This is an auto-generated transcript of Never Enough Podcast Episode 5. It may contain minor errors.
Andrew: So Nick, how you doing today?
Nick: Well, I'm ready to begin our podcast after I have a drink from my Mateina Yerba Mate. I love it, so please—
Andrew: Wait—is that still a thing? Are you doing that?
Nick: Yeah, let's promote it! Let's do it!
Andrew: 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 yerba mate, that'll be less anxiety.
Nick: 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 yerba mates and I think because it contains theanine, it mellows out the caffeine high, kind of like green tea.
Andrew: So my first recollection of you is actually seeing you on Tumblr. I remember in like 2009 or 2010, Tumblr was 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, I have to move to Brooklyn." 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.
Nick: Really? I've never heard that story before.
Andrew: Yeah, so I get there—I'm like 19 or something, I'm kind of nervous—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 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. So I call your roommate, he's busy at work, and he comes and looks at my key—and he just puts the key in and turns it the opposite way. And so basically your roommates hated me for the month I was there.
Andrew: So how did you even come to live in New York with all those cool people?
Nick: I've been on the internet for a long time—since 1996. I happened to go to college with the guys who started Vimeo and College Humor and was very good friends with them, roommates with them. 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—I didn't have very much money and I figured my dollar would go a lot farther in India where I could hire more people.
Nick: 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. The software project was—do you remember AOL Instant Messenger? 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 away messages and turn them into like tweets. College kids liked it but could never really figure out how to monetize it. This was 2004, 2005.
Nick: 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.
Andrew: And then you—my understanding is you sold that business, the family business, and you started a business called Museum Hack?
Nick: 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.
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 the funny thing is I actually gave a tour for someone in or adjacent to the Saudi royal family once, and it was like the worst tour ever. Because they were not laughing at any of my jokes, they had their arms crossed the whole time. They were not fun at all.
Andrew: So you sold that business and this whole time you had this newsletter kind of growing. How are you allocating your time?
Nick: The newsletter is just an afterthought—I'll just let it rip whenever I think about it, generally once a month or once a quarter.
Nick: 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.
Andrew: I've talked a lot about the value of parasocial relationships—one-way relationships where someone knows you but you don't know them necessarily. I think we met in person maybe a year ago or two years ago, but I felt I knew you, and I actually didn't. We had never spoken. How has that manifested in your own life?
Nick: 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?" 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.
Andrew: You also wrote this book which I thought was really interesting—it's called "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party." It's how to host an amazing event where you connect a bunch of people. I was lucky enough—when we were in Austin, you hosted an event for me and Sam Parr and a few other people. And it was so cool.
Nick: 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.
Andrew: Can you give like a quick summary of what are the three elements of a great party?
Nick: Yeah, three elements—I say that there's the N.I.C.K. method. N stands for Name Tags—I will die on this hill. Name tags are helpful and needed at almost any event when there's mixed social groups of five or more people. The name tag serves as a visual unifier for everyone in attendance, almost like a sports jersey.
Nick: 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 most people will not excuse themselves. As a host, when you lead a round of intros, it serves as a breaking point.
Nick: 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. Food causes problems because people sit down, and sitting down is the kryptonite to a successful mixer.
Nick: 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.
Andrew: You've been very successful financially, but now the interesting thing—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.
Nick: 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.
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. 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.
Andrew: What caused you to create all these systems? Was there a period in your life where you weren't that social?
Nick: No way, dude. 100%—high school, never had a girlfriend. 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.
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