285: Cultivating Influence with Jon Levy

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Hello. Hello, my friends. Oh, my goodness. I am so excited to bring you my friend John Levy today. John, thank goodness I met this guy because he has already changed my life and it's only been a couple months. He's a behavioral scientist, New York Times bestselling author of the book you're the Art and Science of cultivating Influence. That's his second book. He is known not just for his work in building trust, human connection, belonging, but his infamous influencer dinners. He launched those over a decade ago starting in New York City. They were a secret dining experience for industry leaders ranging from Nobel laureates, Olympians, celebrities, executives, artists, musicians, and it's just incredible and awe inspiring, truly. It was written up in the New York Times. I'm going to put that link in the show notes. And I have now had the great fortune of attending not one, but two of these dinners. And both times just the childlike glee of who's at the table and the big reveals at the end and the cooperative spirit of cooking fajitas together that John no longer eats after nearly 300 dinners. John, without further ado, welcome to the show.

Oh, my God. I'm super excited to be here. I think you know that, like, if you had a official fan club, I would nominate myself to be president because I think you're the coolest and the greatest. So it really is a pleasure to be here.

I really appreciate that. Well, I met you as a tiny zoom square on an author mastermind and you had a striking resemblance to my husband.

Yeah, he looks like he could be my cousin. I had to do a double take. I'm like, me too.

Michael, is that you on set?

Is she really married to me from an alternate universe? What's going on? I know.

So Michael calls him Cousin John and John only spoke for five minutes, but he mentioned his dinners. I asked if he wanted to do a walk through Central park and he said yes, as long as you walk me to Barry's Boot Camp, because that's one of your fitness obsessions.

Oh, yeah. I like anything that when it starts, I'm like Am I going to regret this? And then at the end, I'm like, yeah, I really probably shouldn't have done that. But I just feel so relieved that it's over right now.

See that kind of audacity, I feel like that's part of your personality is that adventurous spirit. And you're one of these rare people that actually grew up in New York City. So I always find that the city itself and you having sort of artistic, bohemian parents. I know you grew up maybe split, right? New York City and Israel. Is that right?

Yeah. Summer's in Israel's school year.

How do you think growing up in New York shaped you?

The biggest benefit was that my parents let me have the experience of freedom. So it's really popular to have helicopter parents nowadays that are like, oh, my God, we're so worried that the child's gonna cross the street by themselves. And my parents were just like, yeah, you know, just go pick up some milk. And I'd be, like, 7 years old, and they'd send me through the city. And, you know, you learn to adapt, and you realize that the world isn't as scary a place as people think it is.

Now there's a whole TV show on Netflix. Those kids in Japan, like, the parents send them out to run errands.

Oh, my God, really? Is it a game show? Do they, like, earn points or something like that?

I honestly don't know. We'll have to put the link in the show notes. But the whole premise is that young kids go out and run an errand, and then you track them, like, how are they doing? But I had the same thing growing up in San Francisco. I had a key around my neck on a string around my neck. And it's just kind of wild to think about the free reign that I had in a big city.

Yeah, I think we've just been so normalized that children have to be on, like, leashes or literal leashes sometimes that everything is so scary. Now, we did survive in nature for millennia, like a city street. Isn't that dangerous?

One of the things that I admire about you. So let me give listeners some more context. We went for the walk. You know, that's just a walk and talk. Kind of get to know you. And then the next time I saw John was at the TED conference. This was a big bet.

Oh, no, no, that's not true.

When was it?

That same day. I said, hey, do you want to cancel your.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And immediately show up to a party? And then you and Michael joined me at A party. And we hung out throughout the night and kept bumping into more Lebanese people. I'm from Israel, He's Lebanese. And we had paintings of us done, and we had food and drinks, and it was like a fun time.

Oh, my gosh. How on earth could I forget? That's right. John is also famous for the text that's like, you free tonight? And I've learned that if John Levy asks that, you just say yes. I'm sure everybody says that to you, John.

It's been said for years.

Yeah. We ended up at this soho loft and kind of with pandemic times, I just hadn't been doing too much of that. I used to live right adjacent to soho and Nolita. It had been so long since I went to a cool downtown house party. Like, it really was this kind of quintessential New York experience. There was a caricature artist there, drinks, pizza, and just talking with interesting people. I totally forgot. Yes. That is where we saw you. You were regaling us with stories of your research and discoveries you were making.

One thing I'll point out is my first book was about the science of adventure. And as a general rule, very infrequently does anything super interesting happen in our own homes. If you want higher levels of creativity, if you want new relationships, if you want to explore new ideas, it's probably going to happen outside of our standard routines. And so that really comes from saying yes to things, even things you think you might not enjoy.

So do you do that? Do you say yes? Is that still your default?

I say yes to almost everything, assuming that I'm in the city at the time, or even if I'm not. I'll sometimes say yes to stuff that I don't know if it'll be any good. And I will literally get on a flight just to experience something.

I noticed you're also really good about plus one ing. So you'll either allow a plus one or you'll say you'll get invited to something. Go, is it okay if I bring my really amazing friend? That's how I got invited to the soho party. You texted your friend that night and said, is it okay if I bring somebody? And that seems also like a good way that you're able to kind of get a win, win, go somewhere interesting and also bring and connect interesting people.

Yeah. So there's this, I think, misconception that if you want to succeed, it's just about hoarding really great relationships. But the research kind of suggests a different behavior is more effective, which Is that Jenny? When we spoke, I thought you were awesome. I'm like, okay, this is somebody that I want consistently in the orbit of my life. I'm not going to necessarily be able to take a walk with you every week, but the more connected you are to the people that I know, the more positive impact you will have on them and then eventually on me. And the more you're connected to them, the more likely I am to bump into you at events or conferences or a brunch or something that somebody's hosting. So my objective isn't just to get a lot of relationships with great people. It's for them to integrate with each other as much as possible so that there's a sense of belonging and community. Because, listen, I've had probably three conversations that literally changed my entire business with you. And the more of those ideas I could get pushed into my career or my life or whatever it is, the better off I'm going to be. So it's really kind of selfish of me.

Yeah, well, that selfish altruism. Right back at you. And I'm honored to hear that. What I was starting to say about TED was that I got lucky in a way because I was nervous. I'm super introverted and get really shy in these types of situations. I do love serendipity and I can do okay when I'm by myself, but it takes me a lot to warm up. And I saw John. He was one of the first people I bumped into on day one. And he just said, you wanna walk? The TED Conference center in Vancouver is like a big donut. So you could just walk in circles to your heart's content. I basically became John's shadow on day one, AKA the Barnacle, as I refer to it. And the number of people that were just falling over themselves to wave and say hi and come over, and not just out of obligation, but genuine elation when they would see you was mind blowing. It was kind of this proof positive of everything you're talking about because I had been reading your book on the plane knowing that I had just connected with you. And it was so cool to see it actually worked because everybody was so delighted to see you. And then you knew absolutely everyone. And every time I would even in the following days walk up to you, you were talking to somebody interesting. You'd make an introduction. You were just really generous about making intros. And I saw you do it for and with other people, too. What's behind that?

First of all, thank you. So I'm pretty clear what my Superpower is in life. And that is, I'm not the guy who's got a fortune who's going to give it away like some people. I'm not a super genius who's going to cure some disease, literally. At the TED conference, there was the woman who led the creation of one of the major vaccines. I think it was the Johnson Johnson one. That's her superpower, not mine. Mine is that if I can connect two people, there's the potential of creating a new future for them as a byproduct of that relationship. Maybe it's a social cause that will be furthered or an idea that will be funded, or a friendship that will positively impact people's lives. And that's really what I'm good at. It doesn't cost me anything besides my time. And I guess also some time to think about stuff, right? Some mental effort. But I love the idea that I can start something. And this is one of the few things in life that you can start without ever having to finish. I can start something like a new relationship for people and I never have to touch it again. And their lives may be changed. Most things like, oh, I have an idea for a nonprofit. You're holding onto that one like a child for a lot of years. This is like a new future exists, new potential in the world, and I don't have to do any more work.

