In this episode of the Judgment Call Podcast Nick Shelton and I talk about:

• Why spamming yourself with marketing newsletters is a good way to start building your personal network.
• Why curiosity is a superpower.
• Why we network less in person?
• Why social networks have changed the distribution of friendships around the world?
• Has COVID changed the world of networking permanently?
• and much more about building friendships and human psychology.

You can watch this episode on Youtube in 4K resolution – The Judgment Call Podcast Episode #31 Nick Shelton (How to do networking right).

Nick Shelton is an entrepreneur and author of the book An Introvert’s Guide to World Domination: Become a High Level Networker and Upgrade Your Life – now available on Amazon.

You can reach Nick via his LinkedIn page.

 

Welcome to the Judgment Call Podcast, a podcast where I bring together some of the most curious minds on the planet. Risk takers, adventurers, travelers, investors, entrepreneurs and simply mindbogglers. To find all episodes of this show, simply go to Spotify, iTunes or YouTube or go to our website judgmentcallpodcast.com. If you like this show, please consider leaving a review on iTunes or subscribe to us on YouTube. This episode of the Judgment Call Podcast is sponsored by Mighty Travels Premium. Full disclosure, this is my business. We do at Mighty Travels Premium is to find the airfare deals that you really want. Thousands of subscribers have saved up to 95% in the airfare. Those include $150 round trip tickets to Hawaii for many cities in the US or $600 life let tickets in business class from the US to Asia or $100 business class life let tickets from Africa round trip all the way to Asia. In case you didn’t know, about half the world is open for business again and accepts travelers. Most of those countries are in South America, Africa and Eastern Europe. To try out Mighty Travels Premium, go to mightytravels.com slash mtp or if that’s too many letters for you, simply go to mtp the number four and the letter u.com to sign up for your 30 day free trial. I’m here today with Nick Shelton and Nick is a traveler, entrepreneur and also a hacker of high end networking and he recently published a book called The Interwords Guide to the Galaxy, excuse me, an Interwords Guide to World Domination which is available on Amazon now. Welcome to the Judgment Call Podcast, Nick. How are you? Thank you very much for having me. I’m great. I’m looking forward to a good conversation. Yeah, I was just reading your book yesterday and it was a quick read and a three hour flight. I could read through all of it and I really, really liked that and there have been a couple of areas that I participated in where I feel there was someone who hacked it and one of those is travel, right? So I’m a travel hacker. I think I am or I used to be. Let’s put it this way. There’s a lot that I learned about what you can do with all kinds of not just paid tickets but award tickets and you really took one, one thing that I think all of us do, all of us want to do right as is networking and how we can build a network of high quality for ourselves and to get a better sense of what else is out there and you seem to have really codified that way and put rules into this. You build a whole system, how to network properly. How did that happen? How did you come up with this? For the traveling part of it or you mean? No, more for the part that for what is your book about, right? So the networking part. I feel like there’s always someone who, there’s this knowledge that we all know but nobody puts it together in a concise guide and that’s what I think you did for networking, right? There’s just apps, there’s LinkedIn, there’s a couple of other competitors of this but you really put the social part into a codified set of rules. That’s what I really admire about the book. Yes. So for me, I really wanted to be able to build out my network because you hear the things, your network is your net worth and show me your friends, I’ll show you your future and things like that. And so I knew that if I could be around high achievers, people that were doing things that I wanted to do, then that would definitely, some of their habits would rub off on me and also it would give me an opportunity to get mentors and things like that. And that would have an impact on my life because I was not satisfied with the way my life was. And so when I started looking for resources, there was nothing out there that really broke it down into simple steps. And for my personality type, which is, I was introverted and shy and socially awkward and there was nothing that really spoke to that personality type. And so I figured I had to, I really wanted to do this. So I had to figure out what steps could I take that would actually be compatible with my personality type that I would actually do because there’s some things that someone could say, oh, just go do this, go do this. But would I do those things? Probably not. So I had to find what steps what I actually do. And so then by going out there, there’s a lot of information out there that’s kind of like theory, where they, you know, scientists say that lab rat A does this and in your brain, when you’re talking to someone, this happens, that doesn’t help me in a social situation, talking to someone. If I hear some, what scientists studied, I need, hey, what do I do when I show? How do I show up? Where do I go? When I get there? What am I supposed to do? Who do I talk to? What do I say? And then once I do that, how do I maintain the relationship? How do I build and maintain it? And so I had to go out there and, you know, be in the trenches myself and learn it the hard way. And once I was able to do that, I assembled it all and got the blueprint together. And it worked for me. And then I started showing some of my friends who saw some of the cool things I was able to access. They said, how do we do this? Show us how. And then that really got the ball rolling. Yeah, I really love it. And I like how you you put these things into steps, basically, anyone can follow. And I think all of us, we want networking. And, you know, I think the default answer is usually you go to LinkedIn, you get a bunch of connections. You try to be nice to people when you try to meet people occasionally in person. Obviously, that’s been harder since COVID. And that’s kind of it, right? That seems to be the default approach for people to network. And I used to be present in a lot of events. I must say myself, I’ve cut down a lot on in person events. So just even before COVID, maybe that’s a sign of times or maybe that’s signed because I’m getting old. And I felt like the the step that you did you start with, and I think that’s that’s pretty ingenious. You recommend people to actually spam yourself, right, to sign up to all kinds of luxury product newsletters, and then eventually be targeted to in person events, where you can actually start networking with people of, well, not just rich people, but people who who seem to have potential for networking, right? And how did you come up with this? Is this just an accidental observation you had that nobody ever told me that before and asked a lot of people about networking? Right. So I think of it kind of like as an SEO for yourself, you know, you’re trying to, you know, optimize yourself. And so I think I came across it a little bit on accident. I like, I wanted to attend high end things. And so initially, I, you know, I went to an event, I think it was a polo event. And then I noticed, hey, I started started getting invites to other polo events. And then I remember shopping for high end furniture, I didn’t buy any, but I remember going and looking at a lot of high end furniture. And because I thought it was really, really nice. And then, then I started getting, you know, advertisements for that. And then so after a while, I said, okay, well, when I, if I put my name on these lists, and I also, you know, studied, you know, marketing for a while, and I noticed that you can always buy lists, if you’re going to market, you can buy lists of, you know, what I need a list that’s income, household income of, you know, $200,000 plus and that owns this, who did this. And so you can get pretty specific. So those lists are out there. And so when you do things, I noticed, hey, you get put on a list. And so when you start going to events, and if you start just, if you go online and just look for, you know, Ritz Carlton or something, or if you look at, if you’re looking at yachts, or if you go to, you know, a BMW and you make your own custom BMW, and then it says, you know, put your email in here and we’ll keep you up to date on what’s going on. And then you just start getting invites. So first you get advertisements, a lot of advertisements. Then you start getting invitations to events. And if you show up at the events, then you’re on a list of people that show up at events. And then if you spend some money, then that’s the best list you get on a list of people that spend money at high end events. And all of these places, they want to attract, you know, they’re in business, and they want to attract people that spend money at their, that’s their, their target demographic. And so if, like one of the examples in the book, I’ve chartered a yacht for like four hours or something. And then, but I’m on a list of people that charter yachts. And so whether I chartered a yacht for two weeks, or if I did it for four hours, I’m on the same list. So then you get invited to when there’s a, a boat show where they have some new models of boats out that they want to try to sell, they’re going to send me an invitation. Hey, this guy charters charters boats, maybe he might want to come and check out some of this. And then I’m around and put myself in the, that social situation of people that do that sort of thing. And like I mentioned in the book, I don’t go around acting like I’m some big shot or anything. I’m very humble when I get there. But I like the atmosphere because I do like, I do like nice boats. I, I’m not saying that I’m going to go buy one, but I would like to be around them. And I’d like to be around the type of people that have nice boats or that are also interested in, in nice boats. I think that’s, that’s one of the criticisms, maybe people would, would, would, that’s pretty much the only criticism I found with your, with your book is do you really want to hang out just with rich people? And why do you think rich people are so much better to hang out with, right? So I think your approach, it