One of the biggest triggers that is going to make
somebody want to be a part of your life is when they feel that you add value to theirs. If you think about it, we all meet hundreds of people every day. When we meet these different people, we have to decide whether this is somebody we want in our life or someone that we don’t really care if they’re in our lives or not.
The way we’re going to decide that is whether we
perceive that they add value to our life. There’s a concept known as a freeloader. A freeloader, if we go back to ancient tribal times, was somebody who didn’t really work at adding value to the group. What would happen was the freeloader would just hang around on the
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outside of the group, gain all the benefits from being in the group, but not really contribute anything. The way that human beings in the olden days would figure out who a freeloader was, was whether they would take their share of the work and add value to the group as a whole.
Why are freeloaders dangerous? A freeloader is
dangerous because back in the olden days, a freeloader would take all the value from the group, but not warn the rest of the members of the group if anything was going wrong because he didn’t really care about them. If a predator came along, the freeloader would save himself and not take the time to warn anybody else.
You can actually see this in ape society, and there are a lot of really good books about this, particularly one by Robin Dunbar, and the concept is very simple. If you’ve
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got a bunch of apes in a group, the apes will groom each other; they spend time taking out the ticks off of each others’ backs and giving each other rub-downs or whatever it is monkeys do – they groom each other.
If you spend two hours grooming a monkey one day, and then the next day that monkey owes you two hours of grooming, and then a tiger comes along, you’re going to warn your buddy that there’s a tiger there because you want your two hours of grooming. Bear in mind you’ve done this for years and years, so it’s not just two hours of grooming, it’s two hours of grooming every day for the rest of your life. So you tend to warn the other monkey when a tiger turns up.
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Whereas a freeloading ape in the group who doesn’t groom anyone and doesn’t get groomed by anybody kind of ignores everyone else, sits around and gets the benefit of being in a big group. Then when a tiger turns up, rather than warning anybody, it just moves to the other side of the group knowing that the tiger’s going to eat one of the monkeys that he doesn’t really care about, and he’s going to stay safe.
Apes don’t like freeloaders, and seeing how apes are what we’ve descended from, we have exactly the same issue. Think about it. If you’ve got a group of friends and every time you go out there’s one of the friends that never buys a round of drinks, but always comes out with you and gets free drinks from everybody else, it’s not going to be long before you say to him, “Hey dude, you
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need to start paying up,” or you stop inviting them out completely. No one likes a freeloader.
If you’re trying to get someone to want to be a part of your life, you need to think about how you add value to their life. But it isn’t always about what you do for them, which we’ll get to in a second.
Take a moment and imagine that you’re walking down the street and you see a homeless person. The homeless person says that they want to go out for a drink with you, maybe go to a bar and have a conversation. What are the chances that you’re actually going to say yes?
Now, maybe you’re a Good Samaritan and that’s
something that you would absolutely love to do, so let’s now say that you’ve got a prior engagement with one of your friends at the bar to go and have a drink. Would you
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cancel on your friend to go and have a drink with him so you could hang out with the homeless person, or would you say to the homeless person, “I’m sorry, I’ve got a prearranged engagement with my friend, I’ve got to go?”
I think most people in that situation realistically would go and meet up with their friend and cancel on the homeless person. Why ? Because the friend in your life is
somebody important to you, and someone you know, whereas you don’t perceive the homeless person as being able to add the same amount of value to your life. You feel you owe your friend because of all the times the two of you have hung out, and that it’s not really polite to cancel and hang out with a homeless person.
When you first meet a girl, you’re kind of in that
homeless guy’s position. She’s already got other guys in
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her life. She’s got other friends that she knows. She doesn’t really need to add someone else to her life. So given a choice between hanging out with someone like you who she’s just met, even if she’s had a very
comfortable conversation with you, versus hanging out with somebody she’s known for a very long time, a potential person she might want to date, or just a person she enjoys hanging out with, it’s going to be a really easy to say sorry, she doesn’t want to hang out with you, but she’s likely to hang out with the other person.
Now, let’s make things a little bit more interesting. Let’s imagine that that homeless person says to you, “Listen, I’ve got to tell you the truth. This is a disguise; I don’t really look like this. I’m actually an undercover police officer and we’re doing an incredibly important raid and
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we need somebody to talk to me right now, to go to the bar with me so it looks like I actually know somebody who isn’t a cop so I can keep my cover. This is really important, a matter of high security; there are terrorist acts going on, we’re trying to hold it back…”
The point is, if the homeless person adds value to your life by suddenly becoming very interesting and telling you it’s a matter of home security and there are terrorists all around or whatever… basically brings you into an
equivalent of a live James Bond movie where it’s going to get interesting, and you feel important; there’s a much better chance of you going to the bar with the homeless person now, because something’s really interesting.
Or, if while talking to the homeless person he says to you, “Listen, I’m actually a millionaire. I keep things
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quiet; I don’t like telling anyone, but I’m getting old and I want to donate my money to somebody. You’re the first person to stop and talk to me. I’d love to go have a drink with you and maybe discuss about giving you some of my wealth. I’m trying to give away $10,000 every day to different people I meet who actually bother to talk to me.” Once again you would say to your friend, “Look buddy, I’m not going to meet you right now, I’m going to talk to a guy about a business deal,” and you’re going to go and learn how you can get the $10,000.
The point is, this homeless guy now adds value to your life, either by being interesting or by giving you some kind of wealth. Or what if he stops you and tells you that he’s actually a big business mogul and he’s doing a
psychological experiment to see if anybody would want to
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talk to him while he’s homeless? The situations go on and on. The point is, if you see potential value in that
homeless person, you will now hang out with them – if you feel that they’re going to add value to your life.
Now ironically, you could have potentially added value to theirs just by giving them money. So in the first situation, if it was about you adding value to them, if that’s what you really cared about and wanted to do, then you would have just cancelled on your friend and decided to start adding value to the homeless guy’s life. But no – what you’re interested in is whether you perceive that they can add value to you, and that’s why adding value to
somebody’s life is an incredibly important part.
When you’re talking to a girl you need to start thinking about different ways that you can add value to their life.
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But here’s where the difficult part is – Although you adding value to them is something that they perceive that they want, it’s them adding value to your life that makes them like you and respect you.
For example, if the homeless person just gives you that
$10,000, how long would it be before you forget about him? You take the money, you go home, you don’t want to hang out with him anymore because he smells…you can justify why you don’t have to see him ever again.
You take the value, and then you move on. Essentially, you become a freeloader.
When you’re talking to a girl, if you decide you’re going to add value to her life (we’ll talk about different ways of doing it in a second); let’s just say for argument’s sake you give her $10,000, she’ll take the $10,000 and go;
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there’s no reason for her to be a part of your life, she takes that value and leaves.
The key to getting somebody to add value to your life is to get them to chase the value that they perceive you have. So essentially, she believes you could give her
$10,000, so she works hard to try and get it. She has then invested in you. The harder that she’s working to get you, the more value she believes you have, and the more she wants that payout. The harder she’s working, the more she wants the reward, and then of course the harder she’ll keep working at that.
In fact, I read an incredibly good study the other day that talks about this exact process. You can think about it in a very simple way by imagining a game. The game is an auction where you auction off a 20 dollar bill amongst
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your friends. The only catch to this auction is, the person who bids the highest gets the $20, but the person who comes second not only doesn’t get the $20, but they also have to pay the money.
What’s fascinating about this is that as long as people start bidding, it doesn’t take long before people are bidding well in excess of the $20. At some point, it’s not about whether they can get the money anymore; it’s about making sure that they don’t lose an amount of money. After all, no one wants to come in second place, so first and second will keep bidding with each other to compete to go as high as they can, the reason being they’ve stopped chasing the thing that they want and now they’re chasing after their loss. They want to limit their losses and get the most they can for their bidding.
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In the example of talking to human beings and building a connection with them, when somebody starts to invest in you to gain value that they perceive that you have, they will work harder and harder to get that value. And the more they invest in trying to get that value, the harder they’ll work. At some point it doesn’t become about trying to get that value anymore, it’s just about saving face and proving that they were working towards getting you all along because they actually like you, not just because they wanted the value that you have.
So, the key to adding value to somebody isn’t to actually add the value, it’s to let them see that you have a value and get them to chase that value that you have. The way we do this is by using the commonalities we spoke about earlier as key things we know that person is interested in.
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For example, you’re talking to a girl and it turns out that she’s incredibly interested in art. This has come out through building commonalities, and you’ve learned that she really enjoys talking about art. Now, you’re aware that this girl is probably going to be interested in a brand new art gallery, or any gallery that she’s never heard of.
At this point in the
conversation I would talk about an art gallery. I would say, “Oh my gosh! Have you heard about such and such art gallery?” At which point she’s going to say either yes or no. If she hasn’t heard about that art gallery, I now have a piece of value. I have information that she doesn’t
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know about that she’s going to want to get access to.
Then she’s going to say, “Oh my gosh; that sounds amazing. I would love to see that art gallery.”
Then I’m going to sell it. I’m going to talk about all the great things about that gallery and why it’s so good. All I’m doing is hyping up the concept of this particular art gallery, getting her excited so that she’s going to want to see it. If she’s into paintings, I’m going to talk about all the paintings there. If she’s into obscure little art
galleries, I’m going to talk about how I’m not surprised she’s never heard about it because most people have never heard about this art gallery. I’m going to build up this art gallery so that it sounds absolutely amazing, and she’s going to want to be a part of it.
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Then she says to me, “I would love to go to this place.
Do you have the details?” At which point I can say, “You know what? I don’t remember offhand exactly where it is, what the name of it is or anything, but I know I’ve got it written down at home. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll get the details and send them to you.” Now I’ve added a
significant amount of value, and I’ve got her interested in trying to find out more about the art gallery. The point is, I’m showing that I’ve got value and I’m letting her try and find it.
Another example of this – and this is one that I use absolutely all the time, is film-making. I’ve been learning about film-making for an incredibly long time. I’ve got all my own camera equipment, I’ve got all my own lights; in fact, the whole setup I use to record my instructional
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videos is all my own personal equipment that I’ve
collected over the years. I know how all of it works and I really enjoy doing it. If you follow my stuff, you’re
probably aware that film is something that I’m really interested in.
When I meet a girl who’s an actress or something like that, I don’t present it like, “Oh yeah, I’m a producer and I could totally put you in a film.” And I definitely don’t say it like, “Oh, I’m a big filmmaker; you’d absolutely love to be with me.” What I do is talk about their love of acting and all the different things that they’ve done, and then I start a conversation about acting. At some point the girl looks at me and says, “Wow, you’re really knowledgeable about this. How do you know so much about acting?” At this point I casually say, “Oh, you know what? I make a
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few films every now and then.” I play it down. I don’t make it sound like it’s a big deal, and I definitely don’t offer to do anything for her.
What happens is she starts putting the pieces together in her head, “Wow, this guy just said he makes films. I’m an actress; I want to be in films.” And at this point she’ll start chasing. She’ll try to learn more about me; she doesn’t want to come across too eager, but she will start to work at impressing me, work at getting me to like her, and then she’s going to try and build that connection. I didn’t offer to do anything, and I’m not suggesting that I’m going to do anything. She’s building it up in her own mind. She perceives me as somebody who has value, and now she’s trying to gain access to it. The key to adding
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value to somebody at any point is to make sure you play it down, but allow them to try and chase it.
Another good example of this: I meet a lot of successful students, a lot of personal clients who come to me for private training who make a lot of money. These guys tend to drive incredibly nice cars, and they’re always asking me, “How do I show that I have a nice car that I know girls like without looking like a douche bag?” The way you do it is you
don’t show off the car. Instead, you just have conversation with a girl, and at
some point you justify why you could give her a ride somewhere.
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Maybe at the end of the night you offer to give her and her friends a ride home. Maybe you talk about a great coffee shop down the road that’s a few minutes away but you’ll happily drive her there. At some point during the conversation, you get her into your car. When she sees the car she says, “Wow, you’ve got a really nice car!” And then you can play it down; “Oh, it’s not as good as you think. It doesn’t get great mileage, and honestly, I should’ve bought something sensible like a Prius or something; but whatever, it was pretty and I got it.”
By talking about it that way, you’re playing it down and sounding like you’re not bragging, while getting the full benefit of having something that the girl is going to be impressed with. The key to adding value is to talk about it in a way that you don’t sound like your bragging.