to mail this out to my audience. Oh, you should come on my show. Let me help you get this set up.”
Couple of people were like, “I don’t know. I really only want big names on my show. And you’re not a big name anymore because you had to start over.” And now they’re like, “Hey Jordan, what’s up, man? See you’re back at the top.” And I’m like, “F you.” Like, “Go fly a kite.” Because they thought, “Oh, Jordan can’t do anything for me anymore because he hit the wall.” I don’t even need to pretend to be friends with that guy anymore. Nobody wants those people in their network. And fundamentally there is no difference between networking and making or meeting friends.
And that’s the mindset you need to change the image you have of networking. Which originally, for me and a lot of other people, networking is a dirty word because of people that are like transactional or throwing business cards in your face. And you do have to dig that well before you get thirsty. You should be helping other people without trying to get anything in return now, or even worried about getting anything later.
Because if you start to go, “What’s in it for me? Should I answer David’s calls? Should I answer Brandon’s call? Oh wait, what can they do for me? What if I don’t find anything right away? Because I’m not real estate. I don’t need to talk to those guys.” Then later on I go, “Hey, what’s up guys? I have a real estate question.” That’s awkward because it’s inauthentic, because I treated you poorly. I wasn’t treating you like a friend or a connection. I was treating you like somebody who couldn’t do anything for me, so I didn’t have the time for you. Now I need something. That’s inauthentic. You should not be doing that.
What you should be doing. If you ABG, you’re helping other people without the attachment to getting anything in return, you start to find opportunities over the horizon. You know, I might help you with something and then you go, “Hey, Jordan, I don’t know if this is of use to you, but our friend just founded this software and it’s helping us do this. Would you want to check the beta out?” I might get that opportunity. Or there might be something in the future. If you just look at what’s in it for you, not only is it going to be very difficult to have authentic reactions, it’s actually going to be harder to have any interactions, because …
Let’s put it in a party context. Say, I walk into a room. All you guys are in a party. And I’m like … I need a graphic designer for my website. So I come up. I’m like, “Hey Brandon, what’s going on? Yeah. What do you do?” “Oh, I do this.” “Cool. Do you know any graphic designers for a website?” “No, not off hand.” Now I’m looking over your shoulder trying to find another person in the party to go talk to. Because you don’t have what I want. Right?
So I’m just looking around, you go, “Oh, this is a weird conversation. Jordan’s not really present. He’s not really paying attention.” I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, but I walk straight over to David. We chat for a few minutes, superficially about whatever he’s doing. And I’m like, “Do you know any graphic designers? No? Cool. All right. I got to go. Bye.” I’m leaving a bad impression. I’m not generating any social capital. It’s just bad. It’s transactional.
On the other hand … And that’s what’s in it for me. That’s when I’m looking at what’s in it for me. If I’m not looking at what’s in it for me and I’m looking at what’s in it for other people that are already in my network that I know, I might say, “What do you do?” I don’t have to worry about what’s in it for me right now. You might say, “Well, I’m a real estate investor. I’m always looking for deals and stuff.” And I go, “What kind of deals?” You tell me and I go, “You know, I know a couple people that are actually selling Silicon Valley property. Do you, is that a thing” “Well, yeah, I’d love to have my agents or my deal finding people, whatever, talk to those folks. Why not”
Now I make that intro. I found something for someone else in my network. So there’s referral currency for them. You’re stoked because I’ve got referral currency for you. Now we’ve just helped each other, except all I did was send like two emails or one email. And I haven’t even done it yet. And then if I ever need anything three years from then, if I reach out to you, you’re going to be like, “Yeah, Jordan helped me out with this other thing.”
You have so many more options if you’re not just looking at the one or two things you need. You’re looking at the 10,000 things that other people in your network might need. That means anyone can help you, because your goal is to help someone else in your network. So you literally have a need for pretty much everything that anyone else could possibly supply.
And you can’t find those opportunities. They’re invisible until you start a relationship with somebody. So if you’re just looking at what’s right in front of you, you miss everything else. And that’s why you’re not supposed to look at what’s in it for you. Even if you’re like a selfish, narcissistic, sociopath, it’s still a better option for you and for everyone else to try and help people in your network because it’s more scalable. Does that make sense?

Brandon:
And think about how much more you learn about the way the world works when you’re always getting in somebody else’s world and saying, “What do you need?” When you’re in your own head and what your thoughts are is, “How can you help me?” All you know is what you already know. You’re in this echo chamber of your own thoughts.
When you get out and say, “What’s in Brandon’s world, what’s in Jordan’s world, what’s in this person’s world?” I now learn a ton about something that I didn’t know anything about, which can only help me in my own business and only help grow my own network. And I can tell, Jordan, just from the few things you’ve mentioned about agents needing CRMs and real estate being a certain way, but you’re not necessarily a real estate guy. You’ve learned about real estate from talking to real estate guys. You now know how to help real estate guys better than if you had not done that. And that’s just another perk of when you put other people first in a genuine way, it always ends up benefiting you.

Jordan:
Yeah, it really does. I think that’s lost on a lot of people. They’ll go, “All right, I’m starting to take your course, Jordan.” Because I have this free sort of networking thing. And they’ll go, “But when do I get to ask what’s in it for me?” And I’m like, “Okay, anytime. But the fact that you’re hung up on this means that you’re probably coming across pretty poorly to the people in your network.” Because if you’re just kind of like … It would be like dating and you’re talking to somebody that you’re really not interested because you want to date their friend. And you’re like, “So what do you do?” And they’re like, “Oh, I really love playing the saxophone.” And you’re looking on your phone. You’re like, “Cool. So what’s Shelley up to? What does she like to do?” And they’re like, “Okay, I get it. You’re a jerk.” Right?
That’s what’s happening when people are starting to look at what’s in it for them. It really is all about trying to help. It’s the ABG. Help as many people as you can. And people go, “What happens if I help them and they never help me back?” Who cares? Stop keeping score. Because keeping score is what poisons the well. If I introduce you guys to seven real estate deals, and then you’re not able to help me, because there’s just nothing that you’re able to do right then. If I get mad about that, who loses? You got the thing you wanted for me. And you’re thinking, “Jordan’s great.” And I’m like, “These guys are jerks.” Why? Because you couldn’t do anything for me? So I lose. I poisoned the well, I poisoned my own relationships.
If I don’t worry about it, if I don’t keep score, then I might give you guys 17 real estate deals. And then one day I’m like, “Hey, do you guys know anybody who does this and this and this?” And you’re like, “Dude, you’ve made us like 12 million bucks off these deals. I’m going to have my team do this thing for you, because that’s the least we can do.” And I’ve had this happen more than you might think.
I’ve introduced people who’ve started a business together and we’ll go to a conference and I’ll go, “Oh, you guys know each other?” And they’ll be like, “Yeah, you introduced us.” And I’ll go, “Oh, that’s cool. For what?” And they’re like, “Well, long story short, we started this bike business because you introduced us. And we just were looking at selling it.” And I’m like, “What? When was this? Three years ago? I don’t even remember doing this.” They’re like, “Yeah, you introduced us. We founded a business. We’re about to have an exit. Let’s go out for a steak on us. It’s the least we can do.” I can call those guys and be like, “I need to sleep in your garage for three months.” And they’d say yes. Because I’ve earned so much referral currency.
If I stopped helping them, because I couldn’t think of what they were going to do or I helped them twice and they weren’t able to help me back, I would have just poisoned that relationship. Now, look, if somebody’s asking you for something over and over and over. And then you ask them for something small and they say no or they ghost you, maybe there’s a boundary issue and they’re selfish. Sure. You can stop helping those people. But if somebody just doesn’t have the ability to do anything for you, the last thing you should do is cut them off thinking, oh, they’re just dead weight. That’s just not how it works.
If you help a hundred people, 90 of them never help you back, but 10% or 1% give you an amazing opportunity, it was worth it, especially if all you’re talking about is introducing people to one another via email or helping somebody with a quick 10, 15-minute phone call. Like the ROI on that is so enormous that you should put money in that slot machine all day.

Brandon:
Yeah, so good. I feel like we could talk all day long on this, but I want to get to a couple of other topics that I know that you’re good at talking about, specifically things like confidence and when you get a seller on the phone or you get a potential mentor at the kitchen table, or at a lunch table or whatever. How you come across as more [inaudible 00:44:00]. And we mentioned confidence earlier, you said when you were young, you didn’t feel like you had a lot of confidence. So how does somebody appear more confident? Whether they’re, again at a kitchen table, they’re on the phone with a motivated seller, they are talking with a mentor, whatever, an agent, how do they appear more confident?

Jordan:
Sure. So of course the answer to this is always practice. But that’s not really that useful or actionable other than, “Hey, go out and get more practice.” What I recommend for people to do is, in order to be confident in certain situations, you have to build situational confidence in situations that are analogous to that situation. So, you know like bartenders and servers tend to be really confident when they go out at night. Why? Well they’re in that environment all the time. They work there, they have a lot of reps in the game.
So if you don’t want to blow it when you’re on the phone with a motivated seller or in front of a mentor, you need to have, I guess, micro interactions of a similar variety or at least interactions of a similar variety with other people where the stakes are lower. And I find this happens. This is a problem for a lot of folks who are, let’s say, shy, bashful, not really feeling that confident. They’ll go, “I don’t want to go to this meeting or this event, because I’m not in the zone and ready to go.” So they avoid interacting. They avoid being in the room with these folks or getting on the phone with these folks or whatever it is, because they feel like they’re going to make a bad impression.
But what you need is proximity and you need frequency. So if you’re not that confident… I’ve yet to meet anybody who’s not confident among their family and close friends, of course. And so whenever people say, “Be yourself,” what they’re talking about is, unfortunately, it’s this non-actionable bit of advice where they’re like, “Be the same way you’ve been with those guys that you hang out with and play video games that you’ve known since you were 10, with this stranger who is a female, or the opposite sex, a stranger who’s in an artificial situation, known as a date. Just be the exact same way.” It’s not possible.
But let’s say that you’re very active socially and you have a ton of friends, and then you go out on a date. Who do you think is going to do better? The person who’s avoiding social interaction all the time, or the person that has ton of friends and a great social network, and then happens to go out on a date? You’re going to see a massive difference in performance there. So for somebody who’s not confident in those situations, I would say there are some…
Here’s a drill, actually. This isn’t going to make you confident overnight or anything like that, but if you make a list of, let’s say, 10 or 15 people that you have lost touch with over the years, but that you thought were important to you. So like your college career counselor, your old boss, your friend’s dad, who was an entrepreneur that was kind of successful. Make a list of those people, reach out to them now, because you don’t have an agenda with them. You don’t need anything from them.
In fact, you can think of it like this. I call it lay-off lifelines. Imagine you got laid off, your business crumbles tomorrow. Who’s the dozen or two people that you would call and ask for advice or help? Make that list, reach out to them. Now you don’t have an agenda. You don’t need anything.
You’re going to find that when you reach out to those people cold, they’re usually happy to hear from you. Even if some are suspicious, because they’re like, “Oh, is this going to be like Herbalife or Scientology or something?” Once you show them that you don’t have that agenda, they’re going to open up.
As you start getting used to building new relationships with people that you haven’t talked to in a while. Building relationships that are new with people that you’ve never talked to, is a close and very analogous piece of situational confidence that you’ll build. And then, when the stakes are high, you’ll be like, “Okay. In low to medium-stakes situations, I’ve done a pretty good job of being confident, keeping up the interaction, putting a good first impression, second impression, third impression off on this. I don’t have too much to worry about.” Yes, you’re still going to be nervous. Yes, you’re still going to be sweaty. Yes, you’re still going to be like, “I hope this goes well.” But what you’re not going to be is completely green, inexperienced, and in a straight-up panic, because you’ve built analogous confidence in different situations. Or you’ve built confidence in analogous situations, I should say. Does that make sense?

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s really good. I mean like, just by being confident with people that you already know and that it’s easy to be confident with, and the more you do that, and then start expanding that outward, it sounds like, like you said, a college professor or whatever, the counselor.

Jordan:
Right. You’re pushing the edges of that circle. So like, of course, you’re going to be confident with your roommate and your spouse and your parents. The bar is low for that. So you start reaching out to people who like… Even if those people are like, “Why did you call me? I hated you. You were the worst kid I ever advised.” Click. You’re going to be like, “Well, that doesn’t affect my life in any way at all, but was totally weird.” Right?
But if that happens to a mentor and they’re like, “Dude, this guy’s weird as hell.” That’s bad. That affects your business and your life negatively. So what you do is you start off by kicking the rust off, making that list of lay-off lifelines, going through those experiences and finding that you’re not as big of a weirdo. Everybody’s glad to hear from you. You’re doing a pretty good job. Now you’re keeping in touch with them over time. You’re building those relationships. Then when it’s like, you’ve got to meet this mentor, the stakes are high, you’re going, “Okay. I can do this. I’ve done this sort of before, and it was fine. It worked out fine. This is also probably going to work out fine.”

David:
I feel like that’s really good, practical advice you’re giving for kind of edging under the fringe. It works in everywhere else in life. If you can run a mile and then you can’t really go much further, you don’t try to run four miles. And then you just feel like you’re a complete failure and you never want to run. You go an extra 5% at the end of that mile. And when you’re lifting weights, you increase it tiny, incremental bits, and that’s how you extend.
If you’re really shy and you’re not comfortable meeting people you don’t know, it’s not always the best thing to throw yourself into a network and make yourself talk to every single person there. It’s going to feel inauthentic. It’s going to feel forced. You’re better off to find one person there that you connect with, build a genuine connection, and then kind of reverse engineer and debrief with yourself. Why did that work? Why was I comfortable here? How can I find a similar trait in somebody else? And then go practice it again.
And I think what you’re saying, Jordan, is to slowly extend that circle of your comfort zone by pushing the boundaries, but not just saying, “Screw it. I’m just going to go call 200 people today and pretend like I’m their best friend,” because they’re going to see right through that.

Jordan:
Totally. Yeah. You’re 100% correct. And another little piece of this is that when you’re talking about ABG and creating that network and getting those weak and dormant ties back up with the lay-off lifelines exercise, that not only builds confidence, but you start to realize that you not only are you able to build relationships with other folks like that, your value proposition is now starting to become your network and the people that you know.
A lot of folks will go, “Oh, I can’t really do the networking thing because I don’t have a lot of money and I don’t have a big business or I only have one property or whatever it is, what use? What value am I going to bring to some heavy hitter?” Now it’s the people that you know. I’ll get an email from a college kid, who’s a junior, and they’re like, “Hey, I love your show. I would love to work with you on something,” and of course my immediate thought is, “What is this 17 year old kid going to do?”
And then the people who are good at this, the kids who really have been paying attention to The Jordan Harbinger Show and taking the 6 Minute Networking class that I offer, which has all these drills in it, they’re the ones who go, “I don’t know if this would be useful for you,” and this is a real example, they go, “But my neighbor,” or it’s a guy from his gym or something, “He’s a filmmaker. And when he was making a movie, he discovered a lost city in the jungle using LiDAR.” And I was like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yeah, you want an introduction?” He made an introduction to that guy. He came to the taping because we ended up doing a show, with this filmmaker who found this lost city in the jungle, using laser. It was incredible discovery. It’s one of the most important archeological discoveries of the century that this guy made based on, there’s a lost gold city, ridiculous, movie plot type scenario.
And now when that guy emails me, this kid emails me for anything, I will get his email and will answer it right away because he’s the guy who gave me that hookup. I think he’s a personal trainer or something in another town. I don’t have a whole lot of use for that skillset. He’s not leveraging his own skillset. He’s leveraging people he knows that are going to be of interest to me. Now he’s on my email VIP list that pops onto my phone. You don’t have to be a multimillion dollar real estate investment bad-ass to have a network that’s going to be of value to other people. Remember, I’m not looking for what’s in your portfolio, I’m looking at what’s in the portfolio, so to speak, of everyone, that’s willing to pick up your call essentially.

Brandon:
That’s so good. All right. Let me go, one more specific example or question for you. In the real estate space, it’s very common to do what we call just real estate meetups, or we even call them BiggerPockets meetups. Pre COVID, this was much more common now it’s hopefully coming back.

Jordan:
I would imagine.

Brandon:
Yeah, but I would say, lastly, if you look at last February, there were probably 200 different meetup groups of BiggerPockets members coming together in cities, all across the country happening every single month, just tons of them. Such a great way to meet people in your local area, from BiggerPockets, millions of people online to let’s get into our real life people, in our real life area to figure this stuff out. It’s super valuable.
But the problem is a lot of people are scared to go to these events because they’re going to go there and what they’re going to do is throw out business cards. They feel weird, they feel uncomfortable. For those people listening who, as this starts picking back up again, and of course people can go look at the upcoming events at biggerpockets.com/events, but as that picks back up again, how do they go into a setting like that? Where they don’t feel like they have anything to bring to the table and come away with connections, contacts, people, relationships, goodwill.

Jordan:
That’s a great question. The key is going back to that ABG, always be giving principal. Yes, when you go there, grab other people’s business cards, if you don’t feel comfortable handing out your own fine, don’t hand out your own, grab their contact information. I don’t even know if people still use cards, but if they do, cool. Grab their contact information after the event, mail them back, “Hey, great meeting you. Again, just wondering, what are you looking for? What kind of things are you interested in? I’ll keep my ear to the ground.” Not like, “What can I do for you?” Because some people are like, “Oh, don’t worry about it.” You want to go, “What are you looking for? What are you interested in? I know a lot of people, maybe I can introduce you to somebody who might be of use.” Almost everybody has an answer to that.
Very rarely is someone going to go, “I need you to do this.” You have to offer that up. You’re creating that email, you offer the access to your network and other people that you know. “I’ll keep my ear to the ground for you,” that kind of thing. Then do your best to try and connect people to each other, but don’t do it without asking them for permission. This is a crucial bit here. You want to use the double opt-in. Let’s say I meet you at an event and then I meet some other guy named Tom at an event. Tom says, “Yeah, I want to meet real estate investors.” I don’t go, “Cool. Brandon meet Tom.” You’re like, “Crap. I don’t have time for this,” or I’ve been avoiding Tom because he’s a weirdo who shows up at my door with little bits of animals or something, I don’t know. Maybe you don’t want to meet Tom. You have to be really careful about that.
But what happens if I reach out to you and I go, “Hey, I met this guy, Tom, he is a new real estate investor. I know that you guys have courses and things like that. Where should he start? I recommended your stuff.” You might go, “Oh, well what sort of asset class is he in or whatever? Is he buying duplexes? Is he buying family properties or is he just buying skyscrapers in Manhattan?” I don’t know. I might say, “I’m pretty sure he’s a residential guy, but I’m not sure. Would you mind if I introduced him to you? All I know is he seems to be relatively successful in one area or he’s new in this other area and he’s new to town.” You might say, “Yeah, sure, no problem.”
And then I go to him and I go, “Can I introduce you to Brandon? He runs BiggerPockets and he’s got a successful podcast. And he teaches new and advanced investors, how to make the most of their portfolio.” He might go, “Yeah. Sure.” And then when I have both permission, permission from both parties, I should say, then and only then do I make the connection, because otherwise you might already know each other and I’m wasting your time. You might be avoiding each other and now it’s awkward and I’ve put that monkey on your back or you’re just really busy. And then I intro you and you never reply because you’re going to Hawaii for two months and you’re going to be off the grid. And Tom’s like, “Hey, that Brandon guy, he didn’t even bother freaking answering. You guys are clowns.” He might not say that, but he would be thinking it.
You need to get that double opt-in. But when you do the intro will be even more fruitful, generally speaking, because both parties already gave permission. They’re much more likely to reply. And they’re going to credit you with that introduction. If I just slap you together on an email, they might forget, you all might forget. But if I ask you first, it signals professionalism. And then I make an intro, that’s two contacts with you for the same person. That looks like multiple interactions. You’re getting all the right signals, “Jordan’s really professional. He’s really respectful of my time. He asked me before connecting me to this person,” that way, even if it doesn’t work out, you’re not like, “Oh, Jordan’s intros always suck.” You’re like, “Well, I told him he could do that.”

Brandon:
Yeah, I gave him permission. Oh man.

Jordan:
You win some, you loose some.

Brandon:
One other tip on to that I found helpful when people try to make a… That is so important, but one additional is ask how you want me to introduce you to them. If somebody says, “Hey, I want you to use my buddy, John, he’s good for this.” I’m like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” I typically don’t want a text message from people that I don’t know-

Jordan:
No.

Brandon:
… because now they got my phone number, but sometimes I do want to text and I don’t want to go email because they’ll get lost in emails. If you ask somebody, “Yeah, great. I can introduce you. What’s the best way to get in touch, get you guys together?” It’s just a little simple thing, that just shows that you’re thinking about them rather than just trying to make it easy on yourself. And that’s been helpful.

Jordan:
That’s a good… I’m actually writing that down, text or email-

Brandon:
Good.

Jordan:
… Because I do find it annoying when you’ve got my phone number, but if you met some random person at a conference and they were like, “Hey, can I meet Jordan?” And you suddenly gave them my phone number-

David:
Yeah, you’d be betrayed.

Jordan:
… I’d be like, “Hey dude, what’s going on? You stabbed me in the back on that one.” Because maybe I don’t want to answer texts from people that I don’t really know and now I can’t forward it to my assistant anyway, because it’s on my phone and there’s no thread, so I’ve got to call her and give her background.

Brandon:
How has iPhone not figured out, mark unread or forward?

Jordan:
I know. Mark unread, first of all, hello.

David:
Amen.

Jordan:
Then now I’m taking screenshots of the whole conversation. I’m sending those to my assistant. No, it’s frustrating.

David:
What’s interesting about this conversation is that what we’re saying is in general, you could sum it all up, be considerate of others. It’s still coming down to quit asking what’s best for yourself.
I’ll get people a lot of times that will say, “Hey, David.” They want to help me. They are trying to get me business. They’re saying, “I just told my friend, he needs to call you. He wants to sell his house.” They’ll give my number to them, which is great. But now you’re putting the responsibility on friend to call me, a stranger, who he does not know and probably feels uncomfortable, and there’s a 10% chance they’re going to do it.
What I’ll tell them is, “Why don’t you connect us in a text message, send a group text to introduce both of us. It’s a warm intro. I can jump right in there. This person won’t feel uncomfortable when you do it that way.” I swear 90% of people don’t think to say, “How do you want the intro to be made?” Because sometimes I want them to have my contact info. Others, like you said, I wouldn’t want it.
But if you were just thinking about other people, how would I want it to be if I was in their shoes? A lot of this stuff would just naturally appear to your own mind. You wouldn’t have to say, what am I supposed to do? It’s that you’re in your own head thinking so much about what you want, that you completely miss Jordan might be a little upset if I give his phone number to a complete stranger who’s going to send him 27 text messages in a row that he’s not answering.

Jordan:
I mean, you nailed it right there. Another thing before I forget, because otherwise I will forget, systems for the win, is after you make the intro, set a Boomerang, if you use Boomerang, where your emails pop back in. I use something called Superhuman, which is an email client that has the Boomerang feature built in.
I will Boomerang the email for, so set a reminder, for 30 to 60 days after that intro to bounce that thread back into my inbox and I’ll just reply all and I’ll say, “Hey, how did this shake out?” Then if one person’s like, “Oh, I never replied.” It’s a gentle reminder where they can go, “That was in my spam folder,” or whatever excuse they want to make up and it’s fine. It doesn’t matter.
But also you’ll find one person might reply and go, “So I reached out to that guy and he was a complete freak. I didn’t want to say anything, but since you’re asking, that guy’s a weirdo.” I want to know that because that’s damaging my reputation if I keep introducing them to someone.
Or they’ll come back and go, “Oh yeah, we meant to tell you, we actually ended up starting a bike company and it’s launching next month. We’ve been so busy with our heads down. Thanks so much for that intro.”
So you build even more referral currency, you pack it in, right? You pack the lid on of that can and you find out what happened with the intro. Did it go well, did it bomb or did it just not go anywhere because somebody didn’t reply? That jump-starts the interaction again. It’s not a bother.
It’s not like, “Hey Brandon, John told me, you never replied. This is weird.” You have to send it to both and it’s like, “Hey, just checking in. Nobody said anything.” If somebody does say, “Hey, Brandon never replied,” you still reply all. Don’t reply to the one person and go, “Hey, John says you never wrote to him. What’s up?”
You want to make sure that you’re responsible for that intro at least getting as far as those two people getting in touch because somebody might go, “Oh, I thought you just never made it because I never saw it.” Then it turned out to have been in their spam folder the whole time. So you really want to make sure that these fire, and the way you do that, is do that 30 to 60 day follow-up.
You don’t have to track hundreds of these, by the way, you’re tracking a few dozen. You’re just maximizing the value there. People will start to see you as a connector. Then the beauty of this comes when people go, “Hey, Brandon, I don’t want to bug you, but you seem to know everyone. Do you know anyone who does this, this and this?”
Now you’ve got people bringing opportunities for social referral currency, social capital to your inbox. You don’t even have to do any work anymore. They’re just coming to you and you’re going, “Yeah, Tom would be good at that. Mark would be good at that. Let me make those intros right now.” Boom, boom.
So it starts to snowball and you start to get really good at this. I know people are like, “I’m so busy.” This takes me, I have thousands of contacts, it takes me 90 minutes a week. That’s it.

Brandon:
That’s awesome. Yeah, I love that you said the connector, like the people who just seem to know everybody. That doesn’t require a ton of skill and real estate. You don’t have to have done a single deal in real estate to be a connector in the real estate space. Therefore, now you have a massive amount of value that you can provide.
So, if you’re just somebody who’s new, maybe make it your goal to just become a connector instead of trying to pretend that you’re a better investor than you really are instead of just you know everybody. Go ahead.

David:
Digging that well to build that network is not easy. Just because we’re saying once you’ve got it, you can add a lot of value, it’s true, you still have to be purposeful. Digging wells is hard work.
It becomes a form of passive income once you have the well, you just dip your bucket in, you come up with water. But if you think this is just going to happen, because you went and handed your business cards out at a meet-up somewhere, you are gravely mistaken. You actually have to work on your personal growth and becoming the kind of person that people want to help, if you want to build that network.

Jordan:
It’s about consistency. Do it for 10 minutes a day. Don’t do one day a month where you spend seven hours doing it and you’re like, “I hate this. It’s a grind. It’s annoying.” Do it in like 10 minutes a day. Send those texts, make those email intros when you’re going through it. It literally can take 10 or 15 minutes a day.
I call it six minute networking because it takes like four or five minutes, but five minute networking was taken. So I just put it in six minute networking and it really doesn’t even take me six minutes on any given day. It’s so much faster.
To have the reputation as a connector or a super connector is awesome. When I think of successful sales guys, there’s a couple of different levels. When a lot of people who aren’t in sales think of a successful sales person, they think of a person who’s really good at applying psychological pressure to close a deal, like a car salesman.
A great salesman really doesn’t have to do that at all. They have such a high level of trust through repeated interaction, proximity, showcasing expertise, referral currency that they’re able to go and take their calls and take their meetings and take their whatever’s in their emails and then hook people up with other folks or other opportunities for them to buy.
They go, “All right, well I trust Brandon. He’s done me right for a long time, so I’m going to give this deal my top priority. All right, let’s do it.” Then you just have to what, not screw me over? That’s a pretty low bar. Then I want to give you repeat business, so that’s how the most successful salespeople that I know operate.
They’re not like, “Limited time only. You’d better call me back right now. I’ve got another couple right here. They want to sign.” Click. That’s not what good sales is. It’s about having a huge number of relationships that are profitable. That’s really what great salespeople are doing. I know real estate agents because I just sold my house. There were some really good ones and there were some really bad ones.
And the good ones were like, “Hey Jordan, just checking in. Did you manage to sell your house yet? There’s a couple other properties. Are you looking for something new? I’d love to get a chance to find out what you’re into. We can either do a call or we can stick to email.” Because anybody who’s like, “Call me tomorrow.” I’m like, “I’m never calling you. I don’t have time. And I don’t know you.”
The worst ones were the ones who out of the blue emailed me a month after they got my contact info and were like, “Are you looking to sell your house?” You’d know that if you talked to me for even three seconds, yes. “Call me at this number.” Never going to happen. Not doing that. “Come to my open house for free cold Starbucks coffee that I bought seven hours ago.” “No, thanks. Not doing that.”
It was the people that did five minutes of research and figured out a way to add value. That was really, really minor. Those were successes. And I was, this guy probably has a lot of money and this guy is probably brand new or on his way out of the industry.

Brandon:
I think everybody needs to really listen to that. Whether or not you’re an agent or whether you want to work with wholesalers in the future, whether you want to work… It doesn’t matter. Anything in the real estate space or just business in general, just being a good person. Go back, rewind that and listen to it again. And I do want to bring up a couple of quick points and then we’ll move on to the last segment of the show.
First of all, I know David, you are writing a book on or for real estate agents right now. Do you have any idea when that’s being published?

David:
Yeah, it’s supposed to be out in December.

Brandon:
Obviously, if you’re a real estate agent, make sure you listen to that. I know, David, you… And I talk a lot about this stuff and I know this is why you’re good agent because you understand this stuff. So definitely you guys check that out. What’s that book going to be called? Do you have a name for it yet?

David:
We’re still working on the name, but it’s going to be the first of a three part series, this is going to be made for new or inexperienced agents. And then the next book is going to become a top producer, being an agent and then to build a team.
What’s funny is that as I’m listening to Jordan talk, I’m thinking, I literally put that section in the book. I literally said, this is how you sell.
You never try to convince someone to buy a house they don’t want to buy. That high pressure technique that he’s talking about. You look for people that already want it. And then you make it a very smooth, easy way for them to get it and stuff like building social capital’s literally in there like give, give, give so much that when you make a withdrawal, it comes from the form of, they give you a referral. They send you somebody who wants to sell their house.
And as I’m listening to you talk, Jordan, I’m like this couldn’t have come at a better time. You’re giving me a very serious stamp of approval on this stuff that actually works. The better of a person that you are, it’s amazing, the more success you will probably end up having in life. They’re very tied together.

Brandon:
That’s cool.

Jordan:
I couldn’t agree more. It’s funny, I see a lot of salespeople that do this stuff wrong and some of it’s just being new to sales. I’m not like, “They’re idiots,” they’re just new to sales.
I see a lot of people that are in sales that learn from a lot of these, I don’t want to mention names, but these shady guru people that only sell courses on becoming successful, but aren’t real, real estate people or are, and just are insufferably horrible people.
They’re really hard to deal with. And you go, the only type of deal that they’re getting is the desperate person who hates them for having to go through with that deal or the person who can’t wait to never see them again. So they’re never getting any repeat business from anyone.
They’re thinking short-term. Good salespeople think long-term and long-term means long lasting relationship, even if you don’t quote unquote win on the first round, you win long-term.
Ideally it’s one of those win-wins where you both win long-term. But if you’re really bad at this, you’re thinking short-term only. The longer you stretch out your timeline, the better career you’re going to have. And the more people are going to respect you inside the industry.
And I think people who think short-term, either think this isn’t my forever job. I just need to pay the bills and/or they don’t have enough self confidence, speaking of confidence, to do things the right way.
So, they do things with these weird little shortcuts. It’s the difference between somebody who’s building a real online business and a quote unquote internet marketer who just says whatever that works in the sales copy to make the sale. And then has a really crappy, hard to follow refund policy. “Oh, you wanted a refund? You had to text in from a 734 area code on a Tuesday and you didn’t do that, so no refund for you.”
Good companies can stand by their stuff and good salespeople and good relationship builders can stand by the intros that they make, the relationships that they have.

Brandon:
That’s so good. Hey Jordan, last point before we move on to this one, you mentioned, I don’t want to gloss over this because it was so good. You said, rather than that vague question of, how can I help you? Or I want to provide value. What value can I provide? Everyone’s like, don’t worry about it, or I’m fine. People ask me that. I always say, “I’m actually pretty good.”
But if you ask the question, “What are you looking for?” Now specifically in real estate wise, if you’re talking to an investor you want to get closer with, what type of deal are you looking for? Or if you’re talking with a big business owner, maybe they’re a large real estate investor, you’re looking for any employees right now? What are you looking for?
That immediately changes the question because I can tell you right now what I’m looking for. I’m hiring for two different internship positions, I’m hiring for all this stuff. I have a list of things I’m looking for, mobile home parks of a certain size.

Jordan:
Professional beard trimmer.

Brandon:
A professional beard trimmer, I had to do my own the other day. It was-

Jordan:
Bonzai guys do it.

David:
Another denim shirt, to connect to.

Brandon:
Honestly, I was like, I actually think about hiring an actual clothing consultant because I’m like, man, these shows get viewed by tons of people. And I still dress like I shop at the thrift shop. So anyway-

Jordan:
Is that one of those stretchy denim shirts?

Brandon:
It is.

Jordan:
Yeah. Well I used to have one of those. It didn’t quite fit me. I’m a little wider than I needed to be for a stretchy denim shirt, if you know what I’m saying.

Brandon:
Maybe I’m a little wider, I’m taller, so my belly button shows.

Jordan:
If it’s a belly shirt you get to [crosstalk 01:10:51].

David:
He’s got a [inaudible 01:10:53] belly button ring. If you catch it a bit at just the right angle, you’ll see it.

Brandon:
All right. Here’s where I’m going with this question. [crosstalk 01:10:59]. I wanted to bring up now and ask you, Jordan, what are you looking for right now? Are you looking for anything in particular like employee wise or, in your life?

Jordan:
Yeah, like I’m always looking for really great stories for the Jordan Harbinger Show. I’ve had an art forger, I’ve had Kobe Bryant. I’ve had that guy who discovered the lost city in the jungle, but I also have psychologists. I had a poker player who reads body language and talked about that on the show.
So I’m always looking for those unique angles for the Jordan Harbinger Show. I know you’re coming on the Jordan Harbinger Show in a couple of weeks, months, whatever. We got to figure that out. I had a kid, so my life is in complete disarray.

Brandon:
Me too. I got to get… Anyway.

Jordan:
But I’m looking for those unique stories and everyone’s always like here, cool, here’s like guru coach of the day, who’s like Dejour, made his money doing multilevel marketing schemes and is now an influencer.
And I’m like, “No, don’t want to interview that horrible excuse for a person. Knowledge, yes, exactly. So, keep me away from those guys. So, whenever somebody is like, like that personal trainer guy who wrote in and goes, “Yeah, this is weird, but this guy discovered the city, are you interested?” I’m like, “Absolutely, I’m interested.” Somebody emailed me the other day and said, “I know this guy who, his whole job was tracking stolen art.”
And I was like, “Well, I liked the art forger episode.” And that’s where they got the idea. I go, “Yeah, find me this guy who tracked stolen art.” And he’s like, “He’s retired from the FBI. I don’t know if he’ll do it.” Super fascinating episode. So, that kind of thing. Yes. I always want to have the guys like Ray Dalio, who’s on the show this week. That’s great. If you know somebody of that caliber, throw them at me, [email protected]. But if you just have that neighbor that used to hunt Nazi war criminals, and is now drinking iced tea on his porch all day, I’m down to hear that story and probably record it.
So that’s hard to find, because the self-promoting guys, they’re everywhere, but usually I don’t necessarily want them, unless they’re really legit, like Ray Dalio or Mark Cuban. But it’s the small stories, that are incredible, where the person doesn’t ever think, “I should be famous for this,” because that’s not who they are. Those are awesome. So if people have ideas on that, [email protected], I’ll take any pitch. All I have to do is reply, “No, thanks,” if it’s not a fit.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s so good. Man, I need to talk to you about how to get guys like Ray Dalio, that’s awesome.

Jordan:
Some of it’s luck. I’ll give you that.

Brandon:
Yeah, sure. I totally believe it.
All right, well, let’s move on, then, to the last segment of the show. This is our, Famous Four. All right. Moving on onto the world famous, Famous Four, these are the same four questions that we ask every guest every week. The first one we’re going to alter a little bit. So normally we ask, what’s your favorite real estate book, and then we go to business book, but I’m going to change from real estate book to basically, resource for this type of stuff we’re talking about today, whether it’s a podcast and besides your own, yeah, it’s podcast, or it’s a book, or something, what resource do you have for people?

