Jordan Harbinger’s Networking Playbook for Lawyers

Episode Notes

Transcript

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing

Jordan Harbinger’s Networking Playbook for Lawyers

02/28/2019

Gyi Tsakalakis: Dearest listeners, this is Gyi. I did a really bad job recording the sound on this episode, so I apologize in advance. I hope you are able to bear through it. It’s a great, great episode, but I did want to say sorry for the lousy recording.

Enjoy.

Kelly Street: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Hey Gyi Tsakalakis.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Kelly, what’s up?

Kelly Street: Hey, but you didn’t say my last name.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I know.

Kelly Street: Let’s go back in time and say my last name.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right, Kelly Street.

Kelly Street: There we go. Thank you so much. So Gyi.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, Kelly Street?

Kelly Street: Do you have a favorite time machine?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, Kelly Street.

Kelly Street: What is your favorite time machine?

Gyi Tsakalakis: DeLorean.

Kelly Street: I watched that movie for the first time about two years ago.

Gyi Tsakalakis: How did it hold up?

Kelly Street: Pretty, you know.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Hmm, not a very strong endorsement there.

Kelly Street: No, but I mean, it’s great. It’s a piece of cultural history.

Gyi Tsakalakis: What’s your favorite time machine?

Kelly Street: Put my nerd hat on.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Take your time.

Kelly Street: From Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’, the short story, where the term The Butterfly Effect was originated from, that is my favorite time machine.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay.

Kelly Street: That story and the time machine in that story, because like that’s kind of what — not really what started it all necessarily, but just — I mean everybody says, oh, it’s The Butterfly Effect, but having no idea where it comes from, unless you know the story. So there you go. That’s my favorite.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay.

Kelly Street: I like it. So we went a little back in time today to talk to someone you know from elementary school, but before we get into the episode, I just want to talk about how awkward you and I both are at networking events or conferences.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Sure. I know you really just meant how awkward I am.

Kelly Street: No, no, no, I am also a very awkward person. We have got TECHSHOW coming up and some other — it’s kind of the start of the year for all of these legal events, and you and I both get to be a little awkward sometimes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: See, one of my many problems is I actually like awkward.

Kelly Street: Oh, I absolutely do too. Other people just don’t know how to engage with me when I am in one of my awkward modes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Like right now.

Kelly Street: Like right now. No, I just — okay, so here’s how I can be awkward. I will —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Walk us through your awkwardness please.

Kelly Street: I think it comes across as standoffish, but really when I am feeling awkward, I just will like make jokes or not really try to be engaging with someone, and it’s really just because like I feel uncomfortable, I don’t really want to be there, and it has nothing to do with them. It’s more I am like I just can’t emote right now and I can’t — I am having a hard time making connections and so I will just make jokes and then hopefully you will think that I am a charming person.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Got it. You know what —

Kelly Street: Okay, let’s turn this around. Let’s talk about how awkward Gyi can be.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay, tell me what do I do?

Kelly Street: Well, you have a lot of twitches, which we talked about.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, I do. What are some of your favorite Gyi twitches?

Kelly Street: Your hand thing, where you would like move your —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Please be more specific.

Kelly Street: Where you like — you like rub your thumb across the pads of your other fingers.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I know, it’s so weird. Why do I do that?

Kelly Street: I wonder if other people notice that you do that.

Gyi Tsakalakis: They do, my friends know. My friend MG, he has been like my friend from childhood, he always makes fun of me. In fact, he like tries to take pictures of me when I am doing it.

Kelly Street: Is it like a soothing mechanism, to like keep yourself calm?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I guess, I don’t know, it’s like a subconscious thing. I don’t know. I do do it though. It’s not even like — I do it even when I am like not in a public setting. Like right now, I am sitting here just kind of, oh yeah, when you mentioned it, I am like, oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea. So it’s not even like a public tic, it’s like — I do it by myself.

Kelly Street: Yeah. Well, you have that, and then you also —

Gyi Tsakalakis: The big one.

Kelly Street: I think the biggest awkward thing is just you have a very limited time frame in which you are generally — you either engage in a conversation for a long time or it goes on for about 30 seconds and then you are out.

(00:04:49)

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes. Our guest today would be able to assist me with how to more eloquently exit conversations, because I just do the, all right, and then it’s quiet. And actually one of the things our guest — I don’t know if we talked about it today, but on his show one of the things they talk about is using water to be able to more gracefully — here is an example they give, if you forget someone’s name, you introduce them to somebody else and then take a drink of water and that person feels compelled to continue the introduction on their own.

Kelly Street: Oh, that’s so smart. That is such a good trick. We did not — I need to do that.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I know.

Kelly Street: Because I am great at remembering people’s faces and outfits, but names, I just — for some reason names don’t stick with me as easily.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Keep water with you.

Kelly Street: People are going to learn so many tricks in today’s episode and tips for networking and kind of building out their audience. I am super excited.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Awkward.

Kelly Street: Awkward. All right. Well, let’s stop being awkward, Gyi, and let’s get into today’s episode with our fabulous guest Jordan Harbinger.

[Music]

Intro: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, with your hosts Gyi Tsakalakis and Kelly Street, teaching you how to promote market and make fat stacks for your legal practice, here on Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Kelly Street: Gyi, it’s time to go back in time. Oh, that was weird, it’s time to go back in time. But it is.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Let’s do it.

Kelly Street: Let’s take you back to your elementary school days.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes.

Kelly Street: Gyi, who were you friends with in elementary school?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I mean a lot of people, but more specifically —

Kelly Street: Yeah, there is one in particular that we are talking to today.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There is. And this person, we actually went — we were in the same bus stop for a period of time. I was trying to remember the street, but it was a long time ago so I was kind of blanking, but yeah, this person and I, actually we went to elementary school together and we actually went to other schools together, including Michigan and Seaholm. And so we are very happy and privileged to have Jordan Harbinger joining us today.

And for those that don’t know Jordan Harbinger, Jordan has been referred to as “The “Larry King of podcasting”. I mean Jordan has got a lot of interesting stories that I have got some talking points here to bring up, which I am just going to throw in there.

But Jordan is also an ex-lawyer and an entrepreneur and an extremely influential podcaster. In fact, he is hosting one of the Top 50 iTunes podcasts, I think from 2018, but even before that he had one running for 12 years.

So we are going to get into podcasting, we are going to talk entrepreneurship, we are going to talk Harlan Elementary School.

Jordan Harbinger, welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

Jordan Harbinger: Thanks for having me on. It’s so funny, when I got this invite I was like, wait a minute, I don’t know too many people named Gyi Tsakalakis.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There is only like 50 in the US, so.

Jordan Harbinger: Is there — have you actually —

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, there are none. There is none.

