How to Host Successful Events and Build Meaningful Connections

23:29And so right now what's happening is he's giving me advice on practicing before I host for the first time. Now look at this through the lens of an entrepreneur. If you are a realtor, if you have a nail salon, If you are a tax accountant, if you are a photographer, all of us have the ability to bring people in from the community and foster it from a professional circle or even from a client circle. And so when Nick is telling me to practice with my friends and family, Nick is telling you to practice with your friends and family. So I heard a few key takeaways. Set a distinct time. Start time and an end time.

24:02Start time and end time. To be very specific around letting them know what will be included and then to manage expectations. Yeah. And then telling them the why. Yeah. Am I missing anything from my first practice one? Yeah, there's a lot more stuff. Oh, you said to me. Okay, so this is where I had a little bit of a panic attack. You said mix circles. Yes. Oh, you don't like this idea. You don't like the mixed circles. Listen, I would love to live the Olympic life. I would love five intersecting rings of beautifulness. I've never mixed my circles. Why is that? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. You're afraid you don't think they'll like each other?

24:37No, I definitely think they'll like each other. Yeah. I do. It's all so different. It's different. You think it's different. Well, the groups of people are so different. But I'm just going to go on a whim here. Are you and your husband exactly the same? No. No, do you appreciate it? That's the reason why I really like him. We're nothing alike. Interesting. Touche. What if it was like that with our friends? I wonder. It's so funny because sometimes I'll host these parties and I'll see people like hitting it off. I'd be like, you were talking to him all night? Like, what? Really? I'm like, yes, I love that guy.

25:14I was like, I would never have guessed that. Okay, all right, that's good. So you mentioned two neat avatars when you were saying for your viewers. One was folks who work in real estate and one is just someone who has a nail salon. Both of those people really can and should be using gatherings to grow their business. And by the way, the results are not immediate from hosting events. You may not immediately sell a house or get a new listing the day after you host a party. You may not host at your nail salon sort of a happy hour and immediately get 10 new clients sold. But you build this network of loose connections that is so insanely powerful that you can become seen as a connector within your local community.

25:59I love that. And it's so powerful because imagine somebody is watching this in Little Rock, Arkansas, and they have a nail salon or they have a small business or a restaurant or something. when you can bring these different buckets of people together, you start to be seen as a connector. And they say, oh my God, Judy hosts these awesome happy hours every quarter at her shop. You totally have to come. You start getting introduced as this person. There's a woman I worked with in New Jersey when I was launching my book as a test. And she had a small business. She had two kids and she didn't want to host.

26:33She didn't want to bring people into her home. She thought she had to do it at a restaurant or at a bar And frankly she felt like her house wasn't big enough Because she put this image online of her as a successful business owner And the reality was at the time she was in a different sort of living situation And she really didn't want to host and she I had to talk with her a lot and say like the power and the reason and Really let her know that people aren't going to judge her and that this was the right move And so she ultimately did it. And she said, you know what? She said, people actually respected me more for bringing them into my world.

27:12And nobody's going to show up to your house when you're like hosting. That's right. And look around and turn up their nose and be like, you guys, this place sucks. Let's go to another house. Nobody's going to say that, right? She said, what I learned was that they actually respected me more for bringing them in. And they started to see me as a leader. And I talked to her a few months afterwards. and she says now she goes out to grocery stores. She gets recognized. She goes to PTA meetings at school. She has friends. She says hello to. And it was all just because she started to host this monthly Wine Wednesday.

27:43That was a very simple way to get people together. Low stakes, no dinner, just super casual, light snacks. Maybe they had a charcuterie board or whatever. But she said that. Why? She said, look, there's so many amazing people in town. I'm meeting all these various people. Let's all just get together and say hello. So pop in for 30 minutes whenever you want to, but I'm hosting it at this day and time. And I think that everybody that's watching this can become that person in your local community. All you have to do is host a really simple gathering. The ideal thing is that you would start to host this every quarter.

