667: Nick Gray - How to Host World-Class Events, Why Leaders Need a Personal Website, Writing Like You Talk, Mastering Introductions, the Viral Tokyo Trip, & Adding Value Before Taking It cover art

667: Nick Gray - How to Host World-Class Events, Why Leaders Need a Personal Website, Writing Like You Talk, Mastering Introductions, the Viral Tokyo Trip, & Adding Value Before Taking It

667: Nick Gray - How to Host World-Class Events, Why Leaders Need a Personal Website, Writing Like You Talk, Mastering Introductions, the Viral Tokyo Trip, & Adding Value Before Taking It

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 Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Nick Gray is the author of The Two-Hour Cocktail Party and founder of Museum Hack. He's mastered the art of hosting events that strengthen networks and build genuine connections. In this conversation, he shares practical systems for hosting gatherings, why every leader needs a personal website, and lessons learned from his viral blind date trip to Tokyo. The Learning Leader Show Key Learnings Two Great Ice Breaker Questions: What's a compliment that someone has given you that you've never forgotten about? If you could teach any class about a topic that you're an expert on, what would it be? The power of a network is real: As a leader, you're probably hiring people regularly or looking for investors. By hosting simple, lightweight meetups or dinner parties, or happy hours once a quarter, you can strengthen your network, build it, and keep those loose connections or weak ties warm. Mix professional and personal contacts: For me, a really boring event would be all work people. Look for occupational diversity. If you're hosting a work event, invite some other random folks who you know are gonna be good conversationalists and add to the energy. Don't reach for the top shelf first. Most important advice for leaders: do not invite your most impressive contact to your very first happy hour or meetup. Your first party should be for your neighbors, the parents of kids at your school, those LinkedIn connections, high school buddies you haven't seen in a while. Your first party should be a comfortable meetup for 15 to 22 people that you host at your home with just cocktails, not a dinner party. Then slowly, once a quarter, you'll be adding more people to it and filtering your list. Collect RSVPs to ensure attendance. New hosts are absolutely terrified that nobody will arrive. As long as you get a minimum of 15 people to show up, your party will generally be a success. Use platforms like Partiful or Mixily (not Paperless Post or Evite) to get people to RSVP, let them know what to expect, and send reminder messages. Ten days before, send a reminder message hyping up the party. About a week before, send another reminder message with a little dossier of who the attendees are. Write something little: "Ryan Hawk hosts a podcast. He wrote a book. He lives in Ohio. Ask him about the ski trip he went on with his family." This serves to make anxious people or socially awkward feel like they're welcome and they have a conversational access point. Practical hosting tips on event day: Label your trash cans and your bathrooms. As people arrive, greet and welcome every single person, and make them a name tag. Write it out right in front of them, first name only. Do not pre-write your name tags. Force collisions through structured activities. Your job as a leader is to go through life collecting the interesting people that you meet and helping them meet each other. Can you become a connector? One way to be a connector is to host these meetups and force the collisions. Lead two or three rounds of introductions at your meetup. Make a little announcement 30 minutes after it starts: "There are so many interesting people here. I want you all to meet each other. We're gonna split into small groups. It might seem silly, but I promise the purpose tonight is for you to talk to as many new people as possible. We're gonna split into small groups of three or four people, and you're gonna go around and tell your life story in two minutes." End on time, especially for weekday events: Host from 6:30 to 8:30 PM with a hard stop on Tuesday or Wednesday nights. People appreciate having an end time because they have responsibilities. Having that end time makes them more likely to RSVP yes and actually attend. "I get more compliments on my party ending on time, and they leave with a positive experience, so they want to return for another." Why every leader needs a personal website. If you have a blue check verified on Instagram, if you post at least once a month on LinkedIn, you probably need your own personal website. It's proactive reputation management. People are out there searching for you on Google and on ChatGPT. It may not happen every single day, but it probably happens every week. Whether it's parents of your kids at school, whether it's new employees, people are googling you. You want to have a personal website to put your best foot forward and make a good impression. Carrd.co to create a simple homepage or cloudflare to set up your domain name. Keep it simple: You don't need a Gary Vee type page. Your page can look like a Google Doc. Feed these large language models your story and bio. My website is plain text, simple ...
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