How this former Wall Street lawyer makes money teaching people the art of persuasion

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This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with The Jay Kim Show where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews with top entrepreneurs. This is heavily revised from the original show transcripts. For the full interview, go here.

Jordan Harbinger is the host of the podcast The Art of Charm, where he teaches advanced social skills for top performers. He started his career as a Wall Street lawyer and quickly realized that the people who were bringing in the biggest deals were not the smartest ones at the firms. Harbinger then spent the next several years studying human psychology and persuasion.

He started testing his methods out in bars with his business partner, and it wasn’t long before he attracted a following, many of whom offered to pay him to teach them what he knew. With that, The Art of Charm was born, and it’s one of the leading schools that teach social interaction. Harbinger is also one of the very first podcasters on the scene long before podcasting was a thing.

Here’s my interview with him.

Who is Jordan Harbinger and what do you do for a living?

I am a broadcaster, but I used to be a Wall Street attorney. Before that, I was just a regular guy. No, I wasn’t cut out to be an attorney. I knew it all along.

In America, we do summer internships and I started with a law firm. They paid ridiculous amounts of money, like US$25,000, for the summer so that you can go and watch plays, hang out, and get to fancy restaurants and think “This job is amazing!” And then, they put you to work like you’re in a sweat shop, slavery style, except you’re in a Manhattan skyscraper.

There’s this mentorship program but my mentor was never in the office. These mentors were assigned; they didn’t volunteer. It’s not something most of them wanted to do. But a lot of them really enjoyed it because they got to rock the company expense account over the summer, seeing the Blue Man Group and having US$90 or US$190 lunches. And my mentor was never there.

So, the HR department asked him to take me out for coffee. He said, “Ask me anything you want.” So, I said, “How come you’re never in the office but you’re a partner? It doesn’t make any sense.” He was really shocked because you don’t talk to partners that way, generally. I said, “Look. Let’s be candid here. What the hell are you doing all day? Are you working from home? What’s going on?” And he told me that he brought in all the deals of the law firm for our department—not for the whole firm but for our department, which was real estate.

And I said, “Wait a second. You bring in deals so you don’t have to show up at work?” He said, “Yeah. My time is more valuable outside the office than it is inside because I get million-dollar deals every quarter. And in order to make a million dollars by billing hours for the firm, even if I bill out at US$1,000 per hour, that’s a lot of hours.”

So, he didn’t have to worry about hitting a certain billable hour requirement every year. And I thought, wait a minute, this is really good. Because when I was young, I was a smart kid. That’s how I got through school—being a nerd and just being a smart kid. When I got to college, everybody was as smart as me, but I studied harder and outworked everyone. That worked in law school too. But when I got to Wall Street, everyone’s smart and willing to outwork everyone else. So, my competitive advantage evaporated.

And that’s why when Dave (my mentor) told me, “Hey man, I bring in the deals.” I thought, holy cow, this is like the secret third elevator to the top that nobody even knows existed. And if I work on this skill set now, and in five years, someone will say, “You need to bring in deals,” I will have already spent five years trying to figure out how the hell to do that. Then, I’ll get my competitive advantage back.

That was my plan for the law game. And that’s why I started studying psychology, persuasion, influence, sales, and the other components of The Art of Charm.

Did you just dive into reading books and studying on your own?

Yeah. That was interesting because, honestly, the way I wanted to do this was very different from what actually happened. First, I wanted to get books about getting deals or something like that. But I read dumb books; I don’t even remember what they were. And there were other people who were writing, “Persuade anyone to do anything.” Then, I realized this stuff doesn’t work.

When did you decide to make a business out of teaching people?

Podcasts don’t seem to be that popular in Asia. Is podcasting still on the uptrend?