What I Learned About Influence After Having 2,000 Famous People Cook Me Dinner
Everything we’re doing to develop meaningful relationships is wrong
In my twenties, I received some of the worst advice of my life: “If you want to succeed, you need to network.” Since I had no money or status, I took this standard approach. I showed up at every networking event, business cards in hand, and tried to strike up a conversation with anyone who would talk to me. And just like everyone else, I hated it.
I decided instead to find a way to meaningfully connect with the people I respected and admired. For more than a decade, I have been running a secret dining experience and community called The Influencers. (You may know it from my TED Talk or this New York Times story.) The concept is that 12 people are invited to cook a communal meal, but there is a twist: They can’t talk about what they do or give their last name. Once the guests sit to eat, they try to guess what the others do professionally, only to discover that they are dining with Nobel laureates, Olympic medalists, celebrities, Oscar winners, and the occasional members of royal families. We have hosted more than 2,000 people at 227 dinners in 10 cities and three countries.
When I started this project, I had no status, was heavily in debt, and wasn’t well connected. My parents were immigrants, and I didn’t come from the “right” family. And yet I was able to get many of the most influential people to come to my home, cook me dinner, wash my dishes, clean my floors, and thank me for it. I can tell you it’s not because I am that good-looking or charming — I’m a geeky behavioral scientist who grew up on a steady diet of comic books and Star Trek. I am often asked how I was able to pull this off, and to be honest, I am still amazed. But the fact is that if you understand the science of human behavior, you can apply these principles to develop meaningful relationships with the people who are important to you.
The first thing you should understand is the science of influence, which I explore in my new book, You’re Invited. See, you’re probably used to thinking about influence as a number of followers, but that’s not influence — that’s an audience. Most of the things we want to affect don’t really require an audience — getting a job at our dream company, closing a deal with a customer, or having our children eat healthier foods, for instance. What does make a difference are our relationships. And a universal strategy for success is developing meaningful relationships with the people who can have the greatest impact on the things we care about.
Through my research and my hundreds of dinners, I’ve developed what I call the Influence Equation:
Influence=(Connection x Trust )^Community
Let’s break it down.
Connection
Chances are you were introduced to your closest friends through someone you both know, or you bonded over shared interests (playing basketball, painting, or attending religious ceremonies, for example). This is what fosters meaningful connections—participating in activities you enjoy. It is not the same as awkwardly striking up a conversation at a cocktail mixer.
The question still remains: How do we get a business executive, a celebrity, or potential donor with whom we want to connect to participate with us? How do we get their attention?
We begin by understanding that people’s social pressures change the more influential they become. As influence grows, so do the demands on their resources. It also means they have experienced more, and since more people are approaching them, they have to be more selective about who they hang out with. In You’re Invited, I break down the specifics of what will cause global influencers like Oprah and Sir Richard Branson, industry leaders like the CEOs of the Fortune 500, and community leaders to engage with you, as well as how to approach each group with specific strategies. But here are a couple takeaways.
Don’t invite them for coffee—be different
Oprah doesn’t need to be invited to another casino-themed fundraiser. She has seen it all before. If you want to get on her radar, you have to trigger a section of the brain called the SN/VTA. This is known as the major “novelty center” of the brain, and when triggered, it entices us to explore and understand. If you can do something novel, people will be drawn out of their homes to participate. It’s why people will pay a fortune to see the hottest Broadway show but won’t show up to a cookie-cutter event or fundraiser.
The Influencers Dinner works because it is novel: The guests cook together; there are strange rules and fun traditions. If you want to connect with people, don’t just invite them for coffee — go for a hike, or invite them to bring one problem they are dealing with and figure out how to solve it by the end the night. Instead of just doing a cocktail party, have people bring a story around a single word. Whatever you do, make sure it is something you enjoy and something that is uniquely yours, otherwise you won’t want to do it more than a couple of times.
Get the right people in the room
There is this misconception that influential people get to spend their time with other influential people, but the truth is they mostly spend it with their staff. If you curate an environment with interesting people, it will attract others. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to go to TED, even though you can see the talks online. That’s because of who is in the room. Let’s be honest: I doubt many people are coming to the Influencers Dinner to hang out with me. I am generally the least interesting person in the room, but that is what makes it appealing. I never needed a Nobel Prize or Olympic medal to be friends with them. By curating an interesting group of people, others came, and we all got to be friends. When I first started, the guests weren’t nearly as impressive. I didn’t know celebrities or award winners, but with each dinner, guests would recommend other guests, and the attendees became more impressive. Also, you would be shocked by how many people’s email addresses are public.
Trust
People have a misguided belief that we can buy trust through expensive business dinners and party swag bags, but the opposite is true. There’s something known as the Ikea effect: Human beings disproportionately care about the things we invest effort into, like assembling Swedish furniture. This means we should find ways to get people to invest effort into us, our brands, and our social causes. With the Influencers Dinner, the guests cook together because it causes us to invest in a shared effort. In You’re Invited, I break down the mechanisms of how this works. Here are two insights:
- You should accept favors. By letting people support you, they will care about you and trust you more. Remember, reciprocity is critical—you don’t want to be a selfish taker.
- Find activities that require joint effort. A hike, painting class, or volunteer work is better than getting coffee or drinks, because you are investing more effort.
Note: There is a simple rule to prevent any manipulative use of these ideas. If you can tell people why everything is designed the way it is — “I want people to form closer relationships, so we’re going to cook together” — and people don’t have an issue, you are in the clear.
Community
The need for belonging is at the core of what it is to be human. After genetics, social integration is the greatest predictor of how long we live, and in business, the most important factor of team success is psychological safety—the idea that you can express your perspective without the risk of being pushed out of the group. It is about feeling like we belong.
As researchers David McMillan and David Chavis explained in their pinnacle work Sense of Community, it is “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together.”
This type of feeling comes from two things:
- People knowing one another: The more connections you foster between the people, the more you will be naturally a part of each other’s lives and, as a result, can have a positive impact on one another. This means that they will be closer to you, and their knowledge, expertise, and good nature have a stronger impact on you and the community as a whole.
- Consistent engagement: If I had one dinner, it would accomplish very little, but since we do six a month, we can foster meaningful relationships. We see this with every community, from weekly religious services to book clubs to fans who gather to watch their sports teams compete. They all have a clear structure to maintain the bonds between people.
The fact is in an era where almost any person is accessible through a tweet, DM, or email, it seems that we have lost our ability to connect, build trust, and foster belonging. People are lonelier than ever and are yearning for meaningful relationships. Over the years of running The Influencers, it became clear that we have things backwards: We network instead of becoming friends, buy relationships rather than fostering trust, and silo our relationships rather than creating community. The real opportunity is for all of us to find something we enjoy and to invite others to participate. Just remember two things: If you want influential people to attend, make it novel and well-curated. If you want to develop a community, keep it going.
