Nick Gray: How To Increase Your IRL-Surface Area

In this episode of the Become More Compelling podcast, I brought back Nick Gray (@nickgraynews), author of ​The 2-Hour Cocktail Party​.

You’ll hear us cover a lot, including why in-person connection still matters, and what it actually takes to build strong friendships as an adult.

We talk about the role of humor in work conversations. We get into why having a personal website isn’t optional if you want to control your online and AI-based reputation.

We talk about how Nick met his wife, how saying yes changed his life, and how the friendship recession is affecting almost everyone (even if they don’t realize it). We also get into AI tools and book related stuff. Enjoy!
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Links:
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Nick Gray's PersonalWebsite.org and PersonalWebsites.net

Nick Gray's Patron View donor database

Nick Gray's Website and Blog

The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray

Patron View Patron Leaderboards

Nick's Friendship Recession site

Timestamps:

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00:00 Nick's back!
07:07 Saying Yes to Opportunities
10:25 What Nick Gave Up to Find Real Love
14:17 Why Making Friends Feels Harder Than Ever
16:09 Using Humor to Build Connection
18:55 When Self-Deprecation Backfires
23:19 Behind the Curtain of a Successful Book Launch
29:11 Studio Setup and Getting a Podcast Off the Ground
30:29 Friends Who Came Through in a Big Way
32:09 Planning the Timing of a Book Launch
33:09 Getting Found: SEO for Authors
36:16 What You Want to Leave Behind
37:10 How a Book Lets You Be Everywhere at Once
39:13 Helping Readers Take Action
39:48 Why Everyone Needs a Personal Website
41:56 Building a Digital Home People Can Trust
44:21 Controlling How People Perceive You Online
49:24 AI Tools That Actually Make Life Easier
53:17 How AI Will Change the Way We Create
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Transcript:

Jeff Callahan (00:01)
Hey, and welcome to another episode of Become More Compelling, my podcast where I talk to cool people like Nick, ⁓ which I'm excited to say, Nick, you are the first returning guest on Become More Compelling. So ⁓ I don't have a medal or anything for you, but maybe like a webcam high five.

Nick Gray  (00:21)
Webcam high five. This is an honor. This is a true honor.

Jeff Callahan (00:24)
Yeah.

And so, Nick, for people who who don't know, the last time we talked, we talked a lot about your book, The 2 Hour Cocktail Party. Amazing book. I've been recommending it to clients. Clients have been having parties based on your book. And so I really loved our conversation last time. And I'm excited to bring you on today. And we're going to get into some really cool stuff. We were just talking off offline and I told I told you like, hey, let's

Let's hold it, let's hit record and actually talk about it. the first thing I'd like to cover, ⁓ well, number one, congratulations on getting married. That's huge. ⁓

Nick Gray  (01:03)
Thank you. Thank

you so much. Big, big win. Big life change for me.

Jeff Callahan (01:06)
Huge, huge, huge. I've been married now, I guess, gosh, after a little bit, it starts to get little fuzzy. I've been married for 11 years now, I'm working on year 12. And it doesn't feel like it, man. Like I still feel pretty young, I'm not even 40 yet. But one of the things that really stuck out at me is how you met your wife. And if you want,

Nick Gray  (01:17)
Congratulations on 11, almost 12 years.

Jeff Callahan (01:37)
You can take it away from there and we'll kind of layer in some of some of the the topics that we want to talk about today. Sound good?

Nick Gray  (01:44)
Yeah, it sounds good. I met my wife the old fashioned way. I met her in real life out at the pool. We have a big ⁓ public pool here in Austin, Texas called Barton Springs Pool and

I saw her sitting up on the hill reading a book and I went up and I chatted with her. Now, this idea to me sounds crazy now. Like, I know that I did it, but it sounds very wild. And I think that there's a version of me that would have heard that and said, no, that's crazy. How could you ever do that? Like to just go talk to somebody random, but by putting in the reps and I think by

making that IRL surface area, making me someone who just was comfortable talking to strangers. Through years of doing that, this became a natural thing that as soon as I saw her, boom, I went and I had to go speak to her. So I'd love to chat with you about that because you were telling me something in your new book. Can you say about that idea?

Jeff Callahan (02:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

I can. So ⁓ I think most of my audience probably already knows, but if you don't, I'm writing a book. It's called Confidence Maxxing. will be back out early next year. And one of the chapters ⁓ in which Nick makes an appearance, it's chapter six, where we talk about, well, I talk about, and I use Nick as an example of what I call IRL-Maxxing. It's really similar in the same universe as IRL surface area, where the more

the more often you are just out and about experiencing life, doing things, you open yourself up to potentially meet and like in your case, Nick, like you met your future spouse. on a scale of meeting people that have an impact on your life, like that's it. Like it's a scale up to that point. Like that's the 10 out of 10, right? ⁓ And so, you know, if you would like,

Nick Gray  (03:37)
Yeah, that's the biggest one.

Jeff Callahan (03:41)
talk a little bit about, ⁓ you know, just like your background, you had museum hack and you had you had, ⁓ you know, 10, 15 years of I don't know if it came naturally to you or not, but sort of ingraining in yourself the the notion of, hey, I talk to people, it's what I do. And that and I love I just love it so much because it prepared you for that moment, which was the most important conversation that you would ever start.

Nick Gray  (04:02)
Yeah.

Hmm.

I never thought about it like that, but you're so right, dude. You're so right.

Jeff Callahan (04:13)
Which is wild.

So did the notion of ⁓ IRL surface area, I get out, I talk to people to what I do, did that hit you as a notion at some point or was it just kind of a ⁓ gradual sort of layering of all the different stuff you've done over the last decade plus?

Nick Gray  (04:39)
Look, here's the reality. The reality is that I did not do well on dating apps and I knew that for me as a guy, my best bet was to meet a woman that I would fall in love with who became my wife, not on the dating apps.

