What Does Building Relationships Actually Mean?

Read time: 6 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives Tuesday Tale, a weekly newsletter where I share a story about a transformation, revelation, or change in thinking that has helped improve an aspect of my life.

In May, I got a random direct message on LinkedIn from the founder of a Tech company in Austin.

I was starstruck.

Shaan is the host of My First Million, a podcast I’ve been listening to religiously for the past year. I’ve heard Shaan tell stories about him and his business partner launching multi-million dollar companies like the Milk Road and hanging out with famous entrepreneurs like Tim Ferris, Joe Lonsdale, and Mohnish Pabrai. His business partner was the operator behind a big time creator…my dream job.

My imposter syndrome was going through the roof.

I’m not a founder.

I’m barely making any money with two clients.

Who else is going to be at this pickup game?

I decided to go for a walk. With some fresh air and my heart rate up a bit, I started to change the narrative in my head.

How cool was it that a newsletter I sent 2 months ago to ~50 of my friends and family got picked up on a Google Search and dropped this opportunity in my lap?

They are just playing basketball. I can hold my own in a pickup game.

What’s the worst that happens if I show up?

Founders Pickup

I showed up at the first run two days later at a local rec center.

The guy from LinkedIn greets me. He tells me that he moved from San Francisco and has been running his startup for 3 years. He points out some of the other guys in the group: a digital marketing agency founder, a CTO at a successful tech company, and the producer for one of the top self-development podcasts. Then after some small talk, the LinkedIn guy asks “So do you have a ghostwriting agency?”

…

In that moment I had a choice.

Do I try to “fake it til I make it” or just be honest that I haven’t made it? I could have talked about how I had previously helped a creator launch a WSJ best selling book and online course business. I could have portrayed a story of going out on my own to start my own agency, that I’m working with one of the biggest fitness creators in Austin, and looking to grow rapidly (all true stuff but a little exaggerated). I could have acted like I had my shit together and “belonged” with these other entrepreneurs.

But that didn’t feel right.

What did feel right was admitting I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I told him I quit my job 6 months ago. I had a few ghostwriting clients that I got from doing free work. But I was only a few months into my journey and was still figuring stuff out.

I decided to just be me.

While these guys look impressive on paper, they are all just normal dudes in their 20s and 30s who enjoy playing ball and hanging with other entrepreneurial people. Nobody judged me for not having a big business. Besides that initial question, business barely came up for the first month. I made a conscious effort to not kiss up to them or to talk any business. I was there to play basketball and meet new people. I found other ways to connect with them like talking about the NBA, playing basketball in high school, or common people we knew in Austin.

Every week that I showed up, I began to get a little more comfortable. In any situation with new people, we pick up on other people’s tendencies and naturally get closer. Take inside jokes for example. They only come from spending extended periods of time with people and having shared experiences. It’s been no different with me and these guys. Me and Christian love guarding each other because we challenge each other but don’t try “too hard”. Brian, a former D1 player, likes playing with me because he knows I will make the right cut or read off a screen. Joe and I are the hustle guys so we constantly battle when we’re on opposite teams.

These interactions didn’t happen the first 2, 3, or 4 times I showed up to play. Over time I built rapport and a connection with these guys from showing up and being me. I leaned into being the guy who can’t shoot but will play great defense, make the right pass, and can have a good laugh.

After 6-8 weeks of showing up consistently, they realized that I wasn’t just a random guy who showed up once and never again. This created a level of trust that opened up opportunities to build relationships beyond basketball.

Making a Connection Beyond the Court

One of the regulars was a guy who I had followed on Twitter and whose newsletter I subscribed to months before joining the pickup game.

One day in between games, he asked me about what I was working on. When he heard I did some ghostwriting, he mentioned that he had run a ghostwriting agency but recently shut it down to focus on other things. I was intrigued. But in between games was not the place to pepper him with questions.

I made a mental note.

A few weeks later, I was sitting at a coffee shop late on a Friday afternoon contemplating an inflection point in my business. Now that I had been doing this for 5 months and was close to landing 2-3 more clients, did I want to scale this into a full on agency? That would require hiring writers, managing people, and adding complexity to my life.

Then I thought of that guy from basketball. He had scaled the exact business I’m thinking about building. Why don’t I just go right to the source and ask him what it was like? I found his email from our basketball thread, sent him a note with a quick rundown of my problem and asked for his thoughts.

A few hours later he replied, “Coffee next week?”

This is a guy with 350k+ followers on social. A guy who quit his consulting job at EY 2 years before me. A guy who built a business that not only replaced his salary at EY but exceeded it.

And I got to sit down with him for an hour and a half.

He was an open book about his work. I asked him about scaling the ghostwriting agency, why he decided to shut it down, and what his business now looks like. We talked about life. What it was like living in Spain for a few years with his wife and the fiction writing that he enjoys doing. An opportunity even came up for me to shadow him on an upcoming project he’s launching.

Over the next several weeks, we continued to see each other at basketball but also randomly at other places around town. He was camped out at my favorite coffee shop on a Wednesday at 1 PM so I grabbed a seat at his table and we caught up. Then last week he showed up at my Friday Writing Club.

He was no longer just a guy I followed on the internet. Or just a guy I play pickup basketball with. He’s a friend.

But it didn’t happen overnight. This played out over 3 months.

Small touchpoints were key. It was also critical that I didn’t go up to him when I first recognized him as a big name on Twitter and tell him how much I love his work or ask for help. He’s a great guy and probably would’ve helped but it would’ve changed the dynamic. We get along as people, as friends, and have the potential to do business together because of our shared interests and trust that has been built.

Final Thoughts

Everyone talks about how important it is to “build relationships”. They talk about the importance of networking and building rapport.

They say “Don’t be transactional”.

That all makes sense, but I never really understood how to execute that. Whenever I reach out to someone on LinkedIn to connect or send an email to someone for a coffee chat, it feels transactional even if I tell myself it’s not.

Developing these relationships with the pickup basketball guys over the past 3 months has taught me 4 things:

1. Relationships are built on common interests

2. Relationships require consistency

3. Relationships take time to develop

4. Relationships only work when we be ourselves

There are no shortcuts and there is no forcing it.

Relationships stem from trust. And trust takes time.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew