Engineering Friendship

Friendship is the answer to more questions than you realize

What does it mean to be a friend?

What does it mean to be a GOOD friend?

If you’ve followed my work over the past month, there’s been a theme that I’m focusing on: the power of friendship. And this week was supposed to be the perfect way to showcase the power of friendship to a larger group.

And it was. But exactly the opposite of how I expected it to. Let’s set the scene:

About two months ago, my best friend texted me and told me he was tickets to a new conference called Neurodiversion for a group of us. Someone we knew was a speaker and told him about it, and he did exactly what he does anytime someone tells him about something they are doing: he goes all out in support and he refused to let people be blocked from coming for financial reasons. He helped out multiple people in multiple ways. Our friend group is a collection of creators/podcasters focused in the mental health space and this was a conference that seemed to be different from normal ones. It was meant to bring together people in the space who were interested in sharing ideas and helping each other out.

That’s when we set ourselves a goal: get him 5 minutes to speak to the audience about the power of friendship. Multiple people emailed the organizers to see if they would give him a chance to speak. They told us that there were small groups available to organize, and we were fine with that, and set up an event through that route, but the goal was to speak to the largest audience possible.

I was able to make it past the initial line of contact, but still wasn’t able to get a chance.

So we took the last shot we had: he asked the guy who initially told him about the conference if he could have the last five minutes of his slot.

This was perfect. We worked on crafting a tight five minutes, and he re-worked his initial idea to align with the talk he was following. Excitement was high, because this was more than just talking for five minutes: it was helping him overcome something that had been a fear, and he was doing so with the power of friends, who all came together to make this happen.

He was going to get up and speak for five minutes, and then invite people to the event back at the airbnb we had rented. It was further away from the venue than most of the events, so we knew it was important to make it obvious to people. This was an event where it was going to be easy for neurodivergent people to find friends.

It’s tough right now. And let me tell you, it’s been tougher for me than anyone over the past decade. I realized I didn’t have any friends around me during the pandemic. I had lost touch with everyone over the years, as I focused on my “career”. And then I met Lobow, and everything changed. He made it easy for me, and I was excited to help the wider group see what I have had the pleasure of seeing.

I had plans for running games and small group activities that play into the research I’ve been doing. I’ve told potential partners about the things I was planning, and how I expected them to turn out. We had everything arranged perfectly. And the day the conference kicked off, we got to the venue and caught the opening.

Then, in the first breakout session, the speaker who kicked everything off started giving his talk. I was set up in the back to record everything. I wanted to livestream, but the connection wasn’t great and the audio was a little weird, so I decided to record instead. And I loved the talk, and got excited as the topic got toward the end. Then it ended, and he never brought Lobow up to speak.

Ok, not a big deal, we can adapt. One of the themes of Lobow’s talk was about being willing to ask friends hard questions where the friendship isn’t dependent on the answer. It’s the key to everything: he was able to ask for five minutes to talk, and was totally fine with being told no. The fact that he was given a yes was amazing.

But then time ran out, and he told us he thought about their conversation, and realized he wasn’t going to be able to give him the time. So he didn’t try to rush his content, because it would be ok. Then we invited him to our event and told him to bring people over. He knew the crowd a lot better than we did. He’s a creator in the space as are a lot of others. There were some serious audiences there, and honestly, I was thinking about things like that. I’ve been focused on creating networks of people that can be combined to make them more valuable, and I was excited to learn from people with bigger audiences!

So we grabbed some lunch, went to one of the afternoon sessions, and then went back to the Airbnb to prepare everything. Another of his friends loved to host, and put a ton of effort into planning a menu, and stocking up on things like beverages.

In the end, only two people outside of our original group of friends came. On the event page, we had over 20 people interested, so the topic was important. But it was a heavy lift to move people over from another space, and we understood that. That’s why we had planned everything out the way we did. We were counting on certain things happening, because we understood the difficulties involved in what we were doing.

Then those things didn’t happen, so it became all about adapting to the circumstances. The two people who did show up are incredible. I was able to have deeper, more interesting conversations with them than I have with people I’ve known for years. There’s a magic around Lobow, which is what I wanted to showcase.

We made the choice to skip the second day of the conference, and instead focus on enjoying the fact that we were with friends in a beautiful place. That’s when the magic truly started to happen.

It started with the group of us that came together over mental health, with three of us enjoying a beautiful day. Then the two friends who hosted the event at the Airbnb joined us, and the group grew. They had been friends of his for 20 years, and loved getting to help him get things set up even though it didn’t go as planned. Next, one of the friends we made the previous day met up with us because they had so much fun they couldn’t wait to join us again.

And suddenly a couple more people show up: more friends of his from all the way back in high school. After meeting up, we got to go out to a beautiful restaurant with some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. The chef/owner?

Another friend from the high school days. Comped our entire table against the wishes of the people at the table, and spent a lot of time at our table catching up with the people there.

This was an incredible group of people for multiple reasons.

This was a table of 8 people: 5 people who had known each other for over 20 years. Then there were 2 of us who had known one of them for a few years. And there was a new friend we’d had for a day.

And our newest friend made an observation that perfectly expressed what I was feeling in that moment, amidst a group of incredibly tight friends who had known each other for decades:

“It’s really weird. I feel like a hanger-on, because I just met you yesterday. But I also don’t. It’s like I’m fully part of the group. And I can’t explain it, but wherever Lobow goes, I just need to follow. I’ve got to know what happens next.”

This thought perfectly captured my feelings of being part of this group. There was so much love, so much instant acceptance, so much generosity.

Because one of them accepted us into the group, we were all part of the group.

This has been completely different from my experience in most other groups, because there’s not nearly the certainty of it. It was devoid of the status games I’ve become accustomed to seeing on Twitter, and trying to break into those types of networks. Everyone is hedging their bets, because social capital is so valuable, and people in status hierarchies are constantly fighting over who’s on top, because it’s all about playing the game. It’s a sport to them.

I’m done with that, because it’s not a sport to me. It’s real life. I’m trying to help people on a different level. I thought that’s what I was doing when I went down there. And I was going to use that as the case study for a new way to market to people. This was supposed to be when I made connections that allowed me to grow my distribution channels via authentic human connection.

Except, I wasn’t able to.

I tried a lot of different things for this trip. While I was working to try to arrange Lobow’s time to speak, I was also talking about the concept of Chaos Marketing, and how it can be applied in different ways. I started putting together proposals for companies that are interested in these ideas, and I was talking about Austin as the place I was testing them.

Then, I tried to sell sponsorships to the in-person event to offset the cost of food for my friends who were covering it. That didn’t work. Companies that I’ve been talking to aren’t interested in moving quickly with me. They don’t care about my timeline.

They aren’t my friends.

I didn’t do a great job of turning that into something they were able to latch on to. Probably a good thing, considering the low turnout.

Companies aren’t impressed by small numbers. They don’t see the powerful forces underneath those small numbers. They see the small marketing outcome, they don’t see the deeper friendship that has existed for years.

They don’t see the parts that truly matter.

From a marketing perspective, this was a failure. But that’s because marketing takes place in an environment in which failure is possible.

But what if there was no possibility of failure?

Lobow asked me one time:

“What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”

On this trip, I realized how true that was for him. His friends will do anything for him. They’ll never let him fail.

This trip brought out some powerful feelings for me. First of all, I felt an incredible amount of love from my friends. I don’t have friends locally, and the internet doesn’t do it justice.

Second, I felt despair. I had a lot of things riding on this trip and being able to turn this into a case study because I need to figure out how to make this all work. I put everything I had left into this trip. It was my last chance to figure things out. When we decided to forego the second day of the conference, I was torn. I was thinking about the “networking” I could be doing and trying to put some plan in place about who I could attempt to talk to, and maybe find sponsors for Build In Public University.

I certainly felt some anger. I had relied on someone to some through, and when it didn’t, I got mad. But that was misplaced anger, I realized. I wasn’t mad at him.

I was mad at myself.

I told Lobow that I was going to move heaven and earth for him to be able to speak. That’s what the power of friendship was to me. And I thought I had.

I thought I had been able to give him something that was of the same value to what he has given me.

But I hadn’t.

And that hurt.

What hurt even more is that he was right and I was wrong. He said that people weren’t real online. He said they couldn’t be trusted to be there for you when you needed them. I disagreed, because I saw people that were there all the time. And then I got to see his true friendships at a closer, deeper level than I ever had before. But I only saw online and him/ the circle of friends I’ve been cultivating since I met him.

I didn’t understand they weren’t real, because I only saw the surface of what people offered. I didn’t understand what real looked like. Because when I saw what he had, I knew that’s what I was aiming for.

I told him something as we were sitting over drinks the day after the event, as we started to hatch an idea. I told him that teachers love me, because I love learning. And when I decide to learn something from someone, I learn it deeper and more completely than anyone else. I told him this as I was taking notes about what he was saying.

I realized two things about friendship on this trip:

1. I’m a much better friend than most, and way better than I used to be

2. I’m still not good enough

I’m only as good as I am because Lobow has helped me understand what it means to be a good friend. And it’s not just me, there’s a whole group of us. A community that has formed around him as he’s tried to show the internet what it means to be a good friend, and the internet started to suck up that energy, because it’s so desperately needed.

People don’t have enough friends right now. And it’s because they aren’t good enough friends.

I’m starting Friendship Training Camp because I’m not a good enough friend.

And neither is anyone else.

If you want to learn how to be a better friend, join me at training camp.