Jordan Harbinger | How Does Your Community Define You? | Ask Altucher! EP04

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24:04What about like in terms of, like for instance, you and I have met at this conference and we've also met via the podcast a couple of times but most of our interaction happens like this over Zoom or Squadcast or whatever. And yet I consider you a friend and a connection and so on. Absolutely. But I've been to your house before. We've hung out at events before. I've met you at least half a dozen times in person for hours at a time. Yeah. So I wonder to some extent, how many people have you overall had on your podcast? I mean, I've had about over 1 ,000 people. Easily. Maybe about close to 1 ,500 people on my podcast.

24:40Yeah. Yeah. And what percentage of them do you think of as actual people you could call up on the phone and say, hey, how's it going? Ooh, it's a small number. And people will go, well, why aren't you drinking your own Kool-Aid then if you're such a good networker? The reason is because, well, there's two things. One, if you do a podcast with the intention of making every guest your friend, you're going to be sorely disappointed. And or your interviews are going to be really bad because sometimes I have to be like, isn't this not real science? and that's not a great way to like make friends with Malcolm Gladwell or something, right?

25:13That's not, that's not good. Do you have Malcolm Gladwell on your podcast? I have. Yeah. And I have to, you know, and look, I like that guy. He's a really, really cool guy, but, and I bring it, I bring up that example because I've seen interviews with other folks, not Malcolm Gladwell necessarily, but people of that sort of caliber. And you can tell the host just really wants to be like their best friend after the interview. So all they do is fanboy the whole time, but it's not that interesting because you can't challenge anything. You don't challenge any thinking. You don't ask any hard questions.

25:42It's not good. And also another thing I noticed in podcasts is that many of the guests are trained friends, meaning they're really good at being your friend for an hour. Yeah. That's so funny. That's so true. Because they're on these podcasts or they're, or they're famous actors, in which case they're even like overwhelmingly trained to be a friend. And so you just can't tell anyway. So you can't get fooled by that in the interview. That's a really, really good point. Yeah. You can't tell. There's a lot of people that I keep in touch with that are from the show. I email former show guests probably every six months, every seven months, whatever, to see how they're doing.

26:18Most of them reply, which I think is good. That's a good sign. So they're in sort of my peripheral network, but I'm not going to call Admiral Stavridis and be like, Hey, uh, let me swing by for some whiskey tonight. What do you think? You know, um, he did invite me to have a drink with him, which I thought was pretty cool, But I wouldn't just be like, Hey, pop them. I'm hopping into Florida or wherever he's located. Like I wouldn't, I would not do that with most guests on the show, but that's okay. You know, having somebody, having somebody on the show and doing a good job with them as an interviewer, that's good enough because now I've had people from Malcolm Gladwell's company and I've said, Hey, can I, I know you heat Malcolm talked to this person.

26:58Would you mind introducing me? and he can do that because he'll go, Jordan Harbinger's not gonna waste your time. He did a good job with Malcolm twice, three times, whatever it's been, and that's good. That's an example where you're so good at the ask and then the connection of a connection. So those two techniques combined together. I will give you a tip for that. So one, a lot of people struggle with this because even if you're really, so where I mentioned at the top of the show was a lot of people are not good at, uh, at giving help to other people because it's out of sight, out of mind. So that's a problem.

27:35But once you get over that, let's say you're really helpful to other people all the time. People then go, Oh, okay. But I need to make an ask. I don't really want to do that because it's awkward or I feel undeserving. Or what if they say, no, I'm going to feel bad about myself. Like there's a million reasons why people will not do it, but that then they're not working the other side of the equation, right? They're helping all these other people, they're never asking for something for themselves. So one of the training wheels that I give people in that situation is I say, okay, don't ask for any help for yourself.

28:06Ask for help for somebody that you like. So that's a great idea. And the reason is because like, okay, James, maybe you'd never ask me for anything or maybe not me. Maybe you'd never ask somebody for anything. But what if your daughter needed something from that person? You'd probably call them in a second and be like, look, my daughter really, really, really wants to work at Microsoft. And I know you have family there or whatever. Because now you're not asking for yourself. So all of the idea that I might reject that or have something to say, all that goes by the wayside because you would do anything for your kid.

