If you enjoy podcasts in general, or you've ever wondered whether you wanted to launch one yourself, then this conversation is for you! Today, we have Jordan Harbinger, a 15+ year veteran in the podcasting space.
Jordan spoke to this idea of fear, whether there's such a thing as good or bad fear, and how do you know? He also spoke to the art of podcasting in general. Could it be the right career for you or just a really good hobby? He also shared how to earn the trust of millionaires and billionaires.
Now, I've decided to take Jordan’s advice and open my door for ad swaps with fellow podcasters. So if you're listening to this right now, and you have a podcast, let's have a conversation about doing an ad swap, just reach out to me on Instagram, send me a DM @melissallarena.
According to Jordan, the best way to grow a podcast in the early days is to do those ad swaps. So I am opening the opportunity to you if you, or a friend who has a podcast, would like to have their show featured on one of my episodes and have my show featured on one of yours. You'll get a good sample of how that would work on my end later on in this conversation where I bring up an amazing podcast that I uncovered the other day.
A lot of us might feel that we're not quite specialists and being generalists mean we're not experts in any single thing. Jordan offers a really interesting perspective called skill stacking. Which brings me to how I can support you this week of March 7th, 2022, I am opening up three free 45-minute discovery Zoom calls with me. I want to help you figure out where you should be focusing your time and attention. What skills make the most sense for your career, whether you work for yourself or for someone else. The best way for you to schedule one is to go to www.melissallarena.com/sessions or send me a DM to learn more @melissallarena
Having coached so many mid-career professionals who didn't know where to get started, they lost a sense of how valuable they were along the corporate way. So you want to be sure that if you are opening the doors to a business, you have a good sense of everything that you bring to the table, as well as the things that you never realized were actually wonderful gifts. The great resignation is great for many, but it can be great for you as well!
Share this episode with anyone who is considering launching or growing their podcasts. This is a conversation you can take to the bank!
Jordan Harbinger’s Biography
Jordan Harbinger is a 15-year veteran in the podcasting space. Once referred to as the Larry King of Podcasting, Jordan is a Wall Street lawyer turned interview talk show host and a communications and social dynamics expert. He has hosted a top 50 iTunes podcast for over 14 years and receives over 11 million downloads per month, making The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the most popular podcasts in the world, where he deconstructs the playbooks of the most successful people on earth and shares their strategies, perspectives, and practical insights with the rest of us.
Highlights
Creativity: Skill stacking is like cross-pollinating different ideas, and essentially, just readying yourself for the opportunity to innovate or add value. Are there some skills you can learn a bit more about and ultimately bring together in some useful way?
Curiosity: Learn how to do forbidden things. Jordan's guests on his podcast are wildly different with completely different viewpoints. Some viewpoints might be different than yours, but also worth learning about.
Courage: Be in tune with yourself enough to decide which is good fear and which is bad. You don't have to run away every time you feel a little bit of fear. And so, that might be an area where you would want to boost your courage. Consider this new way of thinking around fear.
Motivation: Fear is a great motivator. The trick is getting used to which fear you should be following and maybe don't let it control your entire adult life. But there's nothing wrong with being afraid of something and following your gut.
Feedback: It pays to have good friends who aren't just going to tell you what you want to hear and who are going to tell you the truth.
Trust: Trust other people around you, if you're not going to trust yourself. And it's okay to not trust yourself in edge cases. Because if you've made bad decisions in the past, maybe your judgment is not good in these particular scenarios.
Bad judgment: When stakes are really high, often our judgment is bad. People do stupid things because they're doing it based on an emotional reaction where their judgment and experience are not commensurate with the stakes.
Finances: When it comes to finances or other types of investments, look at it as a test and count the money is gone already.
Ideas: When testing new ideas, try not to get emotionally invested in the outcome. Because an idea can work really well or it can work really poorly so there's no sense in getting upset about or ecstatic about what's happening at the moment.
Emotions: Don't add emotional context where there doesn't need to be – whether in relationships or in business. Don’t be tempted to act on that because it's just a waste of time and energy and it causes you to make poor decisions.
Decisions: Never evaluate a decision based on the outcome, but based on the right logical process to come to the conclusion. And if you did, then it doesn't matter what the outcome is. If you base your decision quality on the quality of the outcome, now you're basing it on something you literally cannot control. And you're going to make all kinds of bad decisions.
Reputation: A YouTuber has to have millions of subscribers to get a big-name guest on their YouTube channel. But a podcaster doesn't, they just tend to have a good reputation and solid enough numbers where it's not a waste of that person's time.
Respect: Always be polite. You should never attack someone because you never really know what's going on in someone else's life. You should always assume the best of intentions when something doesn't go your way. And that works especially well for guest booking and podcasts.
Podcasting: You need something that people enjoy and they're going to stick with you. Get coaching for speaking, for voiceover, and for improv, because you can do all that on Zoom now.
Ad swaps: Start trading with other podcasts that are similar in size where you do an ad for their show and they do an ad for your show.
Growth: You're not going to buy new podcast listeners for $1,000 bucks and nor should you really try. The longer you're in the game, the better off you're going to be. If you're still getting better, and you're doing a reasonable amount of promotion, you'll grow. But the growth is going to be slow.
Craft: Marketers love quick results and they're not in it for the craft. They're just marketers. And so, they have to get into the newest trend, as hard and as fast as they can and make money where there's money to be made, and they're off to the next thing immediately. They never really do have a chance to get good at anything other than setting up sales pages and trying to scam their fans.
Freedom: Marketers fall into these traps where the algorithms in these big tech companies tell them how and what to create because that's what they are going to create interest in the audience. Podcasting is totally different. You have way more freedom, because your craft is what's important.
Generalist vs. Specialist: You might look like a generalist, but you're not really because there are all these different things that you know about. And so, you become way more interesting and able to have a conversation.
Skill stacking: There's a part of every skill where the usefulness sort of tops out. Most people make the mistake of not specializing in anything because they think it's too hard. Or they specialize in one or two things way too high a level that they become two-dimensional.
If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes with similar themes:
Links to continue to learn from:
Website: The Jordan Harbinger Show Instagram: @jordanharbinger Twitter: @JordanHarbinger Facebook: @thejordanharbingershowCheck out Christine Zethraus’ podcast: How Coronavirus Saved Life
Want to grab your free copy of the Courage Makerspace (™) Playbook?
Download the Courage Makerspace(™) here www.melissallarena.com/courage
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Figure out what makes you tick Be more accountable and not procrastinate Overcome imposter syndrome Stop caring about what others think Progress despite self-doubt Manage anxiety Ask for helpYou will have a step-by-step playbook to help you finally fulfill your life purpose! Do not miss out on this free opportunity as it will not be available for long.
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Want to continue the conversation?
Find me on Instagram! You can read my daily mini-blogs centered on the same three topics that my podcast features: creativity, courage, and curiosity. I believe that without all three it would be impossible to solve the challenges we were each uniquely made to solve. Wouldn’t you agree? I’m easy to find on Instagram @melissallarena
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