{"id":7500,"date":"2021-09-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-15T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/?p=7500"},"modified":"2021-12-13T13:40:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T18:40:22","slug":"episode-19-bringing-the-art-of-charm-to-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/episode-19-bringing-the-art-of-charm-to-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 19: Bringing the Art of Charm to Friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We could all stand to add a dash of charisma to our social encounters. Hosts of the hit podcast <a href=\"https:\/\/theartofcharm.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Art of Charm<\/a> join Keep Connected to discuss one of the most elusive aspects of socializing: how to charm others. Learn why <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/ajharbinger\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">AJ<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/john-dzubak-b5182687\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Johnny<\/a> think charm is a skill rather than a personality trait and how friendships mark the difference between existing and thriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">&#8212;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Spotify Embed: Bringing the Art of Charm to Friendships\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/2rVk7zJ1g2VEPNvqIr0TtN?si=6ba518bb7b424828&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Ranked as one of the top <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.feedspot.com\/ceo_podcasts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">25 CEO podcasts on Feedspot<\/a>, Keep Connected with Meetup CEO David Siegel is a podcast about the power of community. For more details on other episodes, visit Keep Connected on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/category\/keep-connected-podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Meetup Community Matters blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We hope you\u2019ll keep connected with us. Drop us a line at podcast@meetup.com. If you like the podcast, be sure to subscribe and leave us a rating on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/podcast\/id1545712240\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Learn more about Keep Connected host David Siegel\u2019s experience as a leader and decision maker in his book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.decideandconquerbook.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Decide &amp; Conquer<\/em><\/a>. Pre-order your copy today!<\/p>\n\n\n<h2><em>Episode 19: Bringing the Art of Charm to Friendships<\/em><\/h2>\n<p><strong>In this episode, we&#8217;re talking to AJ and Johnny, the hosts of The <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/theartofcharm.com\/podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Art of Charm<\/strong><\/a><strong> podcast. We are talking about so many different things. These are two people who have had one of the most successful podcasts around personal growth. There are so many topics we hit on. Just read the blog and you&#8217;ll learn a lot more about what we&#8217;re talking about. I&#8217;m not going to ruin it for you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>&#8212;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>You are so lucky because we have <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/theartofcharm.com\/podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>AJ and Johnny<\/strong><\/a><strong> and you&#8217;re in for a treat. AJ and Johnny are like Madonna. They don&#8217;t even have last names. That&#8217;s how awesome they are. They&#8217;re building workshops and an empire and impacting and helping thousands of people. The first thing I&#8217;d love to do is get into your background a little bit to get started. How did the two of you meet? How in the world did you get into this personal growth world?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I can tell you that it&#8217;s the case for me and the genesis of the show. Meeting Johnny was around my career stalling because of my lack of influence and social skills. I grew up as an introverted single dad. He pushed hard work and education as values on me and my sister and me. I was following in his dreams of me becoming a doctor. I got into graduate school and then I realized that my social skills were lacking. I was not forming the connections with my peers and my mentors that I needed. I do not have the influence to win people over onto my side.<\/p>\n<p>I was struggling with the politics in modern medicine and that hit my confidence. I started to struggle with imposter syndrome then there was a cascade of that impacting my social life, my dating life. I felt lost because there were no resources in school to learn how to do these things, how to grow your influence and how to build better relationships. It was assumed you either knew it or you didn&#8217;t. You were born with it or you weren&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How did you realize that though?<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t try to change, you&#8217;re going to expect the same results every single time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>When you&#8217;re in graduate school and you&#8217;re fighting for projects to be seen and heard, get your data and results published, you start to see other people who are working less hard, who maybe you don&#8217;t feel are as smart as you get ahead. Get those great projects. Be seen and heard. That struggle, I internalized and it hit my confidence and I started looking for resources. I stumbled across a company that Johnny was working with at the time. He can talk a little bit about his self-development journey but he was a coach helping people with social skills and relationship building.<\/p>\n<p>As the podcast took off, I was looking for coaches to help all of our show fans because I was still in graduate school. I was still focused on becoming a doctor. I met Johnny and we teamed up and I said, &#8220;I have these listeners of this podcast. You&#8217;re on this journey. You&#8217;re coaching people on this journey. Let&#8217;s create something and create a coaching company around this idea of a podcast.&#8221; The podcast started first, me seeking out information and knowledge to grow in this area. Johnny can talk about his rock and roll background and how he was the rock star who helped our clients and me and coaching in the very beginning.<\/p>\n<p><strong>We&#8217;ve got a rock and roller and a pre-doctor. Rock and roller, Johnny, let&#8217;s hear about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My story is slightly different because the technology was a disruption in my life. I was born in &#8217;73 and the world that I had grown up in my house. My dad played music. My mom was a hairdresser. Music was a big part of that. My dad&#8217;s band used to rehearse in the house that I grew up. Music, the tradition, the ritual was a big deal. When you&#8217;re that young and the floorboards of your house are reverberating with your dad&#8217;s band downstairs and you&#8217;re hearing the songs that you heard on the radio being played by your father, it was easy dots to connect. I wanted to do that. I wanted that to be my life.