Week 70 - The fastest way to connect with other humans 🏃‍♂️

Hey my friend, have you ever noticed that exchanging dozens of messages with someone and meeting them in real life are very different in how fast you build strong human relationships? 🤓

Today, let's talk about why the strongest relationships rarely start through text alone, and why one coffee chat can replace months of messaging.

Try This Yourself

The best conversations are personal conversations. Not the ones you do via text messages or emails, but specifically video calls or real-life meetings. Async is still amazing for staying connected, I wrote about it in Week 44, but relationships usually become real synchronously.

This week I’ve given one in-person speech to around 60 people and had 14 online calls, 6 of which were back-to-back on Friday (and the only thing I didn’t like about that was having to cut some conversations short before we were ready to finish them) 😅

When we connect via text, people don’t see your body language, don’t hear the intonation of your voice, and can’t read your emotions. Usually, they read your text, and kinda speak it out loud in their own voice and connect it to emotions they feel at that moment.

This is exactly what I wrote about in Week 56: people don't hear what you say—they hear what they think you meant. And text leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

In such settings, a very simple “Yeah, thank you very much” can sound like a sarcastic quote as if you’re not helpful at all, or like something they very much appreciate and are actually thankful to you for.

And the craziest part: you’ll never know what they actually think 🤷‍♂️

When you have a video conversation (or even just a voice call) or, even better, speak in person, people can see how you say something, read your intentions through your facial expression, and feel the energy you put behind your words.

That's exactly why the Authenticity Principle from Week 68 matters so much: your energy, facial expressions, and tiny reactions communicate things no perfectly written message ever will (which leaves much less room for assumptions and misunderstandings).

Also, that’s why my number one goal in any connections I make is to have at least an online coffee chat with a person. Because when we connect on the energy level, it’s so much easier to continue a conversation async through text messages.

And that’s what I noticed through the hybrid communities I’ve been building for over 10 years: when people don’t know each other except for reading each other’s intros in the chat or seeing names and avatars, they are less likely to answer questions and support each other overall.

On the other hand, when people meet in real life or via a video call, they already connect a static photo with a real human, and they’re not helping a random person they don’t know anymore. They invest in building relationships with someone they met and want to continue talking to.

I call this the Bandwidth Principle 🤓

The more of yourself another person can experience—your voice, face, emotions and energy—the faster trust grows.

Because the moment you've actually met someone, they're no longer just another avatar. They're a real human with a story. That's what I also wrote about in Week 35: Treat Every Human Like a Rockstar.

Btw, based on my experience meeting hundreds of people online, not every person will agree to that. So if someone is not responding or says they can’t, it’s okay, go to the next person.

tl;dr Relationships grow faster when people experience your voice, face and energy—not only your written words. So, whenever possible, move from text to a real conversation 😉

Expand Your Mindset

As I’ve said earlier, I gave a speech this week about dealing with daily stress (find the recording here if you’d like to know how to deal with it 😉).

And the thing is, stress itself isn't the enemy.

Actually, during my presentation, I shared that there are two kinds of stress:

• eustress: that energizes you and pushes you forward,

• distress: that drains you when it stays for too long.

The goal isn't to eliminate stress completely. Because if we removed all stress, we'd probably remove excitement, growth, and learning as well.

The real goal is learning how to move from: "Oh my God... what if..."

To: "Okay... what's the next thing I can actually do?"

One thing that helps me surprisingly often is asking myself: Can I control this?

If yes, I act. If not, I let it go (just like Elsa - “let it go, let it go…”😁).

It's surprisingly simple, but every time I ask myself this question, I immediately feel like I've regained a little control over the situation. And that single question saves me hours of unnecessary worrying.

Actually, this perfectly connects to the Action Principle from Week 65. Instead of asking "Why is this happening?" I try asking "What's the next useful thing I can do?"

Another thing I shared during the talk is that we often spend far too much time living in either the past ("I should have...") or the future ("What if..."), while the only place we can actually change anything is the present moment 🤷‍♂️

Overall, stress is the alarm system that kinda wakes us up and turns on our fight-or-flight response. And the main thing is how much and for how long we stress, and how we deal with it.

tl;dr Stress isn't something to eliminate. It's something to manage. Focus on what you can control, return to the present moment, and take the next small action.

To brag a little, here is just one of the nice pieces of feedback I’ve got, so if you’re curious about how to actually speak instead of giving a presentation, check it out here 😊

Now I'm curious 🤓

Have you ever met someone in real life after months of messaging? Was it easier for you to talk to them through text or face-to-face?

Hit reply and tell me your story. I read every message, and many of your experiences end up inspiring future Friendworking principles 😉

💡 What influenced me this week 💡

Thoughts of the week:

• “Great code can't save a forgettable identity.” - The Indie Hackers newsletter

• “The best communities advance people. Professionally, in their craft and their careers, and personally, in who they are becoming.” - The Community Field Notes newsletter

• “You can't reach your true potential in the tiny pond where you started. You have to leave the safety of what you know to explore what you can become.” - Sahil Bloom’s newsletter

• “Always assume things will work out, then do the work to make it true.” - Sahil Bloom’s newsletter

• "Things do not change. We change." - Henry David Thoreau, The Economist’s daily quotes

Song of the week:

Book and quotes of the week:

Leadership : Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger

“Edmund Burke, who defined society as ‘a partnership . . . between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

“For centuries, we and the Germans have traversed the world, usually competitively, looking for a hidden treasure, only to find that there is no hidden treasure, and only friendship is left to us.”

“De Gaulle’s seemingly impenetrable armor masked a deep reservoir of emotion, even gentleness, which we can see most clearly in his relationship with his disabled daughter Anne”

Tools that I use with referrals:

• Descript - for anything around podcasting and video editing

• Beehiiv - for a newsletter (that’s what you receive 😅)

• Text Blaze - to access message templates with shortcuts (like “/ty”)

• Exali - promo “FROMYURII” - indemnity insurance for independent experts in Europe

• Manus - for building complex systems and projects

Daily actions:

• tell 1 person what I’m thankful to them for

• read a self-development book/listen to a professional podcast for 15 minutes

• make a valuable post/comment on LinkedIn

• tag 10 people in my connections database

• connect with 30 interesting people on LinkedIn

Weekly actions:

• connect 2 people who I believe need to be connected

• invite 30 people to follow the Community ROI podcast.

If you have any thoughts, ideas, or questions, please 👇

And if you’d like to have more 👋 Friendworking in your life 👇

See you next week! 👋