The Exchanges

Q So then is the next step to build a podcast or to start selling lessons to these guys?

A We accidentally started the podcast in the way that guys were like, you should write a book, you should write a book, you should write a book. AJ was a cancer biologist. I was studying for the bar exam. Nobody was, ain't nobody gonna write a book, right? So we decided to make some sort of CD audio thing and maybe hand it to guys that were asking us for this stuff. Because we thought this, this information must be free. I mean, it was just so good. And, uh, so AJ was like, hey, listen, there's this thing called podcasting. There's like 800 of them in the new iTunes that's, that's out. It's real cool. We should just buy some microphones from Guitar Center and just record some stuff and put it online. And then when people want it, we can just tell them the website to download it. So he made a website. We recorded some stuff, outlined a few episodes, put it online. And we were one of, you know, 800 or 8000 or however many podcasts were there in 2005.

AI assessment note: “We accidentally started the podcast in the way that guys were like”

Q Is that the first thing that you did? Took people up on their offer to fly in and

A Yeah, they flew in and learned, but they didn't stay with us, and then after that was phone coaching, and then after that, guys were flying in and staying with us. We were based in Manhattan at the time. They would stay in my apartment in Manhattan, and they would sleep there, and there were like one or two guys every week, because we had no real, I mean, our audience was tiny. And they would do that, and then they would tell their friends, and like, fast forward to now, now it's eight guys every single week, seven or eight guys every single week, For four months, six months in advance, depending on the season, were booked out completely.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, they flew in and learned, but they didn't stay with us”

Q So what do you do? Let's suppose tomorrow you wake up and you're number three. What do you do to fix it?

A If I, that's a great question. What I would do is I would reach out to my network and say, hey, I know you've been trying to interview me for a while, I would love to come on, or I would get a high profile guest and I would interview them. I, honestly though, what I typically then do is call app, and this is the unfair advantage that I have now that I've been doing this for a long time. I call Apple and I go, hey, who would you like to see me interview? I've got these ideas and who can you, who would you put on the front page of iTunes? And they give me a list out of that list. And then I call those people's PR or have my, I have my people call their people, you know, and then we set it up, and then I go on the front page of iTunes.

AI assessment note: “What I would do is I would reach out to my network and say”

Q So you see this, and what do you do? How does that change the course of your life?

A It was amazing because what I did is then go, wait a minute. I don't have to outwork all of these other people in the office. I just have to be a better networker than they do. And I already kind of like talking to people, even though I'm not the greatest at it, but I certainly hate drafting documents and, you know, checking all these tiny little legal details, and even the research part that everybody says is so fascinating about law. Frickin' blows if you don't like it, right? It sucks. And there's always gonna be people who can do it better than you. So I went, alright, I'm gonna dig in to this people skill set and get as good at it as humanly possible, because at the end of the day, If I can spend the proverbial 10,000 hours mastering this versus mastering real estate finance deals, I'm gonna be able to stay engaged more, and at the end of the day, I'm more valuable than the guy who masters the other skill sets.

AI assessment note: “I went, alright, I'm gonna dig in to this people skill set”

Q It sucked. And AJ was not like that. Do you have an example? By the way, what a great frickin' example. I told Totally relate to that. I have, in my head, I'm picturing a couple of examples in my life where I did that. So AJ was how?

A AJ, I remember the time when I realized he was so good with girls. One day, it was on my birthday, and we were hanging out, and we went to this bar, and I was facing a table, uh, I was facing him, and then behind him was a table of, like, four girls, maybe five or six girls, and he was like, hey, what do those girls look like behind me? And I was like, oh, they're cute, and he's like, ah, that's, they're, they're interested in talking to us, and I was like, okay, first of all, no, they're not, because blah, blah, blah, my own weird issues. Second of all, How the hell do you know? You're facing me. I'm facing you. What do you, what could you possibly know about that table of girls? You don't even know what they look like. He goes, trust me, they're saying things a little bit louder than they need to for each other to hear, and they're talking about subject matter that's specifically designed to get our attention. He didn't even say it like that, but that was what he sort of communicated, and I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, let's get out of here. I want to go to a different place. It's my birthday. I don't want to talk to those girls you don't know you're talking about. We're just going to embarrass ourselves. So he goes, alright, you're lost. As we're leaving, I'm putting my jacket on, and he puts his jacket on, he's halfway out the door, and the girls go, he…

AI assessment note: “AJ, I remember the time when I realized he was so good with girls.”

