Nick Gray, founder of Museum Hack - Profiting from awesome in-person events - The Michael Girdley Show episode 51

Hey, Michael here. Welcome to another episode of the Michael Girdley Show. Today I had my buddy Nick Gray come in and be on the show. Big time for Nick. He just published a book and we'll talk a lot about it during the episode. He's my first guest actually to show up with a name tag on, which was the coolest thing ever, and really enjoy digging into a lot of the stuff he does in life that's super duper smart and things that I learned a lot from and want to emulate. So Hope you enjoy this time with Nick. We also did it face to face, which was the first episode I recorded with somebody in the same room. So it was a lot of fun. We did different camera angles and had a really good time at my office. So here is the episode. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Hey, Michael here. Sponsor for today's show is actually a product that I'm a part of called DMBridge. And what DMBridge is, is a service that we built to solve the problem that Twitter's direct messaging functionality is a total mess. So we built DMBridge to help you fix that. A lot of the other solutions do things like requiring you to install a whole nother inbox. We didn't want another inbox, so we created DMBridge, and what it does is it takes all of your Twitter DMs and has them appear inside of your email inbox. So you can reply to them just like it's a regular email. You see them just like it's a regular email. You can search them later like it's one of your regular emails, all just by using DMBridge. So we're currently live with the product. Would love for you to sign up and become a customer and check it out. So you can find that at dmbridge.app and go on there, put in your name, and be either part of the beta or join us as part of the live use of the product. And again, check it out, dmbridge.app. Well, Nick, thanks for being here, man.

Thanks, this is really cool. So we, I drove down, I live in Austin, Texas, and I drove here to San Antonio saying, let's try to do this in person and we'll see how it goes.

We're excited. It's turned into us getting to hang out in person, which, like, by the way, I'm super honored you made the time to come down here and insisted on it.

Yeah.

And then second of all, it's just great to spend some time with you. I can see, um, well, why you wrote a book about how to throw great parties. So, so, uh, anyway, tell us, tell, tell me about the book and tell me about who you are and all that kind of stuff, because I know I know you, but my listeners don't necessarily.

Sure. So my name is Nick. I was most, like, famous on the internet, which is so funny that you get famous for things that don't necessarily make a lot of money, but then what I did that made a lot of money, like, nobody really minded about or cared about. But I was most famous for this thing called Museum Hack, which did renegade museum tours. And that means non-traditional tours at some of the biggest, best museums in America. Non-traditional meaning I would hire stand-up comedians, Broadway actors to be the tour guides. They'd work for me, not for the museum. And then we made all our money by doing, like, corporate team building experiences using the museum and that staff. So that was really cool. And I worked on that for about the last 10 years or so in New York. I sold it in 2019.

Okay. And so did, when you did that, to make sure I understand it, did you have to get permission from the museum to do that kind of stuff?

Or originally? No. You know, it's better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. So I did it very illegally and very cat and mouse during the early days. And it was just something I did really as a hobby. I never thought it'd be a business, but I became the best tour guide. It was written about as the best thing to do in New York. And literally overnight, 1,300 people sent me an email saying they want to join one of these tours. That was their first blog article. And then it blew up and I was like, "All right, I guess I have to make a business or something out of this." And so that's how it— Yeah, I think some of the best things in life, the best businesses come out of not really wanting to make money.

No, I dig that. Well, I know the economics of writing a book, so I'm there. But anyway, why did you sell that business? Why did you get out of it?

I sold that business, frankly. Yeah, just being very real, I couldn't grow it any bigger. I really tried to hire a CEO and a sales director the last couple of years, and I just wasn't able to break $3 million in sales. It felt like it was a little stagnant. I just wasn't able to do it. And I had a leadership team at the time who basically came to me with an offer saying, hey, would you ever sell us the business? And I'd never thought about that. And I never thought I would sell the business. It was my baby. But they put a deal together that worked out very well for everybody involved.

Yeah. How did you feel when they came to you and wanted to buy the business? Were you like—

It was definitely a shock. And it was also one of those moments, you know, you're like, oh crap, if this doesn't go well, like, I'm going to lose them. And so that was really interesting. It, it was definitely a shock. It was a shock. And it was a lot for me to think about.

Yeah. Was a part of you like almost a little insulted? You're like, oh, they think they could do better? Or—

I think a little bit, of course, because it's like my thing. Yeah. But it made sense. It's— I have nothing but nice things to say about them.

Yeah. So how's the business doing now?

The business now, they— well, through COVID was rough. They went to zero literally overnight. Think about it. Live museum tours, all the museums shut down. They pivoted to online team-building experiences and have taken the business. It's bigger than it ever was. They're doing amazing.

That's great. Yeah, super cool. Okay, so you did that and then you sold a second business also, right?

Yes, I was involved with a family business that did in-flight electronic equipment for small planes and military aircraft. So if you've been in like a Learjet or like a Hawker or a a small jet and you've seen the map of where the plane is flying across the country. My dad made something like that out of the basement of our house and really was this mad scientist type saying, okay, I think I can take this software and this Windows Embedded computer. And I joined after college just thinking I'd help for a couple of weeks because he was very small, him and my mom. Yeah. And I helped them hire their first employee. I did their marketing. I started to build a hiring process. And then we grew that to about 70 or 80 employees and sold it to a PE firm, 2014, I think.

Holy cow.

Yeah, it was cool. Yeah.

So really you've been involved in two significant exits, but everybody wants to talk about renting out water parks for your birthday.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

It's so funny because when I was doing the planes and the in-flight entertainment equipment, you know, you go to parties and it's like, oh, what do you do for work? It's like, oh, I work with aircraft electronic equipment. And then I did the museum tour company. Oh my God, museums. Oh my gosh, everybody wants to talk about it. They love museums. My whole shtick was I hated museums and I started my business because I hated museums and everybody wanted to talk about the museum. But I was like barely breaking even during the first years of the museum thing. But still, it's not— I get it.

It's interesting. I'm going through the same thing and I'm involved in 10 different businesses and there's an inverse correlation between what people want to talk about and what is actually meaningful, like contributing to my net worth. Like, they want to talk about me like going to Chili's for lunch and like, you know, being involved in coffee, which is early compared to other stuff. But like, as I look at them, like, you know, hey, there's these other things over here that are much more lucrative and take much more time for me. But everybody wants to talk about the thing that, you know, that they can relate to, which is drive-through sugary coffee drinks. So I don't know how to explain it.

It changes. I think a lot of the people that we hang out with, they realize and recognize like HVAC businesses and things. Let's do roll-ups. And there is like an early adopter crowd that is those boring businesses, vending machines, right? I'm sure we both know somebody who's hyped on those. And so that is changing. But for the general people, right, you meet out at a party or in the neighborhood, it is sort of conversational accessibility for them for the sexy stuff.

Yeah, they feel like they can understand it. Interesting. So, so switching gears a little bit, You come across to me as one of those magical people for whom interpersonal relationships is just super easy and it energizes you. Is that an accurate description?

I'd say that it is now. And as you do museum tours, because think about it, I went through, I've led hundreds, if not thousands, of museum tours. I have to create a connection and make somebody feel comfortable very quickly and very fast inside a very intimidating space. And so, through my time hosting parties, I've also hosted hundreds of parties, there can be something very similar to, um, have you ever met someone who's lived in a lot of foster homes? I went on a date with this woman and she said very quickly she can size somebody up, whether she can trust them or whether she cannot, because through foster homes she had to go through many different homes and many different schools, and you become very fast at making friends and meeting people.

Huh. So that you think it's all learned skill for it? Do you— I mean, do you feel energized by it, or Do you?

Good question. I do think it's a learned skill. That's why I wrote this book, because I think that hosting events is a skill that anybody— it's a superpower to facilitate and, and run a small group event is a turbo skill that pretty much anybody can learn how to do. I think that— do I become energized by it? I love to lead a, a small group in something. I was out to dinner with my friend Noah Kagan and another group of friends, and it was like an unstructured dinner. There were 6 of us, and I was like, well, what are the conversation topics? And they were like, no, we're just gonna do it. And eventually I got bored, and so I blew my harmonica, which I always have, and I said, all right, let's do a round of icebreakers. And Noah rolled his eyes and he goes, oh, Nick wants attention again. And to be fair, I did want attention, but also there was a good icebreaker and it worked very well and it helped us learn more about each other. I think I just asked because we had gone to a, uh, Barry's Bootcamp class together, and I asked, I said, well, since that's sports related, I'm curious, for each of you, what was your relationship with sports in high school? And we learned some things because there was somebody there who had a new girlfriend and she was new to the group, and we all learned about each other, uh, and things that we did in high school, which, by the way, I played tennis, I was the worst on the team, absolute worst. But because I was the worst, I could just screw around on the court and have fun. I didn't have to worry about is somebody gonna steal my spot or something. So I think I had the most fun of anybody.

That's amazing. Yeah, I was the worst, the worst walk-on on a collegiate Div 1 swimming team in college. And, you know, as I look back on it, it was one of the most transformative things for me. Oh man, it was like, well, I think there's this idea in life that achieving great things, you got to have something a little screwed up. And if you don't have something a little screwed up, you're probably lacking in motivation. And I'll be, I'm still working through some stuff, some high school trauma. Let's get it out there. And I'm totally comfortable with it because I'm like, well, that's just a little screwed up and I'll just channel it into positivity. But as I think about it, that was such a gift. And I look at the other kids who were able to go through that college experience and maybe had more talent or better prep or had been swimming longer than me or were luckier. You know, that was just a different, you know, a different experience for them. And one where I came out, I think, stronger in the long run by being terrible.

Do you think that— okay, this is a tangent, but I think you'll see where I'm going.

Yeah.

Do you think that entrepreneurship can be taught in colleges?

Uh, yes, but I think we're doing it totally wrong.

Okay, can you say more about that?

So I think that most people who, you know, the things that get taught really well in university are things that are very formulaic, right? And I think the problem is, is everybody wants to teach entrepreneurship like it's Bach, right? Like, here's the metronome and stick to that and follow these steps. And like, the one, one of the things that I saw that most drove me the absolute craziest was like this MIT 42-step path to like building a business. I was like, okay, you do this and then you write this and then you write. And it's like, it doesn't work like that at all, right? And it's the same as I think that entrepreneurship as a flavor of business is much more akin to jazz rather than Bach, right? Where you're, you're trying stuff, you're seeing what the other people in the band are doing, you're putting stuff out there and seeing how the audience reacts. And all of that starts to become a flow for you that by understanding how the Bach works, you can then graduate to like what is jazz. And I think entrepreneurship should be done that way. So anyway, so that's the overarching kind of philosophy of it. And I think what that means is that how we teach, we try to teach entrepreneurship like we teach chemistry. It's like, okay, we put these two, you know, atomic things together and you get this reaction. And it doesn't work that way. So if I was to run entrepreneurship programs, I would do it much more practical and also much more freeform where you're providing the kids with a safe space to think through principles, but then develop the tactics and ways to go about it on their own. So like, if I was going to do an entrepreneurship class, this is the way I would run it. Michael Girdley shows up the first day and says, here's some books you guys should consider reading. These, uh, here's how this class works. The first 9 weeks, you're going to build a business. I will invest in your business, but I want 3 times my money back in the 9 weeks. You figure out what you want to do, if you want to take my money or not, and I'll be right here. I'll answer any questions you have. And then, after that, whoever ends up with the most money at the end of the 9 weeks, you get an A. Second most, A-. And we'll work our way down. Last place, you get a D. We'll go from there. And that's the whole class. But I think what that is is it represents more what the world really looks like for these kids. And I would teach it that way as opposed to— Here's the formula from MIT that you can follow.

