The Five Levels of People in your Phone

Your real wealth is measured in the number of Category One and Category Two stalwarts.

[Excerpt from the book “The Favor Bank,” currently in production. Please sign up to the mailing list for updates, and do leave comments on ideas you’d like to further explore or counterpoints to the assertions I’ve made in this essay]

There’s a device we touch every day which serves as a gateway to reach every person we’ve ever met, yet we rarely think about the entirety of its contents unless we need something specific from one of its named entries.

It’s your smartphone - and while most of us use it to interact primarily with 5-15 of our high-frequency contacts, we give little thought to the 98% of the other names and numbers we also saved over the years.

By the time most of us reach our 30s (and beyond), we’ve accumulated thousands of phone numbers/contact information saved in our device. By default, most of us rarely think about people outside that top 15 most-called/texted names, but they’re all there, and they know our names.

Regardless of how infrequently you interact with them, the thousands of names in your contact list have some relationship with you, and all of them can be considered in one of five categories, which we shall explore:

Category One

At the highest level, there are people in your life who would do ANYTHING for you - if you were kidnapped, they would empty their bank accounts to pay your ransom, drop the other commitments in their life and drive you to the hospital, block out their busy calendars to comfort you if you experience a tragic loss.

These are rare individuals who would open their homes to you if you find yourself without shelter, send you money to get you out of a bind, even commit crimes for your benefit if needed - perjure themselves for you if you needed an alibi, or be the proverbial friend who would “help you hide a body.”

These roles are populated by the closest members of your family & loved ones.

Who are your Category One people?

Your spouse/partner (hopefully). If you’re lucky, you have a best friend or two in this category. These are the individuals who will go out of their way to protect you or help you win at life, even at great personal expense on their own, possibly even risk jail for you, if that’s the only way to protect or advance your interests. They deserve our loyalty and love for their unwavering devotion.

One of the quiet tragedies of Category One relationships is that because of the magnitude and depth of their unconditional devotion and loyalty, many of us end up taking Category One people in our lives for granted, often neglecting to concretely demonstrate our gratitude for their support. This is an error which we will discuss how to rectify in Chapter 4.

Category One people are rare, and no matter how many things you get right in this life, it’s unlikely for you to have more than five individuals in your life who’d be at this level (unless you are a cult leader … but then again, if you are a successful cult leader, you’re not reading THIS book for advice).

Treasure them, take time out of your day to acknowledge them and express your gratitude to them regularly. 

Category Two

Category Two people are a notch below Category One types - while they won’t go as far as Category One people, their hearts are oriented in the same direction, just at a lower degree of magnitude.

Category Two will take occasional initiative to check in on your well-being, proactively tee-up introductions for your benefit (investors for your startup, introductions on your behalf on things relevant to your pursuits) and initiate investments or advice when they feel their input can be of value to you. These are also people who will stake their reputations to recommend or endorse you as a trusted member of their inner-circle to those you don’t know, people and institutions out of your reach, with which you want to make a favorable impression upon.

They are happy to incur modest inconveniences or pay some personal expense to be of benefit to you, just for the joy of watching you win.

While it’s extremely difficult to develop more than a handful of Category One relationships, the maximum number of Category Two relationships are not so constrained.

Indeed, conducting your life in a generous, value-giving manner, inspiring loyalty across your relationships and making regular interpersonal “deposits” by volunteering your time, expertise and money will have a direct positive effect on the number and quality of Category Two people in your life. We will elaborate further on this in Chapter Two.

Category Three 

This is the overwhelming majority of individuals in the “business contacts” category of your phone. You’ve had pleasant interactions with them, but don’t know them that well. Populating this category are former co-workers, Graduate-school/college classmates, people you’ve had pleasant interactions with at a conference/gathering and whose LinkedIn invitation you’d accept the moment you see their name cross your “new connections” tab. 

People in Category Three view you positively (if somewhat fuzzily, due to infrequent contact), but don’t think about you all that much or often. If you approached them and asked for a specific favor/introduction, they *may* do something for your benefit if it suits them, or it happens to be convenient for them.

This will be the biggest category of people in your phone, and as a category, the one we think the least about.

But.

Remember that aside from blood family, nearly all of your Category One or Category Two inner circle were once in Category Three casual contacts.

While it’s tempting to look at Category Three contacts as a long boring list of fuzzily-positive names you rarely interact with, I’d encourage you to reimagine your Category Three as a distributed farm team for your inner circle.

Find ways to increase the frequency and quality of interactions with Category Three people in your life. This accomplish two things:

1. These interactions give you more granular information about their character, which allow you to better understand which of the multitude of Category Three people