YouSaid · the spoken record

Charlie Houpert

lines on the record: 119
first: 2025-06-25
most recent: 2025-06-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thought about this. I was like, in the moment, I'll find it. What is it? Don't think, feel. And I know that's counterintuitive to a lot of people. But lately, that's been my guiding principle is. Feel my heart, feel my gut, think from my mind and try to find some union of the three to move forward.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have these dream lives. And so for me, I was having dreams and I was like, okay, I want to just infuse this with psychoanalysis and I'm going to give him a German accent and I'm going to lean into this.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my character was, I called him Sigmund because I was doing a riff on Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung. So Sigmund and his brother Carl, he was a druid. Was he an elf? I forget exactly what his race was. Oh, no, he was a Kalashar, which is one of those weird Kalashar. That must be a new one. Yeah.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Prism on Command YouTube channel. If you're interested in the course, it's Charisma University. You should be able to just type it in and it'll take you to our sales page. And I know it didn't hit, but I spent a lot of time and money. I made a D&D show on YouTube, which was a D&D. I dressed up, I wore a cape. I got my friend who does a Trump impression to be a character that is named Tumpy. He's great. That's called Improvin Dragons. Don't expect it to explode, but if that's your thing and you want to have a quick laugh, you can check that out as well.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me, it was how to win friends and influence people was the one there's ways in which I go to it. And then let me think of ones that have touched me or moved me more today. I've got poetry by Hafiz, which that hits the part of me that is coming more active today. I love Martha Beck. I saw your interview with her. She's got several books. Her interview with you is honestly great, though. I think it does a lot of the work that you might want to take from some of her books. So I'd recommend that. Let me see real quick. Brandon Sanderson's in here. I know he was on. That was a great interview as well.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Running lean. Thirsty, you could probably find many books on the topic, but it's a lean startup thing, and it just has two sections. Here's the big takeaway. There's two interviews that you do. You do one interview that is about the customer and one interview that is about your product. So the first interview is not, do you like this? Do you want this? It's what are you bothered by? What are you trying to make happen? What isn't working for you? Where are you hanging out? And then the second one is, hey, I've got this idea for you. Does that solve the problems that you identified? And it helps you run through those. So that was really important back in the day. What were the other ones? Back in the day, influenced by Cialdini was huge.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At most, yeah. Running lean helped a lot with the interviews. It's not like the most fun read, but it helped me set up those interviews that I did that identified the stuff in the business.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been a minute since I've read it, but I was just like, I'm in that zone of what moved me. I was like, oh, that book brought me to tears many, many times. There are just deep truths about life. Increasingly, I'm into that archetypal mythic pseudo-religious stuff, not because of any doctrine, but because of the way that it moves me. That's just an example of like a 20th century classic tome, not even a tome, it's a pamphlet essentially.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely extinct. Yeah, I'm wrestling with that. It's an ability to look back at myself, have all the thoughts that you said, which is ugh, ugh, but also love that part. Like, holy shit, that guy brought me here”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I ask a question about that? I ask because I have a conflicting relationship with my earlier work, like this course is 10 years old. I look at it. This is exactly what we said, that braggadocious ass. He's not caveating it enough. There's this boldness that you can only have in your 20s of this is how the world works, right? You haven't been smashed before, but there's something beautiful about that as well, that like only a 29-year-old can write this book with this much punch and pizzazz and clarity. So I'm curious what your relationship is with that version of yourself. And I'm also curious, what is it like to receive gratitude for that? Do you feel that it's able to land? Does it hit? Does it matter? I struggle with some of this as well.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, I have to say, if you are here watching this, I can't imagine you have it. But if you haven't read the four hour work week, it's the entire thing. It's like that energy. And I actually think what people are buying from me is that energy in the social realm. There's a third option, which is connect. The magic is available. And I think Far Work Week is like, magic is available in your career.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Net revenue, which is to say with safety valves on if it doesn't perform, I don't have to pay you. And that we couldn't find a number for. It just didn't feel good. And I had a number come through, a literal number that came to me and I was like, that's way more than I've been offering him. And he said, no. And the next follow-up was, yeah, because you're going to take all the risk. And I felt a surge of fear. And then that self-belief energy come back and like, oh my God, yes, I want the risk. I don't want this if it works. I want this through rain or shine, good or bad. Like, let me pay the price for not succeeding. And I'll take you back to one. It was the burning the boats that finally made the business work at every stage. It was taking the steps that got me to not have the contracting job, to move to Brazil. I'm committed. I care about this enough to suffer and hurt if this doesn't work out, right? And so that was also huge in that. And it was huge at the beginning of the business.