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Travis Makes Money
SOLO | Make Money by Building Better Relationships- Lessons from My Jon Levy Interview
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- [00:01]
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- [00:23]
Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the show. On this episode, it's just me, you, and the mic. And we're continuing along our series of going over some of the past guests that I've had over the past 9ish years and over a thousand interviews that I've conducted here on the show. And I wanted to, I sort of accidentally started doing this because I just found a couple episodes and it was like, oh, that was a cool conversation. And I remembered a takeaway or two and I shared it on an episode. And then I was like, I, I started looking at like the list of people that I've had on and I totally forgot about a lot of the conversations that I've had on the show. And so this has been a lot of fun for me just to kind of go back into the catalog and find some conversations, pull out some lessons that are still highly applicable even to this day. So here is what I learned from John Levy. John is a behavioral scientist and relationship communication connection expert who was chronic introvert and somebody who didn't do any of this at the beginning of his career. And then he turned it into basically his entire identity. And so what happened was John came on my, on my Travis Makes Money podcast and we had a 20, 25 minute conversation. But then there was still so much more that I wanted to talk to him about. So I invited him out to be on Travis Makes Friends. And we talked a lot more about connection and people and friendship and stuff like that, which is what we talk about a lot on that show. So there's several things. This is, this was one of my favorite episodes in terms of the actual science of connecting with people. And so if you're interested in that type of a thing, I highly recommend checking out the full episode with John. But here's a few of my key takeaways from this one. Number one, your Network does not just shape your career. It bleeds into everything else. So John, John opened with this fascinating study showing that if a friend of yours is obese, your own risk goes up for 45%. And then if you're, if you, if, if your friend who does not know your obese friend is a friend of yours, they are 15%, I believe it was more likely to be obese. So there's, there's a. There's an effect on your physical health that doesn't even touch the people who aren't connected to the person who is obese. Now, I'm not telling you to not have obese friends, okay? That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is be careful about who you surround yourself with. Be careful about who you spend your time with. Because if it applies in something that's. That you wouldn't, that you wouldn't even think that that would be the case, like your physical weight. If it applies to that, then the same is also true for happiness. Divorce rates, smoking, political, religious ideologies. You framed it simply. Behaviors are, are contagious. And the people around you aren't just influencing your mood, they're influencing your actual outcomes, whether you realize it or not. Which is why we hammer in on my other show so much about being careful about who you spend your time with. And again, I've never been the type of person that's like, cut out all the people in your life. They don't. They don't, you know, understand who you are. And if they don't have the same goals as you, then ruthlessly cut like, I'm not that type of a person, okay? People are people. Relationships are relationships. And I gain value from plenty of relationships in my life, even if some of those relationships are with people who don't have the similar, you know, same goals or mission in life as the one that I have. But what I've done is just purposefully and intentionally go try to spend time with some of those other people that I may not have spent time with organically originally. So if you do that, what tends to happen is you just don't. You don't have as much time to go around for everybody else in your life. So if you're constantly in a group of friends that just, like, spends all their spare time going to the bar and drinking, then you're probably more likely to go to the bar and drink a bunch. But if you start instead of just saying, like, no, I have to cut those people out of my life completely. It's not that. It's just that you fill your calendar with other activities. So on Friday night or Saturday night, when all your other buddies are going out drinking and you're going to this business event or this networking event or this conference or something like that, then you're just not going to have the time to go out. So they're to be like, hey, why don't you come out to the bar? And you're going to be like, okay, well, I can't on Friday because I actually have this other thing that I'm doing from, you know, 8:00 o'clock to 10:00 clock or whatever. So I won't be able to do that at that point. So it's just kind of, of naturally sort of divide your time up for you and, and sort of set boundaries without being a douchebag about it, because you don't have to be a douchebag to build good relationships. In fact, it's the opposite of building good relationships. So you just understand that your network affects so many other parts of your life, not just your career prospects. Number two, can I pick your brain over coffee? Is an absolute no. So I have gotten this one like a. It's usually like virtual, can I buy you a virtual cup of coffee? Or it's, can I pick your brain? I've never positively responded to somebody asking if they could pick my brain. It's just, it sounds, it's literally the frame of a taker without being willing to give anything. Like, it's just the message that, like, hey, you have value to gain. Can you share all that value with me for free? I literally just had this happen. This guy was like, hey, can I pick your brain sometime over coffee about, you know, podcasting or content or whatever? I'd love to, you know, hear more about what I should do. And I mentioned a couple things to him right then and there and hoping that that would be enough to suffice. He was like, all right, yeah, great. This is awesome. Let's, let's sit down and get some coffee. I'll bring a notepad and, and, and, and, you know, pick your brain about this. And it was just like, that does not sound fun for me because, like, there are people who pay me good money for the information that I would be sitting down like. And I don't, I don't know this person. You know, we just met. I don't know anything about them. So they're just basically saying, hey, I want. You have this information that I want. Can I just pick your brain? It's usually going to be a no. So John broke down, why? Cold outreach, framed this way, fails. It asks for someone's most sake, most sacred and scarce resource, which is their time. And it signals that you haven't done the homework right. You haven't read the book, you haven't listened to the podcast, and it offers nothing, absolutely nothing in return. That's the thing that blows my mind is like, I have so much free content about all the things that I do, and if somebody's never listened to a full episode of my show, it's like, well, why don't you just start there? It would be so much better if it was like, hey, I've listened to like 25 of your episodes about podcasting and I have these questions. Can I shoot them to you sometime? That would be, that would be so much more positively received than just, like, I have not done anything to gain your trust or your respect. I don't know, like, you have no idea who I am, but what I want you to do is give me a bunch of, of your time that you could be spending with your family or with clients who are actually paying you, where I can just get as much information from you as I possibly can for free and with nothing in return on my end. And so the, the, the real ask that you want to go for is some form of like, it's, it's like not, not. I, I said that wrong. The, the real ask, that's like the underlying ask here is unpaid part time coaching with no vetting at all. And he wasn't being harsh. John wasn't being harsh when he says this. He's being accurate, he's being truthful. If you want someone's attention, if you want someone's time, bring something novel, show that you've done some work and lead with generosity, and that's always going to be more well received than can I pick your brain? Number three. Connection happens through shared effort and common ground, not just networking events. This is why my show stopped being build you'd network and became Travis Meek's friends. This episode, this episode of the show is brought to you by Dell PCs. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter, for the moments you plan and the ones you don't. Built for the busy days that turn into all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's already taken, the times that you're deep in your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto update throwing off your momentum that's why Dell builds tech that adapts to the way that you actually work. 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Fanview Sponsor
This episode of the show is brought to you by Fanview. Fanview is a creator monetization platform that enables individuals to build, grow and monetize their own digital content businesses. You guys know we talk about this all the time here on the show and so I was excited to do this partnership with Fanview because it's a great platform. They have the ability to share exclusive content with your subscribers over there. You can build direct relationships with your audience through their platform, generate recurring income through fan support. So if you are somebody who has has a creator channel or you are thinking about starting a creator channel, you're not sure exactly how to monetize it. Well, Fanview is a great platform to
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Travis
do that through through.
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Fanview Sponsor
It's super accessible for beginners. You can make it feel extremely personal to you and to your audience. The connection that you can gain no matter what niche you're in. You can use Fanview as your platform so you can monetize your content. You can earn as much as you possibly can. It's super low barrier to entry to entry. So it's really easy to get started and there is no experience or audience needed in order to be able to get started making money on the platform. Not to mention it's crazy, crazy scalable. So you guys know we talk about side hustles on the show all the time. The couple of the parameters that I look for is is it really easy to start, low barrier to entry to start and if it starts going well, is it something that's potentially scalable beyond what your full time job is capable of earning you? And Fanview definitely has those potential things there. So if you're already creator or you're thinking about becoming creator and you're not exactly sure how to monetize platform that you're building, then go check out FanView, visit www.FanView.com today and launch your creator career. That's Fanview. F A n v u e.com fanview.com
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Travis
because the word networking just has so much negative connotations around it and the, the people who are, who are typically attracted to networking are thinking of, thinking of it from the taker's perspective. They, they have something that they want. They think other people have the thing that they want, which that's true, but then they go about getting it. The, the exact opposite of how you should go about getting it. So John described the research really clearly. The implicit, the implicit emotional association with networking is the desire to wash your hands. It just makes you feel, makes you feel gross, makes you feel dirty. But no one has a negative association with making friends. The mechanics of actual friendship are proximity, intensity, frequency and duration. Shared effort, like cooking a meal together, even if it's bad, creates this IKEA effect. You care more. People tend to care more about something that they helped build. Which is why his dinners that John puts on work really well. He puts together these like 8 to 10 person dinners and nobody knows who's going to be there. They are not allowed to talk about work. They don't do like introductions and bios ahead of time. They cook a meal together, usually a bad meal, because none of them are chefs. Well, at least most of them aren't chefs. There's probably a few chefs have been in there, but then afterwards they get to know. So this, this one person was cooking a meal with somebody and then they were talking about basketball and, and this person was talking about their high school basketball career or whatever and then come to find out later on that she was talking to Isaiah Thomas who's like a hall of Fame NBA legend and she had no idea who she's talking to. So it turned into a real, a real connection point. And so connection with other people does not from slapping on a name tag and introducing yourself at a networking event. That's not, that's not actual connection. That's just the, that's the initial introduction. The connection comes from shared effort, common ground, doing things together. And that is going to yield much better results for you. So look for things that you can do that are like that. If you really want to get to know other people, do find some form of like shared activity. Find something you can collaborate on. If you can find dinners like this, great. If you don't, if you can't find them, put them on yourself. Do something unique, do something different and promote genuine connection in the room. Number four, novelty is the override switch for human defenses. Influential people have layers of protection up, you know, assistants, gatekeepers, inboxes set to auto ignore. The one thing that cuts through is novelty. So there's a section of the brain called the SNVTA that when Triggered by something genuinely new, it generates a compulsion to understand it. So John designed his dinner event around this idea. No introductions, no job titles, strangers cooking together. And then afterwards, when they've sat down, they finished the meal, they've been hanging out for a couple hours. Then they reveal that they're sitting with, you know, Nobel laureates and Olympians and authors and comedians and whatever else. So the, the format is the hook. It's this, it's it, whatever can light up the novelty center of your brain. And he gave a couple other really, really good tools for people who are putting on events besides just novelty. So I'd highly recommend checking out the full episode number five. Wherever power accumulates, the dark Tetrad follows. So John, John named it directly. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, sadism, psychopathy. They cluster in fields where power concentrates. So that's why you see a lot of this in, in my world, the self development, personal brand world, in, in media world, in religion, in C suites, in Fortune 500 military police force, the. It's just that in, in a world where power is one of the core aspects of what is to be gained from being successful in that world, it, it tends to draw in a lot of those types of people. So many of the figures people quote as role models are in John words, awful human beings who are really good at faking it. So his practical advice is don't confuse confidence and polish with credibility. The first lie wins in the human brain. In the human brain. So think after you hear, not before you hear. So just because somebody has power or just because somebody exhibits confidence does not mean that there's somebody that's worth following. And I thought this is a really good point that he made. And one of my core problems with the self development world and the religion world and the media like that. It's just that there's so much BS that you have to wade through, but it's, it does not mean that you should not ever engage because there's a lot of really great people in the self development and self help world. And there's, and I still think that it's a bedrock, it's a foundation of why we're here on this planet is to become better, is to be better, is to, is to show the example of what it looks like to become a better version of yourself. So you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. But you do have to do a little bit more work. There's a little bit more work involved. You got to engage your brain instead of just, oh, I saw someone speak on that stage, that must mean that they're completely trustworthy. And I should definitely invest in their new program that they built. So don't, don't confuse confidence with credibility. Think after you hear, not before. John is one of those guys who just breaks this stuff down really well. So I'd highly recommend picking up. He's got a couple different books out there. You know, if you can find how to attend one of his events, you know, go attend one of his events. But there's something that John said near the end of this conversation that I keep coming back to. He talked about the, the. The power accumulating. And I thought about that a lot because a lot of people in this space, the influencer space, they sound am, they're confident, they're well read, they have answers for everything. And John's point is that's exactly the profile that that polish of their brand is an evidence of character. It might be evidence of the opposite. And I'll be honest, the reason I renamed and I talked about this a little bit earlier, the show from build your network to Travis makes Friends came directly from some of the research in this space that people related networking to something gross. And making friends has no negative association. Well, John validated that concept with actual science during our conversation. And it was, it sort of caught me off guard, but not fully because I figured that we were probably on the same page with that. So I, I just, I love, I love, I love sometimes you make decisions from this just like anecdotal place of like this feels right to me. And then when you find that the science actually supports it, it's like, okay, well, I think I'm onto something then. And then the, the. Probably the big takeaway here is that that dinner concept that he did. And I've done several of these myself. It's not necessarily about the food or the atmosphere or anything like that. It's. It's the, it's the mystery that surrounds it. It's the novelty that surrounds it. The moment that you find out who you're sitting next to, who you've been eating with or cooking with, all the stories that you've been avoiding telling or the posturing that would normally take place at an event or mixer that's similar to something like that, all of that's gone when you do something like this. So if you are somebody who is seeking external connection with other people, I highly recommend try to find some sort of a meetup or din that exists like this. And if you can't find it, just start doing it. John was not a really. Well, I talked about this at the beginning. He's not a well connected guy. When he first started, the reason he started doing this was because he realized that this was the thing that he needed to work on the most, that he didn't know anybody. And if he wanted to be successful, he knew he was going to have to surround himself with more successful people. And so the first few dinners that he threw, he was going into debt for. He was, he was paying almost no money for them and still going to debt. That's how little money he had during that time. But now obviously he's doing very well for himself and he's turned this into a thrive, thriving business and a great career as an author and as a speaker and as a consultant for huge companies because he's mastered something that, that everybody values, which is building better relationships. And so if you are somebody who's struggling with that right now, don't wait for somebody else to start something, just do it and it will get better as you go along. You'll learn more. You'll learn how to make it cheaper or how to make it better. You'll learn how to, how to cover your costs more effectively or what to charge. You'll learn how to connect with better people. And then when people have a good experience, they're more likely to refer other people to do the next din things like that. So don't wait for somebody else to do it. You just step into that gap and fix the problem for yourself. And I promise it'll also fix the problem for a lot of other people. So that's it for this episode of the show. Like I said before, go check out the full episode with John. This is one of my favorite episodes I've done on the social science of, you know, connection. So go check out the full episode. I know you'll not regret that. And then pick up a copy of one of John's books. He's a prolific author and has a great writing style as well. So. So thank you John for coming on the show and sharing and thank you for everybody listening. Remember to leave every relationship better than you found it. Catch you guys on the next episode. Peace.