Jordan Harbinger: There is probably one, yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There is zero. Well, there is me. So thank you for coming on.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course, yeah, how could I not after all this time. I just thought it was so funny. I was like oh, let me Google this person and see if this is just such a weird coincidence and of course not. Especially because Gyi, as everyone may or may not know, flushes out to something even longer and harder to spell than your last name.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, that’s right, Argerios.

Jordan Harbinger: Right.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So hence Gyi, I get Guy, G, Gi. And interestingly, when my mom, not to go down a rabbit hole here, but Gyi is actually some kind of moniker in Southeast Asia, but I don’t know much more than that.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Well, once people see you I don’t think they will be like, is he Asian?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Jordan Harbinger: I don’t think so.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Most of the time when I get on the phone they are like, is the person who I am trying to call, do you speak English? I am like yes. Barely, but yes.

Jordan Harbinger: That’s great.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Enough about me. Thanks.

Jordan Harbinger: Great English skills.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Thank you. Thank you.

Kelly Street: Yes. Yeah, enough about Gyi. Jordan, so Gyi gave you a lovely introduction there, but if there is anything else you want to add, please absolutely do that.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. So I have been podcasting for 12 years, which is about 11 years longer than most people have heard of podcasts or 10 anyway. So I was really early in that game.

(00:09:52)

And the reason I got into it was because I initially had thought — I got a job at a Wall Street law firm after law school or during law school and in elementary school or high school you think like oh, I am kind of smart, I can show up and get like a B on this test without having paid attention in class at all for more than five minutes. And that’s great. If you are sort of like of average or above-average test taking skills, you can get away with that in high school.

And then I got to college and everybody was pretty smart at the University of Michigan and then I thought oh, I am in trouble now. But luckily, when you are in that position, everybody is kind of partying and drinking and hanging out, so I thought if I just show up to class and do even half of the homework and the reading, I will be fine, I will be able to get okay grades.

And apparently grades don’t matter in college and then someone said hey, if you want to go to grad school they do and I thought okay, better safe than sorry. So I just outworked everyone and that worked fine in law school as well.

But then when I got to Wall Street it was like, oh shoot, these are the smart kids that had the same thought as me during college and outworked everyone and have better grades and they are smarter and, oh my gosh, I don’t belong here. I am going to get fired. It’s just a matter of time till they figure out I am some sort of fraud and it was this kind of imposter syndrome that I was dealing with. And that really freaked me out.

And so I started to look for another competitive advantage as my first two had been wiped out and I thought learning how to network is going to be that competitive advantage, because nobody is talking about this and a lot of the partners that I am talking to, they were telling me things like, yeah, just bring in business and so they are never going to get rid of me because I have got this great book of business. You need to bring in business at some point. Don’t worry about it, you are a first-year associate, second-year associate.

And I thought okay, so wait a minute, you don’t just get to the partner level and then meet everyone at some country club or whatever and then that’s networking. I don’t understand.

And so that to me was kind of — that to me was problematic, because I thought uh-oh, I was convinced that that would be a shortcut and now it’s not and I don’t know what to do.

And so I started really studying this and that’s how I got into social dynamics, networking and all these different subtopics and that was what prompted me to really study psychology and human dynamics at a deep level in the beginning.

Kelly Street: That is so cool, and I mean obviously, you have built that into this amazing business and have built your own audience, but the main thing that we really are wondering about for our audience, can I say that enough times, is how do you get to build out that following of people, not just through networking, but people who actually are interested in what you have to say, want to learn from you? Because one of the things that we are hearing and seeing more about in, especially the legal technology space, but really across the gamut for the legal field is there are starting to be these legal influencers, people are following them, people want to know what they have to say, but it’s really only in the small pocket. So how do you build out from where you are starting having a small audience?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh man, yeah, building influence in any way is always a matter of trying to produce value for other people. And so a lot of people now, they don’t really understand how this works. And so you see these influencers, people that are like, follow my blog, and it’s like, you go there and it’s just photos of them eating various things or something. It doesn’t really work that way.

And especially in a realm like the legal sphere, you want to make sure that you are providing value that matches the audience, and this sounds really self-explanatory for a lot of folks I think, but most people don’t do this. Whenever I teach something like networking a relationship development, a lot of people will go, oh yeah, I do a lot of that naturally. And it’s like oh, do you, because you just asked me all these questions that indicate that you don’t really do it.

And they are like, well, I guess I knew about some of that stuff. And it’s like, great, I know diet and exercise, am I in great shape all the time, do I follow that all the time necessarily? No, there is a huge gap between knowledge and application, and I think with influencers it comes down to that as well, because we see a lot of these people trying to create influence by pulling people towards them or I guess you should say pushing people towards their content when really we should be attracting them to what we are doing.

And so really good influencers in any sphere produce something that is so compelling that other people think, oh, I really want to catch this, I really want to listen to this, because it’s valuable for me or it’s valuable for my career.

And that’s something that you don’t see all the time and so I want to create that image in your brain of magnetically pulling people towards what you are creating for them instead of just pushing people towards something that you are creating because you want to have influence.

(00:14:58)

So advertising that’s really good does this, all right. It’s like hey, there is all these things that you are going to gain when you experience this, when you buy this, when you have this. Bad advertising says things like hey, look, this is something that you need and you should feel bad if you don’t have it. That works to a degree, but we don’t want people to feel bad if they are not doing it.

So clickbaity headlines and things like that work short-term, like the three things that are ruining your legal career. It’s like you will click on that to a certain extent, but after a while you get sick of the bait-and-switch. Really good content in the legal sphere, I would imagine, just like any other sphere would be five habits that you can cultivate that will propel you to the top of your field.

People want that because they think they have an edge when they get that content as opposed to just feeling bad that they don’t have something and then reading your article about what they don’t have and then going oh, that was just sort of a clickbait thing so they can get page views. And a lot of influence builders are doing the latter, unfortunately. Does that make sense?

Kelly Street: Yeah, absolutely. And/or there is this other thing of like you will read the article and you will be like oh, that’s a lot of stuff to do, or like oh, I already knew all of those things. This wasn’t actually something that applied to me or was new information or was any sort of a secret at all.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, yeah, yeah, the articles that you are like, oh great, three habits that will propel me to the top of the field, and it’s like one, show up to work on time, and you are like okay. And then the next one is like dress well, and you are like yeah. And the third one is like you should be networking, put yourself out there and meet new people, and you are like, is there anything else, where is the beef. And then there is no beef.

Kelly Street: Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that’s problematic.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I think so. I took your advice. I actually listen to — I listen to a bunch of your stuff, but I was listening to your How to Interview, so I figured if we are going to interview “The Larry King of podcasting”, we better have some idea what we are doing here because we are amateurs.

But a couple of things that you said, one was advocating for the audience and taking it back to this idea of networking and people — going to places people are like oh, I have got to go to these networking events, and that’s the thing, they are missing the boat. I mean one of the things that — you were talking about the beef, some of the beef that I think that in terms of practical takeaways, if you could helps some of our audience members know, so they are not like rolling their eyes about networking, you talk a lot about social cues, nonverbal communication, what are maybe like the five bullets you could tell people that are going to these networking events and becoming furniture?

Jordan Harbinger: Right. So the bullets of going to an event, the problem that a lot of people are having is they go to these mixers or something and they are like, all right, I know I am supposed to be networking, but I don’t want to be here. I have got to cook dinner for my kids. I hate this because it seems really fake and I don’t know what I am supposed to do when I get here. And that’s understandable.

Furthermore, a lot of us are going to these networking mixers where it’s like networking mixer for professionals, so you show up and there is a bunch of financial planners there that are brand-new to the game and they are walking around going, hey, if you want to know what to do with your retirement funds, give me a call and they hand you a business card. And the business card is so thin it curls up in your hand and turns — remember those little cellophane fish that we had as kids, you put the red thing, it’s like oh, your mood is fickle because it curled up in a little ball. Those business cards are doing that.

And so I get why people don’t want to go to these, and this is a problem because one event that I will — one key I would say about events is I would say never go to any event that is not curated. And what I mean by that is if you can get in for $10 or if you can get in for free and it’s being held at the local YMCA, and it’s going to smell like a pool and/or folding chairs from the 1980s, you should not go.

And the reason for that is anything that’s not curated is going to end up with a bunch of takers being the primary ammo that you see from the people who go there. So it’s going to be people who want to do some sort of lead gen and they are like yeah, I am going here to generate clients for my MLM or whatever. So they are trying to sell you Herbalife or something like that.

You are going to end up with a bunch of those people in there. People that are like yeah, financial planning, any sort of door-to-door sales guy is going to be in there in force and you are going to be sitting there drinking Hawaiian punch and stale cookies and you are just going to resent going. So, never go to an event in the first place that is not curated.

And if you can’t find a curated event in your area or you can’t get invited to that for some reason, then create one of your own. So instead of going to networking for professionals, create legal professionals of Southfield, Michigan or something like that. It’s like if you are in the greater Southfield area, come to this event, and then maybe you can even get your firm, depending on if this is possible for you, to sponsor this. And you only need a couple of hundred bucks, because really you just need a room; a lot of firms might even have a space for this.

(00:20:13)

And then some very basic refreshments I would imagine. The old Safeway cheese platter can work for this kind of thing. You really don’t need much. And you can keep out people that are like hey, I am a financial planner for lawyers. You are like no, thanks, you have to be part of one of these local firms and we want to see your profile online or on LinkedIn before you come. And you can make the excuse like, yeah, we need to add you to the security list. And it’s like okay, great, here is my online profile.

And if people won’t send you even an iPhone snapshot of their business card, then they shouldn’t be invited. And I know that sounds harsh, because people will want to be inclusive and not exclusive, but the point here is if you have an event and the only people that show up are trying to sell things to the attendees, no one is going to ever show up again.

So never go to an event that’s not curated. If you can’t get into a curated event, create one yourself. And once you are in the room, you can create little ways to create connections with other people. And a lot of people are afraid to network at events because they don’t want to ask for something, or they are like look, I don’t need a job, I already have one, so what am I doing here.

Focus instead on what you can get for other people in your network. So if people show up and they are like yeah, you know, I am new to this firm, you could have some sort of value proposition even for the whole group. And so when you go to these — by the way, if you are curating your own event, one thing that you could and should do is create a value proposition that gets people in the door.

And one of the ways that you can do this is instead of just hey, we are having a networking mixer, you can say, we are learning about search engine optimization for lawyers and the expert on this subject is going to be this guy who does search engine optimization from this local company, and he is coming in armed with ideas for attorneys on how to stand out on the web. Or this is a LinkedIn expert who has written a book about this and he is coming in armed with tips for lawyers on LinkedIn to network with other lawyers.

That way people show up and they are not like so I sit here and I eat this cheese platter and I look at the floor and I pretend I have got stuff on my BlackBerry or whatever that I need to answer and then I go home. It’s like no, we are going to have a 45-minute talk on this and then afterward there will be time for Q&A/getting to know the other attendees. That way even if they meet no one, there is some value in it for them.

And of course, also the topic of conversation would be yeah, you know, I never thought about how to stand out in the web, what are you doing on LinkedIn, do you use LinkedIn to connect with other lawyers, how did you find your job? It sort of gives people a context in which they can talk to one another instead of, and network, see you guys later, and then everyone is staring at each other on these chairs not knowing how to start the event.

So the event structure is more important than having some sort of icebreaker in your back pocket. Does that make sense so far?

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, absolutely. I think those are tremendous points. And I would also encourage folks, Jordan on jordanharbinger.com has some great tips, framework for curation of events and actually then when you are getting there, I apologize, because the person that you do some of the YouTube episodes with, your back and forth with her was fantastic and there were some great bullets, so I encourage people to go check that out, check out the YouTube channel too. There’s only so much we can cram into our episode here, but there is some really good stuff on Jordan’s YouTube channel.

Jordan Harbinger: Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. There is a lot of networking tips, tricks, but the key is always going to be in the mindset or the foundation. So the event really matters.

I would say also, and I touched on this before and then got sidetracked with the event curation, but when you go to any sort of mixer or when you are networking at all, it doesn’t matter what the mixer or the event is actually, always look for opportunities for other people in your network instead of just what you can get from it.

I know everybody is like okay, what’s in it for me, I drove here, I am late for dinner with my family, I need to get some value out of this. If we are always looking for what we can get from other people, especially at an event like that, you are going to be looking for the one in 100 people that can actually help you and you are going to find it pretty fruitless.

Like if you are looking for somebody who can create, let’s say marketing for a legal website and you are going to these events and you are like hey, I am looking for somebody who can do marketing for a legal website, they are like oh, well, I don’t do that, I am a mergers and acquisitions attorney. Oh, I don’t do that, I am an automotive litigation, whatever. You are going to go in that room, talk to a handful of people and you are going to immediately be bored with the conversation if that person can’t help you.

(00:24:59)

You are going to walk up to somebody and go hey, what do you do, I am looking for this, and they are not going to match, and you are going to be like okay, I am going to stand here and be polite for a few minutes and then move on. That’s looking for a needle in a haystack.

But if you are looking for ways that the people you meet can help other people that you already know, now you are not looking for the needle in a haystack, now there is a pretty good chance that anybody that you run into or meet is actually going to have some value for your network.

So let’s say you are still looking for somebody who can do marketing for a legal website and you are not finding them, but you have found somebody who does SEO, you have found somebody who is an attorney in a different field, you have found somebody who does, I don’t even know, marketing funnels or something like that for WordPress, it doesn’t even matter what it is, if it’s technical or non-technical, you are thinking when you are talking with people, who do I know that could use this information or who do I know that can help this person.

So you might meet somebody who does automotive company supplier whatever litigation and you are like oh, this is so far from what I need, and you say, what are you looking for? And they are like well, actually we are finding it hard to recruit first-year associates because the automotive industry has this reputation that it’s dead and that’s not true, but that’s what law students are thinking, because they are 22 and it’s not the hot industry anymore, tech is, we have got to figure out how to make ourselves more interesting.

And you say oh, that’s funny, I know somebody who is in Silicon Valley and they are a recruiter, you should connect with them, because they are always in front of these sort of tech facing students and they can position the automotive companies or your firm in a way that’s interesting to all these Silicon Valley interested law students. That’s a useful connection for them.

You are not necessarily getting anything out of it immediately, but you make that connection between those two people, and if you continually do that your reputation as a connector and somebody who is valuable to know, that skyrockets. And even if you help 100 people connect with each other and 99 of them are never able to help you back, it doesn’t really matter, because the one person who finally comes out of the woodwork out of you having helped all these other people and having them of course looked for something that they can do to repay the favor, that’s how you find these opportunities that really just seem to fall from the sky.

That’s when you get a call from somebody that you go, who is this again, and they go, yeah, remember we talked two years ago at this mixer at Dechert and you helped me find that recruiter. And you are like yeah, I kind of remember that. And they are like I know that you at one time were looking for technically-minded designers for the legal industry, I think I finally found somebody, are you still in need of that? And at that point you might still — you might have given up on finding the right person, but since you have got an army of people that you have helped in the past few years out there with you in mind, because you did so much to help them, that can come back to you, and that’s how you end up with a lot of opportunities that you never would have had before.

You are really trying to figure out how you can give without the expectation or attachment to getting something in return, and you just rinse and repeat. And it’s really scalable. It doesn’t take a lot of time to make an email introduction.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s fantastic.

Kelly Street: That makes me think of — so one of the things that I think I struggle with and a lot of people in general do when they are at events like this is not necessarily all the time, but sometimes it’s like, you know what, I am just tired today and I don’t really feel like being engaging, and so as far as the kind of social cues and body language go, are there sort of fixes that you can suggest to kind of get out of that stuck mindset and be able to then go, okay, I am here to see what I can offer to other people instead of being like I am not feeling well, I want to just go home or that sort of thing?

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. Of course we have probably all heard this before that your nonverbal communication can really affect your psychology and more importantly it affects the psychology of other people around you. So when we have friendly, open, nonverbal communication, other people treat us in a way that makes us feel like we are actually that, because that’s what they perceive.

So people’s first impressions of us is based — when we become a blip on their radar. So a lot of folks think I have got to make a good first impression by coming up with something clever to say. And that’s not where the first impression is made. The first impression is made when other people notice us. So that’s what I mean by when we become a blip on their radar.

And if you want to test this next time you are walking through the mall or down the street and if you are in Michigan, you are not going to be walking down the street anytime soon with other people around, go to the mall and try and test this out, you will notice your brain makes all kinds of judgments on people. Even if you are a nonjudgmental person and you are really fair, you are still going to see someone and you would be like tall, attractive, short, young, old, I mean our brain does this naturally, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

(00:30:02)

When we see people that are open, upright, confident, friendly, they look more approachable and more relatable, so we are more likely to start a conversation with that person. So we want to become that person when other people are making judgments of us, and so that typically happens when we walk into the room.

So what we want to do is make sure that every time we walk into the room the first impression that’s made upon other people nonverbally is this person looks friendly, this person looks approachable.

And so what I do is I have got something called the doorway drill. And what this is every time you walk through a doorway, you just straighten up, shoulders back, chin up, chest out, smile on your face, and you don’t have to exaggerate this, you will look silly. It’s not like a Tony Robbins seminar. You just smile, upright, positive, confident body language and you just straighten up every time you walk through a doorway.

And of course the problem with any sort of habit trigger like this is that we walk through doorways so often that it’s unlikely that you will remember this next time you walk through a doorway. So what I recommend is next time you raid the office supply closet at work, grab those tiny Post-It notes that are not good for much of anything other than marking pages, those like one inch square Post-It notes, and the lime green ones or the hot pink ones, put those up at eye level on the doorways that you walk through the most.

So at home or in your office, the restroom nearby at a conference room, whatever, nobody will even care, it’s an office and it’s got a Post-It note in it or it’s your home and it’s got a blank Post-It note in it, you don’t have to write anything on it. And what this does is it interrupts your autopilot response and you will be subconsciously thinking, why is there a Post-It note? Oh right, I have got to do the doorway drill and straighten up my nonverbal communication.

And so it breaks that autopilot response. You can straighten up every time you walk through the doorway and after a while you develop the habit of walking through doorways straightening up and changing your physiology. And then what that will do is, especially when you go to these mixers or the events, you will be able to walk in, look upright, positive, confident, friendly and approachable, and people will start to treat you as such, because most of us are looking for an out when we go to those events anyways.

And so if you are the most upright and approachable person, you will find that other people will start talking to you and it will break you out of that funk, the first conversation. The first sort of hey, what’s your name, what brings you here, that’s always the hardest. So it’s a much easier nut to crack if other people are looking at you like oh, okay, this person looks friendly, this is an easy way to kick things off.

And so that nonverbal hack is great. I have done this for everyone from law students and lawyers, to military Special Forces, because changing your physiology is one of the key ways in which we find that people are really successful with changing a mindset quickly.

And it’s important to build it as a habit, because if you are just thinking, I don’t need to do the doorway drill itself, all I am going to do is figure out when I go to these events and then remember to keep my body language upright and friendly, that doesn’t work. Because as we are trying to remember to be upright, positive, confident, friendly, whatever, if we are trying to remember it in the moment, the internal dialogue goes a little something like this, all right, I am at a networking event, I have got to remember to straighten up. Okay, I am straightened up. Okay, I am going to start a conversation now. Wait, am I still straightened up? Yeah, okay, kind of. All right, I have got to refresh that. Hi, what brings you here, and then they start talking and then you go oh, shoot, am I upright, I have got to straighten up? Okay, I am upright. Wait, crap, I wasn’t listening to what they were saying, what did they say? Oh shoot, now I am not listening.

