In this episode, I sit down with David Homan, master connector, podcaster, start-up founder, co-author of Orchestrating Connection and founder of Orchestrated Connecting. We explore how connection, generosity, and purpose can transform our businesses and our lives.

David shares how he’s built a system to track and honor referrals — so that connectors get recognized for the value they create. We also talk about his insight that while most people are great at helping others, they often struggle to ask for what they need.

We dive into why being intentional about who you surround yourself with matters, and how success often comes down to the right people in the right conditions.

Key Takeaways:

1. The best connectors give freely — but they also need to learn to ask for themselves.
2. Every introduction has value; honoring the chain of connection strengthens trust.
3. Purposeful communities grow when people align around shared values and generosity.
4. The equation for meaningful success: the right people + the right conditions.
5. True connection isn’t networking — it’s orchestrating relationships with intention.

David can be found at: orchestratedconnecting.com

In appreciation for being here, I have some gifts for you:

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by checking this presentation page - you won’t regret it.

AND … Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and be eligible for my complimentary LinkedIn profile audit – I do one each month for a lucky listener!

Connect with me:

http://JanicePorter.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/

https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1

https://www.instagram.com/socjanice/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and

think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social

media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a note in

the comment section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can

subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcast review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and

greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple, which

exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute,

please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's

episode of relationships rule. I just want to start by saying

that I just had lunch, and while I was having lunch, I listened

to some beautiful music by saying, Alexa, please play me

David holman's music, because I read somewhere that said I could

do that. David, it was delightful. I love your music.

So that's what I wanted to start with and just share that this

man that I'm interviewing today is like a renaissance man to me,

has so many different things that I'm going to share with you

and talk to him about. So first of all, welcome to the show,

David,

thank you and Janice, I'm so honored that you

took the time to listen. As a composer, you spend most of your

life waiting for fame after you die, and so it's always

wonderful to know you've touched somebody even over you know, a

lunch salad or whatever it might be.

And you know what my daughter, I paid lots of

money for my daughter to become a pianist, and she is a

beautiful pianist. She doesn't get to do it very often anymore,

but I'm going to share your music with her because she will

appreciate it and appreciate that you're the composer as well

as the pianist that's playing it, right? So yeah, so that's

just one connection. So let me just tell you a little bit about

David, and then we'll dig in. So David is he connects people. So

right away I knew he was my people in life is learning about

people, helping them reframe and pitch themselves better, and

then creating long, lasting relationships based on the

premise that for everyone for whom he connects the dots, they

would be described as an action oriented, natural giver with

high integrity. And he's written a book called as if you're

watching this as you'll see on the screen, orchestrating

connection. First of all, I love the title, because that's why I

told you about the music experience, because David is all

about classical music, and trained in it, etcetera, and now

he has this new 2025, book that came out is was a USA best

seller called orchestrating connection, and I'd like to get

into that today, because I think it's fascinating. So again,

welcome to the show, and I hope I introduced you. Okay, in that

regard,

no, I mean, look, everyone could say, well, here's

everything else that's important about me. I think what matters

is what's important is what resonates with people. So I'm

grateful that you see value in the book that I wrote, which is

really part of my life, and the other part in the music, which

is somewhere between a career and a hobby. And everything I've

built has been in service of this goal of finding the right

resonance between people, or for people as a musician.

So and that being said, Though you also, I mean,

you've got a tech company, you you work with the nonprofits,

you run a foundation. So there's, like, a lot of balls

you're juggling in the air, right?

Oh, yes, in an overwhelming way, it never is an

order. None of it's all going well at the same time. But I try

to be purposeful and intentional and very focused on what I'm

doing to help other people.

Well, I wasn't going to ask this first, but I

am because of just you saying that about wanting and caring

about people. Did this come from your upbringing at all the

caring about people or and the connecting piece? Do you did you

have a parent or parents that were all about that too, like

it's in your DNA.

So the caring, yes, the connection, the complete

opposite of what would have been easy in my life. So my father,

esteemed theater professor at the University of Florida,

retired at 86 years old. So he taught over 54,000 students.

