The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 255: David Burkus - The Hidden Networks That Can Transform Your Life (Friend Of A Friend)

Episode Date: April 29, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #255: David Burkus - The Hidden Networks That Can Transform Your Life (Friend Of A Friend) David Burkus is a best-selling author, a sought after speaker, and business school professor. In 2017, he was named as one of the world's top business thought leaders by Thinkers50. The Learning Leader Show "The fundamental element that defines the quality of our lives are the people we surround ourselves with and the conversations we have with them." Show Notes: What defines a happy life? "The fundamental element that defines the quality of our lives are the people we surround ourselves with and the conversations we have with them. That's how you live a happy life." Adam Rifkin - The "strength of weak ties" The research suggests you have better odds of getting a job through a loose acquaintance than a close friend "Dormant ties" are very valuable to have in your life.  Make a deliberate effort to reach back out to those people.  Use a system to keep track of those relationships This is the "what" and the "how" to get it done From "science" to "practice" -- The key to success is to be prescriptive.  Give actionable advice The story of Michelle McKenna Doyle -- How she created her dream job in the NFL. 1 dormant tie - 1 degree of separation.  "Most of us are only 1 or 2 introductions away from what we want..." Clusters - People tend to cluster around like minds.  There is amazing power of small communities "Build your own stage, your own community" Super connector - Dunbar's # -- Brian Grazer Having regular curiosity conversations -- That is how he met Ron Howard Never ask the question, "How can I help you?"  Figure out how you can help someone else, then help them.  Don't put the onus on them. Always think, "who does this person need to meet?" And make connections In a networking situation, don't just ask - "What do you do?" -- Try to learn more about them as a person, not just their job "What excites you right now? Who's your favorite super hero?" Where did you grow up?" Be interested in order to be interesting "We feel guilt when we no longer want to associate with old friends and colleagues who haven't changed. The price, and marker, of growth." - Naval Ravikant How David and his wife measured their friendships and peer group -- They made lists How to give a TED Talk? -- Practiced it hundreds of times, hired a coach Go to www.DavidBurkus.com/Ryan Social Media: Follow David on Twitter: @davidburkus Read: Friend of A Friend Go to: DavidBurkus.com/Ryan Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12  

The way to create value is to first understand that your network is not a collection of contacts in your phone. Your network already exists and you're just a part of it. And the way that you start creating value is to realize that your job is to serve that network. Usually that means by connecting people or by helping somebody find a cluster or a community they need, but it's to serve the network as a whole, not to just give to one person and then keep track of it. And when you've had enough gives to make a withdrawal to do it. No, just worry about the network and everything will kind of take care of it. self. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. It is

Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 44222. Now on to tonight's featured leaders with my friend David Burkis, bestselling author sought after speaker and business school professor in 2017. He was named as one of the world's top business thought leaders by Thinkers 50. Incredible. Congrats to Dave for that. A few of the topics we got into. We discussed his latest book titled, Friend of a Friend, Understanding the Hidden Networks

that Can Transform Your Life and Your Career. Also got into the fundamental element that determines the quality of your life. Then the best and worst questions to ask. when meeting someone for the first time, and then how you can become a super connector. Actions to take to make it happen. Ladies and gentlemen, you'll get a lot out of this one with David Burkis. Where a lot of people get hung up or pigeonhole this idea of networking connections

is very sort of instrumental, right? I'm looking for a new job, so I need to network. Or I'm a salesperson, so I need to network. And those things are true, but those things are also what I think a lot of us feel, make us feel sleazy about networking, right? That it's not authentic if I'm doing it for some aim. And that is also true. It is not. The truth is, though, that we need to be very deliberate about all of our connections. You know, we're deliberate about who we marry, right? And we're deliberate about staying in touch. Hopefully, we're deliberate about staying in touch and staying connected and staying

very intentional about maintaining that relationship. Well, the same kind of applies to all of our relationships that we need to be intentional about. And, you know, you probably heard a similar thing to the quote that John loves, you've probably heard these like phrases like, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. The average of the five people you interact with most. Those are all true, but they're untrue in the sense that they sort of narrow it down. And we make, we think it's just about, okay, who are we marry and who are my close friends, et cetera. But at least the research from network science suggests that it's way more broad than that. In Nicholas Krasakis and James Fowler are probably the two best researchers in this area and what they call the three degrees of influence. So, you know, you're, friends, the people that are around you, definitely affect you. They affect all sorts of health things and even happiness. They affect smoking rates, obesity rates, and they affect depression, happiness, feelings of life satisfaction, et cetera. But the truth is that their friends,

so their one degree of separation actually has an effect and even one more. Chris Sackas and Fowler call it the three degrees of influence, that people you've never met, but are two or three people separate out from you? Because they have an effect on your friend and they have an effect on your friend of a friend, that effect spills out over under you. So who you know and who you're connected with and the quality of your life to use the quote, it really is affected by the people that we have in our lives and we need to be deliberate about it and also deliberate about who sort of they keep us connected to as well. And that level, keeping it that broad, I think is the reason almost networking is everyone's business, even if you don't think of it as this will just advance my

career, et cetera. There's a very specific reason in the subtitle. I had something to do with the subtitle, but not the title, that we say career and life, because it's about something way bigger than that. Your friends of friends are your future. So the fundamental element of that quality belongs to kind of all of those people in the network, all the more reason to study your network and be as intentional about it as you would, your close friends. So what about the dormant ties, though? Adam Rifkin story is great. I know you and Adam Grant have talked about this as well, and I'm glad that you put it in your book. But the, but talking about the, but the, the, the, the power of first defining what dormant ties are and how being aware of this concept could be

helpful for you both in your life and your career. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Adam Grant is the reason I'm aware of Adam Rifkin and Adam writes about it in his awesome book, Give and Take. Actually, I went out and had to get Adam's permission to talk about the other Adam because I didn't want him to feel like I'm stealing this story or stepping on your toes, etc. And in true give and take fashion, Adam Grant's response was yes, absolutely. The more people know about Adam Rifkin, the better. Right? So it's like, okay, cool. But the idea, so some of us are familiar with. It's about a 30, almost even 40 year old principle called the strength of weak ties. This started with a study from Mark Granavetter where the majority of people who are looking for a job. So yeah, here's that instrumental piece. But more on that in a second. The majority of people who are looking for a new job, et cetera, found that they got it not through close friends and not through sort of total stranger online app. The majority of source of information on that. came from weak ties, loose acquaintances. And there's actually, there's a tendency to associate weak ties meaning your friend of a friend,

and those are two different things. One is one degree of separation. A weak tie is someone you kind of know, but you don't really know that well. So I think about it as like pretty much every weekday morning at 11 a.m., I do Brazilian jihitsu with a group of guys. I know some of them really well because they've been there forever. I know some of them not so well. And some of them, you know, are very weak ties.

