A founder shares how having a hobby helps you find common ground with peers and make conversations less transactional. Hobbies let you connect as people first, not just work contacts, while keeping reasonable boundaries about what you share.
What's one simple thing for our listeners, founders and investors, that they can do tomorrow to start building that relationship muscle?
You know, honestly, I think what I probably would say is if you don't have a hobby, start thinking about what kind of hobby would you like to do or want to do. If you have one, realize there's probably lots of people in your sphere that have something similar or like to talk about hobbies. I just like talking about other people's hobbies. I'm always interested in stuff. So if it's a VC, if it's an executive, a business conversation, I don't really care. Like I'm curious about them, the work, but also them and their hobby and like what they're interested in. 'Cause that stuff is just interesting. So don't be afraid. I think the big mistake, you know, it wasn't as big a deal in the past, but this is gonna be more and more prominent, which is the more you keep your work life in a box and there's no like casualness, there's no hobbies, there's no talk about this, that, the other, you can do that, but you're only going to limit yourself in the way that you can connect with other people.
It sucks like that.
Yeah, and like, you know, and like just have more like a human-to-human relationship with, you know, I think reasonable boundaries. Like no one wants you to dump— if you're like in the middle of a divorce and you just need to like vent, it's not really the appropriate thing to do, and to say at work with your co-workers, like find, you know, so you have to have a bit of like some common sense on like certain topics and certain times.
Yeah.
You know, like, you know, we're all just people working together. People, like even think about sales and marketing, it's just a psychological exercise, lead generation. Two people don't know each other and they're starting to get to know each other, right? So again, even sales and marketing is just a psychological construct between groups of people. People to people.
It's a very simple way you've put it.
Yeah. So don't overthink it. If the more that you can make, find yourself and expand yourself as a person, the more you'll be able to connect to more people in deeper ways.
Yeah.
That's, you know, so hobbies, that's a simple place to start. And I think just going back, a lot of corporate people, we've been taught that like it's the job and like your value is your job and how much money you make is your job and your title.