Kelly Street: It sounds like you are giving my internal monologue when I am at events and I am just not feeling it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exactly. And then it’s like, oh no, they are going to know I wasn’t listening. Wait, now I am slouching again, straighten up, shoot, what was their kid’s name. And then you just go, why am I here, I need to pretend I need to go to the bathroom and then go to my car and never come back.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, nailed it, right? And the reason I know this is because everybody is the same way pretty much. Everybody who feels like these events are kind of a waste of time or they don’t know what to do, everyone has got that same internal dialogue. So when we relegate or delegate this nonverbal communication, the open, upright, positive, confident body language, when we relegate that or delegate that to the level of habit, we don’t have to think about it anymore and we can stay present in our conversations when we are talking with other people, which basically means listening.

And then when people go, so yeah, I come to these things and usually there is one or two people and that’s kind of all. And then you are like great, all right, good, now I am coming in and I don’t have to think about whether or not I look like I belong here and I don’t have to think about whether or not I look as awkward as I might feel.

And of course when people treat us in a certain way, it informs our behavior. So if people treat us like we are friendly, open and confident, we actually tend to switch into that pretty quickly.

(00:34:52)

And anybody who has kids can tell that behaviors train really fast. You’re normally nice kid turns into a brat when he hangs around certain friends, you don’t want them hanging around friends anymore, and it happens within a matter of minutes, right?

So anybody who has kids knows that this behavior is trainable and it’s really quick. This is kind of how humans operate. Or pack animals largely so we’re social I should say anyway, so we can see our behavior change when other people expect certain things from us, right? We rise to that occasion usually, and the way that we signal to others who we are, is through nonverbal. So changing our physiology really is a dramatic effect.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s great stuff. So now you’ve started doing this stuff, you’ve developed some of these habits. One of the things that I’m really curious to get your thoughts on because you do have a tremendous network, what kind of daily habits or systems or reminders do you have in place for keeping those relationships active and reconnecting with people?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, this is something I’m really — I don’t say passionate about but I’m very much a proponent of consistency because a lot of people they go, oh, networking is awkward and it’s like, okay fair enough, why is it awkward? Well, you know, when you don’t talk to someone for two years and then you send them a note that says, I need a job, that’s awkward. It’s like, yeah, okay, I’m with that, I get it, that is awkward. And the reason is because you know you have not done the work on a consistent basis to keep in touch with somebody and now you’re asking them for something and you know that you deserve to be ignored or told no because you’ve never reached out to them in the past, you’ve never shown any interest in them.

So, one of the daily habits that I have is making sure that I’m consistently in touch with people, and in fact, instead of starting with a daily habit, I’ll give people a drill right now and I call this Layoff Lifelines because essentially, imagine you got laid off from your job today which happens unfortunately, who are the 10 to 15 people that you’d contact and solicit their advice on what to do next. And if the first two are your parents, whatever, just move on from there. But who are the people you’d connect to, to solicit their advice on what to do next?

There’s a good chance, these are weak or dormant ties but important relationships. So it’s like your old boss, that professor in law school that you really got along well with never talked to after graduation, your advisor. Some old colleague that you had that you thought was really smart but then has since changed firms and you’ve never been in touch since.

Make that list and then reach out to those people now when you don’t have an agenda and you don’t need anything specifically, and you can literally start by saying, hey Alex, I know it’s been a few years, I’ve done a really terrible job of keeping in touch with people from the old firm or from back at school. So, this is an effort to sort of reconnect and see if we can rekindle old relationships. I want to see what you are up to, what’s the latest, is there anything I can help with?

And just admit that you’re not sure why you let it go but life got in the way and you want to change that. The reason you have to be upfront about this is anytime that I hear from somebody and it’s been 2 or 3 years, I’m thinking, okay, is it Herbalife or Scientology, what’s going on, what do you want?

And so, when they’re really clear and they say something like, hey, I was looking at podcasts because I heard about them and I wanted to start my own and whose face do I see in this article and Inc or Forbes, but you, wow, it’s been a long time, you know, you’ve seemed to have done really well, I’d love to talk about this subject if you have time.

That’s better than, hey buddy, what’s going on? Been a while. Yeah, just reaching out, randomly nothing on my mind. It’s like, okay, what’s really happening here? So, admit that you’ve let relationships go and most people will readily say, oh my gosh, yeah me too. I think about people and then I never do anything because I’m in my car driving and then rinse and repeat for the next 10 years. What’s going on? Yeah, it’s been a long time. That’s fine, just don’t hide the ball. It just makes people awkward, and honestly, it lowers the response rate from the layoff lifelines drill if people think, uh-oh, I don’t want to do this because if they’ve been burned by a past connection, you know, they got dragged into some guilt trip situation, they might not reply but if you’re really forthright that you just want to rekindle old relationships because you’ve done a bad job at networking in the past, most people will be totally — most people will understand that.

So that’s the layoff lifelines drill, and then beyond that one thing that I do every day around 10 a.m. their time or my time depending if I know their time zone, I will open up the Text Messaging app in my phone, scroll all the way down to the bottom and those are the people that you had lunch with two years ago at some conference and never really kept in touch or old friends that you texted or they texted you by accident and you said, yeah, let’s get coffee sometime and it never happened, those are those old conversations.

Scroll all the way to the bottom and re-engage four to five of those people every day, and I know people are going, I don’t have time for this. Don’t worry, 70% of people will respond, 30% of people won’t, and that’s on a good day.

(00:40:03)

Furthermore, everyone’s so busy that if you’re sending these texts to reengage type of scripts to people, people are going to go, oh man, Gyi, I haven’t heard from you in a long time, what’s the latest with you? Yeah, you know, I’m just hanging out doing this podcast, I work for this company, I got a couple kids, no big deal.

People will send a couple text back and forth, but all these people who fear that they are going to get roped into like coming over for Christmas, it’s just not going to happen, right? Everyone’s busy. The reason I choose 10 a.m. is that people are usually at work and in the office and they’ll answer their phone during a break or during lunch.

And they’re not going to be like, yeah, let’s get together and do all these time-consuming things. Most people are glad to hear from you. They’re going to be glad to be in touch again but they’re not necessarily going to want a bunch of your time because they don’t have that much time to spare themselves.

So don’t worry about that. I think a lot of people worry of if they’re going to reengage 20 to 30 people a week that they’re going to end up with 18 lunches, and it’s just not the case, it’s not the case. What does happen, is you end up top of mind for 20 to 30 people a week in all these random opportunities come out of the woodwork.

This is a real life example for me. I’ll do this and every week or so someone will go, hey, so funny, you texted me. I’m about to walk into a Board meeting now and we’re choosing our speakers for our national sales day, do you speak from stage, do you teach this stuff that you talk about on the show, and I’ll go, yeah, I do, let me know what you guys want and I’ll get speaking invitations or someone will say, hey, I know you’re doing that podcasting thing, a friend of mine runs a show about networking in the legal industry, is that something you’d be interested in? Sure, yeah, let me know.