I know their name and I know their occupation. But that's about all I know about them. Because when you're trying to choke someone else unconscious, you don't really have time to talk about your feelings and favorite movies and that kind of stuff, right? So they're weak ties, right? The people you go to church with, right? You know them. You kind of know their family, but they sit in the other, you know, across the aisle so you don't get to interact all that much. These are weak ties.

And weak ties, we've known for like 40 years, are very beneficial because there's a relationship there. But they're also not super close to you. The people super close to you, they're aware of the same opportunities as you. you. They think like you. They watch the same movies as you. You all think alike. You're too alike to be beneficial when the goal is to find new information. So we've known for about 40 years that these weak ties, people you know, but people who don't really run in your circle are usually more beneficial for that new information. The most beneficial of the weak ties are like you said, the dormant ties. And dormant ties are different than weak ties in that usually a dormant tie,

the relationship was close. They did run in your circle. But for some reason or another, they fell by the wayside. So maybe they moved away, right? Or maybe they got a new job or they switched churches or they go to a different gym to use all of the analogies that we've been using. So there was a tight relationship there and now they're running somewhere else. So they're just as likely as any other weak tie to have access to new information and new opportunities and new perspectives. But it's easier to build the rapport you need to be able to make that connection because they already were your friends. You just haven't talked to them a while.

And I think all of us have had that situation where we haven't talked to somebody in a while and we get on the phone for them to catch up and it's just like it's like no time has passed whatsoever that's a dormant tie and i think most of us allow ourselves to reconnect with those dormant ties sort of serendipitously or by chance and i recommend to people make a very deliberate effort to constantly be reaching back out to those dormant ties so that a when you need them they're there and it doesn't seem inauthentic and instrumental etc but but also because you have no idea what kind of new information that they'll they'll bring and it's just you benefit them and they benefit you by making it a regular practice to reconnect with those dormant ties. So put note to get really practical.

So maybe put notes on your calendar to block off 30 to minutes to an hour once or twice a week to say I'm going to first build the list of those dormant ties and then actually call them or at minimum send them a note. Something like that you're thinking. Yeah. So I mean at a minimum make that list. There's two sort of systems that I've come to recommend over time. I actually use a software for this now called Contactually that you can basically put people in buckets as how, and it tracks your email and it tracks some social media accounts to see. And then it'll flag you like, you haven't talked to this person in six months. And it's a good sort of reminder.

That's a really sophisticated, it's kind of an expensive system, but it's great if you're trying to do sort of the maintenance that I'm trying to do. What I actually recommend to most people is if you're on Facebook, this is a brilliant tool for doing it because people you don't interact with. You went to college together and you're still friends, but you don't really see them all the time. They're constantly posting updates on their life. So one of the things I recommend is sort of make a point, like every day, make it a game. Like, did I check this box off or not? To see one of those updates, but don't just click like, right? Or don't just comment because it's really impersonal.

Actually try and send a text message or an email or a phone call to say, hey, I just saw on Facebook that you got a new job. Awesome. Congratulations, et cetera. But do it in that more sort of personal domain. And that can be that regular practice. I mean, you're already scrolling, most of us are already scrolling mindlessly through our newsfeed at some point in the day. This is a really good way to use that as a trigger to do something intentional that helps

you and helps the other person. The part in your book, so you do a good job from a structure standpoint that you end chapter is titling it from science. Now, I assume a little inside baseball. So you sent me a really early version that's like almost a word doc in my Kindle. I'm pretty sure it is a word document. I want to make sure that this is the way it will look in the book. So I don't want to.

Is the book still structured in that manner to the final copy of that? Okay, okay. So your structure, the way you do it is at the end of each chapter, because you know, you listen to this show, I am big on actionable, implementable advice, things that you can actually do. I love the ideas, but then I love the execution even more, right? So you end each chapter saying from science to practice. And I'd love to hear more about the process for taking the ideas.

So you're a big story in science writer like we talked about, right? Share a story. Share a story. Share the science. Right. Because we remember the stories, not necessarily the science, but the stories will reinforce the science. And at the end, it's from science to practice. So I like the structure as far as how we can actually implement based on what you're writing.

Yeah. So this is, again, like you said, it's sort of insight. baseball. So this is actually my first attempt in a book to do it. And it came because one of my, I don't know if he knows this or not, but one of my sort of big mentors in the game is Daniel Pink. I joke, and he does know this because I've told him, I joke often that my sort of career goal is to be the next, next Daniel Pink. Somebody's going to beat me to it because I'm 20 years behind Dan. But then whoever beats me to it, I'll be the next her, right? So, but one of the things, the last time we were talking, which was right around when I was midway through writing,

this book. We sat down for about an hour, hour and a half, and we're just sort of hanging out and talking about a bunch of stuff. And he really said that one of the keys to his success has been that there's a lot of the Gladwells and Heaths and those sort of things. But he's like, but I'm willing to be prescriptive. I'm willing to take out of. And as soon as he said that, I realized, like, well, yeah, every, I mean, when has that? To sell as human has that. Drive has that. And it's like, all right, well, all right, challenge accepted. I'm going to try and be a little bit more prescriptive. Because it is, I mean, my big lesson from this book, is that you need to understand how networks work so you can know what to do.

But it's helpful to go, okay, well, now that you know, understand how networks work, this is a practice you can do on a regular basis that's in line with that network science principle, but can help you. So that's been the goal of set for every chapter on that. Just like we just said with dormant ties, okay, what's the practice? Well, the easiest thing to do is make a list and then go down and reach out. And I actually think I recommend like rolling a dice to just doesn't matter who you reach out to.

Just be random. Just find a way to do it. and don't even have an agenda just want to reconnect. So that's, so that's, that's very intentional. I'm really, I'm glad you liked it.

Actually, I'm really relieved to hear that because it's new territory for me in getting prescriptive on, okay, do this. Well, yeah, I, I definitely like it.

And it can be done poorly, though. I think you did it well, and useful because that's really the question you're trying to answer is, how do we be more useful? But it's just like when you give a speech, and you know, you and I talk about speaking all the time.

I know from just our texting conversations are a lot are speaking related. But I think great speeches do a good job of sharing the what. But then also the natural follow-up question to that, Dave, is always, okay, how. And that's some of the science to practice where you can share the what, the story, and then this is actually how you can do it. This is what you can do. This is how you can do it. I think that adds another layer to the material to make it more useful.