can be applied to pretty much any demographic, right? It can be used to say you want to hang out with hedge fund managers, or it can be used, you want to hang out with skateboarders, or maybe to, to a lesser event, because they’re more independent. Why did you choose this demographic? And what would you say if people say, well, you just want to hang out with rich people so you can sell them something like everyone else and you want to make money? Excellent question. So yeah, in the earlier in the book, I say you need to decide where, what level you want to network at, where do you want to be? Because what’s your ultimate goal? And for me, there are some nice things that I really enjoy. So I want to be around that. But then also there’s, you know, I mentioned beekeeping, because I just think it’s fascinating beekeepers. They’re not necessarily rich people. They’re just people that keep bees, but I have questions glass blowing. I would go to those events just because I say, who, what types of people would I like to meet? And so it’s not necessarily all rich people. Some of the people are wealthy people. Yes. But then there are also groups that are a variety of walks of life. So, you know, there’s chefs, I’m fascinated with cooking, so I like to meet chefs. Then there was, you know, pilots, I wanted to meet some pilots because I have questions. And I think it’s there’s no disadvantage to knowing more pilots. And so I like how you say, I like how you say that, I like how you say there’s no disadvantage of knowing more people. I think that’s exactly the core argument, right? So you have this amazing ability. I think you give us your backstory also in the book, how you foster this curiosity. And I think people that that’s something that we’ve seen less and I’ve seen this in myself a little less. I think over the years, I think we’ve changed the last two years again. But I don’t know what it is, but people aren’t as curious about other people anymore. They have preconceptions and they put them in a box kind of like an AI algorithm, right? So we only have those five boxes and we have to put these people in order to get the AI to work. How did you make yourself curious about other people and, you know, their stories? Was it like a conscious process or did it just happen to you and you just went out there? Well, I think growing up, I met a lot of people from, you know, different wide varieties of life and industries. And I found that there are all kinds of fascinating things. I have questions, you know? So I would, when I would meet someone, they could be someone from a different country or it could be just someone that has an interest that I say, well, what can I learn about that? That sounds interesting. And so just for me, I try to be as, you know, open to new ideas. And there’s a lot about the world that, you know, I know nothing about. And so there’s, I could always learn something from somebody new. And so there are, there are all types of different, different things that by meeting people in these different groups that I can pick up and it might, you know, so it satisfies my curiosity, but then it might also come in handy at a later time. Once again, it doesn’t hurt to have a little knowledge just like with the glass blowing. I don’t know, you know, I don’t necessarily plan on making my own vases or anything like that. But if, you know, I’m curious about it, how does it work? You know, what kind of sand do you use? How hot is it? You know, what happens if instead of blowing on the thing, what if you suck in, what does it gonna make your lungs explode? I don’t know. But it’s, it’s really interesting to, to find out. And then later on down the line, if I come across someone else who’s into that, I can say, Oh, I met this other person who also does that. And this is what they had to say. And it, I think it just, so the curiosity, I think maybe I was just naturally curious. And then the more I learn about people, the more curious I get about them and new people that I haven’t met. Yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a self reinforcing circle there. And I, I, I, I tell this to young people, you know, but when you’re young, you’re an idiot, I was an idiot when I was young. But I thought I know it all, right? And as more as I learned, I felt that I don’t, I know less and less, right? So as more as you look into other traits of life, driven by your curiosity, or driven just by accident, I felt that it’s so much more to discover and as more you learn, then you realize, Oh, my gosh, I’m an idiot. And I’m so arrogant. And I could actually look other people’s lives is so much, it’s different, right? It’s, it’s, it’s so challenging in their own way. Or maybe it’s so beautiful in their own way. And there’s things I can learn from this. And it’s, I find it hard. And I love your approach. I love how you, you explained this in the book. I think it is a wonderful way to get people a little bit out of their comfort zone and just make them curious in a way that they are, they are discovering someone else’s life through, through real facts, not just through made up empathy on, on Twitter. But it’s something where you can really see, okay, this is, this is the personal challenge, or this is a personal benefit as an advantage someone is using and having in their life. And that’s something you could use for yourself, right? You can copy that person, so to speak. Or you could be great friends with that person. And then that person becomes a part of your life. And I think this is a wonderful message. And I almost feel people have a little forgotten about that the last five years, I trace it back to the Facebook algorithm, but there must, there must be something more in the fairies out there. I don’t know if you ever thought about that. What, what kind of help and maybe that’s just my, that’s just my view on it. But I feel that’s, that’s other guests have confirmed that so far. I don’t know what, what do you think what confirmed this kind of retreat from public networking? I think it was a big deal like 20 years ago, right? And dot com time. But the last five years, people have done this less and less, I feel, and put less emphasis on this. Do, do you know why that is? I’m not sure if I know exactly why it is, but I think that it’s because it just seems so much easier. Well, people think, well, so it’s kind of a misconception. They feel, well, I don’t really need to go out to those things because I can do that at home on my computer. And partially you can, but not really. So what I mean by that is you can, sure, like on LinkedIn, let’s say, you can introduce yourself to some people, but you, you can’t really make the real connection with that person until you meet them face to face. So it’s one of those things that people try to shortcut it. And they, they just say, well, I can just stack it up. I can just do this online, a kind of like online dating. I think that, you know, sure, you can meet someone online and then say, oh, this, this is the one, I think this is good. But then when you meet them face to face, oftentimes in the first 30 seconds, you can think, oh, this isn’t going to work at all. You know? And so you really aren’t making the, the true connection until you meet face to face. But I think that people, they’re just looking for the easy way in the shortcut. And there’s so many things that have popped up now that, that you can, you know, do the, some Facebook thing, you can do Messenger, you can tweet. And then you feel like, okay, I’ve done my part. I’m connected with this person. But it’s, it’s only like a shadow of a real connection. But I think that maybe people forgot how it, how beneficial and fulfilling it is to have that real face to face connection. And I think that maybe they’ve just gotten a little lazy in, in actually putting forth that effort. And they just figure, well, I’ll just kind of do this lightly online. And then maybe maybe things might fall into place a little down the line, but, you know, weeks past, years past, and it doesn’t quite happen. But I think it’s mainly people think that they’re doing it, but they’re not really doing it. It’s a little bit of laziness and a little bit of a misconception in that a lot of these apps and online things try to make you feel like you’re doing it when you’re, you’re only partially doing it. That makes sense. Well, yeah, I mean, I’m with you there. And I think what happened is the social media companies successfully have tricked us into the belief that the amount of followers is what counts, right? So the quality of a connection is, has no relevance anymore. It’s just a sheer quantity. And the count of followers is, is kind of all that makes up your social status. And to an extent, you know, there’s a proxy for this. But it is a really weird proxy. And it’s, it’s, it’s kind of, it’s a winner takes it all game to an extent, right? So you will have a few people who have trillions of followers, and you will have most people who have no followers. And it’s kind of what we see with the internet economy, right? So it’s usually the company or the person with the lowest transaction cost is able to basically take over the market like Amazon, right? They have the lowest cost per order, lowest cost per shipment. So they can take over the internet economy because they always be the lowest, they can go from books to whatever they want to touch. And they always win. It seems, at least it seems so right now. And they create, create this natural monopoly is kind of like Google search. And I think what happened to us in the last five years, since people adopted that idea of for the past 10 years, the idea of followers is that the same principle applies, right? The person already has the best follower, the most followers, not the best followers, the most followers, the person that has the best engaging content for that algorithm kind of gets all the friends, so to speak, gets all the attention within the social circle, social media. But everyone else basically doesn’t get any attention. So the typical way we assume and interact that we have say 100, often say people say it’s about 100 people that we can actually remember might be a little better if we use some tools. But we don’t have 100 people that network with that each have 100 good friends. We suddenly have a few people say a few thousands or a few hundred thousand that network with everyone else on the planet and everyone else is not networking with anyone else anymore. That’s kind of, from my point of view, what happened, right? So the internet, the making