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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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One of the most talked about topics on the show is networking and relationship development.
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It s kind of the face and the function of the whole show.
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And it s what we teach in our live programs at The Art of Charm.
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And it s, number one with a bullet, the highest leverage point that any of us have had here at The Art of Charm in business and in our lives.
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And if you ve been listening to the show for a while,
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You ve also heard most of our guests talk about how that s the same for them from their success, regardless of what industry they re in.
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It s all been about relationships.
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So we wanted to bring on both AJ and Gavin Masters, an expert here at the Art of Charm that you probably haven t heard from yet.
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He writes a lot on the blog, but doesn t talk a lot on the show.
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So I wanted to bring you in, Gavin.
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Thanks for showing up.
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Happy to be here.
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Thanks for having me.
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You know, pride you up here to studio all the way from Los Angeles.
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And AJ s on as well.
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How s it going?
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Excellent, and Jason s behind the scenes telling me to stop talking so fast and stop yelling into the microphone, and that s his job.
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So I think that a great place to start with this is actually how we met Gavin, AJ, because that in itself is kind of a perfect example of this stuff in action on everyone s part.
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You know, curated networking event, how one of us approached whoever it was, I don t even remember,
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So AJ, you want to start us off with the story of how we met Gavin at Summit?
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Absolutely.
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I think one of my favorite parts of the story is that weekend it was pretty much a networking conference and they had a lot of breakout rooms with sort of forced networking games and a lot of like trying to force the connection.
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Yeah.
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And out of that weekend, I would say we probably walked away with like three or four really close friends.
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And Gavin is one of them.
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And meeting Gavin happened outside of all of those little games and that forced networking.
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So I think that s the ironic part about our meeting is that, yes, we met at a networking event, but it was pretty much after hours when everyone was just with their guard down, chilling and having a good time.
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Yeah, it s so funny, right?
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When we talk about networking,
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The thing that keeps coming up is like any event that has the word networking in it is usually not the greatest place to meet people because there always seems to be that ulterior motive, right?
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But in that particular context, I think there was just nothing other than our desire to get to know each other that was driving it.
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And that s what stands out in my mind.
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And I think get a little drunk in the process.
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It doesn t hurt.
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After a long day of listening to talks and meeting bunches of people.
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But then that s where it started.
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I think where the magic happens is when we actually got to know each other, which I think is where, you know, relationships get interesting after that first conversation or that first meeting.
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It s really about both people investing in the relationship for very organic reasons that make them interesting, that make them deep.
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And that s what happened with us.
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Yeah, I mean, obviously, we walked away with a suitcase full of business cards.
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I know Jordan and I were kind of laughing on the plane ride home, like, how could we possibly keep up with all these people?
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And it s that meaningful first step, right?
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It s who actually connects after the first step after the meetup, the follow up, that leads to the real connection.
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And I think a lot of people fail in that they re very good at collecting business cards, collecting, you know, numbers.
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but they re not good at collecting connections.
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And this might be a Los Angeles thing.
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This might be an L.A.
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specific thing, but I have a feeling this kind of shows up in all sorts of different contexts.
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There was one moment, Jordan, when you and I met up for dinner for the first time, I think a day or two before I d sent you a text being like, hey, man, are we still on for dinner?
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Are we still going to grab whatever it was that we re going to do?
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And you were like.
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when you showed up to dinner, you were like, you know, I was surprised when you sent me a text, because everybody I met in L.A.
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so far has been super flaky.
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Right, like, oh, this is actually happening, and the reason you sent that text is because you could have showed up and I would have been like, oh, sorry, bro, I m at yoga, or whatever.
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Totally spaced, didn t make it on my calendar.
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Totally spaced, oh, traffic, I m leaving now.
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Meanwhile, I m like, getting in the shower.
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That s very L.A.
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But I will say, in terms of follow-up,
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It s not just, hey, how did you follow up?
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I got your business card.
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The roots have to go around it, because if you just get business cards, and people do this all the time at events, they ll get my card or something like that, and then they ll send me a follow-up email, but I m like, who is this guy again?
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I don t know who this person is.
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Ah, we re not really, this isn t gonna happen.
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And I think that that s important because the groundwork for the follow-up has to happen in real life at the actual event.
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So collecting business cards, you can t just
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sort of salvage or create a relationship out of whole cloth just because that person gave you contact info.
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That s something that a lot of people do wrong when it comes to relationship development is they think, well, I can always follow up later where there s infinite time, so right now I need to focus on meeting as many people as possible, but I d love to focus more on like the quality versus quantity type thing, and especially getting to that early on.
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Well, that gets into the transactional quality of a lot of networking these days.
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And tell me if you guys agree, but I feel like the more networking as a concept gets into popular culture, like every time you go on business insider, there s a headline about networking or every single blog you visit has some content around networking.
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It seems that everybody s like so much more focused on the mechanics of it.
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Like where do I meet them?
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How do I do it?
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What do I say?
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What do I follow up with?
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What are the templates?
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Instead of just remembering that there are two people in that exchange, which is the most interesting part of when I think back on the moment we met.
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Yeah, they re trying to figure out what app to use to network.
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Meanwhile, they can t start a conversation, and when they do, it doesn t go anywhere.
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We back this up to the point where people are going, well, what events do I even go to?
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And we talk about this a lot in the social capital product, but I d love to give away some of this for free just so people get a taste of kind of how we network AOC style in the company and what we actually practice as opposed to outside experts and opinions.
