The Friendship Pipeline
The 5 Hidden Skills of Making Friends
Hey there!
Making friends isn't a skill. It's actually at least five different skills that most people never master.
I used to think I was just “bad at making friends.” Despite being outgoing, extroverted, and social, I ended my seven year tenure in Baltimore with only four friends. Then, I moved to Austin and made more friends in my first six months than I’d ever had in my life. The difference? I finally understood the complete process for making friends and focused on nurturing connections in every stage of the process.
Today, I’m debuting The Friendship Pipeline, the systematic approach that helped me transform my feelings of social isolation into social abundance.
We’ll cover:
Why a systematic approach to friendship works
The five crucial skills you need to master
How to identify and fix your friendship bottlenecks
Let’s break it down!
Why We Need a System for Making Friends
Traditional advice on how to make friends sucks. Be genuine. Put yourself out there. Go to meetup.com. Useless.
Why? It’s too vague and doesn’t tell you what you actually need to do.
It’s like telling someone who wants to get in shape that they need to “exercise more.” Sure, that’s true, but it leaves out too many details!
It also treats the act of making friends as a single issue. It’s not! Finding strangers to meet is a very different problem than turning your existing connections into best friends and you need different skills at different points in the process.
To overcome this, we need to break friendship down into its distinct phases and provide specific, actionable advice for every stage of the process.
The 5 Stages of The Friendship Pipeline
1. Become a person who can be a good friend
The first step in creating lasting friendships is to approach it with the right mindset.
If we want to attract great friends, we need to become a great friend ourselves. To do so, we have two challenges. First, we must be willing to give without the expectation of receiving. Second, we need to take the initiative to create our social lives rather than wait for them to happen to us.
Key skill: Overcoming neediness and developing an abundance mindset around friendship
For example: Instead of waiting for party invitations, I started hosting small gatherings at my house. Soon, I was getting invited to others’ events because I’d established myself as a thoughtful person who invites people to things and others wanted to return the favor.
Quick tip #1: This week, do something nice for one of your existing friends without expecting anything in return.
2. Leave the house to find strangers
Unless you only want to be friends with your plumber (and that can get real expensive real fast), you’re going to need to go out into the world to find new people you can become friends with.
Not all environments are created equal. It’s a lot easier to meet people at a house party than at the grocery store. The best way to find strangers who are also seeking friends is to frequent events where people expect to be social. These could be one-off hang outs with existing friends or social groups like clubs or recreational sports leagues.
Key skill: Consistently saying “yes” to events and situations that will surround you with new people.
For example: When I moved to Austin, I committed to attending a weekly walking group every week. If I was in town, I had to go. This event worked well because there’s an influx of new people every week and everyone that comes wants to meet new people and have interesting conversations.
Quick tip #2: Find one recurring event in your area that happens at least monthly and put it in your calendar.
3. Approach strangers and ask them to hang out
Once you’ve found some strangers, you need to say hi to them.
For many people, this is the scary part! You need approach someone you don’t know, build trust and rapport with them, and ask them to see you again. Once they’ve agreed, you’ve become acquaintances. This can be the first time you really face rejection.
Key skill: Convincing a stranger to have a second interaction with you.
For example: At a recent meetup, instead of having a nice conversation and walking away, I made sure to say “You seem really cool. I host parties every month, would you mind if I invite you to my next one?”
Quick tip #3: Practice your “closing” line. Have a preprepared line you use to invite people to hang out with you. This doesn’t need to be a friend date and works best when you can invite them to something fun like a social meetup or a party.
4. Integrate acquaintances into your life and turn them into friends
To level up an acquaintance to a friend, you need to spend consistent time together. Really, you need to see each other at least once a month or so if you want your relationship to grow.
This means the two of you need to schedule your lives around each other. This doesn’t have to be dramatic and often the easiest way is for one of you to join the other on something they already do regularly, like a Saturday morning walk. Because all of our time is limited, this may also mean making choices about who to prioritize.
Key skill: Building your calendar around the people in your life to consistently nurture your friendships.
For example: I usually go out to eat on Friday and Saturday nights, so every week I try to invite a friend or two to catch up.
Quick tip #4: Look at your weekly routine and identify one regular activity that could easily include another person.
5. Build intimacy with your friends
To really elevate your friendships to best friendships or chosen family, you need to build a foundation of shared intimacy.
To share the pieces of ourselves we hide from the rest of the world requires immense trust, the kind of trust that can only be built over time. When someone shares something with us, they are taking a risk of rejection. We need to reward them for taking that risk by helping them feel seen and appreciated. Similarly, we need to take our own risks and share our own insecurities to develop mutual trust.
Key skill: Listening well to others and displaying your own vulnerability.
For example: When a friend recently shared something personal with me, I cleared my calendar to let them talk. Even though I had somewhere to be early the next day, I let them share everything they needed. I asked what kind of support they needed and did my best to let them know they could trust me.
Quick tip #5: Next time someone shares something personal, try responding with "Thank you for sharing that with me" before anything else. Don’t share your own story. Just let it sit and ask, “Is there more?”
Putting the Pipeline into Practice
The power of this framework is that it helps you diagnose exactly where you're getting stuck. You might be great at meeting new people but struggle to turn those meetings into ongoing friendships. Or maybe you're excellent at maintaining deep friendships but find it challenging to meet new people.
Think about your current friendship-making process. Which stage makes you most uncomfortable? That's likely where you need to focus your attention.
For me, I used to struggle with every phase! But by working on each skill systematically, I was able to transform my social life entirely.
Today, we learned
Making friends is a systematic process, not a magical talent
Each stage requires different skills and approaches
Most people get stuck at one (or multiple) stage(s)
Action to take: Identify which stage is your biggest challenge right now. Send me a reply letting me know. I'd love to hear where you're at in your journey!
-Connor
PS... If you're enjoying The Friendship Engineer newsletter, please consider sharing this edition or referring it to a friend. It goes a long way in helping grow the newsletter (and creating more friendships in the world).