friends idea for people and, you know, we talk about not necessarily very close friends, but friends that kind of reconnections, so to speak. This is followed other examples of the internet economy. And that’s why it looks so weird to us, right? It looks very unhuman, but very machine driven. Right, absolutely. It is, when you mentioned the followers, yeah, that is very interesting. A lot of people, they might have a lot of followers or maybe on their Facebook that shows a lot of friends, but you know, and so they feel, well, hey, I have, you know, 600 friends on here, but that’s not really, you know, a lot of times when you, if you go through there, you’ll say, I don’t know a lot of these people. Who are these people? Somehow we’re connected. But, you know, so I think instead of, they’ve made it so you feel that, you know, that’s kind of a part of being successful as I have all these friends or I have all these followers. But, you know, really, at the end of the day, it comes down to the actual real connections. And so that’s what I try to focus on in the book is a lot of people do the, a lot of more shallow connecting and I’m trying to go a little deeper and really create those connections because then that’s what really upgrades your life. And so, you know, when I talked about upgrading your life in the book, you know, we talked about the the high achievers and the rich people, but at the same time, it’s not necessarily about that. It’s about the quality of your relationships. At the end of the day, the quality of your relationships is that is your life. The quality of your life equals the quality of your relationships with people. And, you know, regardless of their income or anything like that, it’s that relationship. And if you have a bunch of followers or a bunch of likes or, you know, a bunch of friends on Facebook, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those are high quality. It’s just this number. So I think that the more that you can actually get real quality connections with people, then the better your life ends up, you know, whether that’s, I’m not necessarily talking about financially, which that’s included in there too, but just a good, well rounded life is definitely much easier to do if you have solid, good, real connections with people. I fully agree. So I think the quality of your own decisions makes a big impact on your life too. And it’s, you see this compounding over the years. And I think that also obviously applies for relationships that make a huge impact on you. What I feel is the, and that’s that really stuck with me in the book is that you outline, you know, we all have this preconceived notions of kind of a hierarchy of a status. So especially men have this, and I think girls have that too. There is this hierarchy. We have someone who’s really famous, right? We have someone who is really rich, someone who drives a wonderful car, someone who is a movie star, right? So we feel like if we meet these people in person, and you call them the A listers, the people who run an event, right? So who are actually the keynote speakers in an event and how hard it is to meet them. And I think what you introduced, and I really like that, and I think this is a powerful mental attitude change that I think is hard to overcome. What you say is we kind of should adopt once we are in the same room, we are all the same people and we are all peers, right? And we should get rid of this attitude of taking status that comes from somewhere else. And sometimes it’s accidental, right? Some people come, they’re just geolocked that they come up with a successful business to speak, or they had a lot of rich parents with a lot of money. So we should really adopt that mindset and use it in a good way to create a conversation as equals. And you really elaborate on this, and I think this is a core part of the book. I think this is really powerful. Do you have some stories where this helped you especially in moments of networking, where you felt like, well, I went from someone who’s a total outsider to someone who can really create a conversation that really stuck? Well, I think that, and so that kind of gets us into a little bit of the imposter syndrome thing where people say, okay, well, I’m here and they’re here, you know, and that elevating other people. But one thing that I noticed is when I started meeting the so called, you know, the A listers or the, you know, the big shots, and then you would see them a little bit behind the scenes, you’d say, wait a minute, these are regular people. These are just regular people. And I remember one guy was is a pretty big shot, and he was about to go give a speech. And I happened to be standing next to him before he went out to give a speech. And I looked at him, and this was a, I kind of held this person in really high regard, like, wow, one day, you know, maybe I can be sort of similar to this person. And when I looked at him before he walked out to give his speech, he looked absolutely terrified. He looked, and I said, he looks really scared. He’s about to go out and I never thought that, you know, that was even possible for this person to even feel that emotion. But I said, wait a minute, he looks terrified. Then he went out and he gave a great speech and everything. But I saw that fear in him before he went out. And I was like, well, this, this is like a regular person that that was like me looking behind the curtain and saying, Oh, he’s like a regular guy, he has fear to before he walks out in front of an audience and does his thing. And then so that kind of helped me when I show up at some fancy event or, you know, or if it’s like I talked about in the book, I went as in Sri Lanka and went to that, that party for high end criminal defense attorneys in Sri Lanka. And I’m not a attorney or anything. But I said, Hey, you know, we’re all here. They’re here. I’m here. And so wherever you are, you’re there to your I’m on the list. You’re on the list. We’re both in the same room. So we can just talk like regular people. And you don’t have to, I don’t have to, you know, be submissive or I don’t have to actually try to puff myself up like I’m better than anyone. I can just talk to you actually have that. Hey, we’re, we’re both human beings in this room or at the event. And yeah, let’s have a actual general genuine conversation. And so Yeah, I’m just I was the example you you pointed out in the book, I think there’s something really special with the with the lawyer community in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, and I lived in India for a while. And it’s almost like a society that on its own, they kind of, you know, like in Pakistan, they kind of are the only ones who really had power inside the country against regime or against the government, so to speak. They it’s, it’s almost like, you know, it’s like Supreme Court judges, I feel, I don’t know what it is in these countries, right? I’ve never really got to it. But the the is anyone who who’s studied the law, so to speak, as a lawyer or as a judge, they seem to live in a kind of separate society in these countries. That’s very visible in India. And I think Sri Lanka is very much the same. I don’t know where that comes from. It’s really strange. Right. Yeah, it’s like it’s its own fraternity or club or something like that. But it’s like the Freemasons, like they have a very different agenda and they’re kind of untouchable and they they’re very well educated and they but they blend in so well in society. But they kind of did they’re like a group on their own that I mean that I never saw that in like other countries in the US or in Europe, they they they’re part of the system, so to speak, right, as judges or as lawyers. But in India, there’s something that I couldn’t really put my finger to it that that really seems like that gives, I don’t know, some secret secret society status if you if you’re a lawyer and you have some experience. Yes. Yes. But yeah, even then, yeah, I was in the room, I was there and, you know, I didn’t try to talk about law stuff because I don’t know anything about law stuff, but we could still talk about world events and things like that. And so I just was, you know, humble and just a regular person talking to these guys and yeah, it went it went really well. And so yeah, you have to another thing is, you know, I think a lot of times people think about they’re always thinking about themselves. And so if you focus on you when you’re in these these situations, then it’s a lot harder if you get up in your head. But if you think about the other people like, Hey, what can I do to, you know, help? What can I do to make someone or help someone have a good time here? And you take that focus away from yourself, like thinking, Hey, is anyone looking at me? What are they thinking about me? If I don’t think about that, and I think about, you know, how can I help somebody here? Is there something that I can do to, you know, add value to this room or situation, then it gets you out of your, your head and you don’t have to think about, you know, do I fit in? Am I supposed to be here? This is weird. You shift that focus on to the other people and just trying to add value and it makes a huge difference. Yeah, I think that’s a great hack to just look in a way at the world how I can, how I can help and how I can contribute. And I think people have that. And I know your book is about introverts. And I think people have that as a secret plan in their mind, but it doesn’t really come out. And it’s, it’s, it’s something that you, you have to find your right in your, in your daily life, because there’s only so many people where I feel, or so many interactions where you can really, where you feel you should bring out that side of you. And so daily life, you know, it’s like a routine where you basically, you see the same people and you already know them for quite some time. And there isn’t so much unless you, you have a specific networking event where everyone is kind of in the mood to talk to new people. I think that’s, that’s tough to pull off unless you, you find that opportunity in networking. And I don’t know what you see in the, I don’t know what, what, where, which state you live in right now. The, the, the book seemingly definitely was written before COVID, right? Do you think COVID changes that game a lot because it’s much harder to have public gatherings right now and it might continue for quite some time? How do you feel with COVID the same way you, you know, you talk a lot, talk a lot about the food buffets as a good way to get people