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So what s the first thing we do?
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We re obviously looking for the type of event that we re going to, where we see a lot of folks and where we see a lot of emails coming from listeners is where do I meet people?
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I ve been going to, you know, meetup.com events for two years, or I ve been going to the local chamber of commerce to meet other business owners.
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And it s not the worst thing, but it s, it s far from ideal.
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It s, it s basically one step up from staying in your house and tweeting at people.
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Well, I think what you re getting at is that when you think of networking as either an activity to do or a thing on your to do list,
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Or like a thing you need to carve out time to go do, like go to a networking event, go to the chamber of commerce or whatever, as opposed to making networking, just this reflexive ongoing, like layer to your life where you might meet somebody interesting at line at Dwayne Reed or CVS just as easily as you might meet somebody.
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Probably even more likely if you see someone cool in a random opportunity than you would at like an explicit networking event.
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And I think a lot of what we talk about here at AOC and what we ve been promoting and pushing a lot on the blog is this idea that you can.
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build networking into your life where it doesn t feel like a thing to do.
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it feels like a way of relating to the world, and if you do, then you can find interesting people anywhere.
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It s exactly that.
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It s not a system, it s a lifestyle.
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You have to work it in as something that is cultivated just like your personality, and stop looking at one event or one-off events as your goal to networking and making it something that s a task.
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As you said, instead, anyone, any opportunity that you have to meet someone becomes another gate to open in your network.
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And I think to capitalize on those moments, you have to be willing to look at people as an opportunity to find something interesting.
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Like, there isn t that agenda from the moment you start talking to somebody that can constrain, like, the reasons you would want to get to know them.
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If you talk to somebody about, like, you know, I don t know, the candy bar in their hand, then you might open up a window into some accidental conversation that s so much more interesting than whatever you would impose on that person if you were like, hey, that s somebody I should network with.
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Right.
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So it has to be a little bit more
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kind of organic, but also basically a set of habits, and something that you don t set out to do as a task.
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But the problem that I would have with it, I think, originally, if I was just learning this stuff fresh, I would say, well, great, how do I build those habits without structuring a time to actually do it sort of consciously, right?
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It s this weird paradox, like, do it naturally, do it as a way of being, and you re like, great, how do I start being a different way?
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Doesn t that require something manual in the beginning?
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Where do I begin?
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It s basically being curious.
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It s opening yourself up and being curious to the people that you re interacting with so that you pull out their value.
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You can identify their value very readily.
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I mean, everyone s favorite conversation is themselves.
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So if you re curious with everyone you meet and ask questions that allow them to open up to you, you can very quickly understand where this person derives their value and then you can look for ways to add to their life.
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And in social capital, we kind of outline this very specifically, what you can do to find out what people are needing, how you can quote-unquote give value, which is really, really vague when you say just give value, because people are thinking, I don t have any money and I don t have any good connections, what am I gonna do for somebody who s higher than me on the totem pole?
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Where does that value come from?
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And I don t wanna just tease social capital,
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So where does that value come from?
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What if I m 30 and I ve just been working in an office for my whole life?
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What can I possibly do to help a thought leader?
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What can I possibly do for somebody 10 years my senior in my company?
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because I think that example has a bunch of assumptions that most people think of when they think of networking.
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They imagine this case of like, I ve met this important person or I want to reach this important person.
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Suddenly I m struggling to figure out what it is that I have to provide to them.
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And that s not always the case.
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In fact, I d say most interesting networking happens in and around your level, where you are.
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It could be your friends, could be your friends who have never thought consciously about networking, or it could be the guy who sits around the corner from you in the office or your neighbor, or like we said, the stranger you meet.
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at Duane Reade.
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So the fictional example of having to supply some crazy immense value for some super important person will definitely come up, but it doesn t necessarily have to be the first step in building your network.
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The much easier thing to do and the much more fun thing to do is just start to think about the easy, small, practical ways that you can turn around and help somebody.
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and help them not in the sense of like, I m gonna give you this so that I can get that later on, which of course is one of the most tempting pitfalls of early networking and to be honest, kind of advanced networking as well, where you get that agenda and that transactional kind of networking where it s like, I m aware that I m introducing you to this person and in six months when I need to get an intro to that venture capitalist, you better be there.
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That s the kind of inauthentic networking that we are so not about and that we re really teaching
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to replace with a more organic kind of networking, which is about investing simply, like AJ said, because you re curious about other people, you want to see them succeed.
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And I think that s a mindset that if you cultivate, it becomes suddenly so much easier, because you re there to help people to see them grow.
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And then who knows how that s going to come back around, but it will.
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And the value that you re giving them does not have to be immense, right?
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If you take the example of a thought leader, if you happen to come across an article that s really interesting in his field of study or his area of interest, and you pass it along over email, I m sure you get a lot of articles on a daily basis.
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But this one was really interesting to me, I figured you would enjoy it.
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Such a good example, right?
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Because I think we read things every single day that are interesting in some small way.
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And if you take that extra second to just imagine like, who else would be interested in that?
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Who else could benefit from that?
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You re not just passing along that piece of information, which is super valuable, but you re almost allowing somebody else to like outsource the job of researching and learning to you.
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And that is a form of value.
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All right, back to the toolbox.
