3 Success Principles I Wish I Had Known At 20 (Part II)

Think for Yourself, Not of Yourself. Think of Others, Not for Others.

II. KEY TO SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIPS

If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.

The old adage is:

“It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”

“It doesn’t matter who is buying and who is selling. It’s the personal connection that matters.” — Tim Draper

or as American sociologist Ronald Burt put it, “Instead of better glasses, your network gives you better eyes.”

That’s still true today.

The #1 investment, as we know, is in yourself. The next best investment is in people.

Relationships are more important than most people think. Our brain is shaped in relationships with others and with ourselves. Your relationships are also the best predictor of your health.

If you can master one skill, learn to network and build relationship. The most profitable business is investing in people. Success in life can often depend on the opinion of people around you. Whether you’re looking for a promotion or trying to get a date, you’ll struggle if no one likes you. It doesn’t matter what you do, if people adore you, your life will be easy. Do not build fortresses to protect yourself — isolation is danger. Isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from…better to circulate among people, find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

There is no secret success formula for entrepreneurs. But one common thread is that no matter where you’re living or your circumstances, it takes time, resources, and dedication to turn an idea into a fully functioning business. The true geniuses will attract the resources necessary to turn their ideas into reality wherever they are. They understand that the most important component isn’t product or capital — it’s the people.

Building a company is only 10% about the product. The rest is about the people and the market.

We live in a world where 70% of success is determined by relationships. As long as humans are still deciding who gets the investments or the top jobs at companies etc, there is no such things as 100% meritocracy. What this means is that being smart, meeting expectations, and working hard with your head down aren’t going to supercharge your career. Word of mouth is always the leanest way to acquire your first customers, create your network, and begin your entrepreneurial journey. People typically say startups succeed 1–10% of the time — I actually think if you put together the right founding team, it’s more like a 35–40% chance of success. Just like a movie’s talent (actors, writers etc.) determines its odds of being a blockbuster, the strength of a company’s talent determines its chances of success. Great work requires teams. A company becomes the people it hires, not the plan it makes. A company often exists only because of the heroic efforts of a handful of individuals. The team you build is the company you build. The companies that really succeed become this magnet for talent, and they’re able to sustain it for a significant period of time. The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish. In the business world, achieving success often means finding individuals who are just as passionate as you about achieving your goals.

Because of physical limits on one’s ability and energy, no one can do everything by himself. You’ve never been the best person at doing every job. No single individual could create the leverage and momentum necessary to create billions of dollars in value. It’s the successful people who ask for and offer protection and support, because they know that entrepreneurs accomplish almost nothing alone, and we all move forward faster together. If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. Research in creativity and innovation points to the importance of interaction among people, whether formally or not, to bring together the unusual combination of ideas that spark something new. Whether in schooling offered, the way you were raised, pre-existing national and global infrastructure, work of those who went before, or teams that help make a final vision possible and known to the world, there is always help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the internet. Business success depends on the employees doing all the things they need to do. Inspirational movies and theatrical productions don’t happen because of one actor or director or writer or designer or crew member. If you build your own deck or even replace a washer in a faucet, you learned to do it somehow and the tools and methods you needed were all invented long ago. No one can do everything by themselves.

Doing everything yourself in the beginning is fine if you don’t have the budget to invest in people but you must break through the mental block and invest in people as soon as you can. A great relationship will earn you more profit than any other investment. There’s so much to be gained from working with people who support each other to achieve great things. Don’t be afraid to share your vision with others or ask for help when you need it. The right people can help you achieve more than you would have alone. All great feats and accomplishments in life were the efforts of a group of people. This is difficult for people, because when you ask for help, you’re making yourself vulnerable and that’s scary to most. But don’t let the ego stop you from becoming the best version of yourself because you’re too scared or stubborn to ask for help. You need to seek and partner with the highest quality and smartest people in the industry. Your network is your source of opportunities. (Of course you can’t come up with opportunities on your own). The easiest way to get opportunities is to leverage your connections. Your strategic network will keep your focus laser sharp. It can help guide you towards the decisions you need to make to move forwards.

Life without relationships, focused solely on accomplishment and success, is empty and meaningless. Love, Freud said, is the great educator. I’ve never understood the idea that monks and priests should turn away from relationships. No, it’s through loving and being loved that we reach a higher plane of stillness and understanding. “There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable,” Seneca said, “unless one has someone to share it with.”

Cultivate relationships. When you expand your network of contacts, your income also grows proportionately. Expanding your network will have an important impact in how much you earn eventually. Build the relationships, opportunities will follow. Get to know them well and opportunities (love, work, friendship, personal connections, etc) will come when the time is right.

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The High Level

Create a open network. According to multiple, peer-reviewed studies, simply being in an open network instead of a closed one is the best predictor of career success. Connect with people who are in completely different fields than yours. Attend an idea conference. Ask a connector friend for intros.

Quality over Quantity. Don’t spread yourself too thin. The main reason people struggle to generate fruitful connections is they simply have too many. They haven’t focused on those who are most important. Networking and building relationship are not about being in touch with as many people as possible or attending every event at the opening of an envelope; it’s about finding the right people and the right relationships; it’s about nurturing them so that at every moment there is the mutual exchange of value, insight, connection and information to drive the professional and personal success of another. It’s best to build close bonds with others you can count on when you need advice. If you wish to attract and commit energy to new things, you need to free up capacity by ridding yourself of “energy vampires,” or people who suck up all of your time and resources. Move away from how many people you know to discovering who are the people you need to know. Choose to make an impact by developing your own network to connect with the right people in the right way and to cultivate those relationships over the long term. You have to take ownership of your network. You have to take back control of your time and network with the right people — those that matter. Get back in control and you will change your game, make the impossible possible and achieve your goals. Get back in control and build connections that really matter. Optimize for quality, not quantity. Get comfortable saying NO to people you don’t want to prioritize. That sounds harsh, but in the end, it will save your time and effort and theirs. It’s not a kindness to “perform” friendship without genuine support and commitment, and both of you have limited time to spend. Instead of saying you’ll grab lunch and then canceling yet again, you can just part ways and make friends who are better suited to each of you. With the right software and strategy, it is fairly easy to throw your name out there and establish hundreds of surface-level connections. What is far more challenging, and more valuable in the long term, is establishing a few dozen close friends who you can rely on for big favors and help. You’ll find these deeper contacts to be more helpful when you need them — the types of relationships that actually change lives.

If you can’t see yourself working with somebody for life, don’t work with them for a day. If any relationship is short-term or temporary, it’s really not going to pay out the dividends that you want later in life. Find and befriend the influential people in your community. Look for the most talented people you can find and then find a way to align yourself economically with them (e.g co-founding, working for them, investing in them). A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally early in your career. Spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions. Instead of working from the bottom up, you should work from the top down. This is easier said than done. Start from the top. This group of superpowers will build your success, boost your positive mojo and keep you in a place of constant growth. It’s about meeting a few well-connected people who can vouch for your ability and who are willing to refer you to a few other well-connected people. Collaboration among unlikely partners amplifies impact. Find people who challenge your thinking and invest in them. Align yourself with thinkers and doers who have already achieved what you dream of achieving or who simply ride shotgun alongside you and you’ll be pushed to take the right actions and be inspired to move in the right direction towards your goals. Find and befriend the super connector in your community. Spend time with ‘cup half empty’ thinkers and you’ll feel low and de-energized. Spend time with individuals who dream big and see the cup not just as half full but as overflowing, and you’ll believe anything is possible. They put fuel to the fire in your belly, put a spring in your step, and water the seeds of ideas that grow in your mind.

The spectacular successes come from finding people before they’re well known. A particularly valuable part of building a network is to get good at discovering undiscovered talent. Recognizing another individual’s potential before they do is an underrated human skill. Identifying super talented people before everyone else does (or even before THEY realize they’re smart) is one of the most valuable skills to develop and is the core skill of recruiting, investing etc.

Building a more valuable network means taking back ownership and control of your network and approaching your actions and connections with strategic deliberation. It is both an art and a science. It is an art as it requires basic human skills in communication, connection, authenticity and the ability to be ‘in the present’ and engaged. It is a science because building your network and being in control requires an ongoing analysis, audit and sustained curiosity around leveraging your networking in the best way possible. It’s about seeing the lines that connect people and ideas and opportunity. This means reworking the way we network and connecting with others on a personal level with authenticity, meaning and value.

It’s not what you know or who you know — It’s how well you know each other that counts

Think “relationship” over “networking”. There’s quite a difference between having a “contact” and having a “relationship.” Don’t be misled by some networking experts — it’s not the number of contacts you make that’s important — it’s the ones you turn into lasting relationships that make a difference. You may be part of a network group or two, have a list of contacts and a stack of connections across various social media platforms but how many of your contacts do you really know? How many truly know you? How many of your contacts honestly care about you and your success? Are you doing things to help each other achieve your goals? Building relationship is not just about having another high-caliber LinkedIn connection or the email address of a VIP. Those are nice to have, sure, but the real win is not who you know, it’s who knows you and responds quickly to you when you reach out. Try making 10 phone calls to people you’ve just met. Tell them you’re putting together a marketing plan for the coming year and you would appreciate any help they could provide in the form of advice or a referral. So… how well did that go? Not very well I suspect.

Work hard at getting to know as many people as you can on a collegial or even more personal level. Work to build a network of close relationships. Your goal over time will be to build a deep (and varied) network of trusted people who will provide you with ongoing mentoring, advice, and feedback as you progress in your career and personal life. Your success, more times than not, relies initially on the support from friends and family. Sometimes that means their time, their emotional support, or in some cases their capital. Because, in the end, who wants to see those near and dear to them struggling? who wants to quit their “family”? Not to mention, so much of working with somebody is communicating what you care about and why. Knowing somebody well means you [don’t] have to get to the bottom of what someone’s motivations are every time you interact. If you don’t develop meaningful relationships with people you’ll never know what’s really on their mind until it’s too late to do anything about it. Many people often don’t have close, meaningful friendships. They want them, but they aren’t willing to go out of their way to dedicate time and effort to developing these relationships. They could be a person who has that hobby or goes to that event or has that friend; they have that option, and they expect it’ll always be there. The choices we have made, not the choices that we could make, are what, in the aggregate, decide who we are. When it comes to friends, it’s the relationships we’re invested in that count — not the relationships we could invest in if we ever made the time for them. The explosion of digital and social media has fundamentally changed the way we function, communicate and do business both online and offline. Yet the technology that was supposed to connect us and bring us closer together actually seems to be having the reverse effect. Building a more valuable network means taking back control and approaching your actions and connections with strategic deliberation. Of course we know this and yet something about how we are networking right now just isn’t working. We are often overwhelmed with myriad on and offline networking options to choose from. Every day we are pulled and stretched in hundreds of directions while maximizing productivity, and to throw networking in to the mix of our already jam-packed diaries — well, it’s no wonder it ends up in the too-hard basket. Add to this the pressure we unconsciously place on ourselves to be interesting and engaging, and the reality is we’ve put the work back in to networking, making it exhausting. Most of our connections are superficial and transactional. Conversations have become brief and fleeting. If you are making a habit to nurture your network along the way, then you won’t be seen as searching for an opportunity. You’ll just be in the right place when opportunity opens its door. It’s true that the idea of networking can make some people feel drained or even fake. But if that’s the case, you might be doing it wrong. Building genuine relationships with influential people is the quickest way to accelerate your growth, and it is relational, not informational. Valuable and sincere relationship is the result of earning ones trust and allowing that individual to help you. The irony is that opportunities tend to come faster when people focus on fostering a genuine connection. No matter what you do, to stay in the good heart’s of people nowadays, you must be able to connect on a personal level. Again, you want people to want to help you. The more that you can establish a genuine connection with someone, the more likely you both will be to help each other. Most people in business have taken the hire-your-smartest-friends approach.