I like that idea that there's real consequences if they're not successful with their business. Yeah, because how many college class— I don't think there's a lot of D's given out in entrepreneurship classes, but there's a lot of businesses that fail. Right. And so that would be really fascinating to say that. I like that idea.

I used to get invited to come teach or come speak, like guest speak to entrepreneurship classes. They don't invite me anymore.

They stopped inviting you? Yeah.

It's like, ah, this guy kind of tells them the things we don't want them to hear, right? Says the quiet part out loud, right?

It's true. It's true.

Yeah.

I think about that in with many college students and entrepreneurship, there are very little real failure that can happen from an entrepreneurship class. And I go back and forth on whether that can be taught, that hunger, that innate drive. And I was curious if you ever, when you think about investing in companies, do you look to see what they did in high school or college to say, do you think someone can be an entrepreneur in their 30s if they've never done entrepreneurship, if they've never run a small business, if they weren't in high school starting a lawn care company, scrapping? Is that something that can come later in life? I don't know the answer.

Yeah, so the data points I have are yes, I think they can do it later. Um, but what you'll see with those people who can do it is a track record of all the way from earlier age, teens, 20s, 30s, they will have done stuff that you're like, oh, okay, like this is a parallel kind of risk-taking behavior. You know, there is a big segment of the population that is out there that will run around and tell you they want to be entrepreneurs, but they are— they believe it, but they're lying through their teeth. Like it's kind of that behavioral economics stuff of consumers.

Wantrepreneurs, we call them.

Yeah, definitely that. Well, then there's the other bucket that really does want to be an entrepreneur and has the mental mindset to get past all the risk, but they're just incompetent. So they never get anything done. That's— I put those in the entrepreneur bucket too. But like, you know, I'm business partners with a person for whom, you know, this is his second entrepreneurial venture, starting a company in his 50s. And he's totally, totally there. Now, I was very interested when I got to know him to understand what his past was a bit besides just corporate America. And I found out he had run a restaurant in his 30s.

Okay.

Like, right, you started a restaurant. It was a terrible experience. Like, that is— that was a great data point for me that, okay, this person kind of has the right mindset to be entrepreneurial.

That's cool.

Yeah. So anyway, I think— I think there are people that can. I think there's a lot of people that lie to you, though, about whether they can do it.

Yeah, of course they have no clue, right? Of course they think they can do it, right? There's a lot of people that I talk to and maybe are the same, and I immediately know this is a terrible idea. This is bad. You are not going to do well with this, but unfortunately you need to learn that. Yeah, but oh my gosh, yeah, it's hard. It is.

I think— I do think we're in a better space now. Like, a decade ago, everybody and their mom wanted to be a technology entrepreneur. Like, it was the cool thing to do. That's what all the MBAs were doing coming out of college. And I think that we've gotten into a better place now where the pendulum has swung the other way, and I'm seeing fewer people do entrepreneurship for the wrong reasons.

That's good. Yeah, that's good. It certainly helps with the economy and stability, right? And there's a little less of the hustle mindset and things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So anyway, so, um, look, I've written 4 books and I can tell you I know how hard it is to like write a book and stuff. So like, tell— and I've been hit up recently to write a book and I'm like, uh, do you know how much work that is? So I can appreciate— first of all, thank you for writing a book because I know how much work it is. But like, tell me your story, like deciding to do it, like your analysis of it, and how it ended up happening.

Similar to my last business museum hack where I never wanted it to be a business, the same thing with this. I never wanted it to be a book. I had just created a Google Doc for friends who had come to these events that I was hosting, and they said, "Hey, that was awesome. I want to do this myself. How can I do it?" Or like, "What's the gist of it?" And so, the first person, this guy Tyler, had come to a lot of my events in New York. He moved to Little Rock. He knew nobody there but his wife's family. And he said, "I think I want to take your formula to build a network and to meet people and to have friends." He didn't even have a friend he could call on a Friday night to go out for a beer. And so, I helped him set up a format and a formula to start to host these events. And it's not something that happens overnight, but through a series of months and events, he built a big waiting list of people wanting to come to his events. He eventually found a really great job through people that had attended his events. And so, through that success story and other people, I started to train and I worked with a couple dozen people to teach them how to host events. And then, I was like, "All right. I want to make this into a book." Okay. Yeah.

And so then, the economics are—

The economics are I spent about $40,000 producing it. So, I hired a firm to help me write it. And originally, they wrote it, but I just didn't really like what they wrote. It felt about 70% there. And there are—

Scribe or somebody else?

