YouSaid · the spoken record

Charlie Houpert

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119
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2025-06-25
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2025-06-25
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  1. “Step one was to get clear that it was happening and I wasn't there to make him do anything. I wasn't trying to convince him to force it. So I was able to really come in with the mentality of I want to show love to you. I want to support you guys and take care of you and I'm willing to be flexible and I can stay another two weeks. But this is happening. So it was making sure that first and foremost, I wasn't asking him to meet a need of mine. I'm going to meet my needs. How can we work together? Then it was literally rehearsing it. I ran through the conversation. This was not an outcome that I had ever planned. I thought it was like, yes, I'd be willing to stay on for three more weeks and then come down and do touch points here and there. And I'm happy to get on the phone and talk to the person you have replacing me. But I really think it was the pre-established relationship that we had plus me taking care of my needs and then saying, what is best for you? Like I genuinely within these bounds, I want to do what's best for you. And he...”

    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

  2. “Oh, it's magical, and it was this showing up with hey, I love you, but here's what I have to do. And I'm open to something that works for both of us, was really powerful.”

    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

  3. “And we sat there, and he's like, you know what? Let's work something out. So he winds up saying, instead of being an analyst, let's make you a contractor. Except if you're a contractor, the base rate that we pay contractors is twice as much as we pay analysts. So we'd have to give you basically like a 90% raise in order to do it, but you'd have no job security and no healthcare. Month to month you could get fired. So I'm like, wait a second, I get to go to New York, double my pay, and no health care. This is incredible. So it worked out really well. And I wound up keeping that job working remotely from New York and making one trip every two weeks for a few months as I did 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

  4. “So I sat down and I said, Hey, you guys have been really good to me. I appreciate it. I just cannot be in DC any longer. I feel socially like I'm missing something. I want to be with my friends in New York. But I want to transition in a way that is really good for you to repay the kindness that you guys have showed me, which was 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

  5. “So there was a transition of my best friend and co-founder was in New York. He was an investment banker. I was in DC. I was a consultant. We would talk every day after work for an hour about the interactions we had. And I was just aching. Like I didn't have other friends in D.C. So I went to this president who I had been close to. And there was this moment where I was trying to get the side gig and trying to get a job in New York. And I went to Skillshare and they didn't want to hire me. And I went to all these companies. They wouldn't hire me. I was taking weekend trips. And eventually my friend was like, why don't you just quit and go to New York and figure it out there? So having settled with that and done the fear setting exercises and what's the worst thing that can happen, I came in and I made a pitch to my president, which was, it's, I mean, a lot of four-hour work week things, which is once it's already done, people get out of your way. So I was internally, I was like, this is done. We're not talking about if I'm going to New York.”

    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

  6. “Was an integral step. I very much agree with you. I needed the experience of disliking consulting. And then the experience of disliking my sidegig to go, okay, the next side gig has to be something that I would do for free or am paying to do. And so then it was, okay, what am I spending money on? It's like, well, I go out to these bars and not to drink, to like talk to women and try to get them to like me and to make friends. And I put way more time, effort, attention into studying how our interaction went. I can't tell you how many times I chatted with my best friend about like, what if I said this? What if we were putting far too much energy relative to others into understanding people and how to connect better?”

    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

  7. “Correct if we'd made the advanced course, or do you want personal coaching or something? And I was completely deflated. I was like, I can't do 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

  8. “I was a little bit outside of myself and thinking what do other people want. I hadn't gotten to the scratch your own itch experience. And what I experienced was that, oh wow, we're actually selling enough DVDs to break even on AdWords and even a little bit of profit, which means if we did a follow-up, we'd be totally in the black.”

    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

  9. “Yes. So the idea was, oh, wow, there's no parkour gyms. If there are, they're expensive. Maybe people would want to learn this. I would want to take a class. And so went out, hired a guy that had done it, had never shot anything before. I mean, there's so many funny little stories. He chips his tooth the day before the shoot, so he's got this lisp before the shoot, and he can't remember more than a line. So we're saying lines to him as he's trying to teach parkour chopping that footage up into 35 or 40 minutes of like how to do a wall run, how to do a kong, how to do all these things, and made a DVD out of it from Trepsar. So the other things, I mean, I can't remember what was on there, but it was very much...”

