How To Meet New People (While Travelling)
Talk with strangers. Most strangers are normal and average, but statistically speaking, there’s bound to be a future best friend or business partner amongst them. You just need to talk with them to figure out who’s who! This can seem difficult, awkward, or risky, so here are steps to make the process easier.
1. Come across as trustworthy.
First impressions count! Be well dressed and groomed. Wear deodorant, stainless shirts, hole-less pants, and matching shoes. Shave and have neat hair. Cultivate confident body language. Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Be intentional with your gaze and movements, not shifty and nervous. If you seem straightforward and put together, people will trust you.
In high trust environments, you automatically become more trustworthy. “What type of watch is that?” means one thing when a homeless guy on a dark street asks you and another when an attractive guy at your friend’s dinner party does.
2. Fish where there are fish.
I want to meet fellow digital nomads, so I travel to digital nomad hotspots like Buenos Aires and work from WeWorks (where they’ll always be). If you don’t have an ideal demographic you want to meet, no biggie. The people you see repeatedly in the different rooms you enter during your day will share similar interests, so chat with them! Familiarity breeds trust.
3. Approach and start talking.
If a conversation starter comes to mind, be impulsive. The more you think about the best opening line or sentence, the more awkward and anxious you’ll get. So just jump in! DO IT! Action is the antidote to anxiety.
There are three archetypally good conversation starters:
Environment-related openers. These recognize your shared environment and similarity. “Where are you from?” and “what brings you to this city?” are two questions I can ask anyone speaking English with a foreign accent in Latin America because they’ll likely be fellow travellers. We share the same environment: the experience of a foreign country. And of course, identifying someone’s problem and solving it works too: “the wifi isn’t working today but they’ll give you the credit back if you ask.” “You can use my adapter to charge your computer if you’d like!”
Observations/labeling. You state an observation. They either reciprocate, parry, or ignore. The sentence usually starts with “It looks like…”, “it sounds like…”, “it seems like…”.
“It looks like the beer tap is spitting out lots of foam today!”
“It sounds like they’re not going to let us back in until the smoke clears out completely from the 28th floor.”
“It seems like it’s going to start snowing soon!”
Questions. Ideally, these are light hearted and easy to answer. These work doubly well if they hint at being a compliment.
“Why are you still at work at this hour?”
“What do you tell your tailor before he crafts your clothes?”
“Have you tried their new vanilla syrup with your coffee?”
Starting small (“small talk”) lets you disengage if things seem wrong. If someone responds with dismissiveness or sarcasm to your opener, don’t take it personally. Just walk away.
I find that compliments work poorly and fall flat. Perhaps it’s because we only want compliments for the things we’re proud of, and you can only know what these are after you know someone.
4. Be interested, attentive, and helpful.
From there, expand the conversation carefully. People get intimate at different rates. Sometimes you can talk about your personal lives after 3 sentences. Other people prefer to talk about low-risk topics like the weather for 3 weeks before the next step of emotional intimacy, like their favourite sports team losing on the weekend. Play it by ear. Small talk is important, as J.B. Peterson once explained best on Quora:
Q: Why do I find small talk boring?
A: Because you aren't good at listening and then carefully and attentively broadening the conversation. This may in part be because you are cynical with regards to the beginnings of social interaction. Why should strangers offer you anything of real value or take a risk with you until you have demonstrated your ability to handle simple social tasks competently (say without sarcasm or dismissiveness)? So they start off trading in pennies to check you out. You can be virtually certain, as well, that if you find initial small talk boring then the people who are boring find you, in turn, awkward, charmless, equally boring and perhaps even a bit narcissistic.
To broaden the conversation, ask questions, listen, summarize their response accurately, and then ask more questions. Summarizing proves that you’ve listened in a way that saying “I hear you” or “I understand you” never would. I know of nothing better that makes people like you.
When listening, look for opportunities to help. If they seek a new apartment, ask them what websites they’re using and share your favourites. If their transit commute is too long, tell them about the ride sharing app you use.
Always remember that people value your ears more than your mouth. Giving unsolicited advice can easily come off as an act of dominance. So pay attention for signs that your help is unwanted.
Another way to broaden a conversation is to ask them about themselves. Once, a guy was buying a drying rack from me. He was a digital nomad who had just moved to Calgary. I then asked him about his experiences in Colombia and for advice. We then got along swimmingly.
If you sense that the other person feels uncomfortable, it may be because they feel like they’re under a microscope, and/or because the information has been flowing only one way. To fix, tell them why you’re curious and share more about yourself. For example, if you ask them about your hobbies, tell them about what you like to do too.
When asking people for advice, remember that it can inadvertently put people a pedestal and place them above you in the hierarchy. This’ll feel awkward to them if they’re looking for friends (equals). On the flipside, asking for advice is how you compliment someone above you. So ask for advice strategically.
5. Exchange contact details. I have always regretted not asking for contact details more than asking for them, so if it feels like you both enjoyed the conversation, ask to exchange contact details.
7. Be okay with disappointments. A small minority of the strangers you meet will be people you want to become closer with. It’s a numbers game, just like the lottery or applying for a job. Don’t take things personally, have fun, and appreciate the beauty of humanity in the process.
CHALLENGE: speak to one new stranger a day. You’ll get over that initial hesitancy so damn quickly it’ll shock you.
TIP: it’s great to speak with strangers who’ve made eye contact with you. It means they are curious.