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Empty, burnt out thing that awaits everybody who trades the inner asset for the external one. So his work was extremely helpful. I'd gone through his courses and he offered me because we'd been in contact a private coaching session because I'd helped him with some YouTube stuff. And on that, he literally suggested he said offer to sell. Like, are you willing to sell? And I was like, and make the offer, do a shotgun deal where you guys both write a number on a piece of paper and the person who was willing to spend more will take it. So just knowing that I had that, I brought that to my co-founder and said, look, I'm willing to make a binding agreement about this where I'm genuinely willing to buy or sell. It was that shift of like, it was, I needed to buy. He was like, well, give me more. And when it's like, look, I don't need to buy, but let's get our way out of this thing. His number came down essentially is what happened. And there was one final thing that was I, based on loving advice from people who were supporting me, had wanted to buy the business out of”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joe's awesome. I have to admit this. It was Father's Day last Sunday, and I was making the joke. I'm like, I'm meeting all my dads in one week. It's my dad and Tim Ferris and Joe Hudson is going to be here in two days. And for me, it's a significant thing because the truth is, and I told you, I had a ton of projections onto you. You know, like if Tim helps me, it'll save me. And I had the same thing with Joe because Joe's work was also deeply important to me. And so it's just really cool to like, you know, drop some of the projections and meet the people. So all my dads, Joe Hudson's my third dad. He's great. He has a thing called Art of Accomplishment. And he acknowledges the emotional aspect of business and not only acknowledges it, but points to the fact that if you ignore it, you will either not do as well as you could or you will do as exceedingly well and feel that”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hey, it sounds like you're really scared. And we just talked about our feelings and the fallout of the friendship and the fears that we both had and acknowledging the emotional intensity of this, that was essential, like pretending that this was a business transaction that we were like, that's a lie. That's not what was going on here. We were both really afraid and speaking to that and bringing it to light moved things tremendously. And then the second one was honestly going to him and saying, I'm willing to sell the business. I'm willing to sell it, but I need one thing, which is I need a no non-compete. I need the ability to go and make anything that I want anywhere. And that moved us from I'm trying to buy from him. He wants more money. I don't want to give him the money to, okay, make me an offer. He made me an offer then for that. And I said, I'll give you 20% more than that. And it was done deal over. And it was that.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your beliefs for cash or approval. You're just sending a signal that I can't be relied on to be myself and be But when you do things that are detrimental to income, like not offering a discount, like saying, I don't want these videos to go up, not to punish anyone, but just because it doesn't feel aligned, I have felt every time where I've dropped into that, this power arises in me. And so that was like, oh, holy shit, I felt like a beggar in a weird way. I'm making all this money, but I'm like feeling unsafe that I need to beg for more and ride the coattails of this thing that I built that I can no longer do. And as soon as I said I don't want this, I felt a surge of like, oh, fuck, I have more to say. I have more to contribute. So that was huge. And then in the negotiation, the big moment was two things. We'd been at deadlock for like two years. I made him an offer. It was nowhere near what he wanted. Like we were just not able to meet there were two things that happened. One was we're starting to get into these circular spirals of things aren't working. And I pause and I said.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“4x total conversion lift, which was huge. There was the avoidance was something that I had to pay for on the back end, the avoidance of conflict. And I think this is one I didn't know how to just allow people to know that I was disappointed or upset or hurt or angry. I had to fix everything very, very quickly. A lot of people please tendencies. Those compounding over time created a lot of issues. There was not firing the person who wound up stealing. I knew that I needed to. There was a lot of like not firings that were huge. And then there was the walking away and the returning, which was really, really important. And they were both honest. The one was like, I'd rather not have this thing send me money than post videos that I don't feel aligned with, which made me like, oh my God, when you do stuff that isn't aligned for money, it signals such a lack of self-belief and self-love. This is in the six pillars of self-esteem book. Like when you start trading.