<\/p>\n<p>I grew up playing music, wanting to be working, involved in the music industry and I set out to do that. In my 20&#8217;s, I was living in North Carolina. I was touring a lot of the time but I was also managing a rock and roll club, a talent buyer and created a life centered around music, which is what I wanted to do. As all these new technologies started to come out, the music industry that I grew up loving and wanting to be a part of was changing. You could even make the argument that the industry that I wanted to be a part of didn&#8217;t exist anymore. At least, in the way that I wanted to be involved with it. That was a big deal.<\/p>\n<p>As I was looking forward realizing that what once was is never going to be again. The music that I was interested in, the ideas of music and the art form that I fell in love with are gone and changing. Social media was in its infancy. We&#8217;re talking about Myspace. Live streaming wasn&#8217;t even a thing yet. People were downloading stuff from LimeWire but as I&#8217;m looking forward, I can tell there was too much uncertainty. I had to ask myself a lot of hard questions and was going to have to do some soul searching to come up with the right answers to those questions. I turned to self-development to ask myself questions that I never had to ask you for. I knew what I was going to be at a very young age. There was no trying to figure that out as a teenager. That was at 9 or 10 years old. That was done.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Most people stumble and have great introspective experiences between 13 and 30. If you figured out at nine, it&#8217;s almost like you started to walk before you were crawling and that&#8217;s a little bit dangerous.<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7519\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7519\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7519\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption1.jpg\" alt=\"KCM 19 | Art Of Charm\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption1-473x315.jpg 473w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7519\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Art of Charm: Missions are very important for people. Once they accomplish a mission, they go to the next one. They have to start thinking about what they will devote their life to next.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Staring into the future and wondering if there was going to be one in music. I had to do a lot of soul-searching and self-development. As I started implementing pieces of self-development into my life, my life changed drastically. One obsession rolled into the next and I was infatuated by it. All of these ideas were new to me. I was having so much fun. I was watching my life change from day to day. I wanted to be surrounded by other people who were involved in this industry, changing lives and I centered my life around self-development. I started working for a small software company in DC, helping young men get it together. That&#8217;s where I had met AJ.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unfortunately, in this world, there are a lot of young men, women, people who need help in figuring out how to get it together and not only young. There are 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds. I got together with a 75-year-old hundred million and he said, &#8220;I&#8217;m struggling because I don&#8217;t know what the next stage is for me.&#8221; I think everyone struggles and needs help. The sooner that people realize how many people can benefit from self-development and there&#8217;s nothing wrong with getting help with everything. In fact, you are right about it. Good things happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For everybody, there&#8217;s going to be multiple times in their life where they&#8217;re going to have to ask questions. Missions are very important for people but once you accomplish a mission, you have to go to the next mission. Do you have to start to think about what is next? What&#8217;s the next hill? What am I going to devote my life to next? Those are not easy questions to ask an answer. As we go through life, there are going to be multiple pitstops to have to figure that out. Self-development plays an incredible role there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Since you mentioned mission and I&#8217;m going to put you on the spot. AJ, what is your next mission in life?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Honestly, why we started the podcast is to help people build better relationships by growing their own influence. I grew up in a broken home. I had a single dad for most of my young adult life. My mom was not in the picture. In the early &#8217;80s, that was a pretty difficult time where it was not expected that dad won custody and mom wasn&#8217;t around. That tore me apart. I saw the damage it did to my dad&#8217;s health and he passed away. That set me on this course of, &#8220;I want these skills and tools to build better relationships in my life.&#8221; We know the data is in.<\/p>\n<p>The scientist in me is so excited because the Harvard happiness study says that relationships are the single greatest factor to your lifelong happiness. We&#8217;re not often taught those tools and skills in school in our formative years to develop those real deep connections. Technology is disrupting it further. That&#8217;s why we&#8217;re so excited about Meetup because it&#8217;s one of the tools that bring people together when so many of us are feeling disconnected.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Let&#8217;s talk about the podcast you started, The <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/theartofcharm.com\/podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Art of Charm<\/strong><\/a><strong>. Charm is an interesting word. You didn&#8217;t call it the art of happiness, the art of love, the art of connecting art of relationships. Could one of you share why you chose the word charm? I see you&#8217;re both smiling.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I started it in my mid-twenties. Charm to me meant success with the opposite sex and in my dating life and finding that partner. Being someone who went through a divorce, Johnny went through divorce as well, we saw especially with young men, a lot of difficulty in this area. When my confidence was zapped in grad school, it had a serious impact on my ability to approach and attract women that I was interested in. We felt that charm is one of those words that hooks your attention. It does not speak only to dating but you know someone&#8217;s charming. When you meet someone who&#8217;s charming, they stand out for the right reasons. We stuck with that name for a few years and it&#8217;s worked.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s a direct line between the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Tell us about The Art of Charm podcast. Tell us about what the mission is because we&#8217;re talking about the mission around the podcast. Give us a couple of stories about the impact either for the podcast or workshops or all the other things that are part of what you do.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Art of Charm podcast centers around social skills and development in your life in those three areas of career, love and your social life and the social skills that are involved in each one of those. There are skills. If you&#8217;re working in a business, you&#8217;re climbing the corporate ladder. There are going to be social skills that are going to be employed there. In dating, dating nowadays is probably more difficult than it ever has been but yet so easy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I feel so terrible for people that are dating now. Teenagers, apparently, don&#8217;t even date anymore. I don&#8217;t even know how things work.