28:17That's kind of the right cadence in my opinion. Certain people have read my book and they go crazy. They host every month. Some people are like every three weeks or something. But once a quarter should be the cadence that you should be doing. Because what I want your listeners to think is that they should be going through life collecting the interesting people that they meet. And they need a funnel to drop them into. Because I imagine that someone very busy like yourself, and maybe some of these listeners, you meet people and you say, oh, we should go on a double date sometime. Oh, my gosh, we should totally go out to dinner.

28:52Stop. Are you recording me? Right. We should totally do this. Let's go out. Oh my gosh, we should hang out. Let's put it on the calendar. Okay, I'll follow up. And then nobody follows up or whatever. And it's hard. It's hard to schedule. We're busy and things like that. I know. But if you hosted this, it's kind of a sweep. It's a catch-all. It is. You get to invite people. I'm sold. This is the first thing that I've said. And I was just like, oh wait, are you talking about time maximization right now? Oh, what's that? Well, if you were to do four independent dinners, and each dinner is two hours, that's eight hours.

29:22But I can have a two-hour event for those eight people. and I'm like, now we're talking baby. Exactly. Yeah, okay. Okay. Exactly, but instead of a dinner, we're going to do a happy hour. Okay, that's right. Because, and once again, I want to just drive this in. Dinners cause people a lot of stress and anxiety. Word. And there is catering, there's silverware, there's cutlery, there's dietary requirements, there's all these other things. Yes. You can get away with not doing dinner as long as you tell people in advance. Okay. And by the way, it's not that it's no food. We'll still have very simple snacks.

29:52Yeah, yeah. But it's not dinner, right? You want to know the best thing about Mexican food? Yes. It's on par with charcuterie if the expectations are there. Because I can make a mean guacamole. Good. Okay. My husband makes a mean salsa. Acceptable. Great. We have chips. Yes. We have a carafe of margaritas, self-serve. And then maybe like a Spanish wine. Great. Okay. I love the idea of you guys doing like, you know, margaritas and some theme or something. It doesn't have to be a theme. Like alliteration? Something. Like money, margaritas, and manifestation. Margaritas and manifestation. I like margaritas and manifestation.

30:30That would not be my genre, but I'd be like, I don't know. I just went with the M's. I just went with the M's. Okay. Sometimes I tell people, though, just to call it something like new friends happy hour. And the idea is that the purpose is really you tell people, look, there's going to be name tags. I'm going to lead some rounds of intros. Oh, name tags. Yes, we'll talk about that. I know. We are going to talk about name tags. I'm telling you, Nick, I've been following your mark for a while, and I'm very creepy. I can probably finish your sentences right now. I'm big on my name. I'm big on the name tags.

30:55I love name tags. I'm very pro name tags for a lot of reasons, but one of which is I'm bad with names myself. Okay. And the other thing is it just makes it less awkward. Yes. And it's like just easier. Plus, we also have to think about being inclusive for somebody bringing their spouse or significant other who's frankly going into a room where they know nobody. They've got dragged along to this event sometimes. and even if there's one or two people in the room, but the last reason I like name tags is that when we mix our different buckets of people, we show that this isn't a click party where it's not like these established groups.

31:30I like that. Right? It's the idea. Okay, so I'm already thinking for my practice run, if I bring a mixed group of people, I could see like the segments, like the Olympic rings are going to stay in their own pockets. What do we do to start mixing them after the name tags? We'll do two rounds of intros, potentially splitting people up into small groups to break up those groups. And so one of the little secrets I like to do is I do these name tags that you can buy online on Amazon. We'll link in the show notes that have six different colors on them. And so I will say the why. What people don't like is to be surprised to show up to what they think is just a neighborhood gathering.

32:09And suddenly you're leading like team building activities. And so you'll tell them in the invitation when they sign up an RSVP, which that's another thing. You have to collect RSVPs. You can't just say this, whatever. We have to collect RSVPs for reasons. But they'll see on there that you'll say, hey, I'll lead a few rounds of intros because I'm in Newport Beach. You're in Newport Beach. We want to meet and mix and mingle. And so I'll do these quick activities to help you meet guaranteed five or ten new people. It's not like you'll make a best friend out of those, but like maybe you'll meet somebody that you want to go out for coffee for.

32:42And when you tell people your why of why you're doing things, I think that that helps. Okay. I'm a big believer. Yeah. Okay. So we'll do that and we'll split the room up by doing those rounds of intros that'll get them out of those. So this is not a wide room intro. You put them in clusters, intro into clusters? It's a little bit different than what my book says. The book says to do a whole room intro, which I still do believe in, but increasingly as I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of my readers, I am putting people into more small groups at the beginning. Okay. So one of the things that I like to do, and I think you should do this at your mastermind when they meet up in person, is to put people into groups of three and say, hey, look, you guys have all really amazing life stories.

33:27Form groups of three, ideally with somebody that you don't know, and I'm going to ask you to share your life story in about two minutes. And you can talk about that personally, romantically, professionally, whatever way you want to. But just sharing these small groups kind of who you are in two minutes. And two minutes is a long time. And those small groups I've found really give people a little bit of confidence that they've met somebody. They have an ally now at your party. They're in this group. That whole activity takes about seven minutes for all three of those people to go. And now they've formed these new connections.

34:01They have like a safe space. and then I'll put them into another small group later and then we'll break and then we'll do a whole group where they just get to say their name, what they do and some sort of unique type of question. But doing those things at the party is so helpful to break up the room and to just remind people that as we get older, it's harder to meet more people and we become more creatures of habit and yet we need these new relationships now more than ever, whether it's personally or professionally. Through a networking lens, this makes total sense and it makes total sense. But if you don't want to do that, if that's cringed to you, you're like, oh, networking, I don't want to host that, then just know that studies show massively the health benefits to having more friends and acquaintances.

34:47And we find that the best opportunities, whether it's new houses, neighbors, finding help or whatever, come from not our best friends, but that network of loose connections. I love this. Now, talk to me about your connections in business. Have you been able, And I don't know the answer to this question, so it's not a lead in. And so if it doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't go anywhere. But have your relationships based on these networks blossomed or portioned into business opportunities, leveraging it? How are you monetizing these networking relationships? Talk to me about that. I launched my last business, the museum company, because I was hosting so many events.

35:18And I had such a network of people that people trusted me and they knew me. I had what was called a warm list. And so I hear from a lot of people, oh, my gosh, I have a new app idea that I want to launch. Oh my gosh, I have a new nail salon. I'm launching a business. I want to read your book to host a launch party for this thing. I say, awesome, fantastic. You're going to do great. When was the last time that you hosted something? And they're like, oh, well, I don't really host right now, but like this is my thing. I'm like, bro, you don't have a warm list. Nobody knows you. So good. You don't have like folks who trust you, right?

35:52Yes. And so by hosting this, you stay top of mind. and these days with social media, with all these different things, we really want to use just casual events to stay top of mind and have people be aware of us. Anyhow, so the specific stuff for me, I've gotten my very first speaking gig came from one of these events that I hosted. Somebody came, they saw me, they heard about my business. I got invited to speak and then that completely changed my life. I got a TEDx talk. I went on the speaker circuit. I've gotten huge client deals. I've gotten book opportunities. I got to be friends with Sam Parr.

36:26All these things, all these people that I've met have come through the events that I've hosted because it's such an easy way for them to get to know me. Interesting. Okay, so speaking of Sam, he said last year for your birthday, you took everybody to a water park. Yes. But it was in the morning. Yes. Talk to me about that. How did you select your guest list? What was the intention? We're talking about your birthday. Yes. Okay. So I like to do fun stuff every year for my birthday. By the way, I feel strongly about this. you should only host your birthday party on the day of your actual birthday.

36:59Okay. Now, some people are going to hate this idea, but I feel very strongly about it. It's a spicy take. I think you should only host your birthday party on the day of your actual birthday because that's your day to do stuff. And my birthday, I think, fell on like a Wednesday or something. And I said, this is my birthday. I gave people notice. I said, this is what I want to do. If you do not want to come, you don't have to. But I'm celebrating it on my day. and I think that on your actual birthday, you get to ask your friends to do whatever you want. Okay, so now can I ask a personal question?

