How to Make Tons of Friends and Thousands of Dollars while Having Oodles of Fun: A 5-Step Guide
How I made $2,500 by making 350 friends
I cracked the Millennial Dilemma of "how to make friends as an adult" and I got paid $200 a month to solve it.
For context: I grew an improv Meetup from 0 to 350+ members in under a year.
Here's how I did it. And you can too in 5 steps.
Make a Meetup group around an interest you have. 🧑🤝🧑
It MUST be Meetup.com.
Why? Because you don't have to be a good marketer to get your event in front of people. It is the only platform I've found that recommends your group and events to like-minded, local people.
"But Gus, it costs $150 / year to host!" - you, a financially savvy developer
This is where Step 2 comes in...
Charge $10 per attendee. 💸
Man, I get a lot of crap for this.
Yes, it will cover your room rental and Meetup fees. But there's another reason (and it's not greed)...
When you charge, the quality of your event AND your attendees' commitment rise.
This works because your attendees have to:
Value your event, your interest, and the connections they make at or above $10
Take you and your event seriously
Plan accordingly to attend
When I didn't charge anything, I got drunk people, high people, and apathetic people. I started charging... and all my headaches went away.
Charge something. (You can always work out alternatives for individual attendees if needed.)
Be welcoming! 👋
Meetups live and die by how welcoming the hosts are.
I went to a Real Estate Meetup in San Diego in 2018.
No one greets me at the door. No one invites me to sit next to them. No one asks me why I'm there or how I heard about it.
The host gets up and starts giving a presentation where I should "feel free to interrupt them with questions." Halfway through, he says a word I don't know.
I raise my hand. "Um... what's escrow?"
He laughs me off and continues with his presentation.
I never went back.
Don't be this guy.
Here's how to properly welcome people:
Greet everybody one-on-one.
Ask them why they came.
Offer them a bottle of water.
Connect them with someone else who has similar goals.
Set their expectations accurately.
Get their feedback AND implement it!
Your attendees could be anywhere in the world. Instead, they put their trust in you and your event. Don't betray that trust!
Encourage interaction. 💥
Being welcoming is table stakes. Interaction is what keeps people coming back.
Too many hosts forget their Meetup is about people meeting people, not the "topic".
For example: coding meetups focus on coding, not people meeting each other.
"That's easy for you to say, Gus. Improv thrives on people interacting. How am I supposed to do that with coding?" - you, an interactively-minded developer
Think outside of the box. Instead of people presenting on coding, why not pair people up and:
Host a mini-hackathon using a specific library
Try to write the WORST "Hello World" program you can
Optimize a piece of poorly written code together
You know your topic better than I do.
Find a way to make it interactive. I'm happy to offer ideas if you need.
Do something social afterwards. 🍻
Keep the good times going.
Get people talking.
And what better icebreaker than interacting over an interesting topic for a couple hours?
👋 Hey, I'm Gus, developer, improviser, and game maker.
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