Absolutely. I mean, the difference between a good sort of keynote speech or presentation in my view, in a business or whatever, in a conference context, the difference between that and a one-man show like you'd go see on Broadway, they're both trying to be entertaining. They're both trying to be a little funny. They're both trying to tell captivating stories. But a one-man show has no responsibility to go, okay, here's the takeaway. When you get back to your regular life, go do this. And that's, so I've been trying to do that in my speeches for a really long time. And so when Dan pitched that to me. I was like, yeah, that just makes perfect sense. People should have the same from reading a book too. Now, I, what's weird is, um, I really did not want to make it sort of a how to book because that's what all of the advice books do. They just say, here's what I did and it worked for me. So now go do this. So that's why I'm so glad you picked up on it. That's why we deliberately name the takeaways from science to practice. These are practices, but these are based in what we know from network science to be effective. So it's not just my advice and what worked for me. I've implemented a lot of it. And it's working. And it's working. pretty well. But that's useless to most people. What's useful to all people is this is a takeaway that's actually rooted in these scientific principles. What about the Michelle McKenna Doyle story? For those who don't know that, would you be, would you be cool to share that one and how that relates to this? Yeah. I wondered if, because this might be your secret way of getting into working with the NFL one day, right? So most, I mean, most people are probably unfamiliar with Michelle McKenna Doyle. She was at the time that She was hired.

As the CIO at the NFL, she was the highest level female executive in the league. But the story starts way before that. So Michelle grew up in a family that loved football, loved Alabama football in particular. All of her brothers played. Her dad was like super into this. I mean, her dad swore that one day one of his kids would make it in the NFL. And he was right. It just happened to be Michelle.

And the interesting thing is she didn't take any sort of football route. She did a little bit working with the athletics program and college, etc. But didn't, like, go out and try and work for a team as a trainer or manager or anything like that. She actually studied accounting. And so she started to work in accounting gradually that moved her over into IT and information technology. I think, I mean, if you're asking me, I don't know why her dream job was the NFL because at one point she worked for Walt Disney World. Right. But eventually she finds herself in this situation.

She's working for a Fortune 500 company. The Fortune 500 company actually announces that it's merging with someone else. going to move the headquarters from where Michelle lives to Chicago. And so now she's got this issue of like, okay, well, do I move? I really don't want to move. We're not at the right stage of life to just uproot all over kids in her life and move away. So I guess I'm looking for a new job.

And the most curious thing happens, she's, again, she grew up in a family that loves football. She's checking her fantasy football league stats and playing around on the NFL website. She scrolls down and there's a little careers tab like most websites have. She just kind of curiously clicks it, looks through and she, finds this job listing that is for what basically is a CIO position, but here's the rub. Like, they don't call it that. It's a much lower pay. The NFL knows they need a CIO, but they don't know that that's what it's called and that that's what the position and the pay level of what they need is. So she thinks like, this sounds a lot like me, but they're not asking for a CIO. They're just asking for whatever. And then what's really sort of a, A, maybe the first testament or hint to the sort of the power of networks is other people start forwarding her that link and go, hey, I just saw this. And I think it sounds a lot like you. So after two or three of those, she's like, all right, well, I should probably give this a shot.

Let's look into it. But again, she knows no one at the NFL, and she's got to convince them that they need a higher position than what they even think they need. So you can't just, like, fill out a, send a resume and fill out an application online and get that level of, like, candid conversation of what they need. So she knows she needs that network connection. She needs to get an in at the NFL. And so she reaches, speaking of dormant ties, she reaches back out to a dormant tie,

colleague of hers that used to work in one of her old companies. And he had moved on and he became a headhunter. So he became the person that usually companies used to find senior level executive positions. And she's she's kind of working her network and just figuring out who does she know that might be a connection. She mentions it to him. He's like, well, you know, our firm's not doing this search. We weren't contracted for it. But I know someone at the firm who is. Let me see if I can make an introduction. So now Michelle gets introduced to the search firm that is doing it. That person believes in her enough to go, you're right, let's get you in front of them. And she goes and through, you know, keeping track, it's, it's one dormant tie and then one degree of separation out. And now she's in the

boardroom at the NFL and she's talking to the commissioners and all the other senior leaders and going, you need a CIO and you need me. And she convinces them, right? And because she's got that personal sort of network connection, she can get the ability to get in front of them to convince them. And she gets the offer. And like I said, her, she, her father finally gets to see someone make it into the NFL, right? But it never would have happened if you're not taking this approach of, okay, I know this is too important to just trust to a random resume. Let me see, let me feel out my network and see if I can find a path. And I think, you know, Michelle's story is really awesome, but the truth is Michelle's story is not unique. Because most of us are only one or two

introductions away from everyone we could potentially need to meet in our lives. The difference is we tend to just play it too close. We don't feel out our network. We don't reach out. We don't reconnect with dormant ties. We don't do the things you need to do to be able to really fully create, but then also capture the value of a network. So that is a story of dormant ties and being one degree away of separation, which I love Michelle's story. And you told it really well in the TED Talk, too.

But for those who are, let's say they're looking for, I'll use one of your words, they're looking for a cluster, looking for a group. to be part of, but they're struggling to find one. And so the alternative option, and Jason Gaynard, somebody else that you featured in the book who were mutual friends with, but Jason told me this advice almost four years ago now. He said, I know you want to speak on stage. My advice to you is to create your own stage. And so in this case, if you're looking for a cluster, there's a group of four guys who

instead of given the fact that they couldn't find a cluster, they decided to create their own. And this started with a ski trip, just four friends. And they were making this dream list of entrepreneurs and started cold-clawing them. Fascinating story. And this is, I think, both an entertaining story, but also educational and practical for people who want to create their own, even for the introverts. Right. Even for the introverts out there, I think this is something that's possible if you want to share. Yeah.

So, I mean, let me let me back up real quick. and talk a bit about like what you mean by cluster, etc. So networks as a whole, we tend to think of them as sort of evenly distributed, but the truth is that that doesn't happen. The truth is that people tend to cluster around like minds, like industries, et cetera. So we tend to have this more clusters and bridges, right? It's not a perfect matrix like a piece of graph paper. It looks like what we all think, a network, that little spider web of a network works like. And these clusters form around people of like mind with like interest, etc.

And they're very, very useful to be a part of. You can't spend too much time in them. Otherwise, you never sort of get anything done by interacting with the rest of the network. But they're very useful to have that kind of community to go back to. You know, like you and I are actually in one online that's a Facebook group that is where most of our conversations about speaking happen. That's hugely valuable. It's a great example of a cluster, right? So this is a similar example.

