Making Friends As a Lone Wolf | Toolbox | Art of Charm

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30:28Yeah, I just wanted to jump in here and almost interrupt Johnny because here's where science comes to the rescue because this is actually one study that I want to present in this episode that's actually really good news compared to the doom and gloom that often comes with social isolation and building friendships and so on. But this study here by Sprecher and Reagan in 2002, this was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. And yes, there is a journal about the social and personal relationships out there, and it's actually quite influential. So this study looked at the qualities that people prioritize in friendships as well as in romantic relationships.

31:11but I'll put that to the side for another episode and just look at those platonic relationships, those friendships. So the main findings in that study was that what people are really looking for is trustworthiness. It's warmth. It's a sense of humor. Those were the most highly valued attributes that people were looking for. Now, how easy is it to bring those values forth? We're not asking for a PhD in neuroscience, right? We're asking for trustworthiness, for warmth, for a little bit of humor, for a smile, for a little bit of ease in talking to people and cracking a smile easily. How easy is that to do?

31:57So what they also found is that there is a preference for people that share your values and that share your beliefs. So that is your wolf pack, right? You're not going to someone who believes in the exact opposite and values the exact opposite. And your wolf pack consists of mountain bikers and not of people that go drinking because that's what they enjoy. And that works perfectly well. You just come together with people that have those similar values. Now, even in romantic relationships, these internal qualities like trustworthiness, warmth, what I've just mentioned, they also increase there.

32:37At the beginning, it's a little bit different. There's attractiveness and all the superficial stuff, especially in the first, second date. But over time then, these exact qualities are also those that are prioritized the most. And in that study that they quote, in both types of relationships, the most preferred qualities were, again, trustworthiness, warmth, and a sense of humor. It's that simple. So how do we leverage the science here? And this is what we call our social capital. It's really built on three pillars. It's your relationships, it's your knowledge, and it's your emotional support.

33:17So you already have relationships. And if you can introduce people who can help one another, who share the same values, who are great people, you're the linchpin. You're the person that they're going to think of that brought them together. that increases your social value. That makes you trustworthy, right? It implicitly makes you trustworthy if you're sharing your relationships. Now, knowledge. Okay, let's be honest. Maybe your knowledge in your career isn't that impactful to your social circle. I, for one, don't wanna be constantly coaching all of my friends and talking about everything we talk about on the podcast here.

33:56Maybe you don't wanna be doing your friend's taxes. Maybe you don't wanna be giving your friend's investment advice. Totally get it. Your knowledge in your career is only one facet of the knowledge you have. You might know how to swing the golf club better than anyone. You might know how to master your short game. You might know where all the best micro brews are in the greater Chicago area. That's knowledge that's valuable to your friend group. One of our clients, Chris, so he has a friend who's leveraged this to a T. His knowledge is all the best new restaurants in his town. He loves food. He reads all the food bloggers and critics.

34:36And he knows when a restaurant is opening so well that he will sometimes get invited to their soft opening before anyone else gets an invite. And that knowledge he's used to bring his friends together to come into town from the suburbs and hang out. And when I was talking to Chris about this, a light bulb went off. He was like, wait a second. My friend is using his social capital to bring us together. that's an example of knowledge that's really impactful and valuable to your social circle i know a guy just like that right and so when i go to to dinner with that guy who i know knows these restaurants and knows food better than me i don't even look at the menu i i go it's listen man i know you know this stuff better than me and it's all you go ahead and order for the table you You know that guy, AJ?

35:28Yeah, you're welcome, Johnny. I need that knowledge in my life. I feel I spend so much time looking what events are happening here in Vienna. What's cool, what's not, where do I need to go? What do I need to try out? What are new restaurants? What do I eat in that restaurant? I feel I spend so much time doing that. I just want an AJ to call up and be like, okay, AJ, I'm in this restaurant here in Vienna. You've never been there, but what do you think I should be eating here and where should I go afterwards? Well, the reason I bring that up is because AJ, that's an interest of his, right? And I'm going to go, I know how much effort that he puts in and how much of a food he is.

36:12So by letting him order for the table, I mean, he gets excited, but he's always like, let, and I got to say, AJ, you always have a big smile on your face because you know you get to go at it with the menu. Yeah. And that knowledge, it's so vast. You just have to take a second and think about, okay, what are you super interested in and passionate about? And what are those little rabbit holes that you find yourself falling down? You know, my buddy Adam, he could snag concert tickets and time it just right when the ticket prices were dropping. And he would send a text message out. He's like, hey, do you want to go to the show tonight?

