For those who were already getting pretty good at it, I offered an additional challenge: Meet a stranger and share a hug in less than 5 minutes. One person in the room said he thought he could do it, but only if I dared him. So I said to him, “I not only dare you. I double-dog dare you!” That got a big laugh, and the challenge was set in motion. I heard a lot of fun stories from people sharing hugs with strangers, spreading love around the Las Vegas Strip.

The most impressive piece of feedback I heard was that Daan Buckinx actually met and hugged two people in less than a minute. I was impressed and told him that would be difficult to top, but he did it anyway. He eventually got it down to 15 seconds. How cool is that? Whenever you’re out in public, isn’t it great to know that the nearest hug may be only 15 seconds away?

I told Daan that if he emailed me his story, I’d post it here in the blog, and thankfully he agreed.

So here’s Daan’s story of how he went from zero to hugs in under 60 seconds:

I never used to hug people before I came to this workshop. I did want to however, but I was afraid to do so because of what people might think. You know, the usual. But I set the intention to hug as many people as I could during the workshop.

My first hugs were exchanged at the pre-meetup on Thursday. I knew people would be open to this, so they came almost effortlessly. And hugs were also quite abundant the following days at the workshop itself. I started refusing to shake hands.

But the challenge was to connect with and hug strangers. That seemed more difficult. But I wanted to do it. And then there was an opportunity. Following the silly questions exercise at the workshop, I began to consistently start up conversations with anyone I ended up in elevators with. This went really well and I loved doing it.

Eventually on Monday an elderly couple joins me in my elevator. I ask what they’re up to and they tell me they’re going to see a show, le Rêve. I tell them I want to see that show too. They ask what I’m up to. I tell them I’m going to a Toastmasters meeting later. They know Toastmasters and tell me that’s nice. Then they ask where I’m from. I tell them it’s Belgium and they seem to have got a connection with that too. They went there to see the bi-annual flower carpet once. By then we’ve exited the elevator and it’s time to go our separate ways. But not before I ask them for a hug! Which they gladly agree to, of course, smiles all around. All in under a minute.

So I told you this story on Monday and you said that would be hard to beat. But it wasn’t.

So on Tuesday I’m in the Imperial Palace, where they have some dealers impersonating celebrities. A friend points out a younger looking female one and asks if I can guess who it is. My friend walks on and I stare for a few moments but I have no clue. When I start moving again, I notice an older woman who seems to be giggling to herself. I feel compelled to ask why, so I do. She tells me that I was staring at that dealer’s knickers! Huh?! I look back and see that, indeed, there’s some underwear exposure I hadn’t noticed. So I tell her that it wasn’t me, but her that was checking out the knickers! The naughty lady! We’re both laughing hard now. I explain the situation and we end up hugging. Total time, around 40-45 seconds.

Does that sound hard to beat? It still wasn’t.

A few hours later, I went to a Chinese restaurant in Harrah’s. We get escorted to our seats by the waiter and while still standing up, I start thanking him for giving us great seats in the (mostly empty) restaurant. I say something like: “Kevin, (I love name tags) you are amazing! Thanks for giving us the best seats in the house! I love you, man! Can I give you a hug?” And what do you know, he’s ok with it! Total time, around 15 seconds!

Maybe that last one doesn’t count, because he’s a waiter and it’s his job to please people. But he still didn’t have to though, as Darby pointed out to me. So I’m not sure. The waiter was definitely smiling afterwards though.

I love speedhugging!

On Wednesday I shared some hugs with another couple at the airport in Washington while waiting for my flight back home. That one took some more time but that’s good, because it allows for a better connection. I even gave a seated hug to a girl sitting next to me on the plane to Belgium. We had been talking for ten minutes and had a great connection going on. She went to Vegas with her husband on their honeymoon. And she’d quit her job after working there for five years to start studying again, because she only had a high school diploma. We ended up exchanging details and she’s going to add me on Facebook now!

I’m going to take things a bit slower now though, because I’m sure I bruised a rib or something by bear hugging Jesse on Monday.

I’m guessing it’s a ‘coincidence’ that some strangers started talking to me in the end or that I started seeing pennies eventually too, right?

I love this new planet!

* * *

Highly conscious people don’t have to buy into the socially conditioned reality. We can create our own reality, one that is a lot more connected and fun!

It will be fun to see if anyone can break Daan’s record at the next Conscious Growth Workshop.

I can now confirm that the dates will be January 15-17, 2010 at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. I expect to open registration for it next week.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

In January 2006 I gave a 90-minute Power Point presentation to explain blogging to a group of about 60 speakers in Las Vegas. By that time I was earning a decent sustainable living from blogging (a few thousand dollars a month). I predicted that blogs would be everywhere within a few years. That wasn’t a difficult prediction to make since Technorati was reporting such phenomenal growth month after month with no end in sight. You didn’t have to be particularly prescient to see that blogging and other social media had bright futures. But I doubt many people in the room believed me.

They believe me now.

Fast forward a few years, and social media has exploded. Now I can scarcely find people who haven’t at least heard of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Unfortunately there’s a downside to such a rapid technological and social change. Part of that downside is that people approach social media with some misguided expectations that aren’t based in reality. In this article I’d like to offer some suggestions and analogies to help steer people away from such erroneous thinking.

The major mistake people make is that they assume they’re entitled to free speech when it comes to participating in online communities such as blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

Entitlement

In the USA and many other countries, free speech is a protected right. Well, that’s certainly debatable these days, but let’s be idealists for the moment.

There are some legal limitations on free speech (criminal behavior, slander/libel, copyright laws, Patriot Act, etc). Some countries, such as China, restrict free speech more than others. I live in the USA, and we Americans are accustomed to a wide latitude when it comes to free speech.

It isn’t surprising that this sense of entitlement to free speech should be carried onto the Internet. In general I’m all for that. I’ve especially enjoyed having the opportunity to interact with people around the world.

Free Speech and Contract Law

Free speech protection, however, does not extend to private homes or businesses. You may have the right to say what you like in a public forum, but you don’t have the right to enter a private home or business and do that. In such situations your right to free speech is subject to the discretion of the owner of that private forum.

Contract law may apply in many cases as well. With some limitations it’s perfectly legal for a contract to limit the right of free speech. This is because you have the ability to enter into a contract that restricts your right to free speech.

I’ve signed many business deals over the years that restrict my free speech rights. Many business contracts include a non-disclosure clause, whereby I agree that I won’t disclose certain financial or other protected info that another business shares with me. This is very common in business.

It’s likely you’ve entered into many contracts over the years that restrict your right to free speech. For example, if you ever sign up for an online service and agreed to their Terms of Service, they usually define pretty clearly what restrictions you’re agreeing to.

Free Speech Online

For many of the online sites where you may think free speech is protected, you’re required to contractually agree to limit your free speech rights. You actually don’t have the same right to free speech that you would in a truly public forum.

This is true of Facebook, Twitter, and pretty much all the major social media sites I’m aware of. Review their Terms of Service and see for yourself.

In most cases the restrictions are reasonable and maybe even necessary for maintaining a quality service. It depends on who’s running the service.

While it may seem that you’re entitled to free speech just the same as you would in a public forum, in actuality you waived that right when you joined the service. That was a condition of your registration.

Some online services are quite liberal when it comes to restricting your free speech rights, while others are more restrictive.

The Catch-All Clause

Many online services also include some kind of catch-all clause which basically gives them the right to censor you however they see fit.

For example, Twitter’s Terms of Service includes the following sentence: “We reserve the right at all times (but will not have an obligation) to remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services and to terminate users or reclaim usernames.” So according to those terms, they can nuke your account and content whenever they want.

Since I’m a Twitter user myself, Twitter could disable my account and delete all my Tweets on a whim. They have the right to do that because I agreed to their Terms of Service. Now if they actually went around doing this sort of thing, it would likely generate some bad PR for them, but because I agreed to their ToS, I don’t see that I’d have a strong legal case if I tried to fight them on it. The legal reality is probably more complicated than what I’m expressing here, but as far as I can tell, I do have a valid contract with Twitter where I willfully agreed to restrict my free speech rights when it comes to using their service.

Consequently, I know that when I post updates to my Twitter account, I have no entitlement to free speech. I’ve signed away that right in exchange for the privilege of using their service. And yes, it is a privilege. Tweeting is not a guaranteed right under the law.

I include a catch-all clause for the discussion forums on my website as well. It says, “The owners of Personal Development for Smart People Forums reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason.” In addition to that, you also have to agree to follow our forum etiquette rules. You can’t post messages in our forums unless you agree to our Terms of Service.

