Call me egotistical but I’m fascinated by ubiquity.

The idea that wherever you go, someone will know your name and, by reputation alone, feel like they know you is enticing. It’s powerful. And, if I’m honest, it’s a goal of mine.

I’m yet to figure out if I’m proud of that or not.

In the meantime, I figured I’d drop one particular theory I’ve spent years testing.

I call it:

The Coffee Shop Rule.

[cue CSI Miami intro music]

The Coffee Shop Rule

I started working in Sydney CBD in July last year. Anyone who knows anything about Australian cities could tell you one thing: there’s coffee shops everywhere. Literally. Everywhere.

On my 4th day of working at Investible, my fellow coffee lover Ben Lindsay took me to Bonnie Coffee and gave it a glowing endorsement as a reliably great filter coffee in the area.

As we were sitting in the small, incandescent-lit space with stripped paint and LEFF designed clocks on the walls, I had a thought.

“I’m going to become a regular here.”

7 months on: I know every staff member at the cafe, Max the manager starts making my coffee before I order, and I have (allegedly) scored a free cookie on the odd occasion.

All because of the Coffee Shop Rule: If you show up in the same place enough times, you’ll become known.

Actually, it takes a touch more than that.

If I was to tell this in LinkedIn speak, I’d call this a repeatable model for reputation-building. In truth, it’s much simpler.

It’s a framework for making friends in places where 99% of people are strangers who come and go, blending into the background.

Here’s the lowdown.

Set the Lid

People are busy. Cafe staff can see over a thousand people a day walk in and out of their store. Unless you’re Ryan Gosling, you aren’t any different than the other 999 people who came through.

If you’re waiting for other people to lead the charge in relationship building, you’ll be waiting for a while.

One funky little piece of human behaviour, however, is that most people mimic their surroundings.

If you know this ahead of time, you can set how you want them to act. Bring the vibe with you, don’t be scared you’ll look like the odd one out by seeming excited about your life. Most people want to be happy and want others to be happy. If they’re not along for the ride with you, that’s ok.

At Burn Bright, the organisation that shaped a lot of my career, we used the analogy of fleas in a jar.

Fleas can jump up to 13 inches into the air. In an experiment, a bunch of fleas were put in a jar, and they jumped straight out. Another bunch were put in a jar and had the lid screwed on. The fleas jumped, hit their head, and fell. Over time, the fleas lowered their jumps until they were just beneath the lid. When the lid was removed, they couldn’t jump out of the jar anymore.

The point of the analogy is this: you set the lid, and others will meet you there.

Don’t set it low.

Be Consistent

On your first time in the place, you might be able to crack a joke or get a smile from the other person but it’s unlikely you’ll have something you call a friendship.

Turn up twice and it’s reinforced. Turn up three times and it’s becoming a pattern. Turn up 3 times a week for 2 weeks and you’ll be a familiar face they look out for.

Do that for 3 months and they’ll start worrying about you if you don’t show up. (When I worked in a cafe, I had one elderly couple that I called because they didn’t come at their regular time - it’s a real thing. Dw, they just decided to go to the movies that day.)

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like you must dedicate your life to this. But if you smash this process in the early days, you’ll be mates with your barista (or anyone you apply this rule to) in no time.

Lead the Charge

The single biggest hack I’ve ever learned for getting to know someone is so dead simple.

Ask for their name and use it.

There is power in a name. They are no longer Barista #2 (Tall, Black and Orange Hair), they are now Max. Once you use someone’s name and they know yours, it becomes easy to follow up with another question on a time you come in.

“Where’s your accent from Max?”

Now I know Barista #2 (Tall, Black and Orange Hair) is Max from Taiwan.

“How long you been in Aus?” leads to “What have you been up to while here?” leads to “What’s the dream? In an ideal world, what would you be doing in a year?”. Would you believe it? Barista #2 (Tall, Black and Orange Hair) is actually a three-dimensional character, you just need to learn about them.

Be curious.

Reciprocate

Don’t be afraid to share parts of your story too.

I know, I know, “Who wants to hear about my life?”, “I’m not interesting.” Blah Blah

Bullshit.

Everyone is interesting. That includes you.

You don’t need to divulge every thought that’s gone through your mind but if you’re asking questions about someone else, don’t be afraid to drip-feed your story into the conversation too. Give them reference points of who you are. You’ll most likely find common ground.

For me, this often looks like (in response to something about the day being busy or them being on their feet all day) “Yeah I know what you mean, I used to work in a cafe. I loved it, would love to open a cafe someday.” And then redirect back to what they just said. You’re not hijacking the conversation; you’re drip-feeding empathy and your story in an aside. Imagine you’re a Shakespearean character stepping to the side and addressing the Globe Theatre audience directly while the rest of the play freezes in a tableau.

You deserve to be a main character as much as anyone else does.

You don’t need to be special, you need to be you.

Ok this one is hard, I’ll admit. Even Meryl Streep says walking as yourself is the hardest thing an actor can do.

Overthinking how to talk as you is like thinking about how you walk while walking. You start changing yourself more and censoring yourself further to become more “you”. It’s not very productive.

Take a breath, let your guard down. Remember that people (like you in this situation) think more about themselves than they think about others.

Everyone’s too trapped in their own heads to care about how you act.

You don’t have to knock someone’s socks off, you just need to be you and you’ll notice the people you interact with will open themselves up too. It’s weird, I’m ngl. I don’t fully understand how it works but it does.

Not sure who you are?

You and literally everyone are in the same boat, my friend.

You are you - don’t worry about trying to cognitively process it further, the ROI of categorising yourself doesn’t pan out.

What should I do with this power?

So you’ve got this framework for becoming known in a place. What now?

Well, despite the name of the rule — coffee shops are not the only place you can use this. I just buy a lot of coffee so it makes sense to test it there.

The biggest area that this skill becomes useful for is, in my humble opinion, your industry.

Almost all industries have common meeting places. Visceral town halls where knowledge and connections gather. Some of them are formal and organised like the startup community, some of them are informal or even accidental.

If you know where these spaces are (either virtual or in-person), you can apply this same method to become ubiquitous in your industry.

Pair it with a cheeky lil personal branding angle (I’m passionate about creativity and community for example) and that’s how you’ll be known.

You may even get some fun offers. Speak at an event? Want a new job? Exciting times.

Go forth

I feel like I’ve expanded on this enough. I shall continue to test the theory and if there are any more relevant parts to it that I think of, I’ll drop a pt 2 (it’ll be shorter than this one, I promise).

Hey, I’m Harry

I’m a creative generalist with a pinball machine for a brain.

I'm passionate about building creative communities and reinstalling creative intelligence in our rapidly updating humanOS.

My work has taken me through a bunch of arenas. From delivering leadership workshops across the country to building communities in startups and VC (with a few fun pitstops along the way).

I share stories of things I’ve learned, wild theories I’ve tested, and random pieces of information I need to get off my brain to clear the hard drive.

Follow for more and if you ever wanna get a coffee (in-person or virtually), hmu. I’m always keen. ☕️