36:45Literally tonight. Because he was able to snag the Guns N' Roses tickets that I thought were sold out. And all of a sudden I'm going to a show. That was Adam's knowledge. It wasn't anything about what he was doing in his career. So when you think about your social capital, the value that you add, we have to really take account of all the different facets of our life where we've explored, we've dug in deep, and we can use that. We can add that value to other people's lives. Maybe it's that hidden parking lot that's close to the farmer's market on Sunday that no one knows about. You invite your friends and you show them how to park there, that's incredibly valuable to them to get their organic farmer produce.

37:23So once we understand knowledge, again, that's increasing our trustworthiness and it's warmth, right? If you're sharing knowledge with someone, you obviously feel really good about them. The other piece is emotional support. And emotional support, it's one of those tricky ones that's a little counterintuitive because of course we think, oh, well, I'm such a supportive friend. I'm thinking about people. I'm constantly letting them know that I care about them. I'm asking them how I can help them. That may feel like emotional support that you're offering it. But what real emotional support is, is being there in their life to celebrate the highs and actually care for them in the lows.

38:01It's not to ask them, what do you need? That's not helpful. And that's not real emotional support because often our friends don't know what we need. But if they just got a job and they posted it on LinkedIn or their son was just born, it's showing up at the house and bringing a gift and being so excited for this moment in their life. Or if something difficult happened to them, it's calling them saying, hey, let's go out to eat. I wanna hear everything about, I wanna help, I wanna support you. Not what can I do to support you? So sorry to hear that. Thumbs down emoji on social media, a comment.

38:34That's not real emotional support in a way that actually increases your social capital. It's great that you brought this up. And it's interesting because I was recently doing some editing on an old David Goggins video, an interview that we had done years ago. And we were discussing our relationships and the goals that we've set out and the emotional support that we get. Right. And there's this big there's a saying that everyone's heard a million times of you always find out who your friends are at your lowest moments. right? And everyone, I think everyone can understand that, but there's also the opposite side of that.

39:15You're also going to find out who your friends are when you're hitting your stride, when you're crushing it, because the emotions of what, everything that you had to do to climb over every hurdle to get to that place, right? Has an effect on somebody watching you do that. They are either going to get fired up and cheer you on because now they have hope that, well, if AJ did this, I can do it too. And so they're going to be there, rah, rah, rah. But you're also going to find out who's watching you do these things and get envious and get jealous and get frustrated about their own life and then either leave or take shots at their friends.

40:05This is important information to understand. And no matter what you might be feeling, maybe you're watching your friend bust those hurdles and achieve some aspirations that they've been working towards. And maybe you get angry inside. Maybe you get a little frustrated. It's important to recognize that. So you go, you know what? That's not who I want to be. I want to be the guy cheerleading my buddy so that he can help me with my steps. So regardless of the initial trauma that I'm going through of watching that, I want to be the high value guy. And guess what? This is an emotional growth that you are training yourself for so that you're not subjected and being a slave to your initial emotions, but you are growing and becoming and maturing into the person of the emotions that you want to foster in yourself and the relationships that you want to be fostering that are going to take you to where you want to go.

41:11That emotional support also happens in the messy middle. Oh, yeah. So what I want to point out is like, for many, it's like, okay, AJ, I get it. Like cheer them on when they're winning the race and be there for them when they fail the race. Actually, there's a lot of emotional support in the middle. And we see this on our boot camps in our experience with clients. So when we go out on field night and we have these experiences of putting these skills into practice and working on becoming more charismatic and confident in social settings, of course there's gonna be mistakes made. Of course there's gonna be putting yourself out there.

41:47There's gonna be failures. There's gonna be the messy middle of trying to figure out how to put all these strategies into action. Well, the next morning, all of our clients come together and we go around the room and we brag about one another. Now you could enter that room feeling really hard on yourself. Like, man, that night really didn't go well. I had a goal of talking to 20 people and making some new friends and getting some phone numbers. And I only really approached a few and the conversations didn't go the way I thought they would. But when you hear someone else in the room brag about how they felt inspired by you walking up to that person, by you putting yourself in the arena, by you challenging yourself, knowing that that's outside of your comfort zone, those are the most impactful moments of the bootcamp experience because you're seen and validated for your effort, not for your result.

42:38So if you want to grow your social capital, don't just think about the highs and the lows of being there to celebrate the birth and being there when they get fired, but be there in the moment where they inspired you to put on your running shoes because they signed up for the mountain biking race. They inspired you to book that trip to Italy because you saw their photos on Instagram. That's real emotional support. That's the warmth, the trustworthiness, and the fun, the levity that we need to be bringing to foster these great social relationships and ties in our lives. And if we're constantly focused on either ourselves and the comparison, as Johnny was saying, and sometimes the envy that comes out of this moment, we're not going to be there in the emotional supportive way that actually fosters the relationships we want.

