Body Language Expert: STOP Doing This, It’s Making People HATE You! | Charisma On Command

24:28But in an elevator, you're always going somewhere. You're just priming yourself to go out and talk to people. I think that insight is so true of modern society broadly. A lot of the fears that we have are because evolutionarily, we grew up in tribes of 150 people. And if you got weird with like 15 of them, it was a huge issue. we're just not wired for that experience of you get this practice chance everybody's going to disperse and disband it doesn't matter and this happens constantly in our lives we have an elementary school then we go to a middle school that's different or we leave states you get so many chances to play around with this stuff and reinvent yourself and try new stuff it's kind of a hack that people haven't fully internalized of the modern world is how low stakes most social environments are compared to how they feel internally.

25:13And if you can get that, it's a game changer. What about posture? Hmm.

25:40great brands great prices that's why you rack they say sit up straight and like uh you know have your shoulders back a little bit the thing that i and i've you know i've done this in the past and i've got poor core strength and all this stuff but what i what i try to pay attention to the only thing that i keep in mind with posture is is to try to have open body language not even so much that the other person likes it but because there's an internal feedback loop like if i were to sit here like this and speak more quietly for a few minutes, it wouldn't be long before I felt shy and uncomfortable around you guys.

26:18But if I open up my body language, I show you my palms, I let you see the insides of my elbows, I lift my chest and my chin a little bit, that sends a feedback loop to me that says, hey, you're safe. There's no arrows being thrown at you. You can expose your vulnerable spots, which makes you much more comfortable. And a brief story about this is I way long time ago when I had a job, I had screwed something up pretty badly. It was my fault on a Friday afternoon. And on a Monday, I got the phone call of like the guys started the call with you really shit the bed on Friday. And I had the I was I was in the my friend's apartment at the time because I was living with him on the floor.

26:58And I remember purposely, I knew this call was coming. So I was sat in a chair and I purposely opened up my body language to just sort of like let myself ground and calm down. And through that and saying, you're right, I did do that. I understand that that was not cool for you guys and that it put you guys in a bad position. And I apologize for that. It was a minute or two of him just like dumping, venting a little bit before it's like, it's all right, man, I'm going to tell the I'm going to tell the higher up boss that you know it's all okay and we made it work and so don't sweat it it's totally not a problem versus if i'd been defensive about it in my body language and in my demeanor he definitely would have kept drilling in attacking and we would have been on opposite sides and it could have gone far far worse so that open body language is it's about the only thing that i pay close attention to in my own body language how important is eye contact deeply very it's also another one that's like now that i'm conscious of it it's like oh i have to look it's it's really tough because when you become conscious of it, it distracts from your ability to be yourself a lot of the time.

28:02So I would practice body language when I went out. It makes a big difference. Like if you've ever spoken to someone who's telling you a story and they won't let you go, one, it can feel, I'll do it to you for a little bit, it can feel a little bit uncomfortable, but it has that tractor beam level quality. Bill Clinton is one of the best that I've ever, ever seen at this. I did a video was my first ever charisma video that where he is in a town hall woman asks a question and he just lasers in on her with the squinty eyes he's smizing at her the whole time and you can tell that he's just got her because this is the feeling of presence nothing communicates that i'm with you like eye contact it's why in the more hippie circles they'll do eye gazing stuff because that simple act of sitting with someone and looking them sustained in the eye is just It's a powerful experience of presence with another human.

28:50If you develop the capacity to do that, not as a gimmick, so, so powerful, incredibly. And what do you think ruins charisma? I think what there's many things that ruin charisma. I think paradoxically, it's this weird if you try too hard. So one of the things that I'm always battling when I'm explaining to people that, yes, this is a skill that you can develop. but if you over obsess about this you're going to go down so thinking too much about yourself will make you self-conscious so generally you only want to have one thing that you're working on at any given time it should be easy it should be a set it and forget it let me use this phrase once at the beginning of conversation let me focus a bit on eye contact or cut out filler words for a portion of this conversation but if you overload yourself with stuff that you're supposed to do which is really what a lot of shy people are subtly doing when they're at a party or an event, that they keep thinking about what they ought to be doing, that will crush your charisma internally.

29:51Is that why nice guys finish last? Nice guys finish last for a multitude of reasons. It's because nice is actually not nice. It's often a people-pleasing strategy to get what you want in an indirect way. So the nice guy cliche is really what he wants is a girlfriend or to kiss her or something like that. But he's going to pretend that he's available for a genuine friendship instead. So the reason that that nice guy is finishing last is because he's not behaving in a clear, honest, direct way. And he's not asserting himself in a way that could possibly be perceived as confident or high conviction.

30:29And then he thinks to himself, oh, my gosh, I've given her everything. And these other guys aren't even nice to her. Why doesn't she like me? And it's because, well, you're you're deeply insincere in the way that you're engaging with her. Yeah. But in terms of insincerity, it seems like that also flips the bad guy. Get all the girls being completely insincere about wanting a relationship or anything. And that and that works. Yes. Yes. So. The thing that tends to work with the bad guy, if you will, is that he activates the part of herself that doesn't feel good enough. so what's going on in those situations where she's chasing the guy is that she has had wounding with her dad or with men at a young age where she feels like if i can get the person who isn't being kind to me to be kind to me then i'm going to be enough and men have this too right we like look for the person that is least we'll have all of these people who just treat us well don't need to be coached or trained or anything but we we focus on the one person who seems just out of reach because that's what we're familiar with from childhood and so i actually think that the reason that these quote unquote bad guys, in that case, the insincerity of the bad guy, the reason that that is appealing is because it's actually a familiar pattern for a lot, unfortunately, of men and women based on how they grew up.

31:42Have you seen Hometh? Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Because he has the entire breakdown of what triggers attraction. And what was it? There's like a dark... Triad? A dark triad of personality traits that is highly attractive to the opposite sex. Well, I think that a lot of that... uh, is targeted at young twenties men and women and is, is true of the experience of being a young twenties guy or girl. I think that there's a whole, and I've spoken to him. I think he would acknowledge this. There's an entire field of love that is not accounted for in any of the diagrams or the ones that he typically references.

32:22Uh, but I do think that those types of things are broadly attractive, particularly in our society. And I think this is the other thing is that a lot of those dark triad traits have a light side to them. So I'm not sure what the three are, but there's like psychopathy, narcissism, and something else. But if you think Machiavellian, Machiavellianism, there is a conviction, and we've spoken about conviction already, that is often associated with those sorts of traits that comes through. And I think that That is the piece that is attractive. But if you're high conviction, but not psychopathic, not narcissistic and not high Machiavellian, I think you'll do really, really well.

33:02It's just that people, women will tolerate that if it comes in a package of he's got other things that she wants, high provisioning he talks about, he talks about good looks. You know, there's a height, the ability to protect and defend muscles, all that kind of stuff adds as well. I think the thing that I would say about that broadly in my experience is that there was a phase of my life where I was trying to optimize for being liked by women writ large. And I understand it. I don't think that it's a bad phase, but I think that it's incomplete. I think that there is a significant amount of value towards finding what is most authentically you and being that and accepting that you are going to have fewer people from the pool interested in that, but way more higher, way more, way higher.

33:53Higher quality. Yeah, way higher, higher quality connection. Yes. Versus if you make yourself broadly appealing to a lot of people, you actually have a lot of noise in there. and I think homeath would acknowledge this. You wind up attracting people that don't make good relationship partners versus if you leave, there's an argument that people have of should you leave with your best foot forward? I often advocate once you've done the work on yourself, lead with your most average foot forward because you don't want to take her to the restaurant that you're only going to be able to take her to once every two years on the first date.

34:24Take her to the place where you're going to be able to go whenever you go out, right? Like be the person that you intend to be six months in, two years in because that is how you have a more successful relationship. If your only goal is to get her attracted to you for a moment, yeah, whatever, lead with your best foot forward, but it creates problems down the line. And what do you think is more effective for status, being liked or respected? Respected, for sure. Yeah, I think essentially status is a measure of if associating with someone improves, and this is if you really break it down to evolutionary psychology, if associating with that person improves your survival and reproductive chances.

35:06And so respect is that person has a skill or a quality that I admire or that has helped them get. Respect is earned usually. Yes, yes. And so, yeah, you look like who's higher status? Well, clearly Donald Trump is not broadly. He's liked by a lot of people, but not by everybody. But there's a lot of respect that is paid to him. Like his ability to change the world demands that even people like Surin Mamdani or even Zelensky had to come and pay him respect even if he wasn't feeling it, even if he didn't like him. So what do you think is the most overrated charismatic advice that people tend to give?

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37:15And so if you're looking for apparel software like this, highly recommend it. They get the thumbs up from me. The most overrated charismatic advice. Huh. I think it's the enthusiasm. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I have to disagree with that because I think that enthusiasm is sort of contrived in the same way that I'm a firm believer that if you are unwavering, that's the most thing that you could do. But if I'm like going up to a barista and I'm like, I'm having the best day ever. she's like like this guy's trying too hard to come across in this sort of way and i can see right through it and i think that as long as you're just like very much yourself the enthusiasm is it can be off-putting if it's a dangerous and fragile strategy you know what i think it is i think it's social calibration and awareness and every person is going to be a little different like someone could really hit that enthusiasm and just like love it and you could tell pretty quickly within like a split second if they're into it or not well do you consider yourself enthusiastic jack yeah yeah i took jordan peterson's personality test and i think i got like a 96 on enthusiasm the way you just entered the conversation was super high enthusiasm and i was like oh no this he's probably right it's the coffee well and i think so i think enthusiasm can be misconstrued for endlessly positive like you just came in and disagreed with something that i I said, but you did it with a ton of energy.

38:38Like, I actually think that's enthusiasm and that's engaging and interesting. Now, you weren't kissing my butt and you didn't come in like, I swell the goody-do, Charlie. So I hear what you're saying and I think that beneath the semantics, we probably agree on this one. And that if enthusiasm is understood as the things that animate and activate you, but doesn't have to be endlessly positive, then I full stamp it. And how you're understanding it is, it's this positivity. And even when it's fake, it's like, yeah, that's not it. That's fair. I'm trying to, I want to come up with like a devil's advocate reason to disagree.

39:20Also, let's just say, conversely, someone asks you, a close friend, how's your day? It's the worst day I've ever had in my entire life. Is that attractive? Is that charismatic to someone that you know well? or do you have to have that social comprehension to be able to like, you know, navigate? I think that's kind of the root and then whatever comes out of that is the, you know, do you choose to be enthusiastic? Do you choose to exaggerate? These are interesting questions because I really do think once it's important to learn tonality, body language, skills, eye contact, like this is where I started and it's important.

