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All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life
The Easy Way to Build and Maintain Meaningful Relationships with Nick Gray
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- [00:00]
Chris Hutchins
Nick Gray might be one of the most interesting people I know. He's thrown parties at museums, he's held a conference for his birthday, and he's built a life full of meaningful connections, not by chance, but with intention and repeatable tactics. So today we're diving into what Nick does best and discussing why sending a casual friend's newsletter might be a secret weapon for staying in touch. How to make hosting parties, including a last minute holiday party, so easy and and what it takes to build meaningful relationships without making it a full time job. As Nick puts it, we get so.
- [00:35]
Nick Gray
Many big benefits in life through those weak ties or loose connections. Big benefits like new job opportunities, new investors, new employees, or even new friends.
- [00:45]
Chris Hutchins
We also get tactical about building personal websites, taking cruise vacations, and more. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, leave a comment or share it with a friend and subscribe. And if you want to keep upgrading your money points and life, click follow or subscribe.
- [01:00]
Nick, how are you so good at building and maintaining relationships?
- [01:05]
Nick Gray
I think you have to give more value than you ever try to take. And I really think about how can I give value through hosting meetups or happy hours. My friend's newsletter that's never self promotional, really trying to think how I can give rather than how I can get, if that makes sense. I'll try to get into the tactics, but I want to see if that gets at what you're noodling on.
- [01:27]
Chris Hutchins
No, no, it does. I mean, one of the things you gave me, I'm holding my Nick42 notebook. I thought one of the things that really just set you aside from so many people as you held a conference for your birthday that I was fortunate enough to be an attendee of and I got to meet so many awesome people and I was like, gosh, Nick just has it figured out. He's not only good at getting the right people together, he's good at staying in touch with people he doesn't live near. What do you think most people get wrong about staying in touch?
- [01:53]
Nick Gray
Oh, staying in touch. I think a lot of people do great with their family and with their close friends. But as we get older and as we get into relationships and have kids, it's a lot harder to keep those loose connections or weak ties. Now, someone like you, Chris, you have a podcast, you have social media, you're very active on those channels, so you stay top of mind for people. But a lot of others just kind of disappear into their small bubble. I have found that if you host a happy Hour. If you do a meetup once a year, I say meetup, but I'm talking about a happy hour with a mixed bag of people that are loose connections or weak ties. If you can do that, if you can send out a little friends newsletter, like I call it, once a year, you will be doing more than 95% of the people. And we get so many big benefits in life through those weak ties or loose connections. Big benefits like new job opportunities, new investors, new employees, or even new friends.
- [02:49]
Chris Hutchins
And so that's keeping people in touch. I'm going to come back to all these things you just said. What do you think about making new friends and adding to that network?
- [02:57]
Nick Gray
I think making new friends for adults is like, scientifically very, very hard, especially for men. There's an idea that there's a friendship recession or a loneliness epidemic. And I think it can really be hard to make new friends. I mean, think about it. If you meet somebody, like, do people reach out to you? And like, Chris, I'd love to meet up for coffee or something like that. And it's just so hard. Like, you honestly might want to get to know them, but it's very hard to make time or space in the schedule.
- [03:26]
Chris Hutchins
I find that it's as you get older, your close friends move further apart. And it's like, I've got a bunch of friends, but they don't live in the neighborhood and I'm not gonna go grab dinner with them on the week. So that group of people that live nearby ends up defaulting. If you have kids, like, it's your kids friend's parents, but maybe those aren't your best friends. So, like building that set of relationships as an adult that's nearby that you can kind of go, I had a horrible day. Can we just go grab a beer at the bar? I have a lot of friends I would like to do that with, but they just don't live close enough that it's physically possible. And so I definitely think that one of the challenges, interestingly enough, might not be finding people because they're all over the place. Like, I meet people at the park, I meet people at kids school event I went to this morning, I met a bunch of parents. It's kind of running through some process to turn the very, very loose relationships into some kind of is this a person I want to spend more time with? And I think a lot of what we're going to talk about today are helpful ways to build those relationships deeper so you can find out, do I want to hang out with this person in my sauna or do I just want to see them at like school drop off?
- [04:32]
Nick Gray
Right. Well, we know scientifically that new friendships and relationships happen to through exposure over time. And there are ways to accelerate those new connections and how deep you go. You and I have both been to some great conferences where they do tips and tactics and some techniques to try to accelerate that vulnerability. But most friendships, most true friendships, happen through a specific number of times. I don't know the exact number, but it's a number of times that you have to see someone over and over again. And that's why it's so easy for people to make friends through things like run clubs today through kids birthday parties, because it's that constant exposure to people. I personally am going to advocate, as you know, that a good way to get that exposure or to force that is through hosting a little happy hour or a meetup with the random kind of interesting people that you want to meet.
- [05:25]
Chris Hutchins
So back in episode 68, I can't believe it, almost 200 episodes ago you came on and we talked all about hosting a cocktail party. You've written this, the book on hosting a two hour cocktail party. So I don't want to go down every tactic of that here because anyone listening can go to all the hacks.com 68 scroll through the feed. So if people want to go listen to the masterclass on doing a cocktail party with friends, I'm going to send them there. At a high level, what makes the formula you're talking about different for people who kind of want a little taste of what that episode brings and how much easier it can be?
- [05:59]
Nick Gray
Okay, so very high level, you're listening to this. It's probably near the holidays and a lot of people might be throwing holiday parties. You do not have to make your party complicated. You can simply host a happy hour even if you don't drink alcohol. You can call it a meetup, you can call it a get together, whatever it is. You can host a simple happy hour with basic finger foods and snacks and a limited self serve bar. And in the same time it takes you to watch a movie on Netflix. You can connect with 15 to 25 people to keep those connections and keep yourself top of mind. It involves name tags, which I know is like super cringe to some people and a few rounds of introductions. And you do those introductions to help people meet others. But I said at the beginning of the episode that giving more value than you take this party is about giving your friends the value of meeting new people. So the ideal party or gathering or get together is where you invite people from different buckets of your life that could be work, school, parents, LinkedIn, random high school friends, the barista at the coffee shop. You're just inviting some random folks. I have taught hundreds if not thousands of people how to do this and it has changed their lives and it changed my life. I know that it works, but like, for some reason I just feel like maybe people will do it or they won't. I don't know how do you think, Chris, that I could try to convince people that they should do it?