You get these little opportunities. Most people they’re just glad to be back in touch and then 30% don’t respond at all, and you should just not worry about it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Awesome.

Kelly Street: Yeah. Okay, so Jordan, since you brought up somebody just as a hypothetical example somebody reaching out to be like, hey, I’m thinking about starting a podcast, what do I do? One of the ways that we’ve, Gyi and I have been approached by people to see if they can build out their audience is like, hey, should my law firm start a podcast? And I just wanted to get your two cents as someone who’s been doing it for so long what you think about people starting a podcast and any kind of tips you would have or whether they should just put it on the back burner and not do it?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I mean, I’m controversial in this space for this opinion so feel free to stop me if this really isn’t relevant or what you want to hear, but I think most people should not have a podcast, and the reason is, it’s not — people go, oh, you’re afraid of the competition, bring it.

But, the reason is that most of these firms, for example, they don’t have a ton that they want to say, they go, should I start a podcast? And I go what do you want to talk about? And they are like, well, I don’t know. The answer then is you should not start a podcast. It might be a great hobby.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There you go.

Kelly Street: Yes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s exactly what we agree with.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Because so many people are trying to like feel like they have to force it and they’re like they don’t want to do it, they’re not good at it, they’re not willing to put the work in to get better at it, it’s like don’t do it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, don’t do it. It’s not — podcasting is not the website of 1998 like does my company need a website? The answer is, yes, even if you just have a dry cleaner and it’s like we’re located here, we’re open till 7, we are closed on Sunday, like that’s fine, that’s your website, you have to have that if you’re not on there, it’s weird.

Podcasting is not that. Podcasting is like a YouTube channel, does your dry cleaner need a YouTube channel? No, it doesn’t. Does your law firm need to have a podcast? No, it doesn’t. Do you need a book? No, you don’t. It’s one of those things where everybody thinks, oh, I need to be on here because marketing, and it’s just not the case. It’s worse to have a podcast that’s not good than to not have one. It’s kind of like —

Kelly Street: Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it’s a problem, it will un-brand you, I don’t know if this is the right word. It will like de-brand you or negative brand you, if you have one, and it’s just super-awful and it’s recorded in an echoey conference room and the partners like, hey, what should we talk about? I don’t know. Let’s talk about how great our firm is. Okay, let’s talk about that for 45 minutes and then devolve it into good restaurants in an area where we work. Stay tuned for the next episode in nine months, we can figure out we need to do another one.

That’s not good, that’s not good branding; and any client that hears that is just going to go, you know, I dislike these people more than I did 40 minutes ago, why did they waste my time with that, are they going to waste my time with other things?

Now, if you’ve got a firm that does really niche interesting work and it’s like, yeah, we have a 10-minute bi-weekly podcast about some of the crazy stuff that we’ve seen where we anonymize some of our — I don’t know patent work that we’re doing and we’ve just seen some of this outrageous stuff that’s really interesting and going to be very valuable for people who want to prosecute patents or file for patents. That’s valuable.

So, the clients are going, should I hire them? And you go, yeah, here’s three 20-minute long episodes about things you need to know when you’re going to file for a patent, and then they listen and they go, wow, that was really helpful and probably saved me a few grand on the phone with attorneys just gathering documents and making sure I had the right stuff. These guys know what they’re doing.

That builds trust. With potential clients you can put it up on the website. They’re grateful and then they feel like they know you and then they’re more likely to retain you. Anything less than that, anything less than valuable that generates trust is going to be a problem, you’re better off not having it at all.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Totally.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And for listeners a great example of what Jordan is talking about is Ken White a/k/a Popehat’s Make No Law podcasts. So he’s a First Amendment lawyer and he is just talking First Amendment, telling some of the stories, having guests on from some of the cases. He’s not sitting there just like doing the things that Jordan talked about which you — it is as funny as Jordan was describing that, there are like so many lawyer podcasts. I was like literally that’s what they’re doing. But is it point if you’re looking for a resource in the legal space, definitely check out Make No Law, it’s fantastic.

Kelly Street: Yeah, and we don’t — and obviously Jordan, Gyi and I both share the feelings that you expressed about whether or not law firm should start a podcast, but it’s more — for me, it’s such a short-sighted thing to say, oh yeah, we’re going to start a podcast, because you have to have months of ideas and content prepared and be able to think about what your one-year plan is, because if you’re like, oh, we’re going to start a podcast. We’ll do three episodes and then we’ll be done and maybe like you said, nine months later we’ll come back and do another episode. That’s not a podcast, that’s just like a thing you tried.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. It’s like some audio files that are sort of available somehow and nobody thinks about it. It doesn’t engender any loyalty or trust with the clients. It’s the difference between creating a video that shows how a product works and having a full-on YouTube channel.

So there’s something to be said for doing a video that shows your client service and it’s well produced, but you would never put a video up where you’re like, yeah, I’m holding my iPhone and I’m walking into the firm from my car, here’s Gina, she’s our receptionist. Let me see. Oh, my office is kind of a mess today. Well, let’s see. Oh, my phone’s ringing off the hook. Hold on, let me put the phone down real quick because I got to get my keys out. That’s what a bad podcast is like, and nobody would ever make a video like that.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: But people make podcasts like that all the time.

Kelly Street: Unless it’s in your Instagram stories?

Jordan Harbinger: Right, right.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Then it’s a little — that’s totally different, right. That’s something that’s like inside look, but even then I think a lot of people think, oh, we’ve got to be on Instagram too. Okay, so what are you going to take a picture of? What are you going to do videos about, and if the answer is, I don’t know, other firms are on Instagram then do not start an Instagram. Don’t start an Instagram that has a photo of your business card, a photo of the front door of your firm and then a picture of everyone who works there and then no posts for the next two years. That’s not good. You’re not going to get any sort of search results for it and it’s just going to look hokey if anyone even finds it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And that’s the sound of thousands of lawyer Instagram accounts closing.

Jordan Harbinger: Closing, yes. Delete it and remove all of the posts. Exactly.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. So here’s another question for you. So I was going to — for me, I just was listening to your episode with Darren Brown which was awesome. So we got an audience of lawyers here, if someone just getting started with the Jordan Harbinger Show what are maybe the top handful of episodes you might recommend them to get started with? It doesn’t have to be legally related, but just things that some of your — you have an experience being a lawyer, what are some of the things you think, whether it’s leadership, coaching, networking, that you would say, go check this one out?