39:55And broadly there's things that work better than others in most cases. The longer I live though, I do see that authenticity is just for so many reasons, the better choice to make. And I'll give you a little short story about this. In college, there was a night where the girl that I was seeing and I broke up. And I found out at like midnight, I was out on the popular college street where everybody was drinking and partying and I wasn't drinking. I just got this message that we were going to break up. We were in like a long distance thing. And or was it? Gosh, did we break up in an alley. It's been a long time.

40:27We broke up and I was crestfallen about it. So I'm walking down the street and I was very unhappy, low energy. And I was stunned because multiple women walked up to me and started talking like, hey, what's going on? Are you like it was weirdly drawing. It happened several times on the walk home. And I was like, should I break up with someone every night? What is going on? But I was not in the mood to talk. It was an authentic, real thing that was happening right there. And it was early and I didn't know what to do with it or make anything of it. But as I've gotten older, and this is not always true, there are people that are going to be completely put off by any sort of authentic expression.

41:03That's important to recognize because every guy's gotten the advice, just be yourself, tell her how you're feeling, and then people run away from him. But I think that there's enough people in the world that if you are able to own your experience and let it move through you in an adult way, which is to say, if you're having a bad time, It doesn't mean that you yell at other people, but it does mean that you can wear that a little bit. I think that's I think that's the most attractive quality, particularly in adults. Kids, teenagers are still sorting out who do I need to pretend to be in order to fit in in my middle and high school.

41:37But I think as an adult, yeah, it's all about. At what age should you have that figured out? Like, I understand if you're 15, still trying to find your way, but like at 30, at what age should people really get it together? You know, should is an interesting one, but what I'll tell you is there's a lot of adults that are still developmentally children, right? You see this on the internet, you see this in your life, you see the way that they handle conflicts. so ideally what would happen is that in your teens you experiment and you start solidifying this ego identity in your 20s you begin to live it out you define yourself as i am this type of guy i am not the type of guy who is inefficient and i am productive and i get all these things done and then carl jung who is i think one of the most brilliant psychologists ever but certainly of the 21st century, says that at about 35, there is a shift that occurs in people.

42:34And it's the shift from your ego, which you've spent your entire life building up to that point. This is the part of you that says, I am this type of person. I am not that type of person. I have succeeded in these ways. I like these things and I don't like these other things. All of your self-definitions, that that gets, that is who you are in your 20s, but it gets decentered around 35. and then what starts to happen is your soul comes in and that becomes the center that you live from and you become far more about rather than how can I make money or how can I get people to like me or how come they're not laughing at my joke becomes authentically how can I serve other people, right?

43:10How can I give back to the world? I am now capable of taking care of myself. What I want to do is give, share, and offer myself to a larger cause. So I think developmentally that's ideal. That's often not how it goes though. So we have parents that behave like children and enmesh with their own children and create codependencies and all sorts of issues. And yeah, that's that's not very common that it breaks that way. So now I think we could all confidently agree that you're very charismatic. Oh, thank you. I struggle sometimes with that. I imagine you put in clearly a lot of work to become this way.

43:46What would you say was the most important change you made? So it was early were the big changes. it was I'll go very concrete it was leaving the town to go to college that I was in I think it's incredibly hard to transform oneself with the eyes of people who already know you around you and you guys I'm sure have experienced this everyone on the internet has experienced this which is the people that are the least supportive are often those that have the most to lose if you transform so if you are in any point of your life trying to make a transformation you're trying to start a business, you're trying to do something else.

44:22Certainly there might be a handful of friends or parents or family members that are encouraging, but you probably need to go somewhere where you are unseen by the majority of your hometown in order to successfully pull that transformation off. So that would be probably the biggest thing that I did was study abroad at a place where nobody knew me so I could have those elevator experiences where it doesn't count. I could just try a hundred different things over and over again. I got to do that for a year and a half in college and then I came back and people were like, who is that person? Like it was shockingly different.

44:52Okay. So what are the directly applicable or actionable things then that you struggled with the most that like a lever, you pulled it and then all of a sudden you're this charismatic person. Okay. So concretely it would be. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think, you know, a browser, but Gemini and Chrome that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense?

45:25There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+. It's way harder today, but actually there's an advantage. Do not use your phone for things that other people can help you with. So if you, like, I went to this new town studying abroad, and at the time there were no smartphones, but today what everyone would do is they would go to Yelp, They would go to Airbnb. They would find a way to get all of their needs met without ever having to communicate with another human being. Far better is to walk down the street and say, hey, perdón, you know, no hablo español, pero, do you know any restaurants around here that are really good?

46:00And I did that for months. Where are the good restaurants? Where, I don't know how to get to my class. Do you know a good spot to learn salsa dancing? Like, we're just constantly asking questions. And some of those people just said, no, I don't know. Some of them showed me cool things. And others wound up being like, what are you doing here? And they became friends. So the willingness to put yourself in situations where you are communicating more with strangers is so important. And what I often tell people is say one more sentence than you need to. So the elevator is a great example. You need to say zero sentences.

46:33Just say one thing. Say anything in the elevator. You're checking out at a cashier, paper or plastic, cash or credit. Okay, normally that's what you say. Say one more thing. How's your shift going? I would love if we could reset the norm in elevators. Elevators could then become a conversation pit. Every time you get in, what's someone going to say? What are we going to talk about today, guys? That would actually be a funny opener. What are we talking about today, everybody? So thank you all for coming. All right. If you're a listener right now and you get in an elevator today, tomorrow, the next day, who knows when?

47:07Please start a conversation. Tell him to subscribe to the Iced Coffee Hour podcast. Did you see that episode of the Iced Coffee Hour? That, by the way, would be an incredible opener because I think a lot of the time we fall into like, what should I say? And it can be a very logistical, what's practical, but it's, you don't need to be literal or serious at all. Like I, that for anybody out there, ask people if they like iced coffee hour, tell them that you heard on this podcast that you're supposed to talk to people in elevators. When they say why, tell me you don't really understand. I don't get it.

47:32I don't get it. I don't know. I don't know. I'm drinking athletic greens and doing what I'm told. now what about for people who have social anxiety where they just feel like going and talking to strangers they get that like rush of just adrenaline yeah that's me yeah 100 hyper introverted uh this was what about them like what should they do or what should they do how do they overcome this because it seems like that's an additional barrier that they have to conquer just to get to the first step yeah yes yes it is for sure for me what made it worth it was recognizing the limitation in my life. And it was experiences like the one I described where I'm saying a joke and everyone else is following the other dude or like I've had a crush on this girl for a year and then some other guy asked her on a date and now they're dating.

48:20So I hate to say it, but early in your journey, becoming conscious of the pain that you're putting yourself in by choosing to coddle your own fears and your own anxieties is really important. Like this is true of any sort of change where you got to recognize what it is costing you. The second thing that I would say is there's hard leaps and then there's easier steps to take. So I've tried in this conversation to give very easy steps. Like I could have given way, way harder stuff for people to focus on. Like go do stand-up comedy or join an improv class and perform in front of a room. Those are incredible ways to develop charisma.

49:00You will become really good really fast. They also are going to terrify you and stretch the people with social anxiety. But quite frankly, if I was asked to give not the easiest prescription, but the most effective, it would be stand up and improv comedy classes would be the things that I would recommend to people. Stuff like that is what's that like? I've had so many people recommend improv. Improv is poorly named. Well, it's honestly named, but it is a skill that is completely portable for everything. So I it's something that people don't often follow through, but I'll make a pitch for it. It's like the best way to get better at speaking, flirting, interviews, friends, because what it trains you to do is to be present in the moment, to yes and in interaction, to find a way to make a situation that is completely unreal, extend further and be fun.

49:56that's a tough lift and then you do it in front of an audience who is sometimes laughing sometimes not you're worried about it those skills are totally portable to life so if i could i would just tell everyone go do improv comedy i was literally just thinking yeah i was just thinking as a team bro i would do that yeah yeah so powerful so powerful and and they have places all over the world i just don't say it because people don't do it oh i would i would do it okay I would do it. They're great. All right, what about this, Graham? Yeah. If we need to make a bet, there needs to be stakes on the line.

50:29Sure. So we'll do an improv class. And if we don't in the next, what, two weeks? Two weeks is tough. I would say in the next. We're gone. We're traveling so much. I would say realistically, the next three weeks. By January 31st. How about this? January 31st? No, no, pause, pause. I've got it. So these things are cohort-based. They're not always available. Sign up for one in the next two weeks. Yeah. Sign up for one. Now, it might not start till January. Yeah. You can do that for sure. Okay. Well, sign up for improv. Sign up for improv. They often start with like level zero. You're not going to be in front of an audience until at the very end if you want.

51:05It's playing. It's games. That is very good. Now, the only thing is some of these classes for you guys, and I saw the speed that you jumped in, are catered to people who like want to be even more coddled. So they're going to take it slow. you might even want to see if you can jump into like a level one or two class i would be fine in front of the audience honestly it wouldn't bother me i wouldn't do that you might want to you might want to be like level zero is really about making people comfortable in it and a lot of people don't feel it but you guys could ask to to do a level i'm just curious what type of person we're gonna see it in improv class in vegas what type of person's gonna be like 50 year old guys is it going to be like they're there 20 year old like i have no idea i saw a lot of 20s and 30s but i did it in new york and that's where people are looking on developing yeah they're acting chops i did it in where was the other town i think i did it in vegas was the other town did i think so what is it like walk us through the process like how do they get you to like maybe yeah role play or something correct so level zero is you come in for a couple hours and it's all games you won't even do a scene to start so like we'll play this game zip zap you don't know what zip zap zap is no okay so a lot of these games and by the way these can be ported to interviews or things they're about creating verbal fluency and freedom in the in the thing because we're often this how it so we're going to play very briefly cool it's the easiest improv game it doesn't even create that much freedom but it's how you start because it's a low lift the game is zip zap zap if i start i have to point at one of you and say zip then you who received it has to point at someone else at me or at Graham and say zap.

52:46And then whoever gets it has to say zap. And you do that several times. The idea of the game is to add a little flavor to it. It's pointless. So I'll be like, zip, zap, zap, zap, zap. You were zap. Did I fuck it up? I said zap. I said zap. You said zap. That was a zap. So I lost zip zap zap. So do you leave then? And then it's just No, no. You can't. You got to get out of here, buddy. How do you win? No. So the idea of the game is you keep it going quick. And the entire idea is you just break the part of you that says I'm being weird. Like there's always this little voice like that was weird. He said that in a strange way.

53:30You're just trying to keep moving through the experience of awkwardness. That's the game. That's it. And so there's a lot of games that are like this. Yeah. And there are people that, you know, practices before they go to interviews, practice before they go out at night. My friends would do it before we went to a bar. It is really good for just chilling out and not taking yourself so seriously. And what's the next level? The next level, let me recall the types of things that they would do. They would do all sorts of short scene exercises. So one of them, this is a bit more advanced, is that, and I remember, this is a lot of times when we storytell, we try to make it interesting.

54:05And so we try to pick our best story. We put pressure on the story and then we don't tell a good story. So what they would do is they would have one person stand in and everyone in the audience just which is just the other people in the class would shout a word at them you would pick one word out and you would say so uh well does anybody want to try this i'll try it okay so i'm feeling in think of a random word and on the count of three we're going to shout it at graham okay one and and then i'll tell you the next step one two three three spine and tree okay so pick one of them doesn't matter tree got it.

54:41So here's what you do. Tree reminds me of something, reminds me of something, reminds, and say reminds me of something until you find a story and then tell us the story. Tree reminds me of dirt. And when I think of dirt, I planted three trees in the front of my house, and I thought it was going to be really easy to plant these three trees. What I didn't realize is that when you dig below like six inches or so, you had this hard clay. And so I had to take the shovel and just beat away at this clay to try to like chip it apart. And then I probably spent half a day. This is a true story, actually.

55:17I probably spent half a day chipping away at this clay in front of the house. And then I realized when I got to the clay, I couldn't put the tree in because under the clay was concrete. And they had concreted below this thing. And there's no drainage for the plant anyway. So I ended up planting these trees. I compacted them down and then they all died because there was no drainage. And so the trees, I guess, like rotted on the on the underside. I didn't know that. So we actually had to go and place irrigation like these little holes at the bottom that drained out to the other side of this like wall.

55:52And now the trees are there and they're alive. Very good. That's the type of exercise that you do. Yeah. And then it's not like there's no like feedback at the end of it. It's not you could have done this better. It's all of the early levels are about developing freedom. And the truth is, in life, people don't tell enough stories. They often operate very literally, question, answer, interview style. And these story breaks are the things that let your listener sit back, relax. There's about 5 % of the population that needs to talk less. They need to tell fewer stories. They need to ask more questions.

56:23It definitely exists. But the type of person who's going to listen to this podcast almost guarantees needs to speak more, needs to bring more of themselves to the interaction. So those are the type of things that they do in improv. See, I would be hard pressed to do like random stories. Yeah. Or make something up or riff. Riffing is, I just don't do that well. Yeah. Unless I've had like a drink or two, I just have a problem just that back and forth of making up some scenario. Interesting. So you mean making up scenarios where people do like build a comical absurd world with one another? Yeah. Like whose line is it anyway?

57:00Like that show. I love that show. I could never be like as quick and witty as, and they just come up with these things on the spot. That to me is like a superpower. So, okay, so those are some of the best in the world they got on the show. But wherever you are today, you take a couple levels of improv, you'll be blown away by your ability to do that. It is a skill. It is not an innate thing. Getting to the elite, elite levels, that's a combination of talent and birth and all that kind of stuff. But you can get way, way better at all of that. Improv is a great way to go. Do you think, though, you said that, you know, with practice, you're going to get better.

57:36But don't you think with AI, people are just going to have less contact with each other? And it's going to get worse. It'll just make it easier to be more charismatic. Yes, but I think more people just don't have to interact with anybody. Like you're talking about going to the store, like talking to them, asking for directions. I'm thinking like, well, now at McDonald's, they have that kiosk and you just go up to the kiosk and you press your order. and it just someone's like just places it on the counter and it's done yeah or starbucks down there they're they're coming up with this ai things you don't need to talk to a person door dash things or you just do it just click a few buttons yeah so where do you think the future is headed in terms of talking to people because isn't it now more important just to have like good texting skills and like just being good over you know online well if you assume well if you assume that the entire relationship is going to be conducted online, then sure.

58:29You know what I mean? Like that. No, but but the relationship could build entirely over text message. And then it skips all the sort of like informalities in the beginning. My experience with that, and I've seen other people's that then there inevitably is an encounter of not just people on a screen, but two nervous systems coming into contact. Oh, that guy can't make eye contact with me. He's really uncomfortable. He's shaking. Now we're kissing and he's trembling or whatever. So I totally agree with you. The arc of technology is that it has allowed us to become more atomized. And I even when I was in Costa Rica the first time, I didn't have a phone.

59:05Now I have the option to use Yelp instead of asking a person for a restaurant. So, yeah, you're going to be able to exist as an economic unit without ever talking to anyone. And that we're already mostly there. The price that you'll pay, I think, in terms of life satisfaction is going to be very, very, very high and then in the inevitable case where you do want to have a relationship your nervous system i don't think will be very prepared for it and you'll struggle eventually uh but if people don't experience that god bless i know i know i feel that way like after years of door dashing i finally am like moving in and i'm dealing with people and it's a shock to the system to talk to a stranger i've gone through periods where i've worked really hard for like a month give or take and i just don't go out yeah the only people i talk to really like jack and macy and podcast.

59:52That's it. And then when I go out, I feel so rusty. It's just like, I don't know how to, it's like, I forgotten how to talk to people. Totally. I felt that way after COVID. I was like, do we shake hands? I didn't know how to do it. So yeah, it's like the gym, which is if you've done it once, you know, you can do it. You built the muscle back faster. But if you don't go for six months at a time, like you're, you're going to lose it for sure. And how do you address situations? Let's give some examples here. If someone talks over you constantly. So there's a number of ways to address this. If someone talks over you constantly.

1:00:29So there's all fundamental questions, which is like, why are you in situations with people that need this level of parenting or correction? Yeah, why could you even be in a situation like that? So there's the concrete thing to say, which is like in the moment, everybody likes to know what phrase to say, which is there's people that have better ones on me that I won't trip their lines. But I think Jefferson Fisher has a good line. There's other people out there in this world. But yeah, my thing is it would be more curiosity around how you wind up in a situation where people are constantly talking over you.

1:00:59and if there's a more structural change that we could make to get you into situations where that's not the case. So you're saying you could have already done something wrong. You could be trying to fit in with a group of people that don't care for you or are low empathy or, and it's just like, the answer to this is not to change this circumstance, find the right phrase. The answer is to leave this situation and go start a better one. It's kind of like if my boss treats me like crap, how do I get him to stop? You could just get a different job would be one way to approach it. What if someone's just droning and they're talking and talking and you don't want to talk to them?

1:01:33And then like, what are you supposed to do in that situation? Is this a podcast question? I've seen where you just keep talking. Yeah. And it's just you finish your sentence. And if they talk over you, you just continue on and you just over talk them and get a little louder. And if they get a little louder, you just kind of have to one up. But it might not end. At a certain point, Graham and I, we have butter. we have a few, you know, Graham knows who I'm talking about. Like we were in conversation with this guy. Say his name. Between everything he would say, but, uh, and then he would go on to the next thing.

1:02:08And so like, you know, you can finish a point and just end on a period or you can say, but, uh, and then go on to the next thing. It was, it was crazy. We started laughing mid conversation because you would just see he would twist something into something else, into something else. We would like talk about this cup and then like 10 minutes later, he'd be talking about like riding a camel in Egypt and what like the tour guide was telling him. And then he'd circle back to like a Christmas gift he got like and it was never ending and it was constant to see like, OK, where is this guy going to lead next?

1:02:43But everything was. But yeah, so then I did this. But and then and at this point, we just stopped talking. and enjoyed what we were doing.

1:02:58Because it's just like, it was pointless. It's pointless to say anything. It was funny. Yeah. So I think there's, do you want to be a saint in these situations or do you want to extricate yourself? If you want to, which is totally fine to want to extricate yourself. I think the, whenever I want to get out of a conversation, I just announce what I'm going to do next. Be like, okay, I'm going to go to the bathroom. But, you know, or, okay, I'm going to go get in my car and I'm going to drive off. It's just a weird, yeah, I'm going to go meet my friend. I'm going to go call my dad. Like I just do that.

1:03:26The dinner had just been served. Oh, okay. So you're locked in in that sort of a situation. Locked in, waiting for food to come in. Okay. So then the other thing, which is not your responsibility, but I have started to try to do is there's all kinds of difficult personalities. You just described one. There's the person who trauma dumps. There's the person who won't stop talking. That person I've begun to learn develop that habit because they struggle to be present with other people. They don't know how to let other people in. They don't know how to communicate with other people. And it's an acutely painful experience for them.

1:04:01So I try to drop into compassion in those moments and curiosity. and I'm not excellent at this, but the type of thing, I would try to pay attention to the story and listen for what is he really trying to tell me here. You know, the camel did this and like, what is he trying to say? Is he trying to get me to understand that he's a cool guy who travels a lot? Is he trying to get me to understand that we should hang out sometime? And I will try to speak directly to the thing that he is deeply trying to communicate, but struggling to say. so and that would just be yeah it sounds like you really get to travel a lot of places and have a pretty interesting life like i try to i try to pull out of them the thing that they are talking around which is why they're saying so many words because they're not able to just express the emotion and the need that they have in that conversation which is to be seen recognized understood uh appreciated whatever there's so many times i wish that i could just say hey lisa i'm not enjoying this conversation.

1:05:01That's a, you know, I think. I'm gonna leave. See that, I would advise against maybe that. I know. There's something close to that that is great though. I just don't wanna listen to this and I just don't wanna talk right now. Yeah. Can we, you know. In the most polite way possible. Like, I'm kind of done with this. I see as people get older, they trend in that direction and they can get really harsh in that direction. I think there's a, I don't know the exact phrase, but I think there's really something powerful there, which is, yeah, I don't know. I'm just not that interested in this topic. What else is going on in your life?

1:05:31Or like, keep the door open to connection with that person. I don't know the exact phrase, but I think that's authentic, right? This, I don't want to do this. Can we do something else? It's an interesting way to approach it. There's been a few times I've just said I've zoned out for like the last few minutes. Great. Great. Yeah. Yeah. And I think people appreciate it too. Because then like you're kind of breaking through that barrier and they see that you're just It's like, hey, look, I can trust this person that they're going to be authentic with me and say how they truly feel. Yeah. Yeah. And worst case, you know, they freak out.

1:06:05You don't do it. Okay. That relationship is over. You're never going to have to sit there and listen to them again. Best case, this person had a barrier up. You stopped being fake and you pull them out of their weird spiel that they have and actually connect with them as a person. And then you're engaged. I think a lot of people be like, oh, I'm not interested in other people. I think they are, but they haven't learned how to elicit the interesting parts of other people in conversation. So they let other people go wherever they want and they sit bored on the sidelines type of a thing. So how do you end a boring conversation?

1:06:38Well, you can try to make a boring conversation an interesting one, which is the first thing, which is to get to values, generally speaking. So the things that make there's fun values and I call it news. News is like, yeah, so, you know, we got a new crib for the baby. we're moving in her mom's gonna visit next it's just you know and that please i don't care that's where a lot of people live values is the things that you actually care about are struggling with are creating friction conflict tension i find that stuff interesting so if somebody were to tell me instead yeah you know her mother's coming to town i got in a big fight with her the last time she was here she actually like now i'm invested so i'm trying to share my values in conversation when I'm talking about the topics in my life with other people and I'm trying to listen for their values and pull them out of them and steer the conversation in that direction to make a boring conversation have depth and be interesting.

1:07:34But let's just say you don't want to have a conversation at all, but you want to excuse yourself in the best way possible without maybe making the situation uncomfortable. Yeah. So I don't know exactly where you are, but for me, it's generally I say awesome I am going to, awesome, nice talking to you. I'm going to X, Y, and Z. I'm going to head out now. I'm going to give my father a call. I'm going to go explore the party a little bit. I'm going to go to the bathroom, whatever. And just, that's it. And really quick, I just want to say that when Jack and I started the iced coffee hour, we had to figure out everything ourselves from the best cameras to use, the best editing equipment, how to get guests.

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1:11:27Yeah, I totally agree. No, I think, I think the superficial aspects of almost anything that people work on themselves for, like it's manipulative to go to the gym, to sculpt your biceps and your abs, to get a particular reaction from a particular person when it's fully understood that that's why you're doing it. You're not expressing your own natural health. You are carving a body that you have predetermined will get a response from it. Like you're trying, and if you don't get the response, you will change your gym routine until you do get the response. Like that is, and by the way, you can put a negative or positive or neutral valence on all of that, but it's a manipulative behavior.

1:12:04You're trying, you're not, the activity in itself is not having unintended consequences. is the consequences are the whole point of what you're doing. And so I totally agree with you that a lot of the superficial ways of engaging with making money, getting in shape, getting people to like you are manipulative. And then as you hopefully progress and develop and get older, they are natural outgrowths of you being yourself and with whether people like you or not, whether they like your body or not, whether they're into your like all of that is let go, I think, at further stages of development. How do you know if you have good charisma?

1:12:40Well, I think certainly an aspect is how people react to you. But you can still misinterpret the way that they react to you. Of course. There are ways that are just concrete, you know, like look at a certain number, something that will tell you if you are charismatic. No, no, it's an interpersonal experience. And it does like show me where charisma exists in the universe. Right. Like, let's go mine charisma. It doesn't it's it's an interpersonal subjectively but broadly felt experience. But take the most charismatic person, whoever you want to call him. I said Trump at the beginning. Obviously, that's not a universally felt thing about him.

1:13:19So it doesn't exist independently of the feelings that people have in interaction with one another. So there is no there's no device. There's no measure. There is only I think what matters is are you satisfied with how your relationships add to your life and how you add to the relationships in your life? And if you step back and you see that you have friends, colleagues that seem to get much more out of that aspect than you, then there's something to work on. And if you look back and you go, no, I'm deeply I feel really good about my wife or my husband. I feel good about my work relationships.

1:13:51I feel good about the opportunities that sort of fall into my lap. then great. There's, you know, probably not an area you need to focus on. How important are first impressions? I mean, how important are first impressions? When you think about the amount of people that you're going to come into contact with in your life and then how many of them you will only meet once. And if that goes well, there's an opportunity for second, third, fourth. It is the gate that it's kind of like saying how important is your storefront or how important is your thumbnail on YouTube? It's the thing that It determines if the inner goods ever get experienced.

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1:15:06While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Yeah, connecting with people. But I think more important is not that you have everybody likes you, but that the right people are connecting with you. So it's bringing yourself consistently into interaction so that the person who would vibe and would connect with you knows that. And then you can form a friendship or a partnership or something like that. And what does that perfect first interaction look like? We're going to an event tonight for Spotify. Okay. We're going to be meeting some people. I'm coming. Do you want to? We'll talk after.

1:15:39I might be able to. Okay. What does it look like, though? Yeah. When you first meet somebody, what's the best way to lead a great impression? Yeah. So, again, I will say there's the broad, objective, more universal way of doing it. And then there's what do you hope to get out of this event? Because for you, maybe all that you want, and this could be different, maybe I'm making this up. Jack just wants to meet a girlfriend. And the only first impression he cares about is do I get the women that I like to like me back? And for you, it's like you're looking for a business deal or you're looking for a friend.

1:16:10The first impression qualities are going to be different in each of those circumstances. So it's important to know what you're wanting out of a situation. But broadly, if the other person has these three experiences in this order, it's a great first impression. So the first one is fun. If the sense that they get from you is that you are an enjoyable presence, that's the important piece. You come in super high energy. I don't know. I disagree. It's fun. It's fun. High energy is more fun than low energy. You can crack a joke. This is something that I've talked about ad infinitum on all the podcasts I've done.

1:16:46But if somebody says, where are you from? And you make up a silly joke. You're like, I live over there in the broom closet. Yeah, they just let me out for parties. You know, like that's fun versus, well, I live here and I do this, right? So, okay, you get a chuckle or a laugh, check. You've done fun. That's all that it takes. Trust. Trust can come in a number of ways. This is where a friend says, hey, have you met you? Like instant trust, right? When somebody emcees you or somebody says, oh, you should meet this guy. That's why a assist when it comes to a first introduction is so valuable. That immediately buys you five or 10 minutes when somebody says, you should talk to this person.

1:17:21Other ways to build trust is mostly nonverbal. It's eye contact. It's your handshake. It's, I mean, you guys are sort of established. There's trust that is going to be there for you guys because you're at this event. But that is something that other people generally need to communicate via nonverbals. And then the last thing is respect. so respect often comes through it can be non-verbal but eventually everybody says they're trying to locate you in this the hierarchy is like so what do you do or do you live around here or this cheap and easy ways not easy but if you have it is like oh you live in the expensive neighborhood you've got the cool job or you know the the guy who's throwing the party or this that and the other thing but it's even if you're not that back when i was a consultant i wasn't too proud of it.

1:18:02The way that you talk about what you do, your ability to bring values and lead the conversation in interesting ways. The fact that there's somebody over there who gives you a high five. Well, you're like, hey, what's up, man? Like all of this contributes to a sense of, I mean, we're monkeys, right? Like that this person is in the hierarchy, alliances, all that kind of stuff is felt palpably and it creates a sense of respect. This is an interesting one. What do you think about people who wear designer clothing, like expensive Louis Vuitton head to toe? They drive a really nice car. They pull up in the Ferrari.

1:18:41How does that play into all this in terms of making a good first impression? Well, it's clearly intended to create desire and respect or that. And there's a subset of the population that it works for. Like a lot of people tell you to buy these cars and the only people who look at them are other dudes. Right. But it does have that effect some of the time. You might remember like probably 10 years ago, there was these pranks where these guys would roll up in Lamborghinis or something. Oh, the gold digger pranks. Yeah, the gold digger pranks, right? The idea is that people see that and they treat you differently.

1:19:13So it impacts a subset of people in one way. It also alienates a subset of people the other way. Who are you trying to engage with? and I would say again if you're getting a car to get people to like you you're going to attract the wrong kind of people you're going to attract the kind of people who want to use you for that car but if you're a real like I know that you love cars and you just love them and you would love them if nobody liked them you just want it if it's an expression of that and who you are go for it 100 % and it's the same thing with the clothes like if you love this clothes and everybody else hating it doesn't mean a thing to you it just happens to be designer wear it But if your love of the clothes is completely contingent on what other people say, then— But what about like the Adam Sandler sort of style?

1:19:59Where he's just walking around New York with— That's Adam Sandler. But I'm saying, but he has that confidence to be able to pull it off. And with him, it's cool. But some other guy does that. It's like, yo, you should really, you know— Okay, so you're competing Adam Sandler and some other guy. I promise you, people told him 20 years or 25 years, hey man you can't dress like that hey man you can't dress like when he was just the guy on snl like dude wear a suit like but he just kept doing it and now it's him and it's fine i mean i'm not dressed particularly nicely i wear my black t-shirt but if you had you know alex o 'connor he would be in a suit right now they create different impressions they they one is not better than the other and the question is which attracts the type of person that you're most interested in and which feels the best for you to do.

1:20:48I don't think that one is better than the other though. So there's no optimal sort of like you should dress this way to get like the best outcome. It's really just whatever you feel most comfortable in. So there is, I had a phrase and I don't live by this anymore, but if you're really trying to optimize, every day is Halloween. And what you'll experience if you have ever had a Halloween where you had a killer costume, makes it really easy to meet people. Like there was a year where we were in Brazil. This is before they had shipped those velcro morph suits out to brazil so nobody had seen them and me and my other american friends dressed up as the five power rangers and we went out for both that halloween and the following carnival and it was the most celebrity experience i have ever had in my entire life constant people coming up oh my god power rangers like taking photos it was the most fun i have ever had now to be clear carnival is not an event where you're supposed to dress up like a Power Ranger but you know people wear headdresses so and we were foreign I experienced this in New York where I was a single guy I was trying to talk to girls didn't have a ton of there going on so I wore suspenders and I tried everything I tried the boa I tried the top but you know I wore everything once and the suspenders reliably would have women come up and just yeah yeah so but you wouldn't do it on a first date like when I would do it all the time yes so does that still wait does that still work?

1:22:10I don't know. It's, but yes, it's been, it's like everybody would say, and by the way, the reaction that I got from you guys, all the dudes would roll their eyes and it just works. It just works. I don't know what to tell you. Walk me through this because I am actually gobsmacked that suspenders work. So are you just putting these suspenders on and walking on the street, striking up conversation with someone and then they go and they snap it? That's it. And are you, because you can display suspenders in many different ways. The two main ones being, look at me, I'm wearing suspenders. I'm the guy who, like that sort of a thing.