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are several aspects that are incredibly easy due to all the technology but that doesn&#8217;t mean that our emotions are tied with the technology as it develops. We&#8217;re still stuck 150,000 years ago, dealing with the opposite sex. Meanwhile technology, it&#8217;s like, &#8220;What&#8217;s your problem?&#8221; That is where the confusion lies. In building the relationships that we need in our lives so that we can feel loved, connected, accepted, that employs more social skills. The show was about the social skills that you&#8217;re going to use in all of these aspects of your life. We didn&#8217;t see anything else that was there. For myself, social skills were the thing that everyone glosses over because people assume they&#8217;re innate. You know them.<\/p>\n<p>Now, are some people better at them than others? Absolutely. However, the environment you&#8217;re raised in is going to focus on certain things. AJ mentioned that growing up, the values in his family was education and so, it was an academic-focused household. There are athletic-focused households. I grew up in a very artsy-focused household. Depending on those environments, you&#8217;re going to be more acclimated to those values. As you grow older, you have to round yourself out. To me, social skills are because it&#8217;s glossed over, it&#8217;s the secret to everything and it holds. I feel the right social skills, developing them, open doors that you didn&#8217;t even know existed. Your world is quite closed off until you start employing these things, adding value to the world around you rather than looking for. All of a sudden, opportunities start coming to you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>One of the things you hit on, which is one of my favorite topics, frankly, is the dichotomy between specialization and non-specialization. There was always this belief that the way to move up in the world is to be the expert, the A-plus expert at one thing better than anyone else. One of the things you said, Johnny, that resonated for me is if you grow up in a certain athletic household or arty household, you become very strong in one area then, an A and something and a C or D and a whole bunch of other things. There&#8217;s a book called <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/davidepstein.com\/the-range\/\"><strong><em>Range<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong>. It&#8217;s a top bestselling book. It talks about the importance of rounded social skills and being able to have a variety of different knowledge around different topics. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s something that you spend time talking about, AJ.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think many of our clients feel that they&#8217;re hidden geniuses who lack that influence. Unfortunately, they are passed over for leadership positions. We&#8217;ve talked a lot about social skills. Communication, as we&#8217;re seeing now with technology, both in-person, online is one of the most important facets of your ability to show people that you are an expert. It&#8217;s not only that you have to train hard enough. You have to get all of the knowledge to advance in your career. You have to be able to communicate that you have that knowledge and you have to win people over and influence them, persuade them to get on board, to follow your lead.<\/p>\n<p>I think many of our clients who come through our coaching programs have felt in their careers. Maybe in their social life or their dating life they&#8217;ve stalled a bit, they&#8217;re stuck, people don&#8217;t see them for who they are and they have a gap in communicating that effectively. That&#8217;s what the podcast is all about. It&#8217;s a bit of a taster for that where we share our toolbox episodes or we take the science of communication but also the creativity. Going back to my science background, Johnny, being creative. It takes both of those, charm, for you to become effective. You have to be able to read other people.<\/p>\n<p>You have to be grounded in the science and what are the most effective strategies to employ. I think it&#8217;s important that people realize that these communications skills and deficits are not going away. They&#8217;re getting greater as more levels of communication are added. We had a great episode about digital body language. Going deep into the way you communicate over email says a lot about you but yet companies aren&#8217;t training people what the norms and the culture are inside of the company on how to communicate effectively digitally. That&#8217;s interesting to us.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7520\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7520\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7520\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption2.jpg\" alt=\"KCM 19 | Art Of Charm\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption2.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption2-473x315.jpg 473w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7520\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Art of Charm: The way you communicate digitally says a lot about you, yet companies aren&#8217;t training people how to communicate effectively digitally.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>For both of those topics, could you share with us a little wisdom on Zoom body language and also email etiquette? If you&#8217;ve got a couple of thoughts there, I think a lot of people will be interested in those two topics because we do a lot of Zoom and we do a lot of emails. Any thoughts on either of those?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The first one, Zoom. This is the first time in many of our lives. In our training programs, we film all of our clients in their communication. Zoom is one of the first platforms for many of us. We&#8217;re seeing our own communication mirrored back at us with that self-view. What we don&#8217;t realize is it&#8217;s very easy for us subconsciously to get caught up in how we look and what&#8217;s going on in self-view. Not realize that we&#8217;re sending the wrong signals to those on the other end who want to see that we&#8217;re engaged, we&#8217;re listening and we&#8217;re excited. The first thing we tell all of our clients is to turn off self-view. It robs you of the opportunity to focus on others in Zoom. The second thing is non-verbally.<\/p>\n<p>You want to showcase and emphasize that you are following along, that you are listening. Head nodding, smiling, using your body language to communicate that you&#8217;re following along and you are engaged is important on Zoom. Even more so than in real life but many of us now, we&#8217;re engaging with these tools for the first time ever. We&#8217;re not understanding the impact that it&#8217;s having on our communication and it may be setting the wrong impression. I think the big problem that we have with email is that we don&#8217;t understand the medium itself.<\/p>\n<p>Email is effective when it&#8217;s to the point, when it&#8217;s succinct and when it is clear in its message. What specifically do you need and how concise can you make that message to be the most impactful because many of us are spending so much time in our inbox. We don&#8217;t have time to read three paragraphs to get to the point of what you need or want from us. Many of our audience are starting out in their career and trying to build connections and networks.