 I had the yellow pages and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Okay, you can now find someone's complete career trajectory. You can find out what they're upset about on, you know, on Twitter. You can find out if they have grandchildren on Instagram. So if you're reaching out cold, you have a way to find out about them so that you can offer some sort of help. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Well, first of all, I'm going to tell every single listener that you all have superpowers and secret sauces and they're going to change from year to year, even maybe from month to month. And, you know, if you can't figure it out yourself, ask your friends, ask your loved ones, ask your partner, ask your dog. Okay, but literally, there are things. You could be a fabulous cook. You could know a foreign language. You could be great at jump rope. But, you know, when a young person comes to me and I shouldn't use those qualifiers, but somebody's just out of college. This is a generalization, but I have found that they are better equipped with some new technologies that I might be. Okay, again, generalization. So I often say two words, TikTok, which I have yet to figure out, but being a communications ahead of a communications firm, I need to figure it out. So I think what we need to do is get rid of the naysayers in our brain, which believe me, I have many of them, and really just think about it and also be, you know, don't be afraid to ask others. You know, it was back in 2007. I went away with eight friends and we went up to the Catskills, which is a couple of hours north of New York City. And our goal that weekend was to be able to articulate our superpowers, our elevator speech. And it was that weekend that I finally got the guts to say, I'm Susan McPherson. I'm a serial connector. Well, after I said it, I almost peed in my pants because it sounded so ridiculous. But I had eight dear friends staying to me. Yes, you are. And what, 16 years later, I wrote a book on it. So what I think for the advice for people who are struggling is, you know, just start making lists and also know that it doesn't have to be you're a rocket scientist. Although that seems to be the flavor of the day right now, doesn't it? It does. Absolutely. I think for young people, it's also important to, regardless of how they feel about themselves or what they have going on, to set up some sort of mission. And it doesn't even need to be a major one that's going to take the rest of their lives to get to. Just something small to get them focused on themselves, where they are, and what they're going to have to accomplish to end that mission. And that's going to get them some great insight about who they are, how they learn, and some small inklings of what they're actually capable of. When we see young folks today, I mean, they have all the technology they have to consume all the information that they need. So to put that, to put the phone down and decide here's what I'm going to learn. Here's what I'm going to do and taking those steps to it. And I've, I've, I mentor a lot of young men. And one of the things that I hear the reason the time in place where they have decided to get mentorship or to start a mission is when they realize that they're spending time with technology, developing a character or an avatar that is online so that they get perks in a virtual world. And for some men, all of a sudden, they're like, wait a minute, I'm putting hours of effort and to be rewarded in a virtual world. What happens if I just decide to spin that and start developing myself in the world and what are those perks? And those perks are going to be the building blocks of who you are, your abilities, the superpowers that you've mentioned, how you're able to help other people. Another thing I'd love to share in all of this is, you know, I'm almost 40 and my network when I was in my early 20s was small, but it's grown exponentially because once you make a connection, then everyone in that person's network is one degree away from you. So even if you're starting out now and you feel like, hey, I really only have a couple friends from college, you know, I had that one professor I really clicked with, that's okay because investing in those relationships, as we see, led to you 18 years later, writing a book. Like all of these things take time and a little bit of patience, but the exponential growth and the payoff from the reciprocity that giving people five minutes of your time, favors and support provides has worked incredibly well in our career trajectory. I never would have thought of it in my 20s. You know, and I think, I think what Johnny, you were just saying, I mean, doing that little bit of research before you reach out to people, whether they're people you know or people you don't know, they have all the tools they need to do that. I mean, when I was coming of age professionally, I had the yellow pages and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Okay, you can now find someone's complete career trajectory. You can find out what they're upset about on, you know, on Twitter. You can find out if they have grandchildren on Instagram. So if you're reaching out cold, you have a way to find out about them so that you can offer some sort of help. And again, it doesn't have to be, you know, writing them a check for a million dollars or you know, solving their marital issues, okay? But I mean, it could just do a little bit of research. And I think, AJ, what you said, I found fascinating in some of the research that people we meet or people have affected our lives we have never met because of the people we have met. Does that make sense? But then they're, I mean, it's one of those things like if you think too much about it, you go crystal little over. We talked about that exact thing and the influence of friends of friends and the impact that they have on our life, our views, our beliefs, our character. And surrounding yourself with the right people takes a little bit of effort at the start, but the payoff as we talked about is so tremendous. And you bring this up in the book, the reciprocity, the power of the invite. I mean, these are all things that we talk a lot about here on the show because it doesn't take much. For you, it may seem like if I'm starting at zero, I'm going to have to master something. I'm going to have to be the best tiktoker in the world. That's not the case. Having five minutes of your time to help set up your professor's tiktok so he's producing content to grow his audience could pay off in his career and in turn lead to him looking for opportunities to give you a favor, to make an introduction to open a door for you. And that's the thing. We all have these strengths. We just maybe haven't spent enough time really cultivating or thinking about it introspectively. And what we love, absolutely love is what you covered in the book, this idea of hosting people and bringing people together instead of waiting for your invite. And that's another common excuse we hear. You know, oh, the weekend comes around. I don't have anyone reaching out to me. Well, why don't you reach out and plan because once you start inviting people even if they don't show up, they still feel an urge through reciprocity to invite you to the next thing that's happening in their life. And I've had tons of connections made when that person didn't show up to my event. They didn't come to my party but they still ended up remembering me and inviting me to something going on in their life. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. There was a study that I showcased a researcher in Utah decided to just send 600 Christmas cards to people he had no idea who they were. And he started getting back Christmas cards and even for like 15 years he would get Christmas cards from those people who he had never met but it was that act. So I think what you just described is exactly that but in like real life. And we're all yearning for that connection. And if you are the one who takes a little bit of impetus a little bit and put yourself out there you're gonna be amazed at what comes back in return and it may not come back exactly the way that you did it meaning you might not get a favor instantly and they might not do specifically what you're looking for but over time the long trajectory of our lives and careers you're gonna see all of these doors open from these small favors that you provide others the value you give those around you. Now you brought up something else that I know a lot in our audience are struggling with as well and that's listening. You know, many of us have a never ending to-do list a calendar of meetings, things we got to do at home things we got to do at work. And of course this little device in our pocket that we've been talking about to distract us what did your research show around listening and becoming a great conversationalist and what tools can we bring to really foster and cultivate better listening skills? Well, we're horrible at listening and the pandemic has made it even worse because as you mentioned notorious distractions including the phone, you know, children at our feet pets at our feet, you know, whatever has been but even before the pandemic and again I am not singling myself out as being an exceptional listener but what I have learned is by not listening you can't get from the ask to the do and you actually miss like what if somebody told you they were giving you a million dollars but you weren't listening you would miss that and being facetious but I spent some time interviewing a gentleman named Dr. Julian Treasure who is one of the world's foremost experts in listening in fact, he's done four or five TED Talks just on listening so I would suggest that your listeners listen to his TED Talks however, a couple of tips that he gave me one is to stop our anticipatory listening and I am guilty of this but when I'm listening to people I'm already so excited to get to the do I'm already thinking about how I'm going to respond rather than just listening, okay the second thing is this is natural when we are listening to people our minds wander so while you're talking I could be thinking about the Thai food I'm going to have for dinner tonight or the dishes in my sink but it is totally acceptable one to be taking notes especially if you're in a conversation on a business or even at an event I sometimes use my phone but of course I say I'm not looking at my email I'm actually taking notes but the other thing that I've learned is it's totally acceptable to say you know what I wasn't for a second I zoned out do you mind AJ repeating yourself because that in itself is a very wonderful gift we can give to one another because first of all it shows a bit of vulnerability but it also is respectful, right you caught yourself and you really want to hear that person and 99% of the time they won't be upset that they have to repeat themselves they'll be happy because they want to make sure they're heard