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like I can do something better now. So I need to go back, do it again, and then be able to honestly say, this is the best I can do. And I'm sure that that will have the same impact because I subtly shy away from selling, from offering the thing that I don't fully believe in. So that was a big one. It's tough. I don't know how to parse it out. But this plus adding testimonials was a 4X conversion lift when we started adding those at the end. So we used to have our call to action. It was a 10 minute video. And then like, hey, if you want to buy Christmas University, it does this. It does this. It does this. It's got all this. Here's what's in it. And then it became, hey, do you want to buy Charisma University? Here's what somebody said about it. This helped me get a promotion. It did this. Here's what somebody else said about it. I got a girlfriend. Here's what somebody else said about it. And they were just literally photoed comments that people had left in the comment section or emails that they sent in. And that combined with the I care about this more was.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I went back and filmed it. And I still have insecurities and this and that. But I did my best effort to make it okay for Tim, for you. And when it was done, the next video that I made, I spoke about it. And I said, at the end of the video, I said, this is the best I can do. This is the greatest thing that I can possibly make for you guys on this topic. And conversions exploded. And every ad read after that had a significantly higher like 2x or more lift in conversions. And we started getting more testimonials. And it was this, if you don't believe in it fully, you're going to sell it with hesitancy. So being able to tell the truth, and the truth was not, this is the greatest thing in the world. This is my absolute best. If you like this blog, this is the best I can offer you. And at this point, the truth is, it's now no longer true.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, have private coaching with J Abraham, and he asks me, who's the person you most want to take your course? I say Tim Ferris or Tony Robbins. And he says, if Tim Ferris found your course and took it right now, how would you feel? I went, I don't want him to. And so he said, that's a problem. I said, well, it's not good enough. He said, make it good enough. So I went back.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rebranding early. Yeah. The course, the building, the course. Here's one. There was between V three and V four, I went to J Abraham. He had a private coaching thing. He's one of these old school business coaches.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eventually, it did need to happen with the company. But there was a period of just like rocket ship growth by letting small problems accrue. There was getting that extra room was really big so that I could film for the video.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, a lot of them we have. So allow me to run through the ones because maybe I'll find something new. So if I really go to critical decisions, there were all of the early ones about this isn't my 10 out of 10, and I'm willing to let it go. That was repeated throughout the business. There was this phase of making videos where I had read essentialism and it became get everything out of my way so that I can do this thing. And that was rocket ship growth. It was like let go awry. Problems are arising. Do not come to me. There's a balance there that I haven't quite figured out because what happens is a lot of little things go wrong, but the net of me making these videos absolutely obliterates and cancels them out. And there comes a compounding bill when you've just hired that person and just let that culture persist and it becomes at some point needs to be addressed, which is what”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things have happened. We've, one, lost the ability to self reference internally our desires, which is exactly in line with what we were talking about. It's all mimetic desire. What do you want that you want that you want that I can't find my own wanting in it? And he talks about how we have become deeply narcissistic, collectively as a society. We see our own reflection and image everywhere. And many people do not have the capacity to genuinely love and encounter another. It's just what my wife says about me, what my kids say about me, that sort of a thing.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Discusses how advertising doesn't just condition you what you want, it conditions how you learn what to want. So as an example, people will watch a Lexus commercial and they'll think, I didn't fall for that. I don't want to buy a Lexus. And his point is, yeah, but you think that that's what a pretty woman looks like, the woman who moves towards the Lexus. And so he's got a couple of maxims which are interesting, which is if you see it, it's for you. Meaning like if you're consuming a piece of advertising and you think it's not impacting you, it's been split test to make it to your eyeballs. And yes, technically there's a chance that you're resisting, but it is teaching you how a watch is a status symbol. And maybe you don't think you need a Petec Philippe, but you learned that this is what money looks like because the background has a bookshelf. And now you think that books are what make people want things. So he talks about how tooth.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't even know if the old website somebody's cataloged them because there's an internet fandom around it. But if I could give you some basic things.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me, he is the secret godfather of bloggers on the internet. Like a lot of the people that you might have liked from crack.com or whatever, he wrote. It was a pseudonym. People think they know who he is. He's likely a psychologist or psychiatrist. And he has incredibly Thought provoking Is very thought provoking in reading it. And at the time, he stopped writing in like 2013 or something.