<\/p>\n<p>They don&#8217;t realize they spend way too much time trying to sell themselves, position themselves and they don&#8217;t get to the point with the leaders that they are reaching out to, the influencers that they&#8217;re trying to engage with. Unfortunately, that only leads to you being lost in the shuffle. Move your point to the top and keep it succinct. Can you write it in less than three sentences? You&#8217;ll be much more effective and impactful in your email communication than many of the pitches that we get in our inboxes.<\/p>\n<p>I want to add to that. The other thing that makes social skills interesting and for people difficult for them to wrap their heads around is the emotional response that they get interacting with the world is always going to be the same if they continue to do the same things. They don&#8217;t realize how different if they change up maybe their body language or the language that they use or how they greet somebody. How it&#8217;ll change the emotional responses that they&#8217;re getting.<\/p>\n<p>Once they see that and change one small thing and see the response then they&#8217;re like, &#8220;I changed my body language. What happens if I change the way that I interact? What happens if a change in my mindset going into an interaction? Once those results show themselves, now people have a line of where they want to get better. Where they want to learn more skills to get better results. Without that change, the world is always going to be what it&#8217;s always been so they don&#8217;t know if it could ever be any better.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The importance of positive reinforcement. The importance of putting yourself out there and realizing that if you don&#8217;t try some change, you&#8217;re going to expect to get the same results every single time, which may not be what people want or what people need.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the things that I love about what we do is, your interactions are going to be on a daily basis. No matter what you might see The Art of Charm as a key to help you with. Maybe it&#8217;s your career, getting better dates, strengthen your relationships and friendships at home. Where people interact with you on a daily basis, that&#8217;s who&#8217;s going to see those changes. We call it the doorway drawer. Having people be conscious of their posture, walking in and out of places especially a place that you&#8217;re comfortable. Why would you think about that in a place that you&#8217;re comfortable with?<\/p>\n<p>Once they change that and they&#8217;re conscious of it, they walk into a room. They do the doorway drill. The response that they get is completely different. It&#8217;s usually the people that are around them, the most coworkers or whatnot, who see the change because they are now giving off a different representation. They&#8217;re going to get asked, &#8220;Did you get a haircut? Is that a new shirt? There&#8217;s something different about you,&#8221; and it&#8221;s there that people realize, &#8220;I can change that response.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>When I went through your 900 different episodes, I was literally interested in listening to every single one of them. There are themes that we&#8217;ve through each of those episodes. I found four meaningful themes. I know you have so much wisdom to impart to each of them. It&#8217;s going to be hard to like winnow out whittle down your wisdom into two or three basic concepts that our audience should keep in mind. I would hate not to sit at your feet and read to your thoughts on them. I&#8217;ll start with the first one and then we&#8217;ll go through each of them. One or both of you could take it. Let&#8217;s talk number one, improving your career.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Developing the right social skills opens the doors to things you didn&#8217;t even know existed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The secret sauce to improving your career is investing in relationships. Especially for our younger audience members who are maybe getting started in their career and they view their careers very competitive. It&#8217;s one of the things that we talk about as low-value behavior, viewing everything as zero-sum and being hyper-competitive. It may have helped you in sports and in school but in your career, that competitive side doesn&#8217;t allow you to invest in relationships as much as you could that ultimately springboard your career.<\/p>\n<p>If you look at every single opportunity, you have the foster and build a relationship, build a team, you have opportunities for mentorship, for advisement. You&#8217;re going to find that some of your peers may move into different industries and there&#8217;s going to be overlap later in your career. Even doing The Art of Charm now for many years, there have been many times where we went in. We didn&#8217;t think very highly of that person or maybe they didn&#8217;t come across well and we wrote them off. All of a sudden, they&#8217;ve gone on to do tremendous things. Stop looking at your career as this hyper-competitive zero-sum game. It&#8217;s, &#8220;What&#8217;s in it for me,&#8221; and start looking at how you can add value to those around you and how you can invest in what we call five-minute favors.<\/p>\n<p>What minute favors you can do for your peers, for your mentors, for your boss, for those around you doesn&#8217;t mean stop all of your work, get your tasks done later but is it an email introduction to someone that you know? Is it offering emotional support to someone that could benefit from it? Do you have some knowledge to help someone overcome an obstacle in their life? Those three things, knowledge, real relationships and emotional support, are what we call social capital. If you take your social capital and you invest that social capital much as we do with financial capital.<\/p>\n<p>In other people, you&#8217;re going to build your social capital and grow a portfolio of relationships that can help you in every endeavor in your career. That was a tough lesson for me to learn in graduate school. I wasn&#8217;t investing in my relationships with my peers. My mentor started to doubt whether or not I was in the right place. It started this negative cycle in my life of self-doubt, self-criticism and imposter syndrome that I didn&#8217;t belong. I felt disconnected. Looking back on it, I didn&#8217;t invest in those peers, mentors, relationships around me. I put myself first and I was the one who suffered because of it.<\/p>\n<p>As we continue down this road with all this technological development, AJ had mentioned investing in your relationships. For young people, I don&#8217;t know if they completely understand what that means. That&#8217;s time and effort. When people deal with other folks, we&#8217;re getting to a place now where if that relationship is turbulent, rocky, there is any conflict, rather than working through it, which is investing in relationships time and effort. They&#8217;d rather avoid the relationship but unfortunately, with family and at work, you can&#8217;t duck and dodge. The relationship is working through the good times, the bad times and you build a bond through that, building a company and your relationships and your network. It&#8217;s only going to be as strong as the relationship develops and the investment that was put in them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>There&#8217;s a clear, direct line that you both have talked about between career growth and building your career and relationships. After I got my first job out of college, I never applied for a single job. I have had seven other jobs and they&#8217;ve all come from relationships from the first job that I got to the second job and vice versa and all around. Talk about a little bit the line because I saw this also weaving in your podcast between relationships and happiness.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When we started the podcast, we never even thought of happiness as a topic or something that we would be covering. As we went through interviewing experts on building and communication, we started to see this connection with happiness from the guests that we were interviewing coming up over again. With my research background and one of the researchers we have for the podcast, we started looking into, what are the real data behind happiness and relationships? There&#8217;s this famous study out of Harvard that followed people for almost 80 years of their life looking at career success, their happiness and ultimately what their life turned out to be.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a direct line between the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life. Ultimately, your happiness and your physical health. Feeling connected is important. I think many of us don&#8217;t understand the difference between acquaintance and friend and real connection. What&#8217;s sad and the data is now starting to show that in the &#8217;70s when they were interviewing people and saying, &#8220;How many close confidants do you have? How many people in your life can you trust with your deepest, darkest secrets or when you&#8217;re struggling that you can turn to?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On average, it was only fewer than two people. It&#8217;s about 1.75 in the &#8217;70s. It&#8217;s now less than one. Meaning we don&#8217;t feel connected. We have more Facebook followers than ever. We have more digital connections on LinkedIn but we don&#8217;t have close confidants and trustworthy relationships that we can lean on in those tough moments. Many of us going through the pandemic have felt that as well. Like, &#8220;I have all these friends that I can go out and grab a drink with or I could see about town,&#8221; but when push comes to shove, are you investing in that relationship, getting vulnerable, sharing and creating that opportunity for the deeper connection? We talk about this concept of giving value to others. That&#8217;s how we foster these deep connections. We define value as attention, acceptance and appreciation.<\/p>\n<p>Attention is listening. When we talk about communication, many of us think, &#8220;it&#8217;s the words I say,&#8221; or maybe you&#8217;ll think, &#8220;It&#8217;s my nonverbal communication. My body language.&#8221; Listening is an important part of your communication skills. Are you a person who listens to others or are you a person who waits for your opportunity to talk and share? Attention is the first key metric in building a deep relationship. Are you giving this person your full attention? The second is acceptance. Now acceptance is listening to understand where they&#8217;re coming from, what their perspective is even if you don&#8217;t agree. Even if you wouldn&#8217;t feel the same way in that situation. I&#8217;ll give you an example. We were hanging out in the winter of the pandemic here. In LA, everything was completely locked down.<\/p>\n<p>We had some people in our life that we thought were friends. We went to the beach with them and we&#8217;re sharing stories. They happen to have a good opportunity through the pandemic and things are going well for them. My fianc\u00e9 and I were opening up a little bit about ourselves and saying, &#8220;It was difficult. Much of our business is live in-person events so that was a struggle during the pandemic. My fianc\u00e9 traveled a lot for work that basically got shut down and we both felt a little trapped in LA.&#8221; We were honest and vulnerable. We knew that our acquaintances were listening but it didn&#8217;t seem like they were accepting what we were saying.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of months later in passing, we were chatting with them again. They&#8217;re like, &#8220;That was so awkward at the beach when you guys were talking about what you were going through.&#8221; I was like, they were hearing us but they weren&#8217;t accepting our point of view. They couldn&#8217;t understand. There was no empathy for what we were feeling and going through. It started to fray our relationship. We don&#8217;t feel as connected to them. This third piece is appreciating. We don&#8217;t spend enough time celebrating others and telling them what we like and enjoy about them and high-fiving them and elevating them. We sometimes get so focused on ourselves. With social media, it&#8217;s very easy to do that, to think about who you are, how you&#8217;re represented and what people think about you.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7521\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7521\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption3.jpg\" alt=\"KCM 19 | Art Of Charm\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption3.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption3-473x315.jpg 473w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7521\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Art of Charm: Stop looking at your career as this hyper-competitive game and start looking at how you can add value to those around you.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When we bring appreciation into the equation, we build and develop deep lifelong relationships that enrich both of our lives. Ultimately the science shows lead to happiness. That&#8217;s why we&#8217;re all here. That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re pursuing. That&#8217;s so exciting that now we understand. The secret sauce to this is investing again in those relationships whether it&#8217;s a career, social or romantic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I hope people are paying attention to everything that you said. I also hope that they&#8217;re accepting the truthfulness of it. It pains me to hear someone say that was awkward. The greatest things in the world, the greatest conversations are awkward conversations. Those are meaningful opportunities for growth are awkward situations. It&#8217;s unfortunate that people perceive that because it gets in the way. It&#8217;s a blocker. If you could share a little bit about your history with Meetup, I think our audience could be particularly motivated by it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the most important things in attracting opportunity rather than chasing opportunity is the mindset and how you install that to make things happen. Meetup allows you rather than chasing opportunities, chasing other people, chasing social groups, chasing cloud. It gives you the opportunity to build and center yourself in a place where people will come to you. You are the host.<\/p>\n<p>The benefits of Meetup go to those who are hosting. By building a Meetup group, putting it out there, brings people who are interested and the things that you were interested in. Perhaps your mission, whatever that may be and bring them to you. Then you can build the connection, invest in the relationships and educate them on what you have going on. We saw that as an opportunity to use Meetup to establish ourselves in the cities that we were in.