Alright, your mind’s in the right place and you’re ready to move the relationship forward.
If you want to become good friends with someone, you need to hang out with them outside of the setting where you originally met (a group, work, an event, etc.). For this reason, your goal is to get a hangout scheduled.
To do this, you need to ask them to do something specific that they can commit to. This is called a hard invite.
But before you invite them to something specific, make sure they’ve shown interest in your soft invite and you have their contact info. Rules can be broken and these aren’t 100% necessary, but it’s best to have a successful soft invite and their contact info before going for the hard invite. It gives you a reason to ask your hard invite, which makes it easier for you and more likely that they’ll accept.
If you don’t have those yet, keep building a connection with them and try different soft invites until they seem interested and you get their phone number. If you still can’t, stay friendly with them but make sure you meet other people too. Maybe the relationship will progress later, but don’t let it stop you from building friendships with others.
Once you have their interest and contact info, it’s time to schedule something real and make concrete plans by going for the hard invite.
The 3 Different Scenarios for Hard Invites
When you’re finally ready, you’ll make your hard invite in one of these three situations:
1. Right after you get their contact info.
Often, once you get their phone number, you’ll immediately start making plans to hang out sometime (that’s why you got their number in the first place). This can happen the day you meet them or any other time you’re talking to them.
2. Through text, sometime after you’ve left.
If you got their phone number but didn’t make specific plans, you can reach out to them and make plans via text messages (we’ll discuss keeping in touch and texting in depth in the next lesson). This is common when more work needs to be done to coordinate the hangout or you don’t know what activity to plan when you first decide you’d want to hang out again.
3. Next time you see them (CSGs, work, random).
You might build a good connection with someone and get their phone number without making any plans to hang out. That’s okay. It’s always possible to make plans the next time you see them. That’s why CSGs and work are great places to meet people – you don’t lose all your previous effort. You can reignite the connection next time you see them and invite them to something specific then.
Learning the Hard Invite for Each Scenario
For the remainder of this lesson, I’m going to teach you how to use the hard invite for the first scenario above – right after they show interest in your soft invite and give you their contact info.
If you are going to offer your hard invite in one of the other two scenarios, make sure you read the next two lessons because they teach you how to keep in touch and reconnect with people.
The last thing you want to do is build a connection with someone, wait some time, then immediately go for the hard invite without re-establishing a bond with them. This can damage the relationship by weirding them out. They don’t see you as a friend yet and you aren’t giving them a reason (or reminding them of one) for why you two should hang out. For that reason, it is not advisable.
Instead, you’ll want to rebuild a connection, throw out (or repeat a previous) a soft invite, get their interest, then toss out a hard invite.
Once you learn how to keep in touch and reconnect, you’ll be able to use the advice below to throw out your hard invite for the two latter scenarios above.
Making Plans to Hang Out Using the Hard Invite
The soft invite lets the other person know that you’re interested in them and makes it easy for them to prevent the relationship from going forward (without having to outright reject you). The hard invite is a bit different – it clearly tells them that you want to make plans with them and forces them to either do it or reject you.
Of course, they can kindly reject you for legitimate reasons (“Hey, I’m really busy this week. Let’s talk next weekend.”) Nonetheless, it forces their hand.
That may seem scary, but it’s a good thing. It’s better to know where they stand than pretend they’re a good friend if they aren’t. And if they say yes, you take a big leap forward.
The hard invite requires you to ask them to do a specific activity at a specific time. Usually, you’ll have an activity in mind while being flexible with the time. There are a few common outcomes you can expect. They may:
- Accept your invitation.
- Decline your invitation, but offer a different activity. This shows they are still interested in you, just not that specific activity.
- Decline your invitation, but still seem interested in hanging out sometime.
- Decline your invitation without showing interest in hanging out.
As you can see, a rejection doesn’t necessarily mean that they have no interest in hanging out.
Let’s go through some examples. I’m going to show you one hard invite with a few possible responses. Here’s the first, where they accept the invitation:
Rob: Yeah, Dale Ball is one my favorite local hikes. Do you want to hike it this weekend?
Sandy: Yeah that’d be great. Maybe Saturday around noon?
Rob: Awesome, that works for me. I’ll put in on my calendar and hit you up Friday to make sure we’re still on.
Here’s the second, where they decline your invitation but offer another activity:
Rob: Yeah, Dale Ball is one my favorite local hikes. Do you want to hike it this weekend?
Sandy: Hmm, I’m pretty busy this weekend. But a group of us are going bowling on Saturday. Would you want to join?
Rob: That could be fun. Yeah, I’m pretty down with that. What are the plans?
Here’s a third, where they decline your invitation but still show interest:
Rob: Yeah, Dale Ball is one my favorite local hikes. Do you want to hike it this weekend?
Sandy: Hmm, I’m pretty busy this weekend. Let’s talk next week and maybe we can get something on the schedule.
Rob: For sure. I’m down with that.
And here’s a fourth, where they decline your invitation without showing interest:
Rob: Yeah, Dale Ball is one my favorite local hikes. Do you want to hike it this weekend?
Sandy: Sorry, I can’t. I’m pretty busy this weekend.
Rob: Right on. Maybe some other time.
Since there are a number of different responses you can get, use this as an opportunity to gauge their interest again.
Alright, here are the steps for using a hard invite:
1. Ask them to do something specific.
This is usually based on the activity you mentioned in your soft invite, but more specific. Let’s say you both enjoy making music, and your soft invite was, “We should create a song together sometime.” Your hard invite could then be, “Would you want to come over this weekend and make some music?”
The soft invite is vague and doesn’t require commitment. The hard invite is a specific activity that you plan together.
As for the timing, you can offer a specific time, and range of times, or ask them when they are free.
For example, you can say:
- Would you want to come over tomorrow at noon?
- Would you want to do it sometime this weekend?
- Would you want to make some music soon? When are you free?
If they accept your invite or offer a different suggestion that you accept, you can move on to the next step.
2. Work with the other person to schedule the activity.
Now you need to nail down the details for your hangout. This includes the location, time, reservations, etc. You might have to determine who will figure out certain details and follow up with each other.
The important thing is that you get a specific activity scheduled on your calendar that you both plan on attending.
Cancellations
People may cancel on you. Give them the benefit of the doubt unless you have a good reason not to, and consider the impact of their decision. If they put you out in any way (wasted your time, money, etc.) and don’t feel remorseful, this definitely makes them a less desirable person and you should be wary of them. If they give you a heads up and it doesn’t impact you (other than giving you no plans when you thought you had some), be lenient and understanding.
Gauge their interest in you as they do it. Do they want to make it up to you or reschedule? Or do they just cancel and leave it at that? Do they give you as much warning as possible? Or do they tell you last minute, or worse, pull a no-show? Don’t write someone off for canceling unless they are inconsiderate and don’t care about impacting your life.
Flaky people don’t make good friends. But things do come up in people’s lives. Use your own judgment and decide if you want to keep trying to befriend them.
Action Steps
Remember, they should have already shown interest in your soft invite and given you their contact info.
1. Go for the hard invite.
Invite your new friend to do a specific activity (likely the one you mentioned in your soft invite). Make sure it’s clear that you want to set this up, not something to possibly do one day.
2. If they accept, coordinate and schedule your hangout.
Find out when the activity can be done and what prerequisite items (reservations, sign-ups, etc.) you need to take care of beforehand. Coordinate times with your new friend and get the activity booked (if necessary) and scheduled.