The Secrets to Hosting Memorable and Impactful Social Events | Nick Gray

28:41But we do tend to make the equivalent of dinners and not just snacks. Like I have to like get her to tone down on that. Like again, sit down dinner, I'm very against, but there's gonna be enough food that people will feel full if they wanna feel full at the end. Sure, sure, sure. And it's a holiday party. This is a special situation for you. And I understand that feeling of wanting to feed people, which is valid. I also want to encourage people to know that you don't have to feed people. Your friends are adults. I would rather someone leave my party hungry rather than bored. Yeah, good point. So I spend all my time curating the guest list, making introductions, and very little time thinking about the food and the drinks.

29:30My book is called The Two-Hour Cocktail Party. I don't drink alcohol. There's not a single drink recipe in the book. but that phrase cocktail party is a lightweight social event. Right. Got it. So I like that. Okay. And that's pretty much covered. So what's the K? The K stands for kick them out at the end. The party is only two hours long. Basically what I found is that if you host a party with no end time, people do this weird calculus of deciding when to arrive. Well, I don't want to arrive right on time. You know, the host is from Central America, so they're going to be running late. Well, it's at this time and traffic.

30:12So I'll show up 45 minutes late. When you don't set an end time for your party, it extends what I call the awkward zone. And the awkward zone, by the way, happens at any event. It's the first 10 to 30 minutes. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. That awkward. Yeah. Yeah. How do you usually There's only like three or four people there. The music's not quite on yet. Yes, yes. And everybody spends too much time talking to those first three or four people. Yeah, and there's not enough momentum in the room to break into small groups, to bop around. You feel locked in and trapped. This happens at every event.

30:47By the way, my book has some suggestions on how to avoid the awkward zone. Things that you could do on Sunday for your party, James. Number one would be to think about whether you and your wife want to delegate duties to anyone who arrives early. I love that suggestion in your book. So like you assign people like, hey, can you be the bartender for the next few people that arrive and so on? Yes, yes, yes, yes. You can say, hey, would you help with the coat check for the first 10 people? Would you help with the drinks for the first 15 people? Would you give out high fives? Hey, we're so busy during parties, we forget to take pictures.

31:23Can you take some candid photos for us while we're here? give out little duties to people to get them to help. And to people like that, they're like, oh my God, I just came for like a few minutes and now I got to be the official photographer. What if I take bad photographs? Well, usually what I find, yes, that's a good point. And usually what I find is what people always ask when they're one of the first person to arrive, they say, how can I help? And so I have this list of things. But if I ask somebody to do that and they don't feel comfortable, then I'm very tuned in. and I say, oh my God, no problem at all.

31:56Have a seat on the sofa or stand over there, say hey to Jeremy and just make yourself at home. I'm so happy that you came. So we're tuned into it. We're not gonna force anybody to do that. And you're gonna use your skills to look and see who might be comfortable to do those things. And so now my situation aside, this does seem like a good life strategy, having these cocktail parties to make friends and build connections. Like even for me right now, I should probably do this more. Like how often you think someone should do a cocktail party? So you're on the extreme end of the spectrum. You've had 1500 guests on the podcast.

32:36You know, hundreds, if not thousands of people who you find interesting. Your top of funnel network of acquaintances is insane. And someone like you could literally hire someone part-time to host a two hour event every two or three weeks, and you could cycle new people through that all the time, and you could use it to juice your network and connections if you wanted to. The average person at the other side, who may just be a listener that moved to a new town, I think they should probably host once a quarter. And once every three months is about a good cadence, looking to have half-repeat guests, half-new guests, with the ideal size for about 18 to 20 people once they've hosted a couple of events.

33:23That's what I think would be nice. Is that what you did? When I first moved, so I just moved to Austin, Texas about three years ago, and I moved here, and I knew the formula on how to build a network. I hardly knew anybody, but I knew what to do. And I hosted every two or three weeks. Every two or three weeks I hosted, and it meant that I always had my next event on the calendar. So when I met anyone even remotely interested in, it was as simple as saying, hey, I'm hosting a little happy hour in three weeks. Can I send you the info? Note that I use that phrase, by the way, can I send you the info?

