Charlie Houpert shares three ways to build friendships as an adult: become the organizer who brings people together, stand out as someone memorable, or say yes to new experiences. He draws from personal experience moving to new cities after graduation.
For better or worse, when you are in school, your social circle is kind of on autopilot in that your friends are going to come from the class that you're in, or at least the school that you are in. But once you graduate, it can be very hard to figure out where you're supposed to go to meet cool new people or how you're supposed to actually make them your friends. And that's why in this video, I want to give you three awesome ways to meet cool people after graduating. And this is going to be really useful if you've just graduated, or you may have graduated a long time ago, but you're moving to a new city and you have to start over. Or quite frankly, you anywhere in between. Because these are the principles for making friends in any situation. So, first one is this. Be the hub. Now, what I mean by this is to think of a bicycle wheel. It's got a bunch of spokes coming into a central hub. And the question is, in your friend group, are you more the hub? The person who is organizing events saying, let's go to my house, saying, guys, do you want to meet at this restaurant at 7 or go to this movie on Wednesday night? Or are you the person who is the spoke sitting at home waiting for the text to come in? Which sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. That is the downside of being a spoke. Yes, you don't have to take charge of organizing events, but you're only invited some of the time. And even worse, when one of the other spokes has a party or a cool event and they can't invite everybody, who is the person that they invite, it's inevitably the person that invited them. It's that hub. And this is why people who tend to organize events or have dinners where they invite a bunch of people over tend to make friends exponentially faster than than the people who are just invited. So if you want to kickstart your friend group, this is a really easy thing to do. Think of something this week that you can invite your immediate circle of friends to, or even your family. And also encourage them to bring anyone that they might like. Could be a dinner, could be movie, could be game night. The second thing I'll admit is the one that I do because I'm not an organizer. I hate planning things and I really almost never do it. So I have to rely on this one. And it's to be the beacon. And what I mean by this is to stand out in a way that makes you stand out in people's Minds as a little bit different, but then they associate you with other people like you. Concretely, when I first left my job along with Ben, we were dealing with a lot of conversations from our friends trying to please talk us out of quitting our jobs, becoming entrepreneurs and moving to Brazil with no plan. When that inevitably failed and we said, no, we're going, they said, alright, at least talk to my buddy who quit his job last year and is an entrepreneur. Or alright, you should talk to this guy who moved to Brazil last year. He can help you sort of get your bearings. And that's how we met our best friend in Brazil. And I have met countless entrepreneurs from other people who maybe didn't necessarily approve of what we were doing, but because we were so different in their mind, they kind of set up like friend dates where they put us together. And that had never happened to me in my life until I started to stand out. Now, you might not be an entrepreneur and you might be wondering, how do I do this? If that's the case, there's actually a very easy way and it's to take a hobby of yours, preferably something you really like or that is very different, and put it early in conversation. And I've seen Ben do this a ton. People say, what do you do? And you can of course say your job, but then you can say, also on the weekends, I like surfing. Now, some people won't respond to that, but some people very enthusiastically will go on. Oh my God, man, me too. I've been looking for a surf partner. Do you want to go sometime? They go surfing if they're friendly, they hang out outside of that. Or they'll say, I'm not into it, but my buddy is, you guys should meet. And the same thing happens. Quite frankly, this is how I have met. 95% of the people in my life have come into it through charisma on command since I graduated college. And I am forever thankful to this. Those of you who have emailed me, my friends, my roommates, guys who came to the first ever class that I held a guy, one of my roommates was a guy who came to the first ever class of Charisma University, which is our online course, Shameless Plug. If you want to check that out, it's in the link below. But all of these people came in because we were the beacon and I highly recommend doing this if you're curious for more, I'm also going to put a link to a video that is on finding and identifying your passion so you can put it out There, and social media, Instagram, blogging, YouTube, you. You will be surprised. And you can feel awkward and strange putting your music out there or whatever it is that you love. But inevitably, over time, people do tend to go to the one that's raising their hand and saying, this is what I like. So consider being the beacon. The third thing is going to be the easiest one and also one that can have the funniest events, which is saying yes to things that you'd never say yes to. And when I got to Costa Rica, this is exactly what I did. I. I thought salsa dancing was super lame. And I also had no friends when I got to Costa Rica, so I kind of had to do what they did. And I took a salsa dancing class. Wound up being where I met almost all of my friends in Costa Rica and the girl that I dated. Later on in life, there's a ton of things that you can do. You've got improv, comedy, you've got rock climbing, you've got theater groups. You've got all sorts of things. If you go to meetup.com and just sign up for something that you wouldn't. Before I actually did this, I went to Meetup. It was called. Well, it was called skillshare back in the day, and there was a class on life hacks, and it was held by this guy named Scott. Looked like a cool class. Wasn't something I do, but I decided to go, and I got there, and it was a cool class, and I actually really liked the guy giving it. I wanted to be his friend now at the event, he was the beacon. He was the person standing there. Everyone liked him. And after class, like eight people ran up to go talk to him, which I was like, all right, this is not me. So I had to leave. This is what happens when you say yes. Friends aren't made automatically just by showing up to Toastmasters or Improv or some meetup. But a few weeks later, I came across an interesting life hack, and I emailed him. And then I went back, and I was the hub. I said, you and me and my buddy should meet up on dinner.