<\/p>\n<p>When we first started this company, we were in New York. Rather than chasing people and trying to get them excited about what we were doing, hosting Meetup events gave people an opportunity who were interested in these social skills, the podcast, an opportunity to meet us, to get involved, to be part of our community. It worked so well that we planned it all out, how we were going to go about it when we went to the next largest city in America, Los Angeles, to establish ourselves. As we are now here, we have this network. We are building this community. We want you to be a part of it. Come join us.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Did LA start as a set of Meetup events?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yes, even New York. I&#8217;m from Detroit and Johnny&#8217;s from Pittsburgh. We met in DC and I dropped out of graduate school to start The Art of Charm and relocated to New York. When we were in New York, there was a lot of energy and emphasis around us, personally, building a social network. We didn&#8217;t know anyone. We were moving to this new city. There&#8217;s a lot to do in New York. We met a couple of people in our building.<\/p>\n<p>One of which ended up being an executive at Axe body spray. They were working on some content and they were like, &#8220;What you guys teach could be impactful.&#8221; We&#8217;re like, &#8220;Let&#8217;s do it,&#8221; and it turned into a business opportunity from a conversation in an elevator. We then started chasing all of these opportunities, as Johnny was saying like, &#8220;Where can we go next? What&#8217;s the next open bar? How do we find this?&#8221; We saw every conversation as an opportunity. We then met some people at SiriusXM. We got invited to be a guest on a show. We had an amazing impact on that show. They invited us to have our own show on SiriusXM with no radio experience because of the success of the podcast.<\/p>\n<p>We started to see that all of these conversations in passing that we don&#8217;t think about when you&#8217;re stuck in the elevator, you&#8217;re waiting on the corner for the light to change or you&#8217;re trying to hail a cab. All of these conversations provide an opportunity for you to meet that next person. You don&#8217;t know who you&#8217;re going to be meeting and what their network is but if you give them value, they&#8217;re going to open their network to you. As we started to build a little bit of momentum in New York, where like, &#8220;I think it&#8217;d be better for us as Johnny said, &#8216;Not to chase and go around town,&#8217; but let&#8217;s start inviting people into our lives and let&#8217;s build a community.&#8221; We started a Meetup group very early on in the company that was only around meeting and connecting with people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How far back?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This was 2009. In 2009, <a href=\"http:\/\/meetup.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Meetup.com<\/a> promoted our Meetup group and we got a great turnout. The first thing we did was we took a bunch of photos. We had the company logo painted on the wall. We took photos of that, we put it in the profile and the next Meetup event had more people attend. It was clear that people in New York were trying to meet and socialize and they also wanted to grow their network. As our Meetup events started to take off, we were like, &#8220;We&#8217;re meeting some people who are having some social anxiety. There are some introverts who are still coming out to the Meetup events. What if we teach a few lessons? We teach our conversation formula. We talk a little bit about the first impression.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Our Meetup group transformed from only bringing people together socially to our teaching. It ended up being lead gen for the business. We didn&#8217;t have much of a network in New York. We started attracting introverts, people struggling a bit with social anxiety or people who wanted to grow their communication and social skills, they turned into clients. After a terrible winter in New York of taking clients out, boot camps, struggling because venues were closed. No storms. We decided, &#8220;Why don&#8217;t we spend the winter in LA?&#8221; The goal was only six months. We&#8217;re like, &#8220;We got to move to LA. We got to get the ball rolling.&#8221; The first thing we did was we hopped on <a href=\"http:\/\/meetup.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Meetup.com<\/a>. The same exact format. All of a sudden, we had a bunch of people showing up in our living room in Hollywood, looking for exactly the same thing. We started to drum up business in LA.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The secret and sauce to improving your career is investing in relationships.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Johnny and I frankly fell in love with the weather. We decided not to move back to New York. Thankfully, SiriusXM accommodated us in LA. We use Meetup to leverage and grow The Art of Charm in another new city where we didn&#8217;t know anyone, to grow our social circle but also to grow our company. It was so remarkable because we knew the power of Meetup that it brings the right people together, that we were going to photography events. We were going to real estate investing events. It didn&#8217;t matter what the topic was. We knew that it was an opportunity for us to meet new people and if we&#8217;re meeting more people, we&#8217;re growing our network. The opportunities are going to come.<\/p>\n<p>Think about who was going to use that tool. People who want to get things moving, people who have goals, people who have missions, people who are going to use the tools that are around them to make these things happen. They&#8217;re going to be outgoing people. They&#8217;re going to be determined, people. You can&#8217;t find a more accommodating place to go than to other Meetup groups because that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re for. It&#8217;s designed to do that. It makes all of this so easy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>They&#8217;re going to be the influencers. To reach one influencer could be more valuable than reaching X number of potential people that sit around playing video games all day or whatever that non-influencers do.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Many of those hosts are super connectors. What we found in our experience, as hosts ourselves, many hosts go to other Meetup events or trying to learn the ins and outs, see what makes other hosts successful. On Meetup, you can see who is RSVP, what Meetup groups seem to have a lot of traction. We are getting a little bit of intel. We were meeting super connectors who are hosts of other events and all of a sudden, they were coming and speaking at ours and vice versa. We leveraged the platform to grow our personal and professional lives. That&#8217;s why we are so big on it. We record all of our clients. We love jamming out with you on the show to talk a little bit about the data and what you&#8217;re seeing behind the scenes and Meetup because we think it&#8217;s such a profound tool for those of us who are seeking better connections, better relationships in our life.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Clearly, Meetup has helped you as an entrepreneur in building the business. How do you specifically advise your clients in terms of taking advantage of Meetup? How is that also part of the practice?