Now we have to get to the meat of the conversation. And the meat of the conversation is finding rapport with the other person. Let’s revisit comfort for a second and figure out exactly what comfort is. Comfort is made up of two things: It’s made up of trust and rapport. Trust that you’re not going to do anything horrible to them or make them think that you might try and kill them or something, and rapport is where the two of you have some things in common; some common ground with each other so that the conversation feels nice and comfortable.
And this is where we start this rapport, with that ability to build up commonalities with the other person. If you and
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the other person can find something in common with each other, you’ve got a great chance of having a
conversation. Here’s a question for you: How well do you know the girl who works at the checkout in your local grocery store? You probably see her quite often every time you do your weekly grocery shopping – yet how well do you actually know her as a person? Do you go out and have a coffee every so often? Do you have a
conversation with them when you see them? Probably not; this is a person you see on a semi-regular basis, and yet they don’t really have anything to do with your life other than checking out your groceries.
But what if one day as you were going through that checkout you discovered that she were about to go on
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holiday to Australia? She’s about to fly out to Australia, to Sidney for two weeks – which just happens to be the exact two weeks that you’re going to be there. Suddenly, you’ll find that you look at the checkout person a little bit
differently. I can almost guarantee that at this point you’d swap contact details with them with a plan to meet up while you’re in Australia and hangout, especially considering you’re going to be in exactly the same place. The point is, now that the two of you have something in common, you have a reason to stay in touch – that reason is a commonality.
How well do you know the checkout girl in your
local super market?
What if you saw her on vacation?
Commonalities are king.
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When you have something in common between the two of you, it becomes a conversational topic. You can talk about the things you plan to do in Australia, what you’re looking forward to the most, whether you’ve been before, whether it’s expensive or not. All of these typical
conversational topics will flow naturally, and the two of you will find yourselves in a great, comfortable
conversation. You’ve got a reason to swap contact details; she’s going to want to hang out with you.
Essentially, she now has comfort with you.
And if you’ve followed everything I’ve taught you up to this point, you will have already developed trust. They know you’re not a weirdo, because you’re hanging out with other girls, or you haven’t freaked them out by using any weird, strange lines that might make them think that
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you’re some kind of axe murderer. So you’ve got trust, and now if you can build a commonality, you’re going to get rapport.
The key to building rapport with somebody or finding a commonality is to identify things that they care about.
Now, in an ideal world, that would be something you care about, too, but if you’re the one going out and
approaching people, you must be willing to have great conversations with people that you don’t have anything in common with, or who share common interests with you.
It’s a great skill set to be able to generate commonalities with them or to essentially find things that they
absolutely love, and then be able to talk about it and build a commonality with it. Now there are typically three things that you’re going to find very easy to find solid
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commonalities with. It might be great to find out that you’re wearing the same color socks as the girl that you’re talking to, but that’s not really going to be a commonality that will generate a great conversation.
Location – Career – Hobbies
The three things that will start a great conversation are location (things like going abroad, where you grow up), career, and hobbies. These are the three things that most people really care about. The most important one of all is hobbies. People care about hobbies the most
because it’s something that you put your time, energy, and money into that doesn’t give you anything back other than pure enjoyment.
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If you can identify what somebody’s favorite hobbies are, and the things that they absolutely love doing, you’re going to find that that’s something they really want to talk about, and all you have to do is build a commonality with them.
The next thing people tend to be interested in is their career. Not necessarily because they love it, although some people do, but because it’s something that they spend a lot of their time doing. People spend so long on their career that it becomes a big part of their life, so they’re willing to have a conversation about it, especially if you have something in common with that career.
Finally, the last one is locations and travelling; places they’ve been, places they’re going to, these are all things people like talking about because it’s either who they are
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or where they’re from, or maybe even things they’re looking forward to. Or like with hobbies, things they put time and energy into organizing, and maybe even money to go and enjoy at a later date.
The way we build commonalities is by looking at whatever it is that the other person brings up in the conversation, and seeing whether you have a direct commonality with it, an indirect commonality with it, or a negative commonality with it.
A direct commonality is very simple – It’s also something I’m very interested in. For example, if I were to meet a girl that likes horseback riding, I could have a direct commonality on that. Growing up, I did horseback riding, so if I meet a girl that rides horses, I can say, “Oh my
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God, I love riding horses!” and I can talk about it for ages because that’s something that I did growing up.
Indirect commonalities are a little bit harder. It’s
essentially when the girl says something that you have absolutely no way of establishing a commonality with it for yourself. For example, if I met a girl who was a
doctor, I couldn’t use direct commonality because I’m not a doctor, I haven’t studied medicine and I know nothing about it. Instead, I would use an indirect commonality. I would talk about somebody I know who is a doctor, and I would share stories they’ve told me. So I’d bring up stories about when they were in surgery, some of the things that happened, the pressure and the first time they did it, and ask them whether that was something they’ve experienced. I’m essentially using the stories
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from my friend who is a doctor to build a commonality with this person. This is indirect commonality. It’s somebody else’s commonality that I can use to have a conversation.
The last commonality is the worst of all, but if you’ve got nothing else, this is
the one you go with – negative
commonalities.
Negative commonality
is essentially, I know absolutely nothing about that. For example, if I met a girl who was a farmer, “I don’t know anything about farming, I really don’t. I like the idea of it.
Tell me three things that I should know about farming.”
The key is to talk about things that she is interested in as if they’re
your interests too, and the easiest way to do that
is to develop interests that are typically shared
with the kind of girl you’re interested in.
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Even though I’ve told her that I don’t know anything about farming, I’ve asked her to tell me three things about it. I can then use that information to have a conversation with somebody else at a later date, and more importantly, it’s given her three different topics of conversation to bring up that maybe I can build a commonality off of. This will keep the conversation flowing long enough for me to figure out which transition I want to use next to keep that conversation going.
To sum up, when I’m having a conversation, I try and build commonalities based on what the other person says. Now the key is how do I find out what they’re interested in and what I can build commonalities on without turning into an interrogator who just fires of questions like, “What do you do for a living? What do you
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do for fun? Where are you from?” These are boring questions that don’t go anywhere.
The way I do this is to gel all of that together with the accent transition, which is why it’s probably my personal favorite. When I first meet somebody, I say:
“Wow, you’re really friendly. I’m trying to place your accent, and I can’t figure out where it’s from.
Whereabouts is your accent from?”
Once they tell me where they’re from, I’m going to be talking about location. I can then find out why they moved to where they’re living now, or whether they’ve lived anywhere else in their life, and that becomes a very normal part of the conversation. So I will have an entire
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conversation about where they’re from and build a commonality on it.
If I find out that they went to England one time, I’ll talk about when I was in England. If I find out they went to Africa, I’ll talk about when I was in Africa. If they’ve been to mainland Europe, I’ll find out where and I’ll talk about how I stayed in France for a while. If they talk about America, I’ll talk about the places I’ve lived in America. I will try and build a commonality on whatever it is that they say and use that as either a direct or indirect commonality to have conversation down. This is why travelling makes it incredibly easy to meet and interact with people.
Once I’ve had the accent conversation and I’ve found out where they’re from, I’ll say, “Wow! You’ve travelled
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around a lot,” or “You haven’t travelled much.” I might say:
“Wow, you’ve travelled around a lot. Does that make it difficult to hold down a job if you change careers a lot because of that?” And then at that point they’ll tell me what they do for a living.
If they haven’t travelled around a lot, I’ll say something like, “Wow, you’ve just stayed here in one place. That’s cool; is that because of a job?” Then they’re going to tell me their career and I didn’t have to say to them, “What do you do for a living?” I avoided that basic question that’s very interrogatory, and instead I’ve managed to work it into the conversation and make it work.
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And now I’m going to have an entire conversation about their career, what they do for a living; I’m going to try to build a commonality on it. I’m going to say, “Oh my gosh, my friend does the same thing!” or, “I do the same
thing,” or, “I did that once,” whatever it is, and I’ll have an entire conversation about their career.
At that point I might say, “Wow, it looks like you work a hell of a lot. I’m guessing you don’t have much free time,” or vice versa: “Wow, sounds like you don’t really have to work very hard. I’m guessing you’ve got a lot of free time; what do you do when you’re not working incredibly hard?” Again, a nice, simple transition, right through to that next commonality.
You can see here that we’ve already gone from that opening line to transitioning very fast to, “Wow, you
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seem very friendly. I’m just trying to work out where that accent’s from,” to talking about locations, to talking about their career, to talking about what it is they do for fun. That there is a good five or ten minutes of
conversation. What you’ll find time and time again is that whenever you find a commonality with somebody,
whenever the two of you gel and hit on the exact same topic of conversation that both of you enjoy talking about – or more importantly, the other person enjoys talking about but you’re capable of talking about - you’ll find that the conversation flows incredibly easy. It’s actually very difficult to stop the conversation because it’s moving so fast now that it’s become natural and unstilted. It will be the kind of conversation you have with your friends.
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Likewise, the person you’re talking to will realize that the only time they really talk to somebody like this is when they’re actually friends with them. They’re already thinking about you as being somebody that they’d want to have in their life. But what you’ve got to learn to do is to keep that conversation flow working incredibly well so that the whole thing doesn’t fall apart.
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