I’ve become addicted to James Altucher’s blog. Can’t help but love his optimistic spin on pessimistic times. You really oughta look for his books on Amazon.
Anyway, every Thursday afternoon for an hour, James answers questions on Twitter, then summarizes and expands on ’em in a blog post next day.
Last week, somebody asked him about the best ways to meet new people.
Altucher suggested organizing a weekly dinner club, where everybody in your circle hosts and cooks for everybody else in rotation. And everyone has to invite somebody new to each dinner.
He also recommended taking dance lessons, preferably tango classes. “Your bodies close, you rotate through the other people in the class, you talk before and after, and over time you plan tango outings, etc.”
Both great ideas.
But James didn’t mention my favorite, extremely reliable method for hooking up with new people — hangin’ at my local coffee house. Shame on him, because I’ve never found anything else more effective.
As I’ve related time and again, when I got bounced from my corporate gig years back, I grabbed a dusty paperback novel and plopped my rear-end down in the comfiest chair I could find at Bean Town, just two blocks over from my condo in the San Gabriel Valley.
In just a matter of days, I was chatting up the locals (including lots of business people) and expanding my range of influence.
When Deb and I moved a couple hundred miles up the coast to our present digs, I just rinsed and repeated the process at Starbucks and whatever other coffee joint was handy.
And so far, I’ve been spared having to learn the tango.