Jordan:
Definitely. So as corn ball cliche as it might sound, everyone’s read this, no-one seems to be following it. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yes, his examples are like, “When I was selling typewriters,” forget about that, okay. But when you go in there, and you read something like, “Be interested in other people and they’ll be interested in you,” everyone listens to that, puts it on an Instagram meme and then puts it out and then forgets about it.
If you are actually, and I have a lot of practice doing this on the Jordan Harbinger Show, obviously I have to be interested in my guests. If you treat people like that, they will think that you’re the most interesting person in the freaking planet because they’ll be like, “Jordan is the only person that understands how important solar power is,” because that’s where they work, selling solar panels, or selling windmills or something.
If you’re interested in, they will think you are fascinating and they will love you. And they will make introductions, and they will want to have you over for dinner, or whatever. Be interested in other people, Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Read the book and actually, just instead of reading the whole thing and going, “I did that,” just read one chapter and try to implement a part of it. It’ll be such a game changer.

Brandon:
Yeah. It’s so good, Jordan. See what I just did there?

Jordan:
Yeah, so good.

Brandon:
I used your name. I read it.

Jordan:
Good job, Jordan. Head pat, head pat.

Brandon:
Yeah, exactly. Awesome.

Jordan:
What was, the other one’s a business book?

Brandon:
Yeah, that was the first question. Second one. Yeah.

David:
Business book.

Jordan:
Have you read this book? It’s called, What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack? Oh my gosh. It’s probably been out of print for 30 years. So good. It might be a little beginnery. I did read it 20 plus years ago, or no, yeah, 10 plus years ago was my most recent reading probably, or one of my most recent readings, but I remember reading it and going, “Oh, this would have saved me so much trouble.” This guy was the CEO of IMG, International Management Group, sports management, something like that. He was a bad-ass agent. He went to Harvard Business School, and he wrote a book that was all about things that you just don’t learn in, so it’s like street smarts, but it’s from the nineties or something like that, or the late eighties. So good. What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack, 1984.

Brandon:
Awesome. All right. I’m looking it up.

David:
All right. Next question. What are some of your hobbies?

Jordan:
I study Mandarin Chinese. What else is a hobby?

Brandon:
Changing diapers?

Jordan:
I used to love traveling. Say what?

Brandon:
Change diapers?

Jordan:
Changing a lot of diapers. I do walk with my kid around the house and outside. Let’s see. I have a one-year-old so it’s weird to say that it’s a hobby, but I do like, I got to get my snuggles in. Definitely Mandarin Chinese, travel is/was one of my main things. I used to take tours to North Korea. I don’t do that anymore, obviously.

Brandon:
Oh really?

Jordan:
Yeah. I used to run a tour company that would take Westerners into North Korea. It’s illegal now for Americans to do that, so I don’t do it anymore. And you can’t go anywhere now anyway. We can’t anyway, we’re banned. Yeah, but those are my main hobbies. Otherwise, man, my job is to read books and talk to smart people. So that kills two birds with one stone, being my job too.

Brandon:
Wow. Awesome. All right, David, is that the… Yeah, that was the last question for you. All right. Last question for me, right?

David:
I’m paying attention.

Brandon:
Question number four. What do you think separates successful, we’ll say real estate investors, but anybody, from those who give up, or they fail, or they just never get started?

Jordan:
I know a lot of people that have tried to get into real estate and almost none of them have succeeded. And I thought that was really strange, because my family does real estate investing. They manage properties. We bought and built houses, not a ton, just for us to live in, and it’s not easy, but it’s also not super complex, I guess. You obviously know more about this than I do. [crosstalk 01:17:40] It seems like a lot of, yeah. Yeah.
I figured a lot of people, they get intimidated by the process and there’s also this resistance to coaching that a lot of people have, where they go, “Oh, I’m going to figure it out for myself.” And I’m just like, “Why?” I know you want to pat yourself on the back for being self-made. You’re still self-made if you sign up for something or pay someone to teach you, or read… They’re like, “I’ll read a bunch of books.” Okay. But I would like love for somebody to stop me from making a massive, expensive mistake or 10. That would have been great.
So, resistance to coaching. And I’m not just saying that, because I know that BiggerPockets does that. I’m saying that because I used to train people and I still train people with networking, like I said, and I only get resistance from either people that are new or low level beginner and intermediate. I never get people, like I said, the MI6 guys, the high end salespeople, the C level executives. They never go, “Ugh, I don’t need help networking, junior.” They never do that. It’s always the 28 year old, who’s like, “I do all of this naturally.” I’m like, “Cool. That must be so nice. I’ve never met anyone that does this naturally. And I just got back from the farm in Langley, Virginia, and all those guys don’t do it naturally, but cool that you just graduated from your local university and that you don’t need any help with this. It must be awesome to be you.”
Those people are never successful, and it’s not just real estate. It’s that coachable beginner’s mindset that you have to have with anything. Imagine trying to learn Chinese and going, “Let me stop you right there. I’m a pretty smart guy. I don’t need to learn this from you.” “Good luck. I’m learning Mandarin, dude.” You have to have that. And people put up ego walls around certain skillsets and not others. If you’re athletic and you know how to lift weights, there’s a good chance you’re like, “I don’t need a trainer. I don’t need someone to tell me how to lift weights.” But if you were going to take Chinese, you’d obviously get a Chinese teacher. So if you’re going to learn how to invest, why wouldn’t you get a coach?
I have coaches for everything, and people that I know who are successful, they spend… The more successful people I know, the most successful people I know, they spend $4,000 a month on coaching for everything. They have a trainer and a food person and this clothing person. They have coaches for everything. They want to find coaches for things that probably don’t even have coaches exist for that thing. They want to find coaches for that. The beginner, intermediate people are always trying to grind it out for themselves, and bang their head against the walls so many times. I know it’s the same thing for real estate. I know people that have been really well self-educated and they do really well, and they get coaches and they go to the next level. And I know people that start off and they just fail because it’s like, “I don’t have money to learn.” Okay, cool. But you had three to a hundred thousand dollars to lose on a property that didn’t go anywhere. How does that work?