So in order to post your own messages on my website, you must also waive your right to free speech. If you think you can post whatever you’d like with impunity, you’re sorely mistaken.

This certainly isn’t unique to my website — not by a long shot. The phrasing I use came standard with the forum software I installed. A simple Google search can verify that thousands of other forums use similar phrasing.

The Reality of Private Forums

Why do so many online communities restrict free speech? Isn’t the expansion of free speech the whole point?

This isn’t some draconian conspiracy. It’s largely a matter of business realities. Creating and managing a highly social website isn’t free. If someone is going to go to the trouble to host and maintain such a community, especially one that may become very popular, they want to make sure they have enough control over the management of the site to fulfill their reasons for building the community in the first place. Unbridled free speech can easily degrade the quality of a community and run afoul of the site owner’s agenda.

If they were legally prevented from restricting free speech, fewer people and businesses would host such online communities. I for one would not host an online community under those conditions.

While it’s nice that government played a major role in funding the underlying Internet infrastructure that makes online communities possible, they don’t directly subsidize online communities like mine. I have to pay my site’s expenses. This includes my $350 monthly web hosting fee.

Computing power costs money. Bandwidth costs money. Site management, including installing security updates and performing basic maintenance activities, takes time. The forum software I use costs money; I pay an annual license fee to use it. Maintaining an online community certainly isn’t free on my end. Even if I use free software and find free hosting, I still have to invest my time. And someone else would still be paying for it somewhere down the line.

Allowing unbridled free speech on my website would be a very bad idea. It’s easy enough to predict what would happen because I know what our moderators deal with on a daily basis, and I’ve seen what happens to other forums that have done that. Within a few months, the site would be overrun by spammers and marketers looking to promote their wares. Flame wars would flare up on a daily basis, and threads beyond a certain length would be quickly derailed by juvenile comments and trolling by drama addicts. The quality of discussions would go down the drain, especially when it came to sensitive personal topics. I’d take one look at the mess and quickly pull the plug. Our forums would not be able to fulfill their purpose under such conditions, which is for conscious growth-oriented people to come together to help each other solve problems and improve their lives.

Although our community has more than 25,000 registered members and more than 407,000 messages posted, the core community of regular daily visitors is actually much smaller. Our top contributor has more than 10,785 posts herself (2.6% of the total). On any given day, the number of registered members who visit the site is around 400 people total. So the core community isn’t nearly as big as the casual visitors. This is pretty common when it comes to online forums and social media sites in general. The hardcore users make up only a small percentage of the total community.

Managing our community requires a staff of volunteer moderators. These moderators aren’t paid for their work. The forums don’t generate enough income to justify it, especially since I removed all the Adsense ads last year. If the quality of the community was too low, we’d have a really hard time recruiting decent moderators, which would lead to a downward spiral. So if we slacked off a little, the community could quickly go from bad to worse as our moderators concluded, “This just ain’t worth my time.” By maintaining high community standards, our moderators can see that their efforts help keep the community as a whole running smoothly, and that intrinsic reward is very important to maintaining community integrity as a whole.

Many of the most active members of our online community have been with us for years. I’ve met many of them in person, including several of our volunteer moderators. Consequently, our community doesn’t much resemble an open public forum. I’d say it’s closer to a really large family reunion with lots of drop-by visitors.

The Site Owner’s Agenda

Amazon wants to sell products. They allow you to post product reviews because someone at Amazon decided that allowing lots of people to do this would increase their sales. Do you honestly think they’d let any of us post reviews if it hurt their sales or cut into their market share to do so? They have some free speech restrictions to prevent people from doing too much damage to their sales, like posting non-Amazon links in reviews. It’s their site, so they make the rules about what you can and can’t post in a review.

The owners of Facebook have an agenda too. Investors have poured a lot of money into the site, so I’m sure they want to see it turn a profit. Consequently, you’ll see ads on your Facebook pages. Facebook makes money from those ads.

And as for Twitter… well, I don’t think Twitter’s owners have even figured what Twitter’s agenda is yet.

Some people seem to think that my primary motivation for starting and maintaining an online community was financial, as if being an entrepreneur means that all of one’s actions are driven by a profit motive. Now that’s a laugh and a half. If I really cared that much about money, I’d never have launched our forums in the first place, and even if I did, I’d have quickly realized my mistake and would have dropped them within a few months. Our forums aren’t profitable. They hog a lot of computing resources, requiring me to pay for a much faster server than I’d need for my blog alone. The forums usually cost more to run than they generate in revenue. On top of that, I’m not counting the value of the time Erin and I invest in administration. If we had to pay someone else to handle the admin, we’d lose more money on it, even if we could hire someone for less than minimum wage.

This isn’t the first time I’ve hosted an online community, so this didn’t surprise me. I used to host a popular forum for game developers, and I’ve been active in online communities since the early 90s. My game developer forum wasn’t profitable either, but I kept it going for a while because I enjoyed the communal interaction. So I knew full well when I started my personal development forums that they weren’t likely to be very profitable. Fortunately my blog generates more than enough revenue to subsidize the forums. But if I ever sold the site to someone who sought to maximize revenue from it, they would most definitely either ax the forums, flood them with third-party ads, or make some other changes to financially justify the community’s existence.

The main reason I maintain a discussion forum is that I like having like-minded people over to hang out. Just as I frequently invite people to my home, I also invite people to my online home to hang out together and talk about life. As I see it, paying for the upkeep of the forums is similar to providing snacks for my house guests.

If you have issues with the site owner’s agenda, don’t pay a visit to their virtual home. And don’t make the naive mistake of assuming their agenda is to help you assert your right to free speech.

Common Courtesy

When people approach online communities with the erroneous belief that they’re entitled to unbridled free speech, this misjudgment often leads to inappropriate behavior.

For example, sometimes people will register for my forums and try to trash talk me.

I don’t mind a bit of friendly ribbing now and then, and I’m all for intelligent debate, but if people come to my website and try to treat me, my wife, my friends, my business associates, or other members of my community with disrespect, they get banned very quickly.

Try going around to various privately owned forums and trash talk the site owner and his/her family. See how long it takes before your account is nuked. Sure, some people will allow you to do that. Some people don’t care. Some don’t pay attention. Some will get into it with you because they like the drama. But quite often you’ll end up having your account disabled. Ostensibly it’s for violating their Terms of Service. But in reality, you got banned for behaving like a jerk in someone else’s home. And when you find yourself bounced to the curb, see how much anyone cares to hear your protests that you were simply exercising your right to free speech. I’m sure the crickets will enjoy listening to your well-formed arguments.

You Are an Invited Guest

Here’s an attitude I suggest you adopt when it comes to participating in online communities. When you visit someone else’s online community, you’re a guest in the owner’s online home. Behave accordingly. Your participation there is a privilege subject to their owner’s discretion.

For example, StevePavlina.com is my own private website. In case that wasn’t obvious, take note of the URL. Notice that the URL is NOT personal-development-free-for-all-subsidized-by-steve-pavlina-who-will-bend-over-and-take-it-up-the-ass-from-anyone.com.

For some reason, certain people seem to confuse those two URLs quite often.

Technically Pavlina LLC owns StevePavlina.com, and technically an LLC is a separate legal entity from a person. Lawyers, accountants, and IRS agents get off on that sort of thing. But based on the company name you can probably guess who owns 100% of Pavlina LLC… and you’d be right.

Some people seem to have a really hard time with the whole notion of privately owned online communities. The idea that they don’t have the right to free speech everywhere online really messes with their heads. They visit their favorite online communities expecting that they’re entitled to rant and rave about anything they wish, even after they just legally agreed that everything they post is subject to the site owner’s discretion.

From time to time, visitors come to our forums and post something disrespectful toward me, Erin, our friends, or our community members. Naturally they get banned rather quickly.

Some visitors act really immature and annoy our members. Banned. Some visitors try to use our forums to promote the latest pyramid scheme. Banned. Some people think it’s fun to derail other people’s threads. Banned. And some people try to participate without ever having seen The Princess Bride. Banned and sent to Count Rugen for rehabilitation.

Most of the time, I’m not the one doing the banning. We have a team of more than a dozen moderators who do a great job of enforcing the community rules. But if I happen to be the first to notice a problem, I’m happy to take care of it myself. It’s my home, so I’m ultimately responsible when problems arise.

Sometimes people who’ve been banned will go to another online community such as someone else’s blog or another online forum and rant about what happened. “I can’t believe it. All I did was go to Steve Pavlina’s website and insinuate that he was a loser for being into self-help, and he banned me. What a jerk!”