In order to do that, I needed to get out into the world and I set out a goal for myself, which was to try to say yes to every single thing that I was invited to or opportunity. If I read about a yoga class in the park, like I was going to it. If I got invited to something that wasn't going to meet my goals and my goal was after I came back from this blind date that I did in Japan, that was real famous online.

Jeff Callahan (05:23)
Yeah,

very famous.

Nick Gray  (05:26)
I came home from that experience and I said, I am ready to find my person. I'm ready to get serious about dating and I'm just going to put myself in as many of those situations as I can to just say yes and to go out. And I tell you what, it wasn't easy. In fact, a very good friend of mine invited me on an awesome vacation. There was a great deal that he found to go on a really cool cruise. I love cruises by the way. And

I looked at and I said, you know what, my goal right now is to really meet someone and I'm not going to meet.

someone that I want to marry and settle down with here in Texas on this cruise over in Europe. So I had to turn down that cruise because it didn't line up with my goals. Anyhow, I think your question was around the SID of like, was I always like that? Did I train for this? I think it was, you know, it was a long time of me hosting events, getting comfortable, ⁓ meeting a lot of people that in that moment gave me the confidence to go speak to her.

Jeff Callahan (06:29)
Yeah. And you, you, you break up a really good point, which all people don't talk about, which is the things that you had to say no to or give up because it wasn't part of your call it near term plan. Like the near term plan probably it may not have been like, I want to get married. It's like, no, I want to meet someone really cool that I want to have a relationship with. And that's near term and everything else followed from that. But ⁓ a lot of times,

a resistance point that is understandable is thinking like, ⁓ I have to I have to go out and be a man about town or a woman about town, you know, for the rest of my life. It's like, well, your life really operates in seasons. You know, you might have a season where you work really hard. Like this year was me writing this book that I both now love and hate, as I'm sure you can you can relate. It was funny. I was editing it last night doing some tasks for my editor. My wife gets up behind me. She's like.

Nick Gray  (07:17)
Yes, my gosh.

Jeff Callahan (07:26)
You know, you think you're sick of your book now. Just wait until you get to read the whole thing for the audiobook. And I'm like, oh, damn it. It was just like I died right there in the chair. But we have different seasons in our life. And for you, the season was like, hey, you know, I'm going to say no to some stuff because this is what I want. So were there any other things that you said no to? Or was that the big thing like the cruise? like like what trade offs did you had? Did you have to make to to to make this happen?

Nick Gray  (07:32)
my gosh.

Yeah.

Mmm.

Jeff Callahan (07:56)
where you had a point where it felt like, don't really want to go out today. If I remember right, the Barton Springs thing actually may have been one of those moments where you were like, I didn't really feel like going out, but I did anyway.

Nick Gray  (08:01)
Yeah.

I didn't absolutely I didn't I was working on something awesome that I was so excited about and I did not want to leave but but I told myself I'd go out and I went out and I did it. Yeah I had to give up some things there are you know what like I used to have this hobby I feel like such a nerd sharing this but it made me think of like the things that we give up.

And one of things I gave up was I used to collect, you're gonna laugh at me, I used to collect airline safety cards. You know those like emergency cards? Because I traveled so much and I worked in the aviation industry in my 20s, I used to collect those safety cards. And whenever I would move, I'd lug around this huge box of airline safety cards.

Jeff Callahan (08:39)
yeah, ⁓

Nick Gray  (08:54)
And remember and people would mail them to me and I love my own. I love whenever I could get a unique one from a random airline or a strange airplane. And then I remember one time I was like, you know what, I think I just have to give this up. This isn't a hobby that are a sort of collection that serves me anymore.

Probably there were moments like that as I thought about my own communication skills or my goals in meeting people that maybe there were certain events or certain things I was doing with my time that I did have to give up so I could focus on more productive stuff.

Jeff Callahan (09:32)
Yeah, and you know, it's like anything else in life is there's only trade offs, right? And some of the trade offs, like you give up stuff that you really like and that's a sort of a tuition price you have to pay to get what you wanted, which is finding a person to spend the rest of your life with, which is, looking back, like, of course he would give up the, know, picking on the airline thing, but like you would give up the cards to, you know, go and meet your...

Nick Gray  (09:53)
Yeah.

Right.

Jeff Callahan (10:02)
your future wife like duh. ⁓

Nick Gray  (10:04)
Wait, wait,

now I'm curious to know. So how did you meet your wife?

Jeff Callahan (10:08)
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, we, we met back in 2011 and we met online before there were any apps. We met on one of the websites where you would like compose a letter and you would send it to your, your, beloved. Uh, and she sent me a message first and, uh, uh, we met up and, and just had a really good first date at a Barnes and Noble and, uh, we just.

Nick Gray  (10:18)
Cool.

Wait, that's a

great first date, the old book. That's great.

Jeff Callahan (10:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We I remember we peruse the like the romance aisle and some other aisles. And I wish I could remember this game that we were playing, but it was something like we would read a line of a romance book to to each other. And it was a lot of fun. And then we I think we danced in the in their religion aisle and all that kind of stuff. And so we had a great time. ⁓ And and, ⁓ you know, I can't imagine. Well, I mean,

Nick Gray  (10:47)
Uh-huh.

That's cool. That's great.

Jeff Callahan (11:01)
I can't imagine. ⁓ I feel like I caught the last chopper out of Nam with meeting my wife when I did, because right after that was the deluge of apps that pretend to that kind of lie to you and say, hey, we don't want you to be on the app for very long. You know, we want you to meet someone. It's like, no, come on. Your shareholders would disagree with that. ⁓ And I can't imagine what a meat market it must feel like.

Nick Gray  (11:09)
Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Callahan (11:30)
in

today's day and age, cause I've had some clients that, you know, will tell me like, you know, I've used the apps for a little bit, but it almost always ends up with like, yeah, it's just, it's terrible. ⁓ and I'm going to go out in real life. So I think we are seeing a resurgence of like, Hey, people are hungry to kind of get off the screen and do things IRL. Any thoughts there?

Nick Gray  (11:49)
yeah. yeah.

Yeah, that's a big thing. I mean, we're experiencing a friendship recession and there's a blog that I keep, link it in the show notes called friendshiprecession.com where I collect these articles that talk about this, you know, loneliness epidemic of sorts. So yes, that is real. I was curious though, how do your clients hire you? Does it end up being more personal or more professional?

Jeff Callahan (12:04)
Hmm.

That's a good question. It's pretty evenly split where some people just want it for their personal communication skills because maybe they have their career on lockdown and they're just like, know, career is going great. I just want to make more friends. Okay, great. And then the other half is like, hey, I had this gap professionally or I'm running this startup or whatever it happens to be. And I want to, you

lock in these particular behaviors. And so if I was putting a percentage on it, man, it feels like it's about 50 50, even though I know it probably isn't. It's probably 60, 40 one way. ⁓ What I always tell people too is like, even if you really just want to focus on career, you come to me for a career, you come to me for personal is going to overlap into the other realm anyway. You know, it's it's it's not as easy as those those carts, those food carts they give to kids where everything's sectioned out.

Nick Gray  (12:56)
and

It does.

Jeff Callahan (13:14)
Like it didn't work like that. It all ends up co co mingling with each other.

Nick Gray  (13:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's neat. I was wondering it it really does I guess that that confidence and That kind of charisma does go both ways There were two things I was thinking about one I was curious. Do you ever give people advice about how to be more funny at work? It's a very difficult complicated question that I don't have a good answer to

Jeff Callahan (13:41)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah. So I do have ⁓ quite a few clients over the years that want help being funnier. And ⁓ if there's anything that I am as close to being a natural at as possible, it's being funny. ⁓ so because of that, it's actually one of the more difficult things to teach, which I think it's hard anyway. ⁓ But what I typically recommend to people is ⁓ something along the lines of

look for ways to fit things together that don't go together. Because that's really at the heart of being funny, that's really what it is. The thing that, ⁓ you know.

The thing that shouldn't go where you're trying to put it in that contrast is what makes it funny. Now there are a bunch of different ways to do that. ⁓ But I think for a lot of people, especially if they have like really technical interests, they aren't consuming much comedy stuff anyway. And so I tell them like, you have to be watching, you know, make it a season of your life. Like, you gotta watch some standup comedy. ⁓

One of my, I guess he's one of my favorites now is Nate Bragazzi. Yeah. Yeah. He he's world-class and like what makes it interesting. What makes him interesting to me is he works clean, which to me is just like orders of magnitude more difficult than cause it would be very easy to sling a curse word here or there. Uh, but man to work clean. I'm like, man, I respect that.

Nick Gray  (15:06)
very funny, very funny guy. He's like a world class.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (15:27)
⁓

I like all kinds of comics, you know, I don't get offended easily. But just the fact that he's like, you he has this bit about he's changing shirts after playing golf and someone walks up to him and and they ask if he's like their elderly wife. He's like, he's like, I, I, I look like your elderly, you know, like your elderly wife with my shirt off next to my car. And yeah, like so I, I tell people like you have to

Nick Gray  (15:43)
Ha

Right, right.

Jeff Callahan (15:58)
You have to develop a taste because if you don't, then you're just kind of trying stuff that it's way easier to kind of steal things a little bit where I steal the timing, steal all that kind of stuff so that when you're trying to be funny at work, for example, you've got a model to work off of it. And if you can do something, it's relatively clean, like a lot of workplaces would be appropriate for. ⁓ That's a really good way to do it. But humor is a is a it's not.

Nick Gray  (16:19)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Callahan (16:27)
one of my most sought after things, but it's something I've been asked about quite a bit over the years.

Nick Gray  (16:34)
I was in a workshop recently that was about as a small one hour discussion group and it was about how to be more funny at work. And we talked a lot about self-deprecating humor and how that is ⁓ a good way to be funny. And yet it can be.

Jeff Callahan (16:46)
Hmm.

Nick Gray  (16:53)
high risk high reward sometimes at work to to to try to worry like if I make a joke am I going to get in trouble with HR so now that I think about I'm so glad that you mentioned Nate Bergazzi because you're right he does play clean and that is the type of humor that one would probably try to model if you had to model and if your goal was to like limit my risk of getting in trouble with HR you would want to watch stand up for clean clean comics because that's one

of advice to be like, if you want to be more funny at work, watch a lot of standup comedy. Well, no, you need to watch. Yes. Right. Right. Don't watch stuff that's going to get you in trouble. So that's a good point. I like that.

Jeff Callahan (17:27)
Maybe don't watch the Dave Chappelle.

Yeah. And, ⁓ yeah. And it's one of those things where if you practice it for a while, you start to notice spots where you can say something a little outlandish or a lot of the humor that I like is like trying on like a, ⁓ like a pretend reality, like imagine if, and then you go off and you say something that's a little out there, like imagine if this, this thing or that thing happened. And then, you can usually,

Nick Gray  (17:56)
Mmm.

Jeff Callahan (18:03)
Insert something with a straight face that's outlandish, but you play it off like you're serious and then people the the Juxtaposition gets people they're like, He's he's not serious about riding a unicorn around the office or whatever it happens to be, right? ⁓

Nick Gray  (18:17)
Right. What is

that called exactly? Is it like imagine if or something?

Jeff Callahan (18:24)
Yeah, so it maybe it has a technical name, but imagine imagine if is it is a good is a good way to think about it. And I'm usually looking for stuff nested in there that's juxtaposition where I can juxtapose things that, again, aren't aren't supposed to fit together. ⁓ But to your point about self-deprecating humor, something that I think about a bit is self-deprecation works really well with people that know you well.

Nick Gray  (18:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ interesting. But people who don't know you well won't necessarily understand it or... yeah.

Jeff Callahan (18:59)
Yeah, so

I bring this up in the book, not when I'm talking about humor, but when I'm talking about stories, like don't tell the story about you being cheap to a group of new friends because they the story about you being cheap and saving $200 on your car, but almost dying might be really funny for like your college roommate or whatever that you've known forever. And that's just hilarious. But to that new group of people, it represents a larger percentage sample size of what they know about you.

Nick Gray  (19:13)
Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (19:27)
And so fairly or unfairly, it's just, he told me the story about how he's cheap. Is he going to like ⁓ Venmo me for two dollars and 19 cents for these appetizers or whatnot? You know? And so just it's my whole thing is it's easy to overthink a lot of communication stuff. So simple rules of thumb are often best because you don't have to overthink stuff. But one of the things is just just think about like, well, I probably want to tell stories or tell jokes that.

Nick Gray  (19:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

Jeff Callahan (19:56)
paint me in a decent light. And then for the people that I know really well, kind of the rules go out the window because they know me really well. And like I've given them seven rice at the airport and, you know, I've bought dinner for them a few dozen times, but then, yeah, I wanted to save 200 bucks and I thought it'd be a really good idea. But I almost fell off a cliff or whatever it happens to be. And so something like that is good, good to be aware of. And I think, I think it relates to self-deprecating humor too.

Nick Gray  (19:58)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That is a joke that I would make, which would be like about me being cheap or something. And you're right that self-deprecating. Yeah, it's so helpful to honestly talk this out because I can tell that you know your stuff because you're like, yeah, don't do self-deprecating humor for people who don't know you because they don't know. Like it's very hard to make fun of yourself when they don't know that that is a joke. That's a really good point. It's so obvious talking about, but I'm like, I wouldn't have thought about that, but that's so true.

Jeff Callahan (20:51)
Yeah. And, and it's also different if like, you just met, you just met people and you picked up the tab for dinner, but then you talk about, you know, this time you almost fell off a cliff because you saved $200. Like, so the context matters in what you, what you've done before matters and, and, uh, all, all that kind of good stuff. Um, so yeah, I like it. Um, something else. Yeah.

Nick Gray  (21:07)
Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, wait a second. You said something

about your book. I want to riff on that for a second. ⁓ You mentioned reading your audiobook. Have you read the whole thing out loud yet? So.

Jeff Callahan (21:17)
Yeah, please do.

No, I've

read many, sections out loud, but not the whole thing.

Nick Gray  (21:27)
Yeah.

So before I locked the copy, I read the whole thing out loud and I found a couple little things that were either typos or just didn't make sense. And so I would encourage you, I know it's going to be painful and it's going to take a couple hours, but you would rather

Jeff Callahan (21:38)
Hmm.

Nick, why are

you giving me more stuff to do on the book?

Nick Gray  (21:49)
I know, I know, I know, but

you would rather catch this now than when you get to it in the audiobook and you're like, my God, now that I read that out loud, that doesn't make sense.

Jeff Callahan (21:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And we've already identified a couple of phrases where we're like, that's going to be real fun on the audio book. I think we ended up changing them. ⁓ I'm sure in my listeners are just going to to bear with me because Nick and I are going to talk about books because it's my podcast and it can do whatever I want. And we talked about IRL surface Maxxing and all that, all that fun stuff. But yeah, like what I, I'm, I wonder if you can relate to this, like having something that is so, it gets pretty unwieldy. ⁓

When there's so many words involved. ⁓ cause I think mine's clocking in at 55,000 words, something like that somewhere in that neighborhood. ⁓ it's kind of a beast when you, it's like steering. would, it's a mad, what I imagine steering, like an aircraft carrier would be like, and you're trying to like do things with it and go through and look at things. And so any, any tips you have, like, think.

Nick Gray  (22:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Callahan (22:57)
reading it out loud as much as I hate to hear that, honestly. ⁓ I know that it's it's the right thing to do ⁓ and I can respect that. So I think I think before I we're going to lock in the manuscript hopefully today, but I am going to everything. ⁓ And that'll also help from a sheer muscle memory standpoint of ⁓ when you're when you're just talking, you have to enunciate a little bit more like. ⁓

Nick Gray  (23:00)
⁓ Yeah.

Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (23:24)
I do a little voiceover for it from for my wife's podcast. She has a fiction podcast that she runs ⁓ that's not related to her day job, but because she's a podcast producer in real life. But ⁓ and I I am the most popular character on the show where I play. I play a ⁓ cat like a literal cat attorney. ⁓ It's called Community Cat News. And we got a few dozen episodes out and they're and they're all great. But ⁓ for just doing the voice work.

Nick Gray  (23:27)
Mm-hmm.

Nice.

Jeff Callahan (23:53)
show up to tell me constantly like, look, you have to enunciate everything. And so I'm like, okay, I when I'm reading this book, it's going to feel a lot more like that and a lot less like doing a video for my, you know, for my YouTube channel or something like that. And so any, any other tips you can throw my way, I will soak them in.

Nick Gray  (23:58)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Someone told me that when I was reading my book to stand up instead of sitting down and that standing up, you just have a different feeling for stuff. ⁓ So I like that advice. The other advice was, man, I could only read.

Jeff Callahan (24:16)
That's good.

Nick Gray  (24:28)
90 minutes at a time, it's exhausting. Much more than you would think because you are reading and engage and there's no time off. Your brain is like a conversation like this where I can talk, I can rest and listen. You're just on and every word has to be perfect. So I tell you what, I had to space mine out over a couple of days.

Jeff Callahan (24:31)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think I've definitely planned for that because I think doing two or three chapters at a time and then you're going to need a break at some point. Yeah, good tips. I like the standing up tip as well. think that's smart, which I haven't used. I got rid of my standing desk for no good reason, but it's just like, hate go, I hate lifting it up and putting it back down. So I'm going to have to reconfigure my office for that, but that'll be all right. Good. I like it. So.

Nick Gray  (25:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (25:19)
Let's talk about your...

Nick Gray  (25:22)
We can also talk book stuff too. If you want to riff on book stuff more, I'm happy to jam on that.

Jeff Callahan (25:27)
Yeah, you know, actually, OK, you offered I'm going to I'm going to ask them because I've got this written down. So it's been we did you release your book in two thousand twenty twenty one roughly twenty twenty. OK. ⁓ Looking back at your book launch, because that's the next step for me, which is, you know, launching the damn thing. ⁓ What what worked really well that you would do again and were there things that you.

Nick Gray  (25:40)
2022 Yep.

Jeff Callahan (25:55)
We'll just ignore the next time around. were like, yeah, you know, I thought that was a good idea, but it didn't matter at all. Any, any thoughts there?

Nick Gray  (25:57)
Yeah.

Hmm. Let me think, you know, what was really helpful was to have an idea of a launch team and people have told me this and I think I could have done a little bit of a better job about.

getting friends to buy it or read it or write a review on the day that it was released. And that is something that really is true. That stuff really does help. A lot of people talk about it. So it's not a new idea to have a launch team, but I have seen it being done very effectively. So I would suggest it. ⁓ And to not discount that. ⁓

I'm not sure. think I did a lot of podcasts where in the beginning, I don't know if what my background was like on the first interview, but now like, do know how you have that really cool red light in the back? You've obviously thought about your studio design. And so that's really helpful. I wish I would have spent some time or money on mine when I did my launch. I really didn't. And that's unfortunate.

Jeff Callahan (27:06)
Yeah.

Part of the plan is as much as I like back to the future, back to the future is going to move to where Jurassic park is. And then I'm going to print out a 24 by 36 poster of my book and it's going to live, live right there. So it can be in the background. And one thing I want to call out, cause I've been, you know, having some, some coffees with people and, and, uh, seeing some, people that I haven't seen in a few years and, you know, I'll mention I'm, writing a book and

Nick Gray  (27:19)
Cool.

Jeff Callahan (27:35)
And it's been heartwarming. It's been really heartwarming where people that. Maybe at first glance, they wouldn't you wouldn't think that they would have much interest in the subject matter of my book necessarily. They'll tell me like, look, you have to send me an Amazon link the day it launches. ⁓ And so like I feel like ⁓ George Bailey at the end of It's a Wonderful Life where the people come in and like instead of dumping money, they they all buy his book or something. But but it's been really heartwarming where, know,

Nick Gray  (27:48)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Jeff Callahan (28:04)
Completely unprompted. They're just like, no, no, no, give me a link and I'll be your first customer. Like it's been really, uh, I guess surprising because sometimes I fall into the, maybe it's a trap of, I assume the default is most people don't care about my stuff just because people are busy. You know, it's nothing sinister. It's just people are busy. They have their own lives. Um, I know my audience cares for sure, but I don't expect just, you know, a lot of my,

Nick Gray  (28:22)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Callahan (28:33)
friends and family to care all that much. And I'm not offended by that. So I don't know if that was your experience where you just mentioned it and they're like, yes, like send me a link. I want to help out. And so in my mind, I already have a launch team list that's, that's, need to write down, but it's, it's been a good experience so far.

Nick Gray  (28:35)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yeah. I think that generally, when are you thinking of launching? Do you have a date or you're going to wait to figure that out?

Jeff Callahan (28:59)
So I don't have a date, but it'll be ready ⁓ January, probably January to March somewhere in there. It just depends on what I want to do kind of associated with that launch. Like if I want to reach out to a bunch of podcasts and kind of time it right, you know, I go back and forth where I'm like, ⁓ I know that.

You just have to launch it. You know, like you have to, you have to launch it, get your ducks in a row, have a nice little push. And that's about the best you can hope for. ⁓ I'm not going to be an Alex Hormozi type where, you know, I'm on like a nine hour webinar, slinging books. That sounds awesome, but you know, that's just not realistic.

Nick Gray  (29:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. I think that if you're these days, you know, something I don't know if you've thought a lot about, but in your interviews that you'll do for your book, you may want to mention some of the other books that are like your book. And the purpose of that is to get you to try to show up in the AI search results when people are asking for a book.

Jeff Callahan (30:00)
Hmm.

Nick Gray  (30:10)
that solves the problem that yours does.

And so one of the problems that I had, you know, I host a book that's called the two hour cocktail party. I wrote that book and nobody Googles for how to host a happy hour. That's not something that somebody Googles for. Right. And I remember when I wrote my book that someone said, man, I wish you just wrote about how to have social skills or how to lose weight or how to, you know, work out or something like that, because people search for that. Those are problems that people search for.

And so my book doesn't tend to show up if you search for something like, Hey, how do I make new friends? Or how do I learn more social skills? For example, it won't show up for that because it's called the two hour cocktail party. Right. And so I wish I would have talked about some of the other books so that that got out into the ether and the transcripts a little bit more.

Jeff Callahan (30:54)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm. Yeah, yeah, that's

what I was thinking is the reasoning would be for transcripts have become nothing to produce now. And so more transcripts float out there. And even I guess when stuff is on YouTube, A.I. is looking at YouTube transcripts, right? When you have the thinking models. ⁓ so mentioning those other books helps to put your book.

Nick Gray  (31:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Callahan (31:26)
And you're sort of borrowing some of the authority and credibility of, hey, these things are mentioned. If an AI is going to look for like the best books on communication, it might find a podcast and then you'd be in there. Am I thinking about that correctly?

Nick Gray  (31:37)
Mm hmm.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the idea of, of how we want to seed those ideas, I think. ⁓ You're thinking of like last edits for your book. that the the phase that you're in now?

Jeff Callahan (31:41)
Nice.

Yeah, it might be locked as soon as today. Yeah, it's, ⁓ I've been working on it since January and it's a lot of work as you know. ⁓ It's just, ⁓ I'm convinced that if people knew how much work it was, they wouldn't do it. And that's why, and that's a good thing because you start writing the book or you start planning the book and you're like, that was a lot of work, but the writing will be easier. The writing's not easy. The writing's harder. And so you write it, you're like, okay, well,

Nick Gray  (31:56)
Congratulations.

Jeff Callahan (32:21)
The of course the writing is going to be hard. Won't the editing be easier? No, it's taken twice as long in the edit as it has in the writing. The writing actually wasn't that bad. My secret was I would text a buddy. ⁓ I wrote him a check for a thousand dollars and I was like, hey, if I, if I don't give you a manuscript, guess what? You get the cash to check. But I would text him every day. My quota of, I think it was 500 words.

Nick Gray  (32:23)
Yeah.

No.

Jeff Callahan (32:51)
And I would just text him as like, you don't have to reply to these. And then I would just screenshot ⁓ the app. cause I didn't want to send him a zero day because that would be embarrassing. ⁓ And I wrote it in two months, two and a half months, something like that. ⁓ Which boy, that was so much easier than the editing. And it is now to my.

Nick Gray  (33:00)
and

Congratulations!

Yeah. What are your goals for this, by the way?

Jeff Callahan (33:18)
Goals ultimately are, ⁓ there's some legacy stuff where it's like, I would like to write the next ⁓ How to Win Friends and Influence People. ⁓ who knows, maybe this is that book, I don't know. Plug in, I'm taking your advice and I'm plugging a well-known communication book. ⁓ That's a lofty, lofty goal. ⁓ Odds are that's not gonna happen, but that's okay. ⁓ But my secondary goal is ⁓ people are gonna read it, they'll find it.

Nick Gray  (33:29)
Awesome.

Jeff Callahan (33:48)
and they'll say, hey, you know, this all sounds great. Maybe I could just hire Jeff and get these results faster, get more access to Jeff ⁓ and become his client. you know, going beyond the scope of the book and all that kind of stuff as well. I kind of have a fantasy about cloning myself. And a book is the damn near closest thing you could do to cloning yourself. ⁓ And so having having the kind of client interactions where someone's already written, already read the book you've written.

Nick Gray  (33:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Callahan (34:17)
⁓ It would be a pretty good spot to be in, I think. That's the idea, at least.

Nick Gray  (34:17)
Uh-huh.

That's a

really great point actually. I think you are onto something with this. That a book truly is a great way to kind of clone yourself. And I think it will be a great way for folks to find it and be able to do all the things that you could teach them. But then a lot of the best people are gonna say, hey, I want one-on-one coaching for this. And I think that's great.

Jeff Callahan (34:42)
Yeah. And ⁓ I don't know if you if you got this way with your book, did you at the end at the end of the writing and editing and all that kind of stuff process, did you find yourself adding stuff to it where you're like, I could just add this little thing or I could add that little thing ⁓ because. And at some point you have to say, OK, I'm done. And I think that day is today. But last week I added a 21 day challenge to the back of the book. And then I was like, you know what? That's great.

Nick Gray  (34:57)
I did, I did find that, yeah.

Jeff Callahan (35:12)
But wouldn't it be even better if ⁓ someone goes and gets the AI tool that I created as part of the book and then they get served a 21 day video challenge. So I shot 21 videos, edited 21 videos, posted 21 videos and it was a lot of work. I was just working on it constantly last week, but I was like, okay, after this, I felt like I just tossed the ring into the volcano. I'm like, okay, we're done. This is over.

Nick Gray  (35:18)
Ooh.

I like the idea of those challenges. I think that that's a really good idea.

Jeff Callahan (35:46)
Because most of how I think about all this stuff is simply that people's default state is they would like to sit on the couch and watch Netflix. That would be an ideal existence for most people. ⁓ That's not ideal if you want to grow. So you have to make the action part as easy step by step, paint by numbers as possible so that you can hope you'll always get the really motivated people that are really hungry and just

Nick Gray  (35:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Jeff Callahan (36:16)
want to improve. ⁓ But you want to sweep up some of the people that are maybe a little less motivated and just need things spelled out, which is every one of us has that where we'd like to do something, but maybe we need a little help or we need it to be really obvious or something like that. And so I just try to make things as obvious as I can. And I think you do an excellent job of that in your book where you're like, yes, do this. Now do this. Now do this, ⁓ which is just I.

Nick Gray  (36:17)
Mm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Jeff Callahan (36:44)
I think it's one of the best books ever written in terms of making it so easy to take action that you almost can't help but do it, which I love.

Nick Gray  (36:55)
Thank you, thank you for saying that. I tried to make it super simple, like my reading level's about a fifth grade reading level, so that's about, yeah.

Jeff Callahan (37:03)
Same. That's

like the goat level. That's like the perfect level right there.

Nick Gray  (37:07)
Yeah, it's so true. Can I plug the thing that it's this personal website idea? I think your listeners. Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (37:15)
I was just gonna ask you about this. yeah,

yeah, tell us about it, because I'm interested.

Nick Gray  (37:20)
Well, do you have a personal website? I'm wondering, because I know you do for your business and for your blog and your pod, but do you have a personal website?

Jeff Callahan (37:29)
not a personal, just becomeworkinbelly.com. It has all the things.

Nick Gray  (37:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, but I'm just wondering if you got like, you know, Jeff Callahan news.com or some some personal site that was sort of about you as a person. What are your thoughts on that? And tell you why I'm asking.

Jeff Callahan (37:50)
Yeah. So I do own a domain, but nothing, nothing is done with it. ⁓ that is, is my name. I'm pretty sure I still, I think it's Jeff Callahan dot me. If I remember, if I'm remembering correctly, ⁓ I don't think that's lapped. So if it has someone else will buy it that's, that's okay. I'll buy it from them.

Nick Gray  (37:58)
Nice. What's the domain?