Life is complicated. I don’t separate work and life into two contrasting initiatives — it’s all living. I don’t believe in work-life balance. Balance is dead. Balance implies there’s a strict trade-off. Work life integration is where it’s at! When you love what you do, your work is your life. Do you want to stop? I like the phrase ‘work-life harmony’. The real reason why people talk about work life balance is that most people don’t do what they love. The problem is their choice. I think the controversy around “hard work” mostly comes from a failure to understand that “work” isn’t a sacrifice for some people — it’s a calling. There are exceptions, but a “workaholic” is often just what people call someone whose hobby also happens to be work. Whatever you do, don’t tell someone that “it’s nothing personal, just business”. Symbolic work-life boundaries are almost impossible to maintain. Why? They are their business. Their business is their life, just like their life is their business — which is also true for family, friends, and interests — so there is no separation because all those things make them who they are. I find ways to include family instead of ways to exclude work. I find ways to include interests, hobbies, passions, and personal values in my daily business life. Because if I couldn’t, I was not living — I was just working. I consider living passionately a job requirement. My interests allow me to better connect the dots and come up with creative and insightful solutions that I would not otherwise be able to create. I do my best work when I’m most connected with my interests, family and friends — and I am most connected and enjoy my life to the fullest when I am deepest in my quest to build things that can make life a little better for everyone. If I’m happy at home, it makes me a better employee, a better boss. If I feel like I’m adding value and am a productive member of a team at work, it makes me better at home. It’s not just about how you allocate hours in the day, but whether you have enough energy to participate with enthusiasm. If you have a good work ethic, you’ll know this to be true. Business IS personal. It’s the most personal thing in the world, because it’s all about you. It’s your vision, your passion, your team — it’s your business, and it’s impossible to separate the business stuff from the personal emotions. People eat, sleep and live every second of a good part of their lives with their business, and every bit of the business affects them as much as their family. Not to mention, in an ecosystem where socializing and happy hours are a big way to meet or get to know helpful people, there are no real clear lines about what is personal and what is professional. People ultimately choose to do business with people they like, trust and respect.

For example: If I want to get a job in banking or consulting, as I start thinking about making a move, instead of cold calling, I would make a list of 5 companies I’d like to work for and for each company I will try to find and reach out 5 people who currently work there. I want to be as certain as possible that the company I might jump to will make me happier than the one I’m leaving, and it’s hard to know that until I hear from people who currently work there, and chances are they would be able to help me get a job interview. Next I would invite some of them to coffee — my treat if possible — to connect on a personal level. People in general will want to help if it doesn’t cost them much.

It would be great if they’re in my circle of friends. If I am in the fortunate position of knowing those people, then great, I can start there directly.

If I don’t know those people directly, here are a few more thoughts on what to do next.

If I am not connected to any of them but have a friend who is well connected, I would go through him/her. They will trust a recommendation from this source extremely highly.

If I don’t know any connections, then it’s time to start connecting and building relationships. If I am struggling to connect via my network, my next best bet is to meet someone at the team in person. I would do an extensive research on these 25 people and find way to meet and become their friends.

Instead of giving my product pitch or trying to explain why I am highly qualified in your field, I would ask people questions. Try to create a real connection. Don’t be transactional. Build genuine relationships. Play the long game. Don’t keep score. Give first. After all, “authentic” relationships involve mutuality and back-and-forth and personal rapport. You don’t want to come off as having a transactional agenda. Right?

Try to avoid getting impatient and feeling the urge to move on if someone isn’t directly tied to the career path you see for yourself. Usually the person who can help you is two to three degrees of separation away — for example, that person might not be in your chosen field, but their relative, sister or best friend could be. Something else to keep in mind when you’re relationship-building? It’s an ongoing effort. Do it consistently and constantly. It could help you unearth hidden opportunities or create custom opportunities for yourself.

Treat everyone like they can get you on the front cover of The New York Times. Since building relationship always takes longer than you think, the first secret is to start your building long before you need it. It’s hard to prioritize conversations that aren’t urgent or essential…until they are. But if you want your future announcements to be successful, you need to lay the groundwork. The big potential win is that by laying all this groundwork, you’ll find your way into a “hidden opportunity” — one that isn’t found anywhere else. That’s huge. (Remember to keep an eye open for hidden opportunities that do not yet exist at a certain time.) You never know when an interesting partnership opportunity could arise. Opportunities emerge from the unlikeliest of places. Even if someone doesn’t seem like a good fit for your needs at the moment, they could still present a great opportunity later on. What you need now might not be what you need later. You never know when your paths might cross again. You are likely to bump into the same people again and again in life, often in unexpected ways. This alone is reason enough to make sure that when you do something, you do so with careful thought about the consequences for those around you. Well, when you’re young, you’re evaluating potential networking contacts based on what you want to do for a living — and less how knowing that person might enable you to do what you want to do later on. And that’s a huge mistake. Some of my most fruitful connections are those who didn’t deliver a lot at first, but over time created a meaningful exchange that slowly grew. Treat every connection you make as if it’s the most important thing you’ve ever done — because, frankly, you never know when it actually will be. Keep in touch with people you think are interesting, even if they’re a million miles away. Build relationship before you need it. When figuring out which connections deserve your attention, take a long-term view. Be open to meeting almost anybody and try to make a great impression every time. Collect contact information whenever you can get it, and listen to people when they talk about them. You need to use the backdoor to gain access to the (hidden) opportunities which are open and grabbed either internally or through a referral from a trusted source. Let people surprise you. The earlier and more widely you plant seeds about what you are working on, the greater your potential for harvesting people when you need them.

Learn how to pass the gatekeepers to connect with the high profile person. Don’t accept a NO from someone who can’t make the final decision. Go around the gatekeeper and try every other possible avenue. What if no one replies to your request? You should wait at least a week before following up, especially if they’re busy. Don’t take being ignored as a NO, and simply follow up politely. When it comes to building relationship, take whatever you can get. Just get yourself in the door.

Listen to the experts in your network, ask questions, find more experts and keep digging until you can unearth the best opportunities. Don’t feel satisfied with the first answer you get or the first opportunity you come across. The best ideas and opportunities need to be discovered.

