Trevor McKendrick - How to make new friends as an adult

Hi everyone,

This is probably my favorite time of year, and I’m sad it feels like it’s already almost over.

The song Auld Lang Syne somehow captures the tension of both melancholy & hope of the final weeks of the year. Do you have a favorite version of the song? One of mine is a very upbeat, bluegrass, no-vocals version here (Spotify link)

Please have an amazing 2 final weeks of the year.

Trevor

My friend Nick Gray is the best in the world at hosting events (website)

If you’ve been to one of my cocktail parties & thought it was any good it was because Nick helped me plan it. He literally wrote the book on how to do it: The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings

One event I recently went to that was hosted by Nick himself had this amazing moment: he was sharing his favorite TikToks on a TV at the front of the room w/ about 30 people.

One TikTok came up w/ a viola player, but it froze & we couldn’t hear the audio. It had this ugh moment, so he sent out one of his helpers through the back door to go fetch AV support.

Next thing we know, instead of AV support coming in, the viola player from the TikTok walks in herself & plays the song from her TikTok live for the group.

It was an awesome moment… what would have normally just been a “hey guys I invited someone from TikTok I like to play her music” transformed into this memorable, surprising, and delightful thing.

If you want to build more relationships in your life, you can, you just have to be intentional about it and treat it like any other goal or priority in your life.

Nick & his book can help you do that. He’s really the best at it.

Here’s links to all the things:

Nick’s Twitter

Nick’s Instagram

Nick’s TikTok

10-year old Coke commercial released only in Argentina is really an ad about why you should have more children (twitter)

Beautiful. These days it makes me tear up.

Poland train companies were autolocking the trains when they were serviced by 3rd parties (Mastodon, I think?)

The person writing the tweet was able to reverse engineer it.

Dwarkesh interviews Jung Chang about growing up in revolutionary China (podcast)

Jung is the type of interviewee that can speak for 10 minutes straight off of a single question, and it’s all extremely interesting and you don’t want her to stop.

I forget just how recently China was in complete chaos, and how recently Mao was in charge of the whole thing. He didn’t die until 1976(!!)

See also the very underrated book by Mao from his personal doctor of 22 years: The Private Life of Chairman Mao.

Netflix’s original culture deck from 2009 (slideshare)

For some context, in 2009 Netflix did $1.7 billion in revenue, only 2 years after launching online streaming, and still 3 years away from launching their own titles.

In 2022, Netflix did $31.6 billion in revenue.

Things that increase & decrease morale (blog)

“To have high morale is to believe that you are able to do the things you want to do; to have low morale is to believe the opposite.”

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