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one sort of hack that works on me, I should say, is when people find out something that I like, which is not hard, I mean, they listen to the show, it s really easy, but the friends of mine will send me something like, hey, I found a photo montage of North Korea, I don t know if you ve seen it already, and I m like, ah, because of course I get stuff like, psychology says that people who stand up straight look more beautiful, or I m like, yeah, okay, this is a good article, I appreciate it,
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85,000 people are sending me that article that day from Psychology Today.
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You know who sent me the North Korea photo montage?
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One person.
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And I actually looked at it, because it s a photo montage, it took me 10 minutes, I ve seen most of the photos already, but there s always one or two where I m like, oh cool, my friend took these.
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You know I might know the people because that s a small community so you can find out something about somebody that s not just like oh you re the security contractor for Apple.
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Well let me send you a bunch of security stuff that s their job but if you know they like racquetball because you linkedin stalked him or some or you found them on Facebook or you met them at another event and you talked about that.
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instead of work, now you ve got this sort of different angle, which they re actually more interested in in the moment because they re sitting in an office going, oh man, I can t wait till I get out of here and play some racquetball, and there you are.
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And they re more interested in that also because you ve chosen to look at them as like a whole person.
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A whole person, yeah.
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as opposed to like this narrow thing that they do for eight or ten hours a day, which might be important to them, but it isn t the full story.
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Like this guy might respond more emotionally to you sending him tips on racquetball strategy or, you know, travel recommendations for his Costa Rica trip, as opposed to like sending him yet another industry report.
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Yeah, it s really, because let s be honest, if people are sending you that, if you send me an article and 15 other people send it to me, I might read it, but if you go, hey, I m that guy that sent you that one article, I m like, oh yeah, a lot of people sent me that.
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And it doesn t really set you apart.
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It doesn t do what it needs to do, which we call priming, which is get you remembering who we are, and then later on, if you follow up, we remember the transaction, we remember the conversation, we remember
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Who you are as a person and then of course later on if you need something then it s always kind of there and and priming takes on different functions.
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There s a guy named Corey and he s like 18 years old and he did a really kick butt job with this and he said he learned it from the show which is great and.
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He really rocked it.
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What he did is he said, hey, I ve been listening to you for a long time.
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What do you think of this guest?
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It was like this author that s a little bit more spiritual than we usually get into.
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And he said, I know you re gonna think this is a little bit woo-woo, but a lot of this can be applied in a practical way.
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Here s how, and he listed some bullets.
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And he said, further, if you re interested, I will reach out on your behalf.
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You can either send me a pitch or I ll just make one up, and I ll see if I can get him to do the show.
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And the one favor that I would ask is if he offers to do the show, would you let me sit in on it?
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And I said, this is a no-brainer.
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You re gonna get me a best-selling author?
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Yeah, maybe, right, we ll see.
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And all I have to do is Skype you in, and you re not even gonna talk?
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I m fine with that.
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He did that and the author turned out to be coming to San Francisco.
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So I said hey great He s gonna be here live and he goes great Can I come over and take you out to breakfast and sit in on the show?
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And I said, oh, well sure.
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Why not?
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So what so he got to meet his favorite author sit down and in on an episode of his one of his favorite podcasts and
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and he set the whole thing up, did all the legwork, and it turned out to be one of the greatest episodes that we ve done this year with Dan Millman.
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And I thought, wow, this kid totally did this right.
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A lot of it was sort of accidental, a lot of it was learned from Art of Charm, but it really worked out for him.
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And so, you know, this system of priming, getting someone to trust you and following through on what you say you re gonna do, providing value, and then asking for a little something, in my perspective, just a little something in return, can I sit in on this, turned into a bigger opportunity for him.
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Well, let s unpack that example.
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It s such a great example, because we talk, like you said, about value in this very abstract way where it s like, provide value.
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What does that mean?
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We also threw around the word social capital.
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And we should share that, like our philosophy on social capital is that it s, it s a very simple thing.
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It s just the value that gets created when you share the resources that you have to help other people.
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And that can take a few different forms.
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It could be people like introductions.
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It could be knowledge, which is like any kind of information, whether it s an article or a skill or an expertise or a tip or even an opinion or a piece of advice.
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Or, and this is the third most powerful in some ways, a form of social capital is emotional investment.
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And the example you just gave, I thought was super interesting because it blends all three of them together.
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He was connecting you to a person.
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He was hooking you up with some information.
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that took
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And I think the best networking moments, even the small ones, even the tiny ones, are the ones that blend those three together.
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He estimated all of my pain points by putting himself in my shoes.
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Like, hey, I know you probably have a lot of authors to reach out to.
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I ll do it.
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Let me find out when he s going to be in your town so we can do it live.
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Let me figure out if he s interested and pitch your show in a way that I know will work for him having read his work.
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Let me pitch you in a way having known your work.
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He figured out your needs and then reverse engineered the solution.
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Exactly.
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But I have a question for you about this.
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In a way, he was offering a ton of help to you.
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But then he also asked you for something.
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But we often talk about in our networking stuff about how important it is to give before you take.
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To invest without any expectation of an immediate return.
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In this example, they didn t come together, but it was sort of like, here I m giving, but also if it happens, would you be able to help me out in this way?
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What s your feeling about when it s okay to ask for something in relation to giving something?
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Yeah, that s a good question and very important.
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In this example, it wasn t transactional.
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He wasn t like, I ll introduce you if you let me sit in on that.