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, damn. And so some of them were, I would have talked to that girl at Whole Foods. And it was, ah, crap. There was one, there was a woman who I dated who I had seen her and I went back and then I did my pillars of self-esteem and I went oh crap and I walked back to Whole Foods and I said I had to talk to you I went home and wrote my sentences and it was If I had more courage, if I had 5% more courage, I would have asked you on a date. And that became a relationship.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Goodness, that Tucker Max message board was a lot of the books that I that was where I found the game and it might have been six pillars self-esteem as well. I think it was through something like that. And I got into, you know, it's like a 1970s psychology personal development book, but it's perennial. What people can expect, there's these exercises that people are discovering the power of, which is sentence completions exercise. So it'll run you through each chapter and talk about how personal responsibility is a critical element of self-esteem or whatever. But then it adds at the end, it's got these sentence stems. If I took 5% more responsibility for myself today blank, and the idea is that you can write or speak just freely, like if I took 5% more responsibility for myself today, I would eat healthy. If I took 5% more responsibility for myself today, I would call my parents and tell them that I love them. Whatever it is that is honest for you in that thing. And if you go through these, usually like the fifth, sixth one, you're just like,”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So good. Now, I haven't read it in maybe seven or eight years, maybe longer, but if you do read it and you're crunched for time, you can skip to the chapters on the pillars. He's got some preparation on what self-esteem is and the history of it. But if you haven't worked on your self-esteem at all, it's the first stop to go to. If you have more experience, you might be more familiar with it.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of letting go of my ego, of the guy who, you know, did it and having the business that is authentic to me. And I have not sorted through it, even in preparation for this conversation. Half of me wants to sit and dial in my story so that I'm perfect and I nail it. And hit that punchline. And the other half of me is like, dude, go and empty. Go in, go in empty.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I'm making monthly payments to him. We agreed we're going to fix some that I would pay over a period of time. I am sole owner, and it's exactly what I want. The business for me always has been the crucible of emotional growth. Like from the moment where, am I going to press publish on this thing to am I going to do private coaching or am I going to move to Brazil? And it's always been the question of can you hold your center in the face of temptation not to? And there's a long period where with my relationship with him, I lost it. I lost my center. And that's not his fault. But God, it's so amazing. I come back and I step into this audience capture moment where like I want to prove myself that I still got it, that I can do it, except I don't want to make the old bangers that I used to. I don't want to like throw fastballs down the middle to the fat part of the bell curve any longer. And so I'm facing continually the challenges.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Contributing to the financial success of the business. So, yeah, it was harrowing. More importantly than the business split was that it was my best friend and we're not that anymore. And so it was going through the ringer. It was Dark Knight of the Soul type challenges. So grateful for it. And it was painful as hell to experience.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was again a question of which it wasn't a game. It was, I just don't feel good about that. And so through that process, we were talking about the future of the business. And what I buy, what he sell, we couldn't find an agreement on who would do what. And I can talk about the negotiation if you want, but we finally settled on I'm going to buy the business all out. I'll pay you for the piece. And you'll have no restrictions. You can make any sort of content that you want on any other channel, but this is going to go, I'm going to take this. I'm going to give you cash. And honestly, it's what both of us wanted. I think the thing that we didn't acknowledge is that we had fundamentally different drives, whereas mine was more creative expression and his was more financial security. And that split, it's very tough. You know, it just doesn't align well, especially when what you said, I did not feel he has a different opinion that we were equally.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of saying this doesn't feel good confronting that, I felt so evil and awful and bad for having that perspective. Like I was being too cruel or too mean, but I had become more grounded in Not saying that you should make videos ever. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do this, but this doesn't work for me. So we just paused literally making videos on the channel for one year.