Build the Space

I’m going to come clean… I’m about to use one of the words I dislike the most:

Networking.

Now that I got that part over with, let’s get down to why I had to come clean. It’s been 14 months since I moved to San Francisco. I didn’t know anyone when I arrived and was starting from essentially zero. I made my intention clear: surround myself with people who were doing the same thing as me—building businesses and caring about health.

Don’t get me wrong, San Diego is still one of the best cities to live in the United States. The problem? It felt like a permanent vacation. Working there was just a means to an end. Peter Pan syndrome was more contagious than the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. I no longer fit in. My ambitions were higher. I realized:

San Diego was full of chillers. I needed to be around killers.

I was itching for a change of scenery. I spent the last 4.5 years in San Diego. When deciding where to move, I asked myself: where do successful people live? Like most men looking for answers, I turned to Twitter. That last sentence was a joke—I used Google. Chill out. The internet told me it was New York and San Francisco. I chose San Francisco because I wanted access to the mountains (priorities, right?).

One big, fat problem: how does a 29-year-old start fresh in a new city?

Become a magnet for your kind of people.

This strategy isn’t new. Look at Laird Hamilton, the legendary big-wave surfer. Before his XPT (Extreme Performance Training) became a global fitness methodology, he started hosting insane workout sessions and cold plunges at his Malibu home. (Anyone got a mansion hook-up in SF?)

These weren’t official “networking” events—they were experiences that attracted his kind of crazies. Fitness freaks, athletes, and eventually Tom Brady and Orlando Bloom. Chats after cold plunge sessions and crippling workouts turned into business partnerships and Laird Superfood.

Heard of Dave Asprey? Probably not. But you might recognize his coffee company: Bulletproof Coffee. Bulletproof didn’t launch with a massive marketing budget. He hosted biohacking (not a fan of that word) dinner parties where he’d serve his butter coffee. Those dinners connected him with leaders in the space and investors who gave him the jet fuel to launch Bulletproof Coffee.

For my first year in San Francisco, I cast the widest net possible to attract the type of people I wanted around me. Finding your real connections takes time—at least 10 months of false starts and repetition.

My plan was simple. I leaned into my biggest strength: collecting and connecting interesting people.

1. Leave your house and show up — I went to any event that interested me and met as many people as I could.

2. Create the space — I hosted my own events to bring my favorite people together and introduce them to each other.

3. Repeat for 10 months.

Most people call this networking. I call it building social capital. Sounds douchey, but it’ll help you get ahead. The more people see you as someone who knows important people, the more they view you as legitimate, influential, and worth knowing.

It really hit me when I got recognized in public as the cold plunge guy. It was kind of funny being called that, also kind of cringe. What made me proud was that I became known for creating a space that people noticed. I wasn’t just attending a space; I was creating one.

I’m about to give you my secret weapon. Because you read my newsletter: whenever I meet someone I find really interesting, I send a follow-up text to them on my big takeaways from our chat. Then I ask one question:

“Based on what you know about me, who do you think I should meet?”

The return on creating these spaces isn’t always immediately obvious financially. It shouldn’t be. But if you do this for 10 months, I promise you’ll build more social capital than someone who spent three years working at OpenAI.

Laird Hamilton didn’t wait for an invitation to join the fitness elite—he created a space where they wanted to be.

Build the space you want to exist

Jared

I Dig So You Don’t Have To

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Gentlemen’s Agreement 🤝🏻

I need a favor from you. Every week I spend several hours crafting this email to give you entirely for free. Banger, after banger. Except it’s not actually free.

I love doing this, but I also love seeing this grow (You might say I’m flawed. But you’re not my therapist). To keep this free it would mean the world to me, and my ego, if you shared this with just 1 person who you think would also like this.

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