I am going to be hesitant and careful about using the names of the services, but I would say that Scribe is a great business for somebody who wants to get a book out there and wants to move on with their life and not become obsessed with the book. All right, Scribe is a great business for that. It is a roughly $30,000-$35,000 fee, and they will help you make a book. Yeah, right. My book is maybe not the right type of book for Scribe because my book is incredibly instructive and practical and there's checklists and it's just not a narrative style book. Yeah, right. My book is really weird. It's a workbook more than it is like a narrative book. Right. And so I did that at first and I spent a lot of money on that. And then I spent the next 3 years rewriting it and really going over every single word, rewriting everything about it. And hiring a lot of editors and proofreaders and designers and things like that.

Yeah.

So my process and what I've said is because I'm a perfectionist, I've been on the internet for 25 years. I wouldn't wish a book on my worst enemy, right? Because if you're used to publishing online on tweets, on blog posts that you can edit, on tweets that you can just spit out and see immediate reaction, a book is terrible for that, right?

Super interesting. So yeah, so that's been kind of my feeling with like the book in a box kind of stuff like that. It's great if you want to churn out something and yeah, like, but for me, like I have such a, like if I want to put something out, like, like here's a, here's an example. I'm going to create a group with other like thread writers on Twitter. And, uh, like we were like texting and I was like, okay, well here's the first draft of one that I'm working on. And they're like, cool, you're going to publish it tomorrow.

I was like, ah.

I gotta revise this like 5 more times for it to be okay, like for it to be there. And maybe that's the Gen X in me, but like, that was kind of— that's always kind of my struggle with like book writing at this point, is I'm like, oh, I realize how much work it is to do it to that level of excellence, and it scares the crap out of me that I'm like gonna look up and get paid like $10 an hour to do like all this crazy amount of work.

Completely wild.

Well, in your case, negative $40 an hour, right?

Negative, right? Have you read this book called Write Useful Books. Uh-uh. Fantastic recommendation. And I now, it's my number one book recommendation. I'm like living up to the thing where you recommend books. An incredible book that I wish I would've read much earlier in the process. And it's good. It is a good book for anyone thinking about writing a nonfiction.

Yeah. So what's kind of the, what were the big takeaways for you?

Some of the takeaways are to get your workout a lot sooner.

Yeah.

Do not wait. Don't write in silence, right? It's a lot of the stuff we're seeing online today. Start sharing your ideas out there much sooner and get feedback from people, right? And share it and don't wait. Don't build and write in a bubble. Your book should not exist in a bubble and then pop, your book is out there. Your book should be an evolving process that you're sharing with people, you're getting feedback. That was one of my huge, huge takeaways.

Yeah, no, I love that. So why do it in a book format rather than a course or something similar to that?

I think that a course maybe would be great and maybe I should have done a course. It felt a little scammy to me to try to put a course out before the book. And I felt that a course, in my mind, stuff associated with a course is very profit and money focused. A course has a higher price tag. Many courses are not completed. A course is not exactly accessible to people. And frankly, I don't use courses. And maybe if somebody wrote this book as somebody who did buy courses and use them, then it'd be great. And maybe this book really should exist and I'll do a course later. But for now, I think this was the first step for me.

Yeah, yeah. No, I totally dig it. Well, I've gone through like this 360 probably twice of like courses and how I think about them and how I feel about them. So I am now a consumer of a course.

Okay.

So I signed up for Sean from My First Million writing course. And I didn't even ask for a discount, so I'm proud of myself. I paid full price.

Real friends pay full price.

Real friends pay full price. So I'm excited to do that and kind of learn his power writing course. So I think he's super smart and excited to learn from that. But like, yeah, I've gone from like courses suck to like, oh, well, cool if people want to do courses. Now I'm like, well, you know, like Might as well.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I have a lot of friends who've made a lot of money off courses. And I hear more about people that have made a lot of money off courses than people whose lives have been changed on the receiving end of courses. And so, certainly, there are a lot of people out there. I don't want to speak negatively. If you're listening to this podcast in the year 2023 and I am shilling a course hard, then please note that my opinion has changed. And so, So I want to leave the room open. I think content, like I am, one thing I can share is that I have had a lot of people reach out about this book saying, when is the audiobook going to be available? When, when can I have the audiobook? And for me, in hindsight, the one piece of advice I could give to anybody listening and wanting to do a book is I wish I would have strategized or had a longer runway so that the audiobook could have been released at the same time as the normal book. And the audiobook, they would not— and maybe you know this if you've done an audiobook— they wouldn't let me go into the studio until all the layout was completely finished and locked. Why is that? Because if one section of the book gets moved because it doesn't fit in the layout, then when I read the audiobook, it's not going to match up and track. And so they had to lock it. And so once my book was locked, for me, it's been a 5-year process. I'm like, I'm ready to launch this. This thing is locked and it's done. I am not waiting any longer. And so they said, well, you could wait 3 or 4 months for us to record and finish the audiobook, and then everything could come out at once. I said, nope, I'm just doing it. And so we'll see how it goes in hindsight, whether that was smart or not. Yeah.

Yeah. And so this— I mean, you and I are talking about the pre-show, just to be clear. This is a book for regular people who want to expand and grow themselves professionally and personally through using parties as a tool and small gatherings. It's not for here's how you jump out of a balloon with Richard Branson. Yes. Yes.

Yes. This is a book for somebody who doesn't even think they need this book. This is a book for somebody that maybe first heard this like, oh, hosting parties. Like, why is he having him as a guest? This is not relevant to me. I thought this was a business podcast. Why do I even need this? This is a perfect book for somebody like that. Yeah, yeah. The thing that I'm trying to share with people is that by hosting these events for what some people call weak ties or loose connections, you can grow and build your network in an authentic way that will help you get more deals, land more customers, hire better employees, and even make new friends and boost your career. So, that is the goal of my book. Yeah, yeah.

No, I love it. And for anybody who's like, why is Michael excited about this? It's because I've sense that I need to be doing more of this, especially here in this space. We're here in our coworking space, the Rainwater, uh, in San Antonio. And I've been wanting to like pull the trigger and start to do small gatherings here and like invite cool people and ask them to bring cool people. And I feel like that's all part of the, you know, the, the, the unknown, unknown that I think is out there, but you're going to codify it into a way that's like, okay, here, follow these steps. And I love steps. Yes.

Oh my God. There's a lot of steps. So I'm curious. I'm going to kind of put you on the spot. What has held you back from hosting something like that here so far?

Uh, so COVID has been a problem for sure. Um, you know, I've had some life stuff going on because of COVID as well. This spring was just pretty tough. That, yeah, time, time was tough. I, I got COVID, my wife got COVID, my son's been sick. So that's all together kind of just been struggles.

Yeah.

Um, and then there was a part of me that was also like, okay, there's this annoying part of putting together the events that I don't really want to do, and I'm supposed to— I promised my business coach like 6 months in I'm going to hire a virtual assistant. By the way, you have some, so congratulations.

Oh my gosh, we should talk about this. If you're hiring for one, wait, wait, we got to talk about this because I am so in this world.

Okay. All right. Well, yeah, yeah. Well, I figured out how to do it. I actually delegated to one of my associates that I hired her and now she's working on the project for me. But anyway, I'd love to hear your advice on it. So, okay, so back to the, back to the party planning stuff. So you said people get stuck like on the being scared that they're not ready or it's not perfect. In my case, they ask, what do I do if I'm really lazy?

Yes, if you're very lazy. So my book is interesting in that it is a step-by-step guidebook or it's a workbook that will teach somebody. And it starts with a challenge to accept the challenge to choose a date 3 weeks from now. That's a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night. So that's what my book is about, choosing to host an event on one of those nights because they're not socially competitive nights. Because what would you guess is the number one fear for a new host.

Nobody shows up.

Exactly right. Or worse, that only 2 or 3 people show up, and that's terribly awkward, right? And so, really, the bulk of all my planning is to guarantee that over 90% of all the people who say that they're going to come will show up. And so, I do that through a series of one-to-one invitations, collecting RSVPs with social proof. So, I always have the list of the guests visible. I send a series of 3 reminder messages. And so, it really is the planning and the messaging that all the work is front-loaded. So, at the event, you just show up, everybody comes, and I tell you exactly what to do minute by minute during your event so it's a success.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So, it's pretty neat. And the good news for you is going to be that you can delegate a lot of it once you do your first one.

That sounds amazing because I also have this problem where I'm going to have a VA and I need to make sure the VA stays busy.

Yeah.

So, this seems very perfect.

That seems fantastic. I can't wait to talk about the VA stuff later.

So yeah, so let's get to that. But first, I want to ask you, you're wearing a name tag right now, which is amazing because I love name tags as somebody who can remember faces and not names.

Yeah.

Um, you know, and not to be insulting to you, but for our guests, like whenever I do this podcast, I have to make sure their name's on the screen because half the time I'll be like, oh, this person's amazing. What was their name again? So, so you're wearing a name tag today, just like you're out and about.

I've never worn it out and about, but maybe I will start to as kind of book promo. I'm wearing the name tag because a lot of my book speaks about, and I have in Chapter 5 of the book, the importance of name tags. I went to an insanely expensive executive seminar that I'm sure you have heard of this group who runs it. There were about 16 of us, high-powered CEOs. That's when I was running my business. Some very famous individuals were there. But the reality is that 16 people, nobody can remember 16 names. Very few people would be able to know 16 people's names within the first day or two. And they didn't have name tags. And I asked them, and so there's 16 of us plus their staff of about 5 people. I said, "Why did you choose not to do name tags?" "Well, we want it to be more casual. We want it to be personal. We don't want it to feel corporate." And the reality is that that doesn't work like that. While you as the business owner may know every one of your clients, everybody else has no clue. So, I think that for name tags, my events, by the way, are meant for 15 to 20 people. That's the sweet spot, which I can talk about. The more people that you have to an extent, the less work it is for you as the host. You've maybe experienced this if you've hosted an event with 6 or 7 people, you have to be on, you have to babysit, you have to merge conversations, you are the host the entire time. For a gathering of 15 to 20 people, there's enough collisions happening, there's enough new conversations over 2 hours that you have to do a lot less babysitting. Name tags, I feel, are important because also for my events, I'm picking people that are maybe shy or introverted that have a lot to add, but they just don't feel as comfortable in a social space, especially after COVID. People are a little awkward. They need to dust off the COVID cobwebs, and name tags make it a more self, you know, welcoming space. Yeah.

Is there— I assume there's a whole science to name tags in terms of—

Yeah, so what is only big block letters? You need to do all of them. Do not let people write their own name tags. Why? They will— some of them will, will play jokes with it. They'll write down the name Batman, right? They will not be serious about it.

This doesn't happen in San Antonio.

You, you might think it not happen, but when you tell somebody you have to have name tags and they write it down, they just kind of joke or fool. Uh, some people won't do it, and you need to have everybody doing it. And so when you as the host are in charge, it gives you a touch point to all of your guests to welcome them, to get them a name tag, to make them feel included. But then also think about the visual, what it looks like when everyone is wearing name tags. Think about sports. In sports, you all wear a jersey. The name tag serves as the visual representation at your gathering that this is a safe space to go up and meet somebody new. We're all on the same team. Everybody, whatever level you are here at this gathering, if you're the most successful entrepreneur or the least, you all have a name tag. It's a leveling function of sorts.

