My

integrity, givers, somebody else who's like, you know, a WNBA star Olympian.

And for me, they're a connector and a friend who sent flowers when my father passed for our ceremony to honor him.

And so I built all these incredible relationships because I'm not trying to be extractive to the people whose world is everyone being extractive from them.

And so for five years, people thought this was naive and misguided.

And in those five years, I became 85% of the fundraising of the charity I ran.

And that all happened through the connected network that I built.

give me plenty of that

So tell us about your book.

Well, you've heard a lot about it through all the anecdotes, but the book I wrote, what's interesting is when you said office hours before.

Because my friend Jamil, years ago during COVID, introduced me to my co-author, Noah Askin.

Because Noah, who is a professor of teaching at INSEAD in Paris, decided he'd just throw office hours for everyone he worked with or knew to jump in on a Friday.

And just take a slot.

And because Noah was open as a giver, Jamil thought David should meet Noah.

Noah, who's become a close friend.

And The antidote to that is how do we authentically build trust? And it's through these connections with people.

How did the co-authoring process go then? Were you writing a chapter and giving it to him or was he just doing half and you were doing half?

It was an iterative process based on an outline.

We're both very organized this way.

Noah is a really consummate professor.

I come from academia.

My late father was an esteemed Shakespearean scholar, a monodramatist with 29 books to his name.

So it wasn't hard for me to think I'm going to write a book.

Like I've been a, you know, chronic oversharer my whole life, but, but not everybody's like that and not everybody loves it.

And so that conversation that you had with this friend in Ohio, were you specifically asking for help? Were you just explaining the situation? Like, give me a little bit more context around that.

So, yeah.

So in this case, my friend was and is a journalist.

So she asked me a whole bunch of questions.

There were certain things I could share, certain that was down an article on me that she was soliciting.

She was simply doing what she did as a great journalist, which was ask a bunch of questions.

And she came to the conclusion that this was a story worth telling of a small organization who had been involved with Bernie Madoff since the early 90s.

But now you're working on Soar Connect, and I'm guessing this is going to help you scale this in a way that just wasn't even possible before.

Yeah

... that I work to filter out.

And so if that is pure, then you have an endless, infinite resource to tap into as long as you are generous.

My advisory firm, which has been a focus the last seven years, is modeled from the work with Dalio.

I'm a coach, strategist, and connector.

I get paid on retainer, no upside, to demonstrate that I can build value, but also teach it.

So a lot of people take the model of charging a membership.

Congrats.

And what is the impact that you've seen of making these connections? I know you alluded to it with some examples from a job and career perspective, but have you had to specify what impact you're trying to drive?

100%.

And the reason relationship value, Joseph, isn't valued is because no one actually says the outcome of what happens from an intro.

So I built a rule in my community called honoring the chain of connections, which means, for instance, if somebody listening here to this podcast then buys my book, Orchestrating Connection, and they read it, and from that, they distill something that lets them land the exact investor they need for their business.

They need to call you up and say thank you for putting me on the podcast.

They probably need to say thank you for the person who introduced them to your podcast.

They should probably, since I make myself publicly available, say thank you to you and me for taking the time to go into something that helped them change their perspective and benefit their world.

And just from this very pretty simple mechanism of tracking and enacting that honoring the chain of connections could resolve and change nothing except just understanding the chain of connections you made.

How did that experience fundamentally rewire your internal radar for trust? And what are the invisible red flags you look for today that the rest of us might completely miss?

I could tell my story of my life in terms of all the crap that's happened, from being sick to panic attacks to barely finding work to getting what I thought was my dream job, running this foundation.

My mom had ran an after-school arts program helping kids.

I'm an active composer and classical pianist, and I wanted to help artists.

And three years into that position, the world's largest Ponzi scheme imploded, and the foundation I ran lost all its assets.

Assets that had been invested since the early 90s, which meant there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, even if I had the financial wherewithal to know.

And everyone in retrospect says they knew or that they didn't know.

What did that decision cost you in the short term and what did it gain you in the long run?

So I so I let's start there orchestrating connection, share with the community where the name came from and the urgency of this in today's world.

Absolutely.

And I really appreciate that thoughtful info, John, for having me on.

So everyone wants to understand how to connect differently.

We talk about the loneliness epidemic.

We talk about all these reasons that we wish things were better for us.

What we don't ask is how can we spend time to make our lives better by helping others? So everything starts with five core principles.

Yeah.

Zero point one.

Okay.

Well, you've had a bad experience.

It's actually 30%.

There are some good people out there.

That means out of every 10 people you meet, seven are wastes of time because they're looking to network through you or judge whether you're important or they don't care.

That's appalling.

So maybe you can kinda give us a bit of a understanding about the different archetypes.

What is different now in terms of how people connect? and ask for follow-ups and what has remained the

same in your world.

Everyone complains on LinkedIn, they cannot decide what is AI generated.

Everyone talks about the future of our avatars talking to each other.

And I say to somebody, the first time you introduced me to somebody else's avatar will be the last time I talk to you.

And so what has changed is the speed by which we can be intelligent and augmented.

What has not changed is the system by which the deeper connections we want can become deeper as opposed to more superficial.

actually do, good damage, yeah.

Um, it seems surprising that there could be this sense of community or that it could be a place where pe- It, it doesn't seem like a place where people want to help you, want to connect you, want to invite you to things.

So I'll tell you one thing, for anyone listening, if they are coming from Ireland or anyone else, New Yorkers are really proud of knowing where to eat and how to get around.

So if you talk to any street tough New Yorker, elitist New Yorker, and you go, "Hey, where's the best banh mi? Where's the best X or Y?" They will all stop for the most part, if they're not a tourist, and say, "The best one's here." Somebody else will stop you, they'll argue, "No, the best burger is here.

The best pub for this is there." But let me give everyone a tangible example of what that patience of understanding how building a network, relationships into a community can be to end up with a connection to one of the most famous Irishmen on the planet that I now have.

So in high school, my brother's year, he was three years younger than me, was this incredible guy, now a exited entrepreneur friend of mine named Bronny.

And Bronny, when he came to New York a few years after me, started a charitable group.

And because he knew I was a composer and I could do a big event, we joined forces.

Okay

Right.

Now, this, now this other woman, she followed up with me a week after I told her, and she said, "I need nothing from you, but here's what I wish I had been told when my mom was dying." She followed up two weeks later.

"I'm sure everyone's checking in and asking you a question, what you have to say.

It's not going as well as you hope.

So I'm assuming that it sucks, 'cause I haven't heard from you, and I want you to know this was a quote that stuck with me three years after my mom died." When my dad died, she called me up, I didn't answer, and she said, "Everyone else is leaving you a message to express condolences.

I need you to take a moment and to celebrate his life.

Don't respond back to me.

And, and that, to me, is the opposite of what you're talking about.

What's

evolved since then is a much more sophisticated business book company, all aimed at figuring out how to build trust one person to the other.

That is not how I started in my world.

But as we get back there, and hopefully the gratitude you extended to everyone to start will be gratitude we extend to everyone for continuing to listen.

But if you want, I'll just give a brief overview of how I got to that place where I got into your room and how my network is deeply intertwined with the world of family offices.

Sure.

By all means, please.

To me, it's

Yeah

... why, why the tech helps.

So I've known him nine years.

We were reconnected recently through a mutual friend at an event, and we sort of fell off, you know, because of that thing called COVID.

And then we catch up and he's really, really struggling to like make an ask, even though he's a very high-powered, amazing guy.So I say to him, like, "Can you tell me what your passion is next and how I can help you amplify it?" This is what I call the impact ask in my book.

And he immediately shifts from I need, need, need to here's my passion and purpose.

And he goes, "Here's what I wanna do to protect women and girls." And I said, "Who do you need to meet?" And he goes-- And he names a very prominent, um, former major CEO, um, an Indian woman.

One question, David, uh, I'm just curious about how do you ask people without overstepping?

shouldn't happen, right? So it requires being present because all of those qualities you brought up, they actually require one being present, listening, right?

So to reframe this, right? Because people often think, well, you know, I'm just going to go forward in my direction.

It's going to work well.

I'm going to lead.

I'm going to build.

I'm going to found.

I'm going to do all these different things.

This is the perfect moment to stop, but I'm going to give you an opportunity for a shout-out before we do.

What was it in you that you think made you rebel against the advice you were being given?

Besides lack of success, and I will say I do appreciate the way you just summarized that very eloquently because you're really good at what you do.

I'll tell you, you know, everyone could talk about their moment with rhetoric and words.

I stopped counting what people told me and I only started counting what people did.

And then I started to measure that.

I started to look at that.

And I started to realize that nothing matters in this world if you have to ask for every part of it and take from people for it.

Where do they get that from, do you think?