152. How To Make Friends As An Adult feat. Nick Gray of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party [Replay]
One of Our Favorite Episodes This Year
Sammie and I had to share our episode on The 2 Hour Cocktail Party again for many reasons. Podcast wise, we received amazing feedback on this episode. Our listeners reached out and told us how much they loved hearing Nick Gray speak about party planning and were excited to read the book. So many of Sammie’s peers in healthcare reached out that we joked that Nick needs to start reaching out to healthcare workers because they love organization and throwing parties. We end up sending this episode to people we meet all the time and they end up buying the book, the name tags and throwing their own parties. Which is great for us when we can score an invite!
In this episode, we discuss party fears and Nick gives me a little party therapy because my birthday is New Year’s eve (hint hint) and a “red level” day for a party. A “red level” day is a day that’s bad for hosting a party because there’s a lot of competition. Nick comforts me and we talk about different fears that come up when party planning. The most common fear, Nick says, is will anyone show up?
He also covers some great basics for starting a party including core group and guest bios.
The cool thing is since launching this episode in May, Sammie and I moved cities and finally had a chance to host our own 2 Hour Cocktail parties. We’ve hosted two in the last month and invited people from our writing group, our Deep Talk meetup and had it as an open invite to people online that wanted to meet new people.
One thing I realized is that there is a big difference between reading a book about hosting a party and taking the action to do it. I’m so happy we had Nick to comfort us through the process.
For our second party, right at the :30 minute mark when it started, no one was there yet! Luckily, I have Sammie and I jokingly panicked, “NO ONE IS COMING.” A couple minutes later, half the group arrived and I felt the fear that no one would come dissipate.
After both parties, we received a lot of compliments for the things Nick recommended we implement. Name tags made it easy for people to move between groups. The ice breakers let people chat about a common topic and search out those that had answers they enjoyed. The harmonica was a crowd pleaser in itself.
Do you host parties or are you thinking of hosting one? I’d love to know if there’s any tips you have for us, especially since we’re looking to host more parties in the future!
Show Notes:
Nick Gray's Information:
Book: The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings
Website: nickgray.net
Nick Gray's Instagram: @nickgraynews
Nick Gray's Twitter: @nickgraynews
Email: nick@nickgraynews.com
This is a great podcast - we're all so isolated and it seems to be getting harder to find friends. I just ordered his book! Thanks!
There is an old saying that it's hard to make old friends. It looks like you are doing a good job of making new friends some of whom could become old friends. I hope this makes sense