So there's these four guys, Elliot Bissnow, Brett Levy, Jeff Rosenthal and Jeremy Schwartz. I think there's somebody else involved to Ryan Bagel. Sorry, it's been a while since I wrote this story down. So I'm trying to remember everyone involved. And they're basically, they all either work for a tech company or they're an entrepreneur themselves. And they're thinking like, you know what, we need to get more involved in this community.

And there's, like you said, they have this dream list of the people who are going to create. So they do, like you said, they create their own stage. So the first one, it starts out is we're going to do this small little event. We're going to go to Park City. We're going to rent a cabin. And we're going to invite a bunch of sort of like-minded people. You've got to be in that late 20s, early 30-something range, work in, work for a startup or chair startup, et cetera. And they get, I mean, this first list has some amazing people in it from executives at sort of the Facebooks and Google, Scott Harrison of Charity Water.

Some of the folks from Warby Parker are all involved, right? So it's this really cool, just little quick ski trip idea of let's create our own cluster. What's interesting is that after that it became sort of so impactful that they started going, okay, well, now let's ask those people who just came, hey, you know, you're awesome. This was an amazing event. We all really benefited from it. Who else needs to be here? And can you refer us to one or two other names who do it?

So over time, they're kind of growing this regular event. Within a year of this, they, because of a couple network connections, they were invited to do a conference for the Obama administration at the White House on sort of young entrepreneurship and tech, etc. Within two years, they were doing this regular event where they would rent a cruise ship, basically, and go out a thousand entrepreneurs out on this cruise ship. That actually, I think one thing that's really interesting is sort of a footnote in this story is that the cruise ship couldn't get their like cell and Wi-Fi systems to work. so everyone had to like talk face to face for three solid days. And so they've been gradually building this thing. Now the organization, they're now known as Summit or it's called the Summit series. And their biggest and sort of most bold one is that they're trying to create a permanent home for this cluster.

And so they bought a mountain, like literally bought a mountain. They bought Powder Mountain Ski Resort in Utah. And they are planning out home sites and keeping sort of a very narrow, very tailored list of sort of who can build a vacation home here. And then they're still, they're using some of that to also have a conference center there, et cetera. But the idea was this has become this super useful thing for people. So we want to have a permanent home for it. Now, I mean, it's cool.

Some it's great. If you're in tech, you probably already heard of them. I think the real lesson is that this is four, four and a half, five guys who started to build their own stage, to use your term, who realized they needed to be connected to a cluster. And so they didn't just go look for one. They built one. And now, fast forward five years, they're buying a mountain, right? They're buying a mountain because of it.

I think it'd be cool to be able to, like, be next door neighbors with somebody who does the same thing as I do. They own a mountain, right? All because they sort of built it. And I love the story because it's kind of like a, you know, what's your excuse? What is your excuse? You can either go find that cluster that I sometimes in the book, I call them the silos, but that community that you need to be a part of to benefit from.

and if you can't find one, you can build your own. If you can't find one, it's actually a really good indication that there's probably a need for it, right? Now, to take it from that in-person story to like I was hinting out earlier, to take it online, we're part of a Facebook group of about 300 people who speak regularly. That was a perfect example of Scott Stratton basically looked at what is currently out there. And it was a big sort of bureaucratic couple speaking organizations that did a conference. He's like, no, we don't need that.

So I'm going to create my own cluster. And it's been, I mean, the only reason I still have a Facebook account. is to so my wife can share pictures of our kids and so that I can access that group and a couple others like it. Yeah, the grouping function is funny. I don't know if you saw this morning. I got asked to emcee an event. I've never emceed an event before.

I saw it. I haven't had time to reply to you. It's funny. It's an interview so I can't tell you that one yet. But we can after, we can talk about that. Well, for sure. Yeah, it's just funny how I posted it real quickly to the group and I said I've never been at. I've never done this before.

but because I'm a little bit uncomfortable, that tells me I should say yes to do it. And that's usually like a trigger for me that, yeah, lean into that. And I think within, I had to go away and do some work. And an hour later, there's like 50 comments and super useful. I mean, it's amazing the cluster that's built. But that's what you're talking about. That it's, if it's not out there or not able to find it, then maybe you should create your own. And I think that's the, that's the takeaway from those four guys, just creating a ski trip with 15 people to

then fast forward years and they're in the White House and then they're they're buying their own mountain. It's truly incredible and it shows the power of community. And another thing, so one of the things I wanted to do, Dave, as I've talked to a little bit about when I made this transition from the corporate world to doing this with a great company that I've partnered with named Bricksey and Meyer is I wanted to create the learning leader circles. So small groups of about 10 to 12 people that we meet regularly on Zoom, they're from all over the world, meet regularly on Zoom. It's a, it's a paid group and we have have conversations that are ongoing on Zoom but then also on Slack. And so there's a lot of info sharing. There's a lot of kind of confidential information of people that are working within

companies. And it's amazing. We just got started about a month ago. It's amazing to see how quickly the community can build when you get like-minded. They're diverse, right? Different jobs, different ages, different types of people. But they, they are so committed. to growing, to improving, to helping one another, that it's amazing to see the power of that small community. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, you know, what's interesting is I think most of us know to some extent that we need this in our social lives, right?

So, you know, as soon as you and I are both married of kids, you start to cluster around people that are in that same stage of life and you know you need that kind of community to interact with, et cetera, very rarely do we think about how we need access to those communities in our professional life. You know, we, I think it's weird. Most people, if you work for an organization, I mean, entrepreneurship is incredibly lonely, and I think they, because of that, have realized they need those communities faster. But if you work for a small, even medium or large size organization, we tend to think of our team or the people in our cluster as just who else reports to that manager or maybe who in the company does a similar function. And we can ignore this sort of very real need for, no, I need a different community, one that I can be, like you said, it's confidential, but one that I can share real needs and real information on that won't put my job at risk.

etc. But they can benefit from being that that sort of like-minded community that shares and helps each other. And it's exactly what, again, what Scott felt like you needed in that and what you're so brilliant to build with this company. And it started earlier, right? You built a Facebook group just for the people to listen to the show, which is, again, I mean, podcast listening is lonely, right? Yeah. People listen to you talk once a week forever, but you've got thousands of people that are listening to it. It's so much, it's an enhanced experience when you can join into a group like that and have that conversation more broadly. What about super connectors? So you've written about a few them. We are mutually friends with one of them, but the other one is Brian Grazer. So I mentioned

Jason Gaynor, but the other one's Brian Grazer who works out in Hollywood. And one of the cool parts of the story, because I want to relate to this to how the person listening who has a mortgage and a spouse and cars and all that, I use that phrase a lot because I get those emails a lot, Dave. And so I want to relate to them, but I think using the Brian Grazer story could be helpful to say something as little as the big, office next to the CEO, so to speak, opened up. And Brian's like, hey, do you mind if I, uh, if I sit in there until you guys fill the space? And just that alone kind of got him into some of the conversations that helped build his career quickly. But, but, but what about the

story of Brian Grazer and super connectors? And not only about him, but how anybody at any place, at any organization can become a super connector. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, so let's talk for a second about this term super connector. And then Brian's is a bold story. That's a beautiful example. So generally, I use this term to refer to when most of us we think about, and maybe you've seen the study of 150 people, etc. Most of us feel like there's an, right, Dunbar's number. Most of us feel like there's an average number of connections that you can have. And like Dunbar's number kind of implies, I'm going to get super nerdy here for a second. I apologize. A normative distribution that inverted you or the bell curve that we all sort of are used to seeing, right?