43:30Yeah. And this brings up a great story. So one of our clients, Mark, he was new to a country club that he was going in and wanted to get invited to more partnerships of playing golf. Mark was looking to join in on some more foursomes and meet some new people and play. And he's began to show more interest into what the folks that he's been meeting and what they had going on and what they were aspiring to. And by checking in with them and encouraging them and, oh, it's great to hear about that. And then maybe see them a week later and ask them how that event went, found himself getting asked to play in more foursomes.

44:13And he was really excited to see just how easy it was to show people that he's engaged with what they're doing. He's taking an interest. And with that, well, they wanted to be around more of that. They're like, well, this guy seems quality. This guy's engaged with what's going on around him. We need to get that guy to come out on our next round. Now, obviously, you're busy. You're getting after it. You're goal-oriented, growth-minded, and we know you have some big, hairy, audacious goals for yourself. So now you're thinking, how the hell am I going to find all of this time in my life to make new friends, to deepen relationships that have drifted away?

44:52and this is where the science is important, but we're going to teach you after you learn this lesson of science how to be more efficient and effective with your use of time. So what does the science say about building these real relationships? Yeah, you definitely want to learn to be efficient with your time when you hear those numbers. So this is Jeffrey Hall, 2018, again, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. The title of that study is very aptly, how many hours does it take to make a friend? very much to the point. And the authors were looking at how many hours it typically takes to form different levels of friendships, so from very loose to very close.

45:33And what they found was, get your pen and paper ready, dear listener. It generally takes about 50 hours of time spent together to move, not from I met you to you're my best buddy, but it takes 50 hours to move from a mere acquaintance to casual friends, 50 hours. It takes roughly 90 hours of time spent together to go from casual friend to good friend. And if you're already breaking out a sweat, it takes more than 200 hours to go from good friend to very close friend, to that confident, to that best friend. Now, I'm loosely throwing out numbers here, but the researchers were very clear on the fact that the type of activity was a major role in how quickly that friendship formed.

46:33Simply spending time together, sitting next to each other on the bus or sitting next to each other watching YouTube or TikTok videos doesn't count. This needs to be quality time. This needs to be quality activity of things that both of you enjoy and you can support each other in. And intimate and deep conversations and those shared routines or group settings, as in the golf example with Mark, can also very much accelerate a friendship development. But it does take a lot of time. When we're an adult and we have our lives set up and our career is going, and maybe we have a family. We're going to do everything that we can to protect those things.

47:18So I can't just open the doors to my life and bring in anyone who is interested in coming into my life because their actions could harm my career. Those actions could harm my family. When you're 21, it's easy to make friends. In fact, you can find your best friend forever around the corner and it's like, hey, I want to get messed up tonight. Do you want to get messed up? Hey, that sounds great. Awesome. We're getting messed up together. We are new best friends. But that's when you're young. You don't have any momentum in your life. You're still floundering. So as we become these adults, we are very concerned and discerning about who it is that is going to be coming in and who we are going to spend that time with and invest in to build these relationships.

48:08And it's not only the, this could harm my network, this could be a bad influence. There's also opportunity cost. Think about 200 hours, that's a long time over a couple of weeks, months, if not years. Now you're meeting someone who's like, nah, it's kind of okay. It's a friend of convenience. Do you really want to use that time to spend investing in this friendship when that is time taken away from fostering really meaningful friendships with those that share your values, share your beliefs that are trustworthy, that are warm, that have that sense of humor? will you invest it there because you only have that much time in the year next to your education, your family, your hobbies, your health, your sleep, your work.

48:56There's very little time left. And that is the being efficient with your time and with your approach that AJ mentioned earlier. We also need to be a little bit picky on who gets that attention and time from us. And of course, in this experiment, in this study, they were not the most masterful communicators. They were not experts at getting vulnerable and sharing stories and creating the conversation that actually deepens ties. And we're going to share that in an upcoming toolbox of how to actually speed this up even further in terms of strategies. But I want to point out that time spent together doesn't have to be one-on-one.

49:39This is a huge unlock for a lot of our really busy professionals who are looking to grow their wolf pack. They think in their mind, okay, AJ, for me to commit an entire Saturday afternoon to someone only to find out that it's not a good fit, or for me to chase this person to dinner and that's a dinner away from my kids and that's a dinner away from me working on my side hustle, and only to find out that we don't have any values. This isn't really that interesting to me. That's a big commitment. And oftentimes that's because you're just saying yes to everything. You're not intentional with creating the space.

