All the while, I thought if I want to do anything, I ask my friend to join me. Perhaps, I ask the wrong friend. I invite my old friend (>10years) to join me for swimming, cycling, hiking. None of them join me despite repeated requests. Let alone doing business (buy/sell/etc) with them. So, you will have to join strangers for your activities. What went wrong here?
Friends are specific. Colleagues, Universities Mate, School Mate, Kampung Mate, Interest group mate etc. Each of you become friends because of some condition and remains intact (stay in the group) for the same reason.
I have a friend Mr. A who use to sell goods on eBay. Mr. A told me 99.5% of his customers are strangers. There is one customer who is his old friend Mr. B, Mr. B found out from eBay that Mr. A is selling some stuff off his interest. Mr. A did not promote it to Mr. B in the first place.
So how to solve this problem. Let said you want to do travel backpacking, but none of your friends want to go with you.
Rule 1: Find, locate, join and cultivate “Interest Specific Friend/Group.”
The solution is “Interest Specific Friend” and Meetup group. For me I like hiking, so I join https://www.meetup.com/KLhiking/ . Anything to do with hiking, I will make friends with people from this group and join them. The rest of friend I can almost forget about them because 99% of them will not be interested.
However, Old friends are friend mah! So, I will briefly inform/self-advertise a bit here and there on facebook on which nice adventure I went. When they ask, I point them the answer. https://www.meetup.com/KLhiking/
Rule 2: I already briefly told you what I have done and my interest. If you ask, I will tell you more.
So, now I am more interested in forming some interest-specific friends such as running, cycling, swimming, research group, religious group and hiking. I assume they don’t cross border. Cyclists will remain as cyclists etc. Nevertheless, rule 2 still applicable.
All my life, I been wasted my time trying and hoping to develop interest among my friends. Since I have found Rule 1, I also found rule 3&4
Rule 3: Interest are not nurtured; they came out naturally.
Rule 4: Interest-based on greed come out naturally, but they won’t last and it’s the first to go.
So, if U 1 2 come along (rule 4), pay your bills. I ‘m not going to pay for your free holiday. $$ is better used for donation to the needy.
It all goes back to the same premise (specialization), if you want to eat good chicken rice, go to a shop that sells only chicken rice and not economy rice stall.