And we tend to think that, okay, everybody clusters around an average. There might be some extreme examples, but they're not too extreme. And there might be some loaners, but they're not too lonely. Everybody kind of clusters around that idea. But it's quite simply not true in networks. In reality, if you were to chart the number of connections for everybody inside of a network, how many they had, it follows that a power law. It follows the 8020 principle, a Pareto principle, right?

that there are some massively connected people. And then there's a long tail I'm extending out from that. And it does have an average, but only because any collection of numbers can have an average, right? But it doesn't cluster around that. It clusters around this other thing. And the interesting thing to me about those super connectors is Brian's a great example of this. Brian is a little bold early on in his career, right? And what he did is essentially, I mean, he got his first job in Hollywood because he overheard a conversation that somebody had just quit a cushy summer job.

And he was like, well, I want a cushy job that pays well and is not a lot of work. So he reaches out to the company basically asking to be that. And he gets a job. Essentially, he's in the legal department of Warner Brothers, but he gets a job as basically a courier. It's his job to deliver contracts and papers and memos and that sort of stuff to other people that work for the studio or actors who are on a film in the studio, etc. And eventually he gets a little more bold. And he starts to realize that like, wait a minute, I'm delivering Warren Beatty, his contract. if I just say that I have to give it to him by hand,

I can't leave it with the assistant, then I get to meet Warren Beatty. So he starts saying that. I have to deliver this in person to the person for legal reasons. And so he ends up getting to meet all of these actors and movie producers, etc. That sort of success on the boldness fuels what you were talking about, which is he realizes,

you know, he's down in the basement working sort of all alone in this thing. And somebody leaves Warner Brothers and that studio is open. So he just kind of asks. He's like, hey, you know, it has a window and it'd be great. If I could have it.

Can I have that until? you find a replacement. He ends up getting to spend, you know, months on months on months, one door away from like the studio president. Eventually, like he can, because he's so close, he builds that relationship. Now he's sitting in on meetings and doing all this stuff. And he gets, I mean, he gets even more bold. He figures out that if he calls people, people's assistant and he says, I'm, my name is Brian Grazier. I work in legal affairs at Warner Brothers. I would love to to talk to Mr. So-and-so. I'll only take, you know, 20 minutes of his time. It's not about studio business, but I think he benefit from this. And I think, you know, I would love to get an

answer to this question. And he finds it just like being associated, being in that office, being associated with Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers legal gets him in the door to a lot of these people. And so he starts having these regular curiosity conversations is what he calls them, where he just wants to meet lots of different people who do lots of different interesting things. And eventually, you know, he connects with Ron Howard, who he and Ron started managing entertainment. They become, I mean, this big thing. I first heard about who Brian Grazer even was because I loved the TV show 24. And he had a hand in making that, but actually has like 20, year track record of success in Hollywood and television, et cetera.

And it all starts from that sort of being bold and taking a couple deliberate steps. But here's what I think is most interesting. And this is actually, it's not in the super connector chapter. It's a chapter later is that we see this power law of connections. But it doesn't, that's not sort of destiny. It doesn't mean that if you only have six connections, you're just, you're screwed, right? What happens in network science is a thing called preferential attachment. In other words, super connectors have an easier time making new connections.

And this makes perfect sense. If you have a lot of friends, then you're going to get a lot of introductions from friends of friends. If you have a few friends, you're going to get a few. And while the first reaction is to go, oh, that's such a shame. The world is against me. We throw up our hands and we go, it's not what you know, it's who you know, etc. It's actually really good news because what it means is if you can take a couple years of deliberate effort sort of growing and expanding your network, it gets easier over time. And eventually the network starts to work for you.

So someone like Brian Grazier now doesn't have to put a lot of work or any bold. into having these curiosity conversations because he's got this massive network. He's got this track record of success. And now people are coming to him wanting to interact. And he gets to sort of just have to say yes to it instead of chase it down. So to me, the thing about, you know, why anyone can become a super connector is that, yeah, it seems like a lot of work, but it's only a lot of work for a short period of time. And eventually that network starts to work for you. And then you really start to benefit. It's a great example of a story because I do, I love the stories, but I also like how you're relating them back to how anybody can do this. But the bottom line is it is not easy. I mean,

it's hard. Just like most things in life, you've got to put in the work to do it. The other thing, too, I think, Dave, I want to make sure we bring up. And we've talked a little bit about this before and online. But the common question I feel like is when someone thinks, like everyone says, hey, you got to add value, right? Add value, add value. And I agree. And you absolutely need to add value. But one of the ways that I think you, that it doesn't add value is by saying, let's say somebody gets done talking about themselves for 20 minutes. We've probably all had those lunches, you know, where you, you meet the person and they sit there and talk about themselves for 20 minutes. And then at the end, they go, oh, wait, hey, how can I help you? And that, that, that, that phrase or that question is, is bad. There are so many great ways to help somebody, but that's not one of them asking. Try doing a little of your own research, maybe by asking questions to learn more about them. And then you could add value without forcing them to come up with something and then putting them in an awkward position after asking the question, how can I help you? So instead of asking that question to somebody, Dave. How can we add value to the people in our networks or the relationships we're

building? Yeah. So, all right. So I just, I'm going to go on a rant here. I really do hate that question. And I hate it because every time I've been asked, right, two, I have immediately have two thoughts. I immediately have, well, I have no idea. And if I did know how you could help me, I would have already asked you. Right. So it's like, I'm putting you on the spot and I don't know. The other thing is it every time, I can't not hear someone ask that question and not think, like, you read that in some advice book somewhere and you thought it's a good idea. Right? It's not. I think the far more beneficial question, this is something that I'm trying to make a habit is, and this is again, not an idea that's unique to me. Adam Rifkin is a great example of this with his sort of five-minute favors. One of the most valuable things we have is the current community that we have. Larger small, no matter what your network is, there's value inside your network. In fact, the sociology term is social capital, as in a form of capital, just like financial capital, right?

