Making 10,000 Friends

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Rob Lawless told me that I was the 6,689th friend he’s met in the past nine years.

He can be exact because he keeps meticulous track.

In 2015, Rob kicked off a quest to meet 10,000 new people. He estimates it will take him another seven years to complete the project.

We connected in the most Kevin Bacon of ways. My friend Julia Carreon who lives in Austin told her former colleague Pete Williams who was visiting New York from Singapore to look me up. Pete took me to a Mets game where I met Rob’s brother Chuck who told about Rob’s quest.

Clearly, I HAD to be one of those 10,000 people, so I reached out.

Rob explained that he attended Penn State and after graduating got a fancy job in consulting. On paper he was on his way, but something was missing.

He realized it was the excitement of connecting with new people, something that happened naturally at college. To continue to meet people after school was going to require more effort.

He started reaching out to people with a plan to spend one hour getting to know them. He intentionally didn’t set an agenda so the conversation could flow naturally.

Eventually, Rob quit his corporate job to join a startup and after that folded, he decided to go all in on the friendship project. Initially he did so without a clear plan for how to support himself.

By the summer of 2019 his savings dwindled to $200 when a solution materialized in the form of a friend who suggested he seek opportunities as a public speaker.

She said people would be curious about the lessons he’s learned from meeting so many people. Since 2021, Rob’s been paid for motivational speeches 71 times.

Rob said he developed his own version of the maxim that you have to ask to be fed. He describes it this way: “the audience cannot see what you don’t give to them.”

Along the way Rob’s become an evangelist for human connection.

He argues a single meeting can change your life, just like it did for his.

He has a mental model to explain how to connect that he calls FRIEND, an acronym for six characteristics that all humans share. It stands for Family, Relationships, Industry, Entertainment, Needs and Dreams.

One of the more powerful observations he made was about the compounding impact of meeting people. He said when you meet a few people you see the differences. When you meet many people you notice the similarities.

He said that when you start to relate to people via his FRIEND schema people become more universal and also more interesting. You aren’t irritated by opinions they have that you might not agree with, because you can put that into a larger perspective.

Rob said he’s never had a bad meeting. The key is to be respectful.

Rob documents each new meeting on Instagram with a photo and brief recounting of the conversation. He posts under the handle @robs10kfriends.

If you follow me on LinkedIn you probably know that I also write about meeting new people. I chronicle each one under the title, “The View from the Office.”

I started several months ago and have done about 40 so far.

At that pace, it will take me another 100 years to get to 10,000.

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