No, it hasn't

lapsed. is still it's still registered. So maybe you're planning to do something with it. Well, I would love to build out your personal page and I'm going talk to you about it. But why have you not done anything with that yet? What's your thought?

Jeff Callahan (38:14)
Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My thought is simply that I have become more compelling.com and that's where everything, everything lives. ⁓ and so that is, that takes the place of a personal branding website.

Nick Gray  (38:29)
huh. Right.

Yes, yes, yes. Okay, so here is my pitch. My pitch is that, especially for someone like you who has a public profile, people want to do business with people that they like, know and trust. And at some point, people are going to look up, become more compelling, they're going to find out about you and they're going to go to Google or they can go to chat GPT and they can say, Hey, who is this Jeff Callahan guy? And they're going to try to Google and research a little bit about you.

I have found that having my own personal website separate from my business ventures or something allows me to put my best foot forward for people to read a little bit about me. Now sometimes that happens on LinkedIn, sometimes it happens on Instagram, but I prefer to have a little bit of stuff on my own personal website, on my own domain name.

Jeff Callahan (39:17)
Hmm.

Nick Gray  (39:28)
But the reason that most people don't set that up is probably like, you know, they're like, I bought my domain name, but I'm too busy. I don't, you know, what do I even put there? You know, I don't want to start a blog and then I have to maintain it and keep it updated and things like that. My suggestion for folks is just buy a domain name. Get Jeff Callahan.me, Jeff Callahan.net, their real Jeff Callahan. One that I have is nickagreynews.com. So news.

Jeff Callahan (39:55)
And that, and that, and that

lines up with your handles, right? Like it's so, so your URL is effectively your handle for a lot of places. Good. Yeah.

Nick Gray  (39:58)
Yeah.

Yes, yes, it lines up with my handle because my handle is Nick Gray

News. But sometimes you can't always get the same handle or whatever, but you need to have your own domain name and you need to write a little bio about yourself. By the way, great task to use ChatGBT or Google Gemini for to ask it to help you write, you know, the homepage or a bio about yourself. And you want to have that. So when people search for you, they get to go and they find your website and your website's this kind of digital garden of some of the things that you like.

Maybe it's a few of your favorite restaurants, a few of your favorite photos. You just want to put your best foot forward to let people come into your world. And so that's my thing about personal websites. I'm collecting a lot of them online. I'll link in the show notes. ⁓ I just launched it actually today. ⁓ The website is www.personalwebsites.org.

And if you have a personal website now, please submit it there and I'll feature it on my site. But I think we need more of this. And as you talk about become more compelling, like more charismatic, more engaging, this is a really good way to do it to have your digital self online so people can click around and learn more about you. You probably see this when you do guest research on people. If they have a personal website, you get to learn a lot about them.

Jeff Callahan (41:23)
Yeah. And it'd be really helpful for ⁓ anyone that maybe they don't have a business, but maybe they end up doing some freelancing or something like that later. Like it's a really easy jumping off point where you can just add this, that, or the other to that website. And like I, I just launched a new version of become more compelling.com this, this year. And I built like 70 % of it, but I had someone on my team.

Nick Gray  (41:33)
Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (41:53)
build the rest of it because I like, I'm trying to write this book. I'm using the website to put off writing. And so I can't, I can't do that. Thank you. Thank you. but to that, to that point, not everyone is, ⁓ like me where I'm like, yeah, I could just build it. ⁓ for someone who doesn't have, doesn't have a whole lot of technical expertise, like do, do you and your team, like, do you,

Nick Gray  (41:58)
The site looks beautiful by the way. The site looks really freaking good.

Jeff Callahan (42:21)
I assume you build the whole thing for them to roughly their spec. I'm sure you're probably working off offset like, hey, these are some options and whatnot. You're taking the heavy lifting off of the end user, correct?

Nick Gray  (42:37)
Yeah, there so yes, there's a service that I have that will build these for people we charge like $29 a month or $99 a month if you want to do monthly phone calls. But I'm just trying to promote for your listeners like

whether you do it with me or you just build your own, like buy your own domain name, host your own site. You can do it for $4 a month on wordpress.com or $20 a year on the service called Card, C-A-R-R-D.

Jeff Callahan (43:07)
Yeah, I've used card before a couple of times and they're pretty good for what it is. It's nothing too fancy, but it looks nice.

Nick Gray  (43:15)
It really is good. an.

It looks very nice. It's a simple single page website. Have something like this. I'm telling you if you just sit down with a cup of coffee or tea for an hour and you just make this put that out there.

It really helps you to show up. Now, when I do it and I help people, we show them how to build links, you know, because you want to show up higher in Google search results and how to do stuff like that so that you start to rank for your name. And we do proactive reputation management and things. There may be like a guide that I have how to do this and I'll put that in the show notes. But in general, I just think people need to have their own site. Now, Jeff, I'd like to make you an offer. You have your domain name. I have a team who builds

Can I build your site out and if you don't want it, then you can erase it, but you're sitting on the domain name. We'll do it for you for free and we'll put your podcast and we'll link to your book and your site and all that stuff. What do you think? Nice. Nice. All right. I'll talk to you afterwards about it.

Jeff Callahan (44:13)
Yeah, yeah, do it.

Nice,

I like it. ⁓ And one underrated reason to do this, however you do it, and this is something that people I think never think about. ⁓ So I Googled Jeff Callahan. This has been 10 years ago or whatnot, but there was a ⁓ ne'er-do-well Jeff Callahan in like, I think he's in Chicago or Milwaukee or something like that. And he had done some terrible things. And so.

Nick Gray  (44:46)
Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (44:47)
A news, if I'm remembering right, like a news article about this Jeff Callahan was at the top. And I think I even like emailed the site. was like, Hey, you know, could you take this down? Cause there are other people named Jeff Callahan. ⁓ I, I think eventually like that link just broke, right? You know, cause that's how the internet goes, but it's, it's like, you may think reputation management is only for like, you have to be famous to do that. Well, you just, it's good to have something.