Just like human capital skills, et cetera, the social capital. So one of the things that I, if I'm in that situation, especially where somebody's talking for 20 minutes, it's actually really easy. I have a lot of time to think because I'm just listening to them talk. But one of the things I'm always trying to do is just who does this person need to meet? Who can I connect this person to? And by the time, you know, by the time it's my turn to talk, but by the time that conversation's over, I'm trying to say, you know, you would really benefit from connecting with this person. Would you be okay with you if I reach out and see if they are interested in connecting with you?

So that's the number one thing that I'm trying to do to provide value. And I do that for a couple different reasons. One is that super connector principle, that idea that if you can be seen as the person who's making the introductions, you sort of gradually move from the fringes to the more connected part of the network. The other thing is, is it's not, it's honestly not that super intensive of a way to provide someone else value, right? I might not have any value. I can't, you know, Ryan, I'm sorry.

I can't sponsor your show and I can't host an event and then pay you an exorbitant speaking fee, but I can refer you to people who could do both of those things, right? So I can connect, I can create that value for you in doing that. And it's an easy thing to be thinking about because, I mean, admitted, it happens most of the time in conversation when you're talking with someone, you're suddenly thinking, oh, they should meet so and so. And then being proactive about offering that is a tremendous way to create value and to serve sort of the whole network.

Like this is the thing I think is is not stated enough in that idea of create value first. What we mean by this isn't like keep a bank account of how many times you gave to somebody before you, you ask for something in return, et cetera. That's great. But that's a very, that's a very limited way to look at interactions as one off, you and me, not us as a whole network. The way to create value is to first understand that your network is not a collection of contacts in your phone.

Your network already exists and you're just a part of it. And the way that you start creating value is to realize that your job is to serve that network. Usually that means by connecting people or by helping somebody find a cluster or a community they need. But it's to serve the network as a whole, not to just give to one person and then keep track of it and when you had enough gives to make a withdrawal to do it. No, just worry about the network and everything will kind of take care of itself. I'm glad. That was a rant. I apologize.

No, no, no, I'm glad that's that because it's so common. I think everyone can kind of picture those conversations happening. And all of us have probably made that mistake. I definitely have made that mistake more than a few times of saying that. And so part, that's part of why I bring this up because I think, and I know listeners tell me this, they say part of the reason why I think they like the show is because they sense that we're kind of all learning together. And, and also learning from mistakes we made where we maybe, maybe we are. habit of saying, okay, well, how can I help you? And realizing that's not really a good question. I know you recently, I think, tweeted about this, but you said stop asking boring questions when

you meet people. And this is another common thing that comes up. And one of the questions we obviously don't like is how can I help you. But what are some questions? Todd Henry and I talked a little bit about this too, but I found it to be an interesting part of the conversation. But what have you found to be interesting questions to ask people when you first meet them? Yeah. So you're putting me on the I feel like I should put my own article. I just pull up my own article so I can look at it. So I mean the most common question we ask people in in the United States, if not North America, if not the Western world is so what do you do? Right? Yep. You know, we just met the person. We introduced some else. So what do you do? And I find this is a bad question for a couple reasons. We're probably familiar with the idea that, you know, like some people don't know how to answer this question. Like my, my biggest rant is like, you know, if you're stay at home parent, you feel like you don't have a good answer to this question when in reality you do like the most valuable thing anyone does in society. So, That one drives me nuts, right? Or people, if they're not proud of what they do because they're aspiring to do something

else, they'll go, oh, I'm just a blank. And like, no, you're not just like you're a human first, A, right? But B, it doesn't matter if you're aspiring, like, that's still a thing. Truthfully, though, the most damaging reason for this is, and we talk about this a bit in the book, when you study networks, there's a phenomenon called multiplexity. And multiplexity is essentially that we tend to think we draw out a network in our mind. We graduate from thinking about it as a list of contacts on our phone to thinking about it as an actual sort of network diagram. We still tend to use one link between any two people, right?

And we tend to do this when we think about our own relationship. We tend to think of that one way that we connect with someone else. We work together. We go to church together. We both do this activity, right? And we put people into buckets. And what multiplexity says is that, no, actually, human relationships are complex. Sometimes they can have multiple things that connects.

We go to the gym together and we work together, right? or we both went to this college and now we work together. There's things that are reasons for that connection to be more layered than any other connection. And what the research says is that when you have a multiplex tie, a connection that happens because of multiple different contexts, you build a deeper and a stronger relationship with someone faster. So, I mean, the lesson is in interpersonal interactions, we ought to be seeking out the

multiplexity. And the truth is, we don't when we ask, so what do you do? When you ask, so what do you do, you automatically. assign that conversation to the work bucket, right? And then it stays in the work bucket and you're only looking for connections between each other in the work bucket. You might get lucky if the conversation happens long enough to stumble into something else. But I think it's better to ask questions that seek out that multiplexity. So probably one of the most famous ones. And this isn't actually mine. I stole this from Lewis Howes because he asked it to me when we met. Yeah, so what

excites you right now, which is a great open-ended question because I could talk about work if I want to, but if I just had my second child, I can talk about that, right? If I just got married or if I just got promoted in, you know, like I do Brazilian Jujitsu, I just got a black belt. Like, whatever, whatever part of my life is most exciting to me right now is what I'm going to answer in that question. And so it broadens that bucket beyond just the work bucket. My personal favorite question to ask is who's your favorite superhero because you can learn a lot about people from asking their favorite superhero, but also because it sort of says this conversation is going to be lighter and more playful. We might get into work related eventually, but first,

let's explore this little thing about your personality. Another one I love, and I think people sort of botched this a lot of times is when we want to know something about people, we might ask, like, so where are you from? But the truth is, I mean, we're actually in the midst of sort of a supercharged immigration debate, et cetera. This is, I think, can be received as a derogatory question. And even so, it doesn't really have an effect on where they are now. But I do like to ask people, where did you grow up? Which is an innocent question. It's more, I'm sort of of just asking about your childhood, right? Did you grow up in the country or the city? You could answer it that way or you could answer it what country, etc. I just think it's a good question to sort of

break out of that work bucket. So really any question that you feel comfortable asking that is in, that keeps the conversation more broad than the work bucket is a great one to ask. But so what do you do is, in my opinion, a terrible one because it just sends that subtle signal that it's only okay to talk about work right now. And you're never going to build multiplex ties and deep and rich connections with people if you start sending signals that it's only okay to talk in this one context. Think about the most interesting people you've ever met for anybody. Dave, you, me, everyone listening.

