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

“So it's evolved, and I'm going to take you up to present day to answer the question. So, at first, it was hey guys, if you like this, leave a comment, subscribe. I wasn't thinking about it. So subscribers, which was, okay, fine. Then it was, okay, you need a tripwire and the idea in online marketing is that there's this low cost product that you want to get people onto your email list, give them a taste of something, and then they can buy your low-cost product, and then they'll buy your larger product. So we set up this online funnel that was By the way, if you like that video and you want to know how to make a great first impression, here's a free piece of content that's like four minutes long on the basics of how to do it. And you get that content. It's four minutes of how to do it, and then it's one minute of, hey, do you want help implementing this buy a section of this larger Charisma University course? And then when you're in that, at the end of that, okay, so now you know how to make a great first impression. Do you want to know all this other stuff? So it's standard online.”
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. Cumulative videos. Yes. So I'm doing Donald Trump, Conor McGregor, taking Game of Thrones characters. We can talk about fame jacking if you want.”
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. I love watching your work because you so often remind me that there's emotional herpes of like, I don't enjoy this. So I don't want to do it. And so the question of what if this were 10 times enjoyable? What if I had to have fun doing this? Those are always the herpes for me. It's always I don't like this thing. It's okay. What if you were only allowed to do the thing that you liked? It's like, oh, well, then I'd do a lot more of it. And I can see some results. We start making these YouTube videos. I do a big one at the beginning that is in January of maybe 2016. I do a video that says, I think Donald Trump's going to be the president. Here's why. You know, I'm watching his debates. Scott Adams is before me on this, but I'm watching the debates. I see the same thing. That starts to pick up. Other videos are going. I'm analyzing Con McGregor. And I think it was from January or February or March of that year, the business tripled. And then I think it tripled again within like two months.”
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
“Slow and so nobody can go so they realize that if they take Herbie's pack and they redistribute it amongst some of the adults and the kids that can handle it, the whole troop is able to go double time and get to where they need to do and get back on time. So the question is, is there one friction point in your process that makes the thing unfun or miserable? And can you spend whatever money or do whatever you need to do to stop this? So the breakthrough was I hated setting up the camera. And so I didn't do it immediately, but the next place that we got, I said it must have an extra bedroom. I don't care. I will pay for the extra bedroom. I need to be able to leave this camera up. And oh my God, that changed it. It was like being able to walk in, press play, and do it versus 15 minutes of focus. Oh my God, it was terrible. That was a breakthrough.”
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
“He's got one story about Herbie. Stuck with me so long. I'm setting up to do these YouTube videos once a week, and they're tedious, and I don't like doing them, and I don't want to. And I reading essentialism, and he tells a story about a Boy Scout troop that was taking a hike, and they're trying to get to their destination, but they've got one little bit of a pudgy guy named Herbie, and he's having a hard time with his pack, and they're falling behind schedule. So they don't know what to do.”
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
“Any views, but I do one video on YouTube that is me analyzing a Bill Clinton debate, and it was like one of those community debates where he approaches an audience member. And I talked about the power of his eye contact in that video. And I didn't look at it for six months. One day I found that piece of paper. I was like, I should review to see how these things did. And I go to LinkedIn and I've got nobody's followed me. And I go to Twitter, nobody cares. And on YouTube, there's a hundred thousand views and I have like 7,000 subscribers or 3,000, something like on this YouTube channel and I haven't even looked at it. That was mind bending. And I had no call to action. So it had no way to hit me other than I had to like log into the YouTube platform, which I hadn't done. So I think it was 2016. I did a few videos at the end of 2015. But by 2016, I made the commitment that once a week, every week I would release one YouTube video. And the first ones, this was, I'd read essentialism and it 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, and so I had no idea. So I post on LinkedIn. I post on Twitter and I put a video on YouTube. Now, to be fair, I put several videos on one YouTube channel that was me on the beach in Rio with the wind whipping past the lapel mic. And just that didn't.”
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 can afford not Maine City U.S. rent at this point. I can live in Vegas. I can't live in New York. I can't live in LA. That's where we're at. At one point, I think it's when I'm in Columbia. I had a list of like, try LinkedIn, try Twitter. And the third was try YouTube. And I have that piece of paper somewhere. It has a question mark. YouTube, question mark?”
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'm sure there's better options now, but we've kind of got on, and so there's inertia. It's just a WordPress with some plugins. There was a wish list member plugin, which was hot at the time and is, you know, since sort of been depreciated. And so we're rolling off of that. Sam cart is the cart. It was one of the only carts at the time that let you do payment plans. Now it's like everybody will let you do a payment plan. But for our needs, those were the two. So it was a SAM card cart to a WordPress site with a gated content thing that hooked into SAM cart.”
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's because the problems are very similar. Yeah, people have questions about Zoom or texting, but it was built off of core human problems that are durable and addressable. And interestingly, the refund rate has not changed. It hasn't increased. So I'd like to rerecord it again. Yeah. I'd love to do one more rerecording, but same thing. Keep it going. This is how I feel.”
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 mean, numbers over 10 million for sure. So I've re recorded it and I've gotten a little bit better background. And I fixed the sound. And one time I was traveling and so there was a new place every time. So I've re-recorded it four times and I've tried to change pieces that I didn't like. But that structure remains. The sales page remains with minor tweaks. It's not great, but it has been almost 10 years, if not 10 years at this point.”
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 exit Brazil the first time right before the World Cup. Great opportunity to Airbnb the last month of rent, get some money coming in. It was great. And so go back to Pennsylvania because I need a car. That's where I've left my car and plan to drive out to Los Angeles, drive across the country in three days, spend one night in Vegas. That was a lot of fun. Avici played at XS. Let's try it again. Say two nights. Say three nights. Stayed there for 10 months. I don't know, a year. It was good food. It was really fun. We were at the time really enjoying going out. We were able to meet and talk to people and do the whole song and dance. And so we wound up getting off-campus student housing, which is the only place that had like four cheap bedrooms in Vegas for a year outside of UNLV and were in Vegas for that period. So it just stayed.”
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 my $450 a month rent becomes affordable. Right. I don't have to Airbnb in my bed. And at this point, we pop back. We go to Las Vegas. We're flipping when summer hits the northern hemisphere. We go home. When it hits Brazil, we go back to Brazil. And so we're just like chasing summer basically in six to eight month increments. Vegas, Brazil, Vancouver, Brazil, Colombia.”
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
“Start coming into the business while I sleep. So we're selling this course. We're getting one a day or one every other day.”
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
“You always overlook the beginning phases. You overlook the fear. You overlook all of those things. So we focus way more on getting through that. And the course as a result is tailored to where my average audience member is, right? The guys that I wanted to work with that I'd started filtering by calling the company Charisma on command. And I have all these surveys that have language that then become the sales page on the back end. So like, do you want to walk into a room and be the guy that people instantly notice and that they're drawn too magnetically? Like that's phrases that they wrote in their descriptions of what they were asking for and wanted. So on the back end of this, I have my outline. I have my course. I've gone through it. And so now I can go record this thing and offer it on the website. So all of a sudden these blog posts, which had nothing to sell to, have something to sell to. So now like actual money can”
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
“Started it at 800, we lowered it to 600, but it's going to sell for 800 bucks. You can get it for $500. But here's the catch. One, you're going to have to do a one-on-one call with me, right? Which is exactly what they want to do. Two, there's going to be group interaction throughout the whole time. And three, I really want your feedback throughout the course so that I'm building it exactly to be what you want. And so we offer 25 seats like this. And that's the most money. We make $12,500. We sell out. People are stoked. And for us, it's, oh, wow, I was going to make this course. And what I learned now each week, I get on a call. I talk to several people one-on-one, and I develop the content that I then send to them and they give their questions. And it's this iterative, interactive thing over six weeks. And they, with their questions, completely reshaped the course I thought I was going to make. I thought I was going to make a course about all these advanced tips and tricks. And of course, if you've done something for a while,”
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