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“brought that possibility. I was like, holy shit, this can happen. Let me bring myself. That was not the result of my conversation with my co-founder. It did not go that way. And knowing that it existed now and then not getting it there made it like, okay, this is no longer working. We need to separate. And so what happened was first it was with the friendship, but secondarily with the business, it was tough for me to come back to to say, I don't want you to make videos anymore for the business. I don't feel that they're aligned with what I want to say. I made videos for, I don't know, the first three-ish years and then got burned out. I was like, will you please step in? And always didn't want to look at the videos. Whatever the money's coming in, I don't want to see. And when I actually had to sit down and literally watch them. And not that there's anything objectively wrong with them, but they weren't aligned with what felt right for me. And I had completely abdicated that responsibility.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, it was pieces. It was first, it was oblique conversations. Like, hey, I'm not feeling, this isn't feeling great. And then seeing what I got back. And then it was more confrontational. And the essential problem was I did not know how to have a boundary and tried to negotiate boundaries endlessly with people that I loved instead of saying, I love you, but like pass this line is not okay with me and I will not comply. It was, well, can't you see why that would be fair for me to have this perspective? So if there was a shift, it was the big thing that happened was over these years I had started to develop a therapeutic relationship with a therapist and a number of friendships where I was being met in ways that I did not think were possible and to not use therapy language. Like I felt that people wanted to hear the ways in which I was upset with them or angry and wanted to repair in ways that actually didn't just paper over the problem but felt good. And when I”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those familial patterns of I'm afraid you won't love me if I say that I'm upset with you. Like I'm afraid that you won't love me if I take what I think is my fair share. I'm afraid that I'll be alone and I hear it in my voice. Like that I still carry that in me. And if you look at the business, charisma on command, even like the how to make Tim like you in a conversation, how to make somebody like there is this founding belief that if I could just communicate clearly enough, do more, say more, be more, that connection would just happen.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It took years and the catalyst was not the business because the sacred center of it for me was never money, it was the friendship. And I was acting out a pattern to try to keep things good with us. And he was doing his half of that pattern to keep things good in the way that we thought to do it, which was let's not address this. And it was on me to address it because I was the one that was beginning to be frustrated, resentful, subtly trying to influence change, encourage, coach, you know, everything other than say this isn't working for me. And how did I do that? It was a multi-year process of facing brick by brick.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But fuck it, I'll give it a try. I go headfirst into this ayahuasca experience with no idea what's coming. And that starts what has now been a seven-year process of completely turning my life upside down and having to face everything that I hadn't looked at, which was, of course, these things in the business, but even more importantly, the patterns of avoidance and people pleasing and seeking that had been birthed in my childhood. And so Abby to touch on all of that. I know it's a broad spanning.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We hire somebody else to cover that up. Turns out years later that we hire somebody who fabricated a bunch of stuff and stole money from the business. And all of it was just from this core pattern of not wanting to face the problem and just wanting to squint at it and say everything's good. The money's coming in. People like it, et cetera. And so what happened was, and again, I was so happy, broke in Brazil, sleeping on the ground, unable to afford food. And then I had the experience, the cliched one of I've made more money than I've ever made. Everybody wants more. They think it's all great. And I feel like shit. I feel awful. And then I have a breakup right before my 30th birthday. And I'm going to collapse some things. We can go into anything. I am invited to an ayahuasca retreat. I have been having these issues that have not surfaced. I don't smoke weed. I don't drink. I'm straight-edged.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and I've been doing it weekly. There was an authentic drive to do it weekly that's then slowly shifted and it became, I don't want to do this. And then it was, I definitely can't do this. And I at the time, so many other things were going on in my life. We can go into it or not, but there was a moment probably in 2018 where I needed to have a conversation with my co-founder that said, hey, I think we're no longer in alignment with this business. Like I've been driving the growth with these videos. Your projects have not succeeded in the same way, not for the sake of money, but for the sake of honesty. We have to have a talk about our 50-50 split. But money was never the drive. The drive was always be with my friends in Brazil. And so I didn't care. But there was a, as my own inability to have sincere, authentic conflict crept in to the business, it cascaded downwards. So I'm avoiding having a difficult conversation with my co-founder.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's so funny. You know this. There's two lines there's the line of when you've created the value, which is like, I created the value sleeping on the couch in Brazil. And then there's the line of when the money starts coming in. And so there's a delay. So you're creating the value and then the money comes in later. But there's also a delay on the backside, which is you stop creating the value, but the money keeps going up. And this is every cash cow business that starts cannibalizing itself and not treating customers well, but is still, when Marvel makes the next sequel to Marvel movie and it does well and they don't realize that they're eating their own future. So I would say the flip for me was 2018 to when it shifted from I personally want to make these videos and I'm excited and I'm learning something in every video to, oh, I've learned what makes them clap. And now I want more claps. I want more clapping. The money was second.