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And I know I kind of said it that way, but I could have said, no, I don t record like that.
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And I guarantee you, knowing him now personally and being a buddy of mine, he absolutely would have still done it just to hear his favorite author on the show.
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That would have happened.
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That wouldn t have been an issue at all.
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And he made it okay because the ask was literally, it was not that big at all.
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And he was right, he was banking on me going, yeah, it s really easy for me to let you sit in on a show.
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That was cake.
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Had it been like, oh, well, I need you to fly me to California, I would have been like, go fly a kite, I don t need you, I can reach out to this guy on my own and save $400.
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It would have been much easier.
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It s okay to ask when the ask is something that s not transactional in nature.
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It wasn t a real condition of me getting the value that he offered.
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It was a, hey, it would be really cool if, as a result of this totally working out due to my work, I could do this, I would appreciate it.
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It wasn t, if you don t let me do this and you don t sign on the dotted line, I m not gonna do the work on your behalf.
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That would have felt really smarmy and I would have never replied to the email.
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And I probably would have just put Dan Millman on my to-be-interviewed-sometime-maybe-never list and we d still be sitting here.
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So it would have been lose-lose for both of us, actually.
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The principle of give before you take still totally applies.
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But that question that we get a lot from listeners and readers is, is there like a magical window or time frame like, give for this long or this much until I take?
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No, not really.
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It s more about the spirit of giving.
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making a demonstration that you re willing to give and there s no like magical amount of time that passes before you can suddenly take it s so much more about
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whether it s an organic moment within the relationship.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, the other interesting dynamic about that is if you give without worrying about the take, it often falls in your lap anyways.
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So you don t even have to really take.
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Offers start to magically appear in your network.
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So true.
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So it s just putting the focus, the energy, the effort behind giving.
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And all of a sudden, you re going to see all of those gives turn into favors for you and people connecting you with people you d never met.
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So that s the power of just giving and giving to people that you want to matter in your life.
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I agree 100% and just to sort of hammer that point home, if you re thinking about when you can do the ask, you re making it transactional already.
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Like you re just pretending at that level to give, give, give without keeping score because you re just thinking, man, at some point I m gonna pull the trigger and get something from this person.
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It doesn t mean you never have any expectation of any return, quote unquote, on your investment of time, effort, energy.
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It just means that you re not worried about when.
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If you find yourself going, oh, I really hope this guy helps me with my launch, you re not doing it right.
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It s really inauthentic.
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You ve got a covert contract where this person has to help you, otherwise you re gonna be pissed off and disappointed.
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Right, there s a difference between generally conscious or aware that this is the way relationships work.
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That s totally different from being like, I know specifically what I might get out of this at some point.
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Right, good point.
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Knowing there s reciprocity in all human relationships that are beneficial is one thing.
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thinking, and then he ll publish my book is transactional.
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But all the big caveat to this is whether somebody else shares your values.
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And I think another thing that a lot of especially early networkers get into is like, well, I ve been investing and I ve been helping and I ve been looking for all these opportunities to pitch in, but I don t seem to be getting the return that I wanted.
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That itself might be a symptom of this transactional mindset.
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But there s something to be said also for helping people who share the same values of social capital that you do.
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people who don t take and take and take and never give, or people who appreciate the kind of emotional support or knowledge or people you might be hooking them up with.
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If they don t share those values, then you could be investing in something that just isn t a fruitful relationship, which is a whole issue in and of itself.
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We talk about it as seeing the world as people, or as Jordan, you always talk about it, seeing the matrix, which I think is such a great metaphor for this.
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Like, you kind of get two groups of people in the world.
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One group views the world as like a series of processes,
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Oh, I m applying for a job, so let me create my resume, apply for the job online, write the cover letter, sit and wait a couple weeks for somebody to respond.
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You know, get called in for the interview, prepare and talk, and then hope for the best.
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You know, that s kind of one camp.
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And then there s like another group of people who I think tend to be smarter, more ambitious relationship builders who start to look at opportunities as really a set of relationships to navigate.
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And when you look at opportunities that way, number one, they get way more fun.
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Two, they tend to go much better because when you re translating process into people,
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You re suddenly working the relationships angle as opposed to just like the surface level opportunity.
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Instead of going through the motions of the job interview, you re actually connecting with your hiring manager.
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You re making relationships at that company.
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You re tapping into your network to get advice on the process.
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Suddenly, everything takes on a dimension of people.
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We ve dedicated a whole section of the social capital course now to that idea.
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And I think it s like one of the differentiating factors between people who seem to have consistently good results with their opportunities and people who sort of
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you know, leave it up to chance.
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Right, the idea is you should seem to be like, you re the guy or girl who s just getting lucky all the time by opportunities falling in your lap, because people don t see the groundwork that was laid where you just made real connections with people, instead of going, what can this person do for me?
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Nothing, next, or oh, that didn t work out for me, next.
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Gavin, you keep in touch with people really, really well, like even, I ve noticed just in passing conversation, you re like, oh, yeah, my old manager at,
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Deloitte was really good about this, and we just had coffee last week, and I m like, jeez, I haven t seen anybody I used to work with for a while except for one or two guys on Wall Street.
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But had I had this mindset, I d probably still be friends with all the partners and all the, had I been more intentional about it.
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But you ve been doing this kind of naturally for a while, and now, of course, we ve systemized it.