28:40Right. It basically dials back the kind of intensity, the interaction. So even if the interaction is not so good, it doesn't necessarily long-term affect your relationship. Exactly. Because, look, it dials the stakes up because it's somebody you love even more than yourself, in this case, your kids, if you're healthy. But it also dials down the idea that the rejection is going to mean anything. Because, like, say you ask me for a seat on my cool yacht party that I'm going to have, right? And I go, no, I don't like your hair, James. You're not a real friend. You'd feel bad. Okay, probably. But if you're like, hey, can my daughter get a letter of recommendation to the University of Michigan Law School?

29:25She's super smart and she's on the wait list and blah, blah, blah. You're not worried. If I say no, you're like, well, okay, that's fine. But because I'm not rejecting you. And I'm not really even rejecting your kid because she didn't ask me. You know, I'm doing it through you so you can shield her from that. So that's, but then also. And you have an easy out too. Yeah. Just say, hey, I don't know her. Yeah. Perhaps if I had worked with her, you know, I have a policy, I have a rule. I only write letters of recommendation to people I've worked with for six months. So the stakes are so much lower.

29:55The rejection is so much lighter and less personal. Sorry, the stakes are so much higher for you, but they're lower for me. And the rejection is so much less personal if I needed to do that. And so it's a good cheat because it's like a training wheel where you can do that. And then when you find out that 90 % of the people you ask for help for your mom's computer or your daughter's letter of recommendation, when all those people say yes, you're like, what if I did ask for something for myself? That might not be so terrible after all. And then you do and you find out people can't wait to help you because they like you and it's fun.

30:32And also the fact that they already responded to an ask makes them more liable. Well, the same person. Yeah, the same person. Sure. Yeah, it makes the same person more likely to think to themselves, oh, I'm the type of person that responds to a Jordan Harbinger ask. So he's asking again for something. Oh yeah, sure. We're doing that. And it's interesting because obviously the reason asking is hard is because it's a little stressful. And there is science behind the fact that if you're stressed about something happening to yourself, one of the ways to relieve that stress is to help others. So you're along the way of doing these, this training wheel style of asking, you're helping other people too.

31:13A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think helping other people is that there's plenty of science that shows that, like you said, it makes you feel better about yourself, but also I think it's one of those happiness hacks that people are always sort of harping on about. Helping other people is one of those things that at no matter what your income level is, it makes you happier, low or high. And also it's, I just read this the other day and I'm sort of like forgetting the major concepts here, but helping other people, one of the things that kind of no matter where you are in the socioeconomic scale makes you feel better and objectively also makes that other person feel better because you're helping them.

31:54Right. And, and so it's like an easy win-win. There's something else that I'm forgetting from that particular science. I think I've even spoke to Andrew Huberman about something like this on, on the podcast where from a neuroscience point of view you know the hunter in the tribe is not hunting for just himself right yeah that makes sense so when he finds the thing that he's hunting for the dopamine levels shoot up because he's satisfying the entire tribe which means his status in the tribe might go up until he feels good that makes sense yeah that actually makes sense. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, that does make sense.

32:31The point is that when you help other people, it makes you feel better. It strengthens your bond with that person and also makes them feel good about their relationship with you. And so what's great about helping other people is it's way more scalable than people think. One of the other issues is, I mentioned this at the top of the show as well, that young people go, I don't have anything that I can do to help someone like, I don't know, Mark Cuban. And they're kind of right, but not really. They're thinking, oh, I don't have any money and I don't have any real connections, so what can I do? The thing is, what they have is time.

33:04So it's not unheard of, especially in today's day and age, for a 24, 25-year-old kid to be pretty damn well-versed in something like AI, right? Because they can absorb all that stuff in their free time and it changes so quickly that if they're on top of the latest thing, it doesn't matter if Mark Cuban got briefed by the CEO of OpenAI six months ago. All his knowledge is now kind of outdated, out the window, too shallow for the latest iteration. So you can really be helpful to somebody like that, but also not just in a specific knowledge area, but in your connections. So yeah, Mark Cuban doesn't need you to get an investment in because he's got the checkbook.