1:22:43Or is it like, I look good in suspenders. So which one is it? It was a combo. Cause my, uh, my co-founder would do it too. And he had like, he was bigger and stronger and just kind of looked funny on him. I was like more lean. So it worked for me, certainly. But I, we ran this experiment with a number of friends and they had the same experience, which is people, girls in particular. Do you wear a belt with suspenders? No, I wouldn't. These were coupons. And here's what I'll tell you. Okay, so when you're, this is when you're a younger guy, you're out in a public event like a bar or a club. The thing that guys don't realize is that we all, but women especially, are clocking everyone in that room.

1:23:21Everyone in that room. And most guys are wearing their normal guy suit. I have a collared shirt and a solid color thing and whatever, and it's easy. Like maybe you're strikingly handsome. Maybe, you know what I mean? It's like, look at us. Like maybe you're super tall. Maybe you're like known from the internet, whatever. But you just blend in. and then one dude has full sleeve tattoos or this was the easiest, clip-on suspenders. That guy is just noticeable. And if she has any reason that she wants to speak with you, which could be she likes your look, could be she saw you talking to other people, she looked like you were having a good time, it gives her this easy way to initiate conversation.

1:23:55So when they ask, why are you wearing the suspenders, what do you say? Okay, this would have been a long time ago. So I'm 38 now. What would I have said? So these were questions that people always asked. Like I didn't drink at the time. And people say, what do you say when people say, I like them or because they're awesome. You know, like just like it's not about the phrase. I would have said belts are too expensive. Great. Great. It's like you can say they were out of belts. Yeah. Yeah. They were out of belts at the belts or whatever. Literally anything. The thing that will the wavering is the doubt that you shouldn't be like the fact that you maybe feel that you need to have justification.

1:24:32communication like if somebody came up to you and was like why you ran a black v-neck like you would never prepare for that sort of a circumstance like if anyone asked you about your clothes or how you behaved similarly you just you don't need to prepare for that you just you just so is so is just peacocking then it's about doing anything to stand out not anything not anything because i tried i tried the stuff that they wrote in the game and i tried the boas and i tried the top hats and i tried all that and they do create different things this was like fashion forward i had a t-shirt and cool khakis with my clip-ons like it's somewhere on my instagram you could find it and it yeah it was effective so what about hand lines for openers explain what a canned line is okay this is all this is all blast from the past for me so a canned line is every guy knows the experience of you see a woman that you're struck by you'd like to speak with her and your mouth goes dry your hands go frozen and numb and you don't know what to do and all of a sudden the fact that you could talk to somebody else three minutes ago, doesn't matter at all.

1:25:32You don't know what to say. A canned line is something that you can say in that situation to get yourself moving, to get yourself out of it so that you can engage in conversation. I found that it was generally helpful to have a handful of these at most and to make sure that they were lines that would just be true in almost any situation. So the one that I used when I was a younger guy going out single trying to meet women was, hey, I don't think I've met you yet. I'm Charlie. That one is very, very powerful because it, without saying it, sub-communicates I'm the type of person that knows a lot of people at this event.

1:26:09Now, I didn't say that, but it's sort of in there. Like, I don't think I've met you yet is baked into that. Again, I tested a bunch of them. That was the most versatile and the easiest. Now, it doesn't make her fall in love with you. Like, everyone thinks they have to have, like, you've been running through my mind all day, you know, type of a thing. You're just talking and you haven't creeped her out. That's where that line gets you. It's interesting for the can lines because I watch the YouTube videos. Stephen Shapiro. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Stephen Shapiro. Yeah, and he's... It's the young generation.

1:26:38I don't know these guys. He's just able to deliver these funny lines. And no matter what he says, they're always receptive. And I'm sure, listen, he could also edit out all the bad ones. But in fairness, he could go up and say the lamest pickup line. Yeah. And you just see it just lights the upper face, but he says it with such confidence. And like a very, he's not attached to the outcome and seems just having a good time. Yeah. Pickup lines are training wheels. Like they're for the person that doesn't know yet how to ride the bike. And so they can lean heavy on a pickup line and not fall over.

1:27:14When you see, I don't know this guy, but I imagine when you see someone like that, he's not even leaning on the training wheels. He doesn't need them. He knows how to ride a bike. So he can say whatever he wants. You can give him challenges. You can give him hard things to say. He would probably be able to start a conversation just fine with something that you thought would explode the interaction. You said a canned line in a podcast I was listening to. It might've been Diary of a CEO where someone asked, oh, do you live in this building? You say, no, I'm just casing the place. Yeah, yeah. I actually thought that was hilarious.

1:27:41Jeez. Jack's gonna steal that. That's so good. It literally made me laugh. I'm still thinking about it because it's so just like clever. So I don't know. It makes me think like, jeez, maybe it'd be a good idea. not even for like dating or getting a girl's attention, but just like for flirting with the world, as you say, like it'd be good to have some kind of go-to things. I'm curious, did you ever have a canned line that you thought was fire, but it was actually really, really bad and you just like overused it? I'm sure I did, but not one that I used more than twice because once they sort of - Really?

1:28:13That's your whole test is like - Two interactions? Three, four? I mean, you know, okay. So if I have to answer this question, here's what I'll say. In the book, The Game, which was like the original thing that I read that was so made that I could learn how to talk to women. They had these canned lines. And very early on, I copied some from that book. And the one that they use is like, did you see the fight outside? So I remember. I remember that. Yeah. It was like going up to people like, did you see the fight outside? And then, of course, they're interested. But there was no fight outside. Now you're like talking about this thing that never happened.

1:28:45You're like, it was crazy. And so I discovered very quickly that any canned line that was based on something that wasn't reliably true, like, hey, I haven't met you yet, you know, it wasn't worth doing. But that was so we picked that up pretty quick early on. Yeah, I remember the other one from like this is the late 2000s. The hey, can I get your opinion real quick? The opinion opener. My sister wants to get a tattoo of her boyfriend, but they've only been dating for three months. She says she's the one. What do you think of that? Yeah. Yeah. I remember that was a one. Yeah. I'm sure I did that a handful of times.

1:29:21Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And those were just, they're not true. You know? And now we're talking about a tattoo that doesn't exist and a boyfriend that doesn't exist. And it's like, so what's going on with your sister? It's like, uh. What sister? I have a sister. Yeah. So yeah. It threw those out pretty quick. So the last time we had you on the podcast, it was what? Three years ago. And I think - Was it only three years? I think so. I think that's only three. Oh, it was four. Okay. It could have been four. Okay. Four-ish. But we titled it Meet the Man Who Makes like a million dollars a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:29:51That's right. Because at the time, what was your involvement? What was your involvement with the business? That's right. It was low. It was low. Yeah. Like I wasn't making videos at the time. I'd made the first group of videos. And my co-founder was, I think, at that time making videos. And I was like working on a Dungeons and Dragons thing that wound up costing me a bunch of money and not getting any views. Yeah. But you were making really solid money off this business. You'd put in, sure, the front end work on. Yeah. You kind of sat back and you were just collecting this check. How has your business developed since then?

1:30:22Developed? Devolved. Devolved. How has your business devolved? Well, no, you're no longer making a million dollars doing nothing. So you can't do nothing forever and make a million dollars. Ran that experiment. I forgot we did that title. Yeah. I mean, making a million dollars doing nothing. I was like, what can we title this? So I don't know how much we've had a chance to talk about, but I'll give you the rundown. So at the time, my co-founder was making videos and the business was still doing well. And he and I had a falling out. It was a personal falling out that then became a business falling out because the basis of the business was the shared friendship.

1:30:53And once that wasn't there, it was like, OK, now there were business partners. How does this work? And so there was a period of time where I said to him, I was like, look, you're going in a direction that I don't want to go with this channel. I'd rather you just not make any videos. I understand that that could have a negative impact on income, but like I think it's for what I hope to do and the brand. I actually think it's I don't want to keep making videos. There was a year over a year where nothing happened on the Charisma on Command channel. So it's just a seven million subscriber channel that just stopped posting and went quiet.

1:31:26What happened with the business, as you can imagine, was like, that's not good. So it was a slow, impressively steady decline from month to month. The amazing thing about YouTube, as you guys know, that there's a back catalog and stuff that we'd made five, six years earlier was still feeding our funnel, which was still selling our course and people were still getting access. We still had all the support services in place, but we weren't driving new leads and we weren't building brand engagement. So eventually we fished that pond out and the business is now down, I don't know, 80 percent from its top, 75 percent from its top.

1:32:02and so yet you can't do nothing forever and then we really did nothing and i then purchased the business from him last december and so i'm now the sole owner of this business and came back and made videos and basically found like i am operating with a pond that is not stocked it's like when i think about when and like look at alex hormosi when did alex hormosi make the hundred million dollars. Was it in two days when he sold his third book? I would argue no. I would argue that was when he collected the hundred million dollars. He made the hundred million dollars over the preceding five years. And so it's the same thing in our business, which is like, when do we make a sale?

1:32:45Well, we've interviewed customers. The vast majority of them have known about us for over a year, if not two. So once you're not making content, you're not getting new fish in that pond, if you will, you fish it out. It's just depleted. So now I've got this really cool channel that I love that it still has my heart. I've got and we've spoken a lot about charisma, but even in the ways you can hear is like this is not I'm not wearing the suspenders. I'm not saying the lines. I'm not doing this kind of stuff anymore. I've got to figure out which I'm excited about what to do with this thing, because the answer is not more of what I was doing.

1:33:18I played around with that doesn't work for me. And it's like it's not what the audience wants anymore. I put up a video two or three weeks ago that would have made legitimately$100 ,000 to$200 ,000 back in the day. And it did a tenth or a twentieth of the views that it would have gotten back then. And I know the caliber and the quality. It's just like the meta has shifted. The attention has changed. It's just a different thing. So, which is good because also my attention. It was like a dating video. And like I said, I've had a girlfriend for a long time. I'm just not there. How much was it to buy the channels?

1:33:53i knew you were asked this question yeah i'm curious about like how you were able to so i can finance this i was thinking about this i've last time we talked i was on camera he was he was right off he didn't want to talk about his finances so i'm not going to say the exact number because it's what i spent he received yeah um but i can tell you about the conversations that led up to it was there's you know you're looking at how much cash is in the business you're looking at monthly cash flow, but mostly it's an emotional decision, you know, with some math behind it of like, he worked on this thing for a long time.