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had to step away for years and didn't make videos for years because I believed that I hated making videos. And what I learned was that I hated losing my creative well as I chased approval and views and more.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No Oh goodness, I've wrestled with this endlessly, and I absolutely hit a period where I felt like to a degree I allowed that audience. So at first it was I wanted to make this video. I think what Bill Clinton does with his eyes is so fascinating. I think it's so interesting that Donald Trump is probably going to be president. And like, I love Game of Thrones. And then it was, well, you guys want more Game of Thrones videos? Let me do another Game of Thrones. You know, like, will you guys really like that one? And what you're describing to me is not just a business struggle. It is a legitimate emotional spiritual struggle to be like, do I choose myself in the face of the world offering me all of this temptation to be something else? And there were periods where the answer to that is I compromised. And it's like, you know, I didn't kill anyone or do anything, but I made the video that I didn't really want to make. And it did really well. And then, okay, well, got to make another one. And I burned out.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is not what had traditionally worked with blogs, and maybe blogs will start picking it up from YouTube. But I see that you don't need to do fame jacking in order to succeed in the same way. There's many other avenues in order to do it”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I see is that in short form content there isn't the decision to click, there is only what captures attention. And so there's many things that capture attention. One is Robert Downey Jr., a guy who you know, but another is can you walk up these sticky stairs on Mr. Beast thing or like what it looks like to run with $10,000? So you actually don't have to sell the click on the short form content in the same way. And just the meta people have realized, I think this is what's beautiful about YouTube. There's these incredible titles that are like, I went to every state's Airbnb or I sat in a circle for 36 hours or I gave a homeless man 10K. At the time in YouTube, it was still kind of, there was this sacred cow belief that it had to look like what you titled a blog article. How to do something in seven steps, like, you know, six things, listical blog titles. And I think YouTube has started to really find its own formatting identity, which”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In order to get traction on some of these social media platforms, you need something that hooks people. And you're my face in front of a whitewall ain't it. That's not going to fly for me. So what we found was if I can comment on somebody that is known, Conor McGregor, John Snow from Game of Thrones, how does Tyrian Lannister? What sort of principles is he applying, even though it's a work of fiction? We were able to take a Game of Thrones fan and by the end of it, make them a charismont command fan. And so we were able to start fishing in all of these pools that I was interested, like we were doing breakdowns of the Marvel actors and why their interviews were so fun or like, how come this viral moment where Robert Downey Jr. gets in a TIFF with an interviewer? What can you learn about it? So called that fame jacking, which is basically, look, there's someone else who was famous. You start with them on the thumbnail. You speak to a broad problem how to deal with a rude person. And by the end, they've become not just a Robert Downey Jr. fan, but a Charismon command fan.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. Walk out with a brochure. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Please. We got them on our emails. These are great leads. Call them back. Yes. So that was that. The fame jacking was something that is worth mentioning, which is it's since changed, but.”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Right. Teacher for a semester No, no. Well, the funnel has evolved. I think it's worth saying that there's so many sacred cows of everything, online marketing. This is how you do it. What I've since seen is that these videos without intending to be, they're mini webinars. They're 10 minutes of content. I don't need to take everybody through this multi-step funnel. Here's a small thing. So what we started doing a breakthrough a few years later was just, do you want to buy our $600 course? Here's some testimonials. And so that was a 4X conversion of just being like everyone who's watched our videos has at this point watched 10 of them and they don't need to be drip fed this thing. They need to be offered jab jab jab that Gary Vaynerchuk calls it right hook is like dude we've been jabbing for years at this point like offer them the product don't offer them the email list so that was a huge huge increase to our thing was when I realized oh we've been just giving value consistently we don't need to do the same game that some”
2025-06-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #817: 4-Hour Workweek Success Stories — Charlie Houpert on Building “Charisma on Command” to 10M+ Subscribers, From Charging $10 for Seminars to Making Millions, Living in Brazil, Critical Early Decisions, and The Secret to Freedom · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT