The purpose of everything you’ve done in this course is to help you find, meet, and bond with another person so that the two of you can hang out on your own. Well, you’re finally here.
Hanging out with your new friend outside of the environment you met them in is a critical step to becoming good friends. It allows you to spend more time together, share new experiences and deepen your bond. It provides more enjoyment in life and opportunities to learn new things.
This lesson picks up the moment you meet with your new friend after planning a hangout. You could be meeting them:
- At the park to shoot hoops
- At a bar to grab a drink
- At the mall to go shopping
- At the beach to lay out, play volleyball, or surf
- At their house to make some music
This list can go on and on. And even though there are tons of options, there’s still a process you can follow to help you enjoy, grow, and nourish your friendship.
What to Do When You Meet Up with Someone
You’ve already learned most of the tactics you need to enjoy, grow and nourish the friendship. Now, you just need to understand the process and put it to use.
1. Quickly recall the bond you’ve built when you greet them.
When you first arrive or see your new friend, you want to reconnect with them immediately by recalling the bond you’ve already built. You want to show that you’re excited to see and that you care about how they’re doing.
Use the tactics from Lesson 4.3 Reconnecting: Quickly Recall and Build the Bond You Started. Here’s a quick recap:
- Say hi.
- Use their name.
- Look them in the eyes.
- Show them that you’re excited to see them.
- Ask how they are doing.
- Find out what’s new.
- Ask them about something they mentioned last time you saw them.
Here’s how the conversation might look:
Rob: Hey Heather! Good to see you! How are you doing? (While looking her in the eyes and smiling)
Heather: Hey Rob! I’m good, thanks. You?
Rob: I’m doing amazing. So what’s new? Did you have fun camping up in Big Sur? That trip sounded like it was going to be awesome.
Heather: Yeah! We…
2. Connect.
Once you’ve recalled your bond, you just keep building a connection with them. Remember what you learned from Lesson 3.3 Making People Feel Closely Connected with You:
- Be curious.
- Relate to what they say.
- Make them feel good about themselves.
Other than doing the activity you planned, this is mostly what you’ll be doing. Whenever you have free time to talk, get to know them better, tell stories, learn from them, open up, reveal your inner thoughts and feelings, and have fun.
3. Do the activity.
At some point, you may need to start doing an activity. You may be able to continue talking during your activity or you may need to focus on what you’re doing. For example:
- If you’re meeting for drinks, other than getting a seat and ordering your drinks, you can talk the rest of the time.
- If you’re hiking, you can pretty much talk the entire time.
- If you’re shooting hoops, you can talk while you’re just shooting around, but you’ll spend more time focusing if you get a little more serious with some one-on-one.
- If you’re making music, you’ll likely be focused on the song you’re creating while you’re in the creative zone, only talking about the music. But it’ll ebb and flow, where you take breaks and can talk about other things.
Regardless of your activity, you’re there to have fun and possibly accomplish something. And when you’re not doing that, or if you can do both at the same time, build your connection with them.
4. Set yourself up for future hangouts.
If you want, you can throw out soft invites (see Lesson 3.4 The Soft Invite: Planting the Seeds so People Want to Hang Out Again) to see what other activities you may want to do together in the future.
You should already have their phone number, but if not, make sure to get it (see Lesson 3.5 Getting Their Phone Number).
And you can use a hard invite to make concrete plans to hang out again (see Lesson 4.2 The Hard Invite: Making Plans to Hang Out).
By doing this, you’re setting up a machine of perpetual hangouts. Every time you hang out with them, you think of other things you might want to do together (or even do the same activity again) and you make plans to do them.
If you don’t throw out a hard invite, it’s not a big deal because you can always text them and set something up while you’re keeping in touch (see Lesson 4.3 How to Keep in Touch the Right Way). I do, however, recommend that you continually toss soft invites to see what they’re interested in doing so you can make those hard invites at some point.
5. Rinse and repeat.
Once you set up another hangout, you do this all over again and keep the process going. This is how you become good friends.
How to Deepen the Relationship
The way you connect with people and the activities you do together will be more intimate as you get to know each other better. Let’s look at how you’ll strengthen this friendship.
Connecting on a Deeper Level
When you’re talking and building a stronger connection, your topics should get more personal (not every topic though – continue having fun and light conversations too).
- Get more personal with the things you reveal when you open up to them. Tell them things that you wouldn’t tell to most people.
- Ask questions that are more intimate. Just like the things you’re revealing, find out how they truly feel about topics that are personal. Of course, let them know it’s perfectly fine if they don’t want to answer your question and that you’re fine changing the subject. Don’t pressure them in any way. Just let them know they can tell you anything without feeling judged.
- Do nicer/bigger things for them. Help them move into their new place. Buy them a gift. But don’t feel obligated to “buy” their friendship. Instead, be willing to do things that show they are important to you.
- Give them more meaningful compliments. Rather than telling them that their personality seems fun or that you like their sense of style, compliment their being as a whole. Let them know you really like the complete person you’ve gotten to know. For example, “Man, I really respect the way you hold yourself as a person. You always stick to your values and don’t compromise them when most people would fold. I love that.”
- Be there for them emotionally. Let them talk about the difficult things in their life and be a good listener. Be careful though. Some people abuse this favor by complaining excessively while not being an equally good listener to you. Remember, you’re not obligated to befriend anyone. If they don’t make your life better, don’t keep them around.
Not only do you want to make the relationship more personal and intimate, but you want to make it more meaningful too. Try to find the things that are truly important to you both. They can be goals, ambitions, interests, desires or anything else you both find important.
Your goals or interests can be existing (you’re both online marketers and love nerding out about it), or you can create a common goal together. Maybe you both want to get in shape, so you sign up for a half-marathon that’s six months away. This shared goal will strengthen your bond, especially if you both take it seriously and work toward it together.
One thing to note: don’t focus so much on connecting that you forget to have fun! The whole purpose of hanging out is to enjoy yourselves. Having fun together is one of the most important aspects of bonding.
Doing Activities that are More Involved
Even the external activities you choose will affect your friendship. That’s why it’s important to make them more involved and personal as you get to know each other better. For example:
- Instead of grabbing dinner locally, try a new restaurant 30-minutes away.
- Do a day trip somewhere.
- Eventually do an overnight trip somewhere.
- Instead of meeting at a coffee shop, have them over to your house.
Who knows, maybe one day you’ll live together, travel the world together, or build a business together. All friends start out as strangers. It’s up to you to create the relationship you want.
Where to Go from Here
This concludes the lessons for Friends From Scratch. You have now learned the complete process of making new friends.
If you find yourself struggling, don’t sweat. Assess where you are having trouble and return to the lesson that will help you. Reread it and work on incorporating those skills and mindsets.
This can take time, so don’t give up quickly. You’re going to hit sticking points at some point. You’ll only break through them if you believe in yourself and keep working to get through the resistance.
If you put your mind and heart into this, you will make the new friends you desire.