“Categorize them and you put them into radio buttons ranking things in one of those survey monkeys, whatever you want. Say, hey guys, thank you so much for writing in. I think I have the top things. If you would just vote on which one you most want me to actually make the free piece on, that would help me to decide which piece to make for you. So then I get back, and the first thing it was how to make an amazing first impression, how to feel unshakably confident, how to have a conversation that flows effortlessly, how to tell great stories, how to have body language that's magnetic, and how to be a good leader. And in that order is what they ranked them, you know, number one, first impression. Number two, confidence. So I get this. And they just gave me the outline of my course in addition to all of the specific phrases, questions, things that, well, need to be answered. So I say, hey guys, I'm making a course. It's going to cover these things. First impressions, how to be unshakably confident, effortless, you know, all this stuff. It's going to sell for eventually, I think 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
“So each stage is important. So I'm dialing it in until I get bored of like, okay, this is what works. This is what creates transformation. But now my role is just robotic at this point. It's not as dynamic as I'd like it to be. So given that I can do it once and be done, maybe I should just make an online course. Thank God for this pre-selling thing though, because it runs you through this process. This time I've been posting on the blog. I think we have 5,000 people on the email list. follow this template, which is something like, hey, Guys, I was about to go into a cave and make this online course. And I remembered that that's stupid because I'm making it for you. So before I sit down to record it, I just want to know what is the biggest problem you're facing related to charisma if you reply to me, I'm going to make the whole course, but I'm going to make a piece of it for free that I'm just going to give everyone who replies. So they come in, they give me all their answers. Step two, you take all of those things, you buck them.”
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 what happens is we get this course from Clay Collins and it's about pre-selling an online course. And at the point, I've done so much coaching that I'm actually getting tired of saying the same types of things over and over again now. Now it's just happening via Skype at the time. Time you got to”
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'm living it. This is the beautiful thing. As I was reflecting, it was really wonderful thank you for having me. It was such a cool opportunity to reflect on this. And I was like, I had it. That was it. I was broke and I was living it. And I got a tattoo right before this. It's a paraphrase. It's right here. I don't need to flash the audience, but it's a paraphrase of Thucydides that is the secret to freedom is courage. And he also says the secret to happiness is freedom. It's a paraphrase, essentially, of, I think, a quote in the Peloponnesian War. I was so happy, so broke, so unable to feed myself. And I have tried to remind myself of that is the secret. It's just like when you step into it and you're living it, nothing more needed to happen. I would have liked the business to do well and it eventually did, but I was there. So at this time, I'm getting everything that I want in a degree, but also I'm running out of money and I'm planning airline points to get back home.”
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, I'm in the servants' quarters. At this point, I contact the HR lady at my old company. I go, hey, we had a 401k, right? She's like, yeah. I was like, can you drain that for me? She's like, that's going to come with a penalty. I was like, don't worry, I have no income. Like, my taxes won't be too much. I'll just pay the penalty. So I hit zero, and then I get a little infusion of cash, and I'm about to hit zero again. Like, I'm going to broke. I am Airbeing being my bedroom, sleeping on a horrible couch. I am teaching SAT tutoring to Brazilian high schoolers. Like I'm still doing the mitigation strategies in order to make things work.”
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
“Just with the rebrand, and we took the long hair down a little bit and made it a little bit, okay, here we are, but we put on like a t-shirt instead of a...”
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
“This is at this point. I forget exactly where we are, but there's just more interest. People are commenting, like every metric of engagement is up. And the type of person.”
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've got alliteration, charisma. The thing that they want is they want to walk into a room and feel like they do with their best friends. They want to feel comfortable, calm, collected. Like they want to just be able to turn it on. And so we're brainstorming in charisma on command comes in. Switch the name of the blog, screw up the redirect so we lose all of our Google Jews, whatever. But very quickly, conversions just nothing has changed and we start converting way better as a result of 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
“Oh yeah. And he's got this line that the name of your company is the most important marketing decision you will ever make. And I realize that when I say Kick As Academy to people, they think it's a dojo where you're going to learn how to fight. And so through this process, Ebon also says, you want an alliteration that sticks in the head.”