Jordan Harbinger: I think the episode with Robert Greene was probably a really good episode for people who are maybe legal-minded, because he talks — his book, his most recent book is called, ‘The Laws of Human Nature’, and Robert Greene wrote ‘Mastery’. He wrote, ‘The 48 Laws of Power’. Those are books that lawyers probably — well, litigators in any case especially should have read and should probably have on their shelf in their office so they can refer to it when they’re dealing with clients or judges especially, but ‘The Laws of Human Nature’ is excellent, because Robert really breaks down what people’s motivations are, and one of the topics in there is Toxic Envy and I see that a lot in the legal profession both from lawyers and clients alike.

(00:49:56)

And so, this is an episode where — and it’s a 28.5 hour long book. So, unless you’re going to do that on audible or you’re really solid reader, I know a lot of US attorneys are great readers, but 30 hours is 30 hours, man.

So we broke down some of the key principles in the interview with Robert Greene from his book ‘The Laws of Human Nature’, and I think that, that this episode is — it’s really, really phenomenal. It’s one of the best interviews that I’ve done in a while in my opinion. And he talks about why and how humans are irrational in the way people, the way this emotional irrationality affects decision-making, cognitive bias makes a little cameo here, and finding out what dictates our own emotions and how that affects our decision-making, even when we think I don’t do that but other people do.

So that’s something we can then turn around and use to our advantage in persuasion and influence. So the Robert Greene interview is a really solid place for people to start.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Sweet, thank you for that.

Jordan Harbinger: You’re welcome. And let me find what episode that is off the top of my head. I think it’s 117, yeah, Episode 117, Robert Greene, What You Need To Know About The Laws Of Human Nature.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Nice pull.

Kelly Street: Downloading it now.

Gyi Tsakalakis: We will put in the show notes too.

Kelly Street: Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh okay. Thanks.

Kelly Street: Oh, that’s awesome. Gyi also had in his notes here. He wanted to know what book you would recommend. Sorry Gyi, I’m stealing your notes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Steal away.

Kelly Street: What book you would recommend that is not how to win friends and influence people?

Jordan Harbinger: I actually think ‘The Laws of Human Nature’ is a great book that I’ve read recently. Then again, it is 28.5 hours, so it’s like all right, yikes I get that that’s a little bit longer than what most people want to read and deal with. There are a lot of books at jordanharbinger.com/books. I’ve actually got a nice big list of books that I’ve read recently.

One that I thought was quite interesting — really interesting, and maybe a little bit off what you are used to, there’s a book called, ‘Why We Sleep’, and it’s actually about sleep and dreams, and I think lawyers, especially in professionals of all kinds, could probably use a little bit of — a little bit more and better sleep. And I think this is a great book for people that I think would be great for lawyers especially to be able to sort of maximize that.

Now that said, if you’re looking for something that’s a little bit more, not corporate but a little bit more relevant possibly to that, I think there, man, there’s so many good books that I’ve read on these subjects.

There’s let’s see, ‘The Dichotomy of Leadership’, if you’re looking for something a little bit more corporate-related, that’s Jocko Willink, he is of Navy SEAL, former SEAL team leader from Iraq and he’s really — when you see pictures of him you’re like, oh yeah, that’s a — that’s a guy who’s blown stuff up for sure. ‘The Dichotomy of Leadership’, and he talks about principles in this book from him leading the SEAL Teams with him and his compadre Leif Babin, they talk about things that are like, you need to be aggressive but not blinded by aggression. You need to be organized and follow the rules, but you can’t have the rules get in the way of success.

So you really do find this balance and it’s not just, hey, you need to have balance in your life. He really does talk about caring about individual team members but accepting you might have to sacrifice their well-being for the benefit of the team, claiming ownership in people’s work that are underneath you, but not micromanaging others so that they don’t have the opportunity to take control and feel ownership themselves. So he really does a great job in this book of outlining that and that’s called, ‘The Dichotomy of Leadership’ as well. That’s a really good book.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, all Jacko’s stuffs lined up in my good reads. I mean it’s great to hear the stories too. It’s just fascinating and also extremely informative and valuable.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the stories are why I usually get the book and then I’m like, okay, I learned something as well.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right, right and then we would be remiss if we didn’t ask the godfather of podcasts on your morning walks who’s in your podcast read these days?

Jordan Harbinger: Tom Bilyeu is really good. He runs a show called ‘Impact Theory’. He is a good interviewer. He has similar guests to the Jordan Harbinger Show. A little bit more pop culturee, I don’t even know if pop culturee is it, a little bit — maybe a little bit more entrepreneurial and kind of buzzy is that, and then James Altucher. He’s a strange duck but he’s a really good thinker. Do you know him?

Kelly Street: Yeah. Well — so actually Jordan, I don’t know if you know this, but you know my husband Aaron Street.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah.

Kelly Street: Through MMT.

Jordan Harbinger: I do know Aaron Street.

Kelly Street: And James is kind of in that universe as well peripherally, and so yes, I have heard a lot of through Jason, and the MMT crew have heard a lot of great James stories.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he is just one of those guys where you are like, okay, if I didn’t like you I would probably think that you’re some sort of possibly — possibly homeless genius that roams around Manhattan or something.

(00:55:08)

But he’s just really brilliant and he thinks in a different way and he’s an interesting guy to listen to especially, so him and I do maybe similar guests but he’s a very different interviewer than me.

Kelly Street: Yeah, well, I wanted to make sure that we ask Jordan since this is Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, what are you eating for lunch today or what have you already eaten for lunch today?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my god, I would love to get a shrimp burrito, that’s I’m really keen on that. My wife is — she is funniesh, lately she’ll be like I’m going to make salmon and quinoa, I’m like, great, sounds good and then ten minutes later she’s like, yeah, I’m at the Mexican place, we are eating this now because I saw it and I can’t resist, what’s here. So, I think I’m probably having salmon and quinoa, but what I want is a shrimp burrito.

Kelly Street: I have never had such a thing. I didn’t know that you could get a shrimp burrito.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah, just imagine instead of steak or chicken, they throw some nice grilled shrimp in there.

Kelly Street: Sounds delicious.

Jordan Harbinger: It is.

Kelly Street: I might need to figure out how to source one of those today.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah you could also just bring your own shrimp, that’s the weird thing that I’ll —

Gyi Tsakalakis: BYOS.

Jordan Harbinger: Hey, hey, BYOS, yeah, exactly. Okay, said of steak, can you throw this thing, I got you might have to defrost him, no, I think good Mexican restaurants around here in California, everybody’s got a shrimp burrito, but I remember when I was in Michigan I don’t think I’ve ever seen one when I was there.

Kelly Street: Well, Gyi is actually in Chicago. He’s been there for the last decade and I am in Minneapolis and I don’t think we have good Mexican food. Gyi says they have great Mexican food in Chicago.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I mean, it’s not California but for the Midwest I mean, we’re doing all right.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was going to say there’s not a lot of shrimp that you would want to eat in some of those rivers and lakes. So they have to bring it in.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Lake shrimp.