50:15And of course, without intention, we can't even remotely become efficient. So the unlock is what we call our social sales funnel. And if you're familiar with sales funnels, this is going to sound very refreshing to know that we can use this in our social life, but let's just quickly walk you through a funnel, as we know, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The first step in the social sales funnel is you gotta get leads, you gotta be meeting people, you gotta get people on board to even want to spend time with you. That's pretty clear, we've talked about that earlier in this episode, how we need to start engaging in more activities and passions that involve socialization to create the leads.

50:54But what do we do with all of those people? Well, if you're only hanging out one-on-one, you're basically a secretary chasing them down, trying to figure out in your busy schedule how to get together. Then you're trying to figure out, well, what can I do with this person and how do I fit it in with my schedule? And you're just taking a complete stab in the dark that this person might actually be a good fit to spend 200 hours with, right? So we want to clear up all of that and make it effective in your time. So the middle step is where we actually qualify those leads in a sales funnel. Now in our social sales funnel, we want to do the same thing.

51:33We want to qualify the people that we're going to give more time to based on our interests and passions and the things we already love doing. Because if we already love doing them, it's going to be quality time. We're going to be at our best. And we're going to invite multiple people to do it together with us. Now, this invite, this hangout, creating space in your life to have many people hanging out with you at once is to Johnny's point earlier, going to showcase to these people that you already have a wolf pack. You're not a lone wolf. They're not going to sit there at dinner, checking notes.

52:11How long have you known AJ? Have you spent 200 hours with AJ? Why are you friends? No, they're going to assume that we're all together. You got the group together. Hey, this is AJ's Wolfpack. He's inviting me to my Wolfpack. So I'm now going to start thinking, well, what can I do to invite AJ to my Wolfpack? Because I'm meeting AJ's Wolfpack. That's number one. Number two, I want you to not throw a crazy party, a backyard Labor Day barbecue that requires you manning the grill for hours and prepping and then cleaning up. I want you to leverage things you're already doing, that you enjoy doing, and invite others to do them with you.

52:52And this could be literally as monotonous as going to the farmer's market on Sunday and saying, hey, I'm going to pick up some produce. I love this one farmer's stand. He's got great apples this time of year. And inviting a few people to come meet you at the farmer's market. Odds are they probably have to get quality organic produce for their family too. And it's an opportunity for you to start to create that space doing things you're already doing. That didn't take you rearranging your whole schedule. That didn't take you printing out banners and party hats and favors. That's something you're doing that you're passionate about because you care about your health and you care about organic produce.

53:33And the people who say yes to that, well, they're starting to show you that they're qualified, that they actually care about those things too. So we're creating more space in our life. Another example, I have a client who loves after a long day of work, once or twice a week, he loves sitting on his porch in the summer and smoking a cigar. Now, in the past, when I had shared with him, hey, let's host an event, let's invite some people into your life. He's like, AJ, when I throw a barbecue, it's a whole day of my time. And it's chasing people and it's letting them know this is happening. And then they want to ask what dishes to bring.

54:08It's complicated. No, no, no, no. We're not complicating this. Invite those neighbors that you see when you're walking your dog and they wave at you and invite those people that you've met through your business connections over to your house to smoke from your massive humidor, one of your cigars that you love. Share this passion around cigar smoking and do something you're already going to do anyways. You're doing that on Thursdays, but invite some people to it. Now, your natural next question is, AJ, well, what if they say no? What if they don't show up? Now I'm hosting things, I'm inviting people, and they're not showing up.

54:43Here's the key, unlock. And my client, Ed, recognized this very early on. So when he started inviting people, trying to network and grow his new friend circle in San Francisco, moving there, he would send out invites and way less people would say yes. And even of the people who said yes, a lot of people would end up flaking, right? So they're low on the trustworthiness. They're not keeping their word. But what he found was he started getting invited to other people's events and gatherings and things simply because he invited them. He was signaling to them, I want you in my wolf pack. And that signal was received.

55:29And in turn, they reciprocated and said, you know what? The next time I have something going on, I'm gonna think of Ed. Ed invited me. And there was a reciprocity in the invite. that led to him meeting new people, hearing about new events and getting invited to other things simply because he was doing the inviting. And the first couple of weeks of inviting, he was a little frustrated. I'm not gonna lie, I get it. You know, you want everyone to show up. You wanna have a great time. You want more people in your life. You're feeling you wanna be efficient. But this actually is the most efficient because you're sending out the signal to everyone that I'm looking to grow my circle.

