SOLO | Make Money by Building Better Friendships

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But also on my other show which is called Travis Makes Friends. I find that these things

basically are very linked to people that you hang out with and the amount of money that you can

make. It's not just about the money that you make. It's about the type of life that you want to live.

And I wanted to throw it back. Go back in time for this episode and learn a little bit about

friendship from one of the world's greatest thinkers. Aristotle himself turns out people have

been talking about relationships and friendship and loneliness for quite some time now. And you know,

it sort of just gives me more of that idea that there's not the new under the sun, that the things

that I'm thinking about, the things that I'm currently studying and reading about and enamored by.

It's just really cool to think about a couple thousand years ago that someone like Aristotle

was also spending time thinking about these same exact things. What makes a good life? What brings

meaning into your life? What are friendships? How valuable are they? How do you go about creating

better friendships? And what does that mean for the quality of your life? So today we're talking about

the three types of friends that Aristotle thinks that you can have. And basically how do we make

these types of friends? Are they useful? Are they helpful? Or should you have all of them?

Should you have none of them? Should you only have one of them? That's what we're going to talk about

on today's episode. If you're just joining us for this episode of the show, just know that we have

a couple other episodes that went out today. One of them is a co-hosted show with my producer Eric,

a little bit more a little bit more fun, conversational. We talk about money news, things that are happening

in society, brings up a bunch of clips to talk about and react to. And then we have an interview

that went out today as well, usually with an inspiring entrepreneur. We talk a lot about their

stories and dive deep into how they built the amazing companies that they've built. And then on

these episodes, these are my solo shows where it's just me, you, and the Mike. And we talk a lot

about some of the stuff that I've learned over the years of doing my shows and all the research that

I've done for my shows, which is sort of one of the abstract and salary benefits of doing my podcast

over the years that I've found is that the podcast has become my number one accountability partner,

not only for making new connections in life and having conversations with other cool people that

I just would not have any reason to have a conversation with. Like earlier today, I talked to a guy

who exited his last pest control company for like a half a billion dollars. It's like I wouldn't

have any reason to talk to that guy other than the fact that I have a podcast about business and

there's stuff to talk about. So it helps me stay accountable to building new connections. But it

also definitely makes me accountable to continuing to continuing to learn new things myself because I

feel that for those of you who are taking the time to listen to this show, I feel a deep sense of

gratitude for those of you who take the time to do this. And so it's sort of my my thought that I owe

you the best possible information that I can provide to you, which then in turn makes me continue

to do deeper research into all the topics that we talk about here on this show or on my other show.

So one of those things is friendship and I've done a pretty pretty big deep dive into this world

in the last year or two. And this was one of the more fascinating things that I come across.

Mainly just because I love the idea of just ancient wisdom that this is stuff that's existed

for a long time and that that there are probably solutions to the problems that we're experiencing

societally now that somebody thought about a long time ago. And this is one of those things. So

Aristotle identified three types of friendship, three different three different types of

friendship that are all based in different forms of commonality. So the first one is friendships

of utility. These are based on mutual benefit. People are connected because they got something useful

from each other such as business partners or colleagues, things like that. But these friendships

also tend to dissolve when the utility or shared goal ceases to exist. Then we have friendships of

pleasure, which are based on shared interest and enjoyable experiences such as sports,

teammates, drinking buddies, things like that. Common and youth, they are fleeting because

they depend on pleasure and people's pleasures and tastes change as they get older, which we've

talked about on the show a couple of times, which is why I think it's a little bit more difficult

to make that initial connection of friendship. The older that you get, like you're in your 30s,

your 40s, your 50s, a little bit more difficult to do that because you're not out just like going

to random bars with a bunch of people you just met last week when you're 48 years old because you

frankly just have more self-awareness. You have more self-respect. You know what you like. You know

what you don't like and it's easier to prioritize the people that you're connecting with based on

the things that you already know about yourself. So these ones tend to fade with time a little bit.