Brandon:
What’s so hard in the real estate space, and you’ve seen this in internet marketing as well, I’m sure, is there are so many coaches out there who will… It’s really big in the real estate. It’s $50,000, we’ll train you. One of my buddies paid absurd money. He got four workbooks. That was it. Just four workbooks. And so there’s this problem with the coaching where people hear those stories and they go, “Well, I’m not going to ever pay for coaching.” And then they go try to figure it all out by themselves. It’s like pull them up by their bootstraps, and then they can’t get there anyway. And it’s hard to find, but they do exist, people that can actually coach you through that, but that actually have done the business. They’re not just selling you on how to do it without actually having been there themselves. It’s a weird line.

Jordan:
Yeah. There’s a difference between hiring an Internet guru to teach you a skill that is not really a skill. So the difference between, and I’ve done whole shows on spotting guru scams, but one of the tells is, “Am I selling you a lifestyle, or am I selling you an actual skill?” My Chinese teacher doesn’t go, “Imagine running around Beijing and speaking fluently with the natives, and imagine women fawning all over you while you’re on a boat because of your [crosstalk 01:21:27].”

Brandon:
Walking into that board meeting of a Chinese company and destroying it, and walking out with a $20 million sale because you can speak Mandarin.

Jordan:
Right. Nobody does. They go, “I will teach you how to read and write. We’ll read some kids books.” I thought that there are some-

Brandon:
But if you do, it’s up to you. Yeah.

Jordan:
Right. And with the guru thing, so you look at this guy, he’s not like, “All right, there’s some serious fundamentals you’re going to need to master. They’re not as complicated as they look. I’ve simplified everything. If you forget, I’ve got these easy charts.” No. He’s like, “I’m on the boat. Look at those women with boob jobs. Look, we’re going to go do cocaine in my mansion. Check it out. $3000.”

Brandon:
It’s a great way.

Jordan:
That’s what he’s doing.

Brandon:
You sell the lifestyle, that’s the first sign of a scammer. They’re appealing to your emotions.

Jordan:
100%, it is. Yes. Because if you’re selling skills, which you guys are, you know that a lot of the skills aren’t sexy, but you’re like, “We’re going to make it simple enough that you can learn, and you’re always going to be able to lean on us.” That’s the value proposition for a real skill builder. Somebody who’s a bull crapper is going to be like, “I never work. I have 7,000 houses. And I just lay back in my house in Hawaii, and everything’s done for me.” You might dangle that carrot to somebody who’s stressed because they have so many deals and they have tons of money but no time. You might be like, “Look, I got a ton of time.” You don’t tell the beginner that they’re not going to have to do any work. That isn’t filtering for a customer that doesn’t want to do the work. You guys, from what I’ve seen, are selling… You’re going, “Hey, look. This is quite a bit of work, but we’re going to teach you what you actually have to do, so you don’t get [crosstalk 01:22:55].”

Brandon:
We’ll walk you through the process.

Jordan:
And that’s a good value proposition to somebody who’s not lazy. So you got to be careful when you’re looking for coaches that you’re getting the right kind of coach. And also, there should be no pressure. A good coach doesn’t go, “If you pay me a hundred thousand dollars right now, you can get in my inner, inner, inner circle.” They just go, “Take one lesson, or two, and find out if you like it.” The Chinese teacher doesn’t say, “You have to buy 400 hours from me.”

Brandon:
That’s so true.

Jordan:
They offer me that ad in less than 10. They’re like, “If you buy a year in advance, we’ll cut 20% off.” But you take the lessons first. There’s no false scarcity. There’s no urgency. Coaches should always be like that.

Brandon:
To the point that people don’t want to pay for coaching because they’re above it. When you’re paying for coaching, all that you are really doing is paying for concentrated knowledge. You’re taking someone else who’s already gathered all the relevant pieces, put them into a package and giving it to you to save you time. And that is the same thing you do when you read a book, and when you listen to a podcast, or when you read an article. It’s all concentrated knowledge.
You could learn Mandarin if you had a thousand years and you just moved to China and just picked it up being around it. You don’t have to pay for someone to coach you how to do that. You could learn real estate investing by just buying a bunch of houses and, eventually, you’d figure out what to do. Coaching speeds up the learning curve, will ultimately save you money in the end if it’s the right coach. So, I thought that was funny when you said there’s people that won’t pay for coaching because they say, “I’ll just read a book.” You’re just paying for a different kind of coaching.

Jordan:
Dude, absolutely. Look, there are better ways to learn Mandarin than me learning Chinese over Skype. The best way I can think of to learn Mandarin is to go to a Chinese public school for 12 years. You will be so good at Mandarin. “Oh, you don’t have time for that. You can’t do that. Well, then you better get a coach on Skype, sucker.”

Brandon:
There you go.

Jordan:
If you want to learn over breakfast from San Jose, California, with your teacher in Beijing, you better do this way. I married a Chinese woman and I wasn’t learning Chinese. So keep telling me about how you’re going to read a book and figure it out for yourself. Come on.

Brandon:
If human beings live 2000 years, we would never need coaches. We could figure it all out that way.

Jordan:
Yeah. Get that vampire stamina.

Brandon:
All right. Last question of the day, Jordan. Thank you. For people that want to find out more about you, where’s the best place for them to go?

Jordan:
My favorite question. I run the Jordan Harbinger Show. If you’re interested in anyone from… I’ve got Kobe Bryant, Malcolm Gladwell, Dennis Rodman, all the way to the art forger and the FBI undercover and the mafia. I got stories and I’ve got know-how. Everything is practical. I’m also @jordanharbinger on all the socials. You can reach me there. But if people have questions, I’m [email protected].

Brandon:
All right, man. Appreciate you a ton. This has been a phenomenal episode. So really, really just glad that you would take the time to do this. So, thank you. And I don’t know, man. Thanks. David, do you want to get us out of here?

David:
Yeah. This is David Green for Jordan Harbinger and Brandon denim T-shirt Turner, signing off.

Speaker 3:
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