- [07:25]
Chris Hutchins
So I think go back and listen to the episode and there's a formula and we're not going to cover it. We use this tactic last year and we held a holiday cookie party and it was not overly complicated. I think we did bake the cookies, but other than that it was like we pre batched, we had two cocktails, two types of wine. You want anything else? Sorry, put out a bunch of cookies, gave people a thing to do, invited people from different groups, and now it's a thing. People are like, hey, are you doing that holiday cookie party? We did it probably over three hours and then it was just like, come whenever but like hard stop hard out at this time, we're going to kick people out the door. And it was fantastic. And I think the holidays are a great excuse to just get together. Lots of people in a casual setting. It's not like a dinner where you need to, hey, are you sure you're in? Are you going to be here at this time? Am I going to feed you? What are your allergies? It's just stressful. But for me having this anchor moment of like, hey, we're doing this thing, if I go meet someone interesting, I can say, hey, we're gonna do a holiday cookie party. If you're around.
- [08:25]
Nick Gray
That's what it is. It's if you meet someone interesting, you have something to invite them to. And if you listen to all the hacks, you wanna make your life better. You should be going through life collecting the interesting people that you meet. And the easiest way to add them into your world is to invite them to something like a Christmas cookie party. I love the idea of like a holiday cookie party, by the way, because it's easy. Everybody's like, oh, I get that, you know, I can pop in, I can drop in. A key piece of advice is, please do not do a dinner party if you have never hosted before. If you are new to this, just don't do a Dinner party. It's logistically complicated and yet that is what people associate with being a host. Chris, you're getting me all spun up because like I will preach about this. So I want to temper down to talk about other stuff. But yes, listen to episode 68 I think he said for the exact formula. Some small changes since we recorded that two or three years ago. I do more smaller group things where at the party instead of having everybody go around and introduce themselves, I'll break people up into groups of three to five or so at the beginning. So that's one change. The second is the two platforms I like for collecting RSVPs today. Number one, Partyful P A R T I F U L and number two is Luma L U M A Number three is still mixaly M I X I L Y But I find more and more people are using partyful and it just makes it so easy. You need to collect the RSVPs. That's very, very important. Listen to episode 68 to find out why.
- [09:57]
Chris Hutchins
So that's our plan. We're going to keep doing it. I'm going to push myself to try to have another something on the docket maybe every three to six months. Just so you have a thing, right? Like it's nice to be like, hey, in the spring we're doing this. Do you want to come? Even better if you want to go to like advanced 401 level, Nick would say like have one always scheduled. So when you meet the cool family at the park, you're like, hey, we're doing this thing on March 14th. Do you want to come? I will send you an invite. I'm not at that level yet. I'm hoping that as life gets a little easier, we will get there. The last few months have been crazy, but that is one tactic that I think is excellent. I refer so many people to that episode and I'm like, this is what you should do. You should do this thing.
- [10:38]
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- [12:00]
Chris Hutchins
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- [13:27]
The other thing I think you do really well to maintain relationships and it's probably like one of the reasons we're talking today is that you send a newsletter. But not like me, like I said, a newsletter every week. Of all the Interesting stuff I find, and it's a lot of work, but it's my job and it requires a ton of energy. You send a newsletter that is not your business and you don't send it every week. And it allows me to stay connected with your life even when we're not talking.
- [13:52]
Nick Gray
Yeah.
- [13:53]
Chris Hutchins
Can you talk a little bit about it? Cause I think more people need to be doing this.
- [13:55]
Nick Gray
Yes, I agree completely and more people need to be doing it. And please, you don't need to sign up for complicated software. I will show you and tell you the easiest way that you can do it. But I want to go back to where this is rooted in. My parents were both in the military, and when you're in the military, you switch around to different bases. And so for military people, they had a tradition of sending an annual Christmas card. And it wasn't just a Christmas card, but there was a letter that was inside that they would type up some life updates. Do you get this from anyone?
- [14:26]
Chris Hutchins
Yeah, my grandparents had one every single year. I think my in laws do this. My parents, I don't know if we do it every year, but they have in the past done something like this. It feels like a tradition of our parents and above generation that's kind of been lost because I think our version of it is a horrible version. But it's like my Instagram feed, which is definitely not the same thing.
- [14:48]
Nick Gray
Right? It's not the same thing. I want you to send an annual Life Updates email. And that's how I started mine. It was called my friend's Newsletter. I sent it, I think around every Thanksgiving and I just send it out with some life updates. But also adding value. And this is important. If you want to do this. You need to tell people what are the best TV shows that you watched in the last year? What are the best books that you read? What are the coolest stuff you bought on Amazon? You want to add with value to people. So I find that that's in sharing recommendations first and then my life updates later. I think everybody should do this. And around the holidays is a great time to do it because it's rooted in that annual holiday newsletter. I do mine every couple months. It's supposed to be monthly, but if I don't have something to send, I don't force myself to send it. And I try to include cool things that I've done recently.
- [15:39]
Chris Hutchins
Share a couple examples. I talked about this in my newsletter, but I haven't talked about on the podcast. You recently went on an Amazon tour?
- [15:45]
Nick Gray
Yeah. Do People know this that you can sign up for Amazon Warehouse tours for free. It's part of this new PR initiative. They used to have them in Seattle and if you were in town, you could do it. They've now rolled it out to all of their warehouses, or not all, but like 50 or 60 of them in North America. There's two in Canada. And it's a free one hour tour that obviously they're doing for like a PR thing, but it was really cool. And for supply chain nerds, for e commerce nerds, if you want to see in the belly of the beast of a multi trillion dollar business, you gotta sign up. So that's what I did. I went on the tour and I wrote about it on my newsletter. Cause I was like, I think people should go do this. This was cool.
