Last week I was part of a panel discussion for TiE on the New York startup scene. I was invited to talk about my experience as both a TechStars Alumnus and founder of Red Rover and AlumniChoose.

Before the event officially started, everyone was casually networking around the room. At one point a lady popped into my conversation and introduced herself and asked what I did. As soon as I finished describing AlumniChoose, she tapped the shoulder of someone nearby and said we needed to talk to each other. As soon as she brought the two of us together in a handshake, she walked away without saying anything. Then a few moments later, she tapped another person I was talking with and pulled him, mid-sentence, away from our conversation and into another one. I continued to watch her work her “magic” around the room and she kept repeating the same system over and over.

In Dance Floor Theory, we teach student leaders to be spatulas of the dance floor. In other words, we teach them to be facilitators of relationships and to focus less on the event and more on the introductions that happen from the event. In doing that, we want them to connect people together around shared interests. Then, once that relationship is started, move on to another group and make more connections. By the end of the night, everyone should, in theory, know everyone else, which makes for a great, long-lasting, dance party. Hence the picture above.

In theory, that’s what the lady last week was doing, but it rubbed me the wrong way, and here’s why…

• Genuine Interest – When she asked me what I did, I thought she was genuinely interested in what I did, but in reality, she was just trying to figure out who she could connect me to as fast as possible. It felt cold, which is the opposite of a relationship. Had she asked me a couple follow up questions, it would have felt much better.

• Right Timing – Knowing when to pull someone into and out of conversations is a bit of an art. But one good rule to follow is don’t pull someone out of a conversation mid-sentence, unless they want you to. This lady not only pulled someone out of a conversation mid-sentence, but it was within a few minutes of having her just introduced us together. We were just warming up our conversation, and she cut it off. A relationship takes time to build roots.

• Make It Natural - Once you see how a magic trick is done, the magic is gone. DFT is magical when done right, but like a magic trick, if you reveal to the audience how you are doing it, it’s no longer natural and feels forced. The lady last week made her ‘introduction game’ so obvious, that I then doubted the value of the introductions she was actually trying to make happen. She was going for quantity over quality and in doing so, her magic trick was reveled.

I suspect the lady thought she was being smooth and helping connect everyone to everyone else in the room. Overall, she probably was being more helpful than harmful, because most won’t even think to make introductions like she was. But the real art is in the practice of making it seem like you aren’t even trying and that you genuinely want to connect two people together because they actually should connect, not becuase you want to make your dance floor better.

On the grand scheme of things, I’m very much a marriage newbie as I know couples who’ve been together for 30, 40, and even 50 years! But like everything in my life, I love learning, getting better, and then helping others to do the same. Marriage is no different.

An interesting self-reflection, and probably shared by many male minds, is my desire to fix what I can see is broken. If a chair screw is loose, I want to tighten it. If a bulb is out, I want to change it. If a gas tank is empty, I want to fill it up. It’s easy to fix what I can see. But what about the things I can’t see? Intangible things are harder to fix because they are harder to identity as broken or not.

Love and marriage, in their entirety, are intangible things. Beyond the tactical actions of love and marriage, there is no physical gas tank to know if things are getting better or worse, and since my mind likes to work with tangible objects, one trick I’ve created is called “The Love Plant.”

A house plant that hasn’t been watered in a week will probably die. But if you give it water on a regular basis, it will continue to be healthy and grow. The same is true for love and marriage. Both need to be watered to be healthy and grow. So I now have a virtual plant in my mind that represents my relationship with ACbert. Every day I check in with my Love Plant to see if I’ve taken the time to water it or not.

By turning an intangible into a tangible, I find myself taking the extra moment to write her a note in the morning with her tea and in those little moments our marriage continues to grow and be healthy.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, “The Thank You Economy,” is a quick 234 page read that I’ll summarize for you in three sentences…

Treat every customer like they are your most important customer because the lifetime value of a customer will be your return on investment. Social media allows you to scale the personal relationships so you can actually treat every customer like they are your most important and in doing so will build a sense of community around your brand. If you aren’t already using social media, you need to be.

The book goes on to really hammer these points home over and over again. If you’re on the fence about using social media, then this would be a good place to start. If you’ve already set sail, then I suggest reading Likeable Media to dig into more advanced ideas around the topic of social media.

My biggest take-away from this book is a refocus on the strength, and value, of the relationships with those in our Swift Kick community.

Having met and talked with Gary V. a few times in real life, a bonus for me was I couldn’t help but hear his voice in my head as if he was reading his book to me. A few times I caught myself smiling because he often writes exactly how he talks, and those who’ve heard him talk know why that’s funny.

Next up is The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.

Click here to read my previous book reviews.

Click here to visit my virtual bookshelf of books read.

I’m on an overnight bus to Boston for a full day training I’m doing tomorrow with UMass-Boston. She is five rows behind me on her phone. She’s talking loud enough for everyone to hear about how she’s sleeping with a married man that she’s had sex with everywhere from a train to Atlantic City, but it’s all done in private and she doesn’t want to be kept in the dark anymore. Oh, and she might already have a baby with him too. As I’m trying to fall asleep my mind is racing about my program tomorrow with 40 student leaders and my new idea I’m launching soon that will have a massive impact on co-curricular engagement.

We’re both riding the same bus to the same place, but it’s amazing how different we are choosing to utilize our limited time on this earth.

Like Joseph Campbell’s famous Hero’s Journey philosophy, we like to divide college students into 5 different stages of engagement based on the Engagement Pyramid below…

Each stage is defined by a different set of characteristics of an individual. Fully engaged individuals display a different set of characteristics than apathetic/uninvolved individuals. Thus, the way we interact with individuals in each stage should be different. A “5″ doesn’t want to be treated like a “Neutral.” And treating a “Neutral” like a “5″ might be too much too soon and thus demotivating.

Once we’ve recognized an individual’s stage, then the next step is to move them gradually up the Engagement Pyramid step-by-step. In our Dance Floor Theory program, we call this X+1. “X” being the stage an individual currently is in and “+1″ being the next step that is challenging enough for that indivdual, but not too challenging (e.g. +3) which might be demotivating. If you think of it like a video game, video games do an amazing job of knowing your current level and knowing what the next motivating challenge is for you. That’s the same thing as X+1.

The hardest step on the Engagement Pyramid is moving someone from a “Neutral” to a “1.” Where a “Neutral” is someone who doesn’t care and is indifferent to anything you do and a “1″ is someone who actually pays attention and is curious. Once someone is a “1,” it’s much easier to continue to move them towards a “5.”

Ask most educators and they will tell you student apathy is huge on college campuses. Campuses are filled with “Neutrals,” however most of the activities we do on campuses are geared towards “1″ through “5″ people because they are the ones who will pay attention to our flyers, emails, and Facebook invites and take the extra effort to actually show up to an event. But what about the larger percentage of our campus that are “Neutrals?” What can we do to engagement them, to give them their X+1 moment, and to move them from a “Neutral” to a “1?”

Enter Free Hugs…

Well actually, Free Hugs is just one example of thousands of examples of events we call Blender Events. Blender Events serve two purposes…

1. Cause people to have a pattern interrupt throughout their day. Or as we say in Dance Floor Theory, get people to go from “Meh” to “Hmmm.”
2. Build peer-to-peer relationships by mixing people together with near-peers. Near-peers are people who are models of success that are just a stage or two ahead. In the Engagement Pyramid, a near-peer to an “X” would be a “1.”

Every time we host a Blender Event on campus and cause a “Neutral” to have a pattern interrupt in their day, or get them to go  from “Meh” to “Hmmm,” or connect them with a “1,” then we are supplying them with an X+1 Moment. The more X+1 Moments they have, the harder it will be for them to stay a “Neutral” as they will start to display characteristics of a “1″ whether they want to or not. And once they are a “1,” then we can work on getting them to become a “2.”

So there you have it, That’s the ‘why’ behind Free Hugs. As you may have noticed, it has very little to do with the actual Free Hugs event and more to do with the introductions/connections/relationships that happen from the Free Hugs event.

ACbert got sick at a wedding last week in Chicago. The sickness is still lingering and, a week later, she’s still not well enough to go outside for very long. Normally it’s not a big deal as weekends come and go. But this weekend is Memorial Day and the weather has been simply beautiful and our friends coordinated a picnic at Governor’s Island today. I was looking forward to hanging with them but Annie woke up this morning still not healthy enough to go out.

I wanted to go to the picnic, but I also know marriage/relationships comes with a set of responsibilities like taking care of your partner when they are sick. I was in a funk for a little bit about not going, but quickly got over it and focused my energy on being present with ACbert. We made veggie wraps, a vegan cake, and watched a movie. ACbert also has an amazing ability to make the best of bad situations. The day ended happy because we chose to make it happy.

LinkedIn’s Google tag line is “Relationships Matter.” They say they are about helping you strengthen the relationships within your existing network. 

Today I received this email from LinkedIn:

From an engagement perspective, three things jump out to me in this email…

1. Relationship Strength – I’ve met everyone on the list IRL (in real life). This isn’t information LinkedIn would know, but whatever calculation they are using is doing a great job of weighting the strength of my connections. I suspect it is based on the number of common connections we share.
2. Call To Action – There’s a nice simple motivating call to action to get me to want to click though.
3. It’s Human – 95% of the email contains smiling human faces. It makes me smile. Each face I look at brings back a collection of stories between me and that person.

Like Facebook, I’m not very selective at “friending” people on LinkedIn. I just don’t have time to mentally decide on who to link with and who not. So my account has a lot of noise. I’m impressed LinkedIn is able to filter most of the noise for this email. Relevancy matters.

The only additional result I’d like from this email is when I click through, instead of just bringing me to that individual’s profile, it would highlight the change(s) that happened and then even give me the option to quickly send them a note of congratulations or support.

We sat inside the theater for a bit to cool down and Annie was, as she should have been, annoyed by the fact we fast walked to the theater to make it on time, only to have me forget the tickets. And this wasn't the first time I've forgotten something, and probably won't be the last. I balance a lot of different things in my life, and some are bound to slip. As a counter, I have pretty good systems in place to help me, but it's not going to catch everything.

From here, I've seen other relationships blow up into a huge emotional deal with a lot of yelling and character attacking. Annie, on the other hand, has an amazing ability to experience the emotion internally, and then express it to me in such a way so to let me know how, and why, she is feeling without blowing up. Then gradually she moves past the emotion so we can still enjoy what is left of the night (like buying a huge molded hand at Fishs Eddy).

Annie's skill at feeling, expressing, and letting go of emotions is something I can't even begin to fully appreciate in words, but know it's one key to our relationship and something that continues to make me love her more each day.