That's true. And then people never forget how they've met. You know, like, I've introduced two couples who went on to get married, and I was lucky to get to officiate both of their weddings.

I almost did a spit take. What? That's crazy. Why, that's pretty impressive. I've done it once and it didn't end well. So I'm very impressed that you've managed to do it twice.

Well, not intentionally, but it was such an honor that they would ask me to officiate because they were like, you're the reason that we met. And it was just such an honor to participate in that. And know, like you said, I've never thought about it in that way of kind of colliding two people and then their paths take on a whole new adventure of its own.

There are going to be human beings in this world that exist because of you, and you didn't have to do any of that work. For better or for worse.

In fact, there is already one. Yes, that's true. There's at least already one. That's so wild. Oh, my gosh. I've never thought of it that that way at all. There are babies and businesses that now exist because of those intros. Hmm. All right, I gotta ask you something. So you said the most interesting stuff happens outside of our home. You have made a habit for 11, 12 years. I don't even know how many at this point, inviting interesting people into your home and curating these dinners in such a way that foster connection, cooperation, awe. And part of the awe comes. Cause no one's allowed to talk about what they do throughout the whole evening. We go around, everybody gets a turn to guess. And that has its own brilliance because it's very egalitarian conversation. And then the moment of awe and joy is, who's in the room? Here's my question for you. When you were first starting out with these dinners and you hadn't quite honed it down to the science that you have now, how did you get those luminaries to say yes in the early days? Like, did you ladder up to. To the caliber of people that you have now? Tell me about those beginnings. At what point did you reach a tipping point where now you could probably get, like, just about anybody. You'd want to say yes to these.

So I'm going to answer two separate questions. One was, you said that I said the most interesting things happen, don't happen in your home, and that I still stand by. They happen in my life.

That's right. A hundred percent.

But it doesn't. Like, it's only because I engineer a situation for something interesting to happen. If you just come to my home on an average Tuesday, it's like me hanging out with my cat. It's not the interesting stuff. We fall into routines in our own homes. We put on Netflix. We don't explore philosophy and do an art project unless we plan it. Now, as far as the guests at the first dinner were amazing people. They just wouldn't necessarily be recognized for accomplishments at the same level as the people that I host these days. And the answer of how I got them is really just a positive feedback. So I would host people, and I didn't know what I was doing. And then months later, I'd host another dinner, and I would ask for recommendations, and sometimes I'd recommend people. And as I'd figure out how to talk about what I'm doing, I'd then see people at events and I'd say, hey, I hear that you're a really accomplished writer. You've won an Emmy for your. The shows that you work on. I run the secret dining experience. Would you be interested in participating? It's completely free. Yeah. They'd say yes. And so I'd collect email addresses. And then I keep doing it. And then I realized that I'm working way too hard. And Jenny, this is very much out of your playbook. I created a kind of standard operating procedure for how to find and select potential dinner guests. And then I hired a team of researchers spread across the planet on upwork, which is a place where you can get virtual assistants. And they literally went around and researched people in every single industry. There were very specific criteria of how to do it. And then they would put these lists together and in the early days, I would approve or not. But then I realized that I actually don't even know who's important in any industry. So we outsourced that as well. So eventually what we ended up with was a potential guest list of thousands of people. And here's what's really interesting. Most people's email addresses are super easy to get a hold of. Super easy. What's the difficult part is seeming credible enough that people would actually want to open the email.

Yeah.

We'll be right back just after this.

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You describe in the book how people at the highest echelons of influence are usually in a position where they don't need more friends on some level. Yet you're able to get people to say yes. Like, it may be sensitive for me to give away.

You can say who you were at dinner with. It's not a big deal.

Well, then is it okay if I say who was at the New York dinner?

Yeah, yeah, go for it.

We had one of the leading actors in the movie the Hangover and National Treasure. We had another actor. You could say all the names if you want to, from Monica's dad on Friends. Remind me his name. Elliot.

Yes, Elliot. Elliot Gould. Elliot Gould.

We had Carol from Tiger King. That was incredible. She flew up. We had people leading people operations at mega international companies. We had.

Yeah. With 122,000 employees.

We had the guy, a fashion designer who designs astronaut gear for Blue Origins in Virginia.

Yeah.

And then somebody who managed the bands like Guns N Roguses, Duran Duran. I mean, the list goes on. But as each person at the end of the night went around after, we guessed what they would do for fun and said, oh, and then there was me. I snuck in the side door, as I like to say, for these dinners, and somebody, a documentarian of films that she does in Afghanistan. I mean.

Yeah, she won the Academy Award for that.

Yes. What's interesting is that you curate such a balance that someone will be awed by someone else almost no matter what, no matter how high they are at their game. And high is probably not the wrong. It's like linear language. But you know what I'm saying, how accomplished they are in their field, they are still going to be surprised and delighted by someone else at the table. So how do you and your team craft that mix to engineer that level of awe in every single person there?

I'd argue that's actually the easiest part. And the easiest part is to just not have more than two people from any one industry. Because let's look at the science of happiness, for example. It turns out that, and this is so silly, you are happier about your income if you earn $105,000 and all of your friends earn 100, so you're earning 5% more than all of your friends. Then if you earn $10 million, but all of your friends earn $50 million. And so the key in my mind is if that's natural for us, for everybody, Right. That's just like the general state, then I want to put people in a position where they can't compare themselves to other people. If it's all authors, then J.K. rowling's going to beat us all, or Malcolm Gladwell, and we're not going to feel happy with ourselves. But if I have one Olympian and one Nobel laureate and one chief executive officer and one actor and one, and so on and so forth, then people can't play the comparison game because there's literally nothing to compare, aside from maybe your SAT score. And that's a maybe. And I don't know what you Know, like, who remembers that at this age, right?

See, it's also interesting, one thing I noticed that stood out to me about your dinner. I've attended Jeffersonian dinners, let's say, where there's a topic we're all discussing, like freedom. And I noticed that when I was a participant in those, I felt a little more nervous and a little more fear and maybe a little my shyness would come out. Didn't know really what to say, or was like, am I going to sound smart? Stupid questions that aren't necessary, but that would nonetheless occur. And then if the conversation is totally a free for all, you have a splintered. Half the table's talking and you can't hear the other half. What's interesting to me about your format is that literally the entire time we're sitting down at the table, we just go around and one by one, like, Carol had a wig on, and we all had to guess what she did. And people might say, fortune teller, international fashion designer. And then, lo and behold, as it gets back to her, she takes off the wig and she goes, I'm Carol Baskin, and I run a big cat sanctuary in Florida. And then we're like, what? Oh, my goodness. But that actually carries the entire evening. And I noticed there's something so egalitarian about it and also so joyful because we're just taking random guesses. Elliot was so hilarious, like telling people that they're a juggler or a pantomime. I mean, he just had a gift for improv. How did you land on that format? Because it is brilliant. And I know you've probably tested and tweaked in the early days, did you have just more organic convo at the table?

So I think that it was kind of lucky how everything landed out. To be honest, I wish I could say that. Oh, we tried a million different formats, and this is where we ended up on that specifically. But what we do is we pair people off to cook, and that allows for the introverts not to feel overwhelmed.

And you give everyone a job that's also important. That helps.

So the job part's really important. Everybody is, like, either chopping vegetables or cooking impossible meat or whatever it is. And the important thing about this is that human beings in our evolutionary history, there's no reason to think that we ever really spent a lot of time meeting strangers. We wouldn't go to networking events. What we did was we worked together in order to survive, whether that's taking care of the community's children or hunting, gathering all these are group activities for the most part. And that's what's natural for us, is to do something that requires shared effort. And it turns out that that actually causes us to care more about people or the thing that we're investing effort into. It's called the IKEA effect because people care more about their IKEA furniture when they have to assemble it. So I think that that's one advantage. The second is there's this kind of well known study by Google called Project Aristotle. And they were trying to figure out what causes teams to succeed. Is it teams that are made up of friends or team, you know, all that kind of stuff. And one of the characteristics or the overarching characteristic is psychological safety that people feel like they can express an opinion opposing that of the group and not be punished or kicked out. But as part of that, what they found is that one of the ways that teams really succeed is when there's on average a similar amount of communication time from each person in the group. And so the format actually allows for that because when you're two people, you're in a conversation. So on average it'll hopefully end up that both people speak the same amount. And then when you're in the group conversation, everybody speaks in exactly equal amount because we're just going around guessing or describing ourselves. And so it ends up kind of evening out bunch more. So I think the format's really fortunate. The other thing I'll say is, and this is going to sound so silly, like business dinners suck. Like dinners in general are terrible format. And part of the reason is that when a table is more than, let's say five, maybe six people, you can't have a unified conversation. And when it's completely unstructured, people will often dominate the conversation. And so there's also this funny thing that people call Jeffersonian dinners. There's no evidence that Jefferson actually ever did them.

Funny. It just makes us sound smarter. John.

So they're saying Jeffersonian. Yes, I'll do anything to sound smarter.

See your next book.

I've moved on to my Lincoln dinners. They're fantastic.

Amazing. You actually have spinoffs. John Levy style dinners, right? Like there's a ton of people who try to replicate what you do.

Oh really? I don't even know. Like, I've heard people kind of try, but the fact is that nobody should bother trying to replicate it because it'll just be like a cheap copy of something. People should just do their own thing and like find their own angle. There's so many different things you can do from like games, nights to hikes, to whatever that you could put your stamp on rather than like pissing off the thousands of people who've attended the dinner by trying to speaking of your.

Stamp, we're approaching 300 probably by the time this goes live. And it's important to you that you're at every dinner. So you have systematized a tremendous amount. And I would love to get into that, actually. But also the one part that you haven't delegated automated systematized is having a stand in. And so tell me what's important to you about still being present at every dinner that happens and not, for example, hosting twice the dinners, but then having a friend who's the co host.

I think the question is, what are we trying to accomplish? And for me, I'm trying to accomplish a community built on relationships. And so if I'm not actually connecting with people and there isn't at least some thread of connection between people, then it becomes just another kind of like cool event you can attend like dinner in the dark. Since I attend every dinner, then I'm actually in a much better position to say, oh, these people should talk to each other. They should connect so that the density of relationships and the strength of them become greater. The other risk is, you know how people all say, oh, I did a TED talk. And then you found out that they gave like a TEDx talk and some like small town somewhere where there wasn't enough ideas for TEDx.

It's TEDx 75th Street.

Yeah, exactly. And listen, don't get me wrong, like a ton of great talks come out of the TEDx, but frankly it diluted the TED brand because it's kind of like the Forbes 30 under 30. It used to be a thing because there were only 30 people. Now they have 30 under 30 in like agricultural, genetic, manufacturing. It just gets so spread out that like it's lost its meaning. And so I wanted to make sure that it never jumped the shark and kept its value so that when somebody got an invitation, it still felt special.

Have you honed how you craft the invitation to elicit an excited yes, yes, to some degree.

I'm sure there's plenty more to do. The bigger issue is just like corporate stamp filters.

Oh, right.

Yes, I made a terrible mistake. Back when the company formed, I was studying influence and this was 2010ish. And so I named the company Influencers before Instagram existed or before it was a thing. Right Then people who are influencers really became people who took photos of AVOCADO toast or like look fantastic in a bikini or something.

You both make avocado toast and look great in a bikini. What can we say?

Yeah. Oh, for sure. Not as good as Michael.

Well, one can only try.

Yeah. So my domain is Influence rs, so it spells influencers, but that's like Republic of Slovakia or something like that. It's like one of these domains that corporate accounts loves to block. So I think the first big issue is that we need to change the domain. The second issue is people are just overwhelmed and by tons of emails, tons of invitations. They're not sure if it's I'm the real person. So we offer for a zoom call with me and do all these things to like, try to convince them. But we use a very specific approach, which is something called an information gap. And this comes from research by George Lowenstein. Lowenstein said everybody talks about curiosity like it's a great thing, like, oh, what a curious job. But when you don't have the answer to something, it's actually like an itch you can't scratch. It's super annoying. So what we do in the invitation is we tell them just enough information so they absolutely know what's going to happen, but not give them any of the details to leave them really curious about who's going to be there, what are you going to eat? Like all these things. And as a byproduct, I think it does two things. One is it creates curiosity so people think about it more and it comes out as novel. And novelty is critical if you want to be noticed. And the second is it actually probably self eliminates a lot of people. Much like in dating, if I were single, I would not want to match with as many people as possible on a dating app. What I want to do is eliminate the people that I'm anyway not going to get along with and then match with the ones that are going to have that adventurous period that I care about.