When you find these types of people, make it a priority to stay connected and hold onto them. Invest in these relationships and you have a chance to be rewarded not just with business success, but also lifelong friends. These people will play a defining role in the success and enjoyment you experience along the way.

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The Nitty Gritty

Human psychology makes us predictable creatures. Behaviors do not appear out of nowhere. No one wakes up one day and decides they want this or that. When analyzing behavior, we should start with the most basic layer. People are human beings, so their most basic layer of behavior is evolutionary. The more I learned, the more I realized how much of our survival behaviors — and misbehaviors — could be explained by evolution.

Tapping into human emotions by understanding the basic desires we have as humans that ultimately trigger behavior change is the key. What are human’s evolutionary needs (desires) that are served by behavior? What are humans trying to achieve? Behaviors generally evolve to serve an unfulfilled need: physiological (re-production), safety (survival/comfort), esteem (significance/status/social approval), love (connection/companionship/belonging), and self-actualization.

Here’s the biggest secret about that ever-important and holy people around you: They don’t care about you.

They care about:

(2) How you make them feel.

(1) What you can bring to their lives.

People care about what benefits you can provide them, how you can fulfill their desires and goals, and how their problems, fears and difficulties can be reduced.

People are inherently self-involved. (Ain’t no shame in that game; it’s just human nature.) So remember that at its core, successful interpersonal interacting is actually an act of service.

We all depend on others. There is no innocent relationship. A relationship is all about mutual benefits. Sometime it is love. Sometime it is companionship. Sometime it is money. It doesn’t matter how nice somebody is. What people say is love, is not love. It’s a transaction. People like to say love is unconditional, but it’s not, and even if it was unconditional, it’s still never free. A great interaction is a reciprocal interaction. There’s always an expectation attached. People always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won’t be happy unless you are …

We’re all selfish enough people that we’re naturally going to have some kind of favoritism towards those who benefit us, we naturally create a bias towards liking those who make us feel special and bring values to us. If you can’t go for more than a day without money and happiness, consider the person who you’re subconsciously beholden to.

That’s why if you want a relationship to last, you have to keep the same energy you had in the beginning. It only lasts as long as you’re working for it. You cannot stop putting effort in just because you’re comfortable. If one of the person stops working, it falls apart. If it keeps going, that’s called “morality” — the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

True, unconditional, love is the province of parents and saints. Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you have to earn it.

When we transition from childhood to adulthood, we realize one crucial detail about human relationships: The unconditional love that we got from our parents can’t really be replicated. However, when we enter a relationship, especially a romantic one, we try to experience the same feelings or behavioral motifs that we experienced with our family. This is the tyranny of the unconditional love.

It is a very beautiful and romantic thing to fantasize about being loved unconditionally by others, but, in reality, it is almost impossible.

It’s not because we don’t want to, but more because we are idiosyncratic beings with different needs. We all have needs, both physical and emotional. And we all need to consistently fill those needs. Just like you never eat enough to last you forever, you never love enough to last you forever, or do something important enough to last you forever. Needs — whether it’s food, love or meaning — must be replenished regularly. And, most of the time, these needs collide with each other. When we try to love someone unconditionally, something like a fight, or a thought, or another person might get in our way and suddenly the love becomes very conditional. Especially if we don’t feel very comfortable in our own skin and we might feel that we deserve to be loved unconditionally, or that the other person needs to save us from our issues, things can get really ugly.

The only way to prevent people wanting you for something is not building any relationships at all.

Other people are far less interested in you than you think they are. You will soon realize that no one was really thinking about you at all. When you realize how unimportant you are to 99.9999999% of people and how important their desires are to them, their behavior and emotion loses weight.

Behavior is what someone is doing, intention is why they’re doing it.

Too often you judge yourself based on your intention, and everyone else based on their behavior. We judge others based solely on their actions, but when judging ourselves we have an internal dialogue that justifies our mistakes and bad decisions (Actor-Observer Asymmetry). We judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions, and this has strained our bonds of understanding and common purpose.

In politics most notably, someone may judge their own party based on its intention while judging the opposing party based on their behavior.

Intention is often inferred from behavior. Almost all disagreements come from a misunderstanding about intention.

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. Their behavior says something about them, not you. It is a reflection of them and their state of being. How someone treats you is a reflection of what is going on inside of them. It is not about you at all. Everyone wants to believe they’re thinking independently, with an understanding of how things work and why things are happening. But everyone has only seen the world through the narrow lens of their own experiences and social circles. Everyone suffers some degree of blindness. We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. People believe what they want to believe, see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear. We all have a habit of relating to the world through our perception of ourselves. First we develop a personality, a set of likes and dislikes, opinions and insights. Then we use that personality as a lens through which to filter our experience of life. People often determine what they want from you based on their prior experiences with others. So if their experiences were shitty, their expectations will be as well.

All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When you take something personally, you make the assumption that they know what is in your world, and you try to impose your world on their world. When you finally learn that a person’s behavior has more to do with their own internal struggle than it ever did with you…you learn grace. Don’t take anything personally. This is nothing personal. Nothing others do is because of you. Don’t always rush to think that there’s something wrong with you because someone didn’t get what they expected from you.

To minimize misunderstanding: Before you criticize people, you should walk a mile in their shoes. Unless you know why someone made a decision, you can’t safely change it or conclude that they were wrong. Rather than judging people and actions as good/bad, right/wrong, frame behavior as people’s strategies to get their needs (like love, respect, self-worth) met. When listening, treat all behavior as the other person expressing their needs. Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?” You’d forgive most things if you knew the facts.

Avoid labeling others and yourself. Never think of yourself as a “worthwhile person”. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. Knowing how little you matter is very important for your mental health and your happiness.

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So how to be an attractive person?

You cannot fix someone. No matter how smart you are, it ain’t happening. Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.

We are the same people as 100,000s of years ago. Everything changes rapidly, but people stay the same. While the tools we use to communicate ideas have changed in the past two thousand years, the human brain has not. Who we are as people isn’t going to change, and that means that the methods we use to reach people — and how we market to them — are enduring and translatable. And that’s the opportunity. The same formula that worked then will work now.