to talk about something. They don’t have to ask a robot like question. How do you feel COVID impacts the way you specifically write, write about the networking? Does it change it completely? There is quite a bit of a change, yes, but there, there are things that still come into play. So when I talk in the book about getting pre known, I think the COVID has given us a good opportunity to, while you’re sitting at home or locked down or wherever you are, then you can, you can put those steps into, you know, you’re not necessarily getting the face to face part yet, but you can put the, set the foundation. So you can do, you can reach out on LinkedIn to people that you would like to meet. There’s, I like to say, when there’s an event coming up, usually, or it might be later down the line, they say, hey, we’re going to have an event in a year from now, maybe, or even a virtual event. They’ll still have some, some social media things and some, some chat rooms. And you can get on there and start socializing with people just to get your name popping up. And so people can get familiar with your name. Then you can also look at those people, the names of the people and see, is there anyone on this list that I feel that I would really like to, to meet one day. And you can start putting in the work now, like maybe link up with them on LinkedIn or something and just get that familiarization down. So then later on, maybe it’s six months from now, maybe it’s a year from now, when you do cross their path, you’ve already kind of laid that foundation. So then they’re familiar with seeing you when that time comes around. And, like for me, I still am able to go and say, you know, not everyone’s able to do this, but there’s still some smaller group events of, so here I’m in Denver, Colorado right now, and they’ll have some, you can have in some counties groups of a 30 or less, and, you know, everyone’s spaced out, but you can still get out and do something. So I still, I lay the foundation, start getting to know people online first, and then when there is an event, then I will show up and then do that face to face that we talked about that’s important. And actually, what I call, I call confirming those relationships. So, you know, the online part, if you have the zoom meetings and all that, that’s, you know, kind of setting the foundation. But then when we meet face to face, that kind of confirms that relationship. Once we meet face to face, I can tell, is this, does this person still represent themselves the same way as I thought that they were online? And do we move forward? Or is this someone that doesn’t seem like a really good fit? And, you know, I’m always looking to find people that, you know, it’s not only just to try to do business, because a lot of people came to me and said, hey, I need leads. How do I get leads? And they figured that my method is too slow. But, you know, I don’t believe in just purely networking just to try to, you know, sell somebody something or something like that. It’s building the relationship. And if somebody likes you, so I tell real estate professionals, for example, there’s the real estate agent that could just say, hey, nice to meet you. Are you interested in buying or selling a house or anything like that? And then there’s somebody that maybe we go to some simple activity, I would say, I don’t know if how many people are doing miniature golf right now because of the COVID. But if say, if you went, if someone said, hey, we’re going to do this miniature golf day, and going to have, you know, six people are going to go, and you’re invited. And then, and I happen to be a real estate person. And, you know, we have a good time out there hitting little golf ball around. Then even if a competitor gave you a bunch of refrigerator magnets with their picture on it and some pads to take notes with their picture on it saying, hey, real estate, whatever, you would say, hey, I had a great time with Nick. And, you know, he wasn’t trying to sell me anything or trying to get my business. He was just being a good person. And I like him when it comes time to buy or sell a house, you’re going to come to me. I think I strayed a little bit. Your question was on the COVID and how this affected it. But yeah, basically the point is, yes, it did affect it, but you can still lay the foundation. And then when you, when it does thaw out a little bit and you are able to get out, then you already, you’re coming from a stronger position because you made those initial connections during this downtime. Yeah, I think what you’re advocating is playing the long game, right? That’s what it’s known. I think there’s equivalence for this and pretty much anything in human relationships, dating more platonic relationships. And I think we’ve kind of, the way the world now is shaped in front of our phones, at least, is that you have instant gratification, right? If you post something on Twitter and it doesn’t get a ton of likes for then on the next two hours, you just delete it. And whatever you posted yesterday, you completely, you have no idea what, what you posted or someone else posted. So it is quite counterintuitive to what our brains have been trained to do. And I think we’re, we’re rowing out of this a little bit because it was so fascinating and interesting. And we felt so excited about it. And I think now on, we come out on the other side where people are just tired of it. Even if you get a ton of likes, it just doesn’t give you the same level of endorphins anymore. And the long game obviously is, is, is tricky for people because it, it needs you to, you need to have a much wider vision about the future. You need to be more sure about what you want, right? So you get, just say you can do 100 people in your life, probably much less, maybe 20. You can build such a strong relationship with, and then you have the ability 20 years later to actually see the fruits of this and compounds over time. That’s just something that, that Navarravi Khan told me is that friendships, they compound as much as real investments compound. And you only see the real, the real benefits of compound after 20 years or more, right? So Warren Buffett wasn’t rich for the longest time. It definitely not the richest person in the U.S. for a long, long time. And then it suddenly starts to compound 20, 30, 40, 50 years later because of his old age, you really saw that happening, not just his, the people who inherited his money. And I think that’s true for, for, for relationships. And I think the trouble is for, especially for young people, and I know what your advice there is for them, it’s very difficult to see, you know, are we at the right level? Is that the right person I’m making friends with? And it’s very difficult. And I think especially as an introvert, I don’t know how you solve that, is seeing people for who they are. So we say, you know, we have all these labels, sociopaths and psychopath, but there’s people always want to present themselves quite differently than who they really are. That’s in a better light. They, they give you a vision of themselves that’s often not true. And as, especially as a young person, it’s incredibly difficult to distinguish this, especially as an introvert. And as more you play the long game, as harder it is, right? Because you need 10, 15 years to, to mature this, and you might realize, oh, that person’s just a psycho, but I didn’t realize that because I barely could, I could just distinguish it, couldn’t distinguish it myself. And I was too, too much part of that emotionally, too much part of that relationship. How do you, how do you find, how do you give, what do you say to young people who, you know, they’re starting out in their twenties, they’re networking, but they really have, they need to figure out who they are in their life, right? Who are the people they want to network with? And it could be an industry that could be the person with the right experience, that it could be the person with the right wisdom. I think it’s really difficult for someone in their twenties to, to have that foresight and say, oh, I want to play the long game and I’m going to wait 20 years. I think it’s incredibly difficult. Right, it is. And you can also, one thing that happened to me was I got a mentor that was not really in line with a good path for me. It was, I thought so at the time when I was very young, I said, oh, I would like to go down this path. And it’s incredible how much mentors can shape you and you will go down that path. And then you might wake up one day and say, wait a minute, I don’t want to be on this path. I’d like to be on this other path. But it kind of ties into also question that people would say, hey, if I’m out meeting all these people, you know, how do I keep track of all these people? And like I said, how do I know which ones are the right ones, the ones that are really going to be beneficial for me to know? And the thing is, it’s, it’s hard to tell right out the gate. So when you first meet someone, it’s hard to know, oh, this is going to be a good person to have in my life for the next 20 years. You have to actually let it grow and unfold. And so I suggest, you know, so there’s people that you meet and you know right away, you don’t want anything to do with them. But then there’s some people that you say, I think that I would like to spend some time with this person. And so you can add some of those in and start maintaining those relationships. And then as you know, you’re adding more people in, there’s going to be like a, people are going to kind of start falling into certain categories with you. And so some will sort of just fade away, even if you’re trying to maintain those. Some, they just don’t rise up enough that it seems like it’s really worth your time and energy to maintain that. And then some really rise to the top. And some, it seems like it takes some time. I know that there’s some relationships where when they started out that I’ve met some people that, I’d say the first two years that I knew them, nothing was really going on. And then all of a sudden, they started really coming to the forefront. And so I think it’s kind of like, I’d say pruning a tree, but at the same time, because you cut it back and then it grows back stronger, but at the same time, it kind of automatically does that. So when you add these people in to the hopper, you add some new people in, there are people that you’re, that automatically you feel a little closer to, and you start giving them a little priority. And then sometimes you’re wrong. And those will kind of start to fade, even if you do try to artificially push them up. And then there are others that they’ll still be around, but they might be kind of sleepers where they’re going to pop up a little bit later and come through. But instead of worrying too much about that, I tried to, I was telling someone about this yesterday, I tried to focus mainly on my part, doing my part. And so instead of saying, well, if I do this, then I expect them to do this. I just have to do my part, which is to be a good friend. What can I do to be a good friend? And then I don’t have any expectation, like they have to do XYZ because I did this. I just do my part. And then we just see how, as we grow through the years, how it falls, what happens, what’s the response. And you see what people do, but your main responsibility is to step up and just do your part without conditions and then see, and you will see very clearly who the key people are. And then another thing real quick is one of the questions that I asked myself that if I was in my 20s or something like that, and I was trying to figure out, well, what path might be a good path to go down? And that is, I would, for me, I had asked people, the first thing that I asked was, what’s the, what am I good at? Because you’re trying to find out what you’re good at. But then people gave me all these horrible answers. But then when I asked them, what’s the most interesting thing about me? Then I got some really good answers. And from that, because there’s a lot of things that it’s invisible to me, because it’s me, I’m too close to it. But other people, when they would see what they thought was interesting about me, then I saw, oh, there’s all these things about me that I know, but I’m too close to it. So I didn’t see it. And then that helped me figure out where my interests were and kind of where to point myself. I think that’s a, that’s a good, that’s a really good question to ask yourself or better ask other people what is, what they find interesting about you. And I’m not sure. I mean, hopefully they give you the honest answer. And yeah, that’s definitely some calibration to do. But I think this is, this is definitely a great hack. And I, what you said earlier, I think people, there is a strong sense of reciprocity, right? That we have in, in our brains, and we really monitor reciprocity. And we can monitor this with lots of people and we can monitor this over a long timeframe. This is pretty amazing as a, as a, we have that memory. And it’s, there’s so many things that never enter our memory, but these things are like hardwired. And I think there is some evolutionary value to this is when monitoring reciprocity because the problem of altruism is, right? You go into a friendship and you give up your time, you give up resources, you give up attention, all these things you, you, you eventually expect reciprocal, reciprocal attention back or the same amount of, same amount of resources that, that you expect from someone else. And I think this is, this is hardwired into our brains. And you just said, you know, we shouldn’t worry about this. You should just be altruistic, so to speak. You should invest into that relationship and really not, at least not for a really long timeframe, worry too much about the return. And I think this is good, good advice in its own, but the problem obviously is there’s a limit to this, right? There is say, there’s 10 hours a day where you can do this, even if you don’t have a job. And if you have a full time job, then it’s maybe an hour or two. So you need to be very, you need to be very picky with who you invest in. And there’s a very limited and you have good tips in the book how to be more productive with this, right? So to have it like a couple of months is a reminder and see, okay, these are the people that are in my network and I consider them strong connections. And I really want to, want to maintain that relationship. I’m just going to do my part, sending them a gift or give them a message and say, well, you know, what’s going on in your life and try to initiate a conversation. But you have to be, I mean, there’s no way around this. You need to be very specific who you, who you give your time to. And if you don’t monitor reciprocity, I think, I think reciprocity is the, the monitoring reciprocity leads us down the path of figuring out who, who is that person who’s willing to build the same relationship for whatever reason, right? Because that person has their own ideas about building relationships that are beneficial to his or her life. And it’s, it’s what, what I find so tricky about that is, and I think we agree on that is how, at what point do you decide, okay, that’s enough. I didn’t get any reciprocity, nothing reciprocal, reciprocal back. I need to, I need to, you know, forget about that person and maybe contact them five years later because, you know, I, I obviously had friends and I contact them all the time for their birthday and then I, I invite them. I pay the bill or they pay the bill, but, but they never invite me, right? And so clearly there’s something wrong in, in, maybe it’s something I say, but if I invite them the next time, then they come out, right? But if they never invite me. So at what point do you feel like, okay, this is enough, I can’t just invest more in that relationship. Yeah. So for me, I, I, there’s no nothing that I have where it says, you know, in six months, if they have not done this, this or this, then this happens. It’s just more of an instinctual thing. I feel that, you know, some people I, I will put in the work and then, and like I said, I don’t really pay attention at the beginning and some people are really responsive right away and then they might fall off a little later on and then some people aren’t and aren’t at all ever. And then those, they just kind of, I noticed who is responsive and when there is the, the, the return of attention and naturally those people, they get more attention when, if I’m, you know, so I don’t make it a big deal to try to monitor it, but it’s kind of a natural thing. You see who is interacting with you and who is not. And so there are the people, like when I say every three months or so, make a list. And then so there’s people that you’ve already been talking to and you know who the people that are either making the effort to reach out to you or when you do reach out to them, they respond, then I talk about, you know, maybe there’s the people that you should talk to. And so, that you haven’t talked to and then you reach out to them. And then if they do respond back, then that’s one thing, but then some people won’t. And then after I’d say a few times of that, if you’re not getting any response, then I downgrade those people. And then there might be some people that they might need to be upgraded. And there’s some people that get downgraded. So, you know, I talked about the, you know, your friends and your associates and the people that are strong associates and things like that. And so there’s always, I feel it doesn’t, so it doesn’t necessarily need to be in an Excel spreadsheet or something like that on, well, this person and this is where they are and where they rank. I think it’s kind of a natural thing. Some people I’ve had. But think about it, someone could come up with this and codify this, you know, I’m an entrepreneur. So, you know, there’s a couple of things you can quantify about that, right? How long does it take them to get back to you? That’s, I think, a lot of dating apps are looking into that. And like basically any freelancer app is looking into that. If you have a freelancer that takes an Airbnb, right? That’s another example. If it takes a host a couple of days to get back to you, it’s probably not a great host because then you might get stuck in wherever you’re staying. And then there’s a bunch of metrics you can, you can associate to that, right? So you could say, oh, this person hasn’t reciprocated in quite some time and that person will be downgraded this. Because frankly, if you build a large network and I think you, I don’t know if you have the numbers in your head, this is a lot of work. So you probably have probably a thousand reconnections. I don’t know how many followers or connections you have on LinkedIn. Probably how many, what’s your connection size just in terms of quantity? Give us an idea. On LinkedIn or? Anywhere. Yeah, like just, it doesn’t have to be LinkedIn or people that you consider strong acquaintances and then weaker acquaintances and friends. What are the numbers for you? So I would say it’d probably go from about five, very, very close. And then we go out another ring and then would say maybe 20 and then maybe a hundred. And then, you know, it kind of loosens up after the hundred. But the 100 you would contact every three months. Yes. So I can, yeah, definitely, I can handle the hundred. Because, you know, like the five and the 20, those people I would be talking to all the time anyway. So there’s no need to try to set aside time to get in touch with them because I’m already in touch with them. But then the people, the hundred level, there’s, you know, there’s movement in and out of that hundred. And so there’s people that can come up and people that go down. But, and then there’s new people. Sometimes I’ll meet someone and they just jump right in at a pretty good, a pretty good level. And they might get in that 20 fairly quickly. And, you know, just out of the blue, just based on, you know, that connection. Because some people you just really connect with. And, you know, they might not have had the long track record, but at least in the near term, they, they’re doing pretty good. Yeah, I think that wasn’t that what LinkedIn wanted to do to manage your life with your 100 acquaintances. So to speak, that most people can still remember. And then remember, you needed to have an introduction to be like someone else. And they don’t introduce you to someone else. It was like impossible to add someone into your network. And now it’s like, you’re literally just going to invite anyone. I think they’ve, they’ve, they’ve also had their learning curve, right? They, I think they were, they were convinced that you had this relatively small number of those reconnection we would now consider a small number, a couple hundred or less. And then suddenly people had 100,000 of those connections and they were broke the whole system initially. And that if you did eventually make an Excel spreadsheet that managed all this, I would, I would be in the market for that. I would check that out for sure. Yeah, I