And then lastly, we have friendships of virtue or friendships for goodness. This is considered

perfect or true friendship from Aristotle's point of view. It exists between good people who are

similar in virtue, aiming to help each other grow and wishing for the others good for their own

sake. They're enduring rare and they take time to develop. So friendships of utility, friendships of

pleasure, friendships of virtue. So the initial danger that I thought about when I was doing some

research on this topic is that if you never take the time to try to point out which friendships

in your life fall under these types of categories, then you can be treating a friendship of pleasure

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You only gain use from each other and don't ever move into maybe a friendship of virtue when

you could actually have that type of friendship with this person. So if you don't take the time to

really sit down and view like look at some of the relationships that you have in your life. Look

at some of the friendships that you have in your life and start asking yourself these questions.

This is a friendship of utility. This is a friendship of pleasure. This is a friendship of virtue.

Obviously the goal is to really define what that friendship of virtue means for you.

What is considered? What are the common virtues, the common values that I need to have with

somebody on order for them to be in this category? It is not just a matter of how much time you've

known them. It is more a matter of the values that you end up creating, which was difficult for me

when I came out of the religious group that I was raised in because there were just a lot of

my friends who we no longer shared this piece with. It was a disruption of values and it forced

me into a bunch of different friend groups because to be frank, it wasn't necessarily me making

those decisions. It was typically the other person making those decisions because I no longer

aligned with them. In fact, I've had multiple Christian friends of mine, especially people that

I grew up with who basically just flat out told me that they would not be willing to do business

in any type of a meaningful way because I don't share those values anymore. I understand where

they're coming from. I get it. My personal view on it is that I do not care whether you're

religious, you're not religious, you're atheist, you're not atheist, you're agnostic, you follow the

gods of the Vikings and pray to Odin and sacrifice your lamb to Thor when you're going on a cruise

ship to have steady seas. None of that stuff really matters to me because I think that I've been around

the block enough times to know that those types of dogmatic belief systems do not mean that a person

is a good or bad person. I have met lots and lots and lots of people who would fall in each one

of these categories and there are several of those people who I would define as good, virtuous,

high values-based people who exist inside of Christianity, who exist inside of Islam, who exist

inside of atheism, and then I would also define a lot of people who are really crappy, terrible people

in my point of view anyway. They just treat others around them with disrespect and contempt and hate

in this sort of like ferrisacal, I'm better than you type of mentality. And those people exist

from atheism to Christianity to all these other things anyway. So that's why I like the idea

of friendships of virtue because it's much more based on common values than just shared belief

systems or shared bucket proximity, right? Like you are Republican, therefore we will get along

because I am also Republican or you are Democrat, therefore we will get along because I am also

Democrat. Like as soon as you start putting people into buckets and then creating your friendships

around these buckets, that's when I think things get dangerous and it's much better calling to

look at your friendships from a virtue perspective. Do we agree on these certain things? Are you the

type of person who will do X in this type of a situation? So I really like the friendships of virtue

angle that Aristotle brings up here because it is a more reliable and predictable way I think

to build your friend groups. Now it's going to take a little bit more work, right? You can't

outs the problem with doing the bucket thing that I talked about earlier is you're basically

outsourcing the work of deciding whether or not this is a good person to keep in your life to

some other group. You're giving the authority to some other system or some other group of people

to say whether or not this person deserves to be in your life. And I think that you might be making

multiple mistakes in that regard. Meaning that somebody who does a bunch of bad and

various evil terrible things, you might just go like, well, you're coming up with excuses for

them because they just happen to have a bad day and I don't want to air out their dirty laundry

or call them out because that would be a bad experience. And then that's how my producer has

an entire show called preacher boy's podcast where he exposes abuse within the fundamentalist group

that we grew up in because there's so many people in that world who, although their personal

values would say that abusing this child is bad and evil and sinful. They find excuses to just

