What kind of comes out of this whole experience? A successful cocktail party has the energy in the room, very high. And somebody leaves your party saying, wow, that was like the best party. That was awesome. And it's so simple. I got a message from a woman who just read my book and she hosted a party with name tags and ice breakers.

And she said that night, she and her husband got multiple text messages from friends saying that it was the best party that they'd ever thrown. Why? Because they just added a little structure to it. So what's the feeling? It's that feeling that when you're done hosting, you say that was awesome, and that was also easy.

Like I could do that again, because I think we've all hosted parties where we're absolutely drained afterwards. And while it may have been a success, we never want to do it again. Hello and welcome to another episode of all the hacks show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I'm a diehard optimizer who loves doing all the research to get the best experience in life without an expensive price tag. So to make this happen, I sit down with the best experts each week and I learned all their strategies, tactics, and frameworks that shape their success.

So you hear the phrase cocktail party. You might think like me, 1960s, dressed up couples, sipping martinis on a Mad Men set. But that's not exactly what my guest, Nick Gray means when he says that almost everyone should be hosting cocktail parties. Nick's the author of a new book called the two hour cocktail party, how to build big relationships with small gatherings, and he's on a mission to get people to have more parties, to make connections, build friendships, and live a richer life now between kids and COVID I haven't hosted many gatherings in a while, but when Nick told me he wrote his book for people like me and not for people who already host events all the time, I was really excited, so we're going to get tactical in this conversation, I want to hear why a cocktail party is a better way to get to know people than just having dinner, why Nick thinks name tags and icebreakers are non-negotiable for parties, and I want to get a complete run through of everything you need to do to make an event easy and effortless from invites to food and drink to getting to leave on time.

But that's not all because Nick also founded a company called Museum Hacks to lead these renegade tours of museums like the Met in New York and others around the country. It's been featured in all kinds of media from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. And after a little research, I'm hoping I can take one of these tours soon.

But in the meantime, I will make sure we also get all his Museum Hacks today too. And on top of that, Nick is an avid traveler and a fellow optimizer, so I'm certain we'll uncover some other hidden gems in this conversation. So let's get started. Nick, welcome to the show.

I'm happy to be here. We're going to get real tactical today. That's fantastic. So I'm going to jump right in and just ask, why cocktail parties? You can get 80% of the benefits of hosting a dinner party with 20% of the work by hosting a cocktail party. Now, like anybody can write a book to teach you how to host one dinner party, but the reality is, is that most people will never do it again.

And dinner parties are too hard. They're too complicated. A lot of people give entrepreneurs this advice, like host a dinner party or host a mastermind, and I think that's actually terrible advice for most people, you get most of the benefits from hosting when you can actually make it a habit and something where you always have your next party on the calendar.

To do that, I built the easiest possible framework and formula for hosting events. So I've looked at that formula and I know you have all these things, name tags, icebreakers, firm stopping times, what's important? Why are they important? And how do you actually get people to kind of play along and agree to them?

Well, one of the first things is that the best day to host an event might not be the one that you think. For example, I highly suggest that everybody hosts their parties on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights. Why those? We can go into that if you want, basically because they're non-competitive social nights.

Most people don't have things going on. Second of all is I always give a stop time to my parties, two hours. There's a start time, there's an end time, and there's hidden benefits in having a stop time. One of which is that it gets all your guests to show up on time, right?

When you're a host, you know, that beginning hour when nobody really shows up, it's slow. When you have a tight two hour thing, then folks show up on time and you end the party when things are going well, so that your friends, guests, your colleagues, they want to come back the next time that you host.

And when you host regularly, is it always the same people or do people feel left out or how does that work? Great question. I usually mix it up. I'll do half repeat guests, half new guests. Um, you really get the best benefits when you're going through life. Let's say that you're hosting a cocktail party once every six weeks.

Between those parties, you're meeting all these random people. And here's why, here's why I did this, why I can change your listener's life. We meet all these interesting people that we never do anything with. Like you meet them, they're cool. And you're like, oh, that person was interesting, but I'm not going to go out of my way to schedule a dinner with them.

I'm not going to go out of my way to, you know, schedule a one-on-one meeting or a hangout with them because life's busy and things happen. When you have a cocktail party, you get to kind of collect all of those interesting people that you meet through life and bring them back in.

And then sort of almost audition them to see if you want to be friends with them or build a relationship, almost something like that. I hope that doesn't sound bad. No, no, it's funny. I, we went to a birthday party, uh, for a kid named Jackson. Uh, I'd never met Jackson my whole life.

My daughter, uh, has met him at the park with our au pair. And we got this kind of invite through the nanny group to us. And so we go to this party. We don't know a single person. And now we just met, I don't know, 10 couples with kids, our kids age.

And I will share this is because we didn't know what to do with them. We're like, you seem cool. We've got kids the same age, but do we really want to orchestrate 10 play dates or group play? Like, it just seemed like we met these interesting parents and we didn't know what to do.

So you've sold me on the fact that like dinner is not going to happen. I'm not going to schedule 10 dinners because that's going to take me the next, I don't know, 10, it feels like 10 months of, of dinners straight. So that's the, like, I get it. I get why I should do it, but it seems like a lot of work.

So I'd love to just dial in, like, how do you make this? You said 20% of the work of a dinner party. How is that possible? Okay. I found when I was scheduling dinners that first of all, you have to stress about all the food, by the way, it's not about the food.

The hack is that if you are insistent on hosting a dinner party, just order out. Don't try to cook the food yourself. Nobody cares about the food. They're coming for the people and for the conversation. When you order out, it allows you to be a little, a little less stressed about that.

But how is it more efficient? How can you get 80% of the benefits with 20% of the work? Well, 80% of the benefits at a dinner party. Um, have you read the book, um, the art of gathering by Priya Parker? I have not absolutely fantastic book. And in there, she says one thing that when you have a dinner party with more than six people, the conversation will naturally split into two smaller groups.

So if you have a dinner party with eight or dinner party with 10, the conversation will split. Unless you're doing Jeffersonian single track with a very skilled facilitator, moderator, the conversation naturally will split into smaller groups. And so I generally would have a dinner party with about six because that's easy to host.

Uh, I find that by hosting a cocktail party and by the way, the sweet spot, the number of people that you want to have attend is 15 to 20. Why is that? Because less than 15, there's not enough energy. There's not enough dynamic, new connections and possibilities. If you have a group of 10 people over two hours, you can survey the room visually and generally you'll talk to pretty much everybody with 15 people.

With 20 people, you probably won't get a chance to talk to everybody. And it leaves this excitement and energy for all of your guests, especially in the room as well. That is a little known fact that the more people you have, the easier it is for you as a host.

If you are hosting seven people, six people, there's a lot of work. You're kind of always on, you are the host at all the time. When you're 15 to 20 people, you get to step back into the role of facilitator a little bit more. And my book speaks a lot about that.

I can share those facilitation tips and tricks for you, but that's why for me, it's so much less work and I can connect with so many more people in the time it takes to watch a Netflix movie. So I've got the number of people I've got the day of the week.

Well, you know, is this send a, an e-vite or how do you kind of get the people to the place and kind of, where do you do it just at your home? Do you rent a venue? I'm just going to go through all the questions I have. Cause in my mind, I'm already starting to plan the next one.

Well, if you're open to it, can we just plan yours? Can we just do that? And then I'll tell you step by step. Okay. So first step is you need to pick a day and you need to give yourself three to four weeks minimum in advance. That's what I call the party runway.

It's so that you can fill up your guest list, have plenty of time to plan and prepare. And so to do that, then you need to pick a date, a Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday. That's minimum three weeks in advance. Do you have a date that would work for you?

First time here. Should I go like on the short end, four weeks, I got a date for you that works in, uh, in August about a month out. Yeah, probably. I probably have a date that works in September, like two months out. August is it let's do it sooner rather than later, because what a lot of people will say when they host this price, Oh yeah, that makes sense.

I'll do it. And so I want to do it when it's perfect. No, like this is something hosting is something that we're going to do naturally and regularly. We're not going to wait for it to be perfect. And so I would even rather you do this first one sooner, just so you can see how easy it's going to be.

And then you can do one that'll be even better later in September. So if you have that date, what day of the week is it? Is it a Monday and Tuesday? I went Wednesday. Great. Now you need to pick a two hour time block. What two hours for me when I was in New York city, I would choose seven to 9:00 PM, eight to 10 PM.

Even because I'm single because in New York, people stay up later. Now I'm in Austin, Texas and people do things earlier. So here it's more like five to 7:00 PM, six to eight. What two hour time block would be good for you? Yeah. I mean, we have kids and so, you know, I would, I mean, there's a whole question I have about how does this whole scenario change with children?

Because, you know, our kids eat dinner and go to bed. Like, do you invite them? So let me talk about that right now. Let's talk about that right now. So what time do your kids go to sleep? We, well, one is only a month. So it's just kind of on demand whenever, but, but the two year old, we usually do dinner around six, six 30.

Do bedtime routine, seven, seven 30, and kind of from seven 30 on, she might not be asleep, but she's kind of in her room doing her own thing, hopefully falling asleep. Uh, so you have a one month old and you have a two month old, right. Or sorry, a one year old.

Yeah. One month old and a two year old. So five to seven could work. Uh, you know, we would just maybe need someone to help get her some food so that when the party wraps at seven, we'll go put her down. So I love that idea for five to 7:00 PM.

And you're speaking a lot about what do you do? How do you have a party with kids? And the advice that I've gotten and I've worked and I've trained a lot of people to host their first party is they say that you have to have the childcare handled, not just for your kids, but for any of the other people who you might invite to make it easy for them to say yes, and to swing by.