1:34:25What is it worth for him to part from it? And he wanted more than the free cash flow that he would have gotten just by sitting on it. And so it was a protracted negotiation. It started, I think I made my first offer like a year before we actually closed it. So the interesting thing about the negotiation is it wound up, I learned a ton about negotiation, but really that it's, especially with stuff like this, it's like highly emotional stuff. It's not just a calculator math problem. So we can talk about that if that's. Yeah. Why not just like sit down over coffee or drinks and just say, Hey, by the end of tonight, we're going to hash this out.

1:35:06I think, well, so we, early on, we had a number of conversations about the friendship. And we had several where it was like, what's going on with us that we were unable to resolve in a way that felt good for me. And then it was like, I was like, I need time and space from the friendship. And then it became, oh, wow, as I got time. And this is not to say that he's a bad person or anything like that. I've had people that are malicious actors in the business, had a guy who stole money. This is not him. Like we had different values driving us in different directions in our life, I think. But when we we eventually were able to sit down, but it was like of the emotions and the intensity had to cool for a lot.

1:35:51So eventually when we did close it, it was these conversations of like, very frank, what are you looking for in a deal? What do you want? He then had by that point had a kid. And it was like, look, my priority is for him he was like i want to get cash to put into investments and the bank so that i can spend time with my family i was like well that's good because i want to get a project that i can pour myself into and work on so it was fairly clear that i was going to be the buyer though we did go back and forth i was like look i'm willing to sell um but we did have that conversation it was just not there was way too much other emotional relationship stuff to have it early in fact we probably needed to have it around the time that I was on the last podcast.

1:36:38Like it needed to be done in 2020 or 2018 or something like that. What would you have done differently looking back? Oh, so much. I would have had a frank, I think we were best friends first. The business came second. And we, in an attempt to stay close to one another, I think avoided a lot of conflicts that needed to be had one of them though there were many others was there was a significant period of time where i was like driving the business and that was why i was doing nothing at that point is because i had carried it up until that point um i think other conversations that needed to be had and then he did make the videos at that point were about real honest conversations about what we were in the business for and i don't think one is right or wrong but i think for me it has been a vehicle for creative expression.

1:37:29And so I have a particular set of things that is meaningful to me. And for him, that was, it was important, but it was more like providing a lifestyle for him and his family and those sorts of things. And they just create different things that you want to do with it. And I think having the two of us in 50-50 ownership with that level of fundamental, what are we doing here? Like he would have done something very different than I would have done or am going to do with it, I think. What's your advice to Jack and I? Are you guys 50-50? Pretty much. Yeah. It sounds, I spoke to Jack about this. Have the conflict early.

1:38:10Like, it is better to yell at each other and say a mean thing four years earlier than to be kind, polite, work it out. Because we were inadvertently in an attempt to be kind to one another in the best way that we knew how. burying problems that then became intractable at one point. And I've spoken to Jack and he said you guys have had discussions about like, what's, are we contributing fairly? And what's your role versus my role? Like that these things continue to be spoken about in ways that are high conflict is actually really, really healthy, I would say. And we sort of prided ourselves on being very low conflict.

1:38:49Like we just got along and agreed and sort of smoothed over anything that wasn't self-evidently going to resolve itself in a single conversation. Now, what about in contracts for valuation? Because it seems like that's a very arbitrary number where you could say, oh, it's valued at X, when really it's like, okay, if you have a buyer, they're going to pay a fifth of that. Sure. So this was the big issue, was when I made the pitch, it was like, well, I think it's worth this, where it actually moved. This was, I got to give Joe Hudson credit. He offered me this suggestion is, I had wanted to buy the business.

1:39:25I looked at it and was like, for me, my sense, and I think he would agree at this point, is that his creative energy was really going to his family and my creative energy was going into some sort of business or project. And it just made sense for me to be the buyer and him to be the seller. But what actually moved it was when I said, hey, I'm actually willing to sell this thing. How about I've been making you offers, you tell me it's not high enough, that you make a counter, I say that's too much. we're not able to work it out why don't you buy it for me and make me an offer to purchase it so when he did that and he looked at it and he really went and he sat on the other side of the table and he was like okay what is this worth the numbers came way way more close so he made me an offer that was a legitimate offer he's like i would do it at this price and i said i'll pay you 20 more than that and we can close and that was it that's a great way to frame it was a great way to frame it it's like the thing that i had to let go of was hey maybe i am selling this thing you know maybe i'll go start a new channel and and we each had clauses which is like you get a shout out or i get a shout out like we had a we we agreed on the broad structure of the deal of like this is what it's going to look like and then it was i'm willing to be on either side of this and that that got us to a price that was we just saw it very very similarly at that point and how is your relationship today it's much better we had a period of time where we weren't talking when i say better it's like we're we were best friends for for 20 years almost um about 20 and where we are now is we are i have well wishes for him we're friendly we're cordial we are cool every now and then we catch up on the phone and have a long conversation he's got a young family he's got like two little kids that are you know any time to talk to him is like okay i just got one down for a nap like that sort of a thing um it's it's much better my my big regret is that i think we we were we were going to wind up here he was going to end up with a young family not working on this sort of a thing because that was what was important to him now i was going to wind up at this stage of my life without a young family working on this project i wish that we could have had conversations earlier about not even the business, the friendship, because really what was going on that created the business problem is we were codependently altering who we were in order to try to make the relationship work.

1:41:51So just for instance, like he was living in California and not marrying his girlfriend and not having kids because I wasn't doing those things. And there were ways in which I was sort of being more like him in ways that didn't feel comfortable to me to try to maintain this closeness. As soon as we split, it was like he started doing his thing all out. I've been doing my thing all out. And I think unfortunately, the closeness that we were trying to protect wasn't allowing us to grow into the people that we honestly were. So how's the business doing today then? What is your definition of how? No, I mean, I told you the revenue is off 70 to 80 % off its top.

1:42:31the you know we had an offer that from somebody else to buy that would have enabled me to retire in just about any place in america maybe not los angeles in the place that i currently am but it is it feels like a really fertile ground honestly it feels like i have the opportunity to come in and do what i did in 2015 which is to find something new when i came in in 2015 there weren't any other charisma coaches. There was no charisma breakdowns. It was a fairly innovative thing on YouTube at the time. And now, which is cool, there's all these other charisma coaches, and they're on podcasts, and they're doing fine, and they have phrases to say in these situations.

1:43:12What the business needs now is like, it's actually in a competitive industry. And I don't like being in a competitive industry. I want to do my own thing. So what it needs, I think, is a year or two of R &D and development of deeper internal work, which is reflective of the stuff that I've been doing for the last decade. And we can chat about if it makes sense. But yeah, it's revenue down, hope, sky high. Why not just do a new channel? I love this too much. I love the name. And so this is - Couldn't you still do the same name or no? Yeah, so this was when I was thinking of, I was so protective, I wanted to buy it.

1:43:50And I was like, oh, I could just sell it. I can just do a channel. I can just take those proceeds, roll it in. I think what I really want to offer to someone, when I was 18, and it sounds like you had a similar thing, like trying to learn to talk to girls, I didn't have a big brother. There was no one that I was able to go to and ask that question. And I uncovered the game and I was like, oh my God. And then as I grew out of it, I couldn't stick with the author, Neil Strauss, and get, he didn't have the next phase of how to be a dad or anything like that. And so what I really want to offer someone is a place where they can drop in as a 16-year-old or 17-year-old and stick with the company through the 30s and 40s through the different life stages.

1:44:27And for that reason, I want the back catalog. I like everything that we talked about today. It's just not what interests me as a 38-year-old guy, right? So what I want to talk about is the inner work and self-esteem and all of those, like those more fundamental pieces. And I think it'd be really cool if those were housed under one company so that someone knew it was like almost a vertically integrated self-improvement company that you could, wherever you enter, there's going to be something for you in five years that is different from where you are today. But you're still clearly making money with the business.

1:45:00And you did mention when we weren't filming that Bitcoin was the best investment you ever made. I'm curious, where are you investing your money today? So I'm actually, so this is, this is maybe we'll get into it here, Grant. Are you going to my house? No, no, absolutely not. Okay. I don't know if you – so I am not – I've realized it's taken me to 38 years old. I don't like doing the practical thing. And we discussed this because you're like, dude, you could take that rental money and you could buy a home instead and you could get value out of it. And I have made decisions that are seemingly from a math perspective, very foolish.

1:45:36One of the things that I think I'm going to do, because it just feels good, is I was I had money that I put into a retirement fund for like you get a 401k, you get the SEP IRA. I want to take it out and take the penalty just because I don't when I I want my investments to be a reflection of the things that I'm betting on and the world that I want to exist in. and having a retirement fund there that is like, I can't touch this till I'm 59 and a half years old. That's not a world where I succeed in business, right? That's a world where I'm like counting on a nest egg. That's more like my parents that were, you know, they had careers and they had fixed incomes and they knew what they were going to be making.

1:46:12So I'm actually pulling a lot of my investments out of the market. I'm going to leave some in the S &P and putting it into hiring, firing, like investing in the business again. How much money do you need in the business though? Well, it's the other thing. It's not even about the business having money. It's just I just don't like it in a retirement fund. It just doesn't feel. But you're going to need money later anyway. It doesn't feel aligned for me. And I know that might sound crazy. But there could be investments that align with you. Sorry, having an IRA, having a fund that I am not allowed to touch.

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1:47:30Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Self-control. It's discipline. Yes, yes, but I can't spend it on myself, right? I can't spend it on the business. I can't spend it on a home. I can't spend it on anything. It has to go into a public equity. Maybe instead you decide what you're going to spend it on first. Sure, sure, yes. Before you pull it out. Here's what I would say. If you pull it out just to throw it in an individual account, and then you're paying a fee to have just less money compounding. I think I'm going to do that. I think you're going to do it anyway.

1:47:59No, no, no. I'm going to talk you out of this. But then you're just having a smaller sum of money that's compounding. Yeah, I'm going to talk you out of this. Okay, go ahead. You're going to have to pay, I believe it's a 10 % penalty. 10%. And then you're also going to have to pay tax in the state of California. So I'm looking at like 55. As ordinary income. So you're going to pay, my guess, probably in what, the 30 something percent bracket. You're going to pay another 10 percent to the state, 43. And then you're going to pay another 10 percent penalty, 53. Yeah. Like, OK, so you're losing half of your money.

