Hey there you sexy thing you!!! How has your week been?! Mine was F-ing AMAZING!!!
As I speak with a lot of people who are into “this stuff” I get to hear about their successes…and their “failures” (There is no such thing as failure, take what u can get out of it and make it your success!) And something that I get a lot is that people feel as if they hold an interview when they are talking to others and no real input and feedback to what they are saying…it’s as if the people they speak with are just their because they are polite and don’t walk off because of that but aren’t engaged in the conversation.
So today I would like to talk a little about “INVESTMENT”.
Like Adam Lyons’ explanation, and this is the short version “A Ferrari which you bought from money you have worked your entire life for is more valuable than the exact same Ferrari which you won in the Lottery…even if the one you bought is a 2nd hand and has scratches on it”
So how can we translate this into something we can benefit from?
When YOU invest into a conversation, like preparing it, reading about how to hold a conversation, taking action and approaching a person, etc you are INVESTING into the conversation! This basically means that this conversation has “value” to you because you put effort into it. Now the person who you are talking to didn’t do anything for the conversation so therefore holds NO value to the interaction. Now if the conversation ends, for some reason, who do you think will feel the loss more…it’s the person who put more effort in it…YOU! So in order to make the conversation valuable to the other person as well you would like them to invest into it, because then it becomes more valuable to them…the bigger the investment…the bigger the value. And to make it even better and more specific…when the conversation becomes more valuable, YOU will become more valuable because that person invested into the conversation with YOU! (Do you see where I’m going with this?)
How do you make someone invest into the conversation with you:
You can do this by asking the right questions for an example, like, if you ask a girl “So how old are you?” she would answer her age…and that’s that! A bigger investment from your side and a smaller one from hers.
Now if you would ask a question where she would have to do a little more work before answering it, the investment would be a little bit bigger! So a more intelligent question to create more investment would be, “How old were you when you 1st realized you wanted to become a … “ (whatever it is she does for work). You notice that to answer this question she has to dig a little bit into her memory before she finds the answer to your question, she has to “work” for it…for you! And so the investment from her side is a bit more than when she has to answer a “yes or no question”.
In order for her to actually FEEL committed to the conversation by having invested a lot into it, you would have to make her invest quite a bit more than just an answer or two logically. To guide the conversation there where you want it to go would take a bit of “calibration skills” as you would have to feel where it is going. Like I would start out a bit shallow, throwing out a couple of different “lines” to find out what interests her and from there on work my way in deeper and deeper until I’m at the point where I can ask really deep questions where she, by answering them, would make huge investments.
Questions for the beginning of a conversation could be:
“You look stylish, when did you 1st find out that you were interested into fashion?”
“Ah, you are wearing matching ear rings! you must have been good at the memory game when you were younger?” she answers and you take it further:
“what other games did you like to play back then…do you remember THIS game?! Yeah it was so much fun! (here you are creating rapport).
“ What things did you want to be when you grew up?”
“What cartoon character do you resemble? and why?”
“You look like a bad girl! Were you like a “good kid” when you were younger though?, would your parrents agree?”
These are pretty simple questions where the investment from her side is not that big but here it allows you to find out who she is a little bit and where to take it further on in the conversation. Now further on in the conversation when you are actually having the chance to take things a bit deeper, come up with more difficult and deeper questions like:
“What was your most memorable childhood experience and how has it impacted your outlook on life?”
“Have you ever found that talking to a stranger can really make you feel relieved in some way as you can say things, to me for an example, that you couldn’t say to one of your closer friends as you might be afraid they would hold it against you where I wouldn’t” (Basically here you are saying, tell me your personal stuff!) then you take it further by asking:
“What’s something you could tell me but couldn’t tell one of your close friends?”
As you see the last 2 questions would take a little more “thinking/investing” from her part especially a question like the last one, which can lead to you guys really growing closer to each other as sharing personal and private stuff like this creates a bond!
So I suggest that now, you start writing down a couple of questions for yourself, a couple easy ones, a couple medium ones and a couple that go really deep so that when you are in an actual conversation…it doesn’t die because YOU don’t know anything intriguing and interesting to ask! Don’t blame it on “her being boring” when the conversation ran dead…take full responsibility here for your own actions! You want to be the “Socially Intelligent” one…then YOU should be held responsible for having an interesting conversation or not.
Now go and create some interesting things to ask so the lady has an amazing time with you by actually having a superb conversation with an incredibly interesting guy she wouldn’t DARE flake on afterwards because…lets be real…don’t you think all your flakes might have to do with you guys not having had an interesting time enough…with YOU not being able to really connect and be more interesting than any other guy out there?! Hey, I’m just saying 
Now go to work!
Rick Dutch.