56:04I want you in my circle. That's as clear as you can get. not in any way, but in a very high value way that shows them you're trustworthy, you're warm, you're fun, you're thinking of them. And this can very quickly, you do this for just a couple months time, regular things you're doing. And maybe once in a while you go a little crazy like our client, Daniel, who loves airplanes and loves rock and roll in Alaska. So he got a hanger and got his favorite bands together and started inviting everybody new two months out to this concert that he was gonna put on. And all of a sudden he had a packed hanger, a bunch of people that love music because that was something he's super passionate about.

56:50But you could start as small as a beach day and some beach volleyball. It doesn't have to be at your house. There's no cleanup. You can go big and you can invite a bunch of people over to watch football on Sunday or hang out in the pool and bring their kids over. And you can barbecue. if you love barbecuing and it's what you do every weekend anyways. But we are leveraging our passions, our time, and all these great connections we've made in a way that we spend more time together. We're amplifying our time spent. So instead of one-on-one trading our time for one-on-one with people who might not be qualified, who aren't a great fit for friends, we're getting a bunch of them together.

57:29And guess what? The ones that you got great vibes from, the ones that actually said thank you. Maybe they brought something over. Maybe they brought their own cigar. Maybe they shared a cigar place that they love going to. That's the person that you pursue a little further and try to hang out with one-on-one. That's the person who's saying, hey, I'm a great fit to be your friend. I'm really interested in this too. That's the bottom of the funnel, right? You've now qualified who you want to spend more time with working towards that 200 hours, right? Like This person has shown that they are worth that time and effort.

58:09And guess what? The return that you get out of it makes you excited to spend more time with them. And you don't have to worry about putting in effort and energy to be taken advantage of, which is a big concern for a lot of people. Everybody has been in situations where they feel they're putting in all this effort and And people seem to take, take, take, but never put anything in. Well, this gives you that opportunity to figure out who is worth that extra time and energy. So building friendships as adults, we admit it can be hard without the right strategies, without the right mindset, and not finding the right values in others.

58:52But today's episode, we shared some insight in what we do with our clients and our coaching programs, busy professionals, and those who are just looking to rebuild the social circle, or maybe lost some friends due to a life change, a move, or even divorce, so that you can start leveraging your passions, your time, and your values in a way that creates friendship in your life when everyone else is feeling more and more disconnected.

59:31All right, AJ, we got a shout out here that I would love to share with our audience. And it begins with, hey, AJ and Johnny, your program Captivate and Connect has been a game changer for me. Your five-minute favor exercise has made a big difference. And your ideas about the four values, supplication, combative, et cetera, were super insightful. People are now noticing how jovial I am. That's some words from my coach. So thank you guys for the course, Michael. And AJ, I have to say, this is what I love about what we do, because these concepts change your view of interpersonal relationships and how to interact with people.

1:00:18These ideas can change not only how you view those relationships and interactions, but also your demeanor. And I love that his coach had noticed how more excited and expressive he has been lately. Well, that's exactly the point that I'm trying to make. It shows up in your body language from verbals to non-verbals. Way to go, Michael. And thank you for writing us. Absolutely. And what I love about it is the ripple effect. Because when you start showing up as jovial, other people's mirror that energy back to you and it makes everyone's life better. If you listen this far, my guess is that's because you want more out of life and finally succeed at love, work, and life.

1:01:03If that's the case, then join us, the Art of Charm team, and other listeners just like you who are experiencing breakthrough conversations, supercharging their confidence, and growing an incredible network inside our world-famous X-Factor Accelerator program. The X-Factor Accelerator is where high-achieving, like-minded people meet, strategize, and unlock their hidden X-Factor to make sure they get the most out of life's opportunities and unlock those doors keeping you from success. We kick off every month with a goal-setting strategy session so you have a personalized plan of attack as well as weekly implementation sessions with opportunities to practice your conversation skills, rapport building, and supercharge your charisma through powerful communication.

1:01:46Imagine what you can accomplish with coaching and mentorship with the Art of Charm. What are you waiting for? Join us today at unlockyourxfactor.com. Before we head out, could you do us and the entire Art of Charm team a huge favor and head on over to Apple Podcasts and rate and review this podcast? It helps others find the show and it makes us more visible. All right. Now we all want you guys to go out there and have an epic week.

1:02:38Cause you had your taste Of black on the yesterday Yeah, but I remember you Oh yeah, I remember you

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