Sometimes someone else who had a similar experience will chime in and commiserate. “Yeah, he banned me too. And all I did was call him a Satan spawn for being married to a psychic medium. Can you believe that? He’s censoring people!”

No, actually I banned you for being a moron. Well, it might not have been me personally, but I’ll gladly take credit for it. And if I was the one who handled it, most likely I did it without guilt or remorse. As everyone knows, the Dread Pirate Roberts never takes prisoners.

Do I censor people? Technically yes. But I don’t like the word censorship in this case — not because it’s too strong but because it’s too mild. I’m not just censoring people. I’m kicking them out of my home and telling them not to come back. I’m not saying, “I don’t like what you’re saying, so I’m going to cut you off.” I’m actually saying, “GET THE HELL OUT, BITCH! AND TAKE YOUR NASTY CHEESE PUFFS WITH YOU!”

Is that clear enough?

So my critics in this area are a bit off base, not because they’ve accused me of something I didn’t do but because they didn’t accuse me of enough.

If you’re going to come into my private online home and behave like a jerk in my presence, I will show you the door every time. And after you’re gone, I’ll return to my other guests and refill the snack bowls.

Who Makes The Rules?

Ostensibly when someone is banned from an online community, it’s because they violated the Terms of Service and/or community rules. But the deeper and more accurate reason is that the site owner has ultimately decided they don’t want you there.

After all, who wrote the rules in the first place? Quite often the site owner did. At the very least they approved someone else’s boilerplate text. Where did those rules come from? They came from the owner’s sense of what behaviors they’re willing to accept in their online community.

Who wrote the formal rules for my online community? I did. I solicited a lot of input from others, but the final decisions were mine to make. Where did those rules come from? They’re based on what sorts of behavior I’m willing to accept from people in my online home. If I’m not willing to tolerate certain behavior in my online home, and if I can articulate it reasonably well, I add it to our community rules, and it becomes part of our Terms of Service. But the unwritten rule is that every member who participates in this community does so at my personal discretion, especially given the catch-all in the ToS. Most people seem to have no problem with this, especially those that have had a lot of experience participating in other online communities.

Now generally speaking, if you want to build a cool community, it’s wise to be fair and reasonable. If you behave abusively toward your own community, you’ll have bigger problems to deal with. I happen to think our current community rules are quite fair and reasonable given the nature of the subjects we discuss. Again, it’s like having people over at your house. If you host a good party, people will enjoy hanging out there, and everyone is happy. If you’re an ogre, you’ll scare everyone away, and your parties will suck. The point of throwing the party is to bring people together to socialize. Maintaining a good social atmosphere requires maintaining a careful balance between freedom and good manners.

How would you react if you were hosting a party at your home for your friends, family, and community members, and someone waltzes in and starts treating your guests rudely or otherwise behaving like an obnoxious buffoon? Would you continue to welcome this person into your home, or would you show them the door right quick?

In general, this is the unspoken truth about how online communities are managed. The idea that you have free speech is a delusion. Your participation is subject to the site owner’s consent. Even if the community has written rules and does its best to uphold them fairly, who makes the rules? In most cases the site owner makes the rules.

Online Abuse

If people want to rant and rave about me in their own homes or on other websites I don’t own, more power to them. I really don’t mind that. Some bloggers commit libel by posting ridiculously false info, and sometimes we end up with a version of the telephone game where information loses accuracy as it spreads around. But as I see it, such things are a natural consequence of my chosen lifestyle. This can get a bit weird sometimes, but after 5 years of blogging, I’m used to it. It’s easy enough for me to tune out someone who rants about me somewhere else. No one is forcing me to go look at it. Whether I choose to read stuff like that or not depends on how masochistic I’m feeling.

That said, I have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to being abused in my own home, whether online or offline. I’m simply unwilling to enter into an abusive relationship with anyone. If I catch you peeing in my yard, I will hose you.

When someone posts trash talk on my own website, it’s like they rang my doorbell and left a pile of crap on my doormat. It smells bad, and it’s a waste of my time to deal with it.

Do you have to become my close personal friend or agree with everything I say to participate in my website’s online community? Heck no, I’m not that strict. But if you pay me a visit online or offline, I do require that you treat me, my wife, and our other guests with basic courtesy, politeness, and respect. Treat me online as you would if you were a guest in my home. Just as I open my website to others, I often open my home to a variety of guests as well. I love hanging out with many different kinds of people, as long as they behave with a modicum of human decency.

Now if at some point you think that I’m behaving oddly or that my manners are a bit lacking, you’re always free to leave. No one is forcing you to sit there and listen to me. It’s my home after all, and if you’re going to hang around in my living room 24/7, you’re bound to catch me at my worst at some point, so try not to be too shocked when that happens. But rest assured that when I visit your home, I’m going to be respectful of your space.

Am I trying to build a cult of supporters? No, I’m actually stricter than a cultist would be. I’ve turned away people who might have had the potential to become good and loyal cult members, but I just didn’t want them in my home because they acted too stalker-like. I want to hang out with interesting people who enjoy intelligent discussion, and I want to maintain a persistent place where people like that can come together. I have no interest in surrounding myself with mindless minions.

Misunderstandings arise when people make erroneous assumptions about how online communities really work and why people run them. This really isn’t rocket science. Can you grasp the analogy of virtual communities being equivalent to someone’s online home, regardless of how big they appear to be? Does this make sense to you? Does this help shed light on some of the problems you may have encountered in the past?

Quality Criticism

Isn’t it a community owner’s obligation to be receptive to criticism?

I’d say that’s entirely up to the owner.

I do think it’s reasonable to be open to critical feedback. A bit of constructive criticism now and then is good for growth. It keeps people honest and grounded.

If I’m going to listen to criticism, however, I want it to be of high quality. I don’t want to waste my time listening to drivel. In my case the best quality criticism almost always comes from people who know me pretty well. They’ve met me in person. They’ve met Erin. They know me on a personal level beyond my public persona as a blogger.

I’m not nearly as receptive to criticism from people who wander in off the street (virtual or otherwise) and who’ve never had so much as a single one-on-one conversation with me. Such criticism is almost always of such low quality as to be useless. Too often such people base their criticisms on one or more inaccurate assumptions and build a house of cards on top of it. It’s totally inactionable; they might as well be talking about someone else. In this area I think Erin has it worse than I do. She gets some pretty wacky criticism from people who begin with, “Erin, since you’ve obviously sold your soul to the devil, you may not be receptive to what I have to say, but please hear me out anyway…”

There’s a difference between offering genuinely helpful constructive feedback to someone you know, coming from a place of respect and wanting to be helpful, vs. cluelessly ranting because you want to vent or you like drama. I do my best to listen to respectful, actionable criticism because it’s in my own best interest and the interest of my community to do so. But it isn’t a good use of my time to wade through unreasonable criticism, and I don’t welcome unreasonable critics into my home to hang out with me either.

Communities within Communities

On some sites we see communities within communities. For example, I have a Facebook page which is maxed out on friends. The friend limit is 5,000. Someone else owns and manages the monstrous beast that is Facebook, and all members, including me, are subject to their Terms of Service.

Beyond that, anyone of the 5,000 Facebook members who want to post messages on my Facebook page are subject to my unwritten Terms of Service.

Imagine that the larger community is an apartment complex, subject to the terms of whoever owns that complex. All residents and guests of residents must follow that owner’s rules. But within that complex, each unit is additionally subject to the individual resident’s terms.

I regard my Facebook page as my online apartment. It’s another fun place to hang out online. If people visit my apartment and try to trash the place, I kick them out and unfriend them. It goes without saying that if you go to a friend’s apartment and behave like a jerk, they won’t be your friend for long.

When I visit a friend’s Facebook page, I consider myself a guest in their online apartment. We all live in the same complex, and it’s fun to pop over to other people’s units and see what they’re up to. But I know that if I go to my friends’ apartments and graffiti up the place while they’re gone, I’m going to lose those friends rather quickly.

I suggest you adopt a similar mindset when interacting in online sub-communities. It will save you a lot of grief.

I think if you have your own Facebook page or something similar, especially if you have a lot of active friends, you’ll have a reasonably good idea of what it’s like to manage a larger online community. How would you react if people came to your community and started posting trash talk about you? How would you feel if they started disrespecting your friends right in front of you? I imagine you’d send such people packing right quick. And I seriously doubt you’d be swayed by their protests of free speech entitlement.

So just to be abundantly clear, in most cases you are not entitled to unbridled free speech when you participate in online communities. You are a guest of the site owner — and possibly of the virtual renter as well. Behave as you would if you were a guest in someone else’s home, and you’re likely to be welcomed as a friend. Give the site owner a reason to dislike you, and you’re likely to be booted to the curb.