37:30Yeah. How many people did you invite and how many people showed up? I invited, I'm very good at inviting through a double opt-in intro. Oh, I have a question. I'd like for you to explain your double opt-in intro because I thought it was really great. Yeah, I will ask people, I'll say something. So let's say, for example, that someone watching this has a small business and they're thinking of hosting a happy hour. The way that they would do the double opt intro would they would reach out to somebody and say, hey, I'm hosting a happy hour in three weeks on Thursday, October 12th from 7 to 9 p.m.

38:03I'm inviting a lot of interesting people. I think it's going to be really fun. Can I send you the info? That phrase, can I send you the info, is not saying will you come absolutely. It's not saying, you know, can I guarantee you'll be there. It's saying can I send you the info. Really good. And they check, you know, and they say, oh, yeah, please, please send me the info. And then if they're interested, then they can sign up on RSVP and say, yes, I'm coming. But that double opt-in intro is really important. I do it for all my events. And that helps me. What do you think it psychologically conveys?

38:31Like you're my party therapist. What is it psychologically conveying to the person of can I, like the permission to send the invite? Does it increase the likelihood of them saying yes? Or what is it? I think it increases the attendance rate because you are not mass blasting out an invite to people. You're not having people do it. It helps protect you because maybe you invite somebody and you're worried that they're going to reject you based on what the event is or something else. When instead they're like, oh, yeah, thanks for the date and time. Like that just doesn't work for me. I can't, but thank you so much.

39:04I'd love to come to the next one. You know, the beauty about inviting people to things is that it's a little gift that you get to give people. maybe you've seen this with your podcast that even inviting somebody to be a guest on the podcast they're very thankful for that and we find the same thing with podcasts that we do with events that just by inviting someone to come to one of your parties it's kind of the reciprocity principle they feel like they owe you something of sorts and so you get to give the gift of an invite to come to one of your gatherings whether it's a happy hour or a birthday party or mastermind anyhow so So I do the double opt-in intro and I ask them first if I can send them more info and then I'll send them the details.

39:45And because of that, I have over like a 95 % attendance rate. Plus I also send a lot of reminder messages to keep it top of mind. And so I have a really good, for my birthday, it was like 100 % because it's such a weird event that like this was like a very big thing. Well, it's such a weird event, but you're in Austin. So it's like, you know, it's perfect. Okay. Okay, let's loop back as we get into the third part of the conversation. If you've had a little bit of time to think about that we have four floors and we're going down the elevator. Yes. What do you say you do? Now I host events. I help people host events and make friends and meet new people, build their network in like a non-slimy way.

40:23And I spend a lot of time doing that and thinking about how to encourage more in-person gatherings. and whether that's with conferences or masterminds or just like my book with simple happy hours that people host at their home. But I'm really passionate about that. It's like my favorite thing. My favorite thing is to talk. I actually print my phone number inside my book and I tell people to call me and I get to get phone calls from people because I'm a psycho and I answer random numbers all the time. We could now be more different. You don't do that. You don't answer the call. No, no. I love random phone calls.

40:56And so I love to talk to those people and spend time on that. That's so beautiful. Okay, so on the podcast, we focus on the business of the business. So what is the business of your business? I see on Instagram that you live a very rich life. Yeah. And so I wonder, what are your revenue streams? I'm very lucky these days. I don't have to worry about money anymore. And that's because I started some businesses in the past. And that if someone's watching this thinking like, wow, what would I do? Like, what is life after the exit? Like, I guess I'm living life up to the exit. I rent out water parks.

41:31I talk about parties all day. I hang out with you. And so that's what my life is like now. And I get to just work on the things that I'm excited about. I make a little bit of money from the book from each book that I sell. I think I make$5. I probably sold 20 ,000 copies. I get hired by certain... Can we talk about that? Yeah. I mean, here's the thing on the podcast. I ask questions and I have zero attachment to the answer. Great. Okay. So you went to an event hosted by Andrew Wilkinson. Oh, yeah. And so I was so fascinated because, you know, it's like I look at the business world very much like a sport.

42:00And so you get to see like, oh, there's like the Northwest Championship and like, oh, the Canadian conference. And I'm looking like conference. How funny. Kind of like conference like sports and then conference like business conference. Look at me. Look at me. That's good. So I heard that you were, or I saw on social media because I stalk you. You were at the event and you were, I think, I believe from what I was able to plot and deduce. You were hired as a facilitator for these like mixers and you were intentionally mixing people at the conference? Yeah. Okay, explain that. And being the master of ceremonies and helping to run the conference.

