With a Little Help from My Friends

I had an intriguing email this morning from a podcast listener who asked me for examples of good questions to drive immediate personal connection. I replied that I don’t know any specifically, but fortunately I have some friends I can ask.

Google is one of those friends. Whenever I need a quick and superficial answer to a question, I can always count on it to help, or at least point me in the right direction. But if I want to dig deeper into an idea, I usually need more help than it can easily provide. The second problem with Google is that it only answers the questions I ask, and sometimes I don’t know exactly what I’m asking for.

When that happens, I’m fortunate to have an incredible network of friends I can turn to for deeper and better answers—friends who challenge my thinking, or remind me of something that I already know, or pose questions of their own. Sometimes they refer me to another friend who might have additional information.

My interests range pretty widely, beyond just my professional interest in sales and communications, and I pride myself on being a foxy hedgehog. Because of that, my network of friends reflects that diversity. Whether it’s psychology, philosophy, history, politics, economics, science, I have dozens if not hundreds of friends who are experts in each. Some I’ve known for a long time, some became my friends just this week. They come from all corners of the globe; they all give me their best thinking; and even those that I haven’t connected with for many years never hesitate to cheerfully try to answer my questions no matter what time or what day it is.

They’re always accessible because they actually live in my house, on the bookshelves that line every wall but one in my office. My friends are the authors whose books I’ve collected through the years.  I don’t have an exact count, but I roughly estimate that I’ve got at least 2,000 friends with something interesting to say—closer to 3,000 if you count the ones that live in my Kindle.

I’ve written before that books are tools; but that doesn’t do them complete justice. I have many books that I consult regularly, on questions such as: What did Kahneman have to say about anchoring? Which of my sales friends has good examples of value propositions? What do Charlie Green or Robin Dreeke have to say about using questions to generate trust? What can Epictetus tell me today to help me deal with these crazy times?

They’re certainly not as quick as Google, but they can be orders of magnitude more helpful. And even if they don’t answer my question specifically, they almost always remind me why I’ve kept them around for so long. I can always get by with a little help from my friends.