excuse their behavior. They sweep it under the rug. They don't tell anybody bad because they don't

want to hinder the main mission that they're working on. And then ultimately build themselves a

circle of people who say that they're one thing. And then behind closed doors are a completely

different version of themselves. And to me, that's the worst type of person. So be careful not to

outsource your friendship selection to a group of people or to a bucket of society. You're going

to need to do the work to decide whether or not these people are people that you should allow

into your life. So the question of is it okay to have friends in all of these areas? The answer is

yes. When I first was reading through this was like, oh, I don't want friendships of pleasure. That

sounds like a really fickle friendship based on not a lot of real substance. And I should

probably avoid those types of friends. But now that I've matured in my perspective on this, I believe

that all three of these are useful and helpful for different times and different seasons.

As long as you know that this person is going to be in this friendship of pleasure world,

like this person is not necessarily somebody that I would want my kids looking up to as a role

model. But also I know those things about them. So I can distance myself from in those perspectives.

However, when we go hang out and whatever, play pickleball, we have a great time. Or when we go

get some beers, we have a great time and we have cool conversations and you know, bring some

levity to my life or you know, this person brings the party with them. So I'm going to invite them

to this party. But I'm probably not going to bring them into my intimate circle of trust.

You know what I mean? So as long as you have the ability to categorize these people, I think

they're going to be totally fine. And then you know, there's there's reasons to have people

at each one of these levels, even friendships of utility. Again, it makes it it's sort of like

it sounds negative friendship of utility makes it sound like you're using each other. When I mean

in reality, you basically are using each other. But again, if you only have friendships of utility,

then you might find that when you do something like switch your career path out of nowhere and

that person can no longer benefit from you because you no longer hold this position of high esteem

inside of this industry, they're probably just going to drop you like a bad habit. And you are

probably going to drop them like a bad habit to some extent. And I realized that during the last

company that I was building because as soon as I sold it and I was done with it, there were a

bunch of people who would normally just reply to whatever text I sent them. And then all of a

sudden, they were like impossible to get a hold of. And I was like, what's going on? It's like,

oh, I see, they no longer see utility in this relationship. So they're just going to drop it

and leave it to the wayside. And it told me where they see me in their friendship hierarchy,

which was also helpful for me when navigating my own interpersonal relationships. And then

it also taught me how important the friendships of virtue were in my life that the people who

were just like, these are like, these are just my people. These are, these guys feel like brothers to

me. It does not matter what life throws my way or life throws their way. It doesn't matter if we

disagree on this thing or agree on this thing. If it's three o'clock in the morning and I'm in

another state and my wife needs help doing this thing or this random crazy black swan situation

or event happens, I know that I can call one of these people and they will answer the phone and

they will be there and they will help regardless. So it taught me to value my friendships of virtue

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Do that that it's okay to have these friendships of pleasure where we're out at this corporate

event and this group of guys just goes and hangs out all the time and we have fun together like

okay well that's that category and then these friendships are people who we are actively helping

each other out in the business world and I can rely on those friends for this type of a thing.

So it's not to say that any one of these are bad or good. It's just to say that if you don't have

the ability to recognize where people fit within these categories then you might be disappointed

in people in the long term because when I first started the show was called Build Your Network

then we moved into Travis Mixed Friends and it was because I looked at basically the activity

of networking basically should be similar to the activity of making friends but then what happened

in my mind was that I started conflating my professional network with my personal friendships

and they don't always have crossover and that's okay. That was the initial thing that I struggled

with was that I thought it wasn't okay like if somebody didn't immediately respond to a text or an

email or something or I was asking for something or a favor or I was trying to make an introduction

or whatever I just looked at it as like oh well they're not a real friend and screw them and

you know what I mean like they you don't deserve my time anyway and you start getting real

egocentric really quickly so allowing yourself just to exist within the these different categories

and realize that there's different friends for different times and different seasons and that

this might be a friend of mine but maybe only inside of the professional network context where it's