42:36A lot of people, this is so niche, so I don't know if this is helpful to folks that are listening, but I'll share. A lot of people will start a conference or a mastermind or an event and become and do it themselves the first year. And it's great and they love it, but it's also very hard. Yes. And a little stressful and you don't really get to enjoy it. Yes. And they don't want to be the person that is front and center. They want to be involved, but they also want to enjoy it a little bit. And so usually I'll get looped in second or third year when they're doing it again saying, hey, we just want a little bit of help from the front.

43:09So cool. To do that. And in certain audiences, I know the host and the audience and I can read what the room wants just like a lot of your listeners probably can feel the vibes. Yes. And I have a unique skill set because I've hosted literally thousands of events to do things spontaneously and sort of on the fly. And so one example, because I did feel like I was in my zone of genius for that event, was on the second day, I knew that we had so many incredible people in the audience. And I completely redesigned the schedule for about a three-hour chunk of time in the fly, in real time. And that was so much fun for me.

43:46And I think it was exactly what the room needed. And it was a hugely successful event. It's very niche. I don't do a lot of these. I'll do a couple per year. The next one is with a real estate group called Bigger Pockets. And that one's going to be huge. There'll be 2 ,000 people at that. So that's very different, right? Wow. But it'll still be fun. So I've done that for Andrew, for Cody Sanchez. I helped Sam Parr when he did my first million and they had a live event here. So helping with that. Something funny, by the way, is one of my favorite things to do for my famous or sort of successful friends is when they're speaking at a conference, I like to be their body man.

44:20And that means that someone like Cody Sanchez or Sam Parr, when they're at a very big event, a lot of people want to talk to them. And they're so nice that if you leave it up to them, they will talk to every single person. And yet, like Sam, Sam will go home completely drained saying, I never want to do that again. I can't. I'm just, I'm drained. And so I will actually walk Sam to the bathroom, for example, and not let him talk to anybody and just say, nope, we're going. Follow me. I'm sorry, Sam can't talk, Sam can't talk. Like, I got to get him here. I got to get him back. This probably isn't interesting.

44:53This is like Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner. Sort of like that. Wow. It's sort of like the bodyguard. I mean, absolutely. Okay, so when you talk about building these connections with your friends, you also have a very unique ability of building connections with people online. You get people very, very interested in not just you, but your story and your journey. And I can really just speak for myself, but I think that looking at the engagement and the way that people are talking back to you. Are you open to talking about Tokyo, the Tokyo experiment? I did have, I had a unique experiment. I don't want to talk too much about it, but I, I shared a lot about it.

45:26I posted online that I was going on a blind date and that I wanted to go on a blind date. And then it kind of went viral. It's one of the most viral things I've ever done as well. And so when people become very invested in you and you always seem like a very open person, is there any, um, I guess I'm trying to get into your head as a private person, who puts out very little on the internet. And it feels like you put out a lot. Yeah. Like saying you want to go on a blind date in Tokyo. Yeah. And then you open, you literally kept a diary of meeting this person and the adventures that you went on.

45:59Yeah. And so people are like, I sent you DMs like all the time. I'm like, this is better than Netflix. Right, right, right. And you're a very palpable writer. Thank you. Your copy is very tight. I've been working on that. It's emotional without wordy. And so do you find that people get very vested and connected to you? And then do you put up any boundaries? Is there any line that you feel? Is there like there's like a line that happens because you appear as an extrovert? Are you? I think I'm ambivert. Even at my own parties, I will sneak away to my bedroom and scroll on social media. It's like close the door.

46:31Okay. What can I say about that? Number one, for your listeners, the most, the best book I ever read about storytelling was this book called Storyworthy by this guy named Matthew Dix. Okay. And Matthew Dix really got me to write in real time as opposed to being like, hey, everyone, I went to a party last night and I did that. This is so good. Versus the style that he would say is to write. I know it might sound cringe if you've never heard this idea before, but you're writing as if it's live, right? You're like, I'm walking inside and my heart is racing. Right. And that was such a big shift for me to start to write in that way.