Online Fairness

Is this whole situation unfair? Maybe it is unfair.

I think the concept of fairness stems from a misguided sense of entitlement. You may be entitled to the right of fair treatment under the law (but realistically you can’t even count on that anywhere on earth that I know of), but you certainly aren’t entitled to fair treatment in someone’s private home, whether online or offline. When you enter a private residence or online community, you’re subject to the rules of the Lord or Lady of the place. Whatever level of fairness you may experience is at their discretion. Fairness is a privilege that humans may choose to bestow upon each other, not a right that you’re automatically entitled to.

I imagine that most homeowners like to consider themselves fair people, but their implementation of fairness is a very personal decision. You have no special entitlement to be treated fairly by others. Some laws may apply under certain situations, but generally speaking, whoever owns the house makes the rules.

If you go through life thinking you’re entitled to fair treatment by people who barely know you, well, let’s just say that you’re in for a rude awakening. The real world doesn’t work that way. Give it another decade or two, and reality will hopefully straighten out your belief system.

I’m not saying you have to like this situation, but I’d encourage you to accept it for what it is. If you have a hard time accepting it, you may have picked the wrong planet on which to incarnate.

You may now commence with the Steve-bashing… as long as you do it off-site and don’t tell me about it.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Since these courses tend to be fairly involved, I decided to ask for feedback from people who’d already gone through some of them to see if they’d be worth my time to evaluate. To be honest I was partly hoping that people would trash them because that would save me a lot of time.

However, the feedback I received about David’s work was very positive overall. Several people told me they got great results from applying what they learned from his programs, such as successfully initiating new relationships.

Another thing I was able to discern from the feedback was that many people found David’s later programs to be significantly better than his earlier works. These products were released over a period of many years, so it makes sense that the work would evolve over time. At the time I wasn’t quite sure what people meant by “better” though.

Evaluating David DeAngelo’s Products

This summer I went through a massive amount of material from David’s product line for men — dozens of DVDs in total — including the following home study courses:

• Cocky Comedy
• Meeting Women Online
• On Being a Man
• Deep Inner Game
• Man Transformation
• Become Mr. Right

He has other product lines for women created by different experts, and I have several of those products too, but I haven’t had a chance to evaluate them yet. Because of the size and scope of these programs, it can take a long time to go through them. It’s a good thing I enjoy evaluating personal development products.

I definitely saw a progression in these courses. The earlier works like Cocky Comedy and Meeting Women Online were largely technique-based. Say this and do that to get a certain result. Although the message in those programs didn’t resonate strongly with me, I could see them being helpful to many men, especially men in their early 20s. I might have applied some of those ideas in college to good effect, but I don’t see them being as effective at creating connections with women who are very conscious and aware. Even David admits as much in his later programs. Whether or not those products will prove helpful to you depends on where you are on your path of relationship growth. If you’re just starting out, you’ll probably find them useful. But if you’re already good at connecting with women and are working on the intimacy stage, it’s safe to say you’re ready for something more advanced.

David’s more recent works like Man Transformation and Become Mr. Right have a significantly different focus. I could see why people liked them so much. In these courses the emphasis is on inner development, not so much on tactics and techniques. A lot of time is spent exploring what it means to be a man today. How do we shed outmoded models of manhood that no longer serve us? What kind of men do we wish to be? How can we express ourselves authentically with women? What do women find most attractive about men? How can we create fulfilling intimate relationships? What’s holding us back?

Man Transformation

By far my favorite course was Man Transformation. At 20 DVDs, it’s the most comprehensive of all these programs. That’s about 35-40 hours of material.

Man Transformation focuses on three core areas of relationship development:

1. Inner game – developing your character, identity, and life purpose from the inside out
2. Interaction skills – approaching women, starting conversations, being confident and authentic
3. Creating lasting intimacy – moving beyond attraction and creating a deep connection with your partner

This course covers everything from approaching a woman the first time… to dating her… to creating a fulfilling long-term relationship with her.

I especially liked that this course included hour-long presentations by multiple experts — 16 in total aside from David himself. These people share a wealth of knowledge based on extensive experience.

My perspective on this course is necessarily different than most people who’d be interested in it, since I’ve been enjoying a very fulfilling intimate relationship since 1994, married since 1998. One reason that Erin and I remain very happy together is that we worked through a great number of blocks to intimacy along the way, especially during our first few years together. There were a lot of challenging moments, but we worked through them together. Our relationship has been — and continues to be — an amazing growth journey for both of us.

Many men, however, don’t know how to work through their blocks to intimacy and remain stuck for years. For example, many guys feel tremendous anxiety at the mere thought of walking up to a woman and starting up a conversation with her (aka approach anxiety), and this paralyzes them from taking action. Other guys can start a conversation, but they don’t know how to express romantic interest and end up orbiting the woman indefinitely as a friend. Other guys are good at getting dates, but they’re stuck with a series of shallow connections and can’t progress to the intimacy stage.

Man Transformation spends a great deal of time identifying these blocks and explaining how to overcome them. I think it will be really helpful for men to learn from men who started out with poor relationship skills and progressed far beyond those limitations.

If this program sounds interesting to you, please read my complete review of Man Transformation.

Exclusive 10% Discount and Bonuses for StevePavlina.com Readers

When I find a course or program that impressed me and that I feel good about recommending, I like to arrange a special deal for my readers if possible. Since I have such a large readership, product publishers are often willing to offer us a group discount or bonus.

Well, I’m pleased to tell you that the publisher was willing to offer both a discount and an extra bonus for any of my readers that are interested in purchasing the Man Transformation course. And best of all, this offer is exclusive for us, so you’re getting a better deal here than anyone else can offer.

First, you get a 10% discount off the price. My readers are the only people who are being offered this discount. Apparently they never do discounts, but they’re willing to do it for us.

Second, you get a number of free bonuses, including 3 extra DVDs (on time management, health, and financial success), a note-taking journal, and a free copy of David’s Double Your Dating e-book. Most of those bonuses you would still get if you buy direct from the publisher — it’s part of their standard offer. However, the free Double Your Dating e-book is a special bonus that’s only being offered to StevePavlina.com readers.

Third, you also get to try Man Transformation for a free 30-day trial. You only pay for it if you decide to keep it. Otherwise just send it back and don’t pay a dime.

As with any special deals I arrange, this one includes a 100% no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Finally, if you live in the USA, you get free shipping too. If you live outside the USA, you’ll pay a reasonable shipping fee.

This offer is good for the next 10 days (through September 27th, 2009). After that, the offer may continue in some form, but it probably won’t be as generous.

You’ll find all the details on my Man Transformation review.

In case it wasn’t obvious, this program is intended for men. If/when I find a high-quality dating or relationship program for women or couples, I’ll be sure to let you know about it.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

At some point we decided to pull out our Flip cameras and do some interviews.

Matt posted his interview with me today. We talked about some of my ongoing experiments with raw and cooked foods (it’s been a while since I posted an update about that), creating social support for change, and how to achieve new income goals.

Hope you enjoy it.

In another interview we did, I asked Matt and Angela some questions about the raw diet and simple steps people can take to eating healthier. As soon as Erin edits it and uploads it, I’ll be happy to share it here as well.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Communicate like a human being, not a marketer.

If your email looks even remotely like spam, expect that busy people will treat it as such.

If an email looks impersonal at all or seems like it’s being sent to more than one person, busy people will often delete it without reading it. Busy people get enough personal communication that they don’t want to bother with anything that isn’t personal.

Sometimes I get messages sent through my online contact form that start with salutations like “Hi Marc…” I actually prefer these copy/paste blunders, since it saves me from having to read them before hitting delete.

If you’re going to contact a busy person, make sure your message is personal and specific to that person.

Be authentic.

Get clear about why you want to connect with a particular busy person.

Do you want to become good friends? Do you want to do business together? Do you want to ask for advice or mentoring?

Don’t put up a false front, pretending to want one thing while secretly desiring another.

Don’t pretend you want to be friends and hang out if you really just want to do a deal together. Similarly, don’t pretend you’re interested in doing business if you just want to hang out and be friends.

When you communicate inauthentically, other people will often pick up a creepy vibe from you. They may not even notice it consciously, but they’ll feel turned off by you.

Inauthentic communication is a big pet peeve of mine. It’s such a huge turnoff when someone is being fake with me. You may think you’re good at hiding your real intentions, but someone who deals with a high volume of communication has the opportunity to get pretty good at discerning patterns, so what seems invisible to you may be glaringly obvious to them.

Authenticity is the best policy. Putting up a false front simply isn’t necessary.

I’m not suggesting the approach of radical honesty, blurting out whatever you’re thinking and feeling no matter how offensive it may be. I think a little decorum and politeness is reasonable. However, to say one thing while secretly intending something else is a bad idea. You’re a lot more transparent than you realize. People usually won’t call you on it, but they’ll sense that something is off with you, and their shields will go up.

If you want people to lower their shields around you, make sure your expression reflects your intention.

Be patient.

Don’t buy into the myth of the once-in-a-lifetime networking opportunity. If you maintain an abundance mindset, interesting opportunities will come up again and again.

Think of networking like playing in the World Series of Poker main event. You aren’t going to win the whole thing on the first day. It’s a long road. You probably won’t make it to the final table. That may be a goal to strive for, but most of your experience will involve playing the game and making new friends along the way. The try-hards usually just make fools of themselves.

Networking with people is much the same. Sometimes you’ll encounter what appears to be an opportunity, but it doesn’t quite work out. Don’t force it. Be patient and wait for a better spot. Maintain your poise and self-respect, and don’t be a try-hard.

A few years ago, someone from Oprah’s production company called to offer me an “opportunity.” They were looking for someone to help teach Eckhart Tolle’s material for some webcasts they were doing. Was that a good spot for me? Heck no. I have no interest in presenting someone else’s material when I have so much of my own to share. I knew they could find hundreds of people to fill that role, so it’s not an area where I can make a unique contribution. It may have looked like an opportunity, but it wasn’t a good spot for me. To say yes to that would have been to act out of desperation. So naturally I turned them down. The “better spot” is to share my own material in the form of a 3-day workshop.

When you network with people, do so from a place of abundance. Know that opportunities are everywhere. When a good opportunity comes your way, accept it. But when the opportunity isn’t right, just relax and let it go.

Realize that the rules change once you’re in.

Once you’re “in” with a busy person, it’s still important to be respectful of their time, but if you’ve made it past the slush pile, your status will likely change, and their shields will go down when they’re communicating with you.

Once I’ve established a solid friendship with a person, my rules change. Now my attention shifts from processing their emails and voice mails to managing a relationship.

There’s a continuum here of course. I might spend one minute typing an email to one person, an hour on the phone with another, and a half day in person with someone else. When I’m typing emails, I normally want to process them fast and move on to something else. But when I’m talking to someone face to face, I’m just going with the flow and having fun, not looking at my watch and worrying about the time investment.

Almost every busy person I know experiences a similar dichotomy. Busy people are usually tight with their time in some areas but much looser with their time in other areas.

The people who will send you a one-line email to save a few minutes are the same people who’d have no qualms shooting the breeze with you for hours under different circumstances.

I think the reason for this is simple. Typing emails and returning voice mails isn’t much fun, especially if you have to process a high volume. I certainly don’t want to spend hours each day typing emails. But I like connecting with people face to face – that feels much more natural, and it isn’t tedious at all.

Sometimes when people pop over to my house to visit with Erin and me for the first time, they start feeling anxious after a while. They might look at their watch and say, “Oh I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I just chewed up two hours talking with you. I’m sure you’re very busy and have better things to do.” I have to reassure them that it’s okay for us just to hang out and chat.

I’ve had one-on-one conversations that have lasted as long as eight hours. I’ve had people hang out at my house for days at a time. Why? Because it’s fun. I enjoy it. But if I spend more than an hour answering emails, I start feeling squirmy.

I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way. Other busy people behave much the same way. Even so-called productivity gurus will sit around drinking coffee and chatting for hours about the most mundane things. Why? Because they enjoy it. They apply their productivity tactics to efficiently process the tasks they don’t enjoy much, so they can free up more time to do what they enjoy most.

Therein lies another good lesson. If you try to communicate with a busy person through a channel they don’t enjoy much, you’re going to get processed. But if you use a channel they enjoy, you have a much better chance at connecting.

***

This was a long series, and it should be largely common sense, but these tips aren’t commonly practiced. I hope that by sharing what it’s like to network with busy people (from both sides of the fence), I’ve helped you gain some distinctions that will help you become a more effective networker – and a better friend as well.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t apologize for reaching out.

Never begin your first contact with an apology.

Every week people send me emails that begin with phrases like, "Sorry to bother you, but…" What does this tell me about the other person’s expectations for connecting with me? It tells me they expect to bother me. Who am I to argue with them? Delete… next.

If you hint that you’re about to irritate or annoy someone, they’ll assume you’re right. Why should they do otherwise?

You might think that you’re just being polite and respectful. Are you really? Or would it be more accurate to say that deep down, you don’t feel equal to the person you’re contacting?

If you have to apologize for bothering someone, maybe you shouldn’t be contacting them at all… at least not until you do a bit more work on your self-esteem.

“Excuse me…” is another weak opener. Why do you need to be excused? Are you doing something wrong?

If you’re going to approach a busy person, do so as an equal. Don’t act like an equal. Know you’re equal.

It doesn’t matter which person on this planet you wish to connect with – the President of the USA, the Dalai Lama, Oprah, etc. Don’t chode yourself with anyone. We’re all equal. We’re all part of the same whole. Why should you feel intimidated to meet another piece of humanity?

Don’t put busy people or celebrities on a pedestal. They may have a lot of accomplishments under their belt. They may be famous. So what? They’re still human just like everyone else. Don’t mistake the public image for the real person underneath.

Be secure in who you are. Know that whenever you reach out to connect with someone, you’re offering something of value. The value is who you are. If you don’t think you’re worth knowing, you need to spend more time getting in touch with your own value. Of course you’re worth knowing.

If you want to be worthy of a busy person’s time and attention, then know that you deserve it.

The surest way to have your communication devalued is to signal up front that you’re a low-value contact. High-value contacts don’t apologize for reaching out.

Get to the point.

If you conclude that making friends isn’t right for you, and you opt to communicate some kind of offer straightaway, then do your best to be concise and direct.

Never ever begin your emails with a paragraph like this:

I know you get a lot of emails, but I just had to send you this message. I’m sure you must be very busy, and I definitely respect your time, so I’ll try to be as brief as possible. This request will take a bit of explaining though. But please take the time to read it all the way through. I’m sure it will be worth your time to do so.

This is the point where a busy person will often hit delete. When I see a paragraph like this, I probably hit delete at least half the time without bothering to read the rest of the message, regardless of length. Historically speaking, such messages have rarely been worth the time to read. Also, when I answer the phone and someone offers up the verbal equivalent of the above paragraph, I know it’s best to get off the phone ASAP.

Plainly state the purpose of your communication in the first sentence. Get to the frakkin point as quickly as you can. Let the other person know the context for the rest of your message.

If you really don’t care to connect on the basis of friendship, then don’t act like you do. That’s inauthentic. You’re better off sending an android-like email and cutting out the fluff. Keep it short and sweet.

Never send a wall of text.

More than two paragraphs is usually overkill when you’re trying to solicit business. If you send long-winded emails, busy people will hit delete long before they make sense of your offer.

Making an offer or suggesting a deal doesn’t require sharing the entire history of your business. Really it doesn’t.

Some people think they should include as much detail as possible in their first message to a busy person. That way the busy person will have all the important info up front. They figure they’ve only got one shot to make a first impression, so the more words they use, the better. So they send first-contact emails that are upwards of a thousand words.

This is a mistake.

If your first contact with a busy person is to send them a wall of text, you immediately give the impression that you’re going to be a time drain. This makes it much harder for a busy person to want to follow up with you.

Make your first message to a busy person as short as you can. Busy people are more likely to read and reply to a 100-word email than a 1,000-word one.

People send me wall-of-text emails every week, but I stopped reading such messages a long time ago. I don’t even skim them anymore. I’d be afraid to reply to them for fear of receiving another wall of text in response.

If you already have a close relationship with someone, a wall of text is questionable but ok I suppose. I’d still suggest you pick up the phone if you have more than a couple paragraphs to communicate – it’s usually a lot faster. But definitely don’t send a wall of text as your first contact to someone new, busy or not.

If you want to share the history of your business or the complexities of your business model or your personal history, it’s inappropriate to do that in an email. Instead, offer to schedule a phone call or face to face meeting, and share the details then. Don’t propose marriage before you’ve had a first date. If the busy person is interested, they’ll follow up with you.

Keep your personality switched on.

The way you normally behave with your friends and family – that’s how you should behave when connecting with busy people. That’s what it means to be yourself.

I’ve seen people act like a deer caught in the headlights when meeting someone they consider famous or popular. It’s like they switch off their personality and freeze up. They can still talk, but it’s not how they normally communicate.

No one wants to connect with an automaton. That kind of communication is very boring.

I think a lot of people hide their personality because they’re worried they might say or do something that will lead to rejection. Can you see that this is a very fear-based way of thinking? You’re going to create exactly what you fear.

Don’t worry about getting rejected. It’s really not a big deal. If you’re secure in who you are, it shouldn’t matter whether or not someone else likes you. It’s much better to relax and be yourself instead of tensing up and worrying about every word that comes out of your mouth. It’s not like such mistakes are fatal. In most cases they’re easily correctable.

When you make a social faux pas and then become aware of it, brush it off if it’s minor. If it’s more serious, acknowledge the mistake and apologize for it. Most of the time the other person will appreciate your candor, and you’ll form a closer bond because of it.

A few years ago, a friend with a very “switched on” personality treated me in a way that some would regard as slightly rude. This happened in front of a bunch of our mutual friends. He didn’t notice it at the time, and I simply brushed it off, but someone else noticed and pointed it out to him later. He quickly realized that he goofed, and he took me aside and apologized. I was touched by the gesture and actually came to respect him even more because of it. He and I are still good friends to this day.

People tend to be very forgiving of personality quirks when they see you’re just being your natural self.

As a human being, you’re going to make social mistakes. That’s perfectly okay. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect. And definitely don’t assume that other people expect you to be perfect. They don’t. When you take things a bit too far and screw up, fess up to it and move on. Learn from your mistakes. This is much better than tensing up or using fake routines and communicating like a social robot.

Keep your real personality switched on, even in circumstances where you might feel inclined to clench up. You’ll make some mistakes now and then, but the honest social feedback will allow you to hone your personality over time. “Being yourself” is not a static state. You’ll continue to evolve.

You can’t grow if you hide your real personality whenever you encounter unusual social situations. The uncommon situations are often the best teachers.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Meet in person.

It’s hard to create much of a connection with someone via email. Email just isn’t expressive enough. Email is communication stripped of its emotional context.

Instant messaging is a step up from email because it’s real-time instead of asynchronous, but it’s still a very thin channel. Consequently, I virtually never use IM. It feels like trying to communicate underwater.

Text messaging is a close cousin of instant messaging and email, depending on how it’s used and how quickly people respond.

Phone calls are a big step up because now you can pick up some emotional context from tone of voice. You can build a halfway decent connection over the phone. But you’re still missing out on body language, and when it comes to creating a strong connection, that’s a pretty big deal.

The best way to communicate is face to face and belly to belly. Nothing else compares to it.

If you do a lot of networking by email and phone calls, but you never go outside and meet people face to face, you’re probably only 20% as effective as you could be – and I think that’s being generous.

Face to face communication is very efficient in terms of the bonds it creates and the value that can be exchanged. Many people can create a strong, intimate connection with someone in a matter of minutes when communicating face to face, but that may never happen via email.

Sometimes when I meet people in person, we can get an amazing connection going in just a few minutes. It’s like our souls recognize and acknowledge each other. If I tried to form these kinds of connections via email or phone, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as face to face, even after years of back and forth contact.

I know a lot of networkers who love to work the phones and email. Personally I find that a huge waste of time. It may seem more efficient at first glance because you can reach more people in less time, but is it really more efficient? What about the quality of those connections? Email and phones are okay for maintaining relationships, but they’re poor choices for building relationships.

I’m not saying that you can’t build some decent connection when communicating remotely. I’m just saying that face to face communication is about a couple orders of magnitude more effective if your goal is to create an authentic connection.

I dare say that if you’ve never met me in person or talked to me one on one, you really can’t claim to know me all that well, even if you’ve read every article and listened to every podcast I’ve created. Many people who’ve met me after “knowing” me online for years have said something like, “This is weird. You’re not like I expected.” That’s because only a small slice of me can really be communicated over the Internet.

I’ve experienced this from the other side as well. At the leadership retreat I attended in July, I finally met some people in person where we’d previously communicated only by email or phone. In every case my expectations of what they’d be like in person were off. Sometimes my mental model of the person was wildly out of sync with the reality, and it took only minutes to realize that.

When you communicate remotely, much of the connection you feel is rooted in illusion. You may harbor very deep thoughts and feelings when typing an email, but only some dull text gets delivered to the other person’s inbox, not the whole mental and emotional context that spawned that text. Similarly, when you read someone’s reply, you’re adding your own mental and emotional context to it, which is going to distort the message quite a bit. Most of the connection you feel with the other person is just you connecting with different aspects of yourself.

Sometimes I meet people who seem really gregarious and vivacious online, but in person they’re so shy and quiet. Other times I’ve seen people who seem very woo woo from a distance, but in person they’re highly intelligent and grounded. My assumptions about people I’ve never met face to face are never accurate, so I do my best to keep an open mind about people I’ve only communicated with remotely.

One of the best ways to meet busy people face to face is to go to conferences, seminars, and workshops where they’ll be, especially multi-day events where you’ll have multiple opportunities to meet and talk to them. Ideally, volunteer to be a speaker at the same event if you can.

If you spend a lot of time networking through technology, spending hours at your desk, make a point of going outside to interact with people face to face. You’ll find that life becomes much more fun and fulfilling when you do this.

Earlier this week I did a live interview for an online radio show. I could have done the interview by phone like I always do, but since the studio was only 15 minutes from my house, I opted to go there and do it in person. It was so much more fun and lively than other interviews I’ve done. I could see the hosts and read their body language from a few feet away. This made it so much easier to interact with them. It made the interview flow much better. There’s just no substitute for face-to-face communication.

Meet people when their shields are down.

Timing plays an important role in meeting busy people. The worst time to try to create a connection is when the other person’s shields are up.

If you try to talk to people when they’re “on stage” or in public performance mode, you’re not really connecting with them. You’re only connecting with their public image. Some speakers are still very human and authentic in those situations, but most have a hard time being fully themselves when there’s so much energy coming at them. They shield themselves in some fashion to avoid being overwhelmed. When you talk to them, they may seem nice enough and be very charming, but you can sense that you’re not really connecting with them at a deep level.

I’ve met some interesting authors and speakers just by hanging out in the speakers lounge for a conference I was speaking at. It’s a great way to meet people and connect as friends. Speakers typically drop their shields when they walk into the speakers lounge. It’s a place for them to just relax. I often hear them sigh as they enter the room. “Ahhh… I can relax and hang out with friends now.”

Sometimes fun connections can happen when you least expect them – if you stay open to them.

For example, I first met Gregg Braden in a restaurant bathroom. We were attending a speakers’ dinner last year and just happened to go to the bathroom at the same time. Sort of an odd place to meet, but in that environment the shields are down, and we joked around a bit before returning to the dinner. When we came out, Erin was standing there waiting, wondering what was taking us so long.

During one of the bathroom breaks at the leadership retreat last month, someone walked into the men’s restroom and jokingly said something like, “Well, this is quite a sight… All these transformational leaders lined up against the wall urinating… What would the rest of the world think if they saw this?” Then we all started cracking jokes about it. I guess this was one of those had-to-be-there moments, but the point is that even very busy and successful people are still human, and it’s a lot easier to connect with their human side than it is to connect with their public persona. The best connections happen when the shields are down.

This doesn’t mean you should hang out in bathrooms trying to network with people. The point is to stay open to connecting.

Connect with laughter.

Sharing laughs is one of the best ways to create a fast connection. This can be done over the phone, but it’s much more powerful in person. Laughter is contagious. Much of the time we don’t even laugh because someone says something funny. More often we laugh for other reasons. Laughter is a vehicle for creating a sense of inclusion and connection.

Personally I love to joke around, to tease, and to have fun. My sense of humor is largely spontaneous, so only a small amount of it comes through in my writing. People who’ve never met me in person often expect me to be this very serious and intense guy. They’re often surprised at how much I joke around.

This was something that surprised me when I first became an entrepreneur. I thought the world of business was this super-serious thing. I assumed that having fun and being business-like didn’t mix. My image of business was colored by TV and movies. Unless it was a comedy, the boardroom always seemed like such a serious place.

When I started connecting with other people in a business context, fresh out of college, I was surprised at how much they joked around and had fun with each other. Even lawyers would sometimes crack jokes with each other or their clients (although generally speaking, I found lawyers to be the least fun-loving profession I worked with, perhaps because their clients don’t take kindly to joking around when they’re paying an hourly rate). It took me years to realize that this was normal and acceptable and that I could actually use my sense of humor to good advantage in business.

I’ve noticed that young entrepreneurs tend to be the most serious. They’re so business-like and don’t give themselves permission to express their natural personalities. Experienced entrepreneurs tend to be more relaxed and sociable; they know how to have fun and enjoy themselves, even in serious business contexts where a lot of money could be changing hands. Generally the people who can’t express their natural selves end up quitting. When you can’t lighten up and have fun, the result is that you burn out.

Networking should be fun. You won’t enjoy it much if you’re super serious all the time. You will enjoy it if you learn to express your natural personality. The way you behave among family and friends should ideally be the same way you behave around business colleagues. Otherwise you’re splintering your personality and living incongruently.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Offer genuine friendship, not neediness.

This idea is more about attitude than actions. Busy people are so accustomed to being approached by people who want to vamp their energy in some way, so their shields often go up when they meet new people. In the back of their mind, they’re thinking, “What does this person want from me?”

You’ll get much better results if you approach busy people from a place of giving, kindness, generosity, friendship, and equality – as opposed to coming from a place of neediness, wanting something from them, seeing them as a potential client or prospect or valued contact, etc.

I meet a lot of busy and sometimes famous people through my work in the personal development field. I don’t approach them from a place of wanting or needing anything from them. I prefer to keep my energy flowing outward instead of trying to suck energy from them. This approach makes people feel comfortable, so they quickly drop their shields, and that’s when the real connection and deeper conversation begins. My focus is on enjoying life and having fun, and the rest flows easily from there.

I noticed that I quickly relax and lower my shields when I’m around the same type of person. As a busy person I learned to be very guarded with my energy. On the occasions when I meet someone who doesn’t want or need anything from me and they’re just happy and having fun, it’s immensely refreshing. Those kinds of interactions really stand out. Those are the kinds of people I love to spend time with.

This isn’t about giving so you can get. If you see it that way, you’re missing the point, and ultimately you’re still trying to vamp something from the other person. You’re still holding yourself in a place of neediness and lack.

This is about giving because you’re using your power to hold yourself in a place of abundance, connectedness, and oneness. You don’t need anything from anyone. You’re simply allowing your energy to flow outward, and you’re exploring new possibilities for connection and love.

When you approach people from this place of completeness, you’ll find that most of the time their shields drop pretty quickly, and they feel very much at ease around you. Comfort allows other people to be fully present and fully themselves.

A couple weeks ago, Erin and I were in Bermuda for our first retreat with the Transformational Leadership Council. This group includes a lot of busy people who are used to getting “hit on” quite often. Members of this group include entrepreneurs, celebrities, and multi-millionaires.

I could have gone to this retreat with an attitude of neediness, thinking about all the deals to be made, the potential business partners, the money to be earned, and the coolness of associating with famous people. I could have behaved like a vampire trying to suck everyone else’s energy. I could have treated them like targets instead of human beings. Blech!

Instead I went in with the attitude that we’re all one, we’re already connected, and I’m there to share, to love, to have fun, to explore, and to create. I felt so happy and abundant throughout the week. I truly didn’t need or want anything from anyone. I didn’t need anyone to accept or validate me.

Similarly, I didn’t go around trying to do favors for people or trying to impress them, since that would also require coming from a place of lack. I simply assumed that I was already best friends with everyone there and that nothing had to be earned.

Throughout the week I shared lots of love, laughs, hugs, stories, ideas, and even some tears. I made dozens of new friends – friends I expect to stay connected with for many years to come.

Will I do business with some of those people later? Sure. But the friendship is the most important part of networking.

More than one person came up to me during the week and said something like, “Steve, I just love your energy. You seem so happy.” I believe Erin got similar feedback since her attitude was similar to mine.

The truth is that at this point in my life, I’d rather form an authentic new friendship than cultivate a strategic business alliance.

And interestingly enough, genuine friendship is perhaps what busy people are most starved for. So many people try to take their energy or seek validation from them. It’s much less common for them to be approached by people who just want to connect with them from a place of love and abundance without wanting or needing anything.

In my almost 15+ years as an entrepreneur, I’ve been approached literally tens of thousands of times by people who want something from me – advice, answers, business deals, money, referrals, etc. But how many times have I been approached by someone offering genuine friendship without secretly wanting or needing something from me? I think that has happened only a few hundred times total. In fact, this year it has become a big focus of mine to have more interactions based on friendship and less that are based on want or need.

Which types of people do I want to hang out with most often? Obviously it feels best to hang out with genuine friends who already feel whole and complete and who aren’t needy.

I should mention that my experience at TLC wasn’t uncommon at all. Almost everyone there seemed to have a similar attitude. We all dropped our shields and shared our true selves with each other. If anyone there had gone into sales-minded networker mode, I think it would have creeped everyone out. But since no one did that – at least not that I saw – the experience was very open and authentic.

Of course if you network with the goal of creating real friendship, all the other stuff you could possibly want or need will arise naturally from that. People who become good friends often look for ways to do business together. I know some people say that business and friendship don’t mix. My advice is not to do business with anyone who believes that. I’ve done many deals with friends – in fact, I very much prefer it. I’m very hesitant to do business with someone I don’t feel a good connection with. Some deals just don’t perform well for one reason or another, but as long as everyone behaves with integrity, it needn’t hurt the friendship. A lack of integrity hurts a friendship a lot more than a business deal that didn’t meet expectations.

It’s perfectly okay to meet someone with a desire to eventually do business with them, but if that’s your primary motivation – if that’s truly what’s most important to you – then the relationship will develop very differently compared to when your primary motivation is genuine friendship. Your life will feel a lot emptier and less fulfilling if you value transactions above friendship.

When I think about all the wonderful new friends I made this year, I can’t even imagine putting business ahead of those friendships. I’d rather stay friends with these people and never do business than earn millions of dollars cutting deals but not have the friendships. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way. Busy people often have plenty of business opportunities coming their way, and they don’t necessarily need more of the same.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a busy person, would you prefer to have lots of money and business partners but few real friends, or would you rather have lots of deep and abiding friendships but little money? I think that deep down, most people would rather have the love and connection. If you pursue money first and foremost, you’re more likely to end up with neither money nor friends. Human beings typically dislike being reduced to transactions.

What do you really want in this area of your life? What kind of network do you want to create? Do you want a network of great friends who like and respect you? Or do you want a network of transaction partners who barely even know you?

Is it possible that the reason you’ve thought about other people as dollar signs or “prospects” instead of as real human beings is that you think money and success will ultimately help you feel more worthy of connection and love? In truth the best way to enjoy connection and love is to connect with others on that basis instead of trying to use money as the middleman.

When you network on the basis of friendship, you take your work to a whole new level. Every deal you transact becomes an act of helping your friends achieve their goals, and your friends do the same for you. Your network transforms into your family of goal achievement partners.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t misinterpret short replies.

Busy people often send very curt replies to emails they receive. Don’t misinterpret one-line replies like "Fine, let’s do it," "No thanks," "Not interested," or "Thanks. " as being a sign of rudeness or lack of caring.

Minimalist replies are common in the business world. Consider them a sign of efficiency, not disrespect. Your message may be one of dozens being batch-processed. The fact that you got a reply at all means the other person considered your message worthy of a response.

If you write back to complain, you become an annoyance. Don’t rant about getting short replies. That’s very low class.

Email simply isn’t the right medium for long-windedness. It’s not the right medium for relationship building. If you want to build relationships, then arrange to meet in person when possible, else by phone. If you spend more than a few minutes typing an email, you really should be picking up the phone instead.

If you send me a 1,000-word email and get a one-sentence reply in response, don’t interpret it to mean that I didn’t care about what you had to say. A more accurate interpretation is that I don’t think a longer reply is a good use of my time, given all the other messages I have to process. Another possibility is that I’m not resonating with your choice of medium. You may be using the wrong channel for what you’re trying to convey.

Sometimes people try to use email to communicate things that don’t translate well to plain text. The camel that gets passed through the eye of a needle doesn’t much resemble a camel on the other side. It’s just a bloody mess of goop.

If you’re trying to compress your whole life story into an email, you’re making a mistake. Your story will be robbed of its essence. Your points won’t be conveyed. The other person grimaces when they see a wall of text. If you want to write so much, either write it in your journal, or become a blogger.

Wait before replying.

If you do get an email response from a busy person, don’t reply back immediately unless you have a really good reason for doing so. Otherwise you may inadvertently annoy the other person. Another possibility is that you’ll be perceived as being too needy or eager.

I suggest you wait at least 12-24 hours before you reply back.

