PodsGPT.io - Podcasts Summaries and Transcriptions

The team Never Quit podcast is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Partner up with Navy Federal to pay down credit card debt. Learn more at NavyFederal.org. I was just looking out the window and I was like, this is a little scary. What am I? What's happening? I remember in my head, am I getting kidnapped right now? I remember thinking, no, that can't be it. Then I was like, well, why can't that be it? I thought, well, I've never been kidnapped before. I was like, that's not really a good reason why I'm not getting kidnapped now though, is it? All right, everybody. Welcome back to the TNGU podcast. I'm your host, Marcus LaTrell. Every week it's my job to fire you up, to ignite the legend inside of you, and to push you to your greatness. Join me every week as I take you into my freaking room with some of the most hard-charging people on the planet. They're going to show you how to embrace the suck of life, teach you the values of working your ass off, and charge through whatever life throws at you. This is the Team Never Quit podcast. Don't fuckle up, buttercup. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Team Never Quit podcast. It's a beautiful day to be back in this newly refreshed studio. Let us know what you think in the comments below. Today we have a very inspirational guest, someone that's motivated and driven to helping other people succeed, also known as the godfather of podcasting, Jordan Harbinger. But before he earned that prestigious title, Jordan started as a Wall Street lawyer, turned podcast interviewer with an approachable style and a knack for securing high-profile guests. His podcast, The Jordan Harbinger Show, was selected as part of Apple's Best of 2018 podcast. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, he deconstructs the playbooks of the most successful people on Earth and shares their strategies, perspectives, and practical insights with the rest of us. Welcome to the show, Jordan. Thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate that. Did you write that yourself? We all constructed it a little bit together. I'll take that as a yes. Good. I like it. Although 2018 sounds like a long time ago now, I should probably update that. I don't really like to try to win some other award that's more recent. It's still a big award. It doesn't matter. It's like those people who are like, he won the 1976 track in Phoenix. Well, that's a deal when you go back to the 1900s, when you shift gears and go back into the 19, most people just turned that off. They can't even fathom the fact of what we truly had to go through buffering, slow down lows. This kind of conversation was literally impossible with the video and the audio at the same time. Or you had a video window that was like that big, the person looked like they were filmed on a potato. The audio didn't match the video yet. It's the whole thing. Now we're just making ourselves sound even more old. But someone changed the subject. Like we were talking earlier, we just wanted to have you on. We did have you on in 2017 when we first kicked off Team Ever Quit podcast. Back then, we had different co-hosts, different producers. So with our new show and you've got a new show since then, we wanted to have you back on and just let our new listeners hear your story. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. Yes, let's start over from the beginning. Like where you came from again. Yeah, if you can just start that, give us. Sure. Let's not do interview style so much. How you came up as a kid too, because that's important. I run into the younger kids and that's who we're trying to give this to. I say, hey man, I know what you're looking at now, what you can see now. And it is. And it took a lot to get to where you're at with all that. But yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, nothing but time to do it. That's a good point. Yeah, when I was a kid, I wasn't exactly inspirational to anyone. I mean, like in any way, I actually was really bored in school. And when you're bored in school as a kid in the 80s and 90s, they don't go, oh, he's smart. So that must be the problem. They just think like, oh, your kids screw up and he's not doing well. And my parents are like, that's weird because he is smart. Why isn't he doing well? And the truth is, I really found and I still kind of agree with this assessment. A lot of what I was learning in school was not that useful. And when I got a computer, I remember going online and talking with these guys that were like in Israel and Germany. And I thought like, there's this whole world out there that I didn't even know existed. And there's all these smart people doing interesting things. And we don't learn about any of it in school. We're just kept in this little tiny bubble. And I got obsessed with the internet and like these online chat rooms. And I started tinkering around with the phone system and hacking computer stuff and just really working the edges of the system. And I got caught. I should say I allowed myself in many ways to get caught because I was a dumb kid. But I got caught copying. We called it cloning cell phone. So you take a cell phone and you would program somebody else's information in it. And you would be able to make calls, receive calls. And then then you're basically, when you're able to receive calls. And that's interesting. Then you start to listen in on phone calls, which is actually wiretapping, which is a felony. So hopefully the statute of limitations has passed on that. What year did you graduate? What year did you graduate high school just for time? 1998, was it 98 or 99? It was one of those two. I think it was technically 1999, but I stopped going in 1998. Okay, so we're prodigies out of the 80s and 90s, bro. It's just a thing with us. I mean, it just we're different. I graduated high school in 97. And I can tell you the thought of cloning someone's cell phone never crossed my mind. Right. I didn't even they were new. I didn't even have a cell phone when I was in high school. No, nobody did. Yeah, I didn't have even the teachers didn't have cell phones. They were reserved for like Wall Street site, social paths and business guys and stuff. Yeah, the brick, right? Remember that thing? Yeah, I seem to come off the line. Yeah, no one that I knew had a cell phone when I was in high school. So the thought of you doing that at such an early age just blows my mind. Yeah, it was it was cool. Because I learned about it on these online chat rooms that were it was called internet relay chat. So it wasn't like AOL chat room. This is like a chat room that runs on servers that are run at universities and usually people who are in them or in university, IT departments or something. And I was just some kid at home on his crappy modem. And so I started learn I got really interested in the wiretapping stuff because to clone cell phones, you needed money, right? You needed to like go get a cable. And that was 40 bucks and you needed to solder and make something. So you needed to buy a soldering. It was hard and it was difficult to do. And for me, I was just I didn't have any money. I was a kid. So listening to wiretapping and sorry, listening to phone conversations and wiretapping got really interesting. And I did that with cell phones. I did that with the line pairs and the green boxes on the side of the road. And I just got really interested in that kind of thing. And listening to adults talk when they don't know kids are around. It's a completely different experience. And it really got me thinking about human emotion, human psychology in ways that young kids don't usually get to do. Because you know, when you talk when you're 13 or 14 and you're around adults, they feed you, they yell at you, they give you homework, they drive you places, whatever, you have like teachers and parents and other people's parents. And that's all the exposure you really have to adults. But when you're listening to somebody who's talking about their divorce with their brother, mother, soon to be ex, whatever ex wife, and you get this unvarnished access, slash look or listen into somebody's life and their emotions that you don't get like these, this stuff is not shared with kids. And if if kids have exposure to adults like that when they're young, usually it's because they live in a really dysfunctional household. And adults around them have no ability to raise kids. So those kids usually turn out pretty poorly. So I had this like pretty decent family home life where boundaries were normal and I had like a safe space. But I also had this look into other people's lives that they didn't really know that I had. It was really interesting. So like, you know, normally if kids are around all kinds of turmoil like that, those people that turmoil has access to the kid. But when you're, when you're essentially just listening to somebody eavesdropping on somebody else's conversation in life, I had one way access. So if I