47:15And it felt very unnatural at first. Oh, that's so good. But I did like his book. His book's really good. His book is good. It's 100%. Right. It's 100 % because you brought us with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that watching your work, you've carried that voice in different instances. That's beautiful. Do you see the one I did about Lucy recently? I'm going to post it. Oh, wait, wait, wait. No, wait, wait, wait. she was a waitress. Was that the waitress one? That was Drea and that one did funny. Lucy I just talked to you. She's this woman who started a company that helps creators to monetize their audience and she's hugely successful in all this.

47:52And yet she has a very interesting dating life. And so I know that what does the internet want? They want the juicy hook. Oh, they want the juicy hook. They want the hook, right? So before I could talk about her business, I had to talk about her dating life because I was like, what's the hook? What's the hook that folks are going to care about? And so much of content creation, I spend a lot of time. So in that four floor, what do you do thing? My work is speaking about my book and helping people host, but I spend a stupid amount of time trying to become a better storyteller and telling stories online in a new way.

48:25And a lot of people do, maybe they're like you, they're like, I don't want to share online. That's a little bit weird or that's cringe. And it has been a balancing act for me to figure out the stuff. And I've made plenty of mistakes. And you have to be willing to get some negative comments that I think a lot of people are not willing to do. But you really just have to know that if you're going to have tens or hundreds of thousands of people read your stuff, you're not writing for everybody. And in fact, that'll be bad, bad content, right? I think the appropriate, you want about 70 or 80 percent of people to like it.

48:58One funny thing was when I led my museum tour company, we actually would hire these actors to test different things on the tour to make it more fun than a boring museum tour. And one of the modules that we played with was hiring actors to heckle the tour guides and then to get into a dialogue and to cause a little bit of a scene. and one of the hard things was that like 60 % of the audience would fill out surveys afterwards and they loved where we took that thing. 40 % of them were mortified and they had such a negative reaction that it like they hated the tour and they really felt bad and for a live experience you don't want that right you don't want 40 % of your audience to hate it and like want to leave when they're paying for it.

49:50But for online content, you kind of do. You never want to ask, for example, a survey question that would be, let me think of like an easy one. Should flag burning be punishable by the death penalty or something, right? Something where the majority of people are all going to agree with the answer. Actually, the perfect question that you want to ask your audience is where it's about a 50-50 split, right? And so those questions and writing that type of content that can be a little bit of polarizing, I think can be interesting. Anyhow, what your question was about was me sharing online and if I have any of those type of boundaries.

50:26I could say that with, yeah, it is a little weird because I can talk to the internet as if it's a close friend. And then it is a little bit weird. You and I have chatted before, so I don't mind these questions. But it is a little bit weird if somebody who knows nothing, And I set myself up for this. It's not their fault at all. That's right. That's right. Somebody who reads all my stuff and they'll ask me a really personal. That's right. Personal sort of question. I used to, I mean, I'm, you know, web two content forward business woman. And I shared a lot of my, I shared so much of my personal life.

51:06And then I realized on the internet, you share it and you never get it back. And people remember stuff and people who follow, they really follow. And people start connecting the dots. And I think that over the years, I've really pulled back, but I miss the deeper connections that I had with people. And so I'm really trying to find what is the balance for me. I know it looks different for everybody. So I just thought, do you have, because I feel deeply connected to you and we don't know each other. But I'm like, well, I mean, outside, okay, but let's be real. Outside of a few DMs, like what does it actually look like, right?

51:36And so where is your line? I don't think I have, you know, I want to create those connections. These are what we're talking about is the idea of a parasocial relationship. And these things have existed as long as there have been celebrities. And so this stuff is not new to have these relationships. I read a book about this about a woman who was crazy famous in the 1970s. And she shared a story where she went into an elevator. And people talked about her as if she couldn't hear them saying things like, oh, my gosh, she's way shorter in person. or like what and she was like i can hear you guys they were talking about her as if they had viewed her from like a distance or on a screen or stop so weird these things anyhow these are problems of privilege and we as creators and people who share our lives online we ask for those things and they are for us to deal with i don't have any i love folks who come up and talk to me and say that they are a fan.