You never change something by taking the existing thing and reworking it. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. You’re better off changing it just by creating something brand new. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

It’s much less about “how” to attract other people to you but more about “being” the kind of person who people want to build relationship with.

Don’t worry about not being able to control things around you. You can control the most important thing, the things that happen inside you. All of the real score cards are internal.

Although you can’t control people’s behavior, you can influence their behavior. Instead of focusing on things that you can’t control, focus on the influence that you can have. In a world where emotions override any level of intelligence, the only way to change people’s behavior is to influence them and let them be fully convinced.

The number one thing to understand about influence is that people make decisions for their reasons, not yours. People always believe what they tell themselves.

You want to make it the people decision to do something. Don’t tell people what to do; they do it on their own. And when people make these kinds of decisions on their own, they are very influential. If you have to persistently tell them to do it, you’ll never win them for the long run.

Change has to come from within. Their feeling is their feeling, and it’s up to you to help “correct” it. It’s real for them, and the onus is on you, not them, to work to change the dynamic.

The great way to influence people’s behavior is to be great.

If you want to influence someone, do not use the words “good” or “bad”, or “right” or “wrong”. I’m not saying these terms don’t exist or have substance, I’m just saying that those terms rarely get us what we want — long-term behavior change. More successful approaches often involve replacing a behavior with another one — or dealing with the underlying need. In other words, that fence went up for a reason, and it can’t come down without something either taking its place or removing the need for it to be there in the first place. When asking for help or behavior change, appeal to people’s self-interests, never to their mercy or gratitude.

Let’s say you don’t think your friend is doing something right. You’re judging them based on their behavior. Ask them their intention — if it’s in the right place, work with them to get their behavior to match. If it’s not aligned, a change in behavior is unsustainable. (Read about Sales skill at (2) above for more information)

This goes for all relationships. Investors, employees, friends, family, significant others… Behavior versus intention!

Or even better, don’t waste your time and energy trying to change people’s behavior — leverage it! People can change, no question, but it is far better to leverage behavior that already exists. So whether you’re talking about customers, clients, or teammates, pay attention to how people act and help them find a way to shine that leverages what they already do.

Building a relationship is about providing value and inspiration. It’s that simple, and it’s that hard.

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People quickly answer two questions when they first meet you:

(2) Can I like this person?

(1) Can I trust/respect this person?

All of these points go in the same direction:

(1) Having something to say.

(2) Knowing how to say it.

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The most attractive trait in a person is their undaunted desire to never stop learning and improving in every facet of their being. They understand evolution and they embody it.

If you want to attract other people, the only way is to focus on you, upgrade yourself and your life, make yourself a more interesting person. Let other people see that side of you so that you can influence them.

The only way to increase attraction is to become a better and more valuable person.

Work to become an attractive person. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. Invest in yourself and the rest will come later. Things often work out as soon as you start loving yourself and do what is good for you.

It’s like, as Charlie Munger says, “To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate.”

You gotta be worthy of the ones you want to attract. If you want to be connected, make yourself worth connecting. To find someone you love, you have to be someone you love. Be the person you search for. It’s always better to raise your own bar rather than expecting someone else to lower theirs. When you start taking care of yourself, you start feeling better, you start looking better; and you even start to attract better. We become and then we attract. Become better, and you attract better. We grow personally and then we advance materially. If you want to attract extraordinary, and you’re not extraordinary, you have to work on being extraordinary. You have to change your life first and prove yourself so that others will see that you’re the type of person to invest in. Extraordinary doesn’t mean having-it-all or being perfect, it just means living in accordance with the values and behaviors of someone who expects the best in her life.

The greatest attraction is when we meet someone who has this full and complete life that doesn’t depend on us, and they’re their own person in their own right. The greatest attraction is when someone can bring their best energy to us when they do engage with us. Relationships always work out better when each person has a productive life outside of their relationship. It’s always a red flag when their sense of happiness is dependent on the relationship. This means that they are in a healing process, or stagnation, and not healing at all. Your happiness is not someone’s responsibility. You should be happy and they should be happy individually. Then you both come together and share your happiness. Giving someone a responsibility to make you happy when you can’t do it for yourself is selfish. Healthy relationships are two people coming together sharing their life. You don’t step into a relationship to get a life, you step into a relationship to share one. Taking the time to plant some roots for yourself is critical. It’s like that part of the speech they give you on an airplane when they talk about the oxygen masks: “Put yours on first before you help the person next to you.” If you don’t make sure you’re safe and capable, how can you possibly expect to take care of others, to better the world, or to create epic things? If you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll never really be much good to other people. If you don’t look after yourself, you will have nothing to give when you’re trying to build relationships or create a value exchange. We need to be fulfilled so we can give to others. You need to fill up your own cup first. You can’t pour from an empty cup. You cannot really help anyone if you are starving. You can’t give what you don’t have. This part of networking isn’t often discussed, but it’s critical for establishing relationships. The irony is that if you always pretend to be “self-less” to get others to like you, you’ll probably start to give only to get your own needs met. You’ll always be acting from that place of lack in your life.

This is why so many people give the wise advice to lonely folks that they need to focus on themselves instead of “Why don’t people like me?” They need to dive into hobbies, interests, careers, and become something more than “nice.” And that’s not something you can do overnight. You can’t be a “nice person,” go to two meetings of a book club, and be magically morphed into a literary expert. That’s not attractive. You can’t be a confident, skilled person by deciding to be one. You have to put in the hours and the passion.

Competition is for losers.

Whether you are running a business, deciding what to do with your life, looking for a relationship — if you worry about what everyone else is doing, you’ll end up chasing the wrong thing. Why? Because you’ll conform.

The only way to escape competition, and feel deeply confident to your soul, is to have your own unique monopoly. You don’t need to win at everything to get a great relationship — you only need to build your unique monopoly in a way that makes you irreplaceable for the right person.

This takes work two levels: accept who you are (0)(3), but work towards who you want to be (1)(2). Think about who you want to attract, and what qualities they will be attracted to. Move towards that. Then forget about the rest.