And so to that extent, can you have childcare that's available, whether it's your au pair or hiring another babysitter as well, even if you have to spend an extra, I don't know how much babysitters cost 50, a hundred dollars, even if you had to spend a little bit extra to have one extra.

Person that was on hand, the concept of the idea would be to have like a simultaneous children's party in your home, in another room, separate from the adults, how does that sound? Or how does that hit for you? I mean, I think that can work. Like we could, we could ask around it's in the summer.

There's a lot of kids in our neighborhood that are home from college. We could probably find a couple of people to help entertain kids or, you know, I'm, I'm less worried about that and more worried, you know, are, are the parents going to want to let their kids go hang out with a random person?

Are they going to want them to like hang out in the back, a second half of the backyard so you can maybe have the kids in the backyard where they're kind of in eyeshot, but kind of doing their own thing, both of those things, but just having the extra set of hands available during the party will let you figure out and feel the vibe.

Do you feel that your, um, questions or concerns of managing the kids during the party are now handled doing it on a Wednesday night from five to 7:00 PM? Yeah, I think, I think that, I mean, we'll find out, uh, you know, if anyone shows up or they're all like, no, I've got kids, I can't do five to seven.

I think the biggest question is if everybody feeds their kids five to six o'clock, how are the kids going to get fed? So you might not need parent food, but you know, kids might need food. Well, I'm so glad that you mentioned that. Cause if, if one of your listeners is saying, why are they talking about kids so much?

I don't have kids. Well, the next step is going to apply both to you and to somebody without kids. Now that you've picked your proposed date and time Wednesday from what time was it again from five to seven. Okay. You're now going to think about what I call your core group.

Your core group will be your closest friends, neighbors, or colleagues who you would invite to this party. And you need a minimum of five of them who would say yes. So to get to five, you may need to invite eight to 10, even. So can you think, or can you write down right now, the names of, you know, five to 10 of those people that you would invite first, that would be part of what's called your core group.

Yes. I don't think I'd have to write it down. Cause you know, I think when we, you know, we've done our, everything from baby showers to stuff like that. It's like, I think I have that list prepared somewhere, but we don't have to go through it all right here.

Good. Well, you know who that is and you know how to message them. Your next step is going to be to send them a text message, a DM, however you communicate most casually saying, Hey, my wife and I are thinking about hosting a casual cocktail party on Wednesday night from six to 8:00 PM or from five to 7:00 PM.

Would that work for you? And if we do it, would you come? By getting those five first people to say, yes, that's what you're looking for is five yeses. You've done a little bit of a survey to know that more or less this will work for them and now your party is going to happen.

You're not going to make an event page. You're not going to share it with anybody else until you get those five yeses. And so since you've set your date out about four weeks, you're going to give yourself the next one, two, three days to try to collect those five yeses.

If you cannot get the five yeses, because people are saying, uh, no way we can do that, the kids are going to go down. I can't work that with our schedule. Then you're going to modify based on your environmental situation. You'll say, you know what? It's actually impossible for us to do this during the weeknight because the kids were going to rejigger this.

I know that Nick said on a Monday or a Tuesday or Wednesday, let's actually try this on a Sunday afternoon. Okay. You can do that once you've done the first sample, but once you get those five yeses, now your party is happening and it's off to the races. Do you think that you would be able to get those five yeses?

Just, I think we can get five yeses though. When you said Sunday afternoon, my gears went, oh man, Sunday afternoon feels like the, such a family friendly time after the nap, before dinner, you could do like four to six, but for the sake of this conversation, let's, I assume everything else will apply the same.

Okay, good. So now you've gotten those five yeses. Your next immediate step is to create an RSVP page to collect the confirmations from people. What do we do by collecting the RSVPs? Have you used any of these like social platforms, paperless post, Evite, Eventbrite, which ones do you guys use?

Or what have you used recently? I think, I mean, I think we did paperless post for baby shower, but I'm very curious to know like, what's, what's your go-to? Cause paperless post, you can get lost in like, oh, which design do I want? And they charge you, somebody just told me that in order for you to download a CSV of the emails or something, they charge you, which is sneaky.

I understand. But sometimes for my friends, I don't, they're like, I'm not signing up for a subscription service. Um, the platform that I like the best, most that I recommend is a service called Mixily, M-I-X-I-L-Y. The youth love a service called a Partyful, P-A-R-T-I-F-U-L. I like Mixily and that is what I use.

I'm hosting a party tonight. It's the service that I use. There's no charge. There is no fees. They don't spam your guests. There's no ads. You don't need to download special software. We're looking for the easiest way for someone to simply RSVP to your party. And why do we do that?

Because they make a social contract and they say, I'm going to show up. And a lot of the work that I'm going to give you advice is just going to be making sure that people will attend. And one of the ways we do that is by getting them to RSVP, not just saying, yes, they'll come on text, but to further their commitment by RSVP.

And so all those five have said, yes, you're now going to text them back. Perfect. Let me make an event page. I'll follow up in a day or two. You make the event page, you send them the link and you say, will you please RSVP here just so we can get a head count.

You will now have a landing page for your party that lists five or more people who are coming showing social proof to everybody else you invite that people are actually going to come to this party. Have you ever been invited to an event? And like, you've clearly been spam the invitation.

It's like 93 invited and two attending. Um, that's bad. And we're never going to do that because we're always going to ask people, can you come before you send the invitation? So you get your five yeses. You make the event page, you get them all to sign up on RSVP.

Now you can invite a wider group that I call your great guests. These are your acquaintances. These are where you're going to fill up the rest of the guest list to get from 15 to 20 attendees, not including the kids. I'll take a pause to see what type of questions you have or thoughts or feedback.

No, that makes sense. I assume a guest, if you're inviting, you know, mostly couples is each couple is two people. So it's, you know, you probably are, if you're having 15 to 20, you're having, you know, eight to eight to 10 couples. If that's mostly the demographic. Yes. Yes.

Yes. That makes sense. It's so funny because I, when I would host my dinner parties, I would finally curate the guest list and I would try to invite all these entrepreneurs and other people, and they'd ask, oh, can I bring my girlfriend? Can I bring so-and-so? And I would say no, because, um, I'm curating a specific group of people there.

And that is blasphemy. If you tell somebody that they cannot bring their partner, unless it's a very strictly business event, if it's a social event, you're like, no, you can't bring your partner. It's very sketchy. So I now no longer suggest that people limit their guest list. And oftentimes for people hosting their first party, you just want warm bodies.

You just want as many people to say yes. And so for your first party, I really need to encourage you, Chris, do not try to finally curate it. Do not try to invite VIPs to this. Simply invite people that you feel comfortable with to run through the pieces of this party formula that I'm going to share.

Okay. So I've got this page set up. What do I put on it? So the important thing about the page is you have to set the expectations of what is going to happen at this party. And there's two unique things at one of my parties. Number one, is there are name tags and number two, there's icebreakers.

I can talk about why those are important, but I can tell you that by listing them in the invitation, it will remove 95% of concerns that people that have on the event that they're going to sign up to an RSVP, by the way, you're also going to list not only the start time, but the end time.

Many people are like, how do I get people to leave my party? And by letting them know that there is an end time by clearly listing that, then it helps people to know, and it also encourages them to show up on time. Like we talked about. So letting them know that there will be name tags and icebreakers.

I usually say something simple like, Hey, I'm getting some friends together, uh, to have cocktails and a round of icebreakers. There will be name tags because I'm bad with names, LOL. Um, this is super casual. Uh, you don't have to dress up. You don't have to bring anything. We'll have mixers, drinks, alcohol, and seltzer, and maybe you'll meet some new friends.

That's the general gist of what the invitation page will say. And by giving people knowing what to expect, it not only helps them have a successful event, but it also encourages people that are kind of shy or like introverted many times, we don't think about those types of people.

You're a podcast host, so you're probably pretty outgoing. I probably sound pretty extroverted and outgoing, but a lot of my work in my book works to help people make their parties feel safe and comfortable for those that might not, or might be a little socially awkward, even after COVID too.

You didn't mention anything about food. Is that because there's no food at this party? There's no food. There's only the most basic snacks. If you had to think of a simple way to think about my parties, you would think about the NIC party formula. N-I-C-K. N stands for name tags.

I stands for icebreakers. C stands for cocktails only, no food. And K stands for kick them out at the end. The party's only two hours. Now, why is there no food? I have a pretty hard rule that there's no food because in the event that you say, well, maybe we'll just do some past appetizers, it completely changes the level of stress that's involved.

You can add food later on. And in fact, my book goes through and I can just tell you what to have now. You can have baby carrots. You can have salted nuts. You can have prepared kind of easy food, like snacks, chips, dip, people love guacamole. Those things are simple that take minimal preparation.

But the whole purpose of this is to show you how easy hosting an event can be. And that it's not about the food. It's about the people. Name tags make sense. Kick them out. Makes sense though. I do want to know what's the, what's the way to kick the people out?

Like, let's say it's, it's five to seven. It's sevens rolls around. I I'm guessing most people there aren't like, Oh, looking at the time. Uh, what do you say to people? So you, as the host, we'll make a last call about 15 minutes before the party's scheduled to end.

You would turn down the music and make a little announcement. And so I'll say something like, all right, everybody. Thank you so much for coming. It's seven 45. I said, this party would go till eight. I know it's a school night, so I'm going to let you home. Uh, grab a last drink.