    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

  10. “Was I did the little Venn diagram of what do I want that other people might be interested in? I just wrote all of my interests. I hadn't done parkour, but I liked Casino Royale. That was my level of exposure to parkour.”

    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

  11. “A service that you'd listed in the four hour work week to try to do it. Was trying to get that off the ground, you know, selling it through Google AdWords, very step by step for our work week. Like it could have been a chapter had it worked. And it was starting to go, but it wasn't something I loved. And I was struggling with it because my co-founder and best friend was in New York. I was in Washington, D.C.”

    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

  12. “After sort of sneaking out as early as I could, and I would write in just my own little journal about like, this is not what I want, I don't want this life. I don't want to be the guy who is my boss or the guy who is his boss. And so it was in this period of time that I was noticing and experimenting with coming out of my shell at the same time. So I was able to make friends with not just my boss or his boss, but like I got close with the president of the company. And it was through just talking about the bars and clubs I was going to at Saturdays. And he was vicariously, you know, we'd meet Monday morning, be like, so what'd you get into this weekend? And we had a little report there of, you know, I remember the good old days type of a thing. And so had that job wasn't right, had our fruitful encounter, which didn't wind up selling anything. And at the time, I was, my first business was at parkour training DVD. I think I even used.”

    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

  13. “Every day it felt like a self-betrayal, so I read the four-hour work week when I was in grad school. And I was in grad school because I was a philosophy major as an undergrad and graduated in 2009, where not only were they not hiring philosophy majors, they weren't hiring anybody. So hit out in business school for a year, wound up as a consultant because that's what you do when you don't know what you're supposed to do with your life. Every day putting on that suit felt like a betrayal of myself, especially having read the four-hour work week at that point. And so there were these minor rebellions that I would stage. Like I had a faux and I wouldn't cut it. And I would put it down. There were these subtle passive aggressive. I let my shoes fall apart. I had my business shoes, but I wouldn't get new ones. They were like ratty and crappy.”

    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

  14. “The idea that maybe there was something that could have been said to create that connection was the inception seed that just kept spinning in my internal safe for the next 10 years.”

    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

  15. “You were by yourself, it was offered up on a silver platter. No, not to say, you know, I reflect. It's like, you're in town for one 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

  16. “But for me, it was a number of things. It was like, man, I wish that I was able to have that conversation in a way that created more connection between he and I. And it was also, it's funny to be sitting here now because at the time I had this projected belief that if you would just feature my business in the muse, if you would just write about it on your blog, everything would be solved. Units would start flying off the shelf. And I'd be taken care of forever. So it's really cool to be sitting here on the other side of that projection and gets a chat.”

    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

  17. “Came back and it didn't have an ask. This is an interesting learning for me. And it was just like, do you want to get coffee tomorrow? I don't even drink coffee. You're like, sorry, I'm in town. I'm just doing the four-hour body. I've got some meetings tomorrow, so I can't do it. And politely excuse yourself.”

    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

  18. “And I just said, you know, hey, Tim, Mr. Tim, I don't read your book and it's changed my life. This is even before it really changed my life. And I love your blog. And it's just, it was so great. You turned and faced me and were very kind. You gave me far more attention than I had anticipated that I would get and asked some questions about what I was doing. And at the time, I was like, fuck, I haven't actually made anything happen. So it's like, you know, I'm working on this, that, and the other 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

  19. “Was a much larger moment in my life than in yours, I think. This is 2011, 2012. I'm working as a management consultant in Washington, D.C. And I have been a four-hour workweek acolyte for probably six months, like evangelical. Everyone needs to read this book. We're all entrepreneurs. I've sold nothing at this point. I've got no product, but everybody has to do this. I'm out to dinner with my company. We've just completed this contract. And sitting there facing the door, and Tim Ferris walks in and the blood drains from my body. I go cold. I'm working on being more gregarious. My boss sees, he goes, what's wrong? It's Tim Ferris. Tim Ferris is here. Boogeyman walked in. I've told him, and he goes, the four hour guys, it's him. Yeah, it's him. So I, you know, excuse myself to go to the bathroom, walked over to your table.”

    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