This may seem counter-intuitive, but look at it from the busy person’s perspective. Every day they have a lot of new communication to process. When they process email, they’re anxious to empty their inbox and move on to the next task. For a busy person, it feels great to have an empty inbox, if only for a moment. If you try to email them back and forth two or more times on a given day, they may begin to perceive you as a potential time drain, if only because you consumed a larger slice of their attention that day than their other contacts did. Suddenly you cross an invisible threshold, and they stop replying to you altogether.

The last thing a busy person needs is more urgency. Delivering a rapid response positions your communication as urgent, and busy people know that urgent matters are seldom important. You don’t want a busy person to think of your communication as a candidate for urgency-based processing. It’s better to communicate at a more gradual pace, so you end up in the important bin instead of the urgent one.

Be patient, not over-eager. Let the busy person gradually warm up to you. Work your way in with a few brief, snappy contacts over a period of several days if you can swing it.

The exception is when it’s really important to speed things along, such as if you’re in the process of finalizing a deal before the weekend. With experience you will get a feel for when it’s reasonable to email someone back right away and when it’s wiser to incubate your replies.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Forgive the blow-off.

Busy people are constantly being approached by those who are coming from a place of neediness. This is why busy people often seem a bit aloof when you first talk to them. Their shields are up.

I admit that when I enter new social situations with people who may know me, but I don’t know much about them, I tend to have my shields up. I get approached so often by people who want to vamp something from me that I’ve become pretty resistant to people who approach me on the basis of neediness.

I’ve also gotten pretty good at detecting Trojan horse approaches, where the person acts like they’re offering genuine friendship, but their voice tone and body language betray their underlying intentions. The hand is offered as a ploy to get something. I can often feel an energetic pull coming from such people, subtly tugging at me. Most of the time I’m not even consciously aware of it – it just triggers an intuitive hit that something feels off, and my shields automatically go up. Non-needy people give off a very different vibe.

It can take time to build trust with a busy person who is accustomed to getting “hit on” in some fashion nearly every day. Most likely you’ll be blown off because their shields are up, and they have a habit of unconsciously deflecting advances as a matter of routine. If they didn’t do this, they’d quickly be overwhelmed. In my experience most busy people tend to be aloof and non-committal when first meeting people they don’t know.

Busy people usually prefer not to reject anyone outright because it too often gets misconstrued as rudeness. They don’t want to deal with someone bad-mouthing them to others. Busy people really don’t want to be rude, but sometimes they get overwhelmed, and if you’re the fifth person to approach them about the same thing in a single day, you may get a more forceful rejection than you feel you deserve.

I’ve tried a number of different approaches for saying no to people who want something from me that I’m not willing to give, so that I let the other person down easy, don’t leave them hanging, don’t invite them to argue about it, and don’t create bad blood between us. I usually say something like, “I appreciate the offer, but my intuition says no on this, so I’ll have to pass. I hope you understand.” That has worked well for me. It’s an honest and empathetic answer. When my gut feeling says no, I simply want to bow out gracefully and not put the other person into “overcome objections” mode. So far no one has attempted to convince me why my intuition is wrong.

However, you will probably find that most busy people don’t use an approach like mine. My response might seem very simple on the surface, but it seriously took me years of trial and error to come up with it. Other approaches I tried either seemed too harsh and would too often be misinterpreted as coldness or rudeness on my part, or they’d be too wishy-washy, leaving the door open for endless follow-up attempts.

I would say that the most common strategy busy people use to deflect unwanted advances is aloofness. Their words may indicate mild interest, but they aren’t being sincere. In practice this does tend to work pretty well, at least from the perspective of the busy person. I dislike this method, however, because it can leave the other person hanging, making them feel they’re being strung along. I always hated it when people did this to me.

Much of the time, when you request something from a busy person, you won’t get a straightforward no because they find that too confrontational. Busy people learn from experience that it’s a bad idea to simply say no. When they say no, it makes people try to convince them, and that becomes annoying very quickly when it happens over and over. This happened to me a lot when I first started blogging. People would ask me for things I wasn’t willing to give them, so I’d simply say no, sometimes with a reason, sometimes without. Unfortunately many people are conditioned to treat a no as a potential yes, and they go into persuasive mode and try to identify and overcome objections. This is really, really annoying when it happens repeatedly – a huge waste of time.

You could try being really forceful when you say no, but that creates some backlash. It comes across as being too harsh, and people start badmouthing you for behaving like that. This is one reason you’ll hear stories about certain executives being hard-nosed a-holes or “dragon ladies.” In reality they’re simply trying to be efficient.

To avoid being so confrontational, many busy people will employ a simple blow-off technique. They may say something like, “Sounds interesting. Why don’t you call my publicist and give her the details, and we’ll see if we can work something out?” If you’re an astute observer, you’ll notice that their voice tone and body language are incongruent with their words. The truth is that they have no intention of following up with you. If you do contact the publicist, you’ll simply get stonewalled. This way the busy person preserves their reputation – you might assume the publicist was the one who messed up your chances.

This happened to Erin several years ago when she was running VegFamily.com, her online vegan family magazine. We were attending an outdoor vegan festival in L.A. called World Fest. Several vegetarian and vegan celebrities were there to show their support or to speak at the festival, including Woody Harrelson and Ed Begley, Jr. We talked to Ed briefly, and I took a photo of him with Erin. He was very friendly.

During one of the presentations while we were sitting in a shady spot on the grass, I pointed out to Erin that she was sitting right behind Alicia Silverstone. That didn’t surprise us because we knew that Alicia was a vegan. I told Erin to go say hi, and she introduced herself and chatted with Alicia for a few minutes. I could tell, however, that Alicia was doing the aloof thing. She agreed to do an interview for VegFamily and gave Erin the info to follow up with her publicist. But I could see that Alicia’s body language was incongruent with her words. I wasn’t 100% certain, but I felt that most likely Erin would be stonewalled when she tried to follow up with the publicist. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. The interview with Alicia never took place.

Ed Begley, Jr., however, did do an interview with Erin, which can still be found online at VegFamily, along with the picture I took of Erin and him. Incidentally, Erin has short hair in that photo, a look I really loved, but she thought it made her look too boyish, so she grew her hair long again.

Now I’m not sharing this to bash Alicia and praise Ed – not at all. I’m simply pointing out that different celebrities have different ways of handling attention from people they don’t already know. Although Ed did follow through on the interview, if you actually go read it, you can see that he didn’t put much effort into it – and it shows. IMO it was one of the worst interviews VegFamily ever posted, which is a shame because Erin was excited about helping to promote Ed’s environmental agenda. We were impressed that he biked to World Fest on a very hot day in the San Fernando Valley.

When this played out as it did, I saw it as a sign of great disrespect. Erin’s online magazine had a decent and loyal following, and it was a valued publication in its field. Consequently, my opinion of Alicia and Ed dropped significantly. However, looking back with the perspective of greater experience, I now see their actions in a new light. I still don’t like how either of them handled Erin’s request, but I can understand why they did what they did, and I can’t hold it against them. Their solutions may have been imperfect, but I can empathize with what they must have had to deal with.

If you interact with a busy person and get a response that seems disrespectful or unfair, try not to take it personally. Do your best to forgive any perceived transgressions. It’s very unlikely that the busy person is deliberately trying to be rude or uncaring. Their reality is that they must deal with an untenable volume of approaches. They’re human beings, and their methods of processing such requests are going to be imperfect.

If I gave you the impression that I have a perfect processing method myself, that would be untrue. I’m fairly content given the circumstances, but my solutions are far from perfect. Misunderstandings still arise. For example, people who’ve never met me and who’ve never had so much as a single conversation with me will sometimes write scathing blog posts about me, assuming they must be able to discern my true nature from a single article of mine they didn’t like. Then people email me to ask about the stuff those bloggers post about me that isn’t even true. That’s just part of the reality I have to deal with. How am I supposed to deal with that? What can I do but forgive it and let it go?

Another thing that happens is that people take out Google Adwords ads using my name, crafting ads that falsely imply that I endorse their products. I don’t know them, and I’ve never even looked at their products. This is mild compared to what some people have to deal with. One author/speaker I know has to deal with dishonest marketers taking out Google image ads with his photos on them, advertising stuff in his name and image that he has no affiliation with. Then when customers get ripped off by this scheme, they post nasty rants about him online because they assume he was the one responsible for ripping them off. But in reality he’s a generous, kind-hearted guy who just happens to be a celebrity, and he worked very hard to get there. Is it fair that he should have to deal with this sort of thing?

I think communication in general would improve dramatically if we could all learn to practice more empathy. Do the best you can to see the situation from the other person’s perspective. If you want to network successfully with busy people, it’s important to empathize with them and communicate from a place of understanding. That is perhaps the central theme of this series.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.