They never ask that. They just don't. They have interesting questions. That's probably what makes them interesting people. Well, this is that, you know? That's a Jim Collins one, right? I mean, the grand revelation of Jim Collins's whole life, right? I'm sure he said it on your show, but he says, you know, stop trying to be interesting and

just interested in people, you'll find that you connect with people far better. And it really is true. Yeah, asking good questions. Think about it. The other part about this that when you talk about growing your network and I want to bring up something that some might see as negative, but I've thought a lot about this as I've been on this path the last three years, man, because I met a lot in really amazing people, you being one of them, both in person and online and talking, is that I'll read Naval's quote about this. And then I want to ask you about it. But really it's it's, it's, it's thinking about our friends and who we decide to spend our time with. And here's, here's the quote. And then I'm going to, I'm going to expand a little bit. We feel guilt when we

no longer want to associate with old friends and colleagues who haven't changed the price and marker of growth. Unquote. So Naval Raav Khan said that. And I found this because like, we talk about dormant ties and weak ties and staying in touch with that. them. However, there is also, and I'm very curious because you and I have not discussed this, what about those people who you feel like just should not be part of your who? There could be a number of reasons why. Navaa talks about the ones who haven't changed or who haven't grown, and that's the price and the marker of growth. But what do you think a guy who wrote a book on networking and doing it the right way in dormant ties and the power of weak ties? But what about

those people in our life who we should, I don't want to be crucial. rule, but who we should just eliminate, right? Who should not be a part of our network because they've, they've done damage in one way, shape, or form. Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. And there are, I should say, there are very few people that I have been mean to in the

process of pruning, but there are a lot of people that I have pruned, right? Yeah. And, you know, I explore this a little bit in the book with Jason Gainer and the idea of professional or preferential attachment, the idea of being a super connector, et cetera. You get to the point where it's overwhelming and you do have to sort of scale back in. The bigger lesson is probably that, that if we talked about at the top, if your friends and your friends of friends are affecting your happiness and your weight and whether or not you take up smoking or any other bad habit, etc., then you need to be really conscious of those people. And there are those people that you need to promote to being a weak tie, right? And I think it's sort of, I wish I could give you like this perfect, here's the script to say.

The truth is I think it's a bit of a fine art. But what I love about the lessons from network science, weak ties and dormant ties in particular, is that it provides a polite, civil, non-aggressive way to say, these people still are a part of my network, they still have sort of some amount of value. I'm just going to gradually start replying to their emails less frequently or, you know, I'm going to wait a little bit longer before I return the phone call. It's a long process. Like I said, there's very few people that I've had in my life of like, goodbye, don't contact me again, right? And usually there's a really deep and immediate reason for that, right? But there are a lot of people in my life that I've gradually sort of unfollowed to use a Facebook term.

But it's really, it's what's deliberate is what you're doing on your end. But you're still, I think you're still trying to be polite and civil and recognizing that this relationship still has value to it. And you're still valuable. I mean, every human is, right? The difference is you're making a very conscious effort that they can best serve you and you can best serve them as a weak or a dormant tie, not as a close-knit person. And so I think it's the fine art of learning how to sort of gradually, introduce a longer and longer space or interval of time in between when you interact with those people. I like the phrase pruning.

I think that's good. I think that makes sense, you know, where you're not not friends, but you just interact with them less. Yeah. And we all do have the same amount of time, right? So if you're consistently meeting new people who are adding a lot of value to your life and you want to spend more time around them, there simply just won't be enough time. time to spend time around everybody. Now, we know that number is bigger than 150 based on the science

we've talked about. However, there is just something to that that as more are coming in, and at some point, some are going to move their way out. Right. But I think it's really important to not just say we're done talking, but to sort of gradually, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to check in with them a little bit less often, et cetera. I mean, I'll give you an example for my own life of how we did this. My wife and I, when we had kids, when we got really busy. I write books and I travel around and speak. My wife is an ER physician. Right. Our lives are busy. And then you introduce kids in that and it just throws a hand grenade in whatever calendar you had left, right? And so what we, what we did, I hate saying this because it makes me sound mean. But the truth is we did in a polite way and no one knows

where they are. But we created the, I call it long list short list. There's a short list of people that we basically reached out to sort of, or ranked, not ranked, but listed out. You ranked them one. No, we did rank. I mean, we It did rank, but it wasn't like one through 20. But we listed out all of the relationships that we had, you know, the married couples that we enjoyed hang out with, the friends and whatever. And then we each person got put on either the short list or the long list. And the short list are people that if we don't talk to them in, you know, once a month and we don't hang out with them once a quarter, we feel bad. Like I gave myself permission to feel bad about not interacting enough with people on the short list. If you're on the long list and a month goes by and I haven't talked to you or a quarter goes by and I haven't seen anything from you.

You know, phone works both ways. It would have been great if you reached out. You know, I love interacting with you. You're fun. You're great. I'll say yes when you invite me to stuff. But I'm not going to be deliberate about talking to you because you're on the long list. You're not on the short list.

And that's what I mean about being deliberate about letting that space, the larger intervals of time interact. It's not like I'm keeping a stop watching going, well, I only talked to Ryan three days ago. So I need to wait four days before I reply to his email. It's just that sort of long list shortlist idea. I want you in the tight cluster. And so I'm going to actively, you know, proactively reach out to you and I give myself permission to feel bad. But I also give myself permission to not feel bad about not interacting with the people on the long list.

I'm open to them. I'm cordial with them. I love them. I would love to hang out with them. And they invite me to something. But I'm not going to invite them to something. Everyone liked you until the end of this talk, man. I know, right?

I'm just blew it. Sure. No, I just, I think there's something. I did it for survival. I didn't do this like instrumental networking thing. I did it from survival because, you know, I mean, I'm sure you're into this. You're married. For sure, for sure.

You get busy and you run into those people. They're like, oh, we really need to hang out with so and so, right? It's incredibly freeing to be like, you have that feeling and you go, oh, no, wait, we don't. They're on the long list. Okay. Yeah, I just think there's something, um, I think doing, sitting down and being intentional about your thoughts with your spouse is a great idea about anything. So whether it's about parenting style, whether it's about discipline, whether it's about vacations, whether it's about your list of friends. I just think intentionality and thoughtfulness.

Those are the two words that keep coming to my mind, Dave, recently. I've been writing a lot. And those are the two things that come up quite frequently to me. When you think about, because everyone said, what are the commonalities? What is it that the people that you talk to on your podcast, what do they have? And, you know, there's a lot of things you can say. you really distill it down, they're very intentional with their behavior, very intentional. And they put a lot of thought into it, too.