33:44But what if you're the person who curates all of your graduate students in your engineering class and finds out which ones are really smart, well-versed in the latest, I don't know, let's again, AI, why not? And now you're doing a job interview. You're going through your job interviews. So you're that student and you go into your job interview at Google and they say, they won't tell you this, but let's say it's between you and another person. Great. You both interview well, you've got decent grades, fine. And then you tell them, hey, by the way, I'm the president of our artificial intelligence society at the University of Michigan School of Computer Engineering or whatever.

34:26You just became a zillion times more valuable because now if they hire you, you're far more likely to recruit from that student organization, which has the exact people that they need because you're in that organization and you're the founder of that organization, whatever it is. So now you're, you're leg up against the other person who is maybe slightly more technically qualified than you is enormous. Your advantage is enormous because you have other people that they are trying to hire and theoretically you're in a position that is respected by those same people. So your network is a major value add.

35:04So you don't have to have money or connections or connections to famous people or whatever it is. You just have to be somebody that other people trust, even at your same level or below. There are a lot of people that get hired at firms that are presidents or not even they're in a student organization and they hire them. Maybe it's even a fraternity. They hire them because they know that they'll be able to recruit other financial professionals from that same fraternity at that same school. And they want an edge in doing that. They want to recruit more finance dorks from Michigan. So they get the frat boy finance dork from Michigan because he knows all the he knows the next three years of upcoming finance dorks at Michigan.

35:45So that's a recruiting edge. They send them back to the school. They fly them around. He's in, in the interviews, uh, round twos or whatever they're called. You know, it's a massive advantage. And that guy didn't do anything, but drink beer with those kids every week for a year and a half or whatever. That's it.

36:14And it's also fascinating that what you said, young people have time and there's lots of ways they can invest that time. So like when I, and I wasn't even this, this young actually, but I was switching careers and I was getting into the investing space. And this was like in 2002, 2003, starting my hedge fund. And I did have a lot of time on my hands. And so what I did was I did an insane amount of research about the people I would email. So if someone got a PhD 40 years earlier, I would read the PhD and find something that excited me and send an email, not even mentioned in my hedge fund, just saying, hey, read your PhD.

36:56What do you think of this, this, this? Did you look at this, this, this? I have some questions, blah, blah, blah. And people almost always responded to things like that. Like if you show real sincere interest in something, even the more obscure, the better, but in something that they did, I think that's a powerful tool. And you can only do that with time. Yeah. I, you know, you're right. That's the one thing that of course, young people don't necessarily realize because they've never been busy like an adult and had all that responsibility. But I think about that all the time. I think about all the time I spent, I didn't even watch that much TV as a young adult.

37:33I did it when I was a kid, but I think of all the time that I spent learning this, this probably sounds terrible, but going to like classes like anthropology or going to college at all, you know, and I'm like, it is, and I'm not saying nobody should ever go to college. I don't like, I hate when people put words in my mouth like that on social media. I'm not saying that I, I, you know, look, I went to a trade school. I went to law school. Right. And that ended up being fine. I, you know, I, I wouldn't do it again, but, um, I think that that's okay. But what if there's all these people that write, I can't afford to go to college, I would have to have these jobs.

38:06I'm going to be in debt and dah, dah, dah. And I go, what do you want to do? And they're like, well, I would love to. And they fill in the blank. And it's so much, it's so funny how many other way more fun alternative paths you can give someone. One person wanted to join an international organization. They were like, which school should I go to? And how do I afford it? And I said, don't even do that. Go to China for a year, then go to Taiwan for a year and just master Mandarin, like fluent office work level Mandarin, and then go get an internship at this UN organization. They'd probably love to have you at that point.

38:47Then call this NGO, which is way more picky and go, hi, I'm fluent in French, English, Mandarin, and I just got it done with the job at the UN. They're going to hire you over the person that is an English lit major can't find their way out of a paper bag, can't work in another country because they only speak English and has$168 ,000 worth of debt. So they can't take the salary that's being offered anyway. Right. Yeah. It's such a good point. Like in a career setting, when was the last time someone asked you what college you went to? And by career setting, I mean like a conference, a podcast, never any type of business interaction.