Must love cats. Must love cats.

Must love cats. Yeah. So we set it up so that it comes out sounding as adventurous and exciting and an experience which tends to attract certain types of personalities more than others. If you are the type of person who's a complete homebody who does not want to interact with you, who does not want to be a part of a community, then you'll probably be less likely to accept an invitation like that. And that's fine.

Yeah, it's basic who does accept. And then there's this again, this egalitarian quality is just done so well. Like we all have Our shoes off. Some people are dressed to the nines because that's their personality and their style. So you can kind of guess about a person. Some of them are like, drop dead gorgeous. Oh, yeah. Because it's a famous actress and you just don't realize until later. But at the one in Vancouver, we're going around the table and it's like, yeah, maybe the quietest guy who didn't say too much, but super friendly. And when it gets to his turn, he's like, yeah, I'm the mayor of Vancouver. I was just like, what? Like, how on earth you got him to say yes?

Isn't that awesome? And then he had to leave the after portion early because there was a police emergency that he had to go, oh, my gosh. Give a. Like, be on camera to talk about or something like that.

Right? So it's just amazing that the mayor of Vancouver said yes, you know, like, wow, it's so interesting. And what I like too, what you do is that you have alumni events. So it's not just the one dinner. You actually help keep people connected and keep people in touch. Were you ever tempted to do an industry slice, like author dinners? Because I have gotten a lot out of things like that that are even. Where I met you was an author mastermind, where you're kind of sharing industry specific expertise and knowledge. Did you ever want to get into that or did you just decide, leave it to somebody else?

Once again, it comes down to what am I looking to accomplish? And at our peak, before the pandemic, I was hosting about 100 events a year. That's already just.

Did you ever get exhausted? Like, people tired or. You always enjoy it, of course. Okay, all right.

No, I enjoy it because I enjoy seeing my friends and connecting people and all that, but it doesn't make it less tiring. You might have a pet. Remind me, do you have a rider, Patterson? I mean, you love your dog. It doesn't mean that it isn't a pain in the butt when you have to. It's like 2 o' clock in the morning and your dog wants to go out or something like that. What we did was we created sub communities that are socially driven to some degree. For example, a Women of Influence event, People of Color event, LGBTQIA event, and each of them has a different format. So, like, the LGBT event is a fitness class that then we all go eat together after. And I've gotten like, Barry's Bootcamp to donate classes so that we can all work out and sweat together. Because frankly, I have tons and tons of gay friends and they love their group workouts. And I'm not trying to be stereotypical, it's just people request it, whereas the women of influence eventually is. I show up, I welcome everybody and then I leave like 15 minutes in because I shouldn't be in the room. I'm a guy and they manage their conversation. And that's the way it should be because these women are far more successful than I am. They don't need me managing anything.

I like that.

But I will provide the platform to bring them together.

Yeah.

We'll be right back just after this.

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There was another moment at TED where I was observing something you said and it just told me so much about you. There was somebody working very high up at a prominent upstart social media company, essentially, if we could call it that, or some kind of connections at scale. And you actually, in the moment that I was observing this, were declining. You didn't want to get involved. You said, I don't want fans, I want friends. And that was so interesting that you actually said it to her. You said, and she's lovely. Like I loved meeting her. But you didn't just jump just because you could. Just because somebody important was there for an important upstart app. You actually just said I don't want fans, I want friends. And you said it to her. And, and I saw that reflected that in your work and even in what you do. I don't know how much you are on social media because I'm not. So I don't see it, but it's so clear to me that you're cultivating friendships, not followerships. Can you say more about that?

