How to Handle People

Everything in this piece comes from over a decade of handling multiple businesses, employees, clients, girlfriends, fuckbuddies, and a few years of managing a wife.

If you read this piece and apply the advice, your life can literally change overnight. You will literally have much better results with people immediately.

You need to sit down with a pen and paper and actually do the exercise here.

Not all relationships have the same end goals.

You have to understand the goals of all the relationships you have, so you can align your behaviors to the goals you want.

True friends: True friends exist for you to enjoy life with and to seek advice from and help each other out. If you consider someone high value enough to deserve the title of a “friend”, you should generally be honest with them and tell them what you truly think.

Ideally your wife also ends up in this category, but that only happens if you are intentional and marry the right woman.

If you are a young man looking for a long term partner, read The Wife Guide: How to Choose The Right Woman For Marriage. Purchasing and reading this book is the most important financial decision you will make this year.

Hobby friends: These are people you are “friends” with because you two have the same hobbies. You could be playing sports together, or doing something together, but don’t care about each other much beyond that particular hobby.

If for example, you play badminton with someone, and they suddenly decide that they want to switch to swimming, in all probability the two of you will stop meeting.

The goal of this relationship is simply to enjoy the hobby together.

Acquaintances: These are people who you barely know beyond their names and faces. Maybe you see them in the elevator, or something else.

The goal of this relationship is just to maintain a social touch so you two can ask for favors from each other in the future, or serve as a mutual friend to establish trust with someone else you might meet. (“I know X person too” establishes that you two share at least one node in the network together. The more such nodes you have, the easier time people have trusting you.)

Coworkers: These are people you work with, including your superiors and juniors. These relationships exist simply to help you make more money and to help you find more work in the future.

Clients: These are people who pay you for your services/products. They can also bring you more business via referrals.

Casual girlfriends: These are girls you’re having sex with but are not committed to. The relationship exists to serve each other’s sexual desires and intimacy needs, and other similar things.

Etc.

Sit down and list all the people you regularly interact with, and classify the relationship and the goals of the relationship. This is extremely important. You cannot just do it in your head.

How to Deal With People

Once you have the list, you need to think about the mistakes you are making with every relationship type and fix them with immediate effect.

Not every group of people can be treated the same way.

True friends: You can generally be honest and upfront with these people as you’ve already tested them and trust them, and likewise expect them to be honest with you as well. This is the only group of people where you can and should “just be honest” without suffering for it.

Note: Funnily, the “always be honest and speak your mind in all situations” is a shit strategy that people with low social skills follow and they think they are geniuses for doing it. Sometimes they go their entire life without figuring out that this thing alone is making them crash and burn repeatedly.

Hobby friends: It is almost always a bad idea to go beyond the hobby or the general topics with this group. There is no need to talk about your political opinions and other controversial views, and no need to ask about them either.

No need to get into their personal matters or do a lot of loose talk here. The reason is that there’s zero advantage you get out of it. There is nothing to gain and only something to lose.

Acquaintances: Just smile and be polite. If you want to build the relationship further, invite them to something or the other, or just chat for a bit longer.

Be likeable and repeat their opinions back to them when you talk to them. For example, if you are speaking to a feminist, the right answer is not “women were never oppressed”. The right answer is “it is unfortunate that women have historically had very little rights, and it is good to see this is changing”.

Remember the goal of the relationship is to keep things open so they can serve as mutual nodes for future relationships, and leave the channel open in case you need a favor or help or advice from them.

There is no need to share your real opinions with them on any topic because it confers you no benefits. Just tell them what they would already agree with.

Low social skills people (usually broke making a measly $250k a year or less) think that this is being “fake”. In reality this is called being STRATEGIC.

Coworkers: These are people you are in a zero sum competition with for promotions and positions, and as such they are not your friends. They are your competition.

Always monitor what you say around them. Don’t talk badly of your bosses or other coworkers or the firm in their presence. Do not “vent” or talk about your personal life problems with them.

Expect to get stabbed in the back if you make the wrong move i.e. with this group of people, you need to watch your back.

If you plan to work the corporate game instead of building a business, read Corporate Machiavelli cover to cover.

Clients: The general rule is to avoid loose talk and to avoid any kind of argument with them. You get no brownie points for burning a client or making them feel bad about themselves.

Be encouraging to them, meet their expectations of quality, and ask for testimonials and referrals when you can.

Casual girlfriends: By definition, she is there to give you sexual pleasure and enjoy your company. There is no need to talk politics with her, or to try to teach her anything about technical topics.

Do not be the nerd who talks to women about things like DNA and Bitcoin. She’s there because she wants FUN, not because she wants information.

Keep your behavior around her such that it helps you meet the goals of the relationship: fun, pleasure, and sex.

Likewise for all the other categories of people around you.

Figure out the goals of the relationship and behave in a way that is congruent to meeting the goals.

This took me YEARS to learn.

What you learned here actually took me many many years of crashing and burning to learn. Many people go their entire life never figuring this out.

I lost many people and connections because I simply did not understand what they were there for. I’d try to debate things with them unnecessarily, or get into topics that I didn’t need to get into when talking to them.

I paid the price for years and years before I learned my hard lesson.

You cannot behave the same way with everyone. It is stupid because not all relationships are the same.

It is like sending the exact same resume for all job profiles. It’s what most people do but it’s not a winning strategy. You need to TAILOR your pitch to the requirements of the person you’re pitching to.

You need to critically analyze your own behavior and see what you can change. This is harder than it looks, because the human ego makes us think we are better than we are.

Think about all the mistakes you are making and just stop making them. You have to be INTENTIONAL.

Only powerless fools behave however they want. People who have power are always intentional about their behavior. They monitor their speech and actions to match the outcomes they want to create in the people around them.

Mindlessly saying whatever comes to your head first is a privilege reserved only for children.

– Harsh Strongman