Everyone loved him. He was the one that was the dad they wanted

to be, even though he's a professor, and he started an

arts and medicine program I was actually part of at the local

hospital. Everything in his life was using the arts to bring

people together. My mother, my dad's six foot one, my mother's

411 on a good day, sometimes less. But my mother was in

charge of everything she ran for nonprofits, Writers Workshop,

local theater, an arts program where kids in elementary school

could take after school arts classes, and for every class

that you took, you had to buy one for a kid whose family

couldn't afford it. So I lived completely in that life of

service, and then I got and again connections through

family. But when I eventually ended up in New York City, as I

started to meet people, I would realize my father, who was the

one who taught all these people, could have helped me, but he

never thought of networking or connection as useful at all, so

that some of that. And where a friend's doing a work at

Carnegie Hall, and I see this, like, you know, pretty striking

man across the way, he's looking at me, and my name had been on

the program as, like, a composer. And he walks up and

he's like, is Sid Holman your father? And it's like, yeah,

since my dad, he's like, I'm Malcolm Getz. Like, Carolyn in

the city, Malcolm Getz, like, one of the, like, really known

actors of the 90s as a comedic actor. My he was my dad's

Hamlet. He loved my dad. I'm building a career Janice in

theater and the arts in New York, and my dad doesn't think I

should connect you with a guy in Hollywood and Broadway. Yeah, I

had to learn it on my own, which really helped me perfect how to

do it.

Okay, that's so many levels there. So did he not

do it on purpose? Or did he not do it like? Did he not do it on

purpose because it wasn't he never thought about it. Or did

he want you to find your own way?

He never thought about it. There was no intention

of like, you know, let my son figure it out on his own. He

just didn't think about it because it wasn't in his DNA.

Yeah, very interesting. Because, I mean,

just a little ditty about that is, my mother loved people. She

wasn't a big connector, but she had this wonderful Joie de Vivre

about taking she was a caretaker, like she loved to

take care of people, and she loved to make people feel good.

And to the point that I always make this joke, but it's so

true, she'd go on a vacation and she'd send a postcard to the

meat market butcher, like just because she cared about these

people who were, you know, I love that. Yeah, that's so

people. And by the way, I'd come home from school and never know

who was going to be at our house. It was always interesting

to see who she'd bring home today. But, you know, good and

bad in those stories, but I have that in my DNA, and so that's

why I asked that question. That's so weird. Okay, people

often hear the word connection and think about networking, per

se, we already mentioned that word and sort of strategies or

tactics around networking. When you were writing orchestrating

connection, what were you hoping people would actually feel as

they read it?

I I was hopeful. My co author, Noah, asked it, and I

we're hopeful that people would see that this is all entirely

possible, that it doesn't take an extrovert to be a connector,

that it doesn't take somebody who can organize events to build

a community, and that you don't have to be born with a network

in order to then build a network. Okay, that's good. And

the whole goal was to take what we called our five founding

principles, which is the methodology of my world of

orchestrated connecting. And orchestrated connecting is the

community that I run that then became a slightly amalgamated

title of the book and none of its rocket science. I believe

that if you want to connect, you should be vulnerable and

curious. We think that from that, if you actually focus on

building a diverse network people who do not look like you,

talk likely you or do what you you do, you'll actually have a

powerful community. But the only way to build that trust towards

that world. Is to be generous, to ask people how you can help

them, and then to honor that, to express gratitude at every

moment that you can from the people that you've built

relationships with. There's lots of books on each one of these.

The system that I built, which is all psychological as well as

practical. It's basically just living and breathing these and

they're hard to all maintain. But if you, if you have the

intention to be all of that, honestly, life is just much

better. You meet more people. It's strategic, it's valuable,

meaning, it's possible to get more of what you need by also

being generous and kind and vulnerable.

So something happened to me today, and I'm

wondering if this is an example of that. So i i Well, it

culminated today, but it has been waiting to happen. So I'd

done a couple of podcast episodes over the last couple of

months, and with some interesting, two interesting

people that I thought of, this person that I knew that I

actually, I think I'd had her on my podcast, or maybe not, but

anyway, she and I had done some, had many conversations and and I

think I wrote an article for for something that she was doing.

Anyway, I reached out to her, and I said, I have a couple of

people that you came to mind when I was talking to them to

and thought you might be interested in meeting them, but

I wanted to run it by you, and I'll, you know, give you my

backstory on it, and so on. And so we had this conversation

today. And. A couple of things. One, I was doing what you call

double opt in, which I never used it that way before, but I

love to use it now. With that, with that in mind is that this

person will call her name is Cher. She is in my my community

already. I have trust with her. She has trust with me. We we

talk, but I didn't want to just give her name to these two

people without running it by her first to see if it's worth her

time. Okay, so we had the conversation, and then we also

in this at the same time. She said to me, have you ever done

something? And I said no, but I'm really interested in that.

She said, Well, I'll let you know what I'm looking into it

right now. I'll share with you. And so what happened there was

we hadn't talked for a long time. I had a reason to reach

out to her to see if I could support her by introducing her

to these people. And then it just happened that she said to

me, Oh, let me help you with that, I'm looking into it now.

Is that an example of something that you teach

absolutely so I love that. Just to summarize

this, you had a meeting today where share shared with you.

Yeah, that name, but more than that, right? So by asking

somebody consent or permission for their time. They hear that

you value that their time, which means they will, in turn value

it back to you by giving them their privacy in the context of

something that might be valuable for them or they might be valued

by you were giving them the respect of it, but you're also

being more respectful of the time of the two people you would

connect her to because you were saying to them, I have somebody.

They might be relevant. Let me get them to buy into this.

Because when somebody has said, Yes, I'll connect. I will

connect. For this reason, it's no longer cold. It's not a

random lead where they might respond, their reputation is now

on the line to respond to each other, because you put your

value in the middle most of what I teach, which is really why

this book is a book also for connectors, although it's not

only is that I always have to say to people, okay, well here,

Janice, you are with somebody that you have access to. Other

people don't that you are showing value to now you're

giving that value to two other people. Did you when you make

the syndrome? I know this was with this scenario A today

thing, will you actually say, Well, this is somebody valued

and valuable to me. I've known them for 12 years. I think

there'll be relevancy for this, but I want to make sure that if

something happens from it, you respectfully honor back to me.

And honor is the term I use. It's called honoring the chain

of connections. Will you give honor back to me? To know, tell

me what happens from it, bring me into it if there's something

more. Because when you give value to somebody that is really

happy about themselves and what they're doing, they think it's

great, because you value them and you're giving it. But when

you're giving something that's actually a quantity of time

you've spent working with somebody, helping somebody,

introducing them, people fail to understand that that's a value,

just like time or money, because it's the composite of what you

put your time and money into, and that that right? It's not

connecting or networking. It's understanding the relationship

value that you've built with people, and then putting on hand

for all to see what the reputation value is by everyone

accepting and treating it well or often that at times acting

poorly, still, but putting them on notice. I may set this intro

up. You didn't call her back. I look bad. You look bad. But now,

guess what? You're probably not going to get another intro from

me.

Yes, yes. So no, I haven't finished the loop yet

with that, right? So I left her with the names of those two

people to check out their LinkedIn, see what she thinks,

and she's going to let me know if she does want that that

introduction or not. So I think what I heard you say is that if

I do make that introduction the three way inter or the two way

introduction, that I maybe put something in that ver, in that

written introduction that that says, you know, if, however, it

turns out, please let me know kind of thing. Because I'd like

exactly not to be clear, to make it transactional,

even if transaction might happen. But when you say, I'd

love if you can honor what happens from this? In every

language, in every culture, there's honor and dishonor.

There's nothing in between love and so when you ask that you're

putting them all on notice that you are the one giving the

value. And then they think, matter of factly, well, why

wouldn't I? But the answer is, most times, people don't, right,

that's the problem

well, and that speaks to just that age old,

which I guess it's in a different context when. People

talk about networking, and they talk about following up, but

it's the same principle that you you have to, and I love your

term better, that you have to honor the the invitation that

you received from the person, you have to honor that person

that sent you the the introduction to show that you

valued it, valued it, even though it's funny though, like

you're if you're a giver, I have these questions here, but I'm

not there yet. Okay, if you're a giver, and you give and you I

call it sending out, because I send cards to people. So if I

send out to give versus send out to get, right, I'm not expecting

anything in return. I'm just sending it out, whether it's a

an, whether it's a card for someone's birthday, or whether

it's just a an, how are you doing card? Like I was thinking

of you today. It doesn't matter what the purpose is. It's just

you send it out to give. It goes in out to the universe and and

it shouldn't expect anything in return. Well, it's the same with

those introductions. And I'm feeling a bit badly right now

because I, I was doing some work with a LinkedIn client for she

was like a full meal deal client. And during towards the

end of our sessions together, she mentioned something, and I

said, you know, I do have something. She asked me if I

knew anyone who would help her scale or business or whatever.

And I said, you know, I may have someone, and this woman is

Canadian, and this other person's Canadian. I said, you

know, she lives in Toronto as well. I said, you might find

this woman to be a fit. Well. She said, Okay. The other girl

said, Okay, I introduced them, and I've heard nothing from the

person who I you know, could get business from it, but I heard

from my client that she hired her, and now I'm feeling like I

can't believe she hasn't told me yet, but I'm going to wait a

while still, because I

thought I would beg to differ. I see this. I used to

see this happen all the time. You have to take the positive

high road, but you have to remind somebody they could be

better than their actions. Normally. Are you wrote? If you

wrote to, oh, yeah, if you wrote a woman who didn't honor this

Yeah, yeah. One next time you do it, ask the person if they will

let me know if they get hired. Yeah, in this case, ask if they

have a referral fee, because you should have gotten paid for them

getting hired. But if you say to them, dear so and so, we'll call

her Linda. Dear Linda, I was so pleased that my client, so and

so said she signed up for us with you, I really can't wait to

hear how incredible the work you do is going to be. Would you

please keep me posted on this and in the future, let me know

more of what you're looking for or who else I could refer you

to. She will never, ever do it again. Yeah, she will probably,

if she's a quality person, right back and go, I'm so sorry. My

kid was sick at school on that Tuesday, and I should have told

you, but you will shame her by saying, I'm aware you didn't

tell me. Yeah, my clients enthused about it. Perhaps, if

you want more from me, you could respect that, because when you

send the card out, you might do it because it's good natured,

but what you're actually doing is increasing or maintaining the

level of respect, admiration or love somebody has for you,

remembering something of them that they often don't do of

others. But that is a that is a that is a valuation of a current

relationship. You wouldn't get an email from me about your

podcast, not have a talk yet. Then send me a birthday card.

I'd be like, Why is Janice sending me a birthday card? She

doesn't know it, but if you send me a birthday card for February

11, which is my birthday coming up, I'll be like, Well, she

didn't actually listen to the podcast, because I hate my

birthday. I don't want reminders of it. My birthday is a

referendum, like other people's New Years on what I haven't yet

done in my life. Seriously. So seriously. So I don't like my

birthday. My mother hates that. I don't like my birthday, which

is why she's flying up this year to be here on my birthday, and

we're going to cook together, have a potluck with friends and

play a bunch of board games, and I better like my birthday, but,

but that aside, right? The point is, you made a little bit of a

flub with making this referral, without saying this is valuable.

I might have said to her, let me know how it goes.

You might have, but regardless of whether you said

it or not, you would do this to somebody else, but most people

wouldn't think to do it to you, because if they're in their

world, everyone's trying to get by. We think we're evolved, but

we're still just animals surviving and working. And she's

probably thinking, Well, yeah, I'm good at what I do, so I got

a new. Client not what am I losing by dishonoring a woman

who works with tons of people she could refer me to, and what

am I losing by not honoring that back? Because once you see what

you're going to lose, then we will take action to correct

nobody in a relationship, marriage or the rest fixes

something till they realize it's affecting their partner. Yeah,

yeah, you just don't, you don't do the work. And so a business

relationship, any relationship, it's all exactly the same. If

people are honoring and respecting each other, you are

elevated. And if not, you don't realize how much you're actually

offending people, even when you don't intend to Interesting.

Okay,

yeah, you answered that question. Okay.

You believe that asking, no, okay, I mean this question,

there's a difference between being visible and being trusted.

How do you help people understand that that distinction

in their relationships and their communities?

So the person who's a taker in this world, the most

visible one is the person called the collector. This is the

person

for a second. Let me just get you to explain how

your book is set up, because I think that's I took your test,

by the way. So let's just talk.

Okay, so, so Premise The book is, here's the

street cred for how I did it. I run a global network of super

connectors. I've done this for a decade. I've learned for the

people who all thought or believed they were the best

connector they've ever met, and instead of them being the best

connector they've ever met, I just introduced them to hundreds

and hundreds of others. I'm not the best. I just built a system

to allow all of us to thrive and support each other that's not

membership based, not not monetized. It's a pure community

that's a network of networks. So all the principles that I had

mentioned, from Curiosity down to gratitude, all come from

understanding how I want that world to operate and how the

people at the very best of building trust operate. And for

somebody who's thinking, well, this is all like goose look

loosey goosey, or like, you know, touchy feely, I'm

thinking, you know, I have one degree from Madonna and Malala

and Jody Allen and Ray Dalio and Steven Spielberg. And I mean,

I've met most of these people as well, but I've met them with the

respect of somebody who knows them. So you would so I wouldn't

abuse it in some cases, like I have a friend. We were

introduced by somebody we both don't talk to. We took a text

message intro, we jumped on a call. We weren't on stream with

each other. I was David, she was Candace, and then we did a

second call, and we jumped on Zoom. And I admit, I haven't

followed sports in years because I have young children, and we

don't have a TV Candace Parker, who bought my book, who's a

friend, who's my friend, like my dad, passed this past December.

Candace said to me, What day are you going to honor him? And I

said, December 27 and she sent the only bouquet I got from

anyone. I didn't really advertise it, but she asked it,

I will do anything to help her on this planet. It doesn't

matter she's an Olympian and WNBA star all the rest. Like she

showed up as a human in a way I didn't think I needed somebody

to to. The flowers arrived, and it made the table where everyone

was sitting around beautiful, like I cried because of that,

which was a gesture of kindness with no expectation,

and the story about meeting her, but I knew

who you were going to say as soon as you said it, because

there's not that many, yeah, but

it's so she's, she's my friend. She blurred my

book. She's, I help. I helped promote her book. It sits on my

bookshelf. I recommend it, especially to people with this

resilience mindset. I'm going to put her on my own podcast. I

haven't asked her yet, so maybe you should listen to this and

then just say yes, but, but when you build relationship for the

value and the why not because of who's asking, that's a

difference of the mentality of somebody who wants to do it, to

be visible. And so the final part of the book, besides the

playbook of how to, I think, how to build purposeful community

that no one I spelled out. I've spent my life looking at people

and studying them and seeing who's a connector, who's

generous. Some people think a connector has to be, as I

mentioned, an extrovert, but one of the most important connectors

is the shepherd or shepherdess. So I'll just give this one for

people listening.

These are categories of people you've just

labeled in your book that do certain things, right? Exactly.

So it isn't always this, but, but we know the term

the woman behind the man. Yes, right. So a big business comes

together all the executives and the investors are everyone in

the room. And. Guy gets up and speaks about the power of the

company he built. The reason that community is there is not

that guy. They're there because of the person. Often, the

shepherdess who called them all told them to change their

schedules, got their spouse to come, you know, helped make the

room powerful. That is as powerful as a connector, as the

Alpha extrovert who comes in the room and everyone's like, Oh, my

God, he built a unicorn company. And then sometimes that person

is an incredible human being. Oftentimes they're horrible,

yeah, but they built something great. So they're not a

community builder. He's not honoring they're they're they're

not honoring her. So the person that I found in this world that

fits the visible before anything else, the taker, somebody who

literally takes relationships from others. One of them is

called the collector. This is the person who says, you know

Janice, I know all these people everywhere. I've been here, I've

been there, I've been there. And you're like, Oh, well, could you

approach Reid Hoffman for my podcast? And they'll be like,

sure, sure. And then it never happens. Then you see them

another time, they're like, Oh yeah, I'm going to get Janice to

read. She does this whole thing with her business on LinkedIn,

maybe the LinkedIn, and then it never happens. And so I wanted

to categorize this to name what all that behavior is, because

the person who is seeking their own fame is feeding their

insecurity. Say that again, the person who is seeking fame

around them is feeding their own insecurities. Yeah, my world is

not rich because I know Candace Parker, my world is rich because

a friend helped me born my dad, she just happens to have all

these incredible things she's done, yeah, and maybe she'll let

me say this or not. But as we were bonding and becoming

friends, I noticed she was getting out of breath, and I was

like, what's wrong? And she's like, Well, my kid is riding

around my house, and I keep having to chase him. And I was

like, Well, stop, go counterclockwise to him, and

then surprise him every time. And she stops, she stops being

out of breath from chasing around however big a house she

has in California. And every like, 30 seconds, I hear her

wave, and I hear a giggle, and she's like, Oh my God, you saved

me. And I was like, Well, I had the kid who kept running and

wanted me to chase her. I went counterclockwise eight years

ago, but I remember and like, she's like, it's the best advice

I've gotten all week. So, like, so I don't seek that even in

mentioning this, because it's about the access. It's about the

visibility. I don't post, Hey, me and Candace had books come

out. Like people who do that are trying to prove something. Yeah,

I prove it when I introduce it to somebody of value to her and

to them, and the fact I have the trust to do so, and when you do

this right, right, when you do this right, there's no such

thing as the upper echelon of people you can get access to and

the lower echelon of people around you. It's just an

intentional community. It's people in it for a greater goal

that you've built trust with when you have that you have

something profound when you need it, not when it has to happen

for you.

So this question probably speaks that you said

that community isn't something we join for benefits, but a

responsibility that we accept. What does that responsibility

look like in everyday business relationships?

I don't think there's been a single titan of

industry ever who doesn't have the story about when everything

started to fall down, how they called their friends and got it

rebuilt. There's a famous story in the 80s about Goldman Sachs

going under, and one guy calling up his Rolodex and saving it.

Every story is about the community around you, the people

you have trust with. Yeah, it's all about and and therefore, if

it's all about the people, then why wouldn't you want the

strongest, most trusted, most diverse network you can to

benefit your business. And so the responsibility right go back

to the terms, to be honorable in it, to be active in it, and to

give more than you take. But know, especially in business,

that's a balance. And my view of community that is different than

a network is specifically this. In a community, you could have a

need and somebody could fulfill it, but then somebody else could

have a need you can't fulfill, but somebody else can. In a

network you view it as quid pro quo, can I help you? Did you

help me? And when you view it that way, it always boils down

to was the transaction worth the. Time. And this is the

difference of why I say these need to be purposeful and

intentional communities, because then everyone is upholding a

collective responsibility. When you have a collective

responsibility, what that becomes is a movement. What

movements become are the things that actually change the world,

and they all start from community. There's never been a

radical shift in this world that hasn't happened from a

collection of people coming together for something greater

than themselves and taking what we thought was a majority

opinion, like, women can't vote, blacks can't vote, trans have no

rights, whatever variation, and once the majority of the

community and networks all say, No, that's not acceptable. It's

interesting how quickly the dominoes fall and change. But

you have to have that surge there, and only community to

community, I believe, makes that happen.

Well, when you talk about it being a movement,

I've been part of this, this movement about gratitude for a

long time now, and through one of my affiliations and

gratitude, I know is a core theme for you as well. So how

does honoring the chain of connection deepen trust and help

relationships last longer? I think we've talked about this,

but let's just reiterate it, because I think it's important,

yes, so I'm going to give a real life example, and

then I will describe the outcome of this. So my friend, Bronnie,

high school buddy, introduces me to his friend Jamie, who is

working at a charity. Jamie meets me. We become friends.

Jamie introduces me to her boss, whose name is Rebecca. I start

to give good advice to Rebecca, and she asked me to become a

board member of her charity. Now I'm Board Chair. Yeah, in that

Jamie comes into my community. She meets my friend Joe. She

meets my friend Wendy. Joe and Wendy make an introduction to

her, which gets a major group that's a charity auction house

to think about helping our charity. So right now,

everyone's thinking, okay, he named a couple people who are

these people in December of last year, Keanu Reeves and Alex

winter, as in Bill and Ted, and Keanu Reeves is in famous,

famous Canadian. So Go Canada, right? And such a high integrity

human being, they agree to do a charity event for the Arthur

Miller Foundation, as in the playwright of death of the

salesman in the crucible, whose daughter Rebecca is the one I

met through my friend Jamie, who's the executive director of

that foundation, right and because of my network of my

friends, Wendy and Joe, they were able to set up an event

that raised, I think, a quarter million dollars for our charity

in one night, which is going to help massively secure our

programming for next year. This took time. Janice, right? This

took time. Built relationships without a goal. What's the

outcome for this one relationship? And I won't go to

the details of each of the powers of each of those people.

They are all valuable. They are all powerful. So if I come out

in the visible world and say, because of my network, I got

Keanu, Reeves and Alex winter do this thing, people are going to

celebrate me. It wasn't me. Yeah, if I come out and say, I

am so grateful to Kiana and Alex, who I've never met, but

I'm so grateful they did this, and their entire team,

especially publicists and managers, who made it happen on

the Monday night when they were in the middle of doing Waiting

for Godot, exhausting weight every night in a Broadway run.

And I'm grateful for every person in this chain and this

outcome. That's what honoring the chain is. I get to say all

these people I know. I get to say the outcome that happened

because of me, but when you do it under the world of honor and

gratitude, everyone is with you in it, everyone is elevated. And

when you do that repeatedly, as I've been now for a decade,

several 1000 times a year, running my community, the amount

of insight you gain, along with the reputation you gain, means

that, you know, I could comfortably walk up to one of

candace's former stars, friends at an event I did in Maryland,

and say to her, Candace is my friend, and she can trust that,

and she can trust that because she knows that I would not come

up to her to name drop somebody who's also well known if I if I

wasn't trustworthy by the person who brought us there to be on a

panel. And so the reputation increases. The strategy is the

same, build with an expectation that you can be grateful. Thank

everyone involved. Don't. Ask. Final point, don't ask once you

thank people for something more, because when you let it sit, you

let that silence sit just at the end of a piece of music, you

finish performing. If somebody tries to applaud right away, the

moment's ruined. You have to wait see how long the silence

will last, to see how deep the journey was for the audience,

when you thank somebody, right? They're thinking, Oh, my God, I

did something awesome. I feel good. They feel good. Could we

do more? Janice, what do you need? What do you need next? Can

I help you more? This is why it's strategic, but also just

personally valuable.

So I don't know how to phrase this without

sounding like fan girl, but when you first I mean people of

influence in any given area may be how to say this, but like,

well, now I'm thinking. Now I'm thinking about, yeah, some

things that I have done in my past, like I did it, I don't

know. I was a mom and young, a mom of a young kid, and I was

doing a part time gig, and I managed to get a job running a

fundraiser for the Kidney Foundation here. And it was a

job that, like they gave you the binder. The event had happened

year after year, but you had to do it yourself, like make it

your own. Get go for it. And the event was called jail and bail,

where you have, you put some people in jail for an hour, and

they have to call their donors to get them out of jail for

amount of money, which goes to the foundation. And when that

foundation was, when I did the event here, two day event, I had

to get all the people that were going to go in jail. I had to

get the judges like it was a whole thing, and then I had to

get drivers to go pick the people up from their place of

business and bring them, you know, and to the event. And

because these people so I decided I would try and make it

a local celebrity type event, because I knew a fair number of

people that I could reach and get to and whatever, and and

when I did it, we raised, like, $30,000 this was many years ago,

but it was a two day event. I raised $30,000 it was, it was

considered a big success. And the person from the Kidney

Foundation said to me, we've never had celebrities in it

before, like, they're local celebrities, like, you know, the

girl that does the news on the local television channel and and

a talk show host and a soccer player that was worldwide known

from, from the team here, stuff like that. And it was so much

fun. And I, I kind of went to my community to and it grew. And,

you know, I called this guy who was, I had to get local business

people too, you know, to who had the to do it. So I called this

guy who was the CEO of a credit union here that had, like many

branches, and his son knew my daughter at school because they

both played basketball, and I called his office and he

answered the phone. I wasn't expecting it was a complete cold

call, but he phone, nicest guy ever said to me he would be

happy to come and do the event, but he said, what he who he'd

really like to get him out of jail is this local celebrity who

is very cute, young girl. She did the weather on on the local

news. I said, I will get her for you. I didn't know how okay, but

I did anyway. It was the best deal, and I felt really good

about it. But I think my point here is, is when you're talking

about celebrities, local or big, worldwide celebrities, they're

just people, and if you treat them like you know, I'm getting

sort of confused.

No, no wait, when you treat somebody not as a

person, but as the persona, people see them as they don't

feel seen or heard exactly when you give them something for the

greater good. I mean, like Keanu Reeves, who's friends with or

knows Rebecca Miller, because she's also Hollywood. Like our

whole point is, who was that theater teacher that changed

your life and brought you a better sense of yourself? Like

Kiana has this. Julian Moore has this. Alec Baldwin has the

entire Arts Advisory Group of our of our foundation, is based

on this. Steven Spielberg has this. They all have it because

they all have the love of the person who made them love

theater and film, yeah. And all we do is fund the ecosystem to

support more of those theater teachers in public schools.

That's the mission. Yeah. Yeah. So if the mission is greater,

then you're asking something, somebody to be part of something

greater. You're not saying, hey, WEATHER GIRL, we want you there

because we want you there. You're saying, hey, there's an

opportunity. Yeah, we have this credit union you probably bank

at, and it wasn't a cold call because you're you can't do the

other I mean, I made it. Yeah, right. No, you had a parent

relationship. But all of that is to say you just use the power of

your of your community as a community, not as a network,

yes, for dollars for you.

What I'm also trying to say is, if some people

want to, they listen to you and have these big names in front of

you, they still don't see that they can do that with their own

community. Make it bigger, make it stronger. Have more people

that trust them, and have they they trust, which then could

lead to, you know, people with more influence that's beyond

100%

yes, yeah. And when we look at as we're trying to

connect those we gravitate to whom we think have great access

and power. Most times those people look the part. They don't

have the substance. Yeah, I went to an event.

Yeah? Sorry, you have to be able to distinguish

that. Though, that's the key piece there you have to be, but

you have to be discerning about who might be a

waste of your time. Yes, you never know the opportunity in

front of you unless you're curious and vulnerable. And

that's my thing. I went to summit event, and I used to, I

mean, I did this wrong for years, and I started to do this

better when I had to, like, this wasn't my whole life. I wasn't

great at this. I became adept by studying. What I did wrong was

that this event in New York, everyone wanted to meet the

celebrity who was there who was talking about this new tequila

brand that came out. And I honestly, as much as I was

enamored by this position, like, didn't feel like going up and

being like, Hey, I'm David. Thanks for being here for this

tequila. It just felt false. So I sat with a friend towards the

side, started talking with this woman who was there, who was in

her 40s, and we just got along. We were joking where I was like,

Listen, I don't even really drink tequila. She's like, me

neither. And then afterwards, Santana came up and hugged his

sister, who was the woman we were talking to and she was

like, You should meet David. We spent like 20 minutes talking

because we built value without an expectation of, oh, can I

meet your brother? I didn't even know, yeah, yeah, and so, but

that curiosity about somebody else without understanding if

they're the right person, gives you a better chance than not

being curious and thinking, you did your pitch, right? You had

your moment. Because I've had so many moments where I've walked

up to people who are like, Honestly now friends who are

rich or famous or this. And one I went up to and they're like,

Oh, hi, I'm so and so I was like, honestly, you look like

you need to get out of here. Like, can I walk you out of

here? And I walked this person out of a conference, and then

afterwards, they're like, but they're like, you have a

connection to me, don't you? I go, Yeah, well, we're doing a

gala with its like, Perlman in a month, and you're coming in

said, Yo Yo Ma. But I didn't go in to be like, Oh, you're Yo Yo

Ma. I thought I'd meet him. He was so harried after doing this

event and being late for something all I did. I don't

even know if he remembers this. He probably doesn't, because it

was years ago. I just said, let me be your out.

That's it. You treated him like a person. You

just

treated this. I missed my opportunity, except

for I didn't because I built one later because of that.

Oh, there you go. Okay, I just realized that I've

overstepped my bounds in terms of time on this recording,

because I'm just going on and on, and I love this

conversation. Last question, what's for someone listening who

or watching who wants stronger relationships but doesn't want

to feel salesy or track transactional? What's one small

shift they could make this week that would change how their

relationships feel?

You know, usually when I answer this question, I

talk about gratitude, but I've learned that there's something

greater. If you don't want your relationships to seem

transactional, then start with vulnerability. Everyone is

dealing with something you don't have to call about to be like

verbal diarrhea. Here's what's wrong with me. How are you

Sally? What you have to do is you have to say, like, I value

our relationship. I just I don't want it to become something that

feels like we only engage when we want something from each

other. Want to grab coffee. Tell me how it is. How is it with

your kids? How is it with aging parents? I'm struggling with

mine. If you connect at that level with somebody you already

have some relationship with, you build a bond. And that final

part, which is why I say generosity is even more

important than gratitude. Mm. If you ask what they need and offer

to help them, if you can do it that builds trust that

transcends any future transaction.

So true, right? So true. So thank you. Thank you

for your time. This is a long episode. I hope, I hope you

stayed with us till the end, because I think it's worth it.

There's so many nuggets in here. David has been David and I, I

think, have had a thoughtful conversation about what it

really means to connect with intention and care. I appreciate

David the way that you remind us that relationships don't fail

loudly, they fade quietly, and that trust is built through

clarity gratitude and responsibility and

vulnerability, as you just mentioned, I think so. Thank you

for sharing not just your ideas but the heart behind them, and

to everyone listening. I hope this conversation encourages you

to nurture the relationships that matter most in business and

in life, and remember that relationships do rule. Thank

you. Bye.