Maybe taken on their own your qualities feel normal. But when you combine them all together, they make something uniquely YOU.

Do what is necessary for you to feel attractive. If you feel you’re slacking and falling short of your personal standards, that’s a good enough motivation to push you to do something to reach a higher level. But if you spend a single second caring that there’s someone else better looking, more educated, more successful, and define yourself along those lines, you’ve already lost.

Your unique monopoly is the essential YOU-ness that makes you who you are. If you can hold onto that, if you can actually value it, if you can internally know that someone choosing you is the smartest decision they’ll ever make and believe it, then you’re no longer in competition.

You make a game that only you can win.

Be a good person with an edge

Be a rare bird that has unique pairings that other people think they couldn’t necessarily find again, or they couldn’t find with ease again. That is someone people could get addicted to. That is someone who is irreplaceable.

A unique pairing is the key to being someone of incredible perceived value. Two or more pairings create addiction.

The best people always embody contrasts.

Be assertive. Say NO when others are saying YES (if you want to). Be the “Strong Grounded Person” who can be both kind and aggressive. Dominant and loving. Powerful but soft, vulnerable. You can have a gentle heart, but still be rock solid at your core. You can be as gentle as a breeze, but as fierce as a dragon. It sounds oxymoronic (which is why so many people struggle with this) but balancing the Hard/Soft side of yourself is what will really turn other people on. The best people always embody both sides.

These dimensions are referred as warmth and competence, respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both. What’s the point of networking if not to get other people to like and trust and respect you? Sure, you need people to see you as interesting, competent, professional, and potentially valuable to them — but if they don’t also find you likable, nobody will feel motivated to reach out later and build relationship with you. The reason why all comes down to emotional intelligence, the set of skills and qualities that allow people to form deeper, closer relationships with others.

To me, a healthy relationship has a dichotomous balance between being utterly independent (which keeps you interesting to the other person) and being utterly dependent (which allows for true connection). Veer too much in either direction and *splat*.

This requires a lot of proactive showing off some EQ. It is an art and requires a lot of strategies. If it is too much for you, maybe success doesn’t mean a lot. Move on.

The same principles (0)(1)(2) and (3) as above also apply to interpersonal interactions.

(0) Understand your true self. And be sincere.

You need to have a sense of self before getting into a relationship… otherwise you can easily lose yourself (or become someone you are not). The most important relationship you have is with yourself. If you want to feel comfortable around others, start understanding yourself and feeling comfortable with yourself first. A successful interaction is nothing more than the manifestation of two personalities that enjoy who they are. Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have. Having a healthy relationship with yourself puts you in a position to have better relationships with everyone in your life. It all flows together. A person who is more confident and secure is a happier person, and a happier person is going to be better able to nurture, share, and give support to all those in her life. Core confidence is the ultimate key to getting the relationship you deserve. You are more able to give love when you live a life you love. If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others. A lot of problems happen because of your internal state. When you’re calm, happy, and fulfilled you don’t pick fights, create drama, or keep score. Only people who are not happy with themselves are mean to others. In relationships with others, it is only you, mirrored. It all starts with you. Most people try to become a better person in order to attract other people. You are changing yourself to please others. It’s just not the right way to do it. Figure out the way to be a better person for yourself.

If you want to fit in with the 99%, you will never become the 1%. Being different is actually far more achievable than being the very best. Try to think of ways that you and your brand separate yourself from the crowd — like interesting stories or unique experiences. Understanding of your true self and your sincerity are what make you unique. As information is increasingly commoditized, personality becomes more important as a differentiating factor. Everyone is trying to find the right person, but nobody is trying to be the right person. Many of us go overboard in trying to impress others because we think that is the best way to be remembered. While that technique sometimes works, far more often it is easier to be memorable than impressive. Once you understand yourself and stay true to yourself, it’s infinitely easier for other people to connect with you. You being connected to what makes YOU feel good, to what YOU LOVE, to what LIGHTS you up, to what FULFILLS you, while FREELY expressing who you are makes people feel the full range of their own souls and heart around you.

Compatibility is the natural alignment of lifestyle choices and values of two people. Great relationships are easy because your value systems line up so perfectly they make you happy being who they are, and you make them happy being who you are. You almost can’t break up because it’s too good of a match. Deep down a lot of bad relationships are power struggles. In a good relationship each person does what they want and does not try to control the other person. It’s also easy for you to go out and make friends or seek a partner and filter out the ones who aren’t a good fit, and it’s better to filter them out and go through a solid filtering process by understanding what you really want before you build an emotional connection. The most important aspect is understanding what you want — what makes a person compatible with you, what personality traits have compatibility with you? The first question you should ask yourself is “What do I want?” And then you should probably ask yourself a few more questions. You need to know what you like and what you want in a partner. Those answers matter. If you don’t know, then you need to cautiously gain enough experience until you do know. This is the foundation because you’re not going to be a priority in a relationship that is not aligned. The only way to know if someone is right for you is to risk being rejected for who you are. A lot of our fear of being vulnerable comes from the idea that we won’t be loved when people really get to know us. For me, the danger isn’t someone getting to know us and then deciding they don’t want us. In a sense, that’s what we want — to see what their true reaction is to our true selves. At that point, when they decide they don’t want us, they really have shown themselves to be the wrong person for us. The right person will be the person that likes us more the more they get to know us. Therefore by opening up, there is no danger of losing someone, because you can only lose the wrong person by opening up, never the right one. The bigger danger as I see it, is someone rejecting us because they never got to know us in the first place. This means being rejected not because we are wrong for them, but because they aren’t being given our true selves to assess in the first place. They are rejecting the artificial or incomplete version of ourselves we have put forward. If we do this our whole lives we’ll never know just how right for us someone could have been. We’re all going to be rejected in our lifetimes. Let’s be rejected for who we actually are, so that we can rest peacefully at night in the knowledge that the person who didn’t want us truly wasn’t right for us in the first place.

