Connection and Relationship Building with Patrick Galvin, Author, Speaker, and Coach

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast that taps directly into the best executive hiring and leadership development insights. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group. You can learn more about us at notogroup.com. As a go-to firm for purpose-driven companies, we've been lucky to work with some of the world's most inspiring leaders as they've tackled the challenge of building high performance leadership teams. Now, I'm sitting down with some of these very people to spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies. Patrick Galvin is joining us today. He's a coach, speaker, and author of four books, including 2024's The Daily Connector. His work is about empowering individuals to connect meaningfully with those around them in order to boost trust, engagement, and performance. He's also co-founder and partner of The Galvanizing Group, an online learning and coaching company based here in Portland. Together, we talk about the powerful difference between networking and connecting, practical approaches to engaging and developing trust with others, how Patrick's methods can be useful to attract and retain top talent, and how to develop and incorporate these practices on a daily basis. Patrick, thanks for joining me on the podcast today. It's great to have you here.

[00:01:28] Patrick Galvin: Hey Roy. I always enjoy talking with you.

[00:01:31] Roy Notowitz: Yes. I've been looking forward to the conversation. You've written that social connection is the foundation for a good life. What made you focus on that for the topic of your book?

[00:01:43] Patrick Galvin: Well, not only have I written it, but a lot of folks smarter than me have written that. There's a guy named Robert Waldinger at Harvard University, and he has been leading up a study of adult development that started in 1938; he's the fourth director of this study. And he has found in the continuing research of this study -- and they found in many other research efforts around the world -- that when you really look at what makes people feel successful at the end of their days, it's not the amount of money that they make or the titles they acquire, it has everything to do with the relationships, the quality of relationships that they build. And I have found that to be true in my life, and the lives of the people who I respect and love, and the lives of my clients, that relationship building is really the cornerstone of happiness and success. And of course, I want to write about that.

[00:02:38] Roy Notowitz: So the name of your book is The Daily Connector. Can you tell us a little bit about the idea behind the book and how it came into being?

[00:02:47] Patrick Galvin: The Daily Connector came out fourth quarter of 2024, and it is really a compilation of everything that we've been doing in our company over the last 20 years. Relationship building is not rocket science, and it isn't "you do this one thing and your life is going to be transformed." Great relationship builders do a series of small things, and, through those small things, their lives, both personal and professional, are enhanced. We work with big companies, some Fortune 50 companies. Our programs work -- we've seen them work -- but we couldn't serve just the average person in the streets. We weren't set up to do that as a company. So we wanted to write a book that would take our best practices, and ideas, and tangible action steps that people could take to transform their relationship building skills. And it doesn't matter if you're an introvert or an extrovert. It doesn't matter if you consider yourself a great relationship builder or one who's more in a learning mode. Wherever you are, you can get better, and the objective of our book was to help them get better. So it's a daily book. Every day there's a concept and idea about relationship building followed by a quick action step of what people can do.

[00:03:59] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, I've been enjoying it. I've been reading it, and it's great, and I'm a connector, so I am still feeling like there's lots of added value in things that I haven't thought of before, so it's been really fun to go through. And there's a lot of people who come to us who maybe are job seekers, for example, they tell me, "Gosh, I wish I had really focused more on my connections and my network. I was so heads down at work that I really let that go, and I'm regretting that now." So, for folks to make it a daily practice, regardless of how busy you are, I think is really powerful and useful.

[00:04:33] Patrick Galvin: Yes. And what those job seekers are saying is something that is encapsulated in a book title that I love. A gentleman named Harvey Mackay wrote a book called Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty, and it's all about the importance of building relationships, not when you're in that mode of needing a job, but when you are out there working, succeeding, just keep building -- in his days it was the Rolodex, now it's your CRM -- and really keep developing those connections, and tracking them, and being intentional about it is really important.

[00:05:02] Roy Notowitz: So what's the difference between connecting and networking? You talk about that in the book. Could you explain why there's a distinction, and why it's critical for career advancement, and team building, and just relationships?

