 The number one growing sport looking at the data in terms of types of outdoor meetup groups. I kind of referenced it already so spoiler alert is pickleball. Pickleball! 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. People want to be friends and play kickball or whatever first before you know they're on that like awkward date just staring at each other wondering what to actually talk about. First you hang out first so we're actually doing a big partnership with that with the largest dating site out there and kind of going to be managing their events and we'll see what happens. Well I want to highlight something that's that's so key here because yes there are shared experiences and there are groups with shared interests that you can join but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go to other groups. When we started hosting in New York and started hosting in LA we had tons of people stop by the meetup were like I'm already experted I'm not interested in social skills but I'm just trying to meet new people. Meetups self-select for people who are open to meeting new great interesting people. So if you're an introvert it's the ultimate safe space for an introvert. The best hosts the ones who have a track record of hosting multiple meetup events they know exactly how to unlock your genius as an introvert get you in conversation and meeting awesome people. So don't look at it oh it's for extroverts as you said earlier who are excited to go back out it's actually one of the safest places for you to practice conversation skills to network to meet awesome interesting people because it self-selects for people who are open to meeting new people. First going to a random bar a random store walking around the street aimlessly or even going to the gym we hear that time and time and again oh I go to the gym people go to the gym to work out they're not going to the gym to meet people. Sure you might cross paths and a conversation could happen but meetup is that one destination that's welcome to all perspectives introverts extroverts ambiverts and great hosts know how to unlock your genius in that setting. So even if you're not into paragliding or you're not into real estate go to one of those events and you might end up like our client meeting your significant other soon to be spouse. One final point to that is that we had told our clients many times to avoid dating meetups specifically because there's so much tension and it's awkward and everyone has preconceived notions and it's just there's because of the expectations put on it it just turns into an awkward experience. So to go on what AJ was saying you're self-selecting for people who are open who are interested who are making the most of their lives those are the folks that you want to put yourself in front of to meet for dating and which is why meetup is so rad because so many people when they think about being single and they think about an event and a singles event they start losing their mind of having to deal with everything that is attached to that. No one wants to go to singles events if they're single and the key is that we don't really call out like singles events we just go we have events and then people look at the some of the people going and they go and they have hopefully a great time. I got to tell AJ and Johnny a very brief story just about what you were talking about which I met in I was in in Silicon Valley obviously prepent not obviously but pre-pandemic and I met this very very introverted engineer and he's a meetup organizer he said I have two groups one of my groups is a group for for people to bowl and build relationships bowling together it's a bowling group I do it for social reasons to get like kind of feel comfortable socially and the other group is a career networking group and I'm the organizer of those two groups and he said and this is insane I've gotten two jobs from my bowling group and I met like a friend and a girlfriend through the career networking group and what that speaks to is kind of the overlap between the personal and the professional that when you one of the great things about meetup is you build personal relationships that could then turn into professional relationships and potential professional relationships that could turn into personal relationships and when you could kind of do both of those things it's beneficial kind of as a human being and in all ways. Well every conversation is an opportunity and if you take that view and that perspective meetups are the best place to ensure you're getting in tons of conversations you can't go to a meetup and not interact with people they're small they're intimate and the great hosts know how to connect people so even if you're feeling a bit of social anxiety jumping into that meetup opportunity is going to put you in a place where conversations happen and it's no surprise that through those conversations that leads to career opportunities that leads to romantic opportunities and of course at its ethos social opportunities. 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. You know we have a lot of clients as well who are coming out of a relationship so we know that you know going through divorce obviously your social life is going to take a hit you might lose some friends who are friends with your spouse you might be starting over and meet up again is one of those great opportunities to hit the reset button if you're not happy with your current social circle and what we've found time and time again with our clients is you go to one and it becomes addicting it's like wow there are people who are really open to meeting new people and if you're sitting here listening to this feeling like man you know I go to these events sometimes I go out I try to meet new people but it doesn't happen I'm not finding those opportunities meet up is that place where you will meet amazing people self-selecting for those who are curious open-minded and interested in connecting with one another. Now you have access to the data Johnny and I have always been fascinated by the data what are some unique meet-up opportunities or unexpected things that you discover through looking at the data and growing meet-up that might surprise our audience members. Okay great I love it okay so first one I will say is the number one most growing sport in at least the United States looking at the data in terms of types of outdoor meet-up groups I kind of referenced it already so spoiler alert is pickleball pickleball yeah I got so many invites to pickleball and I've never heard of it before the pandemic so I'm not I'm hearing about it right now pickleball is like a thing it's so big in so many states because we have this great search data we know what people are searching for and the key is we're just like we just don't know the data of like what someone's going to click on and like an ad they're willing to click on go to you get off their couch get out their butt and actually show up to in real time like those are like genuine like deep interests so biggest outdoor sport pickleball the one this the something that's possibly going to become very big which is shocking and growing in the UK and outside the UK believe it or not I don't want to mispronounce it quidditch oh actually like a significant number of Harry Potter they're obviously not flying on brooms through the air but someone has figured out a way to play quidditch the other one by the way in terms of outdoors is um this is also interesting it might be because of social distancing reasons badminton for some reason there's tremendous numbers of people looking to start playing badminton and find badminton groups that's kind of on the outdoors kind of no surprise um cryptocurrency is obviously going through the roof anyone but the cool thing is that I saw a video of Brian Armstrong who is a founder of Coinbase and he talked about how 10 years ago he founded Coinbase and the first thing he did was started going to every single cryptocurrency related meetup that he could go to in order to talk to people about like what people were interested in it so like the hot trends that that that people are are talking about kind of end up on meetup but but the so like dogecoin there's actually like tons of people that are that are looking for that now so even though it's a made up thing um it may be worthwhile to invest who knows the other interesting thing that we look at is the percentage of events that are happening in person versus online as potentially a predictor of kind of where things are opening up around the world and we'll see for example pretty early Texas was just having a high number like really you're like in the middle of the pandemic Texas is having a lot of in-person meetup events and uh I guess you know they're obviously very open to to to that in terms of their ethos and and you know countries like Brazil are still like and India are still 90 95% online so you could you could really track um based on how the world is opening up um and leverage meetup data to see that because we're in 193 different countries like every country but North Korea so I can't get much information on what's going on there except for that you can only have 10 different haircuts apparently and Johnny's would definitely not be allowed no I don't think they're encouraging meetups either so that's fascinating let's unpack a little bit of obviously we get the outdoor and the sports and and that working but what are you seeing now that we are starting to reopen and not so much be concerned about social distancing or can meet indoors what are those hot meetups that are on everyone's radar yeah the biggest one is the biggest one's around wellness biggest ones are our wellness straight up the wellness category is like I'm not kidding it's like it's tripled in terms of the number of events so everything related to um happiness groups literally discussing happiness and what does it mean to be happy and how do you drive happiness in your life and and uh you know um there's all science you know around positivity and happiness we have a lot of those groups everything around meditation uh yoga uh those are those are also growing um ecstatic dance groups are also we're seeing like significant growth that people just wanted to get back out and like dance like crazy on rooftops or or wherever so so the the health um and wellness category um is is really exploding for good reason because the amount of kind of depression and anxiety that that happened during the their pandemic was is real and and getting back in person people want to do things to to uh heal and there's a lot of healing that's that's required so that's and that's probably the not probably is definitely the biggest category of growth is around health and wellness I mean it certainly makes sense considering we had nothing but time to sit indoors and worry and think about our wellness and health obviously became a worldwide conscious awakening around this pandemic so people being concerned about it investing in their health and then wanting to get together with other people who share that viewpoint I think is certainly huge is there a meet-up group that just surprised you as you started leading the company and the data like oh I would never thought people would be meeting up around that oh I mean we are so long tail and for the listeners long tail essentially means like crazy niche that I was surprised how niche we would get