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It s funny you say that.
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I mean, when you re in it, you don t think about it too consciously when networking becomes a habit.
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Like the day that I m like, oh, gotta network today, kill me.
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I do not want to be that guy.
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And it s not that much fun to think of your life that way.
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But I think when you do make it this layer, then everything is
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through and because of people.
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So relationships get easier to maintain.
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AJ, you re really good at this, too, because whenever I come down to LA to hang out, it s like, let s walk into this club with a giant line and not pay and walk backstage and say hi to a bunch of people and drink a bunch of free drinks and hang out.
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And then those same people are at the barbecue like three days later.
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You re not thinking, well, if I invite them to have a hot dog, I ll never pay for anything again.
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It s like,
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It s just the way that you ve sort of behaved in LA for a while that you just don t have to worry about the stuff that everybody else has to deal with, like lines and having money.
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Well, it s really important that, again, we find what interests the other people through being curious and figuring out where they offer value to the world.
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And if we view people as being able to offer value to the world, it s very easy for you then to make those connections.
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And your example with Gabe, right?
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You re talking about a topic and he s like, oh, I remember my manager was actually really good at this.
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Well, that s one way that his former manager offered value to the world.
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And if you can recognize that in people early on and then allow yourself to add value in those areas for them, all of a sudden you re connected in a way that you don t worry about lines.
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You don t worry about things coming to you.
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They re just naturally falling in your lap.
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So one thing that I think a lot of people struggle with as they start to get those business cards, get those phone numbers, and maybe even start to recognize some of this value is the follow-up and the maintenance of this.
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It sometimes becomes a little unwieldy.
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Yeah, I think that s a good point, because a lot of people sort of seek to automate this by having, and there s nothing wrong with that, but there s also sort of this weird transactional thing that happens when you have a spreadsheet of 400 people and you re sending cut and paste emails.
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It s kind of a weird phenomenon that once, if anybody ever finds out that you re doing it, which it s not that hard to read between the lines, they just kind of go, oh, I m a box, I m a cell in Excel, or in whatever, Microsoft Pages,
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It s
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when people are being authentic, when they really want to connect.
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And this conversation that we keep coming back to, you read about it all the time online, like ways to systematize your network, tools that ll hack your way to maintaining your relationships, or whatever.
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We ve all heard versions of that headline.
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I think it s getting into this conversation of, do I need to develop a system, or should I leave it entirely to opportunity?
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We dedicate a huge amount of time in the social capital stuff to figuring out what the answer to that is.
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And I think at the end of the day, if you can be efficient, you should be.
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There are great reasons to find the shortcuts that ll get you there.
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it s so much more impactful to maintain a relationship authentically and organically because an email that you send, if you re at the gym one day and you suddenly remember working out with an old buddy 18 months ago, and you re like, how is that guy doing?
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Wasn t he working on that book?
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I should check in.
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And you check in by saying that, that guy s going to feel like that s an authentic piece of communication as opposed to like, oh, got a Google Calendar reminder, better follow up with Mark.
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He ll know from that email.
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All right, back to it.
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Speaking of bullshit detectors, peoples are actually miscalibrated because almost nobody is good at this skill set, which is why it s so high value, which is why people who are great at it bring in opportunities and are compensated for it, they get promoted faster.
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But there s a double-edged sword.
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I used to, before we had like a bajillion people on our Facebook and followers on Facebook, I used to write to everyone on their birthday.
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And I d say, hey man, happy birthday.
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I d use their name and everything, and I d be like, what are you gonna do this year?
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Or some variation, like do you have big plans?
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What s on the docket?
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And a lot of people never answered, and I thought, what the hell?
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So the next year, if I saw that message was the last one in our conversation, I d be like.
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hey, happy birthday, you know, are you gonna just ignore this one too, you know, smiley face, and a lot of people wrote and go, oh, geez, I didn t realize that wasn t automated, and so part of that is my fault for not being able to sort of convey that, but there s only so much you can do when something is not automated, if you re engaging people only on maybe their birthday, but it shows you that people are so suspicious of
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even reconnecting with old friends, and it s so outside their reality that somebody would actually give a crap that they sometimes don t answer.
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Now, what I found was really interesting was entrepreneurs, people who are really high net worth, people who are really moving and shaking, or people who are bosses and maybe a little bit prodigious in their achievement, they always answered.
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they always got back to me, because they were like, oh, hey, Jordan, what s up?
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Here s my plans, what about you?
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But the guy who worked in a friggin  cubicle as an account manager for whatever, not that there s anything wrong with that, but I doubt it s his dream job, they were always like, ah, this is some automated BS.
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And I thought, after five years of doing this, this is not a coincidence that these mindsets are totally different.
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Well, I think that a lot of people definitely have been desensitized, maybe is the right word, in this world where we re all getting inundated constantly by seemingly authentic attempts to stay in touch, but not always.
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That maybe their bullshit detectors have been miscalibrated, because they re like, ah, this can t be real.
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This can t be a real communication.
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But I think this also gets into what we talked about a few minutes ago when you said that it really does take two people who share the same values when it comes to those relationships.
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Like if I value keeping in touch with somebody who s interesting, then that s half of the equation.
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And you have to be also interested in maintaining a relationship based on that value.
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Yeah.
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And a lot of folks are like, well, this isn t going to work.
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My friends aren t responding, or these people aren t responding, or, hey, Jordan, you even said yourself it s not working.