39:23Like when was the last, like in a year, when was the last time someone asked you what college you went to? In a year? Zero. I mean, look, the last time it happened. No, I mean, I mean, what year was the last year? Oh, yeah, like 2003 when I was sitting in a job interview at a law firm. Yeah, 2003 is probably the same for me. And they didn't even have to ask because they were on campus giving the interviews, so they knew already. But it was like, yes, you had to have a law degree to be a lawyer who knew, but nobody before that was like, well, did you go to a top 50 undergrad school or did you go to a local community college?

39:57Nobody has ever given so much as half a shit about that. Maybe when they saw the resume they did, but I would bet that back then that wasn't as important. And I think now it's so much less important. I think colleges would love to convince you that it matters life and death, what school you went to. Now I think people are just wanting to hire the person who can respond to their email with the fewest spelling errors in less than six days, right? It's like, I would gladly hire somebody who went to a local community college, but was responsive and professional than a person who graduated from Yale and has their nose firmly planted up whatever ass and can't respond on time and acts like they're doing me a favor whenever they return a phone call.

40:43You know, I, not that that's all Yale people, but like, I would just rather hire the person who can learn on the job. Most colleges are not showing you, and that includes law school. They're not showing you how to do the job anyway. You learn on the job. All you need to do is show me that you can do that before you get hired. That's it. Yeah. That's why it's good advice. Like experience is far more important than class, how many hours you sat in a classroom. And so like, if you're, look, if you're trying to get an engineering job, get an engineering degree if you're trying to get a law job you need a law degree if you're trying to get a job at the united nations uh human rights commission or whatever if that's even a commission on refugees don't don't look for the degree that's going to help you do that necessarily yeah or like you mentioned ai earlier what does it matter now to anybody if if you got a degree in ai a year ago you're so far out of the game you know if you haven't done ai in the past year then it's, it's useless.

41:44Yeah. You're, you're better off being like a data entry person at open AI than you are getting a four year degree in AI theoretical, something, something from MIT, you know, that's it. So, so what, in terms of like catching up, what has been going on? Your podcast doing well? Podcast. Yeah. The podcast is doing pretty well. I actually, since I have two little kids, I spend a lot of time with them. So I'm done at 5 PM pretty much every day. I play with my kids for half hour, hour, every single morning. They're so little. I've, you know, you never hear anybody say, I wish I didn't spend as much time with my kids when they were little as I have.

42:21Like that's never, nobody ever says that. And you do hear a lot like, man, it passed by so fast. Yes. I didn't even see that coming. Yeah. And everyone told me that they're like, they're only little for such a short time. And I was like, that's true. And it's the best time when they're little and all this stuff. So I was like, you know, I will regret it if I spend this time trying to hack the YouTube algorithm or not hack, but crack the YouTube algorithm. That's even if I end up being the next Joe Rogan on YouTube, it wouldn't be worth missing my kids as toddlers because they're not going to care when they're teenagers.

42:56They're not teenagers. Aren't going to give a crap if they're flying in your dad's, their dad's private jet, because you're still their dad and you're a total loser, right? Because they're 13. So like, what's the point and trying to get to that level instead of just hanging out with them while they really want to play with you, you know, and there's, there's nothing better than playing Duplo in the living room and just not worrying about it. So I've been working a lot less and trying to worry a lot less about that stuff. And it's, it's aided by the fact that the advertising market really sucks right now anyways.

43:26So then the more you work now, you almost don't even, the rewards almost aren't even showing up right now, just because the advertising market is so low. So it's one of those times where I'm experimenting more. So it's like, let's do an email newsletter and see if that takes off. If it does cool, if it doesn't, whatever. And I'm just doing fewer shows. I still do two to three episodes a week, but I'm just not stressing myself out trying to put out content. What kind of experiments have you seen working? So I would think an email newsletter would do really good for you. Yeah. I, I, I, that starts like next week.

44:00It's all drafted ready. They're doing crap, like making sure email deliverability is on and you know, all those. So you're not using like sub stack or something like that. I'm using convert kit. So yeah, it's, but they have to make sure that like the domain is validated with D mark and SPF and nobody knows what that means, but it's basically like making sure that people can't spoof your email address. Um, so they're doing that. And then the other thing that I'm doing is I'm letting our YouTube team just mess around because I heard from a lot of big YouTubers that once you get into a rhythm and the algorithm likes you, you basically have to do the same thing over and over and over and over again until the algorithm spits you out and then you got to experiment and find it again.