Understand what you really want and need. Offer unvarnished honesty. Remember that it starts with you, but in service of your tribe. Find yourself first people will come. Everyone loves an independent person who knows what he/she wants. Find a relationship where you, naturally being you, makes the other person happy. And the other person, naturally being the other person, makes you happy.

(2) Be warm. Understand people and treat them with respect.

If you can portray yourself as warm — i.e., non-competent and friendly — people will feel like they can like you.

If people believe you are looking after their best interests, they will do almost anything that you ask.

Understand others’ wants and needs in the same way that you understand yourself. It’s our responsibility not just to seek a partner/friend that we want, but to find a partner/friend that we’re a good fit for.

(1) Be competent. Become someone worth knowing.

If you seem competent — for example, if you are resourceful, have a high social or economic or educational status, look good, and can maintain integrity and self-respect — they’re more inclined to trust and respect you.

Nothing is sexier than confidence born of competence. People are not equally desirable. And the great irony of life is that nothing makes you more appealing than not needing someone else. The friend is rarely the one who is most able to help you; and in the end, skill and competence are far more important than friendly feelings.

For me, this doesn’t necessarily need to be linked to work. My interest in culture and travel, for example, has enabled me to make remarkable business connections that I would never have made without planting my own new trees.

Develop self-worth by earning credibility with yourself. Get rock solid in your own skin. Impress yourself on the daily. Earn confidence and let it ooze quietly out of your pours. Level up your life and find a very respected career where you have a natural access to high caliber, successful people. Then watch how much easier it gets to find a friend/partner you actually want to be with.

Gain some interesting things about you for others to discover, and some interesting subjects of conversation. Make yourself a worth knowing and more interesting person who has ambitions, hobbies, the energy to go do fun things; the one who is always trying something new, going somewhere exotic, learning something useful, someone who wants hustle and is busy. Knowledge and experience — they leave you speechless, then turn you into a storyteller. Not to mention, you know, having more fun and feeling more satisfied with your life.

There are many ways to have something to say in a conversation, but the worst it to just expect interesting stuff to pop into your head. It probably won’t. You collect interesting tidbits by experiencing the world. That can mean traveling to exotic places, reading interesting books, building complex contraptions, or talking to interesting people.

The common thread is doing stuff that changes you. It doesn’t have to be a huge change, and usually it won’t be. It could just be that you went to a new restaurant or learned a new fact. (Did you know that orange things used to be called “red”? We had no word for orange, except as a name for a kind of fruit. The color was named after the fruit, not the other way around! There are still vestiges of pre-orange in our language. It’s why we say “redhead,” even though most gingers have orange hair.)

This is, by far, the easiest step of the two, but I’m belaboring it, because people misunderstand. They think there are simply interesting people and boring people, as if it’s a trait you’re born with. If you want to be interesting, you have to make yourself interesting by doing interesting things. Luckily, there are interesting things almost anyone can do. They can be physical or intellectual.

Simply put,

If you can make them think, you’ll have their respect.

If you can make them feel, you’ll have the keys to the kingdom.

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Most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.

In fact, warmth is the most important factor in how people evaluate you. It’s important to demonstrate warmth first and then competence, especially in business settings. From an evolutionary perspective, it is more crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our care. It makes sense when you consider that in cavemen days it was more important to figure out if your fellow man was going to kill you and steal all your possessions than if he was competent enough to build a good fire. While competence is highly valued, it is evaluated only after care is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire.

There is great truth in the following axiom, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Or, at least, it’s hard to build trust if you treat people like they’re nothing more than targets.

If someone you’re trying to influence doesn’t like you, you’re not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion because you come across as manipulative. A warm person who is also strong elicits admiration, but only after you’ve established care does your strength become a gift rather than a threat.

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Be aggressive/competent in actions; be kind/warm/sweet in your tone.

Under any circumstances, be polite, be professional, be warm, but always have a plan for yourself.

Win through actions, never through argument. Any momentary triumph you think you have gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory. The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate. Never argue. In society nothing must be discussed; give only results.

If you’re competent in your actions, you can be sweet as pie in your tone. Words are powerful, as long as you use them the right way with the right tone. What’s far more powerful are your actions. Word lose its power when the actions fail to compliment them.

Sometimes people think they have to say something interesting that will endear themselves to others. This is not accurate. There is literally nothing you can say to make others think you are cool.

The dumbest mistake people make in interacting with other people is wearing all of the competence in their tone and none of them in their actions. In other words, people are often ruthless and aggressive and competent in their tone and completely malleable in their actions. The reverse is much more powerful.

Tone isn’t that big of a influence. What tone has the potential to do is show someone they have total power over your emotions. When you become aggressive, all you’re showing is that they have actually had an effect on you and your emotions. You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that happens to you.

Tone just has the ability to make you sound really unattractive and hurt by something. This often ends up making us look immature and someone with a lot of negative energy. Nagging people looks more to them like begging, which makes them disrespect you. Sounding aggressive almost never covers our sole purpose of being aggressive, which is to convey our feelings to another person. I have often noticed that people barely pay attention when you’re aggressive although the purpose was to grab their attention in the first place.

It’s so important to communicate your messages through actions whilst maintaining the calm in your tone. Not only you will find communicating is much easier for you and you get far more attraction, but you’ll actually be the one in control.

The person everyone desires never shows others her/his next move. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. Breathe and allow things to pass. You have a standard. That standard is, you’re a great, kind, positive person. Instead of complaining, remind them with your actions that you’re a strong person who isn’t to be messed with. So if someone does something that doesn’t meet your standards, you don’t become a mean, aggressive, obnoxious, difficult, nasty, snippy person. You stay sweet, kind, positive and warm, like their actions had no impact on you whatsoever! But amidst your kindness, your actions tell the story of the competence. The way the cruelest cutting remark, if it is delivered with a sweet tone, is the most effective instruction, the most memorable correction. That’s the most powerful part of interacting.

