This is an auto-generated transcript of Never Enough Podcast Episode 5. It may contain minor errors.
look here's the most important thing I found that I could change the trajectory of My Life by becoming a host the best people learn how to make hosting a habit they host once a quarter once a month and you bring people into your orbit it wasn't really a healthy social life I lived at home I worked with my parents I had no social life no friends no dating life and eventually I was like wow I really need to make a change with this I like haven't had a girlfriend in forever and that's why I moved to
New York City I'm going to give free tours for my friends I'm going to become the best tour guide the Saudi royal family will hire me and for $20,000 a tour I will be the best tour guide in the world and the funny thing is I actually gave a tour for someone in or adjacent to the sadu royal family once and it was like the worst tour ever so Nick how you doing today well I'm ready to begin our podcast after I have a drink from my mateina yerba mate I love it so please wait is is that still
a thing are you doing that yeah yeah yeah yeah let's let's promote it let's do it okay good good good I was ready I had my product placement come on who else has done product placement here it's embarrassing that nobody else all right good I'm number one for product placement on the Pod so far I bought two cases of it to transition off of coffee I've been drinking cold brew coffee in the mornings and I think that gives me a little bit of anxiety and I have a hunch that if I get onto the yamate that'll
be less anxiety it's been interesting when I drink dripped coffee I'm an anxious wreck and if I drink more than one Aeropress I'm destroyed but I can have one or two of those yeram mates and I think because it contains theanine I think it Mellows out the caffeine high kind of like green tea I like the Arrow Press as well and I would say that if you want to have the Arrow Press you actually can supplement it with theanine beforehand have you ever done that yeah I was I was actually putting it in
my coffee so I'd take the capsule open it up put it in my coffee I was talking to my doctor and I said you know I really haven't been sleeping well every morning I just feel sluggish I can't quite wake up and it turns out that theanine has some sort of effect on cortisol and so I was actually making myself tired so you have to be really careful with theine dosing I think in the evening it's really good but in the morning it can actually mess you up because it'll reduce your anxiety but it'll
also reduce your cortisol I feel I like the idea that we are talking about theanine and cortisol as I think we can both say that we are lay people that did not go to school for medicine and so I will add the legal disclaimer to do your own research neither Andrew or I are doctors we're just I think both you and I get into things like this cuz we are interested in human performance and we both want to be at the top of our game taking a proactive approach in that I think you and I both enjoy that
so my first recollection of you is actually seeing you on Tumblr I remember in like 2009 or 2010 Tumblr was like where the cool kids of the internet hung out and you were one of those cool Tumblr users I was like a little 18-year-old nerd following you and being like Oh my God like I have to move to Brooklyn like this looks so cool and you and I never actually met but I went to New York and I stayed in your room I rented your room while you were in Europe and I really pissed off your roommate
really yeah so I got there so I'm like 19 or something I'm kind of nervous you I think all your roommates were like late 20s early 30s they're a bunch of lawyers and stuff I get the key and I can't sleep all night I have this weird thing where I just I'm tossing and turning and I wake up at 5:00 a.m. and I go out and I come back to the apartment at like 10:00 a.m. and I go and put my key in the door and I turn it and it won't turn I can't get into the apartment and I'm like what happened
so I call your roommate he's busy at work and I'm like look I'm so sorry I need you to come back and let me into the apartment and he comes and he looks at my key and I show him I turn the key in their thing and then he just puts the key in and he turns it the opposite way and I was like oh my god and so basically your roommates hated me for the month I was there and uh I got off on a bad start but that that's how we met so Random that's amazing I've never heard that story before so I never actually heard that that happened what were you doing at the time were you you had started tiny or what were you doing I was just a designer starting metalab and designing websites for clients and stuff
we were working with this startup in New York and so I came for a couple months so cool that's awesome that's nice yeah that's how we got connected I think because we had emailed about the room then I added you against your will to my friend's newsletter and probably just started looping you in on my newsletter then and yeah honestly I think your newsletter is my favorite newsletter of any that I get and I've kind of copied it a little bit I think it's so interesting so for those that don't know Nick has this newsletter where he calls it his friends newsletter and he basically provides updates on his life and little hacks and things that he's enjoying
so I remember one was like you were really into overnight oats and you were like here's how to make the best overnight oats or you were like hey I'm wearing these weird FiveFinger shoes or it'll be like I went to Hawaii and here's the best hotel or here's a tour I just got really into this newsletter and got so much value out of it how did you even get to the newsletter in the first place like what is your story like how did you even come to live in New York with all those cool people
came to live in New York because through a circuitous route but I've been on the internet for a long time right since 1996 so a very long time I've been on the internet I've been publishing on the internet for a long time and I had friends on the internet I happened to go to college with the guys started Vimeo and college humor and was very good friends with them roommates with them and so sort of ran in those circles a little bit we were all doing online stuff I moved to New York because after college I tried to start a software company I moved to India to try to start a software company
after college I didn't have very much money and I was like I'm going to bootstrap this I figured my dollar would go a lot farther in India where I could hire more people and so I tried to go to India to hire people it was a terrible failure I hired two people who weren't even in India one of them was in Boston the other guy was in Poland and I was in India it's very bad thing but the software project was at the time do you remember AOL Instant Messenger yeah I loved it and did you ever use away
messages yeah I wrote a software program that would scrape all of my friends away messages and display them into One dashboard so at any one time I could see them and then it would scrape the old way messages and turn them into like tweets so I could read all their old way messages so it was this huge data scraping operation and college kids liked it but could never really figure out how to monetize it this was 2004 2005 and I moved back home and my dad was starting a company in the basement of
our house and I helped him hire his first employee and do a little bit of marketing and what I thought would just be a few months of getting back on my feet after my software project failure that turned into several years as we grew the company but it wasn't really a healthy social life I lived at home I worked with my parents I had no social life no friends no dating life and eventually I was like wow I really need to make a change with this and that's why I moved to New York City
that's so cool and so when you were living in New York what were you doing there like for work were you still working with your family yes still working with the family business running a lot of our sales over in Europe so it was a remote job that I could work flexibly and that's when I got into hosting events because I worked at home it became my way to like have Community almost what was it like living in New York at that time I think 2007 2008 until 2020 so I was there for a long time it was great
I struggle with recommending I think you'd probably agree with me I don't know if New York is the best place to live if you want to start a business there's just simply so much to do that it's very hard to like stay focused and grind and have a quality lifestyle but it was great for somebody who wanted a social life and I certainly loved the time that I was in New York wouldn't trade it for anything and then you my understanding is you sold that business the family business and you started a business called Museum hack
which I thought was a very unconventional business I was doing Museum hack for fun like as a hobby on the weekends just for free for my friends and I got really good at it I did it for two years as a hobby and then eventually when I couldn't take it anymore when there was overwhelming demand then I was like all right I guess I'll try to make this a business and that's when I stopped working for the family started my own thing and you're basically just giving the world's best museum tours so how did it work yeah it was basically Museum tours for people who don't like museums and that was me I don't like museums I think they're boring
I have a very short attention span however we lived in New York City have you been to the Met Museum by the way many times I love it yeah it's huge more than 2 million square ft I moved to New York I think to go to cool stuff like that and so I started to hang out there and I'd look things up on Wikipedia on YouTube and then started to show my friends around when they would come to visit and then for some reason I thought I wanted to be the tour guide for the Saudi royal family so my stupid idea was like I'm going to give free tours for my friends I'm going to become the best tour guide and then the Saudi royal family will hire me
and for $20,000 a tour I will be the best tour guide in the world and so I worked really hard to try to have the best tours and the funny thing is I actually gave a tour for someone in or adjacent to the sadu royal family once and it was like the worst tour ever because they were not laughing at any of my jokes they like had their arms crossed the whole time they were not fun at all and that's I think what I want I just want to have fun so you sold that business to I think to your employees and then this whole time you had this newsletter kind of growing
how are you allocating your time so you're doing Museum hack you're doing the newsletter and then I think you started writing the book the newsletter is just an afterthought I'll just like Let It Rip whenever I think about it generally once a month or once a quarter and you had asked where that came from actionable takeaway for the listeners you should probably start a friends newsletter that you can send to your friends once a quarter with your life updates put them all on BCC I have found it a very helpful practice for myself and remember the purpose is to add value
so don't make it like a diary you want to add value to them with the interesting lessons learnings articles books movies you've seen value first I've talked a lot about on this podcast and other places about the value of parasocial relationships right so one-way relationships where someone knows you but you don't know them necessarily and there's two ways to use a newsletter like this one is keep up with your friends and the other is you end up having this relationship with people like me who have only known you until recently
I think we met in person maybe a year ago or two years ago but I felt I knew you but I actually didn't we had never spoken how has that manifested in your own life like what's been the benefit what kind of interesting experiences have you had as a result of that newsletter well I mean you know the benefit of it and a friend of mine said this to me recently because he's very viral on LinkedIn he said dude do you realize does this happen to you where people come up and say hello and they don't even introduce themselves they don't
and you're laughing because I think this probably happens to you you've never met this person before you have no clue who they are but they don't even say their name what are the benefits of the parasocial stuff I think that it just paves the way for social interactions for investing for business for other things when your reputation precedes you a little bit more people know me and recognize me it makes things easier it's Fame in a very small weird Circle but it is largely good and positive
okay so you have that newsletter and then you also wrote this book which I thought was really interesting and it's called the 2-hour cocktail party it's how to host an amazing event basically where you connect a bunch of people and I was lucky enough when we were in Austin you hosted an event for me and Sam par and a few other people and it was so cool I feel like whenever I go to these events I get stuck in a conversation pit and I end up having a lot of small talk and I also don't know who's there
and so I remember you got all of us into a circle and you said what do you do over and over again to every single person so I knew who's in the room and then you did such a great job of curating everybody you forced everyone to break up into different groups you're constantly moving people around you're saying you should know this person and then at the end you're left wanting more I remember it ended after an hour and a half or something and I was like what like that's it and you said well you can stay if you want
and it was such a great psychological hack can you talk a little bit about like how did you come to even write that book and the key insight is I was watching like a hawk who you were talking to and I knew in my mind how long you'd been talking to people at any moment I could tell you who was talking to you and I think you probably noticed that during that event I was bringing you new people and introducing you I'd come up and tap you and say Andrew can I borrow you for a second
constantly moving and so that is the role of an active host who takes an active role in leading an event and the problem is that most events have passive hosts who say oh no I'm not going to do name tags I just want it to be chill but you said something when you came in town you said one of the greatest compliments I've got for my hosting you said whenever Nick is around I feel like I can relax because he is the one stressing and I was like yes I feel seen let me rest so that you can relax
I love it I feel like a kindred spirit because when I'm in groups I just want everyone to be happy and to have a good time and it really stresses me out if I bring a group together and I realize that two of the people should have met and they didn't your book is called The 2-hour cocktail party it's available on Amazon and it'll make your life better I can't say that about that many books
it's a very simple practical book that has simple things like put a label on the bathroom and your where your trash can is obvious Common Sense advice but when like how often have you been to that rich friend's house and their trash can is like hidden in some door and as a guest we're like where the hell is the trash can can you give like a quick summary of like what are the three elements of great party yeah three elements I say that there's the Nick method n i c k n stands for name tags I will die on this hill
I do a lot of marketing around this but I think name tags are helpful and needed at almost any event when there's mixed social groups of five or more people name tags are supremely helpful the name tag serves as a visual unifier for everyone in attendance almost like a sports Jersey so think about when we wear a sports Jersey we're all on the same team the name tag unifies us to say this is not a party of clicks we are all on the same team
i stands for intros or ice breakers just doing a round of intros not only helps create new conversations but it also helps end the conversations because a guess that I would have about Andrew is that he's too nice to say I've had enough I'm going to go meet somebody else most people will not do that and so as a host when you lead a round of intros it actually serves as a Breaking Point
C stands for cocktails or mocktails only do not over index on food most people think hosting is about feeding people I would rather have someone leave my party hungry rather than bored so I think more about the conversations and the introductions and less about the food food causes problems because people sit down and sitting down is the Kryptonite to a successful mixer you get locked in
and then K stands for kick them out at the end you really want to end on a high note you don't want to just let it drag on so you wrote that book you have the email newsletter you sold the family business you sold Museum hack you're an investor you've been very successful financially but now the interesting thing um when I talk to people about what they want they'll often say I want to get rich I want to be a billionaire but I think Nick is a friend billionaire
I would much rather be a friend billionaire than a money billionaire I think having a broad group of people who know you deeply is really valuable is that a fair assumption to say that is your goal look I know what it takes to make $50 million or $100 million and after running my last business I decided that I wasn't willing or ready to do that that it wasn't a tradeoff I was willing to make and I didn't feel pulled towards that money as much as I felt pulled towards Life Adventure and experiences
and I've often thought about okay what would I really spend the money on now maybe it's easy for me I don't have kids I don't have a a family that I'm building yet so I don't feel pulled to the need of that money but I am lucky that right now in my life I have more money than I spend and I don't I'm not willing to trade and make those sacrifices towards the freedom and flexibility I have in my life right now
what caused you to create all these systems I was never the guy that everyone had to invite to the party I learned over time that if you want to go to Great parties you have to create the great party you have to be the host you have to make it happen you have to build systems for you personally like you seem like a very extroverted friendly guy was there a period in your life where you weren't no way dude 100% High School never had a girlfriend same thing what you said I wasn't the first to get invited
College was not super popular years after college had no social life at all whatsoever and then moved to New York and found myself feeling very much as an outsider at all these events I wasn't tall enough I wasn't Rich enough I wasn't muscular enough and so there's that phrase if they won't invite you to speak then build your own stage and I felt that way about hosting parties that I'll just start to host my own parties and get the people that I want to be in the room
look here's the most important thing I found that I could change the trajectory of My Life by becoming a host the best people learn how to make hosting a habit it is not something that they host once a year for their birthday they make hosting a habit they host once a quarter once a month and you bring people into your orbit think about someone like Andrew he's going to meet you but the next step for you to see Andrew again could only be oh can I pick your brain that's never going to happen
as opposed to if you say hey Andrew occasionally I host this little happy hour with the most interesting people may I invite you and eventually if you invite him enough times he'll come I once went to this dinner party that this woman hosted and she had a very famous author who came and I asked her how did you get that guy to come and she said well I just invited him and after about seven invitations it finally worked out and what I realized is everyone wants to be invited to a party
you may not go you may politely decline but generally everyone wants to at least be invited and so by hosting I got to give the gift of invitations and eventually folks start to come then it's up to you to actually host a good event
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