44:40So what you don't want to do is do something and then the algorithm likes you and then you're like, cool, let's try this other experiment. It's like, no, no, no. Once it works, you have to keep doing it or you, you You fall off the track that you're carving for yourself. So I'm letting my YouTube team just do all kinds of weird stuff, like mashups and different types of experiments, because now's the time. What format seems to shine? Have you found any kind of magic button yet? Yeah, so some of the stuff that's doing really well is taking three different guests that have really radically different opinions on something.

45:18so it'll be like three radically different opinions on the economy it'll be like clips of me with ray dalio clips of me with um uh a general who talks a lot about china clips of this guy peter's spalding yeah um clips with peter zion who's like this uh global geopolitics analyst guy so they'll run those together and then those have done really well or like three different perspectives on the chinese communist party or something like that no it'll it'll I'll have those three guests. So somehow those have been doing really well. So that's been really cool to see because I don't primarily create for YouTube because I don't want the algorithm to tell me what I can create.

45:59And that's what YouTube does, right? But you know, the problem with being a podcaster and not having a big YouTube channel is people, there's no numbers for podcasting that people could look up, but they see, oh, but he's only gotten 71 views on a YouTube video. So it must not be very big. Even though the audience, like if you don't focus on YouTube, you're not going to have an audience. If you focus on podcasting, you're going to have an audience there, but not on YouTube. Right. It's frustrating. It is. That is frustrating. And I keep debating whether to put in the time because it takes time to figure out the YouTube thing.

46:30But like you said, there's other things on the priority list that are higher. There are. And YouTube is dangerous because you could do the exact same thing as another YouTuber and you could even do it better. But the algorithm will go, nah, I like this guy's engagement better or the, you know, whatever it is. And they'll just push it. And you're like, what is happening? So a lot of the people that are helping me with my YouTube channel have huge YouTube channels themselves. And they're like, I don't understand why you only have, I think I have like 130 ,000 subscribers. How do you not have way more?

47:02And I'm like, well, I don't know. And they'll try everything. And they're just, they're banging their head against the wall and they'll go, you know what did really well? Your video where this kooky guy talked about this. And I'm like, but I don't want all of my shows to be with kooky guys that are talking about why, you know, frigging aliens built the pyramids. It's stupid. And so if you get, if you get obsessed with the YouTube algorithm, YouTube will tell you what to create. But the problem is the YouTube audience is not as sophisticated as the podcast audience by any measure. So the YouTube algorithm will tell you, interview more guys that talk about why aliens built the pyramids.

47:38And now your show is all Scientology and aliens and pyramids and, you know, all these stupid things. And if you're interested in that, great. YouTube is your place. If you're not, you're now going to become a circus clown dancing for the algorithm gods. And that's all you're going to do. And you're going to start to hate what you create. Whereas with podcasting, I can interview Kobe Bryant one week, RIP, and it does X well, right? In podcasting, you know, X plus 10%. But then the next week I can interview a scientist nobody's ever heard of that talks about food and nutrition, or I can interview a gold smuggler or a counterfeiter that's not even giving out his name.

48:21And it'll get like 95 % of the traffic that the Kobe Bryant interview got because it's podcasting and that's how it works. Yeah, no, that's the great thing about podcasting is that we did a lot of experimentation with, you know, what kind of guests do well just to see. And it just doesn't matter. Like you just have to be, you just have to be yourself and have fun with it. And like here, like we're just chatting like friends and, and it doesn't even, you know, whether you're again, Richard Branson or anybody, it's just, it's the same number of views. Exactly. It has to be consistent so that your audience sticks around, but you're not, most YouTube, as you probably know, YouTube, when you look at your views, it's like subscriber views, 2%, non-subscriber views, 97.8%, and then unknown is the rest or whatever.

49:18So you're like, wait a minute, if 98 % of my views are coming from people who are not subscribed to the channel, that means the algorithm is feeding those people that interview. So it's not the same steady audience of people that know and love what you're creating every time. It's 97 % different. And that's like the TikTok algorithm. I mean, the TikTok algorithm, they don't even care about your subscribers. They specifically are going to share videos that are going to do well with everyone. Like they, I don't even know if they do anything with your subscribers. Yeah. I think the following thing is almost like a, it's like an award you give somebody who made a video you like is like, now you're a follower, but it's not necessarily going to show you more of that.