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
“They didn't really want it to be public that they were learning this kind of a thing. And so we talked to them. We're like, you like us, but you don't want anyone to know what's going on. And we learned that, yeah, you know, I do want to get better in my relationships and learn how to talk to women, but I don't want to broadcast it that way, essentially. And I also care about work and I also care about friendships. And so we did a bunch of interviews and I started tracking like what word are you comfortable with? Like what's the 10 out of 10 word that you're down for? And I had a long list. It was lifestyle, design, confidence, and charisma came back as like a nine or a 9.5 out of 10. And so I'm going through this marketing course, Ebon Pagan's marketing step by step, Oldie but a Grady. Excellent.”
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 so said I had no money. I was like, okay, 200 bucks. Let's get this done in whatever, eight minutes, 12 minutes. So call him up, say, hey, can you help? We're having trouble getting customers. Can you take a look at our business? What do you recommend? And he goes and he goes on to her homepage. It's called kickassacademy.com. It's me and my co-founder. He's got hair down to his shoulders and he's wearing like a pink tank top. And I've got a neon green pink top and, you know, frizzy hair. And he says, you guys look like douchebags. No one over the age of 26 is going to want to associate with this. It was so true. It wasn't packaged in a very digestible way. But in time, as I started to get other points of feedback, I was able to integrate that. And there was a transition from, oh, wow, what I realized is all the guys who had come with me, they were like, one of them was the captain of the Princeton football team when he was at Princeton. Like these were successful, cool dudes. But they all had this thing where it's 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
“Yeah, never boring. So at the time, there's this program, I think it was called Clarity or something, whereas you could pay people per minute for advice and they would get on the phone with you and I don't know what Tucker was 15 or 22 per minute or something like that. I don't remember exactly.”
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 now all my income is gone because it was all the thing and then it was in person coaching. One or two people agree to switch to online coaching, but it's not enough. And so for a period, the blog becomes online coaching, which is actually nicer because now instead of just going to a bar and speaking about, did you talk to the girl, what to say, it's people that are calling in with questions about workplace scenarios. And so I'm speaking to guys older than me using Tony Robbins' principles essentially to answer questions about experiences that I've only barely had, but it's helpful because it's this Tony Robbins transformation process that I'm helping with and using. So that becomes a thing. And after months of doing in-person coaching, and there's a whole learning the sales process and being able to ask for money, these are all intermediate steps that had to happen. I'll tell you a story about Tucker Max in here 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 it was a really encouraging growth. If you tried and failed, it was high fives all around for that year was just amazing. She didn't want to talk to you. So cool. Like, welcome back into the fold. You are welcome here. So we're.”
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 get there. Nobody speaks Portuguese. I speak Spanish, and I'm negotiating rent looking for a four bedroom where I can take, they have maids quarters in a lot of these places. So I have the tiny room because that's what I can afford. But anyway, we settle into a life in Brazil. And my Spanish is converting to Portuguese as quickly as I can. And we are living it. We're there. It is the thing. We are going to the beach, throwing the American football, making friends. We've got a whiteboard every day. There's four questions. Did you do the social stretch that you wanted to do, whether that's make a friend, speak to a woman you're attracted to, be kinder to the guy who serves you asai, whatever it is. There was a social stretch. Did you do your business stretch? Did you do your health stretch? And there was one more thing, which is like, did you do your own personal thing? For some people, it was reach out to a family member. For some people, it was learn the guitar. So it was like four things. We had this running whiteboard of who had done.”
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, you know, had that romantic experience of I showed up feeling empty and then I walked away with abundance and feeling wonderful.”