1:48:31So if you have two hundred thousand dollars invested, which would, you know, for retirement money, you know, is going to be, I'm guessing, on the higher end. You're going to have one hundred thousand. left out. You would be much better off just keeping it in the account and working harder and making an extra hundred thousand dollars doing anything else other than cashing out. Okay. So I'll give you the other, the flip. And I don't know if you've felt this way, but there's been a number of times in my life where I've done dumb things that don't make sense, but because I put the bet on myself, something internally in me changes.

1:49:01So like when I quit my job, a lot of people would have advised, hey, have a second thing lined up before you leap. I have found that this habit that I have of burning the boats and just being like, I'm doing. I got an idea, dude. Yeah. If I could buy your 401k. Maybe. If I'm able to take that over and give you cash up front. This is perfect. I love this. I don't know if there's a way to do this, but I'm telling you right now, I would buy it. And whenever your pre-tax value is. Don't do deals with this guy. He's going to be like, okay, so you're at 200. You're going to end up with 100. I'll give you 102.

1:49:34too. And you're going to make it complicated for two grand. I look at the compounded value of this over time. Why wouldn't I be able to take that over? I don't know if it's possible. If you want to sell it, then also sell it to me because whatever he's paying, it's going to be pennies on the dollar. I'll have a better offer. I would give you whatever you'd be left over with after tax. I don't even know if such a thing is possible. I don't know if it's possible. I would love to be able to buy people's 401ks if they need cash. I'll buy your 401k. I'll buy your Roth IRA. Give it to me and and maybe we work something out because if you're going to cash out anyway yeah what do you want the government to get the money or you want graham to get the money i think i would do way more with that money when i'm 59 and a half and compounded that like 10x from where it is today then what's the government going to do they're going to blow it they're going to spend it this is this is where we need to get most conversation am i am i incorrect no no well Well, so what's interesting is, so, okay, just stepping back.

1:50:31This is always interesting to me. You clearly are passionate about finances. You know what I mean? It's not just intelligence. It's emotional wisdom to you to behave in certain ways. It's not just, oh, that's a foolish way to approach it. It activates you. I feel similarly, but in a different direction. I get turned on when I make bold, daring decisions where I bet on myself. and it unlocks something inside of me. So like something where you benefit and I'd be like, great. Yeah, but you could do the same thing. All you have to do is open a credit card and max it out. I don't want to do that. I just don't want a retirement account.

1:51:09That's it. I actually don't want a retirement account. Like that feels really good for me to say and do because I only did it. I did it unconsciously. I did it because I was told to by some financial person without an understanding of the implications and I just want out. It doesn't make it automatically bad though. Not bad, just not for me. I don't, I'm not advising anybody to do this, but I don't want it. Okay. But I will say, here's me trying to speak your language. Yeah. Yeah. Hit me, hit me. It's not Graham's language. I see. I've got Graham activated. It's your language. That's one word for it.

1:51:43No, for your language, I would say you are confining yourself to a certain identity, a person that needs to have the boats burned in order to invoke action. And I don't think that's the case. I think that you can relinquish the identity that you want to hold to yourself. I hear that. Just say that you're not that person. You are whoever you want to be whenever you want to be that person. And then prove to yourself that, you know, that you are not the type of person that needs to be held slave to these ideas that you have about yourself. No. So there's a totally hear you. There's, you know, I was a philosophy major.

1:52:20And one of the things that I've always been is like, I have to rebel against a thing. Right. But if you're rebelling against a retirement fund, you are still a slave to the retirement fund, just in a different direction. Like the person that has to do it because everyone else is doing it is a slave to public opinion. But the person that can't do the retirement fund because everyone else is doing it is also a slave to public opinion. So I hear you there. I will not lock myself into it just because I have an old identity. It'll be a practically informed, real-time thing. I'm going to look at all the implications and dig into it.

1:52:53I'm not going to – Just have some sort of reasonable justification aside from burning the boats. Or like I want to make this higher that I'm absolutely betting on and trust it. Because then it'll even feel better and it will motivate you even more than just like, why did I even do that? I totally agree. If you want to burn boats, two things you could do. One is there's something called a hardship withdrawal on the 401k. If you get down so low that you need that money, I believe there are certain conditions that if you meet them, you could waive that 10 % penalty. I don't think I'm going to be there.

1:53:23but yeah okay the other one find a way to put you there yeah the other one that we're getting there the other one though is if you want to like burn the boats you make a bet with me and then you say hey if i don't do xyz by this time i give you 50 000 that's it that's it that's what you're that's what you're cooking up so wait so it's just i'll give you money i like yeah i hope you realize is it all right if i do that to charity instead of you yeah what are you gonna do with it dude literally nothing. I'm going to put it in my 401k. It's insane what this guy does. And he does this. He does. I'm hiring his friends.

1:53:59It's motivation. Look, I'm fine with it. It's motivation. He doesn't want to, see, Jack doesn't want to pay me. Look, I want Graham to have it, Jack. Can you just let me give Graham $50 ,000 for no reason? I really don't want Graham to have it. Like, so badly don't want Graham to have it. Because Jack wants it himself. That's why. No, no, no. Literally give it away. Give it to anybody except Graham and I. Anybody. Anybody. Well, so this is such an interesting thing and maybe we don't need to go deep, but it's so obvious to me that how emotional money is. And I experienced this in the negotiation with my co-founder.

1:54:29Like, you have enough money. You don't need my$50 ,000. And Graham having$50 ,000 doesn't mean shit to you. You know what I mean? Like at a lit and to me, I'm fine. I don't need to take money. It's all these like deeply emotional decisions that I think get dressed up rationally, you know? and that is the part that I find exciting about money is to use it as an emotional trigger rather than as this thing that I'm just trying to have more of. So, but there also is such thing as reality. And at a certain point, you have a girlfriend, you guys are moving in together. You might want to have kids. I don't know if you do.

1:55:03You might want, you might not want and you don't know what you'll want at some point in the future. I want to argue this with you. Yeah. So this all presumes, and I think it's important. Look, analysis, you see, I'm a pretty heady guy. I can do analysis. I've talked to ChachiBT. I'm aware of the 10 % penalty. These are not news to me. This last eight years has been about letting go of living from this. My ego knows what to do. Oh, well, in five years, I'm going to do this. All this like math in the head of I need this, that's living from an analytical ego infused mind. But there is this other way, which you could argue is a more feminine perspective, which is what feels good right now.

1:55:39And I know that is anathema because you guys talk to a lot of people who do that and they're impulsive with their credit cards or Caleb Hammer talks to these people and they like, you know, are making horrible decisions based on momentary feelings. I have found that there, for me, when I align myself with my own deeper intuition, even if it doesn't make sense, even if I take a hit in the short term, the ripple effects in my life are just so much more positive. And instead of optimizing for what my brain thinks is going to get me the most money, maybe it puts me in financial hardship. And maybe as a result of it, my girlfriend's business takes off, which, by the way, that is not because of me, but like she's shocked me with what she's capable of.

1:56:17And if I'd made her a stay-at-home mom, she wouldn't have the successful business that she has right now. So the idea that I'm going to math it all out in my head, I don't really subscribe to anymore. I'm like a much more analytically informed but intuitive decision maker these days. And I'm happier as a result. There are plenty of other ways that you can get rid of that 401k. I'm just saying. I hear you. Plenty of other ways than just giving it to the government. I love that. I love that. I'm going to make sure you don't just poof, it's gone. I'd rather you pay taxes when you're 59 and a half in a lower bracket without the penalty.

1:56:53Maybe it'll help them deal with the next fire, you know, if I give them a little bit more. Listen, what's funny about taxes that people don't realize is that you could always pay more. So if that motivates you, you feel bad about it next year, I'll just, yeah, I got you. You know, believe it or not, they have a fund that you could send money to pay down the national debt. Really? Yes. I don't want to, but I get it. You could, you could literally do that and you get a deduction for it. So if you want to help pay down the national debt, do everyone a favor. You could just send your money into this black hole of spending and it just gone.

1:57:25Yeah. You could fund the next second. I don't know about that. And then I'm just going to go around and be like, Hey, that one was on me. everybody. For all of you, all of you yesterday, 301 p.m. and 15 seconds. That was me. That was your point. Honestly, I might do that if I can buy a second. I'm going to look into it. That would make a great YouTube video. I paid down the national debt for one. I have everyone in America indebted to you for one second. Almost worth it. If you want the math here, here's the math on how much we spend every single second as a country. We spend seven trillion dollars a year to run the United States, the deficit, meaning we spend more than what we take in, the deficit's$2 trillion.

1:58:10But if we take the$7 trillion that we spend every single year overall, divide that by the number of seconds in the year, that comes to roughly$222 ,000 spent every single second. Second? A second to run the United States. I was thinking about it, but I take it back. Maybe I'll buy a tenth of a second. Yeah, so if you want to run the United States, You send them$222 ,000 and your second could be owned by you. You could fund the government for a second. You know, there's people that like sell stars and that kind of stuff or like those. I wonder if this could be like a thing. Name the second that you just paid for.

1:58:51Yeah, yeah. And you could get a, you put your name on it. This is even crazier. Per minute, the government's spending$13.34 million a minute. so just in the time it's taken to say this we've spent 13 million dollars crazy where does it go i don't know i kind of know i could look at the chart but anyways i hear you guys on the retirement thing i hear you on the miss the the poor decision making in the government and the dislike for just forking over all the money i'm i'm not opposed it makes me wonder like what was it 13 million dollars a minute if if every minute they're just like okay 13 million goes towards building, you know, actual affordable housing in some location.

1:59:34$13 million goes to repaving all of the streets in this city. Like, if you were to just, like, isolate it, like, boom. It would be fun as, like, a slot machine where someone's just, like, cha-ching, and it's like, oh, we're gonna fix this road. Cha-ching, oh, this person gets... It would be allocated way better than whatever. I want it to be random. And you know what would be cool is just every minute, just a random person in the United States that has a social security number... Build a bridge somewhere. No, just gets a million bucks in their account. Why not? I think if they gamified it, they could get a lot more engagement.

2:00:03That's for sure. Yeah, but it's like every day you just check your bank account and be like, was I the lucky one who got that million dollars? And it's just, it's a cha-ching. But there's so much money out there. Why not? Why can't they have fun with it? If you really think if they just did that every day, cost$365 million. It's not that much money in the grand scheme of things. That's thinking like a social media marketer. Because that's like, what's Mr. Beast going to do compared to that? like you make a video about it you're gonna you're gonna like whatever you're gonna you're gonna smash youtube when you look at that budget like 365 million dollars a year for the government budget is is a rounding error the pentagon loses more money than that probably on like a weekly basis and if you're talking about giving 365 people a million dollars one new person a day just wakes up and it's in their account that would be awesome because they they balance the budgets in hundreds of billions.

2:00:59And so to take not even like a hundredth of that and just give it back to the people at random. Well, what's interesting, I mean, there's a lot of issues obviously with the federal government, but one of the things that you're making me realize is with a budget that large, to have such poor brand association is really pathetic. Like imagine if you had all that money to spend and you had to sell a movie or get some of your YouTube channel. Like you'd figure out a way to have positive brand association. But I guess because they're also taking all the money. But like, man, to be spending all of that money.

2:01:33A lot of it is Social Security, Medicare, healthcare. I think that works out to be about$2 trillion of that. It's just like one segment. And then there's the military and then there's interest on the national debt. And then just in those categories, you're at$4 trillion a year. And then$3 trillion has to get allocated elsewhere. so yeah this is a conversation for a career very very it's expensive it shouldn't it shouldn't have to be you know I think the private sector would do better I believe just have everyone I believe you believe that we've been going over two hours but uh don't get Graham on the private sector you know but uh I think the government got some problems you know when I was in light yeah no we I think I think most people here agree with you If you don't, leave a comment, guys.

2:02:26We are so curious to know what you think about this subject. We have one last thing for you, Charlie. So we've curated what we call a tier list. And you're going to go through it and rank everything from the perspective of charisma. Oh, I've seen you do these. Yeah. Okay. So it's S tier all the way down to F tier. Okay. And I'll announce it to you guys while I do it. You just kind of hold it. Yeah, do whatever. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. This is cool. I want to get this. Tiermaker.com. Yeah, it's free. Okay, I'm going to do it. So I'm going to, just to be clear, none of this is an endorsement of the person or saying that I believe they did or didn't commit the crimes that they're accused of.

2:03:06This is how effective this person is at influence writ large. Okay. Donald Trump, two-time president. No governmental experience beforehand. He's got to go S tier. Like I said, just undeniable. I don't think we'll ever see anyone talk themselves into the White House the way that he did. Andrew Tate. Okay. Another easy one. Wildly, wildly charismatic. I mean, I could break him down a number of ways, but in terms of high conviction, like, got it. He can talk. He knows what he's doing. That's an S tier. Who is this next one? Let me see. Nick Fuentes. I know of him. I don't know a lot about Nick Fuentes.

2:03:55I mean, you're giving me, and now I'm on here? Shit. It's not only people, it's also like things. Yeah, okay. So I don't know a lot about Nick Fuentes. I know that he's got a huge audience that he's built without the backing of like corporate media and that sort of stuff. Can you give me some context? No, I would just say if you don't know, just skip it. Yeah, just skip it. Okay, I'm going to skip. Elon Musk. So I'm going off charisma here. I think Elon Musk is a great example of someone with insane amounts of power, insane amounts of horsepower, capital, vision. If vision counts as charisma, he definitely – and I'm going to give a caveat here.

2:04:34Like his ability to get people to follow and work for him is very impressive. But I also, from what I understand, he doesn't retain and keep people like he they're interested in the vision and then he burns through him and tosses him. So from a charisma perspective, he's got some of the worst. I'm going to put him in D tier. Gavin Newsom don't know a ton about the guy. These are tough ones. Should I rank him or just like I would guess B or C? Biebs. Biebs I know a little bit about. Uh, young Bieber had a level charisma. Like the guy who got picked up by Usher was just like such a radiant young kid.

2:05:13Mid Bieber, the guy who is now on the Jimmy Fallon show was some of the worst charisma I've ever, I'd ever seen. Like he, he had the thing that it sounds like you have, which is so many people came up to him and, oh my God, that he just became so low energy. Didn't want to engage with anybody. And now I've actually seen him. he's got that low energy, but he is, um, he's way more authentic. And from the stuff that I've seen, he started streaming lately. So I am going to put him with a generous B, but it's probably more like a C or C plus me. Hmm. That S now next. I give myself, um, a stronger B than Bieber.

2:05:55So then you'd put it to the left of him. Okay. I'm going to put it to the left of Biebs. So being attractive. So I wouldn't count this as charisma. I would count this as a separate category because we see all these people that are hyper attractive and, you know, they're duds and that sort of thing. But if I had to like compare the power of being attractive to like where would that like how how does that fit? I think that being attractive is let me see. I'm going to put it in B, but it might even go up to A. It's very important. People respond very differently. But I've also seen people that are super attractive just completely ruin it.

2:06:37So it depends on like relative to average, relative to as bad as it can get. Like these are the sorts of questions that I would be curious about. Crying in front of people. Look, I'm all for expression of emotion. the way this is phrased, this is like I cried on my diary of a CEO podcast. I cry all the time. This is just phrased in such a way that it's not. That's how Graham phrases to me in the drive over here. Crying in front of people. No, but if it was like being vulnerable, okay, I'm going to give it an A or an S. But, you know, just crying in front of people with no description, I'm going to put that as a T.

2:07:16eye contact when shaking hands this is this is a c it's like important but is not gonna you know break the bank fame in terms of influence it's s tier uh there are a few things that get people to respond differently than fame we've all felt it like you see that person and if they're hyper famous just they get basically a pass um i don't love it i didn't make the rules i don't advert i I think there's a lot of issues with fame, but that is what it is. Handshake firmness. I think when done wrong, it goes bad. And I think it can go really, I'm going to give it like, if you have a bad handshake, we're talking like C minus D plus level.

2:08:00If you have a good handshake, you're just a C. So I'm going to put it in C. Humor. That's A plus or S tier, I would say. That's like very, very, very high. and I want to compare it to fame. I mean, I've seen funnier people be more liked than famous people, but fame is incredibly powerful. Money. People don't know. I mean, in terms of getting responses from people in the world, like how am I to understand this? Like you're like walking out. You could be flashy. Flashy. You could be, you know, throwing money around and bottle service, that sort of thing. Okay, I want it, or just have a lot of money.

2:08:39I mean, again, it's like, do I have a million? Do I have 10 million? Do I have a billion? I'm going to put it in lower than just because it's not as visible a lot of the time. And so and again, how much money all these questions matter. But I'm going to put it in B tier. It really matters. Like if you have if you're a billionaire, my brother worked at the club in Las Vegas. Like there are ways to spend money that get people to do insane shit and reactions. And you can you can shape the world with money. But just the word money, like some of it I'm putting in B tier. Mystique, way overrated. F tier.

2:09:13mystique is not worth it all this like there's this idea that you're gonna like go to a a bar and stand on the wall and look really cool and everybody's gonna be like what is what's going on nothing's going on nobody cares name dropping um done lightly actually oh done two three four times you start to hurt yourself so given that it's called name dropping i'm gonna put that in D tier because you're hurting yourself. Never apologizing. Okay, so this is a complicated one. Donald Trump never apologizes. Andrew Tate never apologizes. As much as I hate to say this and don't acknowledge it, there is a way to be that is incredibly effective in terms of getting people to follow you that is never apologizing.

2:09:58But it has a ton of downsides. And I don't know them personally, but I think what goes on internally with Andrew Tate and Donald Trump is not desirable. so i'm gonna really put it low i know that i just said that it's effective but i don't want people to do this and uh and also there's so many ways to do it poorly like there's a lot of like for most people there's more ways to do it poorly so i'm gonna put it in f tier like to do the andrew tate donald trump make it work for you is more likely you're just gonna ruin your marriage and ruin your friendships by never apologizing so that goes f tier posture so this is like am I saying good posture or bad posture?

2:10:36Just how important is it? How important is posture? If someone has great posture, they would be in whatever tier. I'm going to give, I feel like B, no, C. It's just not the most important thing, C. Vocal volume, this is more important. I'm going to put that. That's like high B, low A. And then we've got two guys that I don't really know. Frontez and Newsome at the bottom. There you go. Cool. Thank you, guys. I hope I got these right. Thank you. Really appreciate you coming on. And thank you, by the way, for showing up to the index. That was so fun. Thank you. I was inspired. Really? Have you shared about that on the pod?

2:11:16Briefly. What's funny is that quite a few of the people, not that you met, came from a mention I did on the podcast with Alex from Ozi. at the very end. We only talk about it at the end of the podcast. But I talked about this group with him and we've ended up getting a few people who inquired from that episode. Wow. But yeah, it's a small group of really like high level entrepreneurs, investors, business owners. We're at like 20 people. I don't think we're going to grow it much beyond this point. But every meetup, we try to bring on like some new guest. And so the last one we had Chris Camillo.

2:11:52we had jeremy who we're going to be posting soon so uh you know stay tuned on that you came for our first one yeah which is really cool yeah thank you for the invite i mean i what what inspired me about it was it was so cool for you to have this group of people together and to see that you were an attraction but you weren't the main attraction it was like they getting to connect with themselves and one another was the main attraction and i see so many people who are in this space who it's like you got to be the guru and you got to be on stage for eight hours and do all the thing and it was so cool to watch these people get a ton of value by connecting with one another.

2:12:26And that made me want to do the same thing. Well, they're mostly more successful than I am. And so like, I'm looking at them as like, what would you guys do? I mean, there are people in the group that, you know, manage hundreds of people or have sold companies. And like, here I am just like making YouTube videos. And so it's cool to be able to talk to them and get their opinion outside of YouTube without any, like, there's no ulterior motive. It's just, you know, you get their advice and they have nothing at stake. And so they'll just give you, you know, whatever the truth is. You got to be, this is something that I talk about with Charisma, is you set yourself up as the hub instead of a spoke on a wheel.

2:13:04So you got to be the person that brings everyone together, which means you don't have to be the most impressive person in the room. You're the person who gathers everybody. So I was like, oh gosh, I know this. I have to do this more. Well, we're doing a meetup tonight, if you can go. Yeah, we'll chat. We'll see if we can make it. Cool. Oh, by the way, if you're interested, we do have an application in the description. There is a wait list at this point, but just submit your info and we'll be in touch. And that's it. All right. Thank you, boys. Charlie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

2:13:29Really means a lot. Super, super excited for this dinner, this Spotify meetup. I'm excited to practice these new skills. So hopefully there's an elevator there. Thank you guys for watching. If not your trouble. All right. Till next time. And then how much is your 401k? So I could buy it.

2:13:55Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.