Oh, for sure. So I have a limited amount of energy, and like I said earlier, I have a ton of respect for creators. I see people ranging from like Logan Paul on one extreme to like, Adam Grant on the other or. And I'm incredibly impressed with what they create. It's just that's not my thing. I'd love to post occasionally on Instagram or whatever and congratulate my friends and all that, but in general, I look at my happiness levels. For me personally, the less I engage on these platforms, the happier I am. And I have even rules about this. So, like certain platforms, I will not log in on my phone. I do not have the app installed, I will not install it, and the only way that I can access it is a handful of times throughout the year I check in an Incognito browser so that they're not tracking, like, all of it. Not because I'm super paranoid. I just don't want it easily accessible and a byproduct. I just tend to be happier around it. I just check, like, the platforms in case somebody messaged me that they need something or whatever it is because they don't know how to get ahold of me. I do enjoy posting on Instagram every so often just to get people, like, an update on my life or before the pandemic, we would host a couple of events every year for just the open public. Ish. Like, not completely, but it'd be things like, it's Thanksgiving. If you don't have a place to come, join us and people will message me and come and join.

Do we have to eat fajitas on Thanksgiving as well on friendsgiving?

No, it's tough.

Oh, okay. Phew.

No, I'm kidding. Listen, I'm a vegetarian. We still do the whole turkey thing and all that. We often have about 80 people over musical performances.

Wow, that's incredible.

But I think the question is, why would you be on social media? The question isn't like, why aren't you on it? Why on earth would I want this?

I love how all of your logic, how you answer every question, comes back to a core principle. Like, you're so clear on your principles, your mission, your gifts, and you almost don't answer a question without referencing one of these. It's so interesting.

Thank you. This is just to say we know it makes us less happy. There was a great study done independently, funded by Imgur which you can say might be heavy handed or not. And what they found was that social media falls into two categories. Those things that entertain you, which generally cause people to be happier after, and those things that cause you to compare, which make you less happy. So that would be like the Twitters and the Facebooks and the Instagrams. And the things that make you happier are the things more along the lines of like you see a funny YouTube video of a dog doing something or like a Reddit or an Imgur or like a meme account. If all I did was follow meme accounts on Instagram, then sure, like, then it's a happiness source.

I never opened the app, but I would follow like little piglets and puppies.

Oh my gosh, that sounds adorable.

The best.

If I have one guilty pleasure on social media, it's Reddit. I love Reddit and what I do on it is I have things that I follow, like awe, which is like a few things. And I spend a lot of time forwarding it to my wife because it makes her super happy. And then there's this thing called movie details, which are like the things you don't notice in the backgrounds of movies because I'm like a sci fi geek.

Animals being bros, where they're like helping each other. Oh my gosh.

Or kids are effing stupid. Just to remind me, you know, like we're thinking of having kids and like, just to remind me what to expect.

So funny.

It's like a child running around holding his cup, screaming that he can't find his cup.

Reddit. I love Reddit because it's not about comparison to other people. It's really about ideas and humor. And the whole meme culture of Reddit is so interesting.

And I still will say you have to be careful because it's full of news that's like, will just really upset you. So be warned, because the algorithm still. I know we're human. We have a loss aversion. Yeah, it's what'll cause us to engage.

Okay, speaking of kind of a love hate software and tool relationship, probably one of the number one questions that I get are people who ask me, do you use a CRM? If so, which one? And I really enjoyed our walk and talk because you were telling me about how you filled out your CRM. So Customer relationship manager. Just the phrase alone annoys me. So I did create one in notion that I call Kit yearbook style, like who I want to keep in touch with.

Very cute. Yeah. Have a neat summer, Jenny.

Have a neat summer.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I forgot all those little phrases. You have a database and you seem to be using it well. And I'm just wondering if you can tell us a little bit about this. For people who are CRM, curious or reluctant, who could. Yes, who could use one? How are you using yours? It seems that you have crafted it to work with you and for you and not just be this cumbersome beast to robotatize all your relationships.