Q I'm really proud that you did, and That helped take off. That was just the start, and then when I switched to membership, so I didn't have to sell each one individually and deal with all those individual smaller products, life got a whole lot different, and now there's a team here, and those two steps were dramatic. You didn't have anything like that, did you?

A No, no. There was no, like, oh, that made everything a lot easier. I mean, that would be great. That would be cool if we had some really major big wins like that, but Honestly, one of the things that helped me get to the next level and helped us as a company get to the next level was me realizing that I couldn't pick up all the slack for any other team members that were slacking, and I also couldn't do everything myself. So, hiring people and getting return on investment beforehand after learning their job was something that I started to replicate. So I did, that Ocean Ray guy, that's a real person, by the way, I did his job for, I think, at least one year, maybe two, That's why he's real and talks real, because I wouldn't outsource to a bot. I want guys with a certain level of competency. I tested them myself.

AI assessment note: “No, no. There was no, like, oh, that made everything a lot easier.”

Q blah, blah, blah. And if they were interested, it would be the wackiest thing and it would start a conversation. And if they weren't, then that's fine. But to get to that, I needed a crutch. How do you get someone who's so, who's so uncomfortable, who's in a new country, culturally unsure of himself, what do you tell him that gets him comfortable saying, saying something to a stranger?

A A lot of it is exposure therapy, and at that point I was like, I didn't just want to make crap up and give it to clients who were paying me money, so I contacted a lot of really, like, interesting and very value-giving and cool Therapists, psychologists, people like that, and I was like, listen, what would you give somebody with social anxiety? And I looked up a lot of those drills, and read tons of books, and educated myself, and I was like, okay, listen, if this doesn't work for you, you don't pay me. That's what I gave to every single client, and that's the guarantee that we still give to Art of Charm clients, because we don't want them to burden, or shoulder the risk, the burden of the risk. So we would say, alright, listen, if you ride the bus, and you see people that you want to talk to, and they're not talking to you, It's not because you're African, it's because you live in Norway, and people don't freaking talk to each other there on the bus, nor do they do that in the United States. So just lean over, and at that point, it was like, whatever he was comfortable with. I mean, some clients, it was like, ask for directions. Other clients, it was like, tell them that you're new in the country, and you're having trouble making friends. And he's like, wow, that's dangerous. That feels dangerous. And I said, if it feels dangerous, but it doesn't feel physically dangerous, the…

AI assessment note: “A lot of it is exposure therapy”

Q to build relationships. You're clearly a hustler, a guy who works intensely hard, comes up with creative business ideas, and I can't imagine someone like that being in law school. Did you not have this hunger at that time? Did you not say, I want to lead my mark on the world? I want to make money. I want to be something bigger than a guy in a law firm?

A I was going through this weird crisis-ish thing that didn't seem so urgent at the time, and it's funny because now that I think about it, I, I remember being in law school going, I'm going to be the worst employee in the world. Anybody who hires me is going to be pissed that I work for them because I don't care, and I can't care, and I can't seem to, like, get my, wrap my mind around why I should, even though I realized that my dad would have hated to hear that because he worked for Ford, and he was a great employee, and he was a great, you know, Manager or whatever. And I just wasn't, I didn't know that I was an entrepreneur. I didn't know that was what I think now, which is that that crap is like genetic, man. And so I just thought that I was really not cut out for what everybody else was going into. And even when I was in law school, like, twenty-twenty hindsight, I didn't study that much. I mean, I stu-, I worked my butt off, but I didn't study that much. I'd read everything and I prepared everything, but I, I couldn't learn and memorize. I couldn't pay attention in class. So what I did is I made friends with a lot of those smart kids who could also communicate really well, the kids who participated the most, and we started a study group, like, the first week, and everyone made fun of us, especially me. They were like, why are you in a study group, you geek? And I thought, …

AI assessment note: “I didn't know that I was an entrepreneur.”

Q So the big takeaway for you there is knowledge is out there and enough people have it. Relationships there aren't enough of. If I could build relationships like this guy, I could make more money, have more fun. That's the life for me. Were you the kind of person who was social in high school? Were you the kind of person who could talk to strangers?

A Not really, no. Um, I was definitely really shy as a kid, too. High school, I started to come out of my shell a little bit. College, I kind of retreated right back in there. And, and you're right. Knowledge, the way you put it, is perfect. Knowledge is essentially a commodity, even at the highest levels. I mean, some of it's esoteric, some of it's harder to gain than others, and some of it's gained through experience. But at the end of the day, there's always going to be a larger pool of those people that have that knowledge, versus the pool of people that have the right type of networking connections. And of course, Later on, when that firm sort of went downhill, he just bounced and went straight to partner level at another firm in midtown Manhattan. He probably didn't even have to move. He probably didn't even have to change his usual parking space. Everybody else got screwed.

AI assessment note: “Not really, no. Um, I was definitely really shy as a kid, too.”

Q So, how did you get so many viewers for, or so many listeners for your podcast? You guys are enormous.

A Yeah, we, right now, I think we've got like, 800,000. We're one of the largest shows in iTunes. It's pretty awesome. I love it. It's my baby. I'm obsessed with it. I check my iTunes rank every five minutes. Um, but, The way that we did it, and this is just gonna sound cliched and dumb, so feel free to, like, try to poke holes in it, because I, I'm honestly, I'm welcoming of that. I think putting out consistent quality without trying to be salesy, and not trying to be like, here's a quick fix, and just telling people like it is, and also being authentic in terms of, like, admitting my own shortcomings in every area of my life, probably way too publicly, made us relatable enough that people stuck with us, and giving people things that we had tested to And not just the latest, like, flavor of the month bullcrap that self-help you guys were trying to hawk and not hawking those DVDs. Like, all the DVDs, all those products you saw, we gave those away for free up until we weren't able to anymore, and then we removed it from the site. We never sold any of that trash because we didn't know about it, and so people would have to ask for that, and even when we were having, like, links for stuff on our website, we removed those eventually because we were... I remember at one point years ago, we were actually giving people refunds when the person who sold the product wouldn't give them a ref…

AI assessment note: “The way that we did it... putting out consistent quality without trying to be salesy”

Q When did you know it would be a business?

A I, you know what, honestly, it took years and years. I'm trying to, that's a good question, because I'm thinking about I'd quit law, and even then I was like, uh, am I gonna have to become a, like, a school teacher? Not that there's anything wrong with that. My mom does that. But am I gonna have to get a day job? Again. And, uh, the answer became, eventually the answer was no, probably like three, four years ago, and that's probably 50% of the company history was with me spent going, I just want to work at the post office. Those people don't have that much stress, which is a lie, because they shoot each other. But, uh, You know, if, if, there was so much stress at points that I, I wished I was not in business for myself now that I literally never wish for that ever. I mean, at all.

AI assessment note: “eventually the answer was no, probably like three, four years ago”

Q What's media and PR for you? What's that? What's media and PR?

A So, it seems like every day there's somebody's like, oh, I'm, I, either another podcast or, uh, some sort of ink magazine thing, like, oh, we want to learn how you earn money digitally, or whatever, you know, the latest thing is, and I get those opportunities all the time. I do a lot of networking, where I talk to people and develop relationships, try to help as many people as possible, and I also do coaching and consulting on my own, of course, uh, about either everything from podcasting to Helping clients who are looking for advanced social skills, like, for whatever purpose they want. Lawyers, doctors, special forces guys, people who need to negotiate things. I mean, those people, they all come to us, and so I'm on the hook for that. There's no such thing as passive income. Honestly, I wish there was a such thing as a forty-hour freaking work week for me sometimes.

AI assessment note: “either another podcast or, uh, some sort of ink magazine thing”