Nick Gray  (44:58)
Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (45:14)
If for no other reason than you can outrank like a criminal with your name. Like I just I felt like I've gotten really lucky where there had been no serial killers named Jeff Callahan, because then I would just have to be like, damn it, I have to change my name, don't I? Like like what if it was like the most famous serial killer ⁓ just happened to have your name like son of a bitch? I've had my name for 40 years and now I've got to I'm going to change stuff up. That would that would just be like the worst.

Nick Gray  (45:19)
Yes, yeah.

Yeah, ⁓ no, what am I gonna do?

Yeah.

I fear for that happening with anyone's name. have a colleague whose name I have to whisper this, but his name is Alexis, and it triggers all the home devices. Yeah, it's tough.

Jeff Callahan (45:53)
Hmm.

RIP Poor poor

one out because it's just every time he walks into a room. Everyone's gonna be listening including Jeff Bezos Yeah, so, you know, I want to be respectful of your time We've only got a 45 minute book here But is there anything else that you that you'd like to to talk about that? We haven't talked about I am interested in all the AI stuff and I know that you're up on all that stuff and you've mentioned it

Nick Gray  (46:04)
Yep, that's true. Yes, for real.

Jeff Callahan (46:26)
A little bit. there anything else knocking around in that, in that brand of ears?

Nick Gray  (46:30)
⁓ I'm doing this

cool museum donor database project. It's patron view.com. And I've been using AI tools to help me build that, to create the database, to scrape the PDFs. We're listing from all these major institutions like Metropolitan Museum of Art and other stuff. It's been such an exciting project for me to learn how to use Claude code and things like that. What type of tools are you using now for AI?

Jeff Callahan (46:46)
interesting.

Interesting. ⁓ I use

it. I use about all of them except for cloud code. I was just talking to a friend a few nights ago that recommended cloud code. So the the end of the yellow brick road for me that I would love is to either vibe code or actually code my own app that would have I already have in my mind what it would be and it would have a few different features. But

I would love for us to be at a point where you could vibe code something like that, which I think we're getting close, but it's not quite there. But some of my standouts are, ⁓ I like Google notebook LM quite a bit. Like when I was writing the book and I was looking for a client stories, like what's nice about Google notebook LM is they don't save stuff where each one of your chats is, is just sectioned off, right? And it won't even save the chat. And so

Nick Gray  (47:31)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Jeff Callahan (47:53)
from a privacy perspective, assuming they're doing what they say they're doing, ⁓ you can upload, you know, client audios and things like that, where you could surface stories or examples of a time when someone used this, that or the other, and you don't have a fear of someone using the audio inappropriately, right? ⁓ And so I like that. It's not very creative. I will warn you, it's not creative at all. Because its main thing is it's trying to just give you the information.

Nick Gray  (48:12)
Huh.

Jeff Callahan (48:23)
And it has citations in the next panel. And so what a lot of people do is they'll, ⁓ for instance, like if you have like ⁓ an old truck that you're working on or something like that, and you're like, you know, I want to upload all the specs of this thing. You can just upload it all there. And you're like, how do I change the oil in this thing again? ⁓ I'll just type it in and it'll grab it from the PDF, show it to you, and then link to the citation of where it got that from. ⁓ And so that's been super helpful just as one example.

Nick Gray  (48:23)
Yeah.

Interesting.

So you're Google Notebook LM to help you. Have you heard about it making these slideshow presentations? Everybody's talking about slides that you can make in Notebook LM and apparently it's the absolute best at that. I think I'm sleeping on Notebook LM. I really don't use it that much. I should try.

Jeff Callahan (49:06)
Mm-mm.

Really?

I've

seen the slideshow button, but I haven't pressed it because I haven't had a need to. Interesting. And it will do, and it's kind of freaky, it will do its own podcast for you if you want it to.

Nick Gray  (49:22)
Supposedly you gotta try it, it's supposed to be cool.

I've

done that before. That is one thing that I've done. I really like that.

Jeff Callahan (49:34)
which is kind of wild because ⁓ AI voice is getting so good that they'll even, what kills me, it's a man and woman team. when the one person is talking, the other person will make little affirmation noises. Then I mentioned this in the book where it's like, yeah, ⁓ totally. Like they'll make little affirmation noises and it's really engaging, but it's kind of disconcerting.

Nick Gray  (49:50)
Yes, it's...

Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (50:03)
It's like the first time you got on one of those ⁓ customer service phone calls and an AI voice was making pretend keyboard noises. All in the service of like trying to get you to to hijack your brain to think, hey, it's a person and they're working for me. And I don't know how I feel about it. I don't know. I kind of love it, but I kind of hate it.

Nick Gray  (50:03)
It really is.

Yeah

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is wild. I I played one of these podcasts, I put some family history in ⁓ and I created a podcast about family history and I shared it to my dad and my uncle and they were blown away. They were so thankful. It was a really cool way for them to access that information. ⁓

Jeff Callahan (50:36)
How interesting.

Nick Gray  (50:49)
But I can see these are unique tools and we got to be careful with them. But I'm so happy with what it made. Yeah.

Jeff Callahan (50:55)
Nice. like it. Well,

Nick, unless you've got anything else for me, ⁓ we'll wrap it here. But I have enjoyed this conversation immensely. Flew by. We'll have to we'll have to have you on for a third. It's like title belts where, know, you'll have two or three belts for four podcast appearances.

Nick Gray  (51:16)
I would love to I would be I

would be honored to that would be so cool.

Jeff Callahan (51:22)
And I'll take

you up on the website thing and we'll make sure to get your ⁓ links in the show notes and the YouTube video and all that good stuff as well.

Nick Gray  (51:31)
Yeah, great. All right, cool. Well, thank you for having me on a good luck with your book. Everybody check it out. It's going to be great.

Jeff Callahan (51:37)
Thanks, Nick.

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