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it becomes a screening mechanism by which you ll find, oh, well, if this guy s not even gonna answer my text because he thought, oh, you re just asking me what I m up to and I don t need to reply, and you find that all of your entrepreneur friends or all of your boss, manager-level friends are doing this right and everyone else is doing it wrong, it becomes a selection process whereby, yes, sorry, you re gonna have to weed out some people that aren t gonna follow this, but on the upside, what that means is that a lot of the people who are answering you and who are
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engaging and keeping in touch and reciprocating, they tend to be the more successful people and your network tends to sort of, it s self-cleaning.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well I definitely agree that the most successful people are the most connected people.
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It s the difference between trying to start a business with an idea and not knowing how to market it and having someone in your network that knows exactly how to market it, someone else who knows exactly how to get your traffic, someone else who knows exactly how to build a website, right?
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It s having a team of people behind you to support you.
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That s what that genuine connection fosters.
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It s like, yeah, my friends have no problem helping me cut the line or offering me a meal.
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It started as small as just inviting them over on Sundays because I had a DirecTV NFL Sunday ticket and they had no place to watch the football game.
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So it s so funny to me when people are like, I don t understand how I could give value to others.
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I don t find value in myself.
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I think a lot of times they think value has to be this massive explosion and fireworks when instead it s just like a very comfortable, easy experience for someone else, giving someone else your ear and offering them a little bit of advice.
3
SPEAKER_00
So true.
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Exactly.
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Like I think we overstate how important our own value has to be when it s really these small human forms that can move people or deepen those relationships.
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The example you just gave is actually perfect, AJ, because, you know, we talk a lot also about building a platform and we talk about how much easier it is to network when you have a platform.
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In the same way, people start to like, oh, so that means I have to have a podcast or a huge blog with 100,000 followers in order to actually meet the people I want to meet?
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SPEAKER_01
Well, sure, that helps.
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But that is, first of all, years in the making, and it s actually not necessary.
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A platform can be as small or as big as you want to make it.
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The idea is whether you treat it like a platform and invite other people in.
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And I love the example of inviting people over to watch football because I think that is a platform.
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That is a live action, you know, real world platform.
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You could have sat on the couch watching that alone or with one other friend, but instead you chose to invite other people into it.
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And to me, that turns it into a platform the same way that a dinner party is a platform where you might send 10 separate emails.
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They might be great emails, but you d have to send them to 10 different people, or you can invite 10 people around your dinner table and have a cool conversation and get everybody together.
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The platforms that we end up using, that we end up building, don t have to be crazy sophisticated.
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The idea that they have to be sophisticated can itself become a barrier to being a great networker because you think you gotta do all this stuff before you can build relationships.
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And you really don t.
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You can watch football, you can have a few people over for dinner, you can go to a movie with a group of friends, as long as you treat it as an opportunity to bring other people into your life.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you outlined this really well in Social Capital in the module about platforms.
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And one of the things that you reinforce is that the platform is self-sustaining.
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It s not something that you build in order to…
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share your own stuff or to market to other people.
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It s something that you invite other people to, which increases your network.
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And then, of course, by also having that platform with people in it, it also increases your value.
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So it snowballs over time.
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So a lot of people think, well, I m gonna network, I ll start this whole process of relationship development.
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After I launch my prototype or my product or my website, you re actually doing it backwards.
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You need to dig the well before you re thirsty.
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And a lot of people fail to do that
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mostly because they don t know how or they don t have the confidence to do it, so doing it after the site launches or after the product is on the market, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is a great, convenient, realistic-sounding excuse.
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The problem is that s why a lot of these companies, and I see this in startup land in the Silicon Valley area a lot, they re going, all right, well, yeah, we ll build those relationships later, or we ll take on investors that have those relationships, and it s like, well, how are you gonna even make that happen?
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And also, that s really expensive money to get, is somebody who s already got a network.
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The reason that investors and VCs are valuable isn t just because they can cut a check.
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It s because they know everyone else.
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What if you didn t need that?
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Or what if those people came to you because you knew everyone else, too?
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You know, there s a huge advantage in this.
3
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There s never a disadvantage to spending time connecting with people.
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There s no reason that that would ever be bad, although you can overdo it, actually, and you and I were talking about this earlier today.
3
SPEAKER_01
There are networking pitfalls that can masquerade as advantages or strengths if you take networking too far or if you invest in it in the wrong way.
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SPEAKER_01
So like, you know, here we are talking about how important it is to have these relationships, to build them before you need them, to make networking a part of your life.
3
SPEAKER_01
But that could just as easily become a full time job at the expense of actually building stuff of your own, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like you have a company or you have a job at a company or or you have side projects and these things need your love and attention.
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SPEAKER_01
Instead, you re trying to meet people and connect people and do all the textbook right things to do in terms of networking at the expense of actually creating value of your own.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I think it s a seductive way to fall into that trap because it s hard to feel like you re making a mistake if you re meeting people.
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SPEAKER_01
But as you and I, Jordan, were talking about recently, when you meet somebody who tends to do that, when they ve kind of like replaced their own value entirely with their network, those conversations, those exchanges, those introductions tend to be kind of transactional, they tend to be a little bit surface level.
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SPEAKER_01
I think
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this is fascinating, this whole idea that you can almost network too much.
