Today’s guest on The School for Good Living Podcast is David Burkus who says, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”

David was named one of the world’s top business thought leaders by Thinkers 50. He’s a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, his work has been featured in multiple publications such as Fast Company, The Financial Times, Ink Magazine, Bloomberg Business Week, and he has a Ted Talk that’s been viewed about 2 million times!

I liked David from the moment I met him. He’s an interesting guy, very charismatic, he’s got a great message, and he knows how to entertain. We talk about weak ties, dormant ties, how most of us allow our networks to grow organically, but says David, we shouldn’t. David shares about the idea that networking is not necessarily about making new connections, but it’s about understanding the network you’re already in and making new connections as part of that. He talks about the idea of super connectors, people who have a disproportionately high level of connections with the network and how we can be ‘One’.

And as we get into the writing and the creativity section (the two things I love), you’ll hear him talk about work writing as a journeyman – just showing up and putting in the miles, so to speak. It’s a perspective he’s learned from Dan Pink. He also shares how writing professionally can be the inverse of earning a master’s degree, where instead of dropping tens of thousands of dollars writing some kind of a thesis that very few people read, publishers pay you! A fascinating individual and academic, but also a really practical guy, I present to you my friend David Burkus.

SUMMARY
00:02:24 – What’s life about?
00:05:47 – How do you introduce yourself?
00:08:19 – Who is Friend of a Friend written to?
00:24:40 – Facebook or Gmail roulette.
00:29:14 -Lack of connection through social media.
00:40:42 – Curiosity Conversations.
00:47:34 – Lightning round.
00:52:19 – $20 rule.
01:06:25 – TEDx comment.
01:13:21 – Phase 0 and first time authors.

LINKS – (In order of appearance)
BOOKS by David Burkus
https://davidburkus.com/