49:58Or maybe it will when you run out of other crap to watch on TikTok, but with podcasting, it's all that matters. So I, and people will go, oh, that doesn't make sense. Or you don't understand YouTube or you're salty about YouTube or whatever it is. And I've heard that before. And I, I understand why people think that, but here's the thing. The market has spoken. An advertiser on YouTube is paying the creator something like$2 to$3 CPM. An advertiser on a podcast is paying a creator something like$35 CPM, maybe$25. So that just shows you that a YouTube view is about 10 % the value of a podcast listen.

50:38Why is that? And that counts people who download the podcast and never listen to it. Whereas YouTube, a play is a play. That person was there for some point in time looking at that video while it was running. So think about that. If you just took the plays of a podcast, now your CPM is probably like$175. Yeah. And whereas on YouTube, it's like$2 and 75 cents. So that shows you how much more engaged somebody who listens to a podcaster is with advertising. And the part of the reason for that, I'm theorizing here, but part of the reason for that is that person has heard you and I talk if they're, let's say they listen to your show.

51:19Let's say they've been a listener for a year and a half, not that long of a time for a podcast listener. They've heard you for hundreds of hours, talk to different people. They know you better than many slash most of your friends actually do. It's true. Whereas on YouTube, maybe there was a guy who recognized me at a restaurant the other day. And he's like, you look familiar. Are we neighbors? And I was like, yeah, maybe. I mean, where do you live? Uh, around here, Saratoga, San Jose. I was like, oh yeah, me too. Probably I just saw each other somewhere. And he goes, you were interviewing Peter Zion the other day.

51:48And I go, yeah. And he goes, I saw that on YouTube. And I go, oh, what other episodes do you like? And he goes, oh, no, I just, it just like played after something else I was watching. And that's why I recognize you. That guy will never come back to the, well, maybe you will now, but he wasn't gonna subscribe. He wasn't gonna go download my audio podcast. It just showed up when he was, you know, falling asleep in his Xbox chair. A view on YouTube, they count something as a view if you listen for three seconds. so if you're watching a video for three seconds that counts as a view so another reason why cpms are so low is it even that long is it even three whole seconds or is it just like click and then i don't even know i don't know because you know now youtube videos start playing if you just have your mouse over it so i don't know maybe that counts as a view and you know again i don't know what kind of loyalty that engenders to the youtuber i don't know it's a con you know the media landscape is always hard to figure out as it and as it also becomes more important to figure out because everybody now is basically has some context in social media where they have, you're identified now by your followers and your social media accounts and so on.

52:55I'm not saying everybody, and I'm not saying this is a technique for success, but it's just like a natural thing that's happening. Like everybody became a writer as soon as you could write on Medium and LinkedIn and wherever. So blogger, you know, yeah. So, so you really have to kind of come to grips with what your relationship is with social media at some point. And particularly as a podcaster, because our jobs is to basically be out there and have people listen. It's always an interesting thing. Everybody has a different approach to it. Yeah. The other problem with YouTube that I found, because I talked to a lot of YouTubers and I have a lot of big YouTuber friends who are, you know, have like a million plus subs or 6 million subs.

53:33You can't really take time off because if you do, the algorithm punishes you, not at the levels where you and I are probably on YouTube, but if you're at the top top and you're like cranking out content two or three times a week, you can't just go back to your mom's house for Thanksgiving and Christmas and then come back in January because the algorithm does something where you're no longer as relevant as before and you have to work really hard to get back into it and it's like you might never get back on that wave that you were surfing. so I know people in their 20s that are YouTubers that haven't seen their mom in like seven years for a holiday unless she flies out to see them because they can't get away from their team in their studio because they have to like make jello prank videos you know it's interesting I keep I keep thinking I gotta attack this YouTube thing but I just don't have the energy for it at all no I know because it takes a lot of work too it's not just making videos you gotta have real production value and oh yeah and you know yeah it's different than I mean even a podcast has to have real production value, but not to the same extent YouTube has.

