My First Million: #60 - YC Demo Day Startups #2, Importing Foreign Innovations & Collaborative Copywriting

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app

you listen to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

All right, everyone.

We have Jordan Harbinger on, and I'm going to tell you why.

So we get a lot of people asking us questions on how to do different things that we talk

about in the podcast, and that's great.

And we do the same thing, Sean and I.

And one of the folks we turn to on a regular basis, I'm texting him all the time, is Jordan

Harbinger.

He's had podcasts for 13 years now, he's been in the top 100 for almost that entire time,

and he's got a great podcast called The Jordan Harbinger Show where he talks about social

engineering.

In particular, he teaches Navy SEALs how to do social engineering.

He teaches intelligence agencies, special operations.

It's incredibly fascinating.

He dives deep with his guests to learn how they think, why they think, and it's really,

really, really fascinating, and it's something that I've been listening to for years.

But he has one episode that's incredibly fascinating to me, and that's about the guy from Catch

Me If You Can't, Frank Abagnale.

Is that his name, Jordan?

Yeah, Frank Abagnale, he's a fascinating character.

He came on the show, and we spent a long time talking about the psychology behind how he

was able to trick so many people.

So to refresh people's memory, he posed as an airline pilot, which is kind of terrifying,

a doctor and an attorney.

All of these are pretty specialized, you know, look, if you're just pretending to know how

to stock shelves at a grocery store, like that is something where somebody who does that

for a living could probably catch you, but a normal person might not have any idea.

Now, when you're pretending to be a doctor, the stakes are pretty high, man.

You know, law kind of trickier to pass the bar exam, that kind of thing.

So the airline pilot, of course, is the, really takes the cake.

He did this all in his 20s, and we spent a ton of time on the Jordan Harbinger Show discussing

and dissecting the concepts behind why people believed him.

These same concepts work even now.

He's told us that it's actually easier now for fraud, scams, con men to operate than

it was back then, because you'd think, oh, now we have computers, we can verify everything.

Back then they didn't have that, the communication took longer.

Now though, people trust the machines too much.

So you can trick people and you can trick machines.

Things just got even more complicated, and he, that's what he does now is teaches law

enforcement, FBI and citizens like you and I, how to avoid common scams and fraud.

All of course, while dissecting the psychology behind it.

So I loved this episode.

It was one of my favorites.

I remember watching this movie years ago, and then I immediately read the book and I

was fascinated.

I'm a schemer, and I like building businesses and just like what I call scheming.

I like doing things, and whenever you see someone doing something like this, I mean,

they romanticized it and made it sound like it was kind of cool to go and become a pilot.

And so he got to use it a little bit for evil, but what are some techniques and tactics

and strategies that he used to persuade people that you think people now should capitalize

on?

So something that he used that I actually to a certain degree also used in my twenties

is the element of fear.

And now look, I don't mean you're scaring people and pulling guns on them and making

them freak out.

But for example, I used to talk my way into concerts before I could afford to go to them.

And the way that I did that was I would show up and say, hey, I am from this magazine,

on this German website or whatever.

And people would say like, well, I don't have anything, I have no reservation for you.

And I would say, oh, well, that's okay.

What's your name?

Juliana?

Okay, I just want to make sure, because I'm going to go home, go back to my hotel and

get some rest, but I don't want to get in trouble from my editor.

So I'm just going to be like, yeah, Juliana didn't have my reservation on her sheet.

And she'd go, hold on a second, because nobody wants their name pinned to a failure in a

business.

And I would get her manager, I'd give him the same spiel, and then the guy would go,

you know, he's doing the calculation in his head, right?

He's gone, either I don't let this person in and possibly the owner gets mad at me because

this media guy came from Germany and was supposed to be doing this thing and it didn't happen.

Or I just let him in and it's no skin off my nose.

So they can do the calculation in their head.

Now an amateur person will try to explain and force you to do that calculation by explaining

it to you and being explicit.

If you can get people to think it's their idea and that's how they solve the problem,

then that's the security hole, right?

It's kind of like sales, except for you're trying to unsell them on a certain idea and

then you get them to push the issue forward.

Now that's a simplification, but that's essentially what he did in many ways in order to pose

as a doctor, lawyer and an airline pilot.

He learned jargon so that he sounded more believable and we can find, we can do the

same thing.

You know how to talk in the language of the target.

You are going to have a huge advantage in terms of being believed.

A lot of military people find this.

You'll say that, you'll see that military people can find who's posing as an intelligence

agent or special operator by the words that they use.

So if you can master that vernacular, you go automatically behind the circle of trust,

right?

They start believing you because you talk, walk, act, speak like them.

It's dangerous mental fallacy to fall into.

God, that's so fascinating.

I'm just sitting here, just licking my chops at how I want to apply this.

I really appreciate you coming on.

So there's no money being exchanged here.

We're promoting this because Jordan is an amazing guy who has helped us grow this podcast,

but also I've been listening to him for years and so this isn't, don't take this lightly.

We love this guy.

Jordan, how can people find you?

Yeah, you can find me anywhere you get your podcast.

Search for the Jordan Harbinger show or you can Google the Jordan Harbinger show or go

to JordanHarbinger.com.

I appreciate it, man.

This is awesome.

Thank you.

Sam, do you have the coronavirus?

I was not able to get tested, but it appears so based off of just symptoms from now.

Now.

According to my doctor.

So who the fuck knows?

But you were saying so far, kind of mild.

Today's a little worse.

Today for sure.

The way, okay.

So you know how everyone says it's like not that bad or bad?

That's hard to quantify.

Right.

So the way that I've been quantifying it is, would I stay home from work today if this was

last June?

Right.

And yesterday was the first day that I would have stayed home and just barely today for

sure I would stay home from work.

I see.

So no, it's not that bad, but dude, shortness of breath is scary because like it's not bad,

right?

Like I can breathe perfectly fine, but it definitely is like, oh my God, what happens

if this gets any worse?

Right.

And that's scary.

I've been following a bunch of people who are like pretty fit.

Like there's one guy who's an Olympic athlete and there's, I think he's a swimmer or runner,

Australian swimmer or runner.

He has it.

And he's like, yeah.

So yeah, mate, this is tough and he's like, you know, shortness of breath and just, you

know, it's impossible to train like this.

And, you know, he's talking about it.

And then somebody like retweeted it and they're like, this guy's an Olympic athlete, by the

way.

Like, and he was basically like, yeah, this gets tough.

And then there's the guy, another guy I followed who's healthy guy.

He was the bachelor.

His name's Colton and he got it.

And he's like a, you know, pretty jacked guy.

He was an NFL player for a bit and he's like, you know, he does his little Instagram posts

to like update his fans about how he's doing.

What's he saying?

It's bad?

Yeah.

He's just like, you look at him.

He looks raggedy as hell.

Like he is not, he is getting knocked out by this thing and it's been like a week plus

and he's doing just at home treatment and he's like, you know, he's like, you know,

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.