mean, I feel like that’s, that should be your next startup. Because these things, I think we all have in our mind, but we don’t really, we don’t think about the rules enough. And then even if you have the rules, they are, we don’t really test them, right? So, so I think you have that psychologically, you mentioned that you have to sit in specific ways that people find you approachable, that you, that you, I don’t know, you don’t smile too much, but you look approachable. You have, you’re kind of in a good mood, right? So you, you come across as someone, well, if someone talks to you out of the blue, you won’t shoot someone down, right? You’re not arrogant. You’re not, you’re not a mean person. And I think those are just little things that people, I think they instinctively know them, but it’s not that you can go to the networking school. I mean, maybe you can, maybe I’ve never seen it, but it’s, that’s kind of like a, you know, you could do a seminar. And then on top of that, you do a startup. Is that something you have planned for yourself? The, I’m not sure if I understand the question, but that you develop it as, are you, maybe you already a coach, right? So that you, did you coach these ideas and then you later on bring them into, you know, something that’s, that’s an app or that’s, that’s a website that where you can do all these things. So just slightly quicker. Right. So I was doing workshops before COVID in person workshops, where we can actually get together and we set up the room like it’s a social event. And then we role play and we go through the actual motions. This is what you would do. Here’s how you come into the room. And here’s how you would interact and, you know, your body language and everything. And it’s really great. But then after, isn’t it a little creepy? Not really. I was just thinking, you know, like, like simulating as such as social, similar social situation, right? With so many factors. And then just basically just acting it out in a room. But that’s, I don’t know. I mean, I think you can pull it off. I just feel like that’s hard. Oh, it’s, it’s not as hard as it seems like it would be. It’s, it’s, it’s fairly easy. Because most people are sitting there and we’ll just pick one person and kind of walk through while everyone else kind of watches the process. And then, so it’s not, not difficult. And then virtually it’s a little more difficult to do a virtual workshop, because then you can’t break it up and have the room like that. So you just have to kind of walk through this is hypothetically what you would do. And but yeah, I, I never thought about maybe an app version of it. But yeah, I am definitely, you know, consulting and coaching people. And, you know, I’m trying to put together, I’ll be next month, I’ll have a workshop, a virtual workshop where we’ll try to get as close to the in person workshop as possible. But it’s a different, it’s a different thing. It’s, it’s still effective. But it’s, it’s different than actually being in a room with people and walking through the steps. In those workshops, what do people struggle with the most? What do you feel like is the the biggest thing they need to overcome on average? So I would say that it’s, you know, people run out of things to say, they don’t know how to have those icebreakers to start the conversation. And I’d say that an imposter syndrome, a lot of people have had that feeling like they, like they don’t belong or that everybody is watching them and judging them, that sort of thing. I’ve had a lot of people bring that up the imposter syndrome. And then the, what do I say? I don’t know what to say, that sort of thing. I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to be doing? The one of the big things is for business conferences. There’s a lot of people that go to business conferences and I was asked by someone, they said, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. The company always sends me to these conferences and, and I go, but then they just end up going to the bar, whatever, all night with their coworker. And but at the conference, they’re just kind of hanging out and hungover. And because they say, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. And so I said, well, here’s, you know, you, you can have an actual plan to get more out of the conference. So it’s just not a place where you’re just going just to stand around hungover. You can actually do what you’re supposed to be doing, which is, you know, make some connections that, that matter, make some, have some relationships, maybe make a friend or learn something new. Maybe there’s something in the industry that it might be beneficial to you later on down the line. And it doesn’t hurt to add a few more connections, but it’s, you know, do it in the right way. But, you know, you have to have the steps. So if you walk through the steps arriving, you know, getting preknown, going up and, and actually meeting people and making real connections, then it’s, it’s a totally different experience than just staying with the person that you arrived from your company that you already know, and then just drinking all night. It’s a different process. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people don’t really use the potential of these conferences. And I always thought that’s the best part about it. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve crashed so many business conferences where I didn’t belong. Often I didn’t even pay the entrance fee. And I basically just, you know, in, in, in San Francisco, especially it was good enough to find that hotel. And the conference area was usually zoned off, but people would come out eventually, they would be in a hallway that was fairly accessible there. There’s usually an exhibition hall that you can access for free. So you don’t have to worry about the $5,000 price tag. You literally just show up and you have to involve people in, in a conversation. But what I found really valuable is that you can, you can try out different things about your product, say a different approach, right? So you have a new product as an entrepreneur, and you don’t really know how to pitch this. And literally with every person, you can have a slightly different pitch. There’s no marketing agency involved. You don’t have to craft any ads. You literally can, can see what actually sticks and resonates with people. And that’s often the hardest that you get a little bit of attention and get people to think for a couple of seconds about a product that, you know, you don’t want to sell them something immediately. You just, would you try this? What do you think if I had this product, would you use it, right? With a, with a question that’s, that’s totally away from, from a product sell, which is almost impossible. And I always felt that that worked really well for me. What didn’t work so well, and maybe again, that’s just me when, when I show up at conferences, you get a bunch of business cards, right? And maybe you get that, now you get an, an email, you get a phone number. It’s hard to, to reengage people later on. Like even adding them on your LinkedIn is very difficult. Like it’s a conversation that is true and interesting and fun in that moment, but it’s very difficult to reengage with people later on. And that may be the way that I interact with people. I really haven’t, but I hadn’t, didn’t have the guidance of your book before. And I think it’s really valuable. But why do you think that it’s, so there’s a really good conversation, there’s a good connection you make with people. You have the impression that they do share lots of things on their own. And you can talk about a specific idea of yours, but then suddenly you’ll never hear from them again. Right. I’ve seen that a lot where you’ll meet someone at a conference or something. And then they might say, Hey, are you on LinkedIn? Yes. And then they will send the request. You approve it. And now you’re linked on LinkedIn. And then that’s it. Nothing happens after that. Or even less, right? That’s not, it doesn’t even, not even LinkedIn, right? They completely disappear now. Right. Yes. Yeah. And then you say, I thought, yeah, we had that great conversation. And now somehow they fell off. And so remember, you can only do your part, your half. So you can’t necessarily control the other person. A lot of people are really horrible at following up on their, on their connections. I’d say most people are bad at it. And so if it’s somebody that I think might be pretty good. So there’s a lot of people that just fall off no matter what you do. But then there’s some, once you make that connection, I try to follow up a couple of times and not just launch into, you know, business talk, unless that’s what we bonded over. But whatever it was about that conversation that we had, that it felt like it kind of got a little deeper and what we connected on. Maybe we talked about kayaking or something. I will bring up the kayaking and to try to get a little bit of dialogue going. And then if that, if I can get it going, then usually that gets us in a good place to, you know, try to start maintaining something. But if I can’t get that initial dialogue going, and sometimes they do it to me. Sometimes people connect with me and then I somehow kind of fall off. But then they will say something and then I go, Oh yeah, that’s right. This is that person that I met. And that once we get that initial conversation, then it eases the way, but there’s no guarantee that that’s going to happen. What do you think is the biggest source that people just fall off? Like they, they were like bored in the conversation, but they weren’t, they wouldn’t admit it. They were too shy to do that. And they, they, they literally just hung in there and but they actually thought about something else. Or there’s just too much that happened over that time frame. And there were too many people they talked to and they can’t associate with the specific conversation anymore, even if you, you know, give them a conversational reminder. What do you think is the D short? They just, they’re too overwhelmed and they’re too busy and they don’t see they can make money with this. I think that’s that would be what would I would put my finger on. So people are very focused on, you know, we need to make more money. We need to sell more. We need to sign up Daimler Bents. We need to sign up that big company that everyone’s after. And that didn’t seem like an opportunity to make a million dollar sales. So let’s not put any more time into this. Right. Like we discussed earlier, I think