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Travis (9:11)

virtue or you or vice versa. You could be treating a friendship of virtue as though It's a friendship of pleasure, meaning that you don't give it the time and attention that, that it needs to have and that you don't value it as much as you should be valuing it. Or, you know, a friendship of utility might just remain a friendship of utility where you only gain use from each other and don't. Maybe a friendship of virtue when you could actually have that type of friendship with this person. So if you don't take the time to really sit down and view, like, look at some of the relationships that you have in your life, look at some of the friendships that you have in your life and start asking yourself these questions. This is a friendship of utility. This is a friendship of pleasure. This is a friendship of virtue. And obviously the goal is to really define what that friendship of virtue means for you. What is, what is considered, what are the common virtues, the common values that I need to have with somebody in order for them to be in this category. And it is not just a matter of how much time you've known them. It is more a matter of the values that you end up creating. Which was difficult for me when I came out of the religious group that I was raised in because there were just a lot of my friends who we no longer shared this piece with. It was just, it was a disruption of values and it forced me, forced me into a bunch of different friend groups. Because, to be frank, it wasn't necessarily me making those decisions. It was typically the other person making those decisions because I no longer aligned with them. In fact, I've had multiple Christian friends of mine, especially people that I grew up with, who basically just flat out told me that they would not be willing to do business with me in any type of a meaningful way because I don't share those values anymore. So, and look, I, I understand where they're coming from. I, I get it. My, my personal view on it is that I, I, I do not care. I do not care whether you're religious, you're not religious, you're atheist, you're not atheist, you're agnostic. You follow the gods of the Vikings and pray to Odin and sacrifice your lamb to Thor when you're going on a cruise ship to have steady seas. Like, none of that stuff really matters to me because I think that I've been around the block enough times to know that those types of dogmatic belief systems do not mean that a person is a good or bad person. I have met lots and lots and lots of people who would fall in each one of These categories. And there are several of those people who I would define as good, virtuous, high values based people who exist inside of Christianity, who exist inside of Islam, who exist inside of atheism. And then I would also define a lot of people who are really crappy, terrible people in my point of view anyway. They just treat others around them with disrespect and contempt and, and hate and this sort of like pharisaical, I'm better than you type of mentality. And those people exist from atheism to Christianity to all these other things anyway. So that's why I like, I like the idea of friendships of virtue because it's much more based on, on common values than just shared belief systems or shared bucket proximity. Right? Like you are Republican, therefore we will get along because I am also Republican or you are Democrat, therefore we will get along because I am also Democrat. Like when, as soon as you start putting people into buckets and, and then creating your friendships around these buckets, that's when I think things get dangerous. And it's much, it's a much better calling to look at your friendships from a virtue perspective. Do we agree on these certain things? Are, are you the type of person who will in this type of a situation? So I really like the friendships of virtue angle that Aristotle brings up here because it is a more reliable and predictable way, I think, to build your friend groups. Now it's going to take a little bit more work, right? You can't out. The problem with doing the bucket thing that I talked about earlier is you're basically outsourcing the work of deciding whether or not this is a good person to keep in your life to some other group. You're giving the authority to some other, some other system or some other group of people to say whether or not this person deserves to be in your life. And I think that you might be making multiple mistakes in that regard. Meaning that somebody who does a bunch of bad, nefarious, evil, terrible things, you might just go like, oh well, you know, you're coming up with excuses for them because they just happen to have a bad day. And I don't want to, you know, air out their dirty laundry or call them out because that would be a bad experience. And then that's how we get how. That's how. My producer has an entire show called Preacher Boys Podcast where he exposes abuse within the fundamentalist group that we grew up, up in. Because there's so many people in that world who, although their personal values would say that abusing this child is bad and evil and sinful. They find excuses to just excuse their behavior. They sweep it under the rug. They don't tell anybody about it because they don't want to hinder the main mission that they're working on. And then, and then ultimately build themselves a circle of people who, who say that they're one thing and then behind closed doors are a completely different version of themselves. And to me, like, that's the worst type of person person. So be careful not to outsource your, your friendship selection to a group of people or to a bucket of society. You're going to need to do the work to decide whether or not these people are people that you should allow into your life. So the question of, is it okay to have friends in all of these areas? The answer is yes. When I first was reading through this was like, oh, I, I don't want friendships of pleasure. That sounds like a, that sounds like a really fickle friendship based on not a lot of, you know, real subs. And I should probably avoid those types of friends. But now that I've matured in my perspective on this, I believe that all three of these are useful and helpful for different, different times and different seasons. As long as, you know that this person is going to be in this friendship of pleasure world. Right? Like, this person is not necessarily somebody that I would, you know, want my kids looking up to as a role model, but also I know those things about them, so I can distance myself from in those perspectives. However, when we hang out and whatever, play pickleball, we have a great time, or when we go get some beers, we have a great time and we have cool conversations and, you know, bring some levity to my life or, you know, this person brings the party with them. So I'm going to invite them to this, to this party, but I'm probably not going to bring them into my intimate circle of trust. You know what I mean? So as long as you have the ability to categorize these people, I think that you're going to be totally fine. And then, and you know, there's, there's reasons to have people at each one of these levels. Even friendships of utility, again, it makes it, it's sort of like it sounds negative. Friendship of utility makes it sound like you're using each other. When, I mean, in reality, you, you basically are using each other. But again, if you only have friendships of utility, then you might find that when you do something like switch your career path out of nowhere and that person can no longer benefit from you because you no longer hold this position of high esteem inside of this industry. They're probably just going to drop you like a bad habit. And you are probably going to drop them like a bad habit to some extent. And I realized that during the last company that I was building because as soon as I sold it and I was done with it, there were a bunch of people who would normally just reply to whatever text I sent them. And then all of a sudden they were like impossible to get a hold of. And I was like, what's going on? It's like, oh, I see. They no longer see utility in this relationship, so they're just going to drop it and leave it to the wayside. And it told me where they see me in their friendship hierarchy, which was also helpful for me when navigating my own interpersonal relationships. And then it also taught me how important the friendships of virtue were in my life, that the people who are just like, these are like, these are just my people. These are. These guys feel like brothers to me. Does not matter what life throws my way or life throws their way. It doesn't matter if we disagree on this thing or agree on this thing. If it's three o' clock in the morning and I'm in another state and my wife needs help doing this thing or this ran crazy black swan situation or event happens, I know that I can call one of these people and they will answer the phone and they will be there and they will help regardless. So it taught me to value my friendships of virtue a little bit more. And then it taught me to Are

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Travis (18:38)

Terms and conditions apply that it's okay to have these friendships of pleasure where we're out at this corporate event. And this group of guys just goes and hangs out all the time and we have fun together. Like, okay, well, that's that category. And then friendships are people who. We are actively helping each other out in the business world. And, and, and I can rely on those friends for this type of a thing. So it's not to say that any one of these are bad or good. It's just to say that if you don't have the ability to recognize where people fit within these categories, then you might be disappointed in people in the long term. Because when I first started, the show was called Build you'd Network. Then we moved it to Travis makes Friends. And it was because I looked at basically the activity of networking, basically should be similar to the activity of making friends. But then what happened in my mind was that I started conflating my professional network with my personal friendships, and they don't always have crossover. And that's okay. That was the initial thing that I had that I struggled with, was that I thought it wasn't okay, like, if somebody didn't immediately respond to a text or an email or something, or I was asking for something or a favor, or I was trying to make an introduction or whatever. I just looked at it as like, oh, well, they're not a real friend, and screw them. And you know what I mean, they don't deserve my time anyway. And you start getting real egocentric really quickly. So allowing yourself just to exist within the. These different categories and realize that there's different friends for different times and different seasons and that this might be a friend of mine, but maybe only inside of the professional network context where it's like, we're going to do business together, then we can reach out and that. But that does not devalue that relationship in my mind anymore. It just tells me where. Which category it's in and how to treat that relationship. So understand that there's going to be people who, who maybe, maybe, maybe you got to know them through a friendship of pleasure. And then they became a friendship of utility because you had a common point of having fun at this event. And then you started trusting them a lot more. And then you had business to share and you started doing more business together. Therefore, you kept hanging out with that person, and then that person could become a friendship of virtue. So obviously, like the, the most important of all of these is the friendships of virtue. Just the true meaning of friendship that exists for a couple of people who are just similar in their virtue and their values, and they're aiming to help each other grow and ultimately conspiring for each other's good. And that's why I'm a big proponent of the idea of always trying to give more value to the world around you than you take away from them. Because it's never a bad scenario to have a bunch of great people out there who are conspiring for your good, who actually genuinely want to see you succeed for the sake of you being successful, not because they can ride your coattails, not because they can use you for some other backdoor business deal, not because they can exploit your relationship or friendship now, just simply because they want to see you do well. And the more I've looked at that, the more I've realized how difficult it is to find those types of friendships and those types of people. Because a lot of people don't want you to be successful. I'll take that back. A lot of people want you to be successful, just not more successful than they are. And the more you are that type of person who only wants people to be successful as long as they are not more successful than you are, the more you will attract more of those types of people into your life. Which is why, again, I think it's just a much better strategy to just be kind to everybody and try to always add as much value as you can and just genuinely try to conspire for the good and the success of all the people around you. You, even if you're a little bit jealous of them, you know that that's. That's one thing that I think is a. It introduces a little bit of complexity where you see somebody who is taking off in a field or an industry that you want to be well known or well recognized in, and you've been working really hard to achieve this goal. And then you saw someone else come in and achieve that goal much faster than you did, and your immediate reaction is to sort of start getting these feelings of envy or jealousy. So I've had to actually do almost. Almost like a meditation practice in those scenarios where I try to imagine somebody in my life who I genuinely have nothing but feelings of happiness for when they achieve something amazing in their life. I try to imagine that relationship and that person, and then I literally, in my mind, overlay that person with this other person that I'm feeling jealous of and that I'm finding myself almost rooting against because it's like it's evidence that I'm not doing as well as I should be doing or that as well as I think I should be doing anyway. So My initial reaction was to be like, I hope that they. You don't do well. And obviously that's not a healthy thing to have in your. It's not a good energy to take into your life. And there's a great line in the Alchemist that says something like, anyone who interferes with the personal legend of another thing will never find their own meaning. That if you spend a lot of your time worried about dragging down other people, you will never put yourself in a position to get the things that you want out of life. It's like you might pat yourself on the back to be like, haha, they weren't as good as everybody else thought they were. Haha, ha. But what did that do for you? Like, did you. You won, I guess, like you won what? Exactly. It didn't improve your life at all. It didn't improve your situation at all. It just made you feel better about your situation because now their situation is objectively, measurably worse. And it's like being happy about that. That is some negative energy to allow into your life. So if you find yourself feeling like that, try to do that little meditative practice that I talked about about where you just imagine somebody who you genuinely only want good things for and then try to overlay those feelings on this other person who you might be naturally jealous of or envious of. That's been helpful for me. So I know we're kind of all over the place on this episode, but I wanted to make sure that we talked about this because I think it's really important and I love hearing from ancient wisdom about things, about problems that we're currently experiencing in friendship. And loneliness is definitely one of those things. So three types of friendship from Aristotle's perspective. Friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue. You can have relationships that ebb and flow that go in and out of multiple, multiple of these categories to make sure you have a pulse on where people are in your life and how to treat those relationships. And then really, really, really try to invest more time, more energy, more money, more attention into these friendships of virtue. Because these are going to be the things that will last for the rest of your life and help you to live a better version of your life as well. So that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace. This episode of the show is brought to you by Chime. Chime is changing the way people bank. It's fee free and smarter banking built just for you. Not like old school banks that charge you overdraft fees and monthly fees and the like. It's built for you, not the 1%. Chime is not just another banking app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people with products like MyPay giving you access to up to $500 of your paycheck anytime and getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Some old bank banks still don't do this, so forget overdraft fees, minimum balance fees, monthly fees, all that stuff. Chime turns everyday spending into real rewards and progress. Plus they have the new Chime card, the new way to build credit history with your own money and get rewarded every single day. So what that means is it is a credit card that is backed by your own money and not only and it helps you build credit, which is something that's been around for a while, but you also get to earn rewards on that, which has not been something that has happened and now Chime is here to bring that to you. And with qualifying direct deposits, you get 1.5% cash back on eligible Chime card purchases. I know my younger self would have benefited from a banking option like this just because it's so much more nimble and much much easier. Chime is not just smarter banking. It is the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. It just takes a few minutes to get signed up. So head over to Chime.comTravel Travis that's Chime.com Travis Chime is a financial technology

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