- [16:26]
Chris Hutchins
I saw that the closest one's like an hour and a half and I can't remember the kids age limit. So I was like, gosh, one of my kids is almost old enough to do it. So like it is on the docket to do and. And if we lived closer, we'd be doing it even sooner. And so I loved it. I just got your newsletter and I was like, this is so cool. You're always sharing links to articles that are interesting. In a way, my newsletter kind of started like this. It was like, here's the interesting stuff I found. And then only in the last four or five months did I start including the life update part. And I got all this feedback both from other creators and subscribers that are like, this is my favorite part. Yes, I want to know about the best deals, but also what show did you watch last? The most replies I get to the newsletter are responses thanking the TV show recommendations. Like it seems so crazy because the primary point of the newsletter when I started it was there's all these deals happening every week. Which ones are really important? Like what are the big card signup bonuses? What are the big promotions you want to act on? That was the purpose. And then I was like, well this podcast I listen to, Animal Spirits. They always throw shows and movies into it. So I was like, let me just try that. And someone's like, oh my God, I've never found this show. And you know, I'm not gonna share the most obvious movie that everyone's seen in the holidays. But like, if I find a weird obscure show, I'll throw it in there and I get all this great feedback.
- [17:47]
Nick Gray
I love that. I'm also gonna give you one additional tip that I suggest for your newsletter. This Works for everybody. At the end of the newsletter, you have to include a selfie. You gotta include a picture of yourself. And it should be candid. The more candid, the the better. Obviously, make yourself look good, but like, you gotta include a picture. A friend of mine is a venture capitalist and she would send this weekly newsletter out with market analysis and tips and trends. A very heady newsletter. I told her, caitlin, people wanna do business with people that they like. And you need to create that human connection a little bit more. And so she started including a selfie of the week at the very end of the newsletter. And she said, it's people's favorite part. It gets them to scroll all the way down to the bottom. She hears more about it than anybody else. And it's rooted again in that annual card, annual Life Update letter. We want to do business. We want to be friends with people that we like and that we get good stuff from. And so I think tying your personal selfie into it, I love that.
- [18:51]
Chris Hutchins
I love that idea. I'll put that in this weekend. Tomorrow newsletter goes out tomorrow morning. As we're recording this on a Friday, I'm going to throw a selfie at the bottom. By the time someone listens to this, it will either it'll be a trend that we do every time or we'll see. But I will say, this is not just for creators. It's not for people with businesses. You know, like you said, it's a way to stay in touch with people. I assume it's fine if it has 20 subscribers. This doesn't need to be a big business operation where you're signing up for email newsletter software, does it?
- [19:19]
Nick Gray
No. I'm so glad you mentioned that. You don't need to sign up for email newsletter software for this. You're going to send this through your Gmail or whatever. And very important, just put people in the bcc. Now you can say at the very bottom, hey, this is my annual life update. Write me back if you want to be removed. I won't be offended. And of course, we can still be friends. You're not going to spam the random realtor that you used four years ago with this, but you're going to look through your contacts and you're going to pick out folks. And I would say if you're on the verge of. Should I include them or not? Yes, include them. However, I want to give you a caveat at the top of the newsletter. If this is the first time you do this, you need to say what this is and so as an example, in every issue of my friends newsletter, what I say is, hey, this is Nick Gray's friends newsletter. Here's a little bit about me. If you forgot who I am, we probably met within the last few years. I send this to keep in touch with my best friends and people that I just met that I want to stay in touch with. If you don't want to receive it, write me back. I'll remove. You won't be offended at all. But I include that at the top. And that goes into the why you're doing it and telling them why to get their buy in. If you send out some first thing, welcome to my annual newsletter. As I like, nobody cares. Just get to the TV show recommendations.
- [20:38]
Chris Hutchins
Can you think of anything specific that because of the newsletter, something awesome in your life happened?
- [20:43]
Nick Gray
Oh, my God. Yeah. I sent out a newsletter about a week ago. I mean, this is such a specific example. One of the managers for one of the biggest creators that's out there reached out to me because he wanted to get my advice on something. And now we're gonna work together on a new project in January. And that was like, my newsletter kept me top of mind and he thought about me. He got it and he gave me a call to chat about something else. This happens to me all the time. And honestly, you don't have to send it every month or every other month like I do, but if you send it two or three times a year, you will be shocked at the value that comes out of these weak ties or loose connections that you stay in touch with.
- [21:29]
Chris Hutchins
Another thing, like a TV show recommendation that I've started, including that people have given me really positive feedback, is recipes of things we've cooked. Like, we made this recipe last week. It was amazing. Everybody loved it. Highly recommend things that people can do, whether it's here's a cool article, here's a cool website, here's a cool app here. Like, just things that are easy. Like a recommendation for a hotel in a place is less relevant but more relevant with a story. We just spent a week here with the family relaxing. People love that. But if you're just like, here's a cool hotel, it's less interesting. So I would encourage people to intertwine the story of how you found the thing or how you engage with the thing or how it made you feel. Because that's what I want to hear from people I know.
- [22:16]
Nick Gray
Yes, Yes, I like this. I'm thinking of other easy ways for people to think. Like, what type of content should I Include. I'll give you a couple of ideas. Number one, hop on your Amazon if you use Amazon or if you use some other service and go to your order history page. Scroll through your order history to remind you of any great things that you've purchased that you really love. Kitchen gadgets, new shampoo. These are slice of life daily things that make us human. And we love good recommendations from people that we know. So that's number one. Look through your Amazon recent order history to find stuff and I'll even go back over the last year and be like, oh, that's right. I love that new spatula. I say spatula and like, that seems so little and silly, but it's real. We don't know what to trust and who to trust these days.
- [23:06]
Chris Hutchins
If you sent a spatula in your next newsletter, like, I need a new spatula. I don't want to do the research. If you sent it, I would literally buy it on the spot.
- [23:13]
Nick Gray
Right, right. It's super helpful. All right, so that's one. The other is I would say open up your phone and look at the apps that you use on a daily basis because the apps that we all use are definitely not the same. I live in Austin, Texas, and I found an app that helps me book tennis lessons here locally. And it's so easy to do and it just makes it easier. That's a cool app that I use that maybe not everybody else does. I love those little sections in newsletters where people share about the different things that they're using on a daily basis. I think those are two really good places to start. The last one, I would say, is shows. Shows that you've watched over the last year could be a podcast, it could be a movie, it could be a streaming series. It's almost like the more trashy, the better. I don't want to know about your, like, documentary about the history of New York City unless it's amazing and incredible. But I want to know, like, oh my God, did you love Dancing with the Stars? I'm now in a relationship and I'm like, looking for shows that we can watch together. So I'm keeping and I'm going to include in my next newsletter some of the new shows we watched that we liked.
- [24:21]
Chris Hutchins
Our trashy, binge worthy show has always been below deck.
- [24:25]
Nick Gray
You're a below deck.
- [24:26]
Chris Hutchins
Wow. But not the. I don't think we've ever seen the actual one we've watched, like the saline one and the Mediterranean one. I don't think we've. You actually ever Watched the regular one.
- [24:34]
Nick Gray
Speaking of Below deck, would you ever do that, like a charter a boat with a group of friends?
- [24:40]
Chris Hutchins
Let me make this really real. I have a friend who has not only chartered a boat, but on Below Deck. He did the casting thing and went on it as a guest. And it was so funny because I was watching that episode and this is a friend that's like, would be on my friend's newsletter but wouldn't talk to that frequently. Definitely a work acquaintance more than a friend, to be honest. And I was watching, I was like, that guy looks so familiar. He looks so familiar. And I started researching, I saw his name and then I saw him at a conference and I was like, what did you think? And he was like, it was so much fun. If anyone's ever watched, I don't remember what season or what show, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But he's like the only guest that wasn't awful. Almost everyone on these reality shows are awful. And he came with like pirate outfits for the crew to like do a competition. And so ever since he did that, he's like, you got to do it. It was so much fun. And so I emailed the Below Deck casting team and I was like, hey, I think it'd be really fun to do this. Let me know. And I get the email from Below Deck casting every probably three to six months. And every time I send it to my wife Amy and I'm like, hey, they're casting season 13. What do you think? And she's like, we're not doing this. And one like, I'm going to break her down by season 28. You know, the kids are a little older and it feels safe to bring them on a bow. Like, we're going to do this one time. It is wildly expensive. Forget the cost to charter a boat, they subsidize it. But I pulled this email up, it says, hey, we're working on blow deck season 13. It's going to be in Phuket, Thailand. The charters will be in February, March 2026. We need groups of eight. I have to get them all on a Zoom interview. We want fun groups who want good service and five star lifestyle. The discounted price is 70 grand for three days or 80 grand for four days. It includes two nights in a hotel in the yacht. That would normally be 250 grand for those days. I'm not very exposed to the cost of chartering yachts, so I guess this is a good deal. But it's very expensive. I think with the $20,000 suggested tip, it's a core part of the show. The guest hands a tip, they state the amount of the tip on air. So like you don't want to be the bad tipper. So like you're going to probably go a little over that. So I'd say it's like $100,000 commitment across eight people or four couples, you know, so that's like $25,000 for a three night vacation. The only possible way I could mentally justify it is like, well, is this a business expense? Do we get to talk about the podcast? Haven't really gotten that far, but my friend said it was so much fun and it was like a once in a lifetime experience. He thought it was so great, but at once he's like, I don't want to do it again, but it was really fun.
- [27:15]
Nick Gray
I love that idea. That is so expensive. I had no idea it was like 25 grand per couple for. For only three days.
- [27:22]
Chris Hutchins
Yeah, that's a lot to go back. Would I ever charter a boat? By the way, these are like really high end boats that they charter that have all these pool toy like they have like what are those things? The hydrofoils, the one that Zuckerberg was flying with the American flag. They like have all of those for you. But we've talked about how it would be fun to like go on a boat tour all the way, ranging from like a European river cruise to a boat where you're like chartering a boat for the whole family or doing something like that. My parents owned a boat a long time ago with a friend. They were sailing and like that sounds fun, but it also feels very tight quarter. You know, it's like, it's a very tight quarters thing that is somewhat not top of mind with really young kids from a safety standpoint. But at some point, I don't know, I think it'd be kind of fun. Have you done it? Would you do it?
- [28:11]
Nick Gray
I would like to do it. I think it does cater towards either being extremely generous and paying for it all or having other high net worth friends who could afford to do it.
- [28:23]
Chris Hutchins
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- [29:38]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
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- [31:05]
Nick Gray
Order, I would like to wade into controversial waters and ask as a travel person who has a lot of travel folks on the show, what do you think about cruises? What does your audience think about Cruises. And, and my opinion is maybe not what people are thinking, but because this is all the hacks. I want to tell you how you can hack a cruise.
- [31:26]
Chris Hutchins
We did one episode on cruises where we're like, here's all the deals and tricks on cruises. It was a couple of years ago, so I'm curious what your thoughts are in addition to those. I've done one cruise and I would say I'm open to it. Right. We've talked actively about doing another one. The thing that really excites me about cruises as someone with two kids is prior to kids, my style of travel, it's totally fine to go to Japan and spend two or three days here, pop around the idea of lugging kids, packing them up, moving here, packing them up, moving here.
- [32:00]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
It sounds miserable.
- [32:01]
Chris Hutchins
And so when we do travel now, it's like, we're going to Japan, we're going to spend like five days in one place, four days in another place, and that's it. We're not moving around a lot. But the idea of being able to see a bunch of interesting places and have all the entertainment confined and easily accessible. As a parent, it sounds incredible. And honestly, we've been looking at it and one of the challenges that's held us back for anyone looking at this is we looked at doing one around Europe in the summer and a lot of the really big cruise ships dock, let's call it 20, 30 minutes outside of central downtown. And so our daughter was still napping and we were like, this doesn't work because you got to go into town and then you got to come back to the boat to nap. So we started looking at these river cruises which are really interesting because they're a little smaller, but there's still some really good family friendly ones. But they're small enough boats, they just stop like right downtown in these sit not major cities. It's not going through Paris. So we were looking at doing that this summer. It was an idea for this coming summer. But now that our daughter doesn't nap, the idea of being 20 minutes away from the city is also fine. I am definitely not a cruising person. I see a future where cruising would be a fun thing to do. But maybe not every trip.
- [33:16]
Nick Gray
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:17]
Chris Hutchins
Certainly not every trip. I'm not even gonna say maybe. What's your stance?
- [33:20]
Nick Gray
So here's my stance. All the hacks listeners are people who like to optimize and they're people who appreciate bending the world to their life and lifestyle. If you think about going on a cruise as a Way to live aboard a hotel with full service. It's not a luxury hotel because your room is tiny, right? So I'm not gonna say this is like a luxury, but it's like a hotel with a nice room that gets serviced one or two times a day with unlimited food, with restaurants open and a gym open all the time. And now with Starlink Internet that is on many cruise ships, you can actually work on the ship, which you could not in the past. If you think about the cruise as that is our bare minimum. It is a hotel with food and restaurants on board that happens to be floating around to a variety of places. And we can take what we want from that experience. I will tell you, when I cruise some of the ports I don't even get off on, maybe I'll go off to just like stretch my legs and walk. But I'm like Acapulco or like whatever it is, Cancun. I got to get off the ship. Like, I'm good. You know what? Like, I'm going to hang and read and enjoy this book. The nighttime shows. I never go to the nighttime shows. I mean, maybe I'll go if they have like Broadway, like six is playing on some of the shows, which is good, but most of the shows, I never go to those shows. And so I do not think of a cruise as my one vacation that I have to do. Like, bro, like, I'm not in the casinos, I'm not going to the fancy restaurants. Like, I'm on that ship living a little bit more serviced lifestyle like I do at home. And it's a great place to go with parents. It's a great place to take kids. I appreciate being on a cruise ship as life. And you can do them rather economically. You don't have to opt in for the shore excursions. You don't have to go to the premium restaurants. There are many cruises that you can do for about $150 a day per person, maybe even less. Where you get to travel around. You, you have this room that gets serviced, you have food, you have a gym. So I think about a cruise and sometimes I've been on cruises where I will do them as a reading cruise. And my goal is to power through three or four books. And I'm reading for hours and hours a day. Or maybe I'm writing, I'm working on a new book, or I'm working on something else. I will go to get that focus time on the cruise. You can also think about this as quality time with your partner or something like that, but just know that you don't have to do everything. They will try to funnel you in to this Mall of America type lifestyle. You don't have to do that. Like just opt out of it and live your life. And if you can think about a cruise as supporting you with that infrastructure that happens to be traveling the world to some amazing destinations, it's a real bonus.
- [36:12]
Chris Hutchins
I love that. I think it's in our future to experiment with. There used to be some really great advanced hacks to get free cruises where you could match one credit card to casino status at one hotel. If you have status at a casino, you usually get offered free cruises because they think you'll gamble. But if you get one casino status, you can usually match it to other casino statuses. And so one of our frequent guests, Nick from Frequent Miler, has a post about like how to status match all the casinos. He's probably been on 30 or 40 cruises and never paid for almost any of them other than the additional person fee. All by starting with like one casino status and finding ways to to get through it. And there are people that go really deep on this. They figure out, well, here's the way to gamble without losing money by doing these matched bets where you can like bet on one thing in one casino and one thing in the other and do it online, but build up the amount of money you've bet such that they're now sending you in upgrades and all this stuff. So there's a way to hack the cruise game, but like you said, it's not that expensive. The reason I love points and miles for hotels is that you can go stay at a $5,000 suite at the Park Hyatt for a fraction of it. Cruises are just not that expensive. Yes, they have giant suites that I'm sure are, but you're not going for the luxurious room like you said.
- [37:36]
Nick Gray
Yeah. And you know what? There's really not a way beyond this gambling thing with the casinos, which I would not personally get involved with. But I think there's no way to use points until like game the cruise. I have found there's a site that's like Google flights for Cruises. It's called CruiseSheet.com and it will rank and list the cruises and you can sort by itineraries and things. It's really easy to use and it lists it in a matter of fact nation. And it's very similar pricing that you could get from a travel agent. There's not a lot of markup on it. So that's the site that I use. It's run by a friend of mine, very, very good, nerdy guy who just wanted to create a cruise search engine.
- [38:15]
Chris Hutchins
Yes. Episode 146 was the episode about cruises. If anyone's interested. That is something on the docket that I think, especially with kids, feels like it's something we want to at least experiment with. Like, at least find out if that's a vacation we like. It's not like you have to do it every year if you do it once. But the parents thing is also interesting because we went to Japan with my parents. And what we noticed was at a certain point, the amount of walking we wanted to do was very different than the amount of walking they wanted to do. And so a lot of the things we wanted to do, they were like. Like, we can't go at your pace. And so the more centrally everyone is, which almost invariably doesn't happen in a giant metropolis of any city, the less you're actually going to spend time with those family members.
- [39:00]
Nick Gray
This is why I love cruises, because it's like the food is handled, but is it good? The food is fine, or good, it's not great. And I think that is a little of the releasing expectations that it's like, look, if you want great food, if you want to eat like a local, fine, get off the ship, find some place, go see that stuff. And then you come back and you hit your macros and just that idea of, like, hitting your macros. I'm not going on a cruise to eat great, amazing food. I'm going on a cruise. I. I eat good food. It's like eating at the Whole Foods hot bar or something. Is the Whole Foods hot bar good, Great food? No, it's fine. But it's good. It's great because I have unlimited selections. I don't have to deal with the bill. It's available anytime, it's free. It's all included. So I think about that. But look, if you're somebody who absolutely hates the idea of buffets, for example, which, by the way, on cruises, a little hack. Because it's all the hacks. When you go to the seated meals where the waiters serve you, you can order multiple appetizers and multiple mains and the portions are tiny. So I'm the guy there that's ordering six appetizers. I'm ordering two or three different mains. Now, I don't waste my food. I'm not throwing stuff away, but I'm eating and I'm trying a lot of different things.
- [40:18]
Chris Hutchins
You're getting those macros.
- [40:19]
Nick Gray
I'm getting those macros. I'm hitting the gym like twice a day.
- [40:22]
Chris Hutchins
When it comes to building your relationships, building your network and all this stuff, one of the things you've been doing a lot more recently is helping people set up personal websites. And I remember back in the day when About Me launched, everyone in Silicon Valley set up their, like About Me slash Chris Hutchins, and I had a simple landing page and it never really evolved. I don't even know if it's still there. But something I tell so many people, and I'm not talking about content creators, just owning the place that people will go when they search for your name is valuable. And then I kind of leave it at that. What do you think about this? Like you've been going down this rabbit hole helping people. What should people be doing here?
- [41:00]
Nick Gray
I feel so strongly about this. And this is a great hack that for less than like $30 a year, listeners can change how they appear on the Internet. Now, first I want to say why you need this. Look, this is for not content creators. This is for my wife. This is for Chris's wife. This is for my parents. You need to own something beyond your social media. That is your page, that is your results. When people search for you, by the way, with AI and with ChatGPT and the large language models that are crawling things, if you are a content creator, if you post once a month on LinkedIn, you want that stuff to show up and be crawled and scraped so that it is about your story. The gist is anyone listening to this should probably have a personal website. Now, ideally you have like YourName.com or YourName.net, but if you have a generic name, it's okay to get something like thenickgray.com or nickgraynews.com or nickgraytexas.com but you want to have your page on the Internet where you write a little bit about yourself at the very basic, just something that has about who you are, what you're working on, and how to get in touch with you. Linking to your other social media. Think of it as proactive reputation management. This is your name tag on the Internet. And when you go out, when someone searches for you, and I promise, people do search for you, maybe not multiple times a day, but definitely at least once a week. And that means your employees, your coworkers, the parents at your kid's school, the bank officer when you're trying to get a loan, even for job applicants. I heard from a Recruiter three weeks ago. She said, anytime I find someone that has a personal website in addition to their resume, that is a small signal that is a check plus for her that she says it shows that they show a little bit more effort almost. There's a thousand reasons. What have I said, Chris, that like you think would resonate with your listeners? I'm so deep in the technical side of this that I forget to zoom out occasionally.
- [43:07]
Chris Hutchins
I don't think anyone's going to bat an eye at this concept, but I think the question would be like, well, I don't have that much to say. What am I even gonna put on this page? How much work is it to set it up? How do you simplify this to be like, let's make it something that you can do in an hour.
- [43:22]
Nick Gray
Oh, this is fantastic. And I do have a Google Doc that I can link that is like the free way for you to set up a lot of this stuff. And I'll try to include that in the show notes. But here's exactly how, number one, you need to buy your domain name.
- [43:35]
Chris Hutchins
Now.
- [43:35]
Nick Gray
I do not like Godaddy because they try to upsell you with all these things. Security, protection, email, all this other stuff. I prefer to use Cloudflare domains. So that's domains.cloudflare.com. it's a little bit technical to register, but if you listen to all the hacks, you can figure it out and they charge you the exact cost of what the name is. You don't need to buy anything else. It's about $11 a year to buy your name. Who do you like? For names I like, maybe Namecheap is number two, but I don't even know.
- [44:07]
Chris Hutchins
I used to use Google Domains. They for some reason migrated to Squarespace domains. Hover was a good place. I liked hover.com. i also, by the way, have most of my domains, I think at Cloudflare. But I will say it is more technical if you're just buying a domain. Any of the places we mentioned are fine.
- [44:25]
Nick Gray
So you need to have your domain name. Okay, so that's the first thing. And the next thing is that you need a simple webpage to hook it up to. Probably the most simple thing that people can do is a service called Carrd C A R R D CO. Very easy. It's a simple one page site that I believe the pro plan is $20 per year. And so now you've spent $10 for your domain and $20 for a card site that includes five different sites that you can Create so you could create one for your family members, for your business, whatever you want to create that and have something on the Internet. But then the next thing is you need Google to find it and you need to put stuff on it. And so if you're wondering what would I put on it, I would copy your Resume, copy your LinkedIn, dump it into ChatGPT and ask, say, hey, I'm trying to create a simple one page website that talks about me things that I like. It's meant to be more personal than professional. But I do want to include some professional things. Please ask me some questions and use my resume to help me create that. And then you create it, you copy, you paste it and you put on your site. The final thing that you need to do is you need to create some links to that so that Google can find it and you'll start to show up in ChatGPT and other places. One of the easiest ways to do it is in your LinkedIn, in your contact or your bio. You can have an unlimited number of links link to your website. You don't have to tell everybody that you have it if you don't want to, but just add it in there so that it can get discovered on the Internet. A bonus pro tip is share it out. If you are on LinkedIn, make it as a post. If you're on Twitter, tweet it out. That helps these places to discover your site. And now when you go into ChatGPT and say who is Chris Hudgens in California? It's going to start to tell about you. It takes a couple times, a few weeks, sometimes a few months, but then you start to be listed and indexed and you can tell your story. And that's what we want to do is we just want to put your best foot forward. For anyone that's trying to find out about you, don't leave it up to your LinkedIn.
- [46:26]
Chris Hutchins
The only thing you didn't mention, which I would suggest is get one good photo, whether you took it or someone else took it and put it on this site, then you get to own the photo. And so often I see people that I go and search on the Internet and the first thing that shows up for their photo is like their LinkedIn photo that's like 15 years old or something. And so here's your chance that if this becomes the place that's synonymous with you, then own the photo that's there as well.
- [46:53]
Nick Gray
Should we talk about that how on Google Gemini 2.5 Flash with nanobanana you can easily create Some beautiful headshots by sending in some casual photos of yourself off your phone. They don't have to be professional. And you can ask Gemini to make me some headshots. Say I'm doing a webpage. I need some nice headshots. I want it to look professional or I want it to look like a headshot. And they do a really good job. That's free. You can use that to make your photo. It does a really good job of making headshots.
- [47:22]
Chris Hutchins
Yeah. I'm gonna give it a try. Maybe I will give it a try. Come up with a photo and put it in a newsletter. There we go. Like, we'll tie it all together.
- [47:29]
Nick Gray
Yeah.
- [47:31]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
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- [48:55]
Chris Hutchins
Much for being here today.
- [48:56]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
You can find all the links, promo codes and discounts from our partners@AllTheHacks.com deals. These are brands I love and use, so please consider supporting those who support us.
- [49:10]
Nick Gray
So just some like, more like pro tips for people that like if they want this. I believe beyond the card, if you're available to do a little more Advanced stuff. I would sign up for an account on WordPress, WordPress.com, there's a $4 a month plan that now allows you to have an about page, allows you to have articles, allows you to have multiple pages. And when I'm helping my friends set these sites up, I want them to have more surface area. So I'll ask them. For example, my father in law, John in Houston, I say, hey, what are some of your favorite restaurants in Houston? And he'll tell me, and I say, oh, what do you like to order there? And he'll tell me those and I'll make a new page. My favorite restaurants in Houston. And that allows him to show up when people search for his name. Houston. Having more surface area is important. If you can have multiple pages, you talk about businesses you've started or places you've worked. If you're willing to put that time in, I think it's helpful. I've been trying to do this for my friends. I've been trying to help people. I think it's just about control. You want to show up and put your best foot forward. It is worth spending an hour or two and let's say $30 a year to do that. And it goes a long way when you're making new relationships and meeting new people.
- [50:21]
Chris Hutchins
Two things. If you're in the points game and you have an Amex Business Gold card, you get $150 of Squarespace credit a year.
- [50:28]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
So.
- [50:28]
Chris Hutchins
So this could cover your domain and a lot of your plan. And it's every year. I wouldn't go get this card just for this though. It often has a 200,000 point signup bonus. So, you know, but I have a few of them. And so I'm like, right now I actually have so much Squarespace credit that when Google Domains migrated some of my domains to Squarespace, I went and I just renewed the domains for like 10 years because I have all this credit on these cards. So that's one. And then I noticed you don't do this, but you write these friends newsletters. They have great content, but they're not on the website. Is there any reason not to put your friends newsletter on the website?
- [51:02]
Nick Gray
I could definitely put them on the website. I find sometimes in the newsletter, like, honestly, I want to talk about more personal things that I maybe don't want to show up for the Internet to exist forever. I know that they are like on my newsletter, if you go to the software, you can find like the backlinks and like the archives, but sometimes I just want the newsletter to be the real and the raw. And going back to what we said about the personal newsletter, you do want it to be real? I don't want it to be marketing forward all the time. I want it to be more real. So that's why you won't find a lot of my stuff linked on my homepage.
- [51:35]
Chris Hutchins
But once you've done that newsletter three or four times and you've got four or five interesting articles, you could have a section of your site that's interesting.
- [51:44]
Nick Gray
Articles show recommendation 100% favorite show recommendation Favorite Amazon products Look, I think about version one of this for a lot of your listeners who don't have a site is just like, hey, put up a page about you. So that when people ask, who is this person on ChatGPT? Or they search on Google, your page starts to show up. Version 2 is creating this digital honey pot of a world where people can come into your world and learn about you and see some of that stuff. That's really the next step. And that is where you want to have your product recommendations or other stuff that you're including in the newsletter. I hesitate to say it because I just want people to take the first step.
- [52:21]
Chris Hutchins
And Nick, you didn't mention, but if someone is listening to this is like, I don't want to do this myself. You do offer a way that you could do it for them, right?
- [52:29]
Nick Gray
Yeah, I have like a little team of people and it's been a way for me to start this up. If you just want somebody to handle this for you, for $29 a month, my team will like build your site and keep it updated once a month. Now that's the problem that a lot of people don't do reach out to me online. I don't really have a landing page for it yet. I think it's like personalwebsites.net but it's something I've been doing for friends. You can see a list of them on there as examples. And the key thing is we keep it updated at least once a month for you.
- [52:56]
Chris Hutchins
On the topic of friends, newsletters and personal websites, I'm curious. You wrote this recent post where you talked about your asset allocation. I'm curious if you wrote a post like that because you wanted to share with the world or was the process of writing it something that was really valuable and you just felt, well, if I wrote it, I might as well.
- [53:14]
Nick Gray
Publish it for my asset allocation. It is something that I share. I try to share it twice a year or more, and I Got so much value myself from writing it. Thinking and taking the time to write really added a lot of value. I also believe simply in sharing and having this conversation. What is your asset allocation? I'm not asking how much is your net worth? I'm not sharing how much is mine, but I'm talking about how have I invested my money. Index funds, specific stocks. We're talking about percentages. And I think we should be having more of those conversations with our friends.
- [53:49]
Chris Hutchins
Yeah, I'm going to go one step further and say one thing that I experimented with a few times was talking to a friend about money. We've never disclosed how much money we have, but he had a question that just real practical examples would be valuable. And there's a big stigma about sharing your net worth or how much money's in your bank account, all this stuff. Whereas, like you said, if you just want to talk about asset allocation, there's not a lot of stigma between. I mean, maybe if you have the ability to invest and someone doesn't, you could create a situation. But with this particular friend, I just asked him, this is a really awkward question, but how much money do you think I have? And he guessed an amount that was so close. Like, not to the dollar, but close enough that we're talking same order of magnitude, same ballpark. Then I was like, oh, you're sitting here just assuming that I have about as much money as I have. And he was like, well, that was weird. But he was like, do the same for me. And so I gave a number, and I was assuming he had about as much money as he had, like within enough that it was kind of all the same. And then we were like, great, if we're sitting here assuming we each have about as much money as we have, why aren't we just openly talking about money? And ever since that point, this friend of mine, and it was a person I worked with, it was a good friend who. Who is also a colleague. Ever since then, we've just been openly talking about money. And I've used that tactic multiple times with people to basically drop their guard. And now I probably have a dozen friends where we're just wildly transparent about money and we can talk all the nitty gritty, and it's awesome. And it's obviously weirdly uncomfortable. The first time you do it, it feels like it's going to be strange. It also feels like once you guys know how much money each other have, it's going to change things. It turns out it doesn't change anything. At least in my experience. And so I would encourage people talk about your asset allocation, but if you want, maybe take a little risk and, like, find ways to get over the hump of just talking more real about money. Because I just think that it's so mystified and we go through all these challenges. It's like, oh, I'm thinking about buying a house. But, like, how much help can someone be without understanding more context? And once they have context, it just unlocks things. And by the way, in the US anyone you give your address to can probably look up on Redfin or Zillow, like, how much your home cost or what the rent is. And so, like, people do those things. Like you mentioned, people are always googling about you. I can't tell you how many people I know are like, oh, I went to my friend's house. I looked it up on Zillow. I knew, like, I can't believe he has a million dollar house. So people have a pretty good sense of a lot of things. It's like, if we could just get rid of a lot of the societal barriers, it would be so much easier to just have more real conversations.
- [56:22]
Nick Gray
Challenge accepted. I'm gonna try this sometime. I love it, and it's refreshing.
- [56:27]
Chris Hutchins
Nick and I were talking before we recorded, and we were talking about all the things we wanted to discuss. I gave a hint at this, and then you had said, like, oh, I wonder if I should do, like, some survey? And we had this idea that I wanted to make sure we get out there before we wrap, which is, well, if you're gonna send this annual newsletter, My good friend Kevin Rose did this once where he sent an anonymous survey to me and a bunch of his friends that was like, genuinely he wanted to be a better human, a better friend. And so he sent this thing and it was like three or four questions. He's like, hey, I'd appreciate if you could spend four or five minutes on it. And it was like, where could Kevin be a better friend? What is one of Kevin's weaknesses professionally? Where does he drop the ball? Just questions like that. He collected all this information and then he actually, I think, hired a business coach or had one who helped go through the process and write the survey. Nowadays you could just go chatgpt, hey, I want to send an anonymous question to my friends and professional colleagues. Help me write four questions, make it easy. But now my idea is one. Put that in your annual newsletter. If you want candid feedback to try to improve yourself, make it anonymous. Make sure people know that I sent this newsletter to lots of people. Here's an anonymous survey. Make sure you tell Google forms don't collect email addresses. And you could ask people things to try to improve your life. But maybe put this last question. I think this is a little crazy, but maybe put a last question that's like in an effort to be more transparent, I'm trying to realize that most people have a good guess at how much money everyone has. And if we all knew that, we could be more transparent. So if you're willing to answer, what do you think my net worth is? And give some bands, like give a wide bands and just see what happens. If it's the last question and people don't answer it, will you still get the answers from the first ones? You know, who cares? But how crazy would it be if you sent this to 50 of your friends and almost every single one of them assumed reality? Wouldn't that just change your mindset a little? And isn't that what experimentation is all about?
- [58:19]
Nick Gray
And you use that great example when you were talking with somebody and trying to make a decision to buy a house, nobody knew how much you have. If someone was like, hey, do you think I should buy this new car? Or hey, should I buy this new phone or laptop? One of my first questions be like, well, how much money do you have? How much of an impact is this purchase? And if someone says, oh God, you know what, I'm actually like $55,000 in debt, which a lot of people are, then I'd say, I don't know, let's think about budgeting. Can we afford it? If somebody else says, Well, I have $15 million, I'd say buy the thousand dollar phone. And so it's such an interesting idea. When we give people financial advice without knowing the financial scope, it changes how you can think.
- [58:57]
Chris Hutchins
I have enjoyed forcing more financial transparency. Forcing is the wrong word. Like this is. I'm not forcing it, but I'm finding ways to make it easier. And I now have at least a dozen friends where we're just open. Some of them have orders of magnitude more and orders of magnitude less money than I do. And it hasn't impacted any of our relationships, at least from my perspective and everything I can tell it has had no negative impact. So that's another crazy idea that I wanted to share.
- [59:24]
Nick Gray
Okay, bonus section for how I'm using AI. If you are not recording with audio notes all of your doctor visits, you need to be doing this now. Please note, state by state laws differ. About 40 US states are single party Consent. So that means legally you are allowed to record without the other person's permission. California, where you are Chris, is not one of those states. Two party state, It's a two party state. If you are in a one party state, legally you are allowed to go into any place and record that meeting. I have been using this at doctor's meetings when I will go into the doctor's office and I will just set voice recorder and just leave my phone in my pocket, my shirt pocket maybe on the table and I will record it. And then when I get home I dump that audio recording into Google Gemini and I say, give me a transcript for this. It's a conversation with my doctor. Please add speaker labels and then I will save that as a text file. And now when I'm doing my blood work, when I'm asking ChatGPT or Gemini to give me advice, I can add in transcripts from those things. This is so helpful. If you have parents, if you have grandparents, you need to get them to be recording their doctor visits to add context to your medical advice questions. When you're using AI, it has completely changed the game for the context and for the advice that I can get. And by the way, I'm bad at remembering things so I just want the notes of what my doctor said.
- [60:49]
Chris Hutchins
I went to the vet the other day and the doctor was like, hey, is it cool if I use a meeting notes app on my phone? It didn't cross my mind to be like, oh, why don't I do that too? And then I got home and my wife asked me a question about the visit and I was like, I don't remember that thing. So doctor visits, vet visits, like any call, you know, you mentioned California is a two party state. But I've had doctors and vets both ask that question and I've said yes. I'm fairly certain if I said, hey, do you mind if I do the same thing? They're not going to say no. I think the vet actually sent me their summary from whatever tool they were using of the conversation. I think that's a great tip. Any other AI use case tips or other things?
- [61:25]
Nick Gray
Just a specific way that I use that I had something wrong with my shoulder. I visited three different physical therapists and shoulder doctors. I recorded each of the transcripts, I dumped each of those transcripts then in aggregate and had it triangulate a perfect diagnosis of what was wrong with my shoulder from those three different visits of three various opinions. It was very, very helpful. That's one of the key ways that I've used it. That has been the biggest win for the average person.
- [61:51]
Chris Hutchins
I feel like, Nick, we could keep going, but thank you so much for being here. This has been fantastic.
- [61:56]
Nick Gray
Thanks so much for having me. Look, I just want to wrap it up. These relationships that you make through life, you can get a lot through those loose connections. And whether it's sending a friend's newsletter once a year, hosting an annual holiday cookie party like Chris does, you should do this and it will change your life in ways that you never know could be possible.
- [62:14]
Chris Hutchins
I totally agree. Nick. Thank you so much for being here. For everyone listening. If you want to get in touch with Nick, we'll have links to everything we talked about in the show notes. If you want to get me it's podcast at all the hacks.com that is it for this week. I will see you next week.