52:35And yet imagine I went through some sort of trauma with, let's say that I had a dog and I lost a dog in a very hard way. And I shared about that. It would be a little bit weird if somebody that I didn't know at all came up and was like, like put their arm on me. I was like, how are you doing since you lost your dog? You know, like that's hard to just like drop into that right away with a stranger sometimes. And what I realized that exact example was my dog became very much part of like my origin story as I began my photography career. Oh my God, wait, did you lose your dog? I lost my dog. I am so sorry.

53:08No, no, no, no, no. This is, I lost him a few years ago. Okay. But since people had been following the journey, two years later, they come back and they start talking and like, oh, and when, when you lost Polo and I realized, I was just like, oh yeah, they've been a part of that. They've been a part of that. And so, um, all of the, all of that to say, all of that to say, I feel very, very fortunate. I feel very blessed that you allowed yourself to be open and coming in on the podcast. Oh, thanks. That you shared so generously of the things that you know and have learned. And I think that I don't want to overstep, but I'm like, don't make a commitment that you can't keep.

53:43But I believe that my commitment is to, for the betterment of my mastermind, to host an event before a practice party. Good, great. Yeah. Good, good, good. I think anybody listening to this can benefit from hosting some sort of gathering. and even your first one should be like a practice party okay and think about it should i vlog it neighbors you could vlog it whatever you think that puts too much pressure you can do whatever you want to do if it doesn't feel like it's well you're my therapist i know therapists aren't supposed to give advice but i always i tell my therapist okay this is not you giving advice but what would you do in this situation well i asked your team i was like what should i wear to this interview today and they said you can wear whatever you feel comfortable in yeah and so i would say the same thing about the vlog.

54:26And if you feel comfortable and if that's exciting for you, and if you want to do that, then do a vlog, have fun with it. Just let people know in advance that you're going to be doing a vlog. Oh, if you are nothing, you are consistent. Like drive home. You got to let them know. Great. Okay. So people want to know more about you. Where are they going? How do they follow the journey? And where do they find the book? The best thing that I have that I would love to give anybody is a checklist of what they can do before they host an event. And there's like 19 things, very simple things, by the way.

54:53Like, do you know this one? You need to remove your body towels from the bathroom before you invite people over. So good. Yeah, it's like little things like that. And then something else. Does this ever happen? This might happen in your house. Nobody knows where the trash cans are. I know. They're hidden away in these beautifully modern, discreet. And it's so funny because you know where it is. Of course you know where the trash can is. It's your house. You live there. But somebody who comes to your house has no clue. And they're opening a thousand different drawers. And they're looking for the trash can.

55:24just label your trash can. Boom. Done. Or put a trash can out or something. So there's a checklist. They can find it. My website is nickgray.net, and the name of my book is The Two-Hour Cocktail Party. I recorded the audiobook myself, which you can find online. And yeah, I'd love to help anybody who wants to host it. And they can get that 19-point checklist at nickgray.net. At nickgray.net or nickgraynews.com or something like that. And on social and on social, because I really want people to see your copy. Yes, please, please, please check it out. I'm on all the social medias at nickgraynews, Gray News, N-I-C-K-G-R-A-Y, News, N-E-W-S.

55:56Ladies and gentlemen, I brought Nick in because I believe firmly that he has been guiding me unknowingly to step out of my shell and to build networks and to build real relationships with people. I was so excited that Nick decided and agreed to come on the show and therapize me. I hope that what you found here is not just a story of parties. It's not just a story of what you can do for your business. And it's not a story of networking. It is really about transforming human connection. And if we could do that by way of our business, who are we not to step into it? So this is me making the commitment and also asking for a double opt-in.

56:28Can I follow up with you in the future? Maybe part two. Okay. He agreed. He's going to maybe come back on the show at some point in the future. We got the double opt-in, but then I'm going to send the invite to make sure that he knows what to expect, what to wear, and whether or not I'll be including food and drink. Thank you so much for listening to the Jasmine Starr Show. It is an honor and it is a privilege.