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the things we have is called the social sales funnel. I mentioned flipping the script rather than chasing opportunities, how you&#8217;re going to create opportunities and bring people towards you. This gives you an opportunity to talk to many people, to be the center of attention, to add value to multiple people at the same time. We tell our clients they&#8217;re going to need an event. One that runs all the time that you can always post to, that you could always promote. We always tell them to use Meetup as an opportunity to promote these events. They get people interested. This is the tool that you&#8217;re going to use. That&#8217;s where it lies with our clients and it&#8217;s worked. We give them a full-out strategy and how to use it to bring people and build those connections.<\/p>\n<p>I want to add, that&#8217;s remarkable. Wstarted using the platform many years ago. It was only in the big city. It was slowly rolling out in some smaller towns but it was mostly in big cities. We are recommending it and a lot of our clients are like, &#8220;That&#8217;s great for you guys in New York but there are no Meetup groups near me.&#8221; We would encourage them like, &#8220;Start one. Have your first Meetup event&#8221; We now have clients who will join our <a href=\"https:\/\/theartofcharm.com\/x-factor-accelerator\">X-Factor Accelerator<\/a> mentorship program. They&#8217;re like, &#8220;I live in the sticks. I don&#8217;t have as many social opportunities as I&#8217;d like. Everyone seems to know each other. It&#8217;s very cliquey. What can I do?&#8221; &#8220;What do you love?&#8221; &#8220;I love the outdoors. I love mountain biking or I love snowboarding.&#8221; &#8220;Start a Meetup group&#8221; &#8220;What do you mean? There are no Meetup groups in my area.&#8221; &#8220;Start one. You&#8217;ll be the first.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, these clients are all of a sudden, as Johnny said, they&#8217;re attracting opportunities. Instead of going out to the bar and asking everyone, &#8220;Do you snowboard?&#8221; Getting 100 noes, you can post on Meetup. You&#8221;re going to find that people within 20, 30, 50 miles are going to find that and they&#8217;re going to be excited that, &#8220;There&#8217;s a Meetup group in my area.&#8221; That&#8217;s how you can leverage it. If you&#8217;re reading and you&#8217;re not in a big city, we encourage our clients to be that first person. Drop that pin. Create the Meetup group.<\/p>\n<p>We talk about the science of being a great host. What we have to realize is that people have three general fears, new people, new places and new experiences. As a host, your job is to mitigate those three fears. Posting great photos, letting people know what the agenda is, what the experience is going to be like, making sure that the location is clear and they know where to park. Like in LA, when we first did our Meetup, we put specific directions where exactly to park because we knew that parking is challenging<\/p>\n<p><strong>Did people drove in LA? I thought no one drives in LA. People only walk everywhere.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That was our first mistake moving from New York. We thought we didn&#8217;t have to get a car and everyone laughed at us as they were driving around. Those little details, mitigating those natural fears that we all have, putting your face as the host, putting photos of other people attending your event. Now they see,&#8221;It&#8217;s not such a scary location. Look at all these people having fun. I&#8217;m down for these new experiences. I have a full agenda. I know what to expect. I&#8217;m super excited to show up.&#8221; It is an opportunity to connect to any location on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>I think entrepreneurs need to look at the mission that they have at hand. They&#8217;re going to see where they&#8217;re wasting too much time. Where Meetup could speed things up when bringing the right people together and people should have multiple missions. You should have a mission in your professional life. You should also have a mission in your private life and hobbies or whatnot. You should have your romantic mission if they&#8217;re going to be there building a family for yourself or whatnot. These three missions put you in a position of striving for something better, to create something. When you&#8217;re creating, you&#8217;re going to need tools to help you to do that. This is when you&#8217;re going to see where Meetup can be impactful.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7522\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7522\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption4.jpg\" alt=\"KCM 19 | Art Of Charm\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption4.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/19KCMCaption4-473x315.jpg 473w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7522\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Art of Charm: If you&#8217;re meeting more people, you&#8217;re growing your network and finding new opportunities.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;m awestruck by the suggestions, by the impact that Meetup has had on each of you in so many others. I&#8217;m so appreciative of the partnership. The reason for me to have success, to be clear, is because of people like you. It&#8217;s not because of the company. It&#8217;s because of leaders and people like you who care so much about making the world a better place and helping to grow on a personal level, helping others to grow on a personal level as well. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Typically, I have all these rapid-fire questions that I&#8217;ll ask at the end but for the first time ever in Keep Connected, we&#8217;re only going to ask one question at the end instead of rapid-fire. You both have so much impact ahead of you. I&#8217;m not going to say career because career is overrated. The impact is what it&#8217;s about. What does each of you most want to be remembered by?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>More than anything, I want it to be a lust for life because with that, how you show up affects other people and it starts with you. If you can show up excited, full of energy and positivity, you&#8217;re going to have that impact on other people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The impact of having a lust for life, what that has on other people and what that has on yourself, it&#8217;s like the ultimate impact towards a domino effect for all these other things. AJ, how about you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have this little quote on my Facebook profile, legacy is greater than currency. Now, having worked with tens of thousands of clients all over the world, some traveling out to work with us, some now virtually. The best compliment that I ever receive is how much these communication skills and mindsets impact others, quality of life and their relationships. If you were to come to visit the headquarters in LA, you&#8217;d see the wedding invitations on the refrigerator from the clients we&#8217;ve worked with.