Yeah, I totally like it. And then in terms of the actual physical name tag itself, are you a believer like the, the basic like sticky ones are the way to go?

Like sticky ones are very good when you buy high quality ones. They will not stick to fancy expensive clothing. I think it needs to be worn on the dominant hand, top of the chest. Why is that? As we reach over to shake somebody's hand, that is what moves forward closer and makes it easy to see. I think that in my book, I talk about good and bad places for name tags. A woman came to one of my parties and she insisted on wearing her name tag down on her leg, hidden down, down below. And eventually, I had to ask her to leave. I'm just kidding. I didn't. I just had to— I said, Andrea, move this up closer. Nobody can see your name tag right there. But there are good and bad places to use it. And I think we're getting into the nuts and bolts. For most people, just simply using a name tag will be good.

Yeah. No, I mean, but I think it's a testament to what you're going to find in the book. And I love practical stuff. So, it's awesome.

It's incredibly practical. If you like practical, you're going to love this book.

So, one of the things that you do that's super intriguing to me is you're one of two people I know that's a really good connector with people and what we talked about, the complementality or interpersonal skills. But, you run actually what I would describe as kind of a friend's newsletter where you update people on your life and things you find interesting, stuff like that. So, how did that come about? What is it? Why is that such a good idea?

I think everyone can have a friends newsletter. And for those of you listening, if you want an actionable thing that you can do immediately, you can start a friends newsletter. And the way to do it would be to send out a letter that you would— when you were growing up, did your parents send like a Christmas letter to their friends?

Oh, we still do. Yeah.

Yes. And what's included in that and how does that exactly work?

What do we do?

Yeah.

Well, usually, usually there's a picture of us with the children. Sometimes with a pet, standing around a tree. And then in there, it's like, here are the highlights from the year of things that happened. And, you know, Joey got first place at the track. Yes. And so-and-so had COVID. And yeah, we're excited about next year and we're going on vacation to Turkey.

So I would be curious, is this a uniquely American thing? If you were listening to this abroad, do people in other countries do this? Send us a tweet and let us know because I'm curious. But why not do that exact idea of the annual family card on a quarterly basis. Why wait until the end of the year at Christmas when everybody's doing it? And so do a version of that for your friends and for your family on a quarterly basis. Put everybody on BCC. You don't need to overthink this and create newsletter software and sign-up forms and lead magnets for your friends newsletter. But that's how I started, was by doing a quarterly newsletter for my friends just with some life updates. And also sharing value. I think that's the important part. New products that I had purchased that I loved, a movie that I watched on Netflix that nobody had heard about, a great book maybe, right? People love product recommendations from their friends because these days we don't know exactly what to trust online, and it's easy to lose stuff in the noise on social media. So the Friends newsletter is what I started. You may be wondering, oh, what if my friend wants to be removed? You're like, what if I'm spamming them. One, you're probably not because they're your friend. Two, I include a little line in there, "Hey, this is my friend's newsletter. If you unsubscribe, we're still going to be friends. I totally get it. Write back and let me know how to unsubscribe." Or once you have a newsletter list, I include the unsubscribe right at the top. "Hey, it's my friend's newsletter. If you don't want to get this, no problem at all. Click here to unsubscribe. We'll still be friends, no fault taken." And I don't even check the unsubscribe list, right? I won't be notified if you unsubscribe.

Subscribe.

So, that's the gist of my friends newsletter. And for me, it's been something that I can keep up with because many people start a Substack and then life goes on. They get a new job. They change. Now, I'm no longer interested in this. I'm interested in this, all my subscribers. So, I think starting with the idea of your friends, that's really the feature of it.

Yeah. I love it. And did you decide to start doing that on your own? How did you decide to do it?

I started to do it on my own because I saw from my business the benefits of creating regular communication with with our customers. And I said, wow, why don't I do this for the people I like don't see all the time? Something less than social media, but more than like the annual card. And so for me, I've gotten incredible life benefits from having my friend's newsletter.

Yeah, that's so amazing. Yeah, the other guy that I know that does it, I met him at a conference once and he's just like a total sweetheart and he sends updates on his investments and he's going to travel here and travel there. Um, you know, he's a single guy, so he's got, you know, he's got plenty of time to go out and do whatever he wants.

Yeah.

And, uh, you know, I've always just kind of respected it, and I tried to emulate it, and it's like the, the party thing, you know. It's like I let other priorities get in front of it.

One thing that I do that I can share is that throughout the month, I am constantly sending little things I find to my virtual assistant that I want to include in the newsletter.

Interesting.

So I'm not sitting down and having to write from scratch a newsletter. If I find something cool, a nice article that I read, a book that I see or something like that, it's just a background process running to collecting the objects. Or if you have a software that you use that you can add it or save it to a folder or a tag or something. So then when it comes time to write, you just, you have some stuff there that's kind of built up.

Yeah. I love it. Okay. Well, let's do the VA stuff because this has been something I've been dragged kicking and screaming. Into the past 6 months. So you have virtual assistant?

Yes, 2 now. I'm working on hiring a third. What has held you back or what are you thinking about that?

Well, this is— I'll be the one to ask the questions. Oh, no, just, you know, I think that I've— I'm really good at automating things and delegating things. So it's never gotten so bad for me that I felt like, oh, you know, I should invest in a person to do some of these things. And I think that's just been a mental blocker for me that like I realize the amount of like kind of initial setup that you need to do to make and be successful with VAs. And I've never been like, oh, do I want to record a 15-minute Loom for this to teach somebody how to do it? So, um, that is a long-winded, very Girdley way of saying I've just been lazy, uh, and I need to do better. Yeah, it's like it's the same answer as the parties.

No, I don't think so. I think there's a very real chance that VAs may not be for you. You should— if you are thinking about hiring a VA, especially if you're thinking about hiring one from an overseas location, you need to know that there is an insane amount of, of documentation and setup and training that will go into it. That being said, the rewards can be incredible. The rewards can be incredible.

So what are all the things that you have the people that you work with do? I mean, they sent me the book, or it's coming. So amazing. Thank you.

So there's the simplest tasks that are the best to start with are those tasks that are repeatable and that can easily be documented. So an example would be sending a copy of my book to somebody. I have a shipping address. I know how to do it. I need this to be fulfilled. Okay. A small example would be making an order. That's a to-go order from Chili's. For you to make that order, you need to open the app. You need to place the order. You need to click the buttons, and then you need to watch when it's available or something like that. It probably doesn't take you more than 3 minutes, but through the entirety of placing the order to it being ready for you to come and pick up, you're kind of aware of it and you're waiting for the notification that the order is ready, right? I'm using this for myself because I like to, uh, buy lunch, this fajita special from a restaurant that's nearby. I have to log on to their app, make the order, and then they send me a text when it's ready, and then I come over and get it.

Sure.

Now that whole process, I've timed it, takes about 2 minutes and 45 seconds to log on, place the order, save the stuff, whatever. Versus now I just send a simple note to my VA, order Chewy's, and now they buy it, and then I get one other message when it's ready, and then I go over and it's ready. That's a small example. Some more things that they do, um, are you a blogger at all?

Somewhat, yes.

When you do your blog post, do you make featured images and social images for your posts? That has been a huge thing for me. Creating a social share image is totally different from the featured image. Social shares set up so that when you share the article as a tweet, it looks beautiful. It's a card with a nice, sexy, attractive graphic. That's a simple thing, and also the words that show up at the beginning of it are separate. You have to Um, sort of hardcode those in. So I had them do all those for my blog posts, and that was huge. I have them do my newsletter, set it up, do the software stuff that's involved so I don't really have to think about it. I will frequently voice dictate the outline for a blog post, set up the headers, put down this word vomit, and they will then put that into a doc, a Google Doc for me. So when I'm ready to write it, I have an outline or a structure set up already. But then there's even more advanced stuff like managing my book and things like that. So, for somebody like you who does have a business and that has a lot of administrative things that are maybe just little processes in the background, I have a friend who said, "If you ever do something more than twice, you need to delegate that because that is a process that you don't— you shouldn't have to deal with." Yeah.

And so, where are your people? Are they all in the Philippines?

Yes, yes. I have 2 that are based in the Philippines. I've been working with outsourced labor and remote first for 10 or 15 years, right? So I'm savvy and I'm aware of that. I think for somebody who hasn't, the best place to start, go on Upwork, hire somebody today. You're going to pay more per hour, but now you can start to build that muscle because delegation is a muscle. And if you've never worked it before, you're going to make a lot of mistakes at the beginning and you don't exactly know what you need, right? And so hire somebody online on Upwork where you can see blah, blah, and then run your own hiring process later.

How able are you to give these people, like I would say, open-ended tasks? Like for example, you know, like one of the things I'm wanting to work on is get a, hire a Spanish tutor, right? To spend an hour a week with me on Zoom and, you know, habla español. So like how freeform are you able to give, like, can you, could you diagram a process for your VA to run and come back with, okay, here are 4 or 5 options, or how deep can that go?

It can go very deep to the, to the extent that nobody can read your mind. And so you probably have qualifications and soft things that are involved with that, that you need to be able to document. So for you, it might be important that when you have a Spanish tutor online, they have high quality video and that their lighting looks good and that their microphone is good. Well, how's the VA going to know that that's important to you? Unless you tell them, right? And so there are a lot of things that you will forget to document at the beginning that are important to you, and you need to get to be very good at learning how to express the things that seem obvious to you that are not obvious to somebody else. Yeah, right. And that's what we pay for when you hire a chief of staff at $130,000 a year. You are paying for them to read your mind, right? When you're hiring a virtual assistant at $4 an hour, they're not yet able to, they don't live in your same area. They don't live and breathe your same space. They don't know the things. They're not stupid. They just don't exist in the same world or reality that you do.

Yeah. I mean, the times I did hire chief of staffs and it was always a transitory thing where they would be a chief of staff designed to go to do something else. The chief of staff wasn't their career. So that created a, like a time bomb. There with those people, but it was hugely beneficial for them to just kind of be in the same room a lot. Or secondarily, the thing that was best about a local chief of staff was, hey, I need you to go run over and do this, or like, hey, we need— my kid is stranded, I need help with this, right? And that local presence was there. Um, anyway, I, I'm sold on the concept. I'm just gonna have to be a better human to do it and also put my head around like the amount of work that I need to do to manage them as well and start to automate those things, which I think I'm comfortable with.

Yeah. One suggestion that I would have would be to say, hey, I'm going to make a commitment to hire somebody and I'm going to invest for 20 hours a week. I'm going to hire somebody and I'm going to be willing to know that they may have wasted time. They may not be fully optimized, but I'm going to have them being available and being on call and saying, I'm sorry, I'll just do it. You know what? No, hop in the Zoom with me right now and let's do this together. Watch me do this. Is that something that you can document? Yeah. And so I would say before, um, um, have you ever gone to a real fancy meal and you know that it's going to be so fancy and expensive that you're going to leave hungry? Right, right. So I like this concept of base layers where I would go to Chipotle before I went to a—

you pregame the fancy—

pregame the fancy meal. I think you should pregame the virtual assistant. Hire this VA on a service like Upwork where you're going to pay a little bit more and you may have wasted time, but help them figure out what you truly need before you go in full speed. It's the equivalent of like getting married before the first date, right? Go on some dates, do your dating process with hiring a VA.

I love that idea.

Yeah.

So how do you navigate the idea of them having your credit card number and stuff like that?

Um, I have a lot of trust. I believe that once you go through a hiring process and you work with them a little bit, then you can trust this person. And I, I'm very trusting of people. Think about it. I wrote a book about how to bring people into your home that are sometimes strangers, right? So I am trusting of people. I also know that for many Filipino people, you know, why would they want your credit card number? Like, they're trying to build a career from this. That, that very idea or very question, while it seems normal for you, may just be so strange and outlandish to them that it might not work. So cool.

One more topic I wanted to dig into. And have we talked enough about the book? Should we talk more about the book?

We talk about the book. I'm, I'm super proud of this book, and I believe that it is a, a very well-written book that I've heard. One of the greatest compliments is somebody said, I blew through this in an hour and a half, and it was great. It was fun. It was easy to read. And for me, when you buy this book, you will be able to read it very fast and quickly, and you will feel like you will level up in some life skills. And the unfortunate reality is, is that no one's taught adults how to make new friends. Yeah, and many people having friends as an adult becomes a game of attrition where you just have the friends and they just kind of fall off as you get older. And hopefully this can be a way to help people to make new friends.

That's amazing. Uh, yeah, I'm super excited to read it. So yeah, I'm very proud of it. It'll be good, it'll be good. Um, so one more thing before we wrap up. Um, there's been a lot of people that have talked about Calendly And I thought you wrote a great blog post on this. So, I thought it'd be super useful. I want to hear like, how do you make yourself not be an asshole when you're using Calendly or one of the online, like, here's how you can book time with me type situations?

Yeah. So, using Calendly can be an effective way to reduce some of the friction and the back and forth in scheduling. And if you don't use Calendly already, they have a free account and there's other services like it. But softening up that so you don't just fire them a URL and say, hey, book with me here. Well, you need to think about and remember who's asking for the invitation. If I'm trying to book in your calendar and you say yes, and then I send you a Calendly, well, now I'm the asshole, right? Because I'm working around you, right? So what I will do is I will propose manually sometimes that will work, and then I will also say, or if it's easier, here's a Calendly link, here's a scheduling link where you can choose a time. Okay, so I will use it as a backup, and then 9 times out of 10, someone will choose and select to use that because it's just so much easier for them. There are also some little hacks and tweaks that you can do to modify and make your messages more friendly. You know, the automated thank you for signing up message, uh, having your face to show up as like your profile icon on the page where they choose it. There are little things like that that you can do to soften it up that make it seem like a more friendly process.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I mean, it— I think it's actually a kindness when people send those links around because it can save the other time so much— the other side so much time.

Yeah.

Um, and I've— it's funny, as I get older, I start to see there are more and more things like that that we all kind of socially take as like an affront or something that's kind of a difficulty. Um, and, and it's actually the inverse of that in practice when the more I've done it. And like, the worst example is Like people have always for years kind of thought about firing people as like the worst thing you can do to them. And like the more I've dug into it and I've watched people who for one reason or another kept struggling in a particular role and you giving them a path to find something that's going to be a better fit to them, actually the more times that I saw it turned out to be really a kindness for them. It's like, hey, like you deserve to thrive in life and you're not thriving here, but you keep grinding away at it because you have a strong sense of mission. And I think Calendly is kind of that way too, where it's like everybody kind of thinks it's an insult, but in reality, you're saving the other side so much time by sending that link. And you're saying this is just a great way to massage that so people can maybe take it the way they should take it, which is, man, shouldn't this be great? This is so much easier.

Softening it up a little, right? And being aware of the social dynamics that are at play. The other thing is there's some default times. For example, a default Calendly time could be 30 minutes. Why do we need a 30-minute meeting? If you are doing a cold outreach and you're trying to get 30 minutes, set your times as 15 minutes. I experimented with 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes, and I found that 15 minutes for me, for, for most calls, was, was easy and accessible enough to have a successful—

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. I ended up on 20.

Nice.

My default for like, hey, I'm giving you a bare minimum of time is 20, because I just felt like, well, maybe I'm too to— I talk too much. But for 15, we couldn't get past the introduction, meet, and then next steps kind of flow.

Yeah.

Um, did somebody crash? No, we're good. Oh, that iPhone gave out again. Um, so, you know, anyway, maybe I needed— maybe I need to go to like 7 minutes or something.

Oh my gosh, that would be a 7-minute meeting. Holy smokes. I don't think it would work.

I don't think it would work. Awesome, man. So, the name of the book is The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings. And it's very apropos for me. So, thanks for being here. How else can people follow along with your journey?

You got to sign up for my friend's newsletter. That's the big thing. I have a friend's newsletter that I only send it when I have something interesting to send and I send it through my website. So, you can find me at nickgray.net, N-E-T, that's Nick, N-I-C-K-G-R-A-Y.net. Then I post on all the socials @NickGrayNews, news, N-E-W-S. Yeah.

Super cool. Well, thanks for being here and chatting with me. Now we'll let Mirko click stop.