it’s kind of goes back to the long game principle. And so people are, you know, they’re a little overwhelmed and then they try to prioritize their time as we also discussed. And one of the things that I think people do a little bit wrong, even though there’s, you know, there’s a lot of people that would debate with me about this, but that is something that you said on the, if they talked to you and me and then they talked to some other person and the other person that they talked to seems like, oh, this is a million dollar account that they could get. Then they will say, I’m going to talk to that one person and ignore these other two guys because, and then they might not intentionally ignore us, but they might just, you know, downgrade us. And this is, I know that you try to connect, but this isn’t a priority. I’m prioritizing this other person. But, you know, sometimes that might, that might work for them in their business. But I always tell people, you don’t know who I know and like, and who you know. So just because we had a conversation and I might not on the surface appear that, you know, you’re going to find that million dollar account, I might have three people that I know that would be perfect that have, you know, that could be three accounts that you might be able to get. But you don’t know that yet because we’re still in this early part of this, you know, relationship. And so, you know, before, in your mind, now naturally you wouldn’t, that the person that you knew that you felt might have the million dollar account, sure, keep in touch with them, but also kind of dance around with the other people too because you don’t know where the, where the hidden, hidden gems are in the group. There’s a lot of people that know people that might be beneficial to you, but you’re not going to know about that unless your relationship reaches that level, then you can, you can get a peek into their networks. And once again, you’re not trying to meet people in order to use them or necessarily sell them something, you’re trying to meet people that you actually enjoy being around. But if you do meet someone that you don’t really care for, but they might be good for business, then yeah, you can still talk to them too, sure. But you’re trying to actually, at least from my view, and there’s other people that have argued with me about this, because I want to meet people that I actually find interesting, that I would like to see again, that I think are good people to be around. And other people might say they don’t care about that. There’s the saying, I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to make money. And so those people have their own technique. I don’t think they would hire you as a salesperson. They wouldn’t hire me either. No, I’m just, I’m joking. The thing is, as a salesperson, you have to bring in these sales quickly, right? And then there’s a sales cycle, even if a person is convinced it doesn’t mean they sign the contract tomorrow. So there’s an enterprise sales or in high, high wall, high, high value sales. It takes a while for people to think about that decision, even if they already, you know, they’re 99% there. So it might be for software, it’s often 12 months. So even if someone wants the product, they have to convince the rest of the enterprise. So it’s a very long, long timeframe. And as a salesperson, if you don’t convince someone in the first three months, literally, you will be fired six months later. So you will never, you will never see the light of day. And, you know, the long game is not something that most sales organizations really appreciate because it is so difficult for them to track. It’s very hard for them to find out. And I was talking to another guest who, who spent 30 years as a CEO and lots of different companies. And he literally asked him, you know, how do you find a good sales guy as a startup or girl? And he basically just blanked on me. He says, you know, there’s no way of knowing. You don’t know beforehand, you got to get these people out in the field and then wait six months or 12 months. And then if they didn’t bring the numbers, you can, you have to go on to the next person. There’s no psychological test that you can run because it really depends on other people too, not just on that person. I, I, I want to find out and I know you traveled a lot. The, the idea of networking, how, where would you say already the top five easiest places and most valuable places from your point of view to network and what are like the five worst places in the world and that this could be cities or countries where you feel networking is easy and rewarding for you or for me or for anyone. And what, what is, where is it really, really hard? I would say that so the United States is fairly easy and then Central and South America seems to be fairly easy too. And over in Europe, Western Europe, fairly easy. I would say that in Japan, I was able to do it, but it’s quite a bit more difficult. China is very difficult. There’s a, so there’s some people that, you know, when people from other countries that I haven’t visited have gotten my book, I say, let me know if you think that these principles would work in your country because, you know, there’s different cultures and ways, different ways people do things. And I know that, you know, some of these things don’t necessarily apply in, in certain countries. But I would say a lot of the Western Hemisphere places, it works well and what, and I was thinking the other day to even be more specific, I was thinking if I were to show up, you know, and this is a little bit pre COVID, but I’ll see how I can adapt it because I might do something like this coming up and do a little documentary about it, maybe on YouTube or something. But if I were to show up in a new country, which, you know, I’ve done this, where I show up, where I don’t know anyone, I would start off by, you know, I’d stay at a, I do a home stay, stay at some local’s house for at least a couple of weeks to get the lay of the land, take a dance class, a cooking class, and a language class. And that way, I would be, so I’m learning about the culture and things from the family I’m staying with at the dance class, I’m meeting people there, and there’s going to be probably some foreigners there and some locals. And then, you know, I’m, it’s a little more intimate, so you’re getting to know them in the language class, I’m learning a bit of the language, I can tell the teacher, hey, I’m trying to meet some new people, who do you know that, what are you doing later, I want to go somewhere to practice this, and they would have some suggestions. And then the cooking class, you’re also learning more about the culture and meeting people in the cooking class. And so what happens is very quickly, all these people start inviting you to things and you show up and, and when you show up and you meet people at their event, or just at their home, and they have guests over, you’re going to meet some people that you want to see again, they’re like, oh, this is a cool person. And then you’re going to meet some people that you don’t necessarily care for. But it’s a really rapid, quick way to show up and start building your network out. I love that hack. I think this, those are three places to really get started, especially language schools. I think this is often just, I mean, for two reasons. One is that that’s usually a place where you meet not just other foreigners, but people who are definitely, who are definitely coming from different viewpoints into the same society might have the observations that are of real interest to you. And also on the other hand, if you can use the language skills and demonstrate that you care about the country, and that’s really important to most people, they want to, they want you to see, care about that, that particular place. And I always felt, I’m really amazed, like, there’s a coffee shop in Ethiopia that I go to, and I can strike, you know, hardcore philosophical conversation with pretty much any random person. So we talked about the whole eternity, and then, you know, took it apart for an hour, just in a random conversation. There is a couple of places, there’s actually three or four of those in Addis Ababa, that, well, I don’t know what it is, but everyone there really expects hardcore religious or philosophical debate. And it’s not a debate club. People just sit there the whole day, and just the owner, and they speak perfect English. I’m really amazed. So this is kind of, I feel like if I go to Addis, this is the easiest place for me to network. And you can meet anyone, right? You can literally meet the mayor tomorrow if you want to push for this. And I don’t know anyone, right? It’s not that I know people that I’ve talked to, but it’s not that I wouldn’t call them a strong connection. And I feel also Eastern Africa has that. There’s definitely something there that people are, say Nairobi, it’s a place that’s very polyglot, right? It has a lot of influence from the British Empire. That makes that really easy. And I think the United States, obviously, used to be a place that was fantastic for networking. I’m not sure that’s still true in the coastal areas. I felt it’s much harder to engage people in anything that is like networking, or just a, I wouldn’t say a debate, but like, I have this coffee shop down the road where I go, and I don’t know if it’s my addiction to coffee, but that seems to be the place where it’s relatively easy to define people who you can have a conversation with. And there’s a bunch of people who kind of bring their dogs and they debate, you know, basically what a philosophy professor would do, they debate Rousseau. And that’s just a random morning on nine to 10 morning coffee, right? So these pockets exist. They’re sometimes not so easy to find. And there’s other countries, I felt Asia is not so bad, but there’s other countries where it’s really difficult. And I consider Europe is often hard for this. But the trouble with Europe is if you find the right people, it’s really easy. But if you don’t, it’s really difficult to get people to get in any kind of, like, there was always a joke when I grew up in Europe, that these networking events, basically there was no networking being done because nobody wanted to network. It might have changed since, right? But I would go there and I was actually the only one who would, you know, kind of instinctively follow some of your principles without knowing them. Everyone else was literally just there to drink and go home. And, you know, Germans need a lot of