54:37Yeah, it's not even close. It's funny, I was just thinking about this earlier today because I'm interviewing this guy who was on this massive YouTube channel and he's like, I've got 4 ,000 Instagram followers in the last hour. And I was like, you're not going to get that when you come on my show. And he's like, oh, I don't care. But I looked at the channel and it's like, it's all filmed in a studio. They fly in every guest. They put them up in a hotel. They make a trailer for the episode that probably costs a few thousand dollars. The production quality is off the charts. every time they do a video, they change the header banner of the YouTube channel to show the new video.

55:08They change the featured video to be that they have an ad campaign that runs on it. They have like two Instagram channels that show clips of all of these. And they post like eight times a day. And then there's also a podcast version of it. And I'm like, this is crazy amounts of work. There's probably like 15 people working full time on this YouTube channel. And then I was like, okay, but this guy's probably making like 10 million bucks a year. Right. Well, I look at the advertisers and I go, uh, okay, these are advertisers that are not high quality advertisers. I got to be really careful because I don't want to out anybody or bad mouth any companies, but let's just say one of them was like a tobacco chewing tobacco company.

55:50And I was like, this is not an advertiser you have on your channel when you have a lot of other options for advertisers to have on your channel. The other one was like a vape company. Then there was another one that It was like a supplement company that I know is everywhere. And, but I thought like, oh, I expected there to be a better help ad and an insurance company ad and a mobile company ad, not low end sort of kind of icky ish advertisers. And you pick those when you can't get other advertisers. And I thought, who doesn't want to advertise when this thing's going to get like 1.5 million plays.

56:30and so it made me think like is this guy might be making less money than a good podcast who sits around doing it in their underwear releases the audio make sure that the volume levels are fine and there's not like a dog barking in the background and that's it yeah no it's interesting because uh and and it's even worse in tiktok where it's very hard to monitor like all these people might have give 100 million views on tiktok and make zero dollars so yeah yeah but it's interesting thing about i mean i've tried tick tock i've tried instagram and i've i have like bursts of success on each platform i try but it's just so much work to really expend effort and i do three podcasts a week i want to make these as quality as possible so that right there is is the job yeah i i actually decided early not to do tick tock because well one if there's such thing as shadow ban where they block certain content without telling you then i'm definitely going to be on that because I talk about China and the communist party all the time and it's owned by a Chinese company.

57:28So I'm like, there's no way I'm getting traction on Tik TOK. And even if I was, I could get, you know, I, all my work could go away and with a click of a mouse from whoever's over there at bite dance in Shanghai or Beijing. Right. So no thanks. The other thing is I met people who had like 40 million followers on Tik TOK. And I'm like, why are they doing a Patreon? And I'm like, aren't you making enough off Tik TOK? They're making$0 off Tik TOK. And I thought, Holy crap, you got to get these followers from TikTok to go subscribe to something else. So they would come out with a podcast and it would just epically fail.

58:01They'd get like 8 ,000 plays. I'm thinking, how do you go from 40 million followers to 8 ,000? Yeah. So there's, there's really no loyalty in the audience. And it's funny though, because one time someone said to me, Hey, can you pay like this one TikToker with 20 million views? I'm like her manager. And if you pay me a certain amount of money, she'll give you a shout out and tell everybody to go to your TikTok. And so I said, okay, well, how much does it cost? And he said, I think it was$2 ,500. And this is a person that had literally 20 million followers on TikTok and a million views on each video.

58:40And so I said, I don't know if it's going to work. Can we do it once where I see what the result is and then I'm happy to do it 10 more times. And so this girl did it once. And I don't even remember who she was, like some girl who had a TikTok with 40 million followers or 20 million followers. And all I got was I got a ton of messages from people saying, like all misspellings and lowercase letters, like, did you take over so-and-so's account? Like, did you hack so-and-so's account? Like, give her back her account. Like people were like obsessed with the fact that I stole this person's account somehow and put like some deep fake video of her recommending my, you know, TikTok channel.

59:20So it was just a weird, different type of audience. But Jordan, thanks so much for your time and helping us out with our Ask Altucher sub-series. It's always great to update with you and catch up. And one of these days, I really hope we get together in person again. Yes. Thank you very much, man. Good chatting with you. And I'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Jordan.