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
“One, it's got great PR. Tad never been it. There's just this sense that Rio is this romantic, beautiful beach city vibe And when my company let me go from that contractor role, I immediately said, okay, what's the upside of this? So I booked a flight to Brazil and met a friend who was traveling. And I spent five weeks in Floripa and one week in Rio. And in that week in Rio, my friend had gone home. I was alone. And it was these experiences of being alone in a hostel, not knowing anybody, that uncomfortable feeling of like, I want to go home. I want my friends. I want my thus, whatever. But stepped outside of myself, went to a co-working space, met a guy. He invited me to stay with him. And I had one of those travel magical adventures that culminated in meeting a beautiful Brazilian girl and having this fling that lasted a few days. And she came and visited.”
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 think you know the experience. It's not a great model. It's really challenging high intensity. It doesn't create the level of transformation with reliability that you might hope. And people walk away feeling sometimes very stressed about it. And so it was, okay, I don't know what it is, but I said Brazil with my friends, et cetera. So again, I'm evangelical. I'm telling everybody I meet, have you read the Gospel of Tim? Like this book, The Four Hour Work Week. You need to do it. Everyone's an entrepreneur. That was a mistake in learning it's not for everybody. I got that in time. So I'm telling everybody and what happens is one of the guys that attended that first class becomes a friend. It's probably the most magnetic period of my life where I'm just talking about this ambition. And what happens is not just my co-founder and I, but six people, many of whom I'd met in the last two months, quit their jobs, quit their schools, and agree they were going to move to Brazil in August of 2013.”
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 a per hour rate. And in person, in a place that isn't the most fun with guys that are having a challenging time, you know, 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
“Yes. And so as we'd sat there and written in detail, the 10 out of 10 upside. It was never, you have a dating coaching business that is stressful in New York City. It was you get to live on the beach with your friends, do work that you like when you like. There was this idea, which was silly, that you would have a laptop as you sat on the beach. That's ridiculous. It's like a photo op, but it's not a good way to work. But I had that idea. I would drink kaipirinias and I'd do it in Rio. That was like the romantic vision And so again, I found myself having this thing that was working that wasn't the 10 out of 10 upside.”
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 that was tough. That's a gig where like you're going out with a Fearful experience of his life, and he's paid you to encourage him and support him in facing that fear, which is I'm going to go speak to that woman that I'm attracted to at the bar in the park wherever. It's not fun to push someone to do something that they're really, they say they want to do, but they're really grappling with. And then you go out and you show them. It could look like this. It could look like that. So we did that for a while and we're charging, I don't know, $100 an hour as we did. But again, something else that crept in, same thing with the parkour, was this wasn't the dream. When I'd sat down and I'd done the fear setting, there's another piece of it, which is you write the 10 out of 10 upside.”
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
“Sell the remaining five seats for five or ten bucks. I think I might have sold them for $10 each. And like an hour before the class, we sold the last one. So we had 10 people in this class made $50, lost 60 plus CAP fare, down 15 bucks, whatever, go in and give an hour and a half presentation with a PowerPoint on, you know, this is what to wear, say, do, stand. Here's how to deal with the fear that's going to come up. If she rejects you, here's how to address that feeling, all of that sort of stuff. It was just thrilling to do it. But afterwards, four of the 10 people stayed after and were like, do you do coaching? Do you guys do this? And the answer was, now we do, right? Funny you should have. Yeah, funny you should ask. So really had no intention of, you know, there was not a business idea of there to be an upsell, but there was enough asking. So then it evolved into, oh, now we're doing traditional, what was around at the time dating.”
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 wrote a little short pamphlet book, but the real thing that actually started, I think early, you might even know, I think you probably know him, I hired Neville Medora for like a day of copywriting to help me design the website and wound up with the first actionable real thing that I did was, okay, I've got people that read my blog. There's like, you know, 30 recurring viewers. And I want to host an in-person class that will talk about how to talk to a woman in the park in New York City, which is something that I'm doing with my friend going out. We're breaking it down. And how did it go and all that kind of stuff. So we rent out a room in one of these office buildings for like 60 bucks for an hour, an hour and a half or something like that. I go to the New York City subreddit. I give away five tickets. They are sold. People sold. People accept them, right? They accept the five free seats. And then 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
“I'm going to be seen is the emotional thing that I think for me has been the challenge endlessly in entrepreneurship, the way that I've chosen to do it. So we got that post out and then nobody, of course, read it. And then the next step was, okay, I'm going to promote this. I'm going to go to Reddit. I'm going to go to the forums that are most related. Every man should know there was a seduction subreddit. There was a New York City related subreddit. And I started posting my own things. And now comments start coming in. And so it's thank you. I like this or don't promote your own stuff here. Or, you know, now I'm actually dealing with feedback. But the next stage was posting, posting.”
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, it might have been a how-to. It might have been a declaration of one of my feelings when I was quitting the job. And like, this isn't what I want. It was not profound, but it was personal and tender to me. So it was very tough to receive criticism.”
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 I haven't shared any posts, and I remember being in this tiny apartment with my hand hovering over publish. And I publish it on this blog post and I have to run out of the apartment and go down the street and, you know, just get away from the computer that, I don't know, houses the blog post now that is on the internet. And of course, I come back and nobody's read it. And a month later, nobody's read 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
“It's Kickass Academy.com, and we are here to live a kick ass life, and no one can stop us. We will not be average. It's a 23-year-old manifesto about how all the people don't know how to do it, and I do, right? And I know the way to do it. It's a regurgitated four-hour work week plus my own iteration of the game thing. So I write my blog post.”
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
“Doing all of that, but as things got more and more dire, and I'm going through my fear setting mitigation strategies, I am confronted with the fears that I have not written down, which is, okay, it's time to put your writing out there. So, okay. God, it's so funny. One of the big mistakes that I've made with people that I love is I've tried to prevent and hide from them and support them and not having to confront those horrible, harrowing entrepreneurial moments of, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh fuck, this isn't working because it is in those moments of tension and pressure that something pops and you go, fine, I'll be honest and share what's on my heart because up until then, you're not going to do it or obviously going 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
“Yeah. Airbnb, my own bed. Sign up for a ton of credit cards to get the credit card miles and then convert to cash. I did a lot of things for 50, 60 bucks. Get a job at Chipotle so that you can eat the food that you're there and that takes care of food and money. So I had a lot of these and I ran through quite a few. I zeroed out my 401k and IRA and took the penalty at one point a little bit later down the line.”
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 and others. It was, I mean, I had play guitar and ask for dollars. That was farther down the list. It was learn how to make a basic drink and bartend, Airbnb, the bedroom. These were all, I had a list of 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
“No, no, I'm sleeping literally on a blow up mattress to save money. I'm eating Chipotle and learning how to persuade them to give me more scoops in order to save money. I'm frugal beyond frugal at this point in my life. Start air being... And in the meantime, the beautiful thing is that everything that was taken from me pushes me to the next level of putting myself out there. So I had had all of these writings that I'd been doing in D.C. about what I believed and what I thought and what I was learning about speaking with women and people, but I was too afraid to really share them.”
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 well written. And to a 23 year old guy who has been socially restrained, and I won the award for most likely to break out of a shell in college, which is like, you're the shyest boy in our 500-person class. Congratulations to learn that there was something that I could say or do that would change the receptivity that I got from people. That was so powerful to see in the game. So those two books for our workweek game are like really deeply influencing me. I start sharing some of these blog posts. Well, actually, first, what happens is the government shuts down and that sweet contractor gig that I have disappears overnight. So I had like four-ish months of like gravy and where I've been saving twice as much. And then that happens.”
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 go to New York and I am splitting time now between what is this new business, which is called Kick Ass Academy. And this is my brilliant idea. I think we're going to do, it's an academy, an online academy where you learn how to live a kick-ass life. And it's about going out. And it's heavily game influenced at this point. I've read Neil Strauss's game.”
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
“Came up with that solution. I didn't suggest it, which was powerful. And I've seen that same sort of dynamic play out many times in my life.”
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