like we're gonna do business together then we can reach out and that but that does not devalue

that relationship in my mind anymore it just tells me which category it's in and how to treat

that relationship so understand that there's going to be people who who maybe maybe maybe you

got to know them through a friendship of pleasure and then they became a friendship of utility because

you had a common point of having fun at this event and then you started trusting them a lot more

and then you had business to share and you started doing more business together therefore you kept

taking out that person and then that person could become a friendship of virtue so obviously like

the most important of all of these is the friendships of virtue these are just the true meaning of

friendship that exists to for a couple of people who are just similar in their virtue and their

values and they're aiming to help each other grow and ultimately conspiring for each other's good

and that's why I'm a big proponent of the idea of always trying to give more value to the world

around you than you take away from them because it's never a bad scenario to have a bunch of great

people out there who are conspiring for your good who actually genuinely want to see you succeed

for the sake of you being successful not because they can ride your coattails not because they can

use you for some other backdoor business deal not because they can exploit your relationship or

friendship now just simply because they want to see you do well and the more I've looked at that

the more I've realized how difficult it is to find those types of friendships and those types of

people because a lot of people don't want you to be successful I'll take that back a lot of

people want you to be successful just not more successful than they are and the more you are

that type of person who only wants people to be successful as long as they're not more successful

than you are the more you will attract more of those types of people into your life which is why

again I think it's just a much better strategy to just be kind to everybody and try to always add

as much value as you can and just genuinely try to conspire for the good and success of all the

people around you even if you're a little bit jealous of them you know that that's that's one

thing that I think is a it introduces a little bit of complexity where you see somebody who is

taking off in a field or an industry that you want to be well known or well recognized in and

you've been working really hard to achieve this goal and then you saw someone else come in and

achieve that goal much faster than you did and your immediate reaction is to sort of start getting

these feelings of envy or jealousy so I've had to actually do almost almost like a meditation

practice in those scenarios where I try to imagine somebody in my life who I genuinely have nothing

but feelings of of happiness for when they achieve something amazing in their life I try to

imagine that relationship in that person and then I literally in my mind overlay that person

with this other person that I'm feeling jealous of and that I'm finding myself almost rooting

against because it's like it's evidence that I'm not doing as well as I should be doing or that

as well as I think I should be doing anyway so my initial reaction was to be like I hope that

they don't do well and obviously that's not a healthy thing to have in your it's not a good

energy to take into your life and there's a great line in the alchemist that says something like

anyone who interferes with the personal legend of another thing will never find their own meaning

that if you spend a lot of your time worried about dragging down other people you will never put

yourself in a position to get the things that you want out of life it's like you might pat yourself

on the back to be like ha ha they weren't as good as everybody else thought they were ha but

what did that do for you like didn't you you won I guess like you won what exactly it didn't

improve your life at all it didn't improve your situation at all it just made you feel better

about your situation because now their situation is objectively measurably worse and it's like

being happy about that that is some negative bullshit energy to allow into your life so

if you find yourself feeling like that try to do that little meditative practice that I talked about

where you just imagine somebody who you genuinely only want good things for and then try to overlay

those feelings on this other person who you might be naturally jealous of or envious of that's

been helpful for me so I know we're kind of all over the place on this episode but I wanted to

to make sure that we talked about this because I think it's really important and I love hearing

from ancient wisdom about things about problems that were currently experiencing in friendship

and loneliness is definitely one of those things so three types of friendship from Aristotle's

perspective friendships of utility friendships of pleasure and friendships of virtue you can have

relationships that have been flow that go in and out of multiple multiple these categories

to make sure you have a pulse on where people are in your life and how to treat those relationships

and then really really really try to invest more time more energy more money more attention into

these friendships of virtue because these are going to be the things that will last for the rest of

your life and help you to live a better version of your life as well so that's it for this episode

of the show thanks for tuning in we'll catch you guys on the next one peace

season is over learn more at duet.com