33:57Not do you want to come? We want to give them an easy yes, especially for people like you, James, who get a lot of invitations and a lot of asks. You just want to make it an easy yes for you to send them the information. And then there's other things we do with Social Proof to make it look like an interesting, fun event, which it will be. Like what do you do for social proof? You say like so-and-so's Joe Rogan's coming to this one or? So yes. So I make the guest list visible. We collect RSVPs. You get that core group. Remember your core group idea? That's what I said at the beginning. It's five to eight of these close people.

34:31We get them to RSVP first before I even invite anyone else. So that when you go to the page, you already see that like eight people are coming. I mean, I lived in New York for 13 years. I was in the village on West 10th between 5th and 6th. Oh my God. How the hell did you live on West 10th between 5th and 6th? Like that is, since, that is my favorite block in New York City. I'm not kidding. First off, the Marshall Chess Club on that street. Second, beautiful street. It's like just a beautiful street. It's a very quiet block right there in between NYU and Washington Square Park and Union Square, which are all very busy areas, but that's a nice, quiet, like tree-lined street.

35:18It's very, very pretty. It's an expensive street, by the way. It's an expensive street. I had a fourth or fifth floor walk-up. So Marshall Chess Club, I believe, is 23 West 10th, and I lived at 27. So I was two doors down. So if you went to Marshall Chess Club, we may have passed. In fact, I'd sometimes send my Amazon boxes to Marshall Chess Club. But yes, I lived in New York for a long time. And one party when I was just getting started, I remember I met a woman at this yoga type event. She was really cute. She was a model. I knew I wanted to learn more about her. And I told her, I said, oh, I'm hosting a party in three weeks.

35:56Like, you should come. She said, oh, yeah. So I took out my phone and I loaded up the event and I show it to her. And there's nobody that's coming. It looks like I'm just inviting her by herself over to my apartment. And so she was like, okay, whatever. So I rushed home. I had to get all my friends to sign up on RSVP so I didn't look like a weirdo. It worked out. We ended up becoming friends. But doing that little social proof of showing other people have RSVP'd first helps those that you may have just met to know that it'll be good. The other thing for social proof that I tell everybody to do, and I'd like for you to do this at your party Sunday, is at the end of the icebreaker or the round of intros, snap a group photo.

36:39Take a very quick group photo, and you can use that group photo. Now, you don't need to use it for social proof, but I tell everybody else. I say, look, next time you're hosting, show people your group photo. Show them that you host a good event. Get people smiling, showing them having a good time. I love it. And that's how we use that group photo for future events.

37:17Tell me more about the icebreakers, because I really loved some of the suggestions. You know, like, what's a great piece of media that you've consumed recently? And what did you like about it? Yes. Best purchase under$100. If you were to do a citywide poll, what would you want to learn? Or what's a, I really love this one. What's a compliment someone gave you that you still think about? That's a really great one. Because it makes you really think about yourself and like what you like and a time when you were happy. So that's a good one-on-one icebreaker to ask somebody when you're one-on-one. The concept of value additive icebreakers is that everybody's answer makes the room seem a little bit smarter.

37:56So right now, where are you and your wife? What city? Near Atlanta, Georgia. Okay. So you're near Atlanta. For a long time, I lived up north of Atlanta, near Lake Lanier. And say that I was in Alpharetta. And I would tell people, say I was hosting a party, and this was an hour in. So we've already built up rapport. People are loosened up. I would do this icebreaker for the group. I would say, hey, let's say our name. Say what you do for work again real quick. And then tell me one of your favorite Atlanta or Alpharetta life hacks. What's a secret place that you like? A walking trail? A small business you like to support?