4
SPEAKER_02
if you do it at the expense of other things you should be doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes, just listening to people, the platform will, again, fall in your lap.
4
SPEAKER_00
So recently, I ve probably had three or four different friends mention poker, their desire to play poker or playing poker in Vegas.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, you know what?
4
SPEAKER_00
I should start hosting a poker night and invite some interesting friends over and see what shakes out of it.
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SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden, there s been this huge demand.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I have everyone asking me, OK, when is this happening?
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SPEAKER_00
When is this happening?
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SPEAKER_00
And I don t even have the supplies for it.
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I realize I don t have enough seats.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s interesting how just being a better listener and being a little bit more curious about what interests other people in your current network have, that platform, that event that you can host might fall out of those conversations very easily.
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SPEAKER_00
Great example of opportunistic networking.
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SPEAKER_02
I think that example is like the classic one of if you sat around AJ thinking like,
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, I m good at poker and I enjoy it, and I need to connect with a bunch of people.
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SPEAKER_02
Who do I know who likes poker?
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SPEAKER_02
You might come up with a handful of people, and that might be a really fun evening, but the fact that a bunch of different people basically told you what they need, and then you were like, oh, that lines up with what I want and need, so let me just host this thing.
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SPEAKER_02
I think that kind of networking, which to me isn t really networking, it s just exchanging social capital, it s hanging out, it s getting to know people, means a lot more.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s the fun part is a lot of people aren t willing to put in any effort.
4
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people are lazy or they are scared.
4
SPEAKER_00
So sometimes small effort like buying some poker chips and inviting some people over can build that platform that no one else is willing to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
So true.
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SPEAKER_02
How do you know if you re networking too much at the expense of other things?
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SPEAKER_02
I think in most cases, the quality of your networking will tell you like if you ve ever sat down to write an introduction email between two people, which is something that we should all be doing because it s the easiest way to like
4
SPEAKER_02
rejuvenate relationships, connect up our network, it builds social capital.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s fantastic.
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SPEAKER_02
But if you ve ever sat down to write that email, and it s been really hard to write, like you re struggling to come up with what to say about why you re introducing these two people or what specifically they should talk about, or
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SPEAKER_02
you know, what it is that you have in common.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like, that s a surefire sign that something s a little bit off, that either you don t know these people that well, or you don t have a compelling reason to put them in touch, that you re sort of just doing it transactionally.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think if you re honest and authentic about your own experience of your networking, you ll usually know if you re doing it without the social capital to make it meaningful.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s exactly true.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s a really good sort of measuring stick, I think, for that.
4
SPEAKER_01
flexible as that measuring stick might be, it s still there.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a problem, though, that if you think, maybe I have that, you probably don t have that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Really, the people we re thinking of, they put in a lot of work building relationships, and it s still working really well for them, it s just that it s kind of all they do.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, that s a different story.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like if you are a relationships guru, then it s sort of your job description to be building relationships left and right.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like if you ve written the book about it, as there are, you know, a few people out there like that, like that is so in line with what you do that you might say, yeah, it is my job to simply build relationships.
4
SPEAKER_02
But honestly, most of us are not that guy.
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SPEAKER_02
We are all creating value on our own in our own ways, whether it s a side project, a company, a startup, you know, whatever it is, a skill or a piece of expertise.
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SPEAKER_02
And if that is coming second to you just mechanically.
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matching up your network for no reason other than just to smash people together, then you fall into that trap.
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These are all amazing points.
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I think one thing I really want to nail down, though, I think is really important is is the maintenance.
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We talked about not making the maintenance too automated or too transactional.
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But how do we do it right?
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Well, if all relationships are ultimately about social capital, which means that you re ultimately sharing your people, your knowledge and your emotional support.
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Those are basically the three things that we exchange in a relationship.
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then the first step to maintenance is always going to be keeping that social capital alive.
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Like you have to have social capital in the first place in order to invest it in your relationships.
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What that means on a very practical level is that you always want to be renewing your people, meeting new people, connecting them, and that opens you up to all those secondary networks so that you constantly have an interesting group of people in your network you could reach out to or you could introduce to other people.
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In terms of knowledge, I mean, we re going through core AOC textbook stuff.
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But you know, it s always about being curious and being open to learning new things.
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That means reading, listening, whether it s books, podcasts, or even conversations in the street.
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And then always expanding how well you can connect emotionally with people, which is a practice, I think, of empathy.
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And we ve talked about this on the podcast a bunch.
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When it comes to the mechanics of actually staying in touch,
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I think the most important thing, if we re talking about system versus opportunity, is to instill those habits.
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And Jordan, you and AJ are actually so big on habit forming.
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In fact, seeing how you live your life is actually a great testament to that.
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Every day seems to be driven by the habits, and I think you can apply habits to networking.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, A.G.
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said this earlier, but networking is a set of habits, a way of being.
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It s not just the meeting people and the follow up or the meeting people and the going to a curated event.
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That s not just the set of habits and the way of being or the way that you approach people.
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It s in the maintenance of the network.
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It permeates your whole relationship building philosophy and your actions.
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It s always on.
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Yeah, it s always on.
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Yeah.
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And that s what a habit does.
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And so we can talk very specifically about that.
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I think one of the core habits that we re teaching as part of our social capital
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approach is get in the habit of making introductions.
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It seems so obvious, but it s such an easy thing to let slip, because it is an automatic way to stay engaged with the people you know, to connect them up and to see what interesting, magical, spontaneous opportunities come out of those introductions.