For example, you don’t need to build yourself up any more or explain why you’re important or going to be helpful. Never directly tell people how awesome you are and how bad they are. This will make you come off as cocky and arrogant. Be more discreet. Let them figure it out through your “rock bottom to rock star” story. Or even better, give your tribe a platform to say it for you. Stop trying to impress people, start focusing on actually “connecting” with people. Your focus should be on building bridges between your experience and theirs so there are points of recognition, especially if you can organically work in shared struggles or challenges. Maybe you can’t provide what someone is looking for. But, if you can change the angle or way they’re thinking about something by openly working with them, you make them feel like they got something special and unexpected. It’s key that you’re working with them, not for them, so they can have skin in the game. Help people, but do not do their work for them. The worst things you can do for the ones you like are the things they could and should do on their own.

Now think of both situations and think deep. Which of the two people do you find yourself being more attracted to? An arrogant person whom you know you can yet get away with anything, or a kind, happy-go-lucky person who would not put up with your bullshit? The majority of your answers are going to be the 2nd person.

People maybe different to one another but human psychology is more or less the same when it comes to attraction. So as a person, strive more to be what attracts you. Attract what you expect and reflect what you desire. You cannot expect one thing whilst being the complete opposite of it.

So if it’s the person in the second scenario who’s more likely to win your respect and attractions, then that’s the person you need to often strive to be.

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Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise people.

At the end of the day, it’s entirely up to us to follow these etiquette rules. I guess it’s about finding the balance between the being fun and sensitive to everyone. Less is more. Too much of something is bad. On one hand, as mentioned above, we shouldn’t restrict ourselves with rules and regulations that would limit our creativity and spontaneousness of our social interactions. On the other hand, we ought to be aware of the publicness of our behavior to protect ourselves and at the same time respect the fact that each one of us forms part of the social experience of everyone else. Find that right balance and you’ll not only better that experience yourself, but also help others enjoy it as well!

I believe that every virtue lies between vices of deficiency and excess. Too little humor is dry; too much is silly. Too little pride makes us meek; too much breeds narcissism. Too much self-restraint leaves you doing homework while your friends are tailgating. Too little self-restraint means you’ll really regret eating that fourth Scotsman Dog.

The food industry has a term called “The bliss point” — the optimal level of salty and sweet in a food that keeps you wanting more of that food. Try to achieve the bliss point in your communication with other people and they will become addicted to you.

Sophisticated foods are bittersweet (wine, beer, coffee, chocolate). Addictive relationships are cooperative and competitive. Work becomes flow at the limit of ability. The flavor of life is on the edge.

If you want happiness and success, you need to find the sweet spot between the extremes of too little and too much. You need to look for just right.

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(3) Compatibility

You need compatibility. This is where you both agree on the big things: You love each other the way you both want to be loved, and you value the same things they do. And it can also be the small things: Does your sense of adventure fit theirs? In other words, do you align enough at a core level to be able to be in a harmonious relationship? The long-term success of a relationship is catalyzed by compatibility, yet we often overlook it.

Everyone has good intentions. Everyone believes they’re doing it for someone or something else. The only true measures are actions and results. Intentions won’t determine how beautiful, pain-free or conflict-free your relationship is. Those things will come from the relationship of intention with ability. Because your reality is going to be determined by their ability to deliver action on the outside, not what they feel on the inside, you should find someone who “speaks your language” so you don’t have to spend a lifetime translating your spirit.

When you begin to understand more about yourself and others, you start to realize that there’re certain types of people that you might not be a good fit for.

Great relationship is when two people participate in ongoing, shared experiences to meet their needs. It is aligned around value and values. Value — people get some utility that helps them solve a core problem. Values — people build their identity around common mission or interest and bond with others who share it.

There are all kinds of different people in the world, many of whom value different kinds of things. If you find you can’t reconcile major differences — especially in values — consider whether the relationship is worth preserving. If you find you can’t get in sync with someone on shared values, you should consider whether that person is worth keeping in your life. A lack of common values will lead to a lot of pain and other harmful consequences and may ultimately drive you apart. It might be better to head all that off as soon as you see it coming.

Compatibility is a two-way street. Compatibility is the natural alignment of lifestyle choices and values of two people. A youth minister and a drug dealer are probably incompatible and I doubt many end up dating each other.

Compatibility is about the long-term potential of two people. High compatibility comes from similarities in lifestyles and values. Generally speaking, educated liberal people usually date other educated and liberal people. Hedonists usually date other hedonists. Insane religious nuts usually date other insane religious nuts.

Areas of compatibility:

• Life priorities — Where does each of you see yourself in the next five years? Is it climbing the corporate ladder or living out your days on a tropical beach? Does one want to have a kid and settle down while the other wants a carefree life?
• Preferences — Are there activities you both enjoy? Is one of you comfortable living in a dumpster while the other is a clean freak? Does one turn up to dates on time while the other is perennially two hours late?
• Fundamental beliefs — Is one of you a career scientist while the other bounces from one conspiracy theory to another?
• Values — Our values are the origin from which most (if not all) of the above flow. If your values are not aligned with your significant other’s, then I have bad news for you.
• Favorite flavor of burrito — It all comes back to burritos. Always.
• The way your partner laughs at your jokes
• The questions they ask you about your day
• The way you hold each other in bed
• How they help you decorate your new apartment
• The way they smell
• How they always ask you for a bite of your burrito and when you say no they take a bite anyways but look so damn cute while doing it you can never bring yourself to feel mad — this is the definition of true love, by the way.

Find a relationship where you, naturally being you, makes the other person happy. And the other person, naturally being the other person, makes you happy. Our relationships are mirrors. When who we’re with isn’t a reflection of the values we hold, we feel dissonance. Making mutual decisions together and collaborating together on life goals moving from the “I” to the “We” is important. There should be a feeling of excitement. There should be this energy where you both feel a desire to build an incredible life together to face the world as a team. If you’re not feeling that, it’s like roller-skating up a hill.

To build a great relationship, bring people around *value* — some common utility that solves a core problem. And then hook them with values — get them opening up to you so they feel connected.

*Value* is acquisition. *Values* is retention.

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I broke down relationship development into the following:

• Social networks

• Email outreach

• In-person meetings

• Events

See How To Transition From Finance To Tech for more information.