38:39Who has the best cup of coffee? What's something here in Atlanta that you like and recommend? And let's share that now to the room. I like that. And I am near Alpharetta, so I might do exactly that. The reason that that works well is people are going to hear all these ideas of cool things that they want to support and like, and they're going to leave your party feeling like they met a whole bunch of new people and they got a ton of new ideas on stuff to do. The bar is so low right now for hosting a good meetup that when you do these little things, name tags, intros, group photo, you'll be seen as this amazing host.

39:18And it's what I found from teaching hundreds of people how to host their first party is that all you have to do are a few little elements of structure and it just turbo charges your hosting skills. And that's just what I want people to know. You can learn to be a good host. Just like you can learn to play better chess, you can learn to be a better host. It's not hard. All right. That's very good. And then, so let me ask you, like, do you do this for a living? Like, do you throw parties for a living? I don't make very much money off of it, but I do it full time. I was lucky that I started and sold two companies in the past.

39:55What were the companies? The first one was called Flight Display Systems. It made in-flight entertainment equipment and surveillance stuff for small planes. What do you mean surveillance stuff? So we started making in-flight entertainment equipment and then the screens that would play movies and DVDs. once those screens got certified for use in small planes, I was pretty good with like Google search engine stuff and got it to be certified and to come up for like FAA certified flat panel monitors. And they needed those in surveillance. So like the Coast Guard is doing a rescue mission at night, but they're wearing night vision goggles and they need a screen that's certified to be used in an aircraft that can work with night vision goggles.

40:39So yeah, it's a... Well, that's a weird thing. How did you get into that? So that was total a family business. My dad was this mad scientist guy. I was born on an Air Force base. And when I left college, he was in the basement of our house trying to start and build this company. I thought I'd help him out for a few weeks, hire his first employees, work on his marketing. And then that turned into a couple months and a couple years. And we grew it to about 80 employees. We sold it to a PE firm in 2014. Wow. Okay, cool. And then what was the second company? Second company was, I think, maybe where we originally met through.

41:14In New York City, I did renegade museum tours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major museums across the country. And what renegade tours means is that I would hire stand-up comedians and Broadway actors to be the tour guides for my company at the Met Museum. And then we would lead these non-traditional two-hour museum experiences. That's pretty cool. My, my, one of my daughters is a, a tour guide for, in New York City for donut, like, like great donut locations. Really? Yeah. That's, dude, that I have so much respect for tour guides dealing with tourists and people that are new to New York.

42:00You really have to be incredibly socially savvy. No, it's true. And a lot of standup comedians kind of get their start as tour guides. and stand-up comedians make the best tour guides too because they can read a room they can read an audience they can take people right to the level of roast it's amazing yeah so now you now you do this other stuff full-time this throwing parties and you do it for other people as well right yeah yeah folks i've been doing a little bit of conference work so i got many times businesses and companies will hire me to help them with their conferences to to reimagine how does networking look at a 3000 person conference or a 300 person conference.

42:38How does that work? How do you re-imagine that? Well, I'll give you an example. I just helped out at a conference in Orlando. They had 2700 attendees. They had eight different networking sessions that were happening. And when I audited those sessions, I realized that basically they were just sitting them down and running PowerPoint slides. And the volunteers who were running those sessions were kind of using it as like a sales funnel for them. And so we said, look, we're getting rid of slides. There's no more slides. There's no more chairs in the room. The first 30 minutes, I trained all the teams to say, look, first 30 minutes, they need to talk to as many new people as they can.

43:14Here's how we're going to do that and split them into small groups. For that conference, over half of the attendees were first-time attendees. And so at a conference like that, we wanted them to give a touch point to recognize people and make friends because it's so much easier to resell to repeat people blah blah blah but that was one way um at a conference that had a thousand people they said look at the opening night we want you to lead the first 30 minutes of the gathering to help folks mix and mingle there at the happy hour and so i got on the microphone you know like a schmuck and i just led it and had people form small groups and have conversations and it was amazing so that's what i'm exploring in right now?

43:54That's great. Yeah, I have two conference, let's call them hacks that that helped me. Let's say if I'm speaking at the conference, one is, and they address kind of the problems you were mentioned, one of them addresses the problems you were mentioning in the beginning, which is that everybody just sort of arrives, the presenters show up at the last minute and have slides and then leave. And so what I do is I never use slides, because when you use slides, everyone's looking, they're not looking at you. They're not paying attention to you or they're multitasking, which is very hard actually for the brain to do.

44:27Harder than people realize. People think slides help the presentation. It doesn't help. It makes you actually have to work harder in your brain. So I never, and plus it never works. The technology never works. So, or 50 % of the time. So I never use slides, but that's not the hack. The hack is I will always go to the opening early morning session, like, oh, you know, 7 a.m. coffee and donuts served, you know, before the conference starts. I always go to that and shake hands with as many people as possible because then I'm the one they're rooting for later when I'm speaking. I'm pumping my fist because that's genius.

45:03Yeah, no, it works really well because nobody else is there. No other presenters are there. And then the other thing I try to do, which is a little more subtle is if I can't, I try to be the last person to speak at the conference, which seems a little like maybe everyone's tired then. And that's true. Everyone's a little tireder. They were looking forward to the conference to be over, but it allows me to say, I'd like to thank all the prior presenters. They did a great job because what that does is it makes two categories of presenters, all the prior ones and me. So you can't even remember the names anymore of the prior ones.

45:40There's just me thanking them. And then there's me. And I find that to be, when I do that, when I'm able to do that, I find when I read the, you know, I ask the conference holders to send me the testimonials later. I find that there's a lot more testimonials that mention me because I do that one. I think it's because I do that one technique. Because you're the last one to go. And we remember the last thing, right? It's the recency. The last thing. And also there's this, what's called choice ambiguity bias, which is that you put everybody in this other category where you can't even, it's like, choose your favorite movie.

46:13You can't even choose it, there's too many. And then there's me. So it removes me from the category. Like if you ask what's your favorite movie, there's, and you've seen a thousand movies, there's the 999 you saw first, and then there's the last one you saw. And so I really make that distinction. James, is this too personal? How could I use this in my dating life? that's very interesting question um because i do have hacks for that obviously looking the way i look i mean i don't date anymore i'm married but uh um you know there's one there's one technique um that is useful which is that you do a lot of things on a date so you don't just like beat for dinner and that's the date.

47:01Maybe you meet at a ping pong place and you play two games of ping pong and then you go, uh, you know, to an art gallery or you sneak into like an art opening where you get some drinks and, and then you go to like, maybe you go to one place for drinks first and then another place for dinner. And what happens then is you feel like you've had a lot of experience with the person and so they they've the other person i mean this this feels a little manipulative but it really isn't but you you feel like you've had more of an opportunity to get to know like the other person the person you're on the date with feels like they know you more than they really do because they've done a lot more things with you on a date than they do on a normal date if that makes sense yeah yeah it feels right it feels like similar to my parties we want a lot of activities we want a lot of people there we want it to seem deeper and richer so i love that another one is this works really well is you you kind of make a challenge for instance i'll tell someone this is a challenge i do for myself that i'll go into a starbucks sometimes and just to exercise my ability to be rejected and not be afraid i'll get my coffee and i'll ask for a 10 percent discount and they'll say well why do you want a 10 discount and i won't give any reason i'll say no reason i can i just have a 10 discount and they really they don't know what to do they have to ask the manager and you know it's a starbucks it's a chain they're gonna say no they have rules you know and i'll do this at every place not just a starbucks a deli a restaurant a hardware store like i'll do this all the time but i'll explain this to the person on the date inevitably they say oh that sounds fascinating and i say why don't you try it like i'll try it first and we'll see what happens and then you try it and they'll be like oh no i'm really afraid to do no no just i'll do it first and so they'll see me do it and i'll probably get rejected now women don't get rejected so when a woman asks for a 10 discount at a deli they're much more likely to get sure yeah 10 off your coffee and and so they feel very excited that they did this challenge and they did it.