Jordan Harbinger: Lake shrimp — yes of course, hmm.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yum, come on in for lake shrimps.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my god, hard pass on that.

Kelly Street: So weird. Yeah, I know.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, it’s disgusting.

Kelly Street: Awesome. Oh, there’s so much other stuff I want to talk about that’s like the random stuff like —

Gyi Tsakalakis: I know.

Kelly Street: Escape rooms because Jordan, Gyi and I for our agency just did an escape room on Wednesday as a team and of course we won. And Erin and I do — we have started a tradition of doing escape rooms whenever we travel and I hear that you and your wife are pretty big on them.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah, that’s our major thing. We’ve done like a 170 escape rooms.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Wow.

Kelly Street: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Which is —

Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s amazing —

Jordan Harbinger: Depressing when you add up the cost. But fun — she loves it and I’m just like, hey, you know what kind of car we could have gotten for the same amount of money, but it’s one of those things that we really enjoy doing, and honestly, I will say, I’ve learned a lot about myself through the process of going through escape rooms because it turns people who normally can keep their cool into demons and it takes people who are normally shy into these sort of puzzle-solving machines, they really come out of their shell.

And then other times people who you think, oh, this is going to be like a good person, a good friend, a good team player, you find out that they just crack under pressure. So it’s really interesting it’s — they’re not that high pressure but something in there that competitive instinct can make or break certain types of people and I am one of those people where over the course of a 170 escape rooms I went from my wife being like you’re a terrible person and I never knew it too, oh yeah, you handle these really well and you’re a good leader when it comes down to the wire.

Kelly Street: Oh, I get very intense. Gyi, you were a very good leader in ours. I have to commend you on that. I didn’t tell you that yet.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh, that’s very kind of you to say. I appreciate that. That’s problem solving —

Jordan Harbinger: It’s captain to Seaholm Maples. So that makes sense.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Wow, wow, we are going back.

Jordan Harbinger: That’s right.

Kelly Street: What is a Seaholm Maple?

Jordan Harbinger: The football team.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s our high school mascot. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That’s like my meat had days.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I can’t — I’m having trouble imagining you otherwise when I come in and visit I’m going to be like, wow, we remember —

Gyi Tsakalakis: We will let yourself go.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, well, you and me both, buddy, like I remember be — my doctor was like you need to lose a little bit of weight and you’ll be fine, I’m not that much overweight by any stretch but I was like, huh, I don’t think I’ve ever been that way and then I was like, yes, yes I was in high school, and when I look at photos, man, did I look a lot better than. It’s like maybe I do need to lose a little bit, it’s kind of — it’s a little bit funny because I remember being that age in thinking for me getting fat is impossible. I can eat whatever I want. Now not so much —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh yeah, easy for me. Well, part of my doing so my research taking your advice I noticed that you eat Active Greens which has come up — Kelly, are you on eating Active Greens?

(01:00:03)

Kelly Street: Yes. I — we do Active Greens, of course because Erin got introduced to them through an —

Jordan Harbinger: Athletic Greens.

Kelly Street: Yeah, oh Athletic Greens, yes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Athletic Greens, my apology, I really screwed up.

Kelly Street: My brain just already went to the right thing. So, good job, brain.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So what is Athletic Greens, for our last few seconds here, they are not sponsoring anything, but it really piqued my interest.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they should be. So what this is, it’s essentially it’s like vegetable insurance, right. So you have a packet of this stuff when you’re on the go and it’s all these vitamins and minerals and things like that for that you would get from vegetables and it’s made from vegetables, it’s not just like random stuff put into a powder. And it’s pretty tasty and they come in these little packets so when you’re on an airplane and your only choice is like a Burger King Whopper for the food that you’re going to get all day/airplane food, you can at least get a glass of water and have some athletic greens and you’re not like starving your body of nutrition. So it’s something that I’ve been doing for a while and I really like it because I feel less guilty eating other things and instead of being like, yeah, I have to eat a pound of broccoli now because it’s been four days since I’ve had a vegetable.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right. I’m trying it. I’m going to try it.

Kelly Street: It’s like — well it’s very different than Soylent but it is actually —

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, see, that’s what I thought I was going to be and I was like, I don’t know about the Soylent stuff. My brother is eating Soylent and I was like, eh, I don’t like that.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh really? He is eating the Soylent?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I don’t know if he is stilll as yet. Sorry, I think it blew you out. I think you can try it at some point, but I think he is off of it, but the Soylent doesn’t taste good, does it? I mean, I don’t have the Soylent.

Jordan Harbinger: The Soylent is —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Sorry to Soylent —

Jordan Harbinger: Really my — yeah, I would say it’s not bad, but it’s certainly not my favorite. That’s one of those like all meal replacement and it’s just like soymilk and some vitamins. If you go to athleticgreens.com/jordan, they’ll give you a bunch of free travel packs that you can take with you as well.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Boom, there it is. Nice.

Kelly Street: Yes, and that’s what we do, we just like Jordan mentioned on airplanes or when we’re traveling just you don’t get enough water, you deplete your vitamins and so we travel with athletic greens and just take a thing of it and they are — they are actually pretty tasty. When you see it and you shake it up and it’s all green and it looks like it’s going to be horrible, but it’s not.

Jordan Harbinger: It’s not, exactly. Well, it’s been a pleasure talking with you guys and hopefully —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Thank you so much.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I would love to catch up in person as well. I’m looking forward to meeting you face-to-face as well, Kelly.

Kelly Street: Yes, hopefully soon. I’m sure we’ll eventually see each other at some MMT-related thing if not otherwise.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, tell Erin I said hello, and thanks so much for having me on the show.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Thank you, really appreciate it. If you’re ever in Chicago in the summer, please don’t hesitate to reach out and continued success to you, sir.

Jordan Harbinger: Thank you, yeah, and in the winter don’t reach out because you don’t want to leave the house.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well you can, I’ll be — I walked to work in Februarys, I’m one of those idiots, but if you’re not accustomed to that I would suggest the summer is a better time.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I think that’s always a good move. Thanks so much guys. I appreciate it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Take care, Jordan. Thanks again.

Kelly Street: Thanks Jordan, bye.

Jordan Harbinger: Bye bye.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Bye. Well, thanks yet again to Jordan Harbinger, please check out the Jordan Harbinger Show, really great stuff, and thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, and if you’re not currently a subscriber, please do subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher podcast, podcast, podcast or social media where we try to be pretty engaging.

If you have show ideas or you’d like to be the guest, we more than welcome you to reach out. Thank you so much for listening and enjoy your lunch.

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Outro: Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you would like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts and RSS. Follow Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and/or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes.

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