got tired or emotionally drained or weirded out, I could just hang up, right? And they didn't have access to me. It's not like people were fighting in my house at one o'clock in the morning. I was just listening to their conversation at four o'clock in the afternoon after school. Did you listen to your parents? I couldn't really because they didn't talk on the phone to each other, right? So I was mostly listening to other people's landline based conversations. And so I heard neighbors talking to each other, people making business phone calls from their home office, which was actually pretty rare back then in the late 90s or mid 90s. But the one I remember the most or the ones that I remember the most were people who were arguing, right? So they'd moved out of their wife's house, their husband's house, whatever, and they were arguing on a phone with that person. And then they would call their mom and they would vent to that person or wind to that person. They call their sister and they call their friend. So I heard, I'd hear like the guy who's getting divorced talking to his ex-wife and he's like his total dick. And then I taught, he calls his mom and he's this little man child. Then he calls his sister and he's a different version of that little man child. Then he calls his friends and he's like, yeah, I told her, you know, I mean, you better do this my way or the highway. And I'm like, that's not what happened at all. I heard the whole thing. And I remember thinking if this guy was more like he was with his mom with his wife, he wouldn't even be in this situation, right? Because he would have this vulnerable side that he would have shown her instead of being like a total prick. And it's funny to have that insight at age 13, 14, because you really do see adults as three-dimensional human beings that have feelings, problems, make bad decisions, just like you do. Whereas normally children don't have that, they don't have access to adults like that. They just see adults in their professional capacity or in their capacity as parents, where they don't make mistakes or they don't admit mistakes and they don't allow you to talk to them about anything real back then. So this is a really interesting experience for me. And it sort of was formative in my me becoming interested in psychology, persuasion, influence and other things like that that I later based the Jordan Harbinger show, the podcast on. Wow. That is so interesting. So going through all that, what is that? What would you pull from that? We grow we grow into children, we grow into being children. Yeah, I mean, I think it was primarily like, look, everyone has the same, and this sounds maybe a little bit dumb now, but when you're a kid, it's a huge leg up. Adults have the same flaws as kids, whether they have the same emotions as kids, they have different problems, but they're largely similar. They have the same decision-making issues as kids, right? When you realize adults are like you, you go, oh, okay. So if I think this way, then someone else statistically also probably think that way. And that's a huge leg up. If you're trying to get someone to do something or you want to talk to them in a way that's going to persuade them, I think even adults make this mistake. I'm sure you get emails all the time like, here's what I want from you. And you're like, okay, I don't care. Next, delete, whatever. But if you can frame things in a way that's how somebody else might respond favorably to it, you get really good at things like sales, persuasion, which are essentially the same thing, influence. But to get good at that at age 14 is a massive advantage compared to somebody who's trying to learn it 10 years later. And so getting good at that at age at a young age really allowed me to gain access to a lot of people, ideas, and other things that I didn't have access to at that point in my life. And so I, yeah, I mean, are all adults just sort of children that are winging it kind of in a lot of ways? Yeah. But to really be able to leverage some your own emotional capacity or your own capacity to identify or relate or put yourself in someone else's shoes, it's like advanced theory of mind, you know, like you guys have kids, right? So when toddlers finally figure out that they're not the center of the universe and they think, Oh, this other person thinks something different than me. That's called theory of mind in part, right? It's called theory of mind. So a toddler, when they're like three, they start to realize, Oh, this person is tricking me or this person wants this, but I want that. Hmm. How do I get that? And that's why they try to do really transparent manipulative stuff. Like they want a popsicle for dinner and they say, mommy, do you want a popsicle? And then they say, you know, you go, no thanks. And they say, Oh, okay. Do you want a popsicle now? And they're trying to get you to give them a popsicle, but they just don't know how to do it because they've limited linguistic capability. To do that at age 14, when you have linguistic capability, you have theory of mind, you develop it a lot faster when you start getting access to other people and they're not lying to you, their defenses aren't up because they don't know you're listening. So that was a really, really big advantage. Oh, or are you recognized that someone doesn't have it? Yeah. At a young age, bro, when you're armed up with something that somebody doesn't, doesn't have at the same age, you can immediately see that happened to me with death. So I mean, most people have to wait till you're way down the road in age before you start seeing as much death as I have. It changes you. Right. So I didn't see that at a young, well, that's why I act the way I do and say certain things the way I would never say that unless I was in my grandfather phase, had like, drug me forward in time. And that's the same way as if you're reversed in time. Like if you're at a young age, having to become a man. Yeah. How did that play into your interaction with kids your age? Because you were basically kind of had to sneak peek at the exactly how it worked out because everybody had one of my crew. I was like, hey, man, when it came time for us, if we got into a situation where his skill set applied, boom, your butt steps forward and does it, man. Because you got not only that, he's smooth at his delivery. Those guys who usually have that because they've learned it in violence or if they've learned that kind of to get, I don't want to say you learn ever, ever learn how to manipulate chaos or anything, but you do know I know it's like a wave. You got to learn how to surf it, right? You got to learn how to move with it. And that comes in handy. I would imagine that's that's probably like the physical equivalent of it, right? If you're if you're a soldier and you really know how you start to feel a situation out or whatever, like the guys like me who walk into a room and with somebody who's like a trained combatant, they might go, this person is dangerous. Look at this person. And they can't maybe they don't even say like, Oh, he's moving in this random way or is it a look at his eye contact. They just feel something is off. I would miss that necessarily, but I might walk into a room and say like, Oh, look at this person. Okay, this person, this person's the boss of this situation, but they're trying to pull back and act reserved and they're trying to put this other person forward as the as the decision maker, but it's not really true because of their body language or something like that. So I learned that stuff early on. And it kind of got me in trouble, but it also had obviously huge advantages because I could convince people to do things that I probably shouldn't have convinced them to do. But on the other hand, I also was able to get in and out of trouble using that exact same skill set. And that was that was pretty useful. I think and also having a couple of close calls early on also scared me straight like, okay, this is a skill set, but it can also get you in deep trouble, you know, getting people to give you their credit card number or like trying to order something that with information that's false or whatever, take it to break a system that like a payment system, that's not a good idea. You get away with it once or twice, so you get caught and then they're like, Oh, you're a child, don't do that again. But then you, you know, then you hear a story of an adult who did it and you're like, Oh, they're in prison now. Maybe I don't need to do that anymore. This is like an actual illegal situation. So you try to, you have to have the emotional maturity and develop the emotional maturity to be able to channel this in the right way. I assume it's also kind of like violence. You know, if you know how to fight really well or shoot really well, you also have to be well trained enough and disciplined enough to not just use that tool every single time you want to get something, right? And we see guys who do this wrong, the MMA fighter