49:17And they're going to be able to tell, it's a story. They're going to be able to tell their friends later about your date. And so it gives them fond memories right away. Plus they, you experienced this almost life-threatening experience, you know, asking, you know, that it feels very scary. The first couple of times I did this, so it's going to feel very scary for them. It's like a public speaking almost. And, and so, so they've been through this like life-threatening experience with you. And that kind of adds to the, the, the kind of excitement of the date. So those are two kind of like date hacks.

49:48In terms of this choice ambiguity bias, it's hard to say, well, you know, good thing I'm the last of all the thousands of people you dated. Like then that makes them seem like a slut. So I'm not sure you want to want to do that. But I'll have to think about that a little more, how you can use that specifically, you know, or maybe you can do that referring to yourself. Like you can say, you know, oh, I'm tired of just the concept of dates. And so then you put like everybody else you've previously dated in this category of a date. And now they feel like they have to sort of demonstrate that they're not this generic, ambiguous date.

50:30So that might be a way to do it. I liked what you said about the challenge and this idea of the low stakes challenge that you're both invested in. And it's kind of like me and my date against everybody else. Yeah. And that idea is really resonating with me. And I've never done that before. And I think it just sounds fun to me. And probably things that feel fun are good. And I need to do more of that. That one really, really works. That's like my favorite one because it's not manipulative at all in any way. I mean, I'm thinking like back to 2007, 2008. I used to do stuff like, oh, this person's interested in Kabbalah.

51:14And then I would like quickly go to the book. I would know nothing about that. And I would quickly go to the bookstore, read everything. And then, oh yeah, I'm an expert. And you know, that stuff's really bad. Don't do that. But because then they like you and you don't even really like them because then you're not interested in this. And, but yeah, it's a good question. like what are kind of like dating hacks related. I like these icebreakers though that you do because they don't feel false, these icebreakers. They don't feel like, oh, I'm just trying to have a conversation. I wish I had had these, like I lived in Key Biscayne, Florida for a while, about a year or so ago.

51:53And that's a very social town. It's about 70 % Latino. And it's just a nonstop party, particularly literally from Wednesday night to Monday morning is a nonstop party there. and I'm not made for that. And I would just, I would really research icebreakers because I was like, I just didn't know what to talk about with everybody. They all knew each other all their lives and then we moved in. And like, I liked them and I think they wanted to like me, but I just didn't know what to talk about. And I wish I had had more of these icebreakers at hand. You just did a pod that just released where it was about how to make somebody fall in love with you, where you went through a series of escalating questions.

52:37You remember that? You know, I honestly never remember my podcast. Fair, fair, fair. I'm going to have to listen. Jay, do you remember that one? Yeah, the one with Robin. Oh, it was with my wife. That's right. Some study kind of came out with these questions, and you can find them online somewhere. But yeah, it's basically how to make somebody fall in love with you. And the idea is that you get vulnerable and intimate, not immediately, not right off the bat, but you warm up to it. And at a party, I wonder if there's an equivalent. For example, something that I will ask people, and I don't know if this is good or not.

53:16I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. But I'll ask people, how was your day? Now, that is a very silly question, but it's very personable and it's kind of grounding for me. Many times at parties, I have frenetic energy. It's stressful. And if I can just ground myself and like, hey, how was your day? It takes people out of this superficial, what do you do for work? How do you know James? Whatever. And it's kind of great. I don't know if you like it or hate it. Yeah, no, I like that. But sometimes I feel like with how was your day, there's like generic answers. Like everyone says, great, how was yours?

53:54You know, they don't really answer it. Yeah. Like yesterday, someone asked me, how was your day? And I decided I'm just gonna say, you know, it wasn't really that good. So, you know, but it's hard to do that. Like you have to remember to do that. And to be honest, like, cause it's such a generic question. Something I want to note as we talk about these icebreakers is to be aware of the burden that it places on the person that you ask. And when we're interacting with new people, I would suggest almost that you go first. So as you, James, lead this icebreaker for your party, I want to make sure on Sunday that you and your wife go first.