This goes back to that previous concept of what is it that you're hoping to accomplish from it. And for me, I didn't want to robotize my communication. In fact, in my communications, sure, certain things are templated even in my personal inbox, like quick links for my calendar, availability, things like that, but I actually will often avoid using that just so that all of my communication doesn't sound copied and pasted. And that so people don't see multiple emails from me over the course of months and go, didn't he say the exact same sentences? I know it's more work, but I do that's worth it in a lot of cases. So this is how the system works. We built on Salesforce. I think it's a great platform and we have a research team that actually uses Google Docs to research all of the potential people for dinners. The tabs are separated based on industries. And I don't even know how it works these days because I don't get involved. I have a head of communications who I hire that just manages this for me. They are highly educated, they are smart, they are good and they manage all of the virtual assistants. I don't even need to talk to them, although occasionally I'll just send them like holiday messages and stuff like that because it's important for people to feel appreciated. They will do the research. They'll find lists of like the, you know, people who won the Nobel Prize that year or the Academy Award or whatever it is, and they'll fill it out and then we'll get people to review them, give us the thumbs up or thumbs down, and then they go into our system. Once they're in our system, they're categorized by industry, source and gender. They identify by all that kind of stuff. And last but not least, the city. And then when we open a dinner, the algorithm randomly selects X number of people from that city. It's usually about 220, I think is what it used to take to fill a dinner, I don't know exactly what it is now, and sends out the invitations. It's all like form fee, like, fills out their name and all that.

Is that the case? You message 220 to get, say, 15.

RSVPs to get 13 or so, because at more than half of the dinners, it's plus me plus since I'm not doing them at my wedding.

But that's a lot of outreach. That's a lot of invitations to throw out to get that many who can are available that day and time.

Not only that, but if they don't respond to three consecutive dinners, we just take them out. Because we will not harass people for years. If they respond, they're in communication. That's their choice. And there's an option, there's a button that says, hey, this isn't for me. Please don't contact me anymore. And we 100% respect that. The system is built to block that account from ever getting. And we do consistent reviews to make sure that there's no duplicates of people. So we haven't inputted somebody who's already in there. And then suddenly they're getting invites even though they want them, all that kind of stuff. So once somebody selects a date, our team confirms them to make sure that there's the diversity and everything for the dinner. And then they get an email asking them to confirm that they have the details. So it's not just them receiving it. It's a confirmation of receipt. And at that point, we're confident that they'll attend. And so once somebody attends, they can be invited to future events. And we also tag people based on, oh, this person is a journalist, this person's a chro. That way when we want to introduce people, we go, oh, you should speak to this person. And we type in Academy Award winner. And all the Academy Award winners load. And we can. Or philanthropists. And then we can access them. So that's kind of the basics of it.

Awesome. Okay, last question for now because we might have to do a part two. If you could give listeners one piece of homework, I don't even like to call it that anymore, but if you could encourage them to get out of their comfort zone and do one thing around all this, what would it be?

Right now, we're dealing with a loneliness epidemic. In 1985, the average American had about three friends besides family. Now we're down to about two. And human connection and trust and belonging are really the great predictors of the things that we care about, from human longevity to company stock value, profitability, team success, like anything we actually care about. Which means that if I could encourage you to do anything. It's to reach out to people and invite them for a walk. Like, if you're not an extrovert, great. One person, one walk. Like, these things have a profound impact on your life. And if somebody invites you to something, say yes, because the magic is going to happen outside of your home.

I love that. Essentially the 2am principle is about saying yes and then you're invited is about sending the invitation like two sides of a coin. Your book really inspired me. I know, it's so funny. Like I can't quite call it creepy. I have the podcast as my excuse, but I get to kind of read your book and the research while getting to know you. And your book really inspired me. It opened a loop in my mind of what can I invite people to and how can I make it my own. I used to do picnics in the park for entrepreneurs in Central park or whenever the weather was nice and I just stopped doing it and so what do you have? Well, he's showing a tattoo right now.

Oh no, no. I was showing a tattoo that's a clock because I gotta go.

Me too. Oh my gosh. I know. Well, we'll have to continue. Thank you so much, John. What a joy.

Jenny, always, always a pleasure.

Everybody. Be sure to check out, you're invited. The art and science of cultivating Influe.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Jenny Blake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always?

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