who goes and knocks somebody out at a bar and gets arrested for it because the guy was running his mouth and it's like, yeah, you should have known not to murder somebody by beating them mercilessly when they're not trained and they had three drinks and they said something mildly offensive. Like those guys don't last long. And so I kind of had that experience, the non physical version of that experience early on in my life, which I think is rare. Do you know how much money you're actually spending on your subscriptions? Most Americans think they only spend around $80 a month on subscriptions when it's actually closer to $200. And that's a lot of money. If you don't know exactly how much you're spending every month, you need rocket money. Formally known as true bill, rocket money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills all in one place. I didn't realize how all the subscriptions I was still paying for until I logged in and it automatically uploaded each one I had into one page. From there, I was able to cancel almost five monthly subscriptions that I didn't even realize I was still paying for. That is so easy. I highly recommend you at least check it out. You could end up with more money in your pocket each month. Stop throwing away your money, cancel unwanted subscriptions, and manage your expenses the easy way. By going to rocketmoney.com slash tnq. That's rocketmoney.com slash tnq. Go to rocketmoney.com slash tnq. You know, it abuses that power, the worst are the people who don't have non-physical power. They abuse it the worst. As soon as they get into a position of power and feel what that feels like, somebody with physical power knows exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, like a position. If you give somebody a position with authority that doesn't deserve it because they don't possess the physical power. It takes to wield that kind of mouth. That is the worst kind of abuse. You know how you can tell? You're seeing anybody who's drunk. Like they say the same stuff over and over again, but they start to get loud with it. Right? You're like politicians who get power drunk. They'll say the same lines over and over and over again if you argue with them to get louder and louder and louder. That's power drunk. There's different kinds. You can see that. And the people, I mean, that one swings both ways. That's why you have to have the ability to talk things out before we get, because there are violent people down here. There are physical people down here, the body, the mind, body and spirits. That's what we got down here, mind, body and spirits. Right? Some people physical their way through everything. Some people mental their way through everything and some people will spiritually try to get their way through all of this. They just will. You combine all three of them together. You got something deadly. Yeah. Most people don't train all three, but knowing what your mind does, how your mind works, bro, you are, you're a freaking mental. Yeah. I mean, you got it. Sure. Right? I appreciate that. You're welcome. I appreciate that. I will say I don't, I haven't choked many people out. Although, your question earlier, Melanie, maybe there is one or two times that's happened. Bro, you got to understand like a lot of times before you even get to that. Yeah. Those people who can talk to you and like, it shouldn't even get to that. So did you ever get caught? I did get caught doing numerous crappy things as a teenager. So one of the things that I got caught in these, man. Okay. Just leave it at that. Yeah. That's right. It's the 90s. Yeah. I'm well outside the statute of limitations. One of the things that I did that I got caught for was in order to program the cell phone, you had to get the information and the way you got the information back then was you would go to a cell phone store, which is, you know, they didn't have too many. There would be like a few in each metro area because it was such a specialized thing. You'd go and you just go in the dumpster at night and you would take out all of the duplicate receipts, which were on these carbon printer kind of things and it would have the phone number and the serial number printed on it. And you just needed that and you could program that into the phone. And I got caught with a stack of the, It seems like a lot of work, bro. It seems like a hell of a lot of work. It is a lot of work. But I mean, when you're a kid, you don't even care. It's just like fun to bike somewhere at night and go look for it. But yeah, like you, there's a couple coffee cups in there that could have lived without. But most of it was just good stuff and you could sell that stuff. I only got caught by my parents, luckily for that, because they were like, what is this? We know this is like something not good because why would you have this garbage? This is weird. It looks sketchy. These are not yours. And then another thing that I got caught for, which was not just my parents, was I figured out how the credit card payment systems worked at this pizza chain that was nearby that everybody ordered from. And I figured out that you could use a number that would work in their little machine. And then the machine didn't actually reconcile or call home base every time it ran the credit card. It would just check to see if it was a valid looking credit card number. And then on Friday night or whatever, it would run overnight and call Visa or whatever it was and run every number through there. And then it would go, oh, this number's real. This number doesn't have a high enough balance. This one kicks back out. This one went through whatever it is. And I was like, oh, so if I order this on Monday or Sunday night for delivery on Monday, they won't even try to reconcile this number until Friday. And so I just found how the numbers were generated so that the machine would say, yeah, this looks like a valid number at 16 digits long. The first four are like a real bank or real kind of card or real whatever it matches, what this person says. The expiration date is valid. But the rest of the numbers were just like random. And so I ordered a ton of pizza for the entire school and it got delivered. And bro, that's some straight up John Connor terminator stuff. Yeah, man. Good job. It kind of was like a little bit like that, except less computers. Is that kind of like catch me if you can? It was like that. Yeah, yeah, where the check goes that way. Yeah, it was like the electronic version of that because now when you run a credit card, that machine immediately is already connected on the internet to Visa or MasterCard or whoever's reconciling it immediately says, Hey, you're over your limit. You're under this. It doesn't work. The numbers invalid. It's expired. But back then they only checked weekly. And the machine would just go, is it past this date? No. Does this number, like it's called a checksum? Does a checksum work? Yes. That's all that machine did until Friday night. So I was like, Oh, I just need to pass those two really low bar tests. And so the cops were like, yeah, we got nothing on this kid because I mean, who says he ordered the pizza, a bunch of his friends. So what, you know, that's not proof. And then the FBI was like, Hey, the rumor is you did this, but we're not even who cares about the pizza. That was 200 bucks. The problem is, we found a person who has this credit card number and they're in Florida. And this is a felony. And I was like, Oh, so I just made the number up and I'm confess. And they were like, okay, good community service. 2020 hindsight, I think they were just doing the cop thing. I think probably if I've been like, I don't know what you're talking about, I probably wouldn't have, I would have gotten away with it. But I'm also, I got your podcast is I have one the moment of truth. You got to keep that. Yeah, you got to keep your steel, that your blue steel. I'm aware that I got caught one, they were going to blame my friend. It was like the bad kid who always did bad stuff and he was going to get expelled because this was the final straw. Not good. The other thing is that I would have done something worse if I'd gotten away with this. And that I don't know what it would have been, but yeah, I, you know, then you're looking at like, maybe I get expelled and maybe I go to a juvenile detention facility or something, you know, or maybe I do so much bad stuff and I never get caught until I'm 20 and then I'm an adult and then I go to prison. You know, so I'm kind of glad that I got busted. Yeah, what does that say for solid friends? Like normally the first kid you bust is probably the good friend sticking up for the other one. That happens a lot when we were growing up too. I mean, because you know, your boy, he's got it hard enough as it is. So you kind of just jump in there and take the ass with him for, we did that all the time. That's kind of what it was like my friend, I remember my friend going, his dad came in and his parents were divorced and you never saw his dad. And I was like, oh shit. Like dad is here. I remember that family dude. Like you had a terrifying dad. Yeah, I still did. Yeah. So I think dad only showed up when the mom was like, oh yeah, he needs his ass. But that's right. That's it. And the only time we ever saw our fathers, they were whiskey, drinking, bar fighting sailors. You never knew we're in the hell they were at, let's mom got pissed. Oh my God. Yeah, his parents were divorced and his dad, his mom was like this really mean woman. So I was like, oh, if dad's here, this is really bad. And I remember he looked at me and he's normally like calm, cool, collected kind of a punk. And he goes, dude, I cannot, cannot get in trouble. I can't handle this. He's like sitting at hell married. There's a look that got that that's the brilliant that there's like, and as you're growing up as a man, boy into it, you know, there's that that moment when that face shows up, when you know your partner's like, like we switched level kind of things, right? Yeah, it was like that. It was like all stupid stuff that you're arguing about goes away. It's like, hey, for real. Oh my gosh. So after that, did you after high school and your, your hacking abilities, did you take that into college? So I did a little bit, but I was really wary at that point because I realized it's sort of like with great power comes great responsibility. You know, so I would go and maybe prank my friends, like I would open their CD ROM drives or I would like turn on their, if they had a webcam back then, I would turn on their camera and I'd be like, hey, quit mastermating or whatever. I don't think I don't know if I can say that on your show, but I would do that sort of stuff in college and mess with them. And I would like monitor. This is so nerdy and sounds really sketchy now that I say it out loud. But if there was a girl that I liked, I would like try and figure out what she liked by basically hacking into her computer, which now is like super creepy. I would never do this college. That's a cool TikTok and Instagram dude. I mean, you're ahead of your time. Now it's just a status game, but back then I'd be like, okay, what is Katie like? Oh, she, she likes this and she says her friends never remember her birthday and blah, blah, like I'm going to be all romantic and be like, hey, happy birthday. And she'll be like, how did you know? Like I did a lot of that stuff, but I was really afraid to get kicked out of college because I remember learning at college that we had super fast, really awesome internet. And I can't remember if other, oh, it was the Napster days. You remember Napster where you could download any MP three five? Yeah. Yeah. Where's he at now? Do you know Napster guy? Yeah. What was his name? Sean Parker. He invested in Facebook. He's a billionaire. My gosh. So that's where he's at? Probably living on a island or something. Yeah. He did all right. So that's where he's at. Okay, check. Yeah. Yeah. He did okay. Then that paid off. Yeah, that worked out for him. So these are the Napster days. And I remember the IT department was like, this is illegal. If you run this, we are going to catch you. It's easy for us to catch you, and so all these programs were these file sharing things that were super popular. You would get a knock on your door and I was like, they really are monitoring our internet traffic. Like I got to be careful. And so I didn't want to do something that was worse than sharing MP three files where they would go, hey, stop doing that. I didn't want to do something worse. And they're like, hey, your future is now flushed down the toilet and you can't go to school here anymore. So I was pretty careful about that kind of thing. But I did work at a security company in Detroit and part time and I was doing web stuff for them and I was driving because I had a clean driving record. And a lot of the guys that I worked with did not have a clean driving record. Also being a white guy and driving was a lot easier driving around than being a black dude and driving around. This is just reality of Detroit, especially at that time. So I would drive our VIP clients around and the security guys would be in the passenger seat in the back seat. And it was better because if I got pulled over, they were like, okay, whatever. But if those guys just even went into the wrong neighborhood, it was like, oh, we're getting harassed now by the police. So I would drive around a lot and move things and people around. And I remember one day, the guys were kind of like, hey, what's going on with your dating life? We were all talking about women. And I was like, well, I'm like, I meet women on the internet and stuff because I'm a nerd. And they're like, oh, what's that like? So we're talking, talking, talking, because these are all guys that like go to clubs and pick up chicks. And I was like, that's this totally different world for me. I don't even understand how that world works. So they're trying to give me tips and they're like, but how do you meet women on the internet? Like, how does that even work? So I print out transcripts of what I'm doing in these chat rooms. And they're like, really entertained by all this. And one of the guys genius move, he goes, hey, if you really want to get an edge on people, make a profile as a woman and see what guys are saying to you. And then you can reverse engineer what's working and what's not, because you'll be able to go, oh, all guys are saying the same thing. And he was right. Like every guy, the same stupid opening line, every guy tried to do the same thing, pushed for the meetup really quick. And like, some of the guys were smooth, but almost none of them were. And he's like, this is gold mine intelligence. So I made this profile of a of a woman. There was that thing. You're right. You get in the you get an ideas. So I did this when I was online dating to like as an adult, I would make like a match.com profile that was a woman. And it would just be a friend of mine. I'd be like, can I use your pictures and stuff? And she'd be like, sure, whatever. And now I don't think many women would allow you to do this. But back then, I was like, yeah, why not? So we would do that. We would reverse engineer what worked and what didn't. Now the issue came when one of the guys was like, man, you're getting so many incoming messages. This is really odd. And I was like, yeah, why don't I start experimenting with the age of the profile? And one of the profiles I made as in bear in mind, I'm only like 16, 17 years old, probably 17 years old at this time, I made a profile of a girl that was 16. And she got all these creepy messages. And one of the guys was like, make the profile age younger and see what happens. And I didn't realize at the time why he made me do this or asked me to do this, but it'll become clear as I tell the story. So then I made the profile age 14. And then I started getting really, really, really creepy messages online. And I printed them out and I brought them in to have a laugh with the guys. And the guys, my boss came in and was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not funny. These guys are predators. This is not because I was like, look at this loser. He's 38 years old. And he's sending this message to this 14 year old girl on AOL. And my boss is like, whoa, this is not okay. This is not okay. Like you're 17. So you think it's a laugh because you would never hit on a 14 year old and you're 17. This is a 38 year old man hitting on a 14 year old girl. This is a criminal. And I was like, oh, I didn't really know that. So we faxed these transcripts to the FBI. And they, and this will put a timestamp on the whole thing. The Detroit office of the FBI said, we don't handle cyber crime in our regional offices. Only Washington DC has a cyber crime division. And I think, which is amazing because now everything is frickin cyber. When I think of high quality meats, I envision a nice steakhouse in the city, usually costing hundreds of dollars just to get a decent meal. Luckily with Butcherbox, that wave has changed. Their premium meats are undeniably some of the best quality meats you'll find anywhere. And with these amazing prices, you can enjoy delicious high quality meals without breaking the bank. I know that anytime Marcus comes home from being out of town for a while, my mom's got him a nice juicy Butcherbox steak waiting for him in the kitchen. It's his favorite meal. He loves it. And luckily, since it's so cheap, we're able to have all kinds of meats stacked to the brim in our freezer. It's actually kind of awesome to look at. 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So that's one of the reasons they sent it to Washington is they're like, we need to just need federal jurisdiction over this because we can't even decide who's going to handle this crime. And so I started to lure more and more of these guys to talking with this fake 14 year old girl. I'd print out the transcripts, I'd fax them to the FBI and then eventually they said, okay, we should probably do something about this. And so what one of the things that we did we did was I would do these chats for a while, hand off the chat to an FBI agent in Washington, D.C., who would complete whatever sort of thing was happening where they would try and get the guy to meet up. And I remember one of the coolest things that I ever did as a young guy, a pretty 20 year old guy was one of the guys he said he was a photographer, of course. Lord, if what he thought was a 14 year old girl to a hotel in Ohio and Toledo, which is really close to the area of Michigan where I was living. But since he crossed state lines to go to Ohio, the FBI had jurisdiction. So Toledo PD and the FBI arrested him when he went to the hotel where he thought he was going to meet a 14 year old girl. And I was like, wow, we caught that son of a bitch. And that was really, really cool. And I felt like a total badass for years after that, because of that. That is really neat. Good job, brother. Yeah, I mean, who would have thought, because you're a teenager at the time. I mean, I totally get being in that mindset of like, oh, these guys are just gross and creepy. But that is serious crime. I mean, those are actual predators and you were able to help bring light to the FBI that that was even happening at that time. That's really cool. Yeah, they, they, like the guys are the gals, actually, as a female agent in Washington, she did hear about this, but it was usually local issues, right? They would find out about it. And it would be like local predator meets local teen. And they don't have any jurisdiction over it. Although looking back as an attorney, now I'm like, of course you have jurisdiction because you're using company servers that are located in God knows where across jurisdictions, like this is what the FBI is sort of designed to do in many ways is handle jurisdictional issues like this. But back then they were like, uh, the predators in Troy, the victim is in Troy, just let Troy PD handle it. And the Troy police are like, so he used the what now to talk to the kid, the phone line, but not talking on the phone. He used the fax machine. It was like so confusing because cops and nobody, frankly, had looked at nobody knew what a modem was or a chat room. No adult was paying attention to that shit. And so this was a real sort of creative way to get the guy to go across state lines to commit a crime that then the FBI was like, now we can handle this because we have the transcripts, we have the intent, we have him taking action to get here. We have everything printed out and saved. And then he went across state lines to meet this person at a hotel because the excuse was, I can't meet you locally because my parents will find out, but I'm going to a hotel and my parents won't be there all day and I'll just be born in this hotel. And he's like, let's do a photo shoot, a swimsuit photo, you know, just creepy crap. And I realized, you know, it was really scary though, is after we caught this guy, I was like, I want to do this again. And I looked at my inbox again. And I was like, wow, there's like 38 different screen names in my inbox on any given day. There are hundreds slash thousands of these guys out there using just the internet. This is just the internet savvy contingent of local predators that want to talk to young girls like the you can't stop the fire hose creeps. There's too many. It's almost as if when the internet came online, it got handed to all of us. So while we're trying to, everyone's learning how to play with it, there's no, we don't need rules yet. It's like the same people who learned how to play with it haven't set the rules for it yet. We just, we didn't get into that part, I don't think. No, it was like the whole web was like the dark web, you know, exactly. It was because it's complete darkness and then we're trying to shove, we're trying to contain, re-contain that or something. Yeah, because long enforcement was clueless. And it's not like, oh, dumb cops. Of course, even the smartest cop is like, oh, I have a computer at home, but how the hell am I going to use this evidence? How could they possibly even keep up with us? Yeah. Yeah. The person we picked up the one we picked up the police does. Yeah. No, he's trying to get my daughter to meet. So he's calling her, just don't let him talk to her. No, they're using the computer. How is the computer talking to another computer? Like, I remember asking questions like, oh my God, you guys don't know what the internet is or what modems are or what chat rooms are. And I remember having to rewind and explain this and the cops were like, so when they meet, just call the police and it's like, no, this person is targeting children. What do you mean? Adults don't know about this. I'm telling you this. I'm showing you this and they're like, oh, well, we need to monitor that chat room. And I'm like, it's not one chat room and all the petos are in one room. Yeah. They're reaching out to the specific people and they're like, what's email? I don't understand. How are they sending messages? And they're just like, holy shit, you need a specialized agency that understands what the criminals understand, just like you do now, right? You don't send local PD who investigates murders to investigate a Bitcoin ransomware attack on an oil pipeline. It's not going to work. So what would learn from that? Anything in the beginning, first, going to learn how to be abused? Yeah. Because you didn't even know that it's unbelievable how fast it works. But also just really shines a light on the good and bad, the good and evil. That's awesome. Yeah, there's good and evil in everything. The internet, the intent for it runs together and to connect everyone around the world and the evil got in there really quick to use it to their benefit. That's nuts. Okay, so there's so much to talk about with you because you're extremely interesting. Can we get to the kidnappings? When did that happen? Yeah. So one is less interesting than the other, but one of them I was 20 years ago. Oh, hey, just just between me and you. This is our second time together. So but you don't ever combine those two sentences. Not interesting and what you went through. Yeah. Those don't go together. All right. Gotcha. All right, check. You earned that, bro. Learn how to take a damn compliment. Yeah. All right. One of them is definitely more involved. Oh, yeah. No, I remember. But I'm just saying you earned those, man. I appreciate that. It's so the first time I was 20 years old, I lived in Mexico City and I worked for this nonprofit and I lived in like the hood because they were supposed to find me a house to live in and a family to live with. And they just didn't bother doing any of that before I got to Mexico. And so I showed up and they were like, oh, yeah, you can sleep at our house until next week. Then we have another person coming in and I was like, okay, then what? So they basically found me this old people's house and I would sleep on their roof, which had another corrugated metal roof kind of room over it. And I would sleep in this bed. It was a bedroom, but it was like, it was on the roof of the house. It was very odd, cool and comfortable, but very odd. And to get anywhere, I had to take these school buses that would all be like airbrushed with a giant mural of Mariah Carey or whatever. Aren't those great? And we don't have those here like that. They have this. They love those buses in Mexico City. They do, man. You pay like a dollar. And so I would go through that process every time. But if I was in a hurry, I didn't want to sweat and wait outside and send a dirty bus and then take another bus and another bus and another bus. I would take a taxi. And so this one day I was late meeting my friend at a bar and I was like, oh, I'll take a taxi. And the taxis back then, which are now illegal, were these green folks as far as I've heard from Mexico. Oh, yeah. The green Volkswagen bugs? Yeah. Yeah. The green Volkswagen bugs. And I flagged one down and I get in and the guy is like, hey, where are you going? What are you doing out here? I was like, oh, I live out here. He's like, that's unusual. And I was like, yeah, I need, by the way, I don't have any cash. I need you to take me to an ATM. I'm going to this bar in the middle of the city. And that was kind of my first mistake saying like, I only have credit cards on me. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was definitely a mistake. And so he's driving in Mexico City is like this bowl shape. And so if you're going up higher, you're going away from the center. And if you're going down, you're going towards the center. And we were going up higher. And I thought, oh, this is really weird because we're not going towards the place where I think we're going. And this guy was like, oh, I was like, hey, man, where are we going? Because I thought of first traffic, but then I was like, there's some traffic here. And he's like, oh, I'm going to ask for directions. And that was a mistake. Because if he'd said traffic, I'd be like, there's a taxi driver. He knows what he's talking about, or like road closures. He knows what he's talking about. But he said, directions. And this is like a taxi driver in New York saying he's got to ask for directions to get to Times Square. You're like, hold on. This guy's not telling me the truth. Like everybody knows what the White House is in Washington or the Times Square in New York. Like this guy knows this is a lie. So that I started getting scared. And I didn't have a phone because nobody had mobile phones back then. This is the year 2000. So I wasn't distracting myself with Instagram or anything. I was just looking out the window. And I was like, this is a little scary. What am I? What's happening? And I remember in my head, I was going through in my head, I was like, am I getting kidnapped right now? And I remember thinking like, no, that can't be it. And then I was like, well, why can't that be it? And I thought, well, I've never been kidnapped before. And I was like, that's not really a good reason why I'm not getting kidnapped now, though. And I remember trying to open the door when we stopped. And I couldn't. And I was like, Oh, the door won't open. And then I was like, Oh, it's locked. But the lock, the locks went up and down. But the lock had been trimmed. How do I explain this? Like when it's up, it's up and when it's down, it was below flush with the door. So you couldn't get your finger around the top of the lock. Because when it was locked, it was down underneath the door. So you couldn't just pull it up. And I thought like, Oh, that's that's a problem. Because not only is the child lock on or whatever it is, but the doors had been trimmed that way. And I couldn't unroll the windows and I was stuck in this car. Dude, bro, you have baby locks, man. You got kidnapper locks back here. I can't get out of here. Yeah, like it was basically like this car was either a kidnap car or just conveniently the doors and windows didn't work. And I was like, this is pretty good evidence. This is like this guy's first time trapping somebody in the back of this car. So he's driving and I'm like, just let me out. You know, take me back. I'll pay you. And you know, I was like, let me out. Let me out. Let me out. I'm like, no, no, we're going to get directions and we'll be there. I was like, dude, we're definitely far away. Just turn back and I'll pay you. And he was like, I thought you didn't have any money and you needed to go to an ATM. That's where we're going. We're going to an ATM and I need to find one. And I was like, Oh, he's changing his story now. Now I can't even convince him that I have something of value to give him. If he lets me go, like this is all a big problem. So soon we stop in front of this like corrugated metal cinder block building. And I'm thinking like, Oh, crap. This is not a good place to be. There's no lighting. It's really dark. There's a very sketchy neighborhood. He's stopping in front of a house. He's probably going to get out, go get like three gangster dudes to come in the car. And then God knows what's going to happen after that. So I said, don't get out of the car. And I slid behind him because I was sort of like kettie corner or whatever, kettie corner from where he was sitting behind the passenger side. I slid behind the driver side and I was like, don't get out of the car. And I slid my arm between him and the door. And I didn't want him to like make a break for it and get out. But he didn't know my arm was there. So I'm like, don't get out. He's like, calm down, calm down, man. It's going to be fine. I was like, don't get out, keep driving. Go literally anywhere but here. I don't care. I don't want to be here. I was like, go back towards where we came from right now. And he's like, dude, chill out, you know, whatever in Spanish. And I'm like, oh, I better not let him reach for the glove box. He could have a knife in there like, I don't know what's in there, gun in there. And then he makes a fast one for the door. But the problem is I'm 20. And all I do is eat carne asada and work out twice a day. And he's 50. And all he does is eat carne asada and sit in a taxi all day. So one of us is twice as strong as the other. So he goes to the door and I've just pulled him right back in the seat. And I choked him across the face and mouth by reaching across the seat. And I remember how tough that was to do because when you have a seat pad between you and the person that you're choking, you have to squeeze so much harder and you have like no leverage. And of course, the thing you want to do is stand up, but you can't because the car ceiling is here. So you're choking like this where you also have like very little leverage. And I remember squeezing so hard and for so long until he passed out. And then I had to try to get the door open on his side, push him out of the car, crawl between the seats of a Volkswagen bug, which is not easy when you're like 200 pounds and push him out the door. Then I tried to drive the car, which I couldn't do because it was a stick shift and it was like 30 years old. And so I took the keys out and threw them, which I probably shouldn't have done. Didn't matter at the time, but I probably should have just kept the keys. And then I had to run, but I didn't really know where I was. So I just tried to run back to where I was and I ran and ran and ran and ran. And I find no cars would stop for me even when there were cars because there were no cars in this area. I ran back to a major road. No car would stop for me. Finally, this old guy and this girl stopped and older. He was probably like 50, 20, 20, I said maybe 60. Now he wouldn't even register him as an old dude. But back then he looked older and he was like, what's going on? And I was like, I got kidnapped and he was like, calm down. And I'm like, I don't want to be here. Let me get in the car. And he was like, hell no, man, I'm not letting this sweaty, crazy guy get in my car. And I remember the young girl was like, we have to let him in the car. What is he doing here? Because it was really obvious that I was a gringo. It was really obvious that I was not in a neighborhood where gringos go to have a drink or hang out. And they were, I was like, I'll get in the trunk of the car. Just get me out of here now. You can let me out blocks away. I don't care. Just get me out of here. And so they were like, okay, we're not going to make you sit in the trunk, but like sit in the back. And I remember this guy had his eyes on me big time and he's like, where do you want to go? And I was like, take me to the police. And he's like, let me stop you right there. I am definitely not taking a sweaty guy to the police who just told me that he maybe choked out slash killed a cab driver. Like there's no way I'm getting involved in that. And he's like, and also word to the wise. And I'm paraphrasing here because it's Spanish and my Spanish really wasn't that good. But he's like, word of the wise, you don't want to go to the police because your story sounds nuts. And if they drive here and that guy is still laying there, you're in deep shit. So he's like, I'll take you anywhere but the police. And I don't want anything to do with you. And I don't even want to know what happened. And the girl was like, just go to the metro station and go home. And that's what they did. They dropped me off at a subway station. And I went home. And so that was terrifying. I had to move. I moved at like four o'clock. That was probably like nine 10 p.m. I was out of that town and into another town, or at least in a bus heading to another town by six o'clock in the morning. Like I packed my shit and left. I had to leave the family that I was with. I left straight up left them and note that was like emergency had to go home by. Thanks for everything. That was it. Oh my gosh. That's terrifying. I'm never traveling with you. That's a great story. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That is so scary. How did you get Spanish by the time you were 20? Oh, so I at that point, I had gone to Mexico. I want to say this is my second time there. And I was taking Spanish in classes. So I was learning basic Spanish and Spanish is not super hard. I mean, my Spanish sucks now. But back then, if you're in Mexico and you're taking classes, it's kind of easy and and also just to have a guy who's speaking mixed English and Spanish with you, it's like, okay, I kind of get what you're saying. You know, this guy was an educated man. He actually was a doctor. The guy drove me. He was a doctor. And I remember he was like, are you injured? I'm a doctor. I can help you. And I was like, no, just take me to the cops. That's one of the things. And it's funny because I thought it's him and his daughter. In 2020 hindsight, I'm like, that might have been his girlfriend because Mexico do be like that sometimes, right? Where there's like a 50 year old guy and 22 year old girl and you're like, Oh, because I'm like, they didn't look alike at all. And I remember that such an odd father, daughter couple. And now I'm like, Oh, that was probably just his like secret GF. Oh my gosh. That is terrifying. Yeah, it was really scary. That's that was super, super scary. Wow. So do you have a listen, listen to crazy stories all day? I know that's not that's my favorite. Yeah, I actually checked later on because I didn't want to go to Mexico for years after that. So probably kill that guy or what? Yeah, that's what I checked. So I was I finally I was like, okay, now that I have like law enforcement buddies who know people I was like, can you run all variations of my name through any computer system that you guys have and see if I am like on any lists? And he's like, no. And then I was like, can you check and see if there were any dead cab drivers on this day in Mexico City? And they're like, yeah, there's like 13 or something, right? And I was like, Oh, okay. I remember it. Here's what my guy looked like. Yeah, she was a Mexican dude. He was about 50. He drove a cab and it was maybe in this neighborhood. And it was like check the box dangerous in something. One of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Mexico, you're looking for a made possible homicide that day that maybe got reported. Yeah, there's a few of those. And I was like, yeah, this is a fool's errand. But I found that there was nothing in the computer. And I later hired a Mexican attorney to like double double check and make sure that I could go in and out of Mexico freely. And they were like, yeah, no problem. Don't see you anywhere. Like it's all good. So I think, look, at the end of the day, he probably woke up and was because it was just a, you know, a sleeper. I didn't like rip his throat out or break his neck or anything. I think he probably woke up a few minutes later or moment even less than a few minutes later and went, oh, well, that didn't work. And he probably got back in his car or went into the house and was like, yeah, I got to go find another guy. Because the thing that was lucky, you know, again, looking back, the thing that was really lucky was since there were no mobile mobile phones, like I mentioned, I wasn't on Instagram distracting myself and trying to talk myself out of this dangerous situation that I was in. But further, he wasn't able to call ahead and have guys waiting outside or tell anybody what happened or be like, yeah, we're going to be there in a minute, you know, because if guys have been outside, I'd have been done, you know, they could have just jumped in the car. Because I later when I lived in Panama, years later, you, the same thing would happen except for guys, the taxi driver would make a quick call, you in mumble something. And then we'd be on a corner and dudes would just get in on both doors of the cab and be like, you're going to the bank and taking out as much money as you can, or we're going to stab you or shoot you. And that's what was going on in Panama. And that's probably what was going to happen to me in Mexico. And that's why I saw that it was probably a mistake that I told him I had credit cards and needed to go to an ATM. Because he was probably like, Oh, good. This guy can get thousands of dollars out of any machine. I just need to go get like two muscle dudes who are going to threaten him. And we can drive around on like going to different ATMs. I think that was the plan. But at the time, I was like, Oh, my God, they're going to time me up and cut me up in a little pieces in a basement of whatever building this is. And I'm never going to get out of here, which is also not impossible. But that was what was on the menu scenarios could be very true. I mean, because you look like a white dude. Yeah. And I had like fake dyed blonde hair and I was wearing like a light blue dress shirt from banana Republic. Because I was going out, I like dry clean only pants on. It was a bunch of that's why you're supposed to run around with a guy like me. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And offset because if he screamed too much whiteness, man, people just automatically going to try and kill you. Yeah. Also, I think nobody would have tried anything if I was with a big dude. I mean, I was probably like, I'm even if I was the same size as I am now back then, which I don't know, I was probably about the same. I'm only five nine and a half with shoes on, you know, like, then you know, it doesn't matter. That doesn't mean one with a knife and like I'm not going to be able to get out of there very easily. So slash it all. Okay. So didn't you go to law school? Right. Through your life. Okay. So then you go to law school and are you studying business? Are you sticking to the like cyber stuff? No, I mean, law is sort of a general course of study at Michigan. So I went to school. I was didn't even necessarily want to be a lawyer. Got out of school. Immediately took the highest paying job I could, which so I basically sold out to the man right away because you look at them out of debt you have and you're like, ah, maybe I'll do my do good stuff at another time and I'll start off on Wall Street so I can pay down some of this debt. And so I took the highest job I could find and the market was really good, you know, to jump into finance law. So I jumped into finance law and I know we're like running out of time, unfortunately. But we we we we I did finance law for a minute. The economy tanked and again, it was like the best thing that ever happened to me because I could have stayed a lawyer for a long time. But since the economy tanked, the company that I was with, the firm I was with was like, hey, we're going to buy out everyone. And I just took that money and started my business. And that, again, like turned into a pretty lucky break because I wouldn't have had startup capital. But for the economy going downhill and the law firm being like, we need to shed 60 of you punks who's going to take, you know, 60, 68 grand and go fly a car. Well, that's that's what we get paid. See, I knew I recognized you. So we're we're kind of edge walkers. I mean, this whole time you've been talking, like, Hey, man, you're skirting some evil shit. Yeah. Right. But then there's those of us to get, they can stay keep you back to it and you push back on this side, learn from it to do good from it. I mean, we got I'm on that 68,000 dollar payroll myself. All right. So it but there's people that get consumed by it and they'll get taken down the bad road on it. Well, it's it's, it's a what gives you the phrase out there and I'm going to butcher it. I'm paraphrasing here, but it's like the one of the most addicting things in the world are heroin and a steady paycheck or some or it was like addicting and destructive because any what that person meant. I think it was Nicholas Naseem Taleb or something like that. He's a finance guy and he said something along the lines of of that because heroin, obviously for obvious reasons, but he's comparing a steady paycheck because if you have a steady paycheck, it's really easy to just like not do it. Anything else because I got enough money. It's fine. My lifestyle is good. I don't want to take a risk and then possibly get less or put out a lot of effort and get the same thing or less. And so it does become quite dangerous. So that's why I say getting laid off was one of the best things ever because not only did I get that buyout, but I didn't really have a choice. I mean, it was going to be then or later and I thought, I'll just do it now. I'll make the leap now while I can control the dissent. And I think a lot of people, they don't want to take any risk and I understand it now that I'm older, I'm like, Oh, risk. No, thanks. I got kids, I'm married, I got a house, I got a mortgage. But when you're 20 something, you have no responsibility whatsoever, most people anyway. Right. Yeah, exactly. And that's where I was. So that made it easier. Things are changing back then too. It's in turn when we kind of came of age, there's a big shift. Yeah, that's true. All the wars came off online, then you had all the tech come online. So they separated us by by continents, right? They just did that. And then they systematically pulled us back ones and twos, then we had a housing crisis, then we have pandemics, we have, you know, civilian unrest, all across it's like, our generation is never known peace. That's true. Just never known. You can't put it together because every time we get our faces kicked in, there's, we don't have time to reflect on it because there's something else coming for us. Right. There's actually, yeah. Accurate. Like I'm trying to think when I was younger, we had the Gulf War. And I was in the storms in the shields. The storms in the shields gave birth to the G watch. That's us. That was man, God's warriors of terror. Well, our parents, we got trained, man, two wars for 20 years on top of everything that was going back here. Every time we got back or something crazy going down, we just recently, all of us got back. And when they ended Afghanistan, and just now you're getting everything back, that's what a lot of people don't understand in America. You live in America, but I don't think you know what's living in here with you. Like we brought some stuff back. Like that. There's a huge, well, you're sitting right in the middle of it. Yeah. Well, it's like the tech guys had the, the in on all of it too, because they were kind of creating this worldwide connection. Exactly. They kept us together. Like when we got sent away from it, they're thinking about it. When we grew up, we hung out together. It wasn't a separation between us. Like the jocks, the athletes, the guys who want to be so we all hung out the same places. It's the same things. And then they dropped something right in the middle of us here, 9-11. And so they separated us and you all found a way to reconnect us so we could keep hanging out. That's all that was for. It wasn't for the American people. It was for our generation to hang out. That's what we did. And man, they've been beating our asses every since. And you don't get battle weekend, bro. You get battle hard. Every, every, every asset and every skill set you picked up over the years mean something. I mean, I only say that because everything I had to go through, it was for a freaking reason. So never forget that, especially when you're teaching those young ones. I mean, you've had to put the work in and you've been tested. Yeah, it's interesting to think about the getting tested. And I think we talked about this before we hit record, which is like all these crazy slash bad things that happened to you. It's real easy to look at go. Oh, man, I'm a, I got victimized by this. And then I hit this other setback and I had this other setback and this other setback. But it's better to look at it as you mentioned to be battle hard and like, Oh, well, that happened. And then I survived that. And then this other thing happened and I actually ended up in a better situation because of that layoff. And then this happened and I built this and then I lost everything. But then I built this other thing that was better. And it's like then now all these things, every time that happens, something that I think is like a nightmare is not only survivable, but turned out to be better, you know, like, Oh my God, I lost my job early. What am I going to do? Oh, I'll build a business and make more success out of that. You think I lost my business? What do I do build a better one? You know, that's exactly right. No, no, you're right. I was like, you think we've had a hard man, just look at, look at my playlist. Look at the people I play with. All of them have had crazy stories to wind up in here. Well, one of these, I mean, you've had to have some background on it. They're all crazy. You know, it's it's it's the greatest thing. The minute I'm having a bad day, let's go hang out with somebody like you or anybody else we've had. I'm like, Hey, tell me about your day so I can forget about mine. Yeah. Yeah. Now I've got kids and now it's like that the nightmares are outsourced. So now as soon as you think like I can survive anything, you're like, Oh crap. Now I got this other idiot walking off the edge of the couch with or running into the road. Can you believe it? Control him. Can't control all the people. I'm sorry. We are running out of time. Can you can you tell us what you're doing now? Tell us about the podcast and what's the what takes most of your time other than your kids? Yeah, it's funny because I always used to be like, Oh, I hate these people who put like husband and father in their internet profile. I'm like, I don't care. Now I'm like, Oh yeah, now I totally get it. Like those are the important things that you do and everything else is secondary now that I have my own kids. So yeah, I I run the Jordan Harbinger show. I talked to fascinating people and I try and deconstruct some of their wisdom so that people can apply it. And every Friday we give advice. So people write in with crazy questions. I also try and teach people how to think better on the show because there's a lot of bad thinking, especially just bad logic, bad thinking. It's I'm very nonpolitical. So both sides of the aisle. Well, listen, and I think we have a crisis of just really bad thinking in this country, which will surprise no one. I think everybody probably agrees with that. So I try to teach critical thinking, but not in a boring way. And of course, a lot of stories from really incredible people from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, creators. So it's it's it's fun. That's what takes most of my time. I read books and I talk to smart people. And then I pack it in and play do blow with my kids. That's it. Amen. I love it. So what kind of what kind of people do you enjoy talking to the most on there? Like which profession? You know, it's hard to pick a profession. But I think a lot of people have really interesting stories. So some of the some of the kooky or stuff. Trying to think here. I mean, I have a lot of scientists on. I have a lot of celebrities on, but those aren't even necessarily the most interesting people. Some of the most interesting are like, I had an art forger. And that guy was really meticulous in how he forged art. You know, he had really interesting little details. Same with a guy who forged currency. He had really interesting details of how he did the job. The art forger, for example, this art forger, he was a really good painter. Nobody cared, couldn't sell art, decides to paint something that looks like one of the old masters, which I think is like a Rembrandt era. And he goes, he does it. And the person goes, wow, this is a lost Rembrand. He's like, well, I need money. So sure, it's a lost Rembrandt. And the guy gave him money for it. And then the little guy was like, Hey, this is fake. And he's like, huh, I wonder what I need to do to make this look not fake. And the way this guy solved problems was really something. So he, you need old canvas, you need old wood, right? To make an fake old painting. So you go to flea markets, buy crappy old paintings, wipe the top off, get the paint off with like a solvent, paint another painting. Now the woods, all the staples are old or the what nails are old or whatever. The woods old, the canvas is old, but he doesn't, he has a painting on there. So everyone goes, wow, this is a real old painting. But then it looks a little too new. So he's got to bake it in the oven. Then the varnish doesn't do the thing it does with ultraviolet light. So what does he do? He goes to the flea market, gets old paintings, melts the varnish off with a solvent, pours it into a cup, does all the other stuff, takes the solvent that he melted off the old painting, paints it over the top of the new fake painting. Now it does what old varnish does. It's just like genius. And every time somebody catches him doing something, he switches and does a bet like he figures out how they figured him out. And he like does the other thing. And so now he just makes replica paintings apparently, but like, I don't know, man, you know, he's not going to tell me if he's doing anything different. So those, those I really like talking to because it's a guy who's got a really interesting angle at problem solving and he's doing it in the niche that nobody ever thinks about. What was it? What was Kobe Bryant? You got a chance to meet him? I did. I interviewed Kobe just a few months before he passed, actually, that was just kind of a lucky break. They tried to cancel that and I was like, I'm outside. Yeah, I would have done that to you, man. I always want to meet him. It was like, I'm outside. They're like, where? I'm like, right there. Sorry, I can't hear you. My phone's disconnected. I'll knock on the door in a second. I just got to use the bathroom and I was like, step on it because I wasn't really there. I was here for doing this, brother. And coming back on, I appreciate it. Congratulations. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Can you stay in touch? How can people find you and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. The Jordan Harbinger Show, H-A-R-B-I-N-G-E-R, Jordan Harbinger Show. Anywhere you get your podcasts, my YouTube's pretty small because I don't focus on it, but I'm also on YouTube. Most of the listeners are audio and I'm at Jordan Harbinger on any social media. So anybody can just DM me on pretty much any platform except for TikTok, which I don't use because I can't get any traction there because I talk about China sometimes and it's owned by China. And also, I don't want China to have my data, which they probably already do. So I don't use TikTok. Well, we need to stay in touch. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you all for listening in. And we'll see you next week on the Team Never Quit Podcast. ♪♪♪

Jordan Harbinger: From Wall Street Lawyer To Successful Podcaster, Junior Hacker To FBI Ally & Escaping A Kidnapping