drinks, then the picture changes. If you’re ready to drink a couple of big beers, then things change. I think that’s also the secret in Russia. It’s very difficult to network in Russia with Russia or without. But once you find the right people and you drink a lot, then this changes a lot. But as you said, you know, you don’t want to, and I always felt that’s really difficult about Germany for myself. I’m not a big drinker. Not that I don’t like alcohol, but I can’t drink a lot. And, you know, I can’t drink a bunch of beers every night. I felt like if you don’t do this, you’re in the out group, you cannot associate with people because that’s required. There’s like, you know, five, four, six beers required every night before you can even network. I thought that’s a real problem. I just can’t do it. My liver can’t survive that. Right. Yes, I found that in Germany myself. I learned that, yeah, you could go out and you are correct. If you can put down the beers, then, yeah, people open up then. But yeah, it’s odd trying to do it there because it’s so much of the social scene is built around drinking events that it’s difficult to do it without that factor in there. But I… We can’t drink water. Here’s the thing. Even if you go to the same exact scene, right, with the group of people that you know, and you drink water and they drink beer, there’s no way you can network. I mean, maybe you can. I couldn’t pull it off. I was like, this is impossible. You need to be in that same state of mind and they only accept you if you are willing to go to the same state of mind. Like, if you can’t down six beers in one night, then there’s no reason to network. I found this really odd. I mean, that was my experience and it might have changed quite a bit. Right. Well, yeah, I can see. I know that when I was there two years ago, it was more like you didn’t have to do five or six. I did, but a lot of times people would switch over so they have these nonalcoholic beers. So some of my friends would have maybe two actual beers and then they would have two nonalcoholic beers. So it still looks the same, but it just doesn’t have the alcohol in there because they say, I can’t be completely wasted. I have things to do. So they would have the nonalcoholic beers and it seemed to go pretty smoothly. But yeah, there are certain things. Yeah, if you want to be in that particular circle, then yeah, it does in that society. It seems to, and as you mentioned with like Russia with the drinking, it’s a big part of the social scene. So you can assume that that’s going to be part of it to be accepted into the group. There’s going to be some of that. And since I do drink, I haven’t had the experience of trying to do it without the drinking part, which I think it would be considerably harder. Yeah, I find it impossible. And you know, vodka looks like water, but still it’s hard to get rid of the vodka and then just put water in. You have to like bribe the waitress for it or, I don’t know, it’s really tricky to pull that off long term. There was one thing I really noticed in your book, and I think it applies to a lot of listeners. As an entrepreneur, networking is absolutely essential because that’s how you find your investors over time. And it’s essential to find the first customers who are often more curious about your product than you yourself. That’s kind of the first customers you want because it helps them potentially so much. And you also mentioned that you had the opportunity to invest in a bunch of startups or businesses, right? Because that you kind of accidentally got called when someone was starting in your business or had a new business opportunity. Can you tell us about the deals? And do you think that’s a good way to actually do a long term investing? So it’s really interesting in that, you know, if you are around, so once again, you pick kind of what sort of social scene you want to be a part of. And for me, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs and people that are taking action and starting businesses or they might not at a certain time, but then they might say, I have an idea. I might be into this. And then I would say, oh, that sounds great. If you are looking for investors, I would like to be one of them or, you know, there’s certain things that interest me. And so I would say that sometimes, so it’s not like these are all home runs when you invest in something. Sometimes they fail. A lot of times they fail. And then sometimes they actually do really well. But there’s no real way to tell. So you’re pretty much betting on the person to see, hey, can they pull this off? And some people have a good track record. And even people that have a good track record of doing great things, sometimes they fail also. And naturally, they love to fail when you put your money in. That’s what they fail. You’re like, you’ve been successful all this time and then you fail when I invest. But for me, I like it versus just going into the stock market and just buying some stock that I just heard about. There’s maybe some donut company up the street or something, and then I just buy their stock. This is, it’s a little more personal. But the rewards, if it does work out, the rewards are much greater than you’re just going and buying some regular publicly traded stock. You get on the ground floor of some of these things. And because this is one of your friends, you believe in what they’re doing. Or else if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t invest in it. But I say, hey, that’s a great idea. I would like in. I’d like to support you and your vision. Let’s go. Let’s see what happens. And if it works out, then it works out really well. And a lot of times it doesn’t. So I don’t think that I would necessarily suggest that that is a thing that everyone should. Naturally, I’m not like a financial plan or anything like that. So I can’t really suggest that people do that. It’s all comes down to your risk tolerance and your investment style. But for me, it’s, it’s something that I, that’s my preferred way of investing. I mean, I love that idea. And there’s so many startups now that do not just friends and family rounds. You know, those are often the first round that you raise money with. And the, the, the big opportunity for a lot of startups now is crowdfunding. And crowdfunding, we think of, you’ve got to talk to a million people and then raise $5, you know, it’s like a donation campaign, basically, like an Obama style campaign where you talk to everyone in the U.S. and everyone gives you $5. And, you know, that’s a good change, good, some good change there. But I think most crowdfunding investors, they are, and I think the average is now somewhere around $1,000. And many people invest $5,000 to $10,000 in one particular startup. And if you can leverage your network, a lot of people say that about LinkedIn. That’s the big new opportunity for LinkedIn. Whoever is going to be successful at this is basically leveraging your network for crowdfunding campaigns in that, you know, some of them have been at $1,000 and $5,000. And I think there’s a lot of, a lot of potential in that idea because crowdfunding has gotten so easy. It used to be difficult. You had to go through, you had to be an accredited investor at a certain funding size. And it was difficult to integrate it in your cap table. And it was always a mess. It was totally doable, but it was a mess. And now it seems so easy. And, you know, instead of just getting your five close connections into a deal, you can get your 100 relatively close connections, the one you maintain and every three months, like you mentioned it in your book in a deal, or you can get an even wider network in your deal. And that can add up quite quickly to decent amounts of funding. So I think for entrepreneurs, it’s the idea of networking that’s changed quite a bit because before you had to really focus on VCs, right? That’s, you wanted a long term relationship. At some extent with some VCs, they knew you and they knew what you were up to. And you knew them. So you could target them if you had an investment at some point. But now it’s changed. Now it’s pretty much anyone can be a VC because it doesn’t take that many people to pull off even relatively big funding rounds. So I’m really excited for that. And it’s something that I think people see that happening. Crowdfunding has been around for some time, but it hasn’t really taken off in a big way. Often the problem is that you can’t really see there’s no consumer focus, right? So if it still remains to be seen if a company can successfully crowdfund something that is not a consumer company, so something that is a B2B software tool, for instance, can it ever attract decent size, unless you have that big network, you know, consumers have a hard time judging what you’re up to. Right. I know that one of my friends, for example, has, there’s one with an agricultural company. He has like technology in the agricultural field. And but since we were in this kind of the same, our social network is similar and a lot of things overlap. And so we know a lot of the same people. And we’ve been following him as he’s been developing this for, you know, the past four years. And then, you know, finally he says, okay, it’s this vision has come to pass. It’s ready. And then but he’s been kind of letting us all know where he’s at in the process all this time. So then and saying, Hey, it’s coming up. So this is kind of what we’re looking at as far as investments. So yeah, he should be able to when he does open for investing, it would be kind of like a smaller smaller version of the crowdfunding, because he doesn’t necessarily need to open it up to, you know, thousands of people, he can say, Hey, I’m capping this off at, you know, 100 people or 50 people. And this is the amount that I’m looking for. But we’ve all since he’s not really pitching to strangers, he’s talking to people that, you know, we’ve all known about this for the past four years as it went from idea to, you know, coming around to actually being something now. And so it is a good way for him to raise money. And it’s, and it’s a lot less of like a pitch that he has to do, because we’ve been hearing about it the whole time. Yeah, that exciting note about the future and the future of entrepreneurship. Thanks for doing this, Nick. I learned a lot. And I will definitely heed your advice. There’s a lot of really great stuff in the book. Thanks. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure. Absolutely. Talk to you soon. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye.