The art of authenticity

Ron Lieber writes for the New York Times and is very well-known and liked in personal finance circles. So Ramit Sethi interviewed Ron about building authentic relationships.

I watched this interview in Ramit’s course, Instant Network, and it was so valuable that that it took me several hours to get through… because I kept stopping the video to follow their advice and take extensive notes.

For example:

“Even Ron, a NYT writer, says he is only as good as the last article he wrote, and fully expects to be “on the street” one day. Why wouldn’t he want a network of people he has a relationship with that he can call on?”

I think there’s at least one idea in my notes that anyone could benefit from, so I’m sharing them here, unabridged.

Here you go:

• The word ‘rich’ is emotionally loaded – think in terms of living a ‘rich life’.
• Curiosity and the desire to ask questions is the foundation of authentic networking.
• Talk to people with a deeply conversational tone – not an interrogative tone (even people you are a little suspicious of) and you’ll put them at ease and get better answers.
• You need be able to talk to anyone about anything and put them at ease before you get to whatever business you want to do with them.
• Having a broad base of interests – and following your curiosities – helps you hold a conversation with almost anyone.
• When you’re meeting someone – or want to meet someone – do some research so you have at least a few minutes of conversational fodder.
• Don’t be too robotic… but be prepared.
• Conversing with other people is a skill.
• Don’t lean on the easiest topics of conversation – like asking where they went to college or what they do for work. People have answered these questions hundreds of times, so they’ll give scripted answers. It’s boring. There are almost always more interesting topics of conversation. Ask them about their favourite restaurant and their face will light up because it’s interesting for them to think about.
• A conversational game: see how long you can go without asking someone where they grew up, where they went to university, or what they do for work.
• Investing has been solved: put your money in index funds and forget about it – other than to tweek your asset allocations as your risk tolerance changes.
• One way you can be valuable to someone is to just notice what they’re doing and send them a comment on it.
• Keep a mental file of what other people in your field are doing, and the way in which they’re doing it, so you’re always in a position to take a different approach (it’s automatically more interesting if you give people a contrarian take – and valuable if it’s a good take).
• Take 30 minutes and send 5 notes to people whose work you really admire. It could be a company providing great service. It could be the chef at your favourite restaurant. It could be a writer whose stuff you like. Even Ron, a NYT writer, doesn’t get a lot of notes from people expressing gratitude or appreciation – but he appreciates it when he does.
• When Ron gets a note from someone who has clearly thought something through, he thanks them, and ask if he can add them to an email reader file of smart people he can run things by. So anyone who sends him a thoughtful note – and it’s not many – is immediately on his A list.
• A smart and thoughtful note: what, specifically, spoke to you AND how you intend to put it to work in your own life OR how you’ve already tried to put it to work and failed (this is useful because the recipient gets feedback on why something thy taught didn’t work out for you).
• The most successful pitches Ron gets are like: “Ron, I read your column often, I like this thing that you wrote X months ago and it made me think you might be interested in Y.” Then they give a couple of paragraphs on Y that demonstrate that they understand Ron’s style and it’s interesting.
• You’re only as good as your next idea. And ideas can come from anywhere. So it’s *always *good for journalists, writers, and publishers to receive new comments, feedback, ideas. They can’t respond to it all – but it’s all important.
• Even those on top of the mountain need ideas. In fact, possibly more so than others, because they’re so busy. But because of their visibility, they’re overwhelmed with low quality ideas and pitches. If you can do better, send individual comments, and do so over a period of years, you can separate yourself from others and build an authentic relationship.
• Deadlines can help if you want to write (or create anything) prolifically. Your mind adapts to it. It also helps with volume of production if you stick to roughly the same form every time.
• For Ron, coming up with original ideas is harder than actually writing about that idea.
• If you want to write on the side, and build a portfolio that represents you and your interests, then start a blog on the subjects that you are most intensely passionate about. Ideally in a small niche of a big market.
• There’s value in a “stunt” – or what I think of as a dramatic demonstration (ala Claude Hopkins) – to accelerate your progress as a beginner at anything. Ron gave the example of Julie who wanted to learn how to cook French food. She took the book, “Mastering The Art of French Cooking” and cooked all 524 recipes in one year. It’s known as the Julie/Julia project. Julie blogged about her experience and shared cooking clips on social media. It led to a book and a movie adaptation starring Merryl Streep. It was interesting because it was dramatic, curiosity-invoking, and it makes you think “she gonna cook all of the recipes in that huge book??” The book was well known for people interested in cooking. It was probably interesting for people to see Julie cooking at a time when people didn’t share stuff like that on social media.
• A similar example is Pieter Levels doing a 12 startups in 12 months challenge to learn how to launch digital applications/businesses. It was dramatic. 12 in 12?? Very interesting to other developers in particular. And also interesting to anyone interested in the lifestyle that Pieter lived whilst doing it.
• It’s interesting to me that Julie’s challenge became a book and a movie. Pieter’s led to a very niche audience with many benefits. I think the difference can be explained by the fact that EVERYONE cooks. It’s a mass market. OTOH, not everyone is interested in developing web app businesses. That’s a smaller audience.
• There are a couple of people who I’ve noticed are great at taking a very specific interest and making it appeal to large audience. Ramit Sethi is one of them. His personal finance advice – summed up as ‘live your rich life’ – could appeal to pretty much anyone. Matt Furey is another. Matt taught fitness to martial artists. He broadened the market with Combat Conditioning – a product that could appeal to anyone with an interest in fitness – with Matt’s unique approach – including but not limited to martial artists.
• Ramit teaches something called the Demand Matrix. There are four categories for businesses: mass market, golden goose, labour of love, high end. Golden Goose businesses have big market and attract a relatively high price. Ramit’s book is mass market. But his courses are golden gooses. Earnable, for example – how many people don’t want to earn more money?
• Pulling this all together, here are some principles to take from the Julie/Julia project and my subsequent musings: learn by doing, do something you truly want to do, demonstrate what you do in a dramatic way, make it appealing to a big market.
• So, for example – I want to learn marketing. The first idea that came to mind was this: take How to Get Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham. I could execute every one of the marketing approaches in the book. I could do this without permission for other businesses that interest me. In doing so, I’ll get a very good education in marketing, I’ll learn by doing, I’ll be doing something that interests me, and I can demonstrate it in a dramatic way.
• Ron has also met a lot of people from being published, hiring people, being hired by people, and he contacts people a lot to give them positive or constructive feedback (e.g. “I wish you’d said that to”), tries to help people looking for work or to hire.
• What goes around comes around.
• Use social media to tell people things that you think they’d find really interesting and to ask questions.
• Get to know people who are better at the thing you want to get good at by reaching out to a couple of them each month and tell them specifically why they inspired you (including as much detail as you can) and give them some feedback.
• I’ve got a better version: rather than the feedback part, do something for them without permission that you think would be valuable without asking for anything more than a testimonial. This is like networking/relationship building on steroids.
• Find one thing that’s been vexing you for a long time and find a simple way to improve that area of your life. For example, if it’s been annoying you that you can never find your keys at home, and you waste time looking for them every day, decide to focus on always putting them in the same place until you do that habitually.