A lot, they're thoughtful people. And I think that those are qualities that people who are able to sustain excellence, they have that. Right. Let me take it a step further, too. Like, we know that intentionality in some relationships is good, right? Like, if you don't believe that it's important to be intentional about your spouse, then I'm sure I can find you a good divorce attorney because I know what's coming, right?

We know that we need to be intentional about those close relationships. Well, why are any of the other relationships any different? Like, granted, it feels it feels uncomfortable to say, I'm being intentional about this relationship and intentionally deciding I want it to be a weak tie. But the truth is, I'm actually honoring that relationship a bit more than if I just left it to coincidence. Because I'm saying this is how each of us can best provide value in our life. And it's not we hang out every Friday. It's we see each other every couple of months. Yep.

Completely agree, man. And I can talk to you for hours, just like we always do. but I appreciate you coming on. What's next? What do you have coming up next? I'm not sure I can tell you yet. I'll be honest. I mean,

like I said at the top, I have kind of whenever I'm writing, I have a couple different ideas. But the truth is I have been seating out this book. I mean, like I said, you read an early sort of word document of it, you and a couple of the people.

And the reaction has been such that like, I really think this is a message that needs to spread as far and wide as possible. So I have a couple of their ideas. but I'm deliberately not pursuing anything until I feel like I've done everything I can to get this message out. I think this is going to be your speech to give all over the place for probably a while. I just, I have that feeling. You know what I mean?

You, you transition topics based on some of the work that you're deep into. I just get that sense that when, whether they watch the TED Talk or they read the book, they're going to say, we want to bring you here to talk more about this, especially because we didn't even get into some of your, your, your process for getting up on the TED stage with no slides and no notes and just crushing that speech, man. I mean, I don't know how you did that. Do you know how sometimes, like, you mentioned at the beginning of the speech, like we all have that friend who knows everybody in the connections and we hate that friend. You know that all the speakers. We're all watching that thinking, man, like, I want to do that.

And I, right now, I'm not sure that I can. Like, you know, I have a sense that that was one of the, even though they were the world class speakers, we're all thinking at least that a little bit, thinking that was so, so well done, man. Well, thank you, man. I'm so pleased that you think it was well done and came easily. In reality, I was nervous. How many times did you practice? Did you say 40 plus times you practiced that?

You did the whole thing? Well, no. And so it's important to put it in context. So when I did my first, the one on transparency that got actually put on sort of TED.com, et cetera, I probably practiced that 100 times. I hired a speech coach, all of that sort of stuff. This other one, maybe 40 times, which is a lot. But it's enough to memorize the outline so you don't have to get up there with notes or a slide deck, etc.

But I mean, I'm still sort of fine-tuning. I was making adjustments on the fly in response to sort of, oh, the audience laughed at that. I guess it's funnier than I thought it was because I had only planned on, you know, a small beat instead of a large one. But, I mean, the truth, the truth is this, the concepts in this really resonate with me. This is really fun to talk, more fun to talk about than any other subject that I've written about in the past. And I know that it's a subject that's more applicable to anyone, you know, to a larger share of the population than any other topic that I've talked about in the past. And so that's really the reason for that energy is just like this is a big deal. I've stumbled into something I really, really love talking about.

And it just happens to be really, really useful to people. And now I'm like, I'm the luckiest man in the world. So now I just feel sort of a lighter sense. And I think that's probably what a lot of people, if they use different words, are actually seeing, is just I'm up there having. fun, which is, I mean, it makes a speech, I think, so much more powerful when you're in that regard. Do you write every single word or you give that talk from an outline? I wrote every single word. I did not speak every word that I wrote.

So like on the fly is different. Every time you practice it, you find a slightly different way to say it. And so I was still changing. Like the line about the scruffy kid from down the street, that came to me that morning when I was practicing. So, you know, there was a script, but I didn't follow it to a T. Wow. Well, it was really well done, man. And big props. I'm happy to see it come out. And the timing everything seems like it's going really well. So thanks, man, again for being here. I know we'll be talking and we'll obviously be recording again. But where would you send my listeners for the ones who don't know yet to find you online? Yeah. So I mean, I guess we're going to have to link to that TEDx talking to show notes because you talked about it. So look at that. I would absolutely love if people want to jump over to Amazon and buy the book in triplicate. But like I get it. You've only listened to me for an hour, et cetera.

So one thing that I've done for this book, and I'm doing it specific for your audiences, is there's my site, Davidbergis.com. But if you go to Davidbergis.com slash Ryan, I've actually set up this cool little audio course. Think of it as like a podcast series on how to give and get introductions. So it's kind of a primer on the ideas and friend of a friend. That's yours, totally free. Just download it.

I hope you like it. If you do like it, you're going to love the book. And if you hate it, you know, I just saved you $17 by letting you listen to this free thing. So, but I know they're going to love it. So David Burgess.com slash Ryan is the best place for everybody to check it out. All right. So everyone listening, as Neil Pez reaches said, you are part of the end of the podcast club.

And because of that, go to Davidbergis.com slash Ryan. Because I would imagine Dave's going to be doing a few other podcast and he's going to be tracking who goes to what sites and there are going to be other code words. And to thank him for what he did. and every all the value he provided for free. Go to Davidburgers.com slash Ryan. I, uh, and I'll be checking with David to say, okay, hey, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many, how many of my guys went over there, um, especially the people part of the end of the pod class club.

It was a good club to be in and, uh, Neil coined that phrase when he was on and it's pretty neat to see all the emails still streaming in months and months after, uh, that episode where people are part of the end of the podclass club. So thanks again for reading here today. I really appreciate it. Oh, no. Thank you for having me. I love that.

I'm totally stealing that. So yeah, I love it. Neil brought it up. Yeah, absolutely. He brought it up and it's pretty neat to see the emails and what people learned. And yeah, Davidbergis.com slash Ryan. I appreciate it. Look forward to the next one, man.

Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me, man. I really appreciate it. All right. See it. Thank you to Dave and thank you for listening. I really enjoyed that conversation. Dave and I talk quite frequently. So it's cool to get him recorded every once in a while.

By the way, go to Davidberkis.com slash Ryan. I love to blow that up for him. and support him. He's become a good friend, and I really enjoy his book. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Also, if you liked it, I'd love it if you would go to iTunes, Apple Podcasts, write a review, subscribe and rate the show. So write a review, subscribe to it, and rate it. Hopefully, five stars in iTunes, Apple Podcasts.

Really helps spread the message all over the world. Thanks again for being here. I cannot wait for the next one. See you next week.