[00:05:15] Patrick Galvin: Yeah. A lot of people confuse the terms, and, because of that, I think a lot of people say, "I'm not a connector." In fact, they can be a connector because networking is something very different. Networking is going to the chamber event or professional association and meeting and greeting, shaking hands. For a lot of folks, it's a numbers game. I like to call them the blackjack dealers. They show up in an event, and they judge its success based on how many cards they deal out of their deck. That is the worst idea of networking that is trapped in many people's brains, and rightly so, because they see it out there.

[00:05:48] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. A lot of people hate that too. They hate that.

[00:05:50] Patrick Galvin: Oh, absolutely. Who likes that? I mean, it's just exhausting, isn't it? So, connecting is really much more of a quality versus quantity situation. You're out there trying to build true connections, and how do you do that? It's through listening. It's through offering value. It's from staying engaged in the conversation, not looking at the person across the room who you're going to go talk to next. Because when you really connect, you're really in an active mode of trying to figure out that other person and how you can be of support to them, of assistance. So many people think connecting is about, "What can you get out of that conversation or that relationship?" And really, the highest level of connectors and relationship builders are looking for ways to add value. And value doesn't necessarily have to be anything grandiose like a job. It could be a tip, an idea, some empathy, I mean, it could be a number of things. That's truly connecting.

[00:06:44] Roy Notowitz: I totally agree. I mean, I talk about investing in the success of other people, and that's really been the foundation for our entire business success, or my career, to be quite honest. And it's interesting the timing of your book. We're in a world where there's less opportunity to convene professionally, or hybrid, or remote, type roles are more and more common, so there's less opportunity for those types of connections to be built. So, how does having more people in that hybrid remote scenario impact this?

[00:07:17] Patrick Galvin: Yeah, and it's a shifting world, so right now we're hearing more calls back to the office, and companies are experimenting right now with how far they could push the limits on that. And I can understand why companies want to have people in a face-to-face environment. There are some organic connection opportunities that happen in the real world that simply can't be duplicated in the online world, but, that said, with intentionality of fostering connection, there are many things that can be done in the virtual world and many things that were done during Covid that folks have gotten away from. So, during Covid, I know a lot of people who had virtual coffee chats, whether it was with friends, whether it was with their work colleagues. And now I think a lot of folks who are in a work-at-home environment have just gotten to the point where they're faster at being remote, they can figure things out, so they've cut out those social connections. And it's interesting to me that people who did that well just sort of said, "I don't need that anymore. I know this person," and, actually, they do need it. It's really important. I was talking to an employee for a Fortune 50 company that we work with, and this employee credits her career success in the last couple years to showing up early for the team meetings so she has that opportunity. And she says that not a lot of people show up for it because people tend to log in right when it starts. And she says, just showing up 10 minutes early has opened up an opportunity to join a team that she never would've known about unless she had that casual conversation. The New Zealanders have this term: the keener. The keener is a person who shows up early, sits in the front row. When it comes to virtual, be a keener. Be keen to show up first, to show up early, and really engage in that organic conversation that, once the meeting starts, it's really difficult to have that.

[00:09:02] Roy Notowitz: That's awesome. So, we all know that lack of trust is the main ingredient for a dysfunctional team, and, yet, we live in a world where trust, and authority, and leadership is at an all time low. How can a leader use the principles and practices in your book to build trust amongst leadership teams and to unlock higher levels of engagement and performance?

[00:09:27] Patrick Galvin: Well, I wrote a book called The Trusted Way, and it's a parable about how one develops trust. And it's not a story that starts off successful for the main character. He is not a trust builder. He is out for his own self-interest. He's trying to maximize his earnings, and if he steps on toes, so be it. And he's fortunate that he learns how to build a trusted way to grow his company, himself personally, and he learns that through mentors. It is critically important, especially now. A lot of people lose employees, they fail to recruit employees because they don't have a culture based on trust. There's a book that I love called The Trust Equation, and I actually took some of the concepts from that book when I was writing that parable about trust, and I thought about them. So, The Trust Equation, by David Maister and some co-authors is this notion that trust is a combination of credibility, basically being really competent and doing the job right. Reliability, following through on what you say you're going to do. Intimacy, which means being someone that people can confide in without thinking that you're going to go spread bad words about them in the company or make them feel embarrassed, and that's in the numerator of this trust equation. The denominator is self-orientation. So, the idea is you want to build your credibility, your reliability, the sense of intimacy that people have with you, and you want to suppress sort of your own self-interest and really think about, "How do I help that other person grow?" It's a very simple equation, but if you really think through the consequences of it, the ramifications are huge. So, when I was writing this parable, I was thinking about that equation because I think it really summarizes quite well the trust building process, which is of utmost importance.

[00:11:13] Roy Notowitz: So what are some very practical ways that that framework can be applied in real life for leaders?

[00:11:22] Patrick Galvin: I think the first thing is just do what you say you're going to do and ground it in the wisdom that you have as an organization that you've developed over time. And I think a lot of people are trying to reinvent something that already works, so take a look at your best practices, both inside your own company and your own industry, and really move forward with those and that consistency of messaging around something that everyone in the workforce understands is true, and then really making sure that we're, as a team, all working towards that goal. That got me fired up about working for this one company. It was a very reliable messaging that I got, and when I had divergences from it, and I went and I talked to my boss about, "I don't quite agree with, you know, how you're doing the comp plan," she didn't just rule me out of order. We had a nice conversation, and she was having similar conversations with my peers, and they actually changed some things based on these conversations. So it was a very strong, trust-based environment that really hit on each one of those points. And I really felt like they thought that the advancement of the employees, that if the employees felt happy, if the employees felt listened to, it was going to engender trust. And they were absolutely right. They hung onto their employees for decades because of that. And there were always opportunities for people in the workforce to go somewhere and make a little bit more money for a competitor, but they knew that those bonds of trust were not as solid.

[00:12:44] Roy Notowitz: Right, right. Let's talk about relationship building a little bit more. You emphasize that relationship building is a regular practice, not an occasional activity.

Yeah.

And how can organizations embed this philosophy into their culture and leadership development programs? And why is it important?

[00:13:00] Patrick Galvin: Well, it's interesting. So, usually, relationship building, as something that is a training activity for a company, tends to be built into leadership development programs, which is wonderful. It's certainly better than not having any conversation about relationship building, but we believe that it's so important that you can kind of bury the lede. If you say leadership development, and then you're touching on other critical touch points for the organization, you're not giving it the attention that it deserves. So yeah, do your leadership development, but why not have a separate module around relationship building? Whether it's a coaching module, whether it's online training. There's different ways of bringing that to your workforce, but it is really, really important. When it comes to relationship building inside an organization, I think the judgment usually lies around, "Okay, are leaders really building relationships?" Because you could offer all the training in the world, but if leaders are not respecting the folks who work for them, who are not trying to engender conversations amongst team members, no relationship building in the world is going to work. No training program's going to work. It comes from the top down. Those workforces that have great relationship-centric leaders tend to have great relationship-centric managers and tend to have employees that are thinking, "Okay, this is a company that I want to be with." I mean, there's an assumption that people are going to just figure it out or that it's an inherent ability, and it's such a misconception because it's not about being an extrovert or being glib, it's really about being really intentional. And if it's about being intentional, then it's a skillset, and a lot of people get trapped in this notion it's a mindset. There's great relationship builders, and there's poor relationship builders. The reality is introverts can be some of the best relationship builders. They can be far better than extroverts, and they oftentimes don't get those opportunities, and the reason why is there's misconceptions, and also I think a lot of introverts lack the confidence because it's such this dominant idea that you have to be glib and sort of an out-there type person to be a relationship builder, maybe on an enterprise-wide level, and that is absolutely not the case.

[00:14:58] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, I mean there was one company I worked with in New York City, a fashion brand, and, at the beginning of meetings, they would ask, "How are you as a person in the world today?" And people would go around and share, and it was a really great way to start the meeting, and sometimes there would be, like, a mindfulness minute or something like that as well at the beginning, just to get people grounded and present. I felt like that little thing just really helped people feel connected on a human level. It was kind of like a joyful sort of environment.

[00:15:32] Patrick Galvin: It is the starting point for having good relationships. If you are coming into relationship building with a joyful perspective, as you said, that's a great place to be because building connections inside a company, outside a company, it requires energy, which is really hard to generate if you're not in a good head space. And, if you don't have this enthusiasm for relationship building, it's really difficult to attract people into professional relationships that are going to be longstanding and productive on both sides. So it really starts with itself and a company that is given the forethought to, "Hey, why don't we open up our meetings by talking about, you know, the headspace that we're in and what's going well," that's a great question to start a meeting with, instead of diving right into the issues, like, what's going well in your personal professional life usually has to do with connection or relationships of some sort. I think it's a framing that a lot of organizations don't do at their own loss actually.

[00:16:24] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. And it could also be things that they're challenged with or how they're feeling that particular day. You know, "I'm really stressed out because I have this thing going on at home."

Yeah.

Or whatever.

Yeah.

[00:16:34] Patrick Galvin: Terry Gross, who does Fresh Air for NPR, they asked her, "What's your favorite question?" And she said, "It is: tell me about yourself." If you listen to her, she won't always use those words, but that's essentially what she's trying to get at when she begins a conversation. And she has been known to get people out of their shells more than other interviewers because I think she comes at conversation through this perspective of, "Let's hear where they are as they define it," which I think is brilliant.

[00:17:02] Roy Notowitz: So, in your book, you explore monthly themes to guide relationship building efforts. Which of the themes do you think are most transformative for leaders and why?

[00:17:12] Patrick Galvin: So every month has a theme, and we did that because we want people, as they're going through this, to reflect back on the critical junctures. The one, actually, I think, simplest activity that a leader can do, and, for that matter, anybody in the workforce can do, which is not practiced nearly enough, is having a practice of gratitude with how you are collaborating and working with others. I love this quote by Gertrude Stein and she said, "Silent gratitude is not much use to anybody." She said that back in the 1920s, but it's as true a hundred years later as it was when she said it. And, the reality is, we're all going at such a fast pace -- the world has just accelerated in terms of expectations, what we're supposed to be doing -- that we can forget that. And I know folks who stay with companies because they feel that they have a solid relationship with the people who they work with -- not necessarily just the boss, but also their colleagues -- because they're in a culture of gratitude. That when things are done well, they're feeling gratitude from the top. And it could be as simple as a handwritten note. When I got a bonus at my company, the boss would actually do something that-- I had a meeting with her. I said, "I don't know why I'm getting this amount of money," and she would actually write down what my activities were that helped contribute to that bonus. And that was important to me because she heard me, and I thought that was really cool. So it could be something like that, calling somebody out for what they do well in a meeting and celebrating that, I mean, there's so many things, and we talk about those in the month of October. And, really, if you were to focus on one objective for 2025 as a leader and just say, "How do I bring gratitude to the table more often," I think you would see transformation.

[00:18:50] Roy Notowitz: That's fantastic. So, how do these methods and practices tie into recruiting, the kind of stuff that we're doing? And to what extent can these principles improve the ability for leaders to attract and hire top industry talent and use that as a competitive advantage?

[00:19:06] Patrick Galvin: Most job seekers who are talented have a plethora of choices as to where they might work. And you can bet that a high-level employee, when they're deciding where they want to go, is balancing compensation and culture quite a bit. And culture is not to be devalued at all. And I think if you have a relationship mindset that is not just a mindset, but it's expressed in how the leaders in that organization are treating their employees. You know, there's a lot being said about employee disengagement today. The disengagement numbers are high. I would put my money on it that those companies that really focus on relationship building have much higher engagement levels. And the offshoot of that is you're going to be retaining your employees a lot more, you're going to be attracting new employees who hear about it from their friends, and, actually not just hear about it, but you can actually start getting your friends to become, essentially, recruiters or reaffirming that you are a great company to work for. So it is really, I think, critical for recruitment and retention of talent to have a relationship-centric culture, because, without it, well, what are you going to compete on? Compensation? There's always going to be someone that's going to offer more for employees. It's a really bad place to be. So it is a comparative advantage to really have a relationship building culture.

[00:20:25] Roy Notowitz: Right. I agree. We call it the "Three C's" actually, in order to be really attractive to candidates, and that is culture, which you talked about, compensation, which I actually think is probably, you know, if I'm being honest, the most important element, just because of the world that we live in, and it has to make financial sense for people to make a move these days. But, the third one is career opportunity. Is there meat on the bone? Are they going to be able to learn, and grow, and develop and be part of a good team where they can advance their skill sets and their opportunities? So, a lot of professionals struggle with maintaining strong relationships while balancing the demands of work and life, and what kind of practical advice from the book can you share to help leaders prioritize relationships without feeling overwhelmed?

[00:21:14] Patrick Galvin: It is an activity that can be measured, to a certain extent, compartmentalized. So you can, your agenda full of all the to-dos of the day without doing anything that's really moving the goal of having satisfying, long-term relationships with your colleagues and, for that matter, with your significant others in your life, whether that's with your spouse, your children, your friends, what have you. And it's really blocking time for the people who are important to you, you know, your significant other's a huge one, but also with your colleagues. So, I think a lot of folks will hear relationship building, not their heads in agreement, and they don't really proactively spend time building relationships. A lot of people go into social media, LinkedIn, I think, being the main one for professionals. They'll go in there, and they'll sort of randomly scroll through, and see what's up, and what's happening. But, if you approach it as, "Okay, every day I'm going to go onto LinkedIn for 25 minutes, and I'm going to just focus on building relationships. How do you do that?" Well, when you're on LinkedIn, instead of just scrolling, when you see that somebody has been promoted, take the time to congratulate them. Let them know how lucky that company is, that they're in that new role, or that they got that new job. I mean, go on to a social media with a mode of like, "I'm going to be as relationship-centric as I can. I'm going to limit myself," because, as you said, Roy, people have a lot of things going on in their lives. You can do a ton in about 25 minutes a day. And, if someone did that, they would be amazing compared to what others are not doing, and they will quickly become known as, "Wow, that person's really a giver when it comes to their involvement in social media," and you can take that, and you could bring it into the real world where, you know, you join a group, but don't just join a group, you know, serve in some role, some leadership role in that organization so that you build those relationships of trust. So it's intentionality, and it's blocking a time, and it actually doesn't take more time, it just necessitates sort of standing back saying, "You know, what are my objectives here? You know, what do I want to get out of being a relationship builder?" And then proactively have a plan for it. And The Daily Connector is really oriented to help people have very pragmatic activities that they can engage in that will take them to new heights as a relationship builder.

[00:23:22] Roy Notowitz: I think one of the things that I hear sometimes is that, "I haven't talked to that person in three years," or, "I worked with them five years ago, and we haven't really interacted." I find that there's something really powerful, because I have a lot of connections, and it's hard for me to maintain constant communication, and so there's times where there's people who I haven't connected with in three years plus that I just send them a quick note, and I'm like, "Hey, I was thinking about you. How are things? What have you been up to?" And it's amazing how powerful that is. It's almost even more powerful when you reach out to somebody that you haven't talked to in a while, and you catch up with them. What are your thoughts about that?  

[00:24:01] Patrick Galvin: Keep doing it, man. That's beautiful. Not enough folks are doing that. There absolutely aren't. The statistics in our country right now of loneliness and alienation are off the charts. The American Psychiatric Association had a study that came out late last year that said 30% of Americans feel lonely at least once a week. That's just a devastating number. There are a lot of folks who would love an outreach like that, Roy. So I'm thinking how often it happens to me, and I'm also very connected. It's rare that people do that. So when you are the doer of that, people take notice. And you know what? It makes you feel good too. I mean, these are people that obviously you were thinking about them. You have a relationship, or had a more active relationship in the past, and you reach out. It really puts you in a mindset that will help you in your more immediate relationships. And who knows what comes out of a connection like that? I've had some amazing things, as well as I'm sure you have, of that little outreach of like, "Oh man, Roy, what are you up to?" It's like, "Oh wow, your company's doing great. We should talk sometime." You don't do it for that, but showing genuine interest in others and showing that you were just thinking about it, you would think it's common sense, but it's just not so common.

[00:25:11] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. If somebody's on a podcast that I know or has written a book, I'll read the book, I'll, you know, listen to the podcast because you learn a lot about them maybe that you didn't know, but also there's something really powerful about reaching out to them and say, "Hey, I listened to that," and, you know, maybe there's something that resonated with you, or something to share, or just to say, "I listened to it, and it was really great." And I think we're so busy, it's hard to find the time to absorb all the content that's coming at us, but I try to make a practice of listening to what people are putting out there.

[00:25:44] Patrick Galvin: I love that. As someone who goes on podcasts, you oftentimes feel like you're speaking into the void. You don't hear from the podcast listeners. And when you do, I've actually developed some relationships with those people who've done that. So it is a wonderful thing, and you can, just purely from the standpoint of, hey, you liked what that person had to say and you'd be interested in connecting. If you reached out to someone on LinkedIn, and you heard their podcast, and you sent them a note, got 300 characters, right, and said, "I just heard you on the X, Y, Z podcast. You were awesome. I especially like what you said about this. It'd be great to be connected." I get an invitation like that on LinkedIn, I would not only accept it in a heartbeat, I'd send them a note back, and we're off to the races with a relationship.

[00:26:25] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, that's a great method for meeting people that you don't even know too, actually, I didn't even think about that.

[00:26:30] Patrick Galvin: A hundred percent. For meeting people you don't know and certainly for reaffirming the relationships you have.

[00:26:36] Roy Notowitz: So is this something that can be measured? Do you have any, like, metrics that you'd recommend for leaders who want to track or improve their ability to foster connections?

[00:26:44] Patrick Galvin: So employee engagement scores I think would be a really useful metric. Uh, I know a lot of companies measure that. Client retention rates. If you see an uptick in client retention rates after a relationship building training focus, I think you could say, "Hey, that was worthwhile." Number of referrals generated after doing some relationship building training. These are all quantitative metrics you could use. From a qualitative standpoint, asking team members how supported they feel. That's really important. You know, numbers are great, but the qualitative reaction that employees have is really what they tend to value the most because this company understands that it's that human connection -- which is what relationship building is all about -- that's really critical, so getting that feedback from employees is really important. So there's quantitative measurement, and there's qualitative measurement. They're both important because it is such an important item for a company.

[00:27:33] Roy Notowitz: It's interesting, and those are great metrics for folks to think about. It's motivating if you can sort of see your efforts make a difference, whether it's creating a better place to work or having more clients coming back for business. One of the things I was thinking about is this concept of asking people within your network for help with things. That could be an introduction. It could be, you know, getting their input on something you're working on. What are your thoughts about, you know, putting yourself out there in that way? Because sometimes people felt uncomfortable asking for introductions or things that people-- maybe using people's social capital, I guess.

[00:28:13] Patrick Galvin: I do not think it is done nearly enough. When I look at my thousands of connections on LinkedIn, and then I consider the number of requests along the lines of what you've just described in the last month, the differential between the numbers out there versus the requests that come in, it's huge. When someone asks me for a very specific thing such as, "Hey, I'm interested in working for X, Y, Z company. I see that you know people there. Would you mind sharing what your thoughts are about the current culture of the company? And perhaps you might even know a person at the company who I should talk to about that," I love it when I get questions like that. Those specific dial in questions that I can have a five minute, a 10 minute conversation, provide some real value, I really enjoy it because, as humans, we're wired to be reciprocal. If the person is calling me, more often than not, we've had a relationship, a professional one, we've known each other for years. I am so happy to reciprocate. I mean, we have it wired into our DNA to be reciprocal, and I think people fail to realize that it's one of the most powerful motivators that we have as human beings. We grew up on the plains of Africa as a very weak species, and we survived because we were tribal, and we collaborated, and we helped one another. So, when people have a relationship with us, and they call upon us for a favor, it's a relief, honestly, when I get that call. So I feel like when I reach out to somebody saying, "Hey, I'm looking to do this," and this is a person who I've developed social capital with, I know I'm providing a similar relief for them, so I don't hesitate to do it myself. I love it when I have people ask me, and I think it's really a huge difference-maker in someone's career when they have that comfort level that not only is it okay to ask, but you're actually doing that person a favor because you have social capital with them, and now you are giving them the opportunity to serve, and that's going to make them feel good, and valuable, and respected in all of that.

[00:29:59] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So, looking ahead, how do you see technological advances, you know, AI especially, influencing the way we form and maintain professional relationships? And are there ways to leverage technology without losing that human touch?

[00:30:14] Patrick Galvin: AI can accelerate things for us, but it doesn't replace the human connection. Our comparative advantage versus AI-- and AI is going to develop so fast, it already has. The X factor is our humanity. So, to the extent that we can use AI to leverage the humanity, great. So, for instance, how do I use AI right now? If I go to a company, and I know that I am going to be meeting with someone I've never met before, I can now go into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, whatever it is, say, "Hey, I'm going to be meeting with this person. We're going to be talking about this. What are five things that I should know about this individual that are relevant to this conversation that would help me sort of build a relationship and rapport?" It's amazing what information I'll get back. Before, I'd have to go on LinkedIn, I'd have to go to the company website, read the bio, do some more research and due diligence. Now, that's all done for me, but notice what I'm doing. I'm actually getting intelligence that will allow me to go into that conversation and build a better human connection. That's an ideal use of AI. When you go to a networking event, you've had conversations with somebody, and you want to further meet with them or explore ideas with them, AI can help you generate an email that you send to them, or a LinkedIn connection request that you sent to them the next day that reflects on the conversation you have. You have to give AI the information -- garbage in is garbage out. You don't want a generic note, but now you get this short, little, pithy message. That person never knows that it was AI because it has all of these personal elements of our conversation. What took me maybe 40 minutes to create, I can now send out in 10 minutes or five minutes. I think AI's really cool.

[00:31:49] Roy Notowitz: It's amazing, especially for that type of stuff. So, as you think about the future and your work, what are you most excited about? And do you have anything on the horizon that we should know about?

[00:32:02] Patrick Galvin: I'm excited that there is a lot of interest right now in this concept of relationship building. More than ever. I think there's an awareness, getting back to your AI question, that what will keep us active, whatever industry or whatever our function is, is going to be our humanity. And the baseline of being a good human is being in good relationship with other humans. So I'm excited that The Daily Connector is finding an audience that it might not have found a few years ago when people weren't so focused on, you know, what's a comparative advantage for a human? Just getting The Daily Connector out there on a broader scale, we have created a book that has 366 ways to build better relationships. We have 78 online courses in our Business Relationship Building Academy, so you can do the math 366 minus 78, so we've got a lot more courses that are going to spring from our book that people can actually use. Our courses are all micro-learning courses and very interactive, with quizzes and tests and what have you. So a lot of content will go over from The Daily Connector into the online world of our courses. And then the parable series. I've written The Connector's Way about relationship building, The Trusted Way about the foundational piece that I didn't address in The Connector's Way, and it's a trilogy, so there's a third book that I will finish by the end of this year on relationship building. They involve some of the same characters, so I've got to wrap up the trilogy at the end of the year, and I'm excited to get that out into the world. Some people relate to the nonfiction approach of The Daily Connector, other people love parables and stories, so want to cover all the bases.

[00:33:34] Roy Notowitz: You know, we have a lot of leaders listening to this podcast. When should they think about maybe bringing you in or your work into their world?

[00:33:43] Patrick Galvin: Well, for us, we start off a lot of times with a presentation, an annual sales conference, an annual meeting of employees where they want to make relationship building front and center. That tends to be our alpha point with clients. Because we have all of these other materials, both written and online learning courses, there's ways to follow through. We have a coaching program too. But we tend to just get the conversation focused on relationship building, and if the client feels like it's a good fit, whether it's with our written materials, or online learning materials, or our coaching program, we can have that conversation. But we love to center people's attention on relationship building. Oftentimes it's a 60 minute keynote presentation. Sometimes it's a little bit longer, more interactive sort of workshop format. But any chance we get to go out in the world and help companies talk more about relationship building, we grab the opportunity.

[00:34:33] Roy Notowitz: Well, it's fantastic. I've been really enjoying the book. Thank you for putting that out there. And it's the most comprehensive book on this topic that I've ever seen, so it's very impressive, and I appreciate you coming on to talk to us about it today.

[00:34:47] Patrick Galvin: Well Roy, I appreciate that, and I know you are a wonderful relationship builder -- I've seen you in action. And that you like the book, that means a lot to me, and it also affirms this phenomenon we've seen of the greatest relationship builders realize that the saw can always get sharper.

[00:35:03] Roy Notowitz: That's great. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

[00:35:08] Patrick Galvin: Thank you.

[00:35:11] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit howihire.com for more details about the show. How I Hire is created by Noto Group Executive Search. To find out more about us, visit notogroup.com. You can also sign up for our monthly job alert newsletter there and find additional job search strategy, resources, and content on hiring. This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit aomcclain.com

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