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Now in the beginning, I think you can start as humbly as like,
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introducing two people you know every single week.
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For most of us, that isn t impossible.
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That s totally doable.
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And if you start there, then you ll be making 50 more or less 50 introductions a year.
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That s 100 new people you re connecting to say nothing of all the secondary introductions they might be making.
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Right.
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So I think the first main habit is to get in the habit of making introductions among the people you already know.
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A good number, by the way, if you re sort of new to this, is one per week, and then eventually graduate up to three per week.
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It s important they be meaningful, so don t go, ah, I m gonna just do three right away, and then you re introducing your florist to your gardener because you need to make an introduction.
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You made a really interesting point earlier about that successful example of someone adding value to your life.
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It s identifying someone else s pain point and then finding someone else you know in your life that could offer value for that pain point.
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Last night, I was at dinner with a buddy and he moved out of his house.
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He moved into a new house.
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He was thinking about Airbnb renting his old house because he has it at a really low rent currently.
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It just so happens that I have a friend who manages properties all over the world.
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and basically furnishes them and runs them on Airbnb and knows exactly how to price them, just basically knows how to kill it on Airbnb.
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And I was like, huh, very interesting.
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I ll just mention this casually in conversation, make that connection.
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And sure enough, they took interest.
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And all of a sudden, they re talking and signing contracts.
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And it was literally, hey, my buddy s struggling with this pain point.
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Who in my life offers value in this area?
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I think those random opportunities to connect are so powerful because in a way, like if you let the world tell you what people need, then you can be the guy who fills it.
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You can be the person who fills it with that value, which might be an introduction or a piece of knowledge or just a conversation to help somebody out.
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I love those moments because they tend to come up exactly when the two people need to meet.
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Like your friend needed somebody to help him with his Airbnb approach.
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And the other guy was grateful probably to have some, you know, a new property to manage.
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Most people, I think, when they hear those opportunities, they re like,
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Oh, interesting.
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You re struggling.
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You need some of that.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
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I guess I would want to rent out my house, too.
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But they wouldn t go the extra step to think, wait a second, how can I put these two people together?
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Right.
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Or they might even think, yeah, I had a friend that had that same problem.
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Feel your pain.
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Not, oh, I had a friend that had that same problem.
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He solved it.
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How did he solve it?
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I should put you guys in touch and see if he can help you solve it, too.
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Or even stop to just share what that solution was, which is a form of knowledge, which is a type of social capital.
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And I think this gets into another one of the key habits of how to maintain your relationships, which is to get into the habit of being an active consumer of information.
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Most people tend to be pretty passive, I think, when they hear information.
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Facebook is the best example.
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Like we sit there and we scroll through that feed or we re on Twitter and we just scroll through the feed and we re just passively taking in information like, oh, this person is getting ready to travel to Berlin.
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Oh, that s cool.
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I hope he has a good time.
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Or this person just moved to San Francisco from New York.
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Oh, cool.
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Must be a new job.
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I hope that person has an interesting experience in that city.
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But it only takes a little bit more conscious effort to take an extra moment and be like, wait a second.
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Natalie just went from New York to San Francisco.
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She s a marketer.
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She should totally know Paul.
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I m going to take an extra 30 seconds and introduce them.
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And the difference between those two is becoming an active consumer of that information, just like AJ was in that moment where he heard about this property and this guy who needed some Airbnb help.
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There wasn t anything passive about that.
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He was actively filling in the gap with somebody he knew.
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couple of solid months of sort of like weekly and daily stuff that you can do to build these habits, along with all the other stuff that we ve got in that.
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And of course, like all of our products at AOC, we guarantee it, we ll guide you through it, and we think it s effing awesome.
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What am I leaving out, Gabe?
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All of us on the team have consumed almost everything out there on the internet, out there in the world about networking and relationships, because we really geek out about this stuff.
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But this product is
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Exceptional.
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I mean, it s, it s, I think it s probably the most comprehensive relationship building course that I ve ever seen, but what makes it really special, I think, are the specifics and the worksheets and the lessons that you can take every single day to build relationships, not in that smarmy transactional networking kind of way.
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SPEAKER_00
Uh, in fact, I think this course is awesome because it s really replacing that kind of like a surface level networking with a much deeper, more authentic way to connect with people.
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And I think it s built on years of our collective research and insight into how that works.
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It was written by people who learned it and enjoy it.
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And I think the course reflects that.
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It s really terrific.
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I think the biggest thing that a lot of people coming into networking always ask is, how can I find that value in myself?
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I don t have that value that AJ or Gavin has.
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And the amazing part about this course is the workbooks allow you to find that value.
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So by going through the course, watching the videos and actually completing the workbooks, you will find that value in yourself and unlock it in your network.
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SPEAKER_02
I also want to mention that it s unisex.
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I know we re gonna get email like, is this, but is your boot camps are for men?
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SPEAKER_02
Is this product, no, it s for men and women.
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It was created by the whole Art of Charm team.
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There s nothing that s only gonna work for guys or whatever in here.
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So, for the ladies that have been looking to level up in the relationship development area for business or personal, this is both for the guys and gals that are listening to the Art of Charm.
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So, just to be super clear.
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And if you have other questions about it, as usual, email me, Jordan, at theartofcharm.com, and we ll get you squared away.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.