<\/p>\n<p>Understanding that maybe I didn&#8217;t have the greatest role models or the greatest relationship in my family growing up but to understand that leveraging and learning these communication skills, changing my mindset around relationship building and the impact that it has on my life. Then helping others unlock it so they can break through their social anxiety. They can overcome their imposter syndrome. They can start being real and have those deeper connections in their life is what gets me up in the morning. That&#8217;s what fires me up far more than downloads or currency. We have now built this amazing tribe of individuals who are working on the same thing, who are having an impact in their own lives that reflects back on us, which is so thrilling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What I love is people talk about karma as something that&#8217;s lucky or something like that. In reality, it&#8217;s doing good things. It doesn&#8217;t result in karma, which results in somehow good things happening to you. It&#8217;s doing good things, builds relationships and it creates an environment where inevitably wonderful things and personal growth happens for you as well. I could see it from talking to the two of you and the impact that you have. I wanted to thank you on Meetup&#8217;s behalf, on my behalf, on the world&#8217;s behalf, on your client&#8217;s behalf. I hope that you continue to have the impact that you do. Thank you so much for being on the show.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thank you for having us.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, David.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><strong>There was a lot in this episode. There are so many takeaways. I&#8217;ll list 3 or 4 of the ones that resonated. In the world of Zoom and email that we live in, hearing their advice is helpful. Talking and thinking about what your next mission is when your mission is done and always being on a mission and being cognizant is the best way to live. It&#8217;s very powerful. Understanding the impact of relationships on your personal happiness. Finally, the myriad ways in which they&#8217;ve used Meetup professionally and personally. They help other people use Meetup. I think I want to be the CEO of that company. If you enjoyed our episode and you&#8217;re not a subscriber then subscribe or leave a review on <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/keep-connected-with-meetup-ceo-david-siegel\/id1545712240\"><strong>Apple Podcasts<\/strong><\/a><strong>, please. Remember, let&#8217;s keep connected because life is better together.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3>Important Links:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/theartofcharm.com\/podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Art of Charm<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/davidepstein.com\/the-range\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Range<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/theartofcharm.com\/x-factor-accelerator\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">X-Factor Accelerator<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/keep-connected-with-meetup-ceo-david-siegel\/id1545712240\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a> &#8211; Keep Connected Podcast<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>About AJ Harbinger<\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-7517\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/AJ-Harbinger-150x150.jpeg\" alt=\"KCM 19 | Art Of Charm\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/AJ-Harbinger-150x150.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/AJ-Harbinger.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/>AJ Harbinger is one of the world&#8217;s top relationship development experts. His company, The Art of Charm, is a leading training facility for top performers that want to overcome social anxiety, develop social capital and build relationships of the highest quality.<\/p>\n<p>Raised by a single father, AJ felt a strong desire to learn about relationships and the elements that make them successful. However, this interest went largely untapped for many years. Following the path set out for him by his family, AJ studied biology in college and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology at the University of Michigan. It was at this time that he began to feel immense pressure from the cancer lab he worked in and began to explore other outlets for expression. It was at this point that The Art of Charm Podcast was born.<\/p>\n<p>The Art of Charm Podcast would go on to become one of the largest and most successful lifestyle podcasts in the world. What started out as two graduate students conversing and laughing in a basement in Ann Arbor has turned into a top rated podcast and highly sought after coaching business. After seeing an opportunity to grow The Art of Charm, AJ made the difficult decision to leave the laboratory and graduate school and take a risky leap into the world of entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n<p>Today, AJ and his co-founders teach people from all over the world how to create, develop, and maintain top business and personal relationships. It is often said that the best learning can be found in teaching a subject &#8211; for AJ, it was in coaching others towards success, that he was able to rekindle his own confidence and passion. The love of science and the desire to understand relationships at an elemental level had stopped being separate paths and interests for AJ and now merged into a single focus.<\/p>\n<p>Men have traveled from over 50 countries to attend Bootcamp. Each week at their headquarters in Los Angeles these men discover how to be the best version of themselves.? AJ&#8217;s mantra is &#8220;your network is your net worth&#8221; &#8211; and this value is what he develops in each of his students.<\/p>\n<h3>About Johnny Dzubak<\/h3>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-7518\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Johnny-Dzubak-150x150.jpeg\" alt=\"KCM 19 | Art Of Charm\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Johnny-Dzubak-150x150.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Johnny-Dzubak-315x315.jpeg 315w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Johnny-Dzubak.jpeg 370w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/>After a decade of experience in the music industry, I decided to venture to NYC and start a coaching company with AJ Harbinger called The Art of Charm.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly 15 years in and we have interviewed the top experts in their fields, such athletes, as Kobe Bryant, and David Goggins to experts in productivity, emotional intelligence, and leadership. such as Kevin Kruse, Adam Grant, and Charles Duhigg.<\/p>\n<p>Our in-person and online training programs have helped CEO&#8217;s, CFO&#8217;s, engineers, programmers, law and medical fields gain an edge in their careers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"cu-task-custom-fields__row ng-tns-c344-74 ng-trigger ng-trigger-loadingEnter ng-star-inserted\">\n<div class=\"cu-task-custom-fields__row-body ng-tns-c344-74\">\n<div class=\"cu-custom-field__static ng-star-inserted\"><span class=\"cu-custom-fields__single-line-text\">Join the Meetup Community today:?<a class=\"cu-linkify-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/category\/keep-connected-podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/category\/keep-connected-podcast\/<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-excerpt\"><p>The Art of Charm Podcast hosts AJ Harbinger and Johnny Dzubak talk about improving your social skills to make new friends and find new opportunities.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":7507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Episode 19: Bringing The Art Of Charm To Friendships With AJ Harbinger And Johnny Dzubak<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Art of Charm Podcast hosts AJ Harbinger and Johnny Dzubak talk about improving your social skills to make new friends and find new opportunities.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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