Say hello to somebody new. If you hadn't had a chance yet, and we'll start to wrap up in about 15 minutes. And then I'll turn the music back up at the time. The party is scheduled to end. I will turn all the lights up. I'll turn the music down.

I'll thank everybody for coming. Maybe I'll do a group photo. I do something else that I hesitate to say because it'll make the party sound very weird. But at my parties, I do a little cheer. I've had people have very success with doing this, but it does feel like a kid's summer camp.

But it adds a finality or sort of an end to it. And as silly and ridiculous as my formula sounds, I promise you that it really does work. I love it. Okay. Okay. I have a couple of fobs. You said music. Yeah, they're like a go-to playlist. I feel like that could be a stressful thing for a lot of people trying to curate what's playing.

Oh my gosh. Never, never try to pre-program a playlist. You want easy, happy music that is not too loud. I will play the Beach Boys channel on a streaming service. It's easy. It's non-controversial. It's upbeat. It's generally positive. I'm looking for stuff like that. I have collected a list of playlists, www.party.pro/playlists of party playlists that my friends and readers and other hosts have used.

But generally you just want something very easy. That's background music. That's upbeat and happy. Cocktails. You brushed over quickly. It can be a lot of work to make a mixed drink. Is this really just like only cocktails or is this beer, wine? And if you want a cocktail, you can make it.

What's the drink situation? First controversial thing. There's no beer and I'll tell you why there's no beer. Second thing I wrote a book called the two hour cocktail party and I don't even drink alcohol. So that's ironic. There's not a single mixed drink recipe that's in the book, but we use that phrase cocktail party because it encapsulates a social construct of as an easy event that is lightweight and acceptable to pop into when I say the phrase cocktail party, what do you think of what sort of comes to mind to you?

Chris. Yeah. I mean, like I said in the intro, it feels very like, you know, walk in, grab a martini kind of thing. But, uh, when I, when it comes out of your mouth, it obviously doesn't feel that way. It feels a bit more casual. Well, the reality is, is what drinks are you going to have at your party?

You're going to have a do it yourself, serve yourself bar. And so that can be a couple bottles of alcohol. You can have vodka or tequila or whiskey or bourbon or whatever. You're going to have some basic mixers. You'll have a bowl filled with ice. You'll have maybe some juice and plenty of non-alcoholic options like seltzer, seltzer, water, or hard seltzer.

Now I do not include beer for my list. Are you a beer drinker? I'm a casual beer drinker. Like I enjoy beer, but I wouldn't say it's always my go-to. Do you have friends that are beer drinkers that are beer drinkers? Yeah. I mean, I would be shocked if anyone ever says no to that.

So generally what I find with beer drinkers is that they are highly brand loyal. Beer drinkers are very specific in their beer preferences. They're highly brand loyal and beer just creates a lot of party shrapnel. What do I mean by that? I mean, like there's extra beer bottles, there's beer cans.

It's just like all this extra stuff. What type of beer? Well, if I'm going to buy this beer, then you need another type of beer for somebody else. If you want to serve beer at your party, you absolutely can. But I want to tell all your listeners, I've hosted hundreds of parties, never serving beer.

And it's just another thing to remove the stress for me. And I've never had a complaint. So there's all these little hacks that I'm doing, which is just trying to make it as easy as possible to teach you that you can host and you can make hosting easy and that it can absolutely change your life.

If you become someone who hosts. Okay. So I've got the drinks that want, you didn't mention wine. Is there wine there? Wine, some white wine, some red wine in the summertime, a rosé, just get two bottles of each. That hit everything except this whole, this kind of looming topic of icebreakers.

And I think anyone listening right now is kind of wondering, Oh gosh. Like what, what does Nick mean when he says icebreaker? Yeah. And why do icebreakers? Aren't those, aren't those silly? Aren't those childish? Well, we do icebreakers because it's a short survey of the room. And icebreakers also not only give your guests excuses to go meet new people, which by the way, that's why your party is going to be very successful.

And that's why your friends will love you for hosting this because you are going to help them meet new people. Most adults haven't made a new friend in the last three years. And yet, as we get older, we need friends more than ever, right? Friends become like a game of attrition.

They have kids, they move, things happen. We don't see people as often. Your party will be successful because all of your guests are going to talk to a lot of new people. How do we encourage that by using these icebreakers? Icebreakers are a short survey of the room. Generally you'll go around the circle.

You say your name, you'll say what you do for work. If you don't want to say for work, you say something you're excited about. And then the third one, which is the icebreaker question. Okay. So each icebreaker has three parts, name, what you do for work, and then the icebreaker question, right?

You'll do three rounds of icebreakers. I think of icebreakers as a green, yellow, red, uh, scaffolding where you would want to start your party with a green level icebreaker. A green level icebreaker. The one that I use that I suggest everybody use for the first one is what is one of your favorite things to eat for breakfast?

So first, how does that hit with you? What are your thoughts? I'm ready for it. If you hate it, then tell me and I'll tell you why it's great, but I just want to hear your thoughts. I mean, I don't actually eat breakfast that often. So I, because, because why not?

Why don't you choose to eat breakfast? Uh, I. I don't know. I just, you just skip it's not for health reasons. You know, I didn't run fast and you just, I'm just lazy. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes it's been, uh, intermittent fasting. Sometimes it's just been like, I don't want to, it's just one more thing to think about during the day.

Yes. Um, yeah, when you do eat breakfast, what's one of your favorite things to eat for breakfast? When you do, I mean, when I do eat breakfast, it's usually like some ridiculous, like make an amazing breakfast for the weekend kind of thing. Like lemon ricotta pancakes. Are you lemon ricotta pancakes?

Are you kidding me? That's like a go-to, uh, you know, once a month kind of thing in our house. I've asked this icebreaker hundreds of times. I've never heard somebody say lemon ricotta pancakes. That's incredible. Yeah. Cause I think it's like, I don't make a lot of breakfast. So if I do make breakfast, I'm going to step it up.

And I have this recipe. I, now I feel like I should put it in the show notes that I think is just like every time I make these lemon ricotta pancakes, I'm like, I'm going to make like every time I make these lemon ricotta pancakes and they're not that hard, it just wins every time.

Wait, now I got to know what, like, how long does it take you to make that? Okay. Look, if we're doing this at my party, I just want to show you right there, what just happened. You expressed a piece of your personality that you share and you make your secret thing, lemon ricotta pancakes.

Now you might not always eat breakfast, but you did get to share when you do make breakfast, what you make. Okay. Everybody chooses or not chooses to eat breakfast every single day. And it is generally a positive, happy feeling that we have a good green level icebreaker is an icebreaker.

That's quick to answer it's fast and it doesn't incur judgment from others. A bad green icebreaker, which I would never do would be something like say your name, so what you do for work and say your favorite book ever. Okay. Because that's subjective. That's definitive. That's very hard to pick it.

It's going to maybe elicit a little bit of judgment. People are going to try to show off. They don't know. Now, how do we modify that? Right. It's what I said. What's one of your favorite things to eat for breakfast? I still wouldn't ask what's one of your favorite books.

I would ask that later because a book is an intellectual thing, right? Breakfast is a human delicious thing. It's a fun thing. It's an easy thing. So we ask that as just a way for everybody at your party to sort of sound off and express a piece of their personality.

You do it very quick. A good icebreaker is a quick icebreaker. So you're not going to allow for follow-up questions. Like I was drilling you on, right? You're just going to have everybody go around and then you just say, all right. Thanks everybody. I do those icebreakers so we can all meet somebody new.

Maybe I hope you'll say hello. And then you as a host, shut up and you just let the party go, which is so awkward as a new host, if you've never done this, you're like, this is terrifying. But then you do it and the room explodes. It comes alive.

People go up and they talk to new people. You turn the music back up and everybody's making these conversations. So we do that because most parties you go to, you just, what? Like you went to your kid's birthday party recently. They didn't do icebreakers. You just, maybe you bumped into somebody and started the conversation.

I'm guessing, right? It's just physical proximity. Don't let your kid drink that juice box. Cause my daughter just threw it on the ground. Like that was our icebreakers. Yes. Yes. And there's nothing wrong with those. Those are, those are fine gatherings, but for listeners of your show, they're interested in how to get more out of life.

They're interested in optimizing things. And as cliche and as ridiculous as it sounds to optimize your social situations, it does help if the goal is to help your friends, make more friends. To do a survey of the room, do a couple of them during your party to give people excuses to go start a new conversation because by the way, the other reason we do icebreakers is it gives people an easy excuse to end their conversations.

So are you doing these, like every 30 minutes, you kind of pop in, do an icebreaker and then turn it off. That's exactly right. You do them every 30 minutes. You're going to do them three times. So your part two or three times, and they should only take five or so minutes.

By the way, a hack that everybody needs to know the icebreakers. You have to be standing. You cannot let people sit down. It is the kryptonite to a successful. You can't do icebreakers sitting down. People will ask follow-up questions. They'll drone on a good icebreaker is a fast one.

You said you go from green to yellow to red. What are the more advanced ones? And do you have people because people are coming, going, do you, do you redo the names and the works each time? Yes, you redo the names. You do that for all of them. So your first icebreaker, I'll get into the details with you.

Your first icebreaker you're going to do when there's only five or six people who've shown up. And that is what I call lovingly the awkward zone at a party. It's the first 10 or 20 minutes when not many people are there. It's a little bit awkward. There's not enough energy in the room.

You do the icebreaker to bust out of the awkward zone. You're going to do that same icebreaker about 20 minutes later when now everybody has arrived. And then 30 minutes later, you'll do your last and final icebreaker. And what I like to ask is say your name, say what you do for work.

And then say one of the favorite pieces of media that you've consumed over the last couple months, that could be a show on Netflix. It could be a podcast like this. It could be a great book that you read, a long form article, a funny meme that you saw, a Tik Tok video, just a cool piece of media that you consumed and enjoyed.

And Chris, this one works so well because everybody's sharing great recommendations for a book, a movie, something, and people are wanting to write down stuff. They're feeling smarter because everybody's sharing these great ideas. So I love that one. What about that middle break? Any other tips for icebreakers beyond the two you shared?

One more that you could do. And this is, you've probably seen this online use for engagement bait is one of what is one of your favorite purchases of the last year? It could be a service or an activity, or it could be a physical object that you've purchased. Maybe it's a new car.

Maybe it's a kitchen appliance, but what's one of your favorite purchases that's made your life better during the last year and people love to show. I love this one. Yeah, that's good. I don't know. I don't think I have any other questions. Are you using a, oh, there's one more thing.

Can I tell you about this? Okay. Reminder messages. You need to do three reminder messages leading up to your party to keep it top of mind. And you'll send those reminder messages. One of them, one week before the party, simple message. Hey everybody. What's up? Excited to have you guys over.

We'll see you next week on Wednesday night at 5:00 PM. More details to come. Okay. The next one you'll send is three days before your party. And for that one, you're going to use something I call guest bios and guest bios you're going to do for half or more of your attendees.

It's a brief blurb about your guests. So for me, it could be Nick gray recently moved to Austin, Texas. He lived in New York for 13 years. Ask him about green tea. Right. It's, it's a quick little blurb or summary that you could pull from their LinkedIn or their Instagram or something like that, and it doesn't have to be a hundred percent, right?

You're not asking for permission from other people to get this right. You're just writing some stuff to give these conversational access points and also to get them locked into attending and to give those sort of introverts or shy people an idea of who's going to be there and an idea of who they might want to talk to and to raise the excitement of all the other people as well, but not everyone, just a few people, you don't have to do it.

Everyone. What I suggest is half or more. I'm more focused on the minimum. Don't don't do any less than half. So if you have 16 people coming, you need to do the minimum of eight, but don't feel that you have to do every single person I generally feel more is better, but don't feel like it has to be work.

You know, you're not going to spend an hour writing this thing. It's just a quick little blurb. I think I got it handled. I think I'm ready to go. Any follow-up after do you try to get feedback on how it went? Yes. So right before you do your third round of icebreakers, you are going to do a group photo, right?

A quick selfie. What's up, everybody. Turn around and take a selfie real quick. Okay. Group photo the next morning. You will send them a thank you message. Thanks everybody for coming. You include everybody on BCC. Thank you guys all for coming. Um, can I invite you next time? Right?

Simple question. That's easy for them to say yes to, and you attach the group photo. That's it. That's all that you do. Yes, you can do surveys. That's an advanced level move. I don't recommend it yet. Um, but yes, surveys are helpful as you start to host more. Any other advanced moves for people who are hearing this and they're like, no, no, I'm ready for them.

Now. Oh gosh. I hesitate to say this, but yes, I will tell your listeners, but please don't do this first. Please do not do this first. Okay. A popular theme theme that you can do. I'm trying to teach. And I wrote this book and all this stuff that I'm sharing, because this is an operating system to run events.

You can use it at kids' birthday parties. You can use it at a lot of different type of events. For your first one, just do a cocktail party. Don't try to get fancy. One that is an absolute banger. Huge success is for your neighbors and friends to do a book swap.

Everybody likes books. Everybody has extra books they want to get rid of. Everybody likes to get new books. A book swap is so easy. You use the same exact formula name, what you do for work, but maybe instead of something else you'd say, and tell us about one of the books that you brought, right?

Why is it a great book? This book swap thing, I'm telling you, I've had people do it and it's their most well-attended event. So that's a good one. Um, you can host a clothing swap. I have a formula for hosting a clothing swap. All of these things that you can do, you can do more thematic ones if you want, but those are sort of advanced level.

Get the formula first. Most people have never run an icebreaker before. And so one key thing, can I tell you about how to run a good icebreaker? Yeah. So here's a key thing. A lot of people don't like icebreakers because the hosts will be like, all right, we're going to do an icebreaker.

Say your name and what you do. And the worst first date you ever went on Chris, you go first, right? It's like terrible. It's so bad. I hate the worst first date is a red. That's a good example of a red level question where there's not enough rapport built up among people yet.

So we wouldn't do that one, but a good icebreaker always has the host go first. Ask permission for who can go next and then indicate to the group, which way the round of icebreakers would go. So as an example, if I was setting up the icebreaker, I would say, all right, so now we're going to do this round of icebreakers, you're going to say your name, what you do for work, and one of your favorite things for breakfast.

I will go first and then looking to my left, Chris, uh, can we go to you next? And hopefully you'll say yes. I'll say great. So I will go first. We'll go to Chris next, and then we're going to go around the circle this way. Um, it sounds childish.

It sounds like I'm a clown telling multiple times the instructions and which way to go around, but it just makes the instructions crystal clear. It makes it run fast and it gives power to those, I don't know, those people with social anxiety. I dated a woman who had a lot of social anxiety and she said, the more that I could know which way it was going, the less surprises, the better.

Unfortunately, you are coming to San Francisco soon, but not later. So you won't, you won't get to see me do this in action, but I will let you know how it goes. And, uh, you know, we'll, we'll maybe save some of those advanced tactics for later. Um, one more, I'm going to give one, um, one last thing.

Uh, when you do your round of icebreakers, I want your wife to stand next to you. And I want her to, to talk too much so that you can actually kind of cut her off. And why do you want to do that? Because then you can signal to everybody else that we're not going to use these icebreakers to drone on and on and talk too long.

You can cut her off first. People will laugh a little bit. And I think, or she can go first and cut me off. She could go first, but then she needs to facilitate it. And she needs to be the one who is the facilitator. So, yes, absolutely. Yeah. There's nothing worse than doing icebreakers and one person talks forever.

So I'm, I'm a big fan of finding a way to politely show people that this is not a time to give a presentation. Yes. Yes. And sometimes we have to do that. We have to be, we have to lead a party with generous authority. And that means that what is best for the whole group is not always being ultra polite to one person.

So with a successful cocktail party, what do you think? What do you hope people feel after it? And what, what, what kind of comes out of this whole experience? A successful cocktail party has the energy in the room, very high. And somebody leaves your party saying, wow, that was like the best party.

That was awesome. And it's so simple. I got a message from a woman who just read my book and she hosted a party with name tags and icebreakers. And she said that night, she and her husband got multiple text messages from friends saying that it was the best party that they'd ever thrown.

Why? Because they just added a little structure to it. So what's the feeling? It's that feeling that when you're done hosting, you say that was awesome and that was also easy. Like I could do that again, because I think we've all hosted parties where we're absolutely drained afterwards. And while it may have been a success, we never want to do it again.

What's the energy that your guests have? It's that they, they met so many people. They, they had a really great time. You let them go early, right? They didn't feel like they had to, Oh, I'm so sorry. We have to sleep at no you're telling them. They got to go get out of here.

You're ending it while it's going great. Uh, yeah, it's just, I can talk about this all day. I want to turn to talk about this business. You started museum hack and my understanding is you started a little accidentally and you became a lover of museums, not intentionally. And you probably started on the other end of the spectrum.

How did this all come about? Yeah, I hate most museums. I think they're really boring and they just don't have anything to do with me. I'm not, I didn't grow up going to museums. I think they're stupid. Um, however, I, I lived in New York city where they had the metropolitan museum of art and it's a big museum.

Have you been to the Met? I haven't. Okay. It's enormous. It's the most popular museum in America. It's 2.3 million square feet. It takes up 11 acres of central park. It's enormous and it's overwhelming. And for many New Yorkers, it's just a tourist attraction. It's not a place they have a relationship with.

Uh, this woman brought me there on a romantic date and she showed me things and she talked to me at my level, which I have like a third grade reading level, and so she just sort of talked to me like, wow, look at these Egyptian artifacts, sculpture, furniture, paintings.

And so I started to go back to the museum because I was like, I think I moved in New York to hang out at places like this. And so I'd go to the museum and just explore. I'd look things up on Wikipedia. I'd watch YouTube videos and I started to do these tours for my friends, just showing them around when they'd come visit.

And they became like a, a, a famous thing because my tours were basically 10 cool things I found and three things I wanted to steal. Uh, not like a narrative arc of, of art history, just cool stuff I found. And then it became very famous and celebrities started to come and I hired some tour guides to lead the tours.

And what was special was Museum Hack would hire Broadway actors and standup comedians to be the tour guides instead of the museum volunteers. And they would work for me, not for the museum. And so they would tell the juicy backstories about the art, about how much the art cost, about stories of the donors, things like that, that people wanted to hear.

And so that was our whole thing was attracting new audiences into these storied museums. And what did you learn about how to see a museum? Like, you know, I'm obviously people can go take a museum hack tour, which is still running as a business, but, uh, I'm so fascinated as someone who.

I don't know if I, I, I could tell if someone asked me the question, how do you do a museum? I don't feel like I would have the answer you would. And I feel like you have a better answer. Yeah. I'll tell your listeners exactly how to visit a museum.

And they're in San Francisco. Have you been to the Legion of Honor? I have. Yeah. It's a nice museum, right? That one in the D young are two really nice museums there. Um, so here's how to visit. Here's exactly from all my time. And I've been to the metropolitan museum of art more than a thousand times, and I've been to many other museums.

Here is how you should go about experiencing a museum for the first time. So you're going to a new museum, any museum, or is it, you know, specific categories work better than others for this, uh, this applies to any museum. Museum hack, in my opinion, works best for art museums, but the thing, the hack, the special sauce I'm about to tell you the way to approach works for any museum, and here's what you're going to do.

As soon as you get there, you're going to go in right where you buy your ticket. You'll get a map and you are going to walk the entire floor plan and you're not going to stop. You're not going to stop and look at it. I don't care if you love it.

You're not going to stop. You can circle it on the map and you'll come back later, but you're not going to stop. You're going to walk the entire floor plan to build a mental map of the space and to know where you want to go back to later. So first you'll walk the entire floor plan.

It could take you between five and 45 minutes, depending on how big it is. You will then go to the museum cafe. Almost all museums have a cafe. If they don't have a cafe, you can just sit down and you're going to take a little break. I like to go there and I like to get a cup of coffee.

You can get a glass of wine if you want, and you get a little snack. You're going to rip replenish your glycogen or your glucose or whatever. You're just going to have some carbs, maybe some sugar to build up your energy store, to go back now that you've seen everything briefly, you will now go back and look closer at the things that captured your mind and interest.

What happens to many people? Why we do this is have you ever done this? You go to a new museum and you spend like the first hour looking at the stuff that you happen to just walk like. You waste all of your cognitive load and, and, and looking energy on things that you don't even want to look at because the best stuff sometimes is at the very end, the stuff that you're most excited about.

And by the time you get to that stuff, you're tired and you're exhausted. So the way to do it is to walk through the entire floor plan. Do not stop at anything. Circle things on the map, go to the cafe, take a break, and then go back and look closer and deeper at the things you're curious about.

And how long does that usually take? Would you say for, I know there are museums of different sizes, but how long would you tell someone to budget for a trip to a museum? I personally can't spend more than two hours. I think that this was one of the biggest things that I changed a lot of my friends thinking about is that you don't have to go try to get every single dollars worth and stay there as long as possible.

I can spend about two hours at a museum before I get tired. This is a real thing, getting tired at a museum. It's called gallery fatigue. It happens because we're not in an activated space. We're quiet. We're thinking, we don't know how we're supposed to act. It can be stressful sometimes.

So I spent, I spent about two hours total. So about half that time is a run through and a cafe. And then the other half is actually kind of spending time in the things you're interested in. Yes. Yes. Sometimes if I go to a museum for two hours, I'll spend an hour in the cafe.

Because I just want to go approach it with a strip, with a strategy. And many times we don't have a strategy. When we go into a new physical space, like a museum, we're just walking where our body takes us and we're looking. And before we know it, we've wasted an hour and we're tired.

And we didn't even get to go see the really cool stuff that's on the second floor back in the modern way. And could you do that from the map at home or do you need to be there? I think you need to be there because you need to walk it.

You need to physically get in your body and see the stuff firsthand. And also there's not going to be, the museum's not going to feature like all, like you may be interested. Like, for example, I love at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There's this sofa, it's like a green, beautiful green sofa.

It's not going to be on any of the museum website or featured top galleries. I don't know why I like it, but it was owned by the King of Spain or something. And I love that thing. And you're not going to find that when you do the museum's website tour of the galleries.

Do you have some favorite museums from just, you know, you probably, if you've been to the Met a thousand times, I imagine you've been to, you know, when you're in a new city, I feel like you're probably like, how could you help yourself from going to check out a new museum?

Yeah, I love to go to new museums. So the Metropolitan Museum of Art is my favorite in the whole world. And it's what's called an encyclopedic museum. That means there's many different galleries and curatorial departments. So I love encyclopedic museums, maybe similar to the Legion of Honor there in San Francisco.

In Washington, DC, I like the National Gallery. I like the enormous big museums because they have a little something for everyone. And using my strategy, maybe will help your visitors approach these really big museums that can be so intimidating. To feel like you don't have to get it all in at once.

You don't have to like, it's okay to leave and not see everything. What about deals on going to museums? I feel like, you know, running museum hack while the whole brand wasn't getting a deal on getting into museums. What have you found in that space? For deals, I could tell you how to beat the line.

So I can tell people how to skip the line. Deals, it's really, Oh yes. Oh my God. Wait, I completely forgot. I have the best deal ever. I've won. Oh my God. I have the best. I hope I'm not blowing out my mic levels being too loud. I have the best hack ever.

And don't put this in the show notes. There is a membership called the American Alliance of Museums. It's essentially an industry trade group for museums in America. You can join as a non-employee. It's called a friend of the association or something. It's called AAM American Alliance of Museums. You can join as a friend of the association for under a hundred dollars per year.

It will grant you access, a free ticket to almost every single museum in America. Wow. Do not blow up my spot. Don't blow up my spot. American Alliance of Museums. It's like the friend membership or something. It should be a hundred dollars or less. And me and my friends have done this for many years.

Now you should also support, if you're listening to museums, I'm not trying to scam people out of how to pay for these culture institutions that largely are underfunded. I want to tell you about this though, so that you feel like you can go to a museum for an hour and fall in love with it.

And you can go multiple times. You can buy this and go to the Legion of Honor for 45 minutes. And hopefully you'll fall in love with it and buy a membership and support it in other ways. What about skipping the lines? You said there was another thing for skipping the lines.

Some museums, so for skipping the lines, some museums have additional entrances. Major museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art will have an education entrance that's for school groups and other things at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, there is almost always an enormous line out the main entrance, but no line at the education entrance doesn't mean you have to be part of a school group to use that entrance.

You can just go in and buy a ticket like normal. That's another hack. Love it. The one hack I want to share and it's, uh, it's not for everyone literally because it's, it's a Capital One related deal right now, but I mentioned this in the last episode, but since this is all about museums, if you have a Capital One card, I think for almost the next year, it's until June 2024, I think you can with any Capital One membership, get a six month membership to this site called the Cultivist, which gives you and three guests access to a hundred museums around the world, I know it includes the Louvre, the Guggenheim, the MoMA, um, and a lot more.

So you, after that six months, you have to pay $40 a month. So, you know, if you like it and you want to keep going, great. But there is a six month free membership that I'd recommend anyone with a Capital One card, check out. Great one. And then the other one, I can't remember if I've talked about this before, but I didn't realize that joining museums as a member is in many cases, not much more expensive than just going.

Um, and this is especially true if you have friends or family in town. Um, you know, we, the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco is a cool museum. We had a bunch of people in town and it was actually, well, two things. One, most museum memberships are all tax deductible donations.

Yes. Most museum tickets are not. So, uh, so if you ever see that thing where it's like, buy your ticket, you can apply the cost of your ticket to your, uh, to your membership, technically the ticket price is not a deductible contribution, but the incremental cost is. So if you're going to join, join before you buy the tickets, but we looked into it and after you factor in the deduction you get for making a contribution, it was cheaper for us to buy a one-year membership to the Academy of Sciences, which allowed us a certain number of guests than it was to actually just buy the tickets the day of.

Yeah. So, uh, in many cases that's true, which has now resulted in us being members of the Oakland zoo, the Academy of sciences, uh, a place called curiodicy, um, on the peninsula, which is kind of like half kids, science museum, half zoo. So I feel like we're collecting memberships because it turns out that factoring in the cost, it actually ends up being about the same cost as going sometimes once, sometimes twice, but almost never more than two times.

It's really not that expensive. You're exactly right to join at the lowest level for many of these institutions with unlimited membership. I'll tell you something else for your listeners, a hack for many of these organizations, the biggest ones I'm talking about in major cities, New York, Chicago, DC, Seattle, Denver, big, big cities, their art museums, and sometimes science museums will have something called a young members program, young patrons program, something like that.

That typically goes after members 45 or 40 and younger and gives you extremely VIP access at a disturbingly discount rate. I'll give you an example in New York city at the metropolitan museum of art. Uh, there was something called the Apollo circle group. That was a thousand dollars a year.

Now you might think, wow, that is expensive. It is expensive for some people that gave you once a month after hours parties at the museum. With incredible past appetizers, open bar, private tours from the curators, insane level of access that for older members, they were charging five, 10, 15, $20,000 a year.

But they subsidize this for young people, hoping that you will develop a long-term relationship and donate a lot more. So young patrons programs at these museums, the key word would be to ask if you're looking to, to buy a membership and you're curious about this, say, Oh, what type of young patrons memberships might you have?

And then I forgot about bank of America. If you have a bank of America card, I think the first weekend of every month, you can go to a ton of museums around the country for free. I know in San Francisco, it includes the Legion of honor and the DeYoung museum and that, that, so, um, even like a free bank of America checking account would, would I think qualify if I remember correctly.

So, uh, that's another one I'll link to that in the show notes with museum hack. You probably talked to lots of people and learned a lot about planning tours, booking tours. What do you do if you're in a new country and you want to find a tour? Do you have a way to do that?

That that cuts through the noise and finds the best tours. I'll tell you right now, the people that are killing it are Airbnb experiences. Have you done an Airbnb experience? I we've done a bunch of virtual ones that were kind of like company organized events, COVID, uh, no way you got to do the real in-person Airbnb experience, and I would even challenge you to set up a date night with your wife and do one of them in San Francisco, uh, on the Airbnb experiences.

The problem is now they're spamming them a lot with these photo things where they're just trying to juice for photos, skip all of those. I'm looking for food tours and walking tours that have an average rating above 4.9 with at least 25 reviews. Those are generally, you're going to get some really good tour guides.

And what I like about that is they're empowered tour guides that have set up their own businesses that are going to be very passionate. So I like Airbnb experiences and I will generally schedule it. The first thing I do to a city, cause then I can ask the guide for advice.

This show isn't usually a show about someone's kind of stories, their resume and that kind of stuff. And so normally I was going to skip over the career stuff in favor of all these tactical things we've talked about. Uh, but I looked at, I was like, Oh, you sold your company.

Cool. You know, a lot of shows would be like, tell me about that. I wasn't that interested for the purpose of this show. And then I saw that it was actually a very interesting way you sold your company. Um, something that I think most people probably as business owners wouldn't think of, and most people as employees wouldn't think of.

And so I would love to just hear the quick version of that and how it's gone. Because I thought it was something that at least one person listening might get a lot out of hearing. Yes. I sold my last company, museum hack to my then CEO and marketing director.

They came to me with an offer to buy the business. I never thought that I would sell it. I just, I didn't, it didn't seem like a business you could really sell to somebody and I sold it to them using seller financing, which what that means is that they put zero money down.

And they said, look, we're just going to run the business like we've been doing. And yet we will pay you off over five years from all the profits. So you get to lock in five years of profits of the business and have zero responsibility. And so that's how I sold the business.

And they've, they've done so much better than I ever could have done. They've taken the business to new places and it was a big win for everybody. There's an episode. I think you've done on a podcast about it that I listened to briefly. I'll link to that in the show notes, but I just thought it was a cool story because most small business kind of sales, nobody really talks about how that works and this was a different one.

Yeah. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was super, um, it was super unique and it now would give me the opportunity to do a lot of traveling myself, which I do have some questions for you about traveling myself whenever it's appropriate. Okay. Yeah, no, no. My, my, I had some travel stuff I wanted to jump into.

Cause you know, you have this great website where you've blogged about all these adventures. So, but I'll let you jump in first and let's see where it goes. Fun fact, a friend of mine just flew back last night from, um, um, Istanbul. And have you gone through their new lounge there?

Have you been through the new Istanbul airport? I'm going to assume. No, I think it was, it's been a long time. It is the biggest airport business lounge in the whole world. And it is absolutely incredible. And he and I were just sharing stories about that. Okay. Here's my questions.

Okay. So I have a question for you. Is it ever cheaper to buy a round trip plane ticket? I love to book one way plane tickets. I think it's the greatest luxury in the world. I don't set myself a determined date to come back. I kind of love to go to places and I'll go back when I'm bored.

Am I shooting myself in the foot and losing a lot of money? Or as I assume are one way is pretty much the same price as a round trip. I would say domestic for the most part that is correct. There are one, two, one ways is equal to a round trip.

I was actually looking for flights to fly from San Francisco to steamboat Springs where my wife's family lives. And I actually noticed that booking a round trip was cheaper by about $75. You know, the total cost of the round trip was $75 less than two one ways. But I also know that in the winter steamboat Springs helps subsidize the cost of flights there.

And I assume that part of that deal is we're going to help subsidize the flights for touristic purposes. Most people buying one way tickets aren't flying for, uh, you know, tourism. They're more flying for business or, or they live there. So I would say if there are places that are maybe small airports where they might be subsidized by the town for tourism reasons, you might actually still get a better deal buying round trip.

When it comes to international, there are a lot of circumstances where one way is, is. Much more expensive than a round trip, or at least two one ways is more expensive than a round trip. Um, the, the catch there is there's a few things. So one, you could buy a round trip, set your return really far in the distant future, and you could actually look online and say, depending on the airline, what is their policy for cancellation and reusing the funds.

And in those circumstances, I would say, let's say you wanted to fly on air France and you knew you, you weren't sure if you were going to come back. There might be a way and. Got to read a lot of the terms. You could book a round trip, uh, and change the return later.

Uh, maybe book it on Delta instead of air France. So if you got credit, it would be on Delta, which you might use more frequently living in the States than you would use an air France credit. Um, or, and, and for anyone flying business class, it is often much cheaper to fly round trip business class than, uh, one, two one ways.

But the fair is actually round trip. So I've helped a lot of people who are looking to fly one way business class to Europe. Maybe they want to go to another city and come back from there. You buy one way to Europe and business, and then you fly, but you buy a round trip and the return is in coach.

And so, you know, I remember a circumstance where it was like the one way ticket was $4,000, but the round trip with the outbound in business. And the return in coach was like $2,300. So it was significantly cheaper if you bought a round trip, but you didn't have to buy the return in business.

So that's another circumstance. If, if you're flying business that can help. Um, but I would say if you, it might be cheaper, let's say you're going in the summer, you want a one-way ticket to Europe. It might be cheaper to fly around trip, but summer is expensive, but you could always look to return, you know, maybe in January or some, some other month where it's a much cheaper time to travel, so I don't know if there's a hardened fast rule internationally on when, when it matters and when it doesn't.

And, uh, but I have seen that be the case. There have been times where it's a case. So I would kind of give you the advice of check and see. Um, and if it's the same, then I would just book the one way. Of course, that's smart. I've, I've never thought about that idea.

What resonated the most with me is business one way and then coach back and see how that would go to the one way. So similarly, the coach flight, because in Europe, any ticket you buy that you cancel, even if it's non-refundable, you get your taxes back. So the rule is, you know, you buy round trip business out coach back.

As soon as you fly the business leg, you cancel the ticket and you get your taxes on the coach leg back. I like that, especially through airports like London Heathrow, where the taxes can be almost $200. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. Next question. Um, I like having flight optionality, right.

As my first question alluded. And so I love to book plane tickets where I can get a full refund very easily. For that reason, I tend to book Southwest a lot. Are there other airlines now post COVID? Does everybody give you full refunds on flights or let's just assume domestic only for now?

Yeah. So Southwest, if you book with points, it's like full refund and points get redeposited. If you book with dollars, you get a Southwest travel credit. You don't get a full refund. Um, unless you, I believe there's a new fare. Uh, actually no, and that credit has to be used by you.

Southwest just launched this, like want to get away plus fare. And the, the main selling perk is that that credit you get back can be used by anyone. Um, but most of the airlines have now moved to a similar model where if you cancel something, you'll get a credit back.

Um, I don't have the list off the top of my head of which ones are doing that, which ones aren't, and when you book with miles, some of them still charge a fee to deposit those miles back if you cancel it, but many do not. Um, so I would say the most flexibility, you know, with Southwest, if I know I'm not gonna, I know I might need to make a change versus like, this is a trip I'm definitely taking.

I try to book with points because they'll just refund the points instead of give you a credit. Um, so that's the move, but yeah, I think miles give you a lot of flexibility because let's say I'm booking an international trip. That's tons of miles for a family of four.

They might charge you even a $50 a person redeposit fee, but I'd rather pay $50 times for people, you know, to get my miles back then have a $5,000 credit on, you know, KLM or something, which is going to be really hard to use. Yeah. Super hard to use.

Uh, so that leads me to my next question. I do book with Southwest and I do book with Southwest points because I just want it as easy as possible to cancel. I generally just transfer my chase points one to one to Southwest just cause it's easy and it's built in.

I have a bunch of chase points. Is that stupid? Am I being stupid by just doing those one-to-one to Southwest or what? You're traveling and you're getting to go on trips. So I wouldn't say any of these choices are stupid, right? Like I always say, if you can use your points to go on a free trip, uh, you know, you're doing something right.

However, I will say that, you know, the way Southwest airlines works is that their points are effectively worth like a dollar value, it fluctuates a little bit, but it's roughly around, I think it's like 1.37 cents per point. Um, so that's the bar, like you'll never get more. You'll never get less.

It's kind of right hovers around there. If you use your chase points and you have a chase Sapphire reserve card and you just book in the chase portal, you can book any flight on any carrier, probably except Southwest, uh, because Southwest doesn't like to play with all these travel portals, but you can book any flight on any carrier and your points will be worth 1.5 cents.

So your points are going to go further on any other carrier booking in the chase portal than they will on Southwest. Now that doesn't mean it's going to be as easy to cancel. If you do that, it might not be as convenient for you, but from a pure dollar value of the point, you know, my stack rank is transferred to Southwest near the bottom because the value trans book in the portal, and then, you know, I I'll refer you to a few episodes when we wrap up where we kind of go in more detail, but when you take those points and you transfer them to almost any other airline, Air France, uh, United, you know, you can get 1 cent, but you can also sometimes if you time it right, if you're booking last minute, if you're flying an international business class, you know, I've seen, I've gotten 5 cents, I've gotten 7 cents, so I would say you're getting free trips and I want you to take vacations.

That's like, it makes me happy, but your points could be where it could probably be earning you more value, uh, than they are by transferring to Southwest. Speaking of international travel, what is your jet lag strategy? So I typically try to get on the time zone, like 24 hours in advance.

I try to like, you know, you get on this plane and you're using your miles. You'd say you're flying in business and you're like, oh, they're going to give me this amazing meal and these free bottles of wine. And I'm like, but it's about 10 30 PM in Tokyo.

So I'm going to bed. I'm not drinking. I'm not, you know, I'm trying to hydrate so that, um, you know, I can get good night's rest land. I try to power through as long as I can till the end of the day and go to sleep. And I'd say like 70% of the time it works.

Every now and then I remember one night, one afternoon, my wife and I were in Budapest and we were like, let's just take a nap, like, you know, 2:00 PM. Just a quick one. And then, you know, you wake up at 4:00 AM and you're like, oh, we just, we're really screwed here.

Oh God. Um, but for most part, I try to get on the time zone a day in advance and. You know, not worry about the plane ride and the experience as much as like trying to get on the right time zone. I have not yet done a trip like that, changing more than a time zone or two with children.

And so anyone listening has tips there. I would absolutely love you to send me an email because we're talking about taking a trip where we'd go more than four or five time zones with two kids. And I have no idea what that will be like. I have used an app that is called time shifter.

Have you heard of this app? No. Time shifter is a fascinating app. You can use it the first time for free. And then after that, I think it's $9 a trip. And they use the same science that NASA uses when they send astronauts up to the international space station by doing exactly what you said, but just a little more strategically of trying to get you on the new time zone, starting about two days in advance, what does that look like each day they'll have you wake up an hour sooner, each day they'll throttle back.

The last time you're allowed to have caffeine, they're going to do certain things to modulate your behaviors in the two days leading up to your trip. And then on the flight itself, sometimes, like you said, they feed you all this. They try to get you drunk. They try to get you to go to sleep, but sometimes that's not what they're doing in the times when you're flying too.

And they'll tell you advice, like open up your window shade, turn your phone brightness to a hundred percent, get light in your eyes. You need to get your body sync during the flight itself. I think that's an interesting app. I'll have to check it out. My next question is away from travel.

You mentioned a couple of times during this interview that you have an au pair. Do you feel comfortable talking about the decision process that went into as a family, making that jump? I, I didn't grow up with people who had au pairs. I now know friends who have them, but for some, it could feel very inaccessible.

And I was just curious what, how you came to that family choice. So I did grow up my parents. We had four au pairs from Norway when I was a kid. So, uh, you know, I just, we grew up in DC, uh, suburbs and I think, you know, DC is a very international place.

I seemed so normal at the time. I can't actually say whether like my friends had au pairs, but I thought it was so cool. I brought my au pair to show and tell in school one year. That's incredible. And then my wife, Amy and I, we travel differently, I guess.

So we took an eight month trip backpacking and we couch surf the whole time. And before we left, we wanted to like build up credibility on couch surfing the app. And so we hosted probably 50 people over the course of six months in our house. And so for us, the idea of having someone from another country around us, um, or staying in someone else's home, we don't know when we're traveling, uh, was just like something we've done, I don't know, hundreds of times.

And so I love it. I think there's nothing more interesting than meeting people from different walks of life, different parts of the world, hearing their stories, having meals with them, cooking meals for them. I remember trying to find all the ingredients I needed to make eggplant Parmesan, uh, in rural Tanzania.

Uh, in this house where all we had was like a pot and, you know, a little carrier, you know, uh, what did you propane stove and I remember I was so proud because I'd managed to find this international grocery store and Dara Salam and I found eggplant, I found mozzarella cheese and sauce and spaghetti.

I made this whole meal and I served it. And the father of the house we were staying with was like, I'm so excited for dinner. And I was like, we just ate dinner. He's like, oh no, no, that wasn't dinner. There was no meat. And I was like, no, that was, that was Derek.

We had eggplant Parmesan, we had spaghetti. We had some garlic bread. It was kind of garlic bread. And he was like, but there's no meat. So it couldn't have been dinner. And I was like, totally defeated. But that experience was like just cooking that meal. I might look at like a photo in the show notes.

Cause it's kind of, it's like, it was not a normal kitchen to cook this meal in. Um, I should've gone with chicken Parmesan to be honest, but, uh, you know, that kind of stuff I love my wife loves, like we want our children to have experiences like that. So the idea of having someone from another country who has a totally set a different set of background, different set of experiences come in and, you know, share that with you for a year, um, and, and get to know your family and get to show them around, you know, I've like, we've taken, um, our au pairs to visit family, to visit other cities and friends and, um, showing them around museums.

Uh, so for me, I think it, it just seemed like an obvious. Great solution, but about half the people I tell, tell about it, tell it to about half the people I talk about it with are like, you have a random person living in your house for a year.

Like what for us, that just seems like it just totally reasonable and interesting. And whatever trade-off you lose, the space you lose for the room in your house, uh, the experience I I've, I've just found we've only had two au pairs so far, but, uh, to be totally worth it.

And we're, we're already on track, uh, for, for another one next. So two experiences will lead to a third and we'll see what happens next. My guess is you wouldn't, you can't imagine your life not having it. And that's what I've heard from others. Yeah. I mean, I think that when kids are in school all the time and, you know, maybe they're going to camp in the summer or something like that, I could see a world where it's less beneficial to have full-time childcare when, you know, there's kids are out more, but right now when they're kids, you know, they're not out more, like, I, I feel like it would be impossible for me and Amy to both work and not have childcare.

And, you know, the au pair experience for us is much more exciting than, you know, a nanny or daycare, but you know, they're like, I don't knock anyone for making any of those choices. It's just something that we love. Sure. Children, notwithstanding point redemption, regardless, if you could today's Tuesday, if I could say to you, Hey, look, there's no work on Friday.

You and your wife can hop on, just go to San Francisco airport, take any flight anywhere in the world Thursday evening for a long, long weekend. Where would you like to go to just the two of us or just the two of us? Let's assume for the moment that it's just the two of you.

Am I also assuming that for some reason, there's a, a flight, a nonstop flight anywhere in the world? That's a fantastic advanced level question. Let's assume no, we're going to play it on hard level. Not like, not like magical level. Let's, let's be realistic. That's a great question. The reason I ask is I've always wanted to go to the Canary islands and they seem quite difficult to get to, uh, from the West coast, um, I think, and how long are we going for you're going for the long weekend, so you fly out on Thursday night and you'll be back either Sunday or Monday, I'm gonna have to think about this.

Well, I have my answer. Cause I prepared, can I tell you my answer? Yeah. Uh, so I've been dying to go to Buenos Aires and here's why there's a direct flight from many places, probably from San Francisco, from Houston, from New York. It's in the same time zone. And so you can take the flight at like 10 PM and you land, it's like a 10 hour flight and you land at 10 AM local time.

You've not missed any time. There's no jet lag per se. To me, it seems like the most perfect, like whole new world environment and it's currency arbitrage because right now with not only the strong dollar, but just the Matt rampant inflation there and all the other stuff. It now does open up some interesting times for the dollar traveler to get exceptional value.

Yeah, we did a trip to Buenos Aires. I don't know if this is still the case. I should be prepared, but I didn't know this was coming, but at the time there were two exchange rates. So there's, there's the, I think it was like the dollar blue, which is like the, the, the off market exchange rate.

And then the one you get, so you never, at least at the time, please fact check all of this at the time, you never want to pay with a credit card because they're going at the bank rate, but the other rate was like half the price. So you would basically like walk down the street and someone be like, you need currency, you need exchange.

And you'd walk into some random place. I remember at the time I was like watching YouTube videos on like how to test the currency, if it's real, because everyone's buying all their currency and like back alleys. And now there's WhatsApp groups and you'd message them and they'd come to your hotel.

And, um, but I can only imagine that if inflation has gone rampant, the dollar has gone more valuable. It's even more valuable to do this. I second that. The only thing I'd say is we went to Argentina. Buenos Aires is awesome. It's incredible. It's one of the few places in the world.

Maybe new Orleans is similar where people will say, Oh, you've got to check out the cemeteries. Um, which is a strange thing to recommend, but they're just so interesting and different than you've seen anywhere and beautiful and ornate. Um, but there's just so much cool stuff in Argentina that I wish that you would have more time than a weekend to go there, but I did do an episode for you to listen to with the basketball player, Manu Ginobili, who's from Argentina, where he talked about some of his favorite tips.

So check that out before you go. Um, I also did a similar trip for a long weekend to Bogota, which was awesome. Even closer, same time zone. Um, really accessible. Gosh, I don't know where I would go for a long weekend. So let me throw some ideas out of there.

Is that okay? Yeah, go for it. Would you guys go to Hawaii? We are going to Hawaii in a few months. So I feel like I would not go there this weekend if it was a surprise adventure. Okay. Would you go to Japan? A hundred percent, but Japan is not open right now.

Oh, you're right. You're right. You're right. Okay. So Japan would always be the number one on the list. It's like, if you want to go on a trip, we're always like, is Japan possible? If not, we'll look at the rest of the world. Yes. Would you go to Bangkok?

Would you do anything in Southeast Asia? Yeah. So we're actually talking, this is so funny, all the things you mentioned. So we're talking about taking a trip, maybe October, November for a couple weeks, um, with kids and au pair. And the plan was to go to Japan, but because it's closed now we're talking about Bali or Vietnam or Thailand, because we had so much fun there.

The trip, if you hadn't constrained it to a weekend would be, let's go to New Zealand. I've heard incredible things about New Zealand, nonstop flight, crazy long, uh, way more manageable without children than with, and that would be the place, but I just couldn't imagine going all the way there and then turning around three days later and coming back.

So that would have been my, my go-to had that not been the constraint. I love the New Zealand. Is there any place in South America or Central America that is interesting to you? You mentioned Bogota. I went to Medellin and I have to admit, I didn't feel safe there.

Um, I felt, we heard a couple stories where there was one day, I just wanted to go take a nap in the park. And someone's like, you're not going to, you're not going to take a nap in the park. That's not a thing that we do here. And the idea to like not have your cell phone out and things like that, it became enough where I was just kind of spooked eventually and we bounced, but I heard so many great things about Medellin.

I'm curious what your Bogota experience was, or if there's anywhere else in Central or South America. Yeah. I mean, if I were recommending to other people, uh, I could go on for like a, a great list of definitely Mexico city, awesome weekend trip from the U S. Uh, you just want to sit on the beach and relax.

Cabo's a great trip, uh, from the U S Bogota was a great trip. Oh, what's up with Oaxaca. Have you been to Oaxaca? I have not, but I've heard cool things. Um, I haven't been, so I think one place I'd go for the long weekend. Uh, I'd go to Costa Rica.

I went once, uh, before my wife and I, uh, like, I think we'd even met and it was awesome and she's never been, she's wanted to go and now it's been 10 plus years, a lot of what we'd want to do. We looked at doing with kids and we were like, gosh, it's just not, not the right place to go right now.

Like I want to go surfing. We want to go like hiking in the rainforest and like, they're just not the most toddler friendly activities. So to finally answer your question, if we got thrown on a plane right now, uh, this weekend, I'd, I'd say let's go to Costa Rica.

It's not the most inconvenient from the West coast, way easier from LA because there's direct flights. Um, that's probably where we'd go. All the hacks listener beat up in Costa Rica, get ready cocktail party with the cocktail party, with the name tags. Okay. Speaking of travel, this is my last and final question for you.

Do you have any travel gadgets that you absolutely love? It could be as simple as, for example, I have a travel spork, this tiny little spork that I just throw in my backpack. And maybe I only use it like once every four months, but when I get to use it, I'm like, hell yeah, I got that sport.

I don't have a, you know, some people have that long list of here's all my cool travel gear. I don't have the long travel gear list. The couple of things I'll share that I think are important. And one, we use those like stuff sacks to compress your, uh, travel, all your clothes and everything else.

Those were a huge win. When my wife and I traveled for eight months, we were backpacking. So it was one carry on 30 liter backpack each. So space efficiency was important. The other one is I have this really small, like three outlets, uh, extension cord. It's not even, I wouldn't even call it extension cord, but I also wouldn't call it a surge protector because it doesn't actually have any surge protection.

But it's basically like, instead of bringing, we all have like, okay, I got my iPhone charger. Maybe I've got my, you know, this charger, that charger, you got all these things to charge. Instead of bringing four ways to plug them into an outlet in Europe or an outlet in Japan, I just bring like a little tiny portable travel power strip.

And one power converter. Cause usually if you're at a hotel, they'll have one, or you can buy one at any street side thing for a dollar or two, and then I have the power strip so I can plug everything in. That's probably like the one unique thing. Uh, I bring everything else.

It's just kind of like, okay, you know, I bring my passport. I bring a backpack, you know, I don't have a, a crazy laundry list of cool, cool gadgets anymore. That's a great one. Cause I often find that I need three plugs and there's only two, or it's really hard, exactly like you said with the, with the power adapter.

So I like the micro mini non-search search protector. That's a good one. On travel for you, there's two places you wrote about in your blog that I'd love you to, to kind of recommend or not. And it's Kyrgyzstan and the, the Azores. Is it Azores? I don't know. I think locals pronounce it, which is just very, um, so Kyrgyzstan.

I went to Kyrgyzstan. I flew to Kyrgyzstan on business using United points from Istanbul. And that's where I got to experience the lounge in Istanbul. And it was amazing. Kyrgyzstan was fantastic. It did seem like the edge of the world. It felt like no man's land. Kyrgyzstan was good.

Uzbekistan, I'm going to give a hard pass to. I found Uzbekistan to be very boring and very quiet. And maybe if you're a history nerd and you really geek out about the Silk Road and things like that. But for me, Uzbekistan was a pass. For the Azores, the Azores, the Azores, however you pronounce it.

I went there on a cruise. I've done a bunch of cruises. Have you guys done any cruises? One like weekend cruise to the Bahamas and that's it. So let's, let's, let's jump to cruises that like, I'd love your, your take on cruises. I'd love to talk about cruises. Cause I do them in a really weird way.

I do weird cruises. For example, I'm going on one tomorrow that goes Vancouver to Los Angeles. I've done a lot of transatlantic cruises where they reposition the cruise. That's when I went to the Azores or the Azores. Um, I went the longest cruise I ever went on was from Vancouver to Tokyo.

I think it was 17 days. Now these cruises, you're not partying hard. This is not a party cruise. That's going, it's a really unique type of person who goes on this cruise. And I love it because I get to caught up on my reading. I'll read a book a day.

Sometimes I get my diet dialed in. I get my gym routine. You're you have the opportunity to reinvent your life at sea. And it's a really special experience there. They're generally called repositioning cruises and they're very unique. And those are the cruises that I like, but even regular cruises with friends.

Um, I love to do them and I think it's, it's unique cause I've been to a lot of weird places. And I think people might think like, oh, you're too good for cruises. Um, but environmental concerns aside, I do think that they are a neat opportunity for you to imagine how your life could be when there's no constraints.

That's neat. That's cool. I think I got to give it another try. And I think cruises are, are, are more kid friendly than many other types of travel. So they are so kid friendly. They're incredible. People rave about Disney cruises. I want to try the new Virgin cruises that are really, really tailored to millennials and Gen X and things like that.

All right. I got a couple of quick questions for you. You run a friend's newsletter and I think I've seen you write that everyone should. You talk about it. I think everyone should have a friend's newsletter when you were growing up. Did your family, did your parents send like an annual Christmas card or holiday card with family updates?

Uh, my grandparents always did. Your grandparents always did. All right. And what would be in that card? It was just, here's everything we, and all of our kids and grandkids families did this year. Yes. Yes. My friend's newsletter came out of that tradition. My parents were in the military.

And so that idea of giving this annual status update before social media, where we do daily status updates, that annual status update was something I wanted to do on a quarterly basis for my friends. But I tried to add value. So it wasn't just about me. I'd include a nice Netflix show.

I'd seen a great movie or a book. I'm making recommendations for my friends about cool stuff. And I started it just every quarter. Sending to my friends, throwing them on BCC, adding a little note. Hey, if you don't want to get this, just write me back. We'll still be friends.

I won't be offended. And it has been so powerful and helpful to me. I'd encourage everybody to think about starting a friend's newsletter. In many ways, the origin of the, all the hacks newsletter was that many, many years ago. Uh, how, how I started this newsletter called life updates.

And it was like once a year, a life update of what I was up to. And then every time I started some new project, I kind of like somewhat folded them together and it kind of evolved and evolved and some people have been on it since then. Some people obviously just found out about it since relaunching the podcast or launching the podcast.

What things, when you were sending that newsletter, think back to the earliest days. Think to the earliest days. For example, I, I can't talk about this now, but I added people who didn't ask to be added. I just sort of spammed my friends a little bit. Um, and that helped me get started to be honest, but I'll tell you what, if I did a hundred friends and if three of them, if five of them were mad that I spammed them, the other 95 were not mad.

And some weren't even happy to receive my updates. So because everyone likes to travel, I love to ask every one of my guests to pick a place anywhere in the world that they know well, and tell someone who's there, what they should do, what they should eat, where they should have a drink and kind of give them a few ideas.

All right. Because I spent 13 years there. I'm going to say New York city, but I'm going to give some new ideas that maybe people may not have heard elsewhere. Number one, the best park, the second best park in New York city, the first best, obviously being central park.

The second best park in New York city is Washington square park. It is a locals only filled with characters. The vibes are immaculate. You can go almost any time for people watching and it's very centrally located there. Uh, at the metropolitan museum of art, I mentioned that there's two entrances.

There's two entrances at the Met. You listeners can take the entrance at 81st street to skip the lines. Now, when else should you go to the Met? Well, on Friday and Saturday nights, cause the Met stays open late till nine o'clock. Most people do not know this. I would suggest arriving at seven and you can enjoy the museum almost all to yourself.

So I would suggest that, uh, before the Met, why don't you go to central park? And go to my favorite place in central park called sheep meadow. Sheep meadow is a sprawling green area with skyscraper views. It's a great place to have a picnic. Really the best place in central park, in my opinion.

And then the last thing that I'll suggest is if you want a fun activity in New York city. I'm not sponsored, but there's a thing called Scott's pizza tour. Scott is a classic tour guide in New York city. And he has a whole network of guides where they show you the behind the scenes of how the pizza is made and things like that.

I love that place. Scott's pizza tour. You've written about a ton of things on your blog. Everything from Chrome extensions. You love using a virtual assistant, saving money, buying a car. I had this lofty dream of getting to all of these topics. We're not going to do that. Um, I definitely recommend people check out the book, check out the blog.

Where else can people find you online? What do you want them to check out? Uh, before we wrap. Uh, so I wrote a book called the two hour cocktail party. That is if you like this show, it's incredibly tactical and practical with a lot of specific instructions. And the name of that book is called the two hour cocktail party.

If you go to my book website, www.party, P A R T Y.pro www.party.pro, you can get a free two page party checklist that includes an executive summary of my book with all that you need to know. And you can download that there. It's like a PDF file. Um, and then I do have a friend's newsletter, which I think is like my favorite newsletter.

Nobody likes to read my friend's newsletter more than I do. And it's great. Some people say it's one of their favorite newsletters after the, all the hacks newsletter, of course. Um, and you can find that on my website, which is www.nickgray.net and on social media, I'm @nickgraynews in the show notes will include how to host a clothing swap, how to host a happy hour, how to plan a networking event, other ideas that you can use to just bring people together.

Oh, here's the last thing I'll say. All this stuff I've taught about is not rocket science. Hosting a party is something anyone can learn, but no one really teaches us how to throw a well-run event. This is something you can learn and you can become good at that just might change your life.

I love it. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me.