54:36And if I were to come up, I don't want to be the guy that's just drilling people with questions. I need to be vulnerable and go first. And so if I were going to ask, what's your favorite purchase, then I would lead didn't say like, hey, can I ask you, like, I'm going to ask you this, but I'll tell you mine first. But like, what was your favorite purchase for like$100 or less? It could be an object or an experience. For me, I love this Zoji Rushi Japanese water heater. And I love tea and I drink a lot of tea and it gives me boiling water that's ready immediately. I bought it and I think I use it like every single day.

55:15Wow, does that really work? How fast does it boil water? It takes time to boil water, and then it keeps the boiled water in a vacuum seal that only requires a little bit of electricity. So I could get the hot water right now immediately because it's in this vacuum thing. I just kind of push a button and boiling water. They have them all over Japan and China, but nobody uses them here. I like that. I'm going to have to purchase that. That's an example of how I would go first to lead that so I don't put the social burden on you. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, I agree with that completely. And, you know, in terms of the escalating questions and the vulnerability, you're right.

55:53Vulnerability is a really important bonding mechanism because that's how you learn. That's how the people in the tribe learn to trust other people that they're going to fight the bad guys with. But if you're too vulnerable too fast, that's like a little kind of crazy. it's like if you if the first thing you say to someone is oh i'm still fighting for custody with my kids with my husband who used to abuse me or wife who used to abuse you know that's a problem it's too much too soon but if you say or if you or if the first thing you do is complain about your job because that's like no one needs to know that right away um but if you like like when jay complains about his job at my parties it's really a drag so because he's my podcast producer so So, but if you're vulnerable, like, you know, like one thing about living, I love living here, but one thing is my kids are a little older now and they live in New York and I miss them.

56:51I wish I could see them a little bit more. That's like a sweet vulnerability. And that's like, it's kind of figuring out how to divide your vulnerabilities up is a good way to do it. Yeah, what you don't want to do is trauma dump. Oh my gosh, I caught up with a friend recently and he just trauma dumped on me. And I was like, wow, I need a minute for that. Holy smokes. Yeah, yeah. And that's a big red flag in dating. If some vulnerability is good, but trauma dumping, I like that phrase, trauma dumping is really bad. Like that's a bad red flag. Because if they're doing that on the first date, what are they gonna do when you're married?

57:24Like that's all you're gonna hear. So at your party on Sunday, I wanna give you one more piece of advice that you can coach your wife on. Because you may be ready to go to bed and she may have a line of 10 people. that want to talk to her. Yeah. Who are saying, oh my God, I haven't seen you all night. You've been hosting, let's sit down and catch up. What I say in those moments to people is I make sure that they feel seen. And so I would say something like, Jenny, I'm so glad that you came. I would love to catch up, but James wants to wrap up. Can I call you tomorrow? I will tell her this and she won't pay attention to me.

58:04She's, I'm an extreme introvert. she's an extreme extrovert so she's going to talk to all 10 of those people all night long and i and and i don't feel comfortable going to bed while the party's still going on so this is source of attention so i will tell her this and we'll see how she reacts i wish you the best of luck that's not easy well nick this is this has been so great like i knew i wanted to have you on and um the book is the two-hour cocktail party how to build a big relationships with small gatherings. You know, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on too was I've had out of the past 10 years of doing this podcast, I've had on quite a few guests who have built their careers by starting off throwing parties.

58:50So like Lewis house, you know who Lewis houses? Of course. Legend. Yeah. Yeah. So he has a great podcast, a school of greatness. He's written a bunch of bestselling books. Uh, he literally started his career by inviting his LinkedIn connections to networking events that he would host. And by doing that, he built up a big list of people. And then eventually he would write a book, how to network using LinkedIn and that sold out. And then he would start charging people for the parties. And that's how he built up his career from starting to throw parties. And I've had more than one guest like that where they weren't necessarily the most extroverted people, but they built a career out of throwing parties.

59:34So this is like an important, a more important than people think life skill. And it's harder than people think, which is why, I mean, you wrote a book about it because there's enough gaps between people's knowledge and reality that a book was needed. So look, this is a skill that folks can learn. And if you want to meet interesting people, you have to do interesting things. I found that the easiest, fastest way to become interesting is to host a well-run meetup. and the bar is so low today to host a good gathering. There are a few tactical, practical things that I learned like name tags, icebreakers, cocktails only, kick them out, sending reminder messages, collecting RSVPs, a simple group photo.

1:00:18These are not rocket science. I haven't invented a nuclear reactor. They're just common sense, practical advice to host a good gathering. And everyone wants to know someone who brings people together, just like Lewis Howes found, just like other guests. People want to know you when you bring people together. Yeah. No, that's right. Like, there's another guy, John Levy. I'm sure you've heard of him. He's like a famous party holder. Who else, Jay? I feel like there's been a bunch of others, but I can't remember the names. John Levy is the one that I can think of. He's the king. Yeah. He's done such a really good job for this.

1:00:54There's new people that are doing it. I mean, there's a lot of stories of people that have done this. What I would like to do, I would like to volunteer next year to come to Atlanta and to be a host for you and your wife. Yeah, that'd be great. For a weekday, two-hour thing. But your wife has to promise that I can kick everybody out at the end. All right, I'll see if she can do that. But done, deal. Let's do it. Because I even had this conversation with her. I would like to do this more often as a networking thing because like one time we organized even a podcast around it where some people were coming into town.

1:01:39So we combined that with some people here in town and we got all that together and kind of had a good, like it was, who was it? It was Jason Pfeiffer, who was the editor in chief of Entrepreneur. We had Merrick First, who was a professor of entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech. Cal Fussman, who was an editor at large at Esquire and a really great interviewer and a couple of other people. and it was just a really good, I wanted to do more of those types of events. We can do them easily when you host a cocktail party, when you host a happy hour. This is really something that as you think about the funnel of relationships, the top of the funnel is those acquaintances.

1:02:18They're people that maybe you only see once every couple of years. And I found that in the same time it takes to watch a movie on Netflix, two hours, you can host an event to reconnect with 20 to 30 of those people or here's another idea that i'd really like to do and i would love to do it with you i know a ton of people in austin that i would really like to reconnect with so i should just like plant myself in austin for a week and throw a party wait wait wait say less i am in a thousand percent i am in in in the first step we need to do is to pick your date and get the dates that you're going to come.

1:02:56And then let's host like two or three nights. And I think we should do it. Yeah. I think, I think it's a good idea because so like everybody who's been on this podcast is either lives in Austin or just moved to Austin. And I keep saying, Oh, I'm going to visit, I'll visit you in Austin. And I have never done it, but maybe if I kind of focus it around, like, Hey, I'm having a little get together, would you come and you know, some people will, some people won't, you know, there's like a hierarchy of my podcast guests and they'll all come. They'll all come. And if you make it easy for them to say yes, to pop in, we'll host it on two nights.

1:03:32We'll do it both on a Tuesday and a Wednesday. How do you do it on two nights? Like why, what, what's the purpose of that? The idea is that for your ultra busy, super successful friends, you give them the option. And that's people do that. Like they say, look, I'm having events on Tuesday and Wednesday. let me know which day is good for you? The average listener could not do that. You have a wide enough network and you are famous enough that you can easily fill up a whole week. So I don't worry about you having two nights. Now, something that I've done is I will tier my nights. So as an example, sometimes I host meetups for million plus creators, folks that have podcasts, Instagram, whatever, for a million or more followers.

1:04:15And I'll host them on one night. And then the other night is more of just like an open kind of happy hour for other friends. So we could do something like that for you as well. But I think that you should host on a Tuesday and Wednesday. You can come into Austin for two nights, three days, easy flight in and out of Atlanta. No problem. Yeah, yeah. And get a nice Airbnb, you know, and have fun. All right, done, deal. Well, Nick, Nick Gray, author of The Two-Hour Cocktail Party, How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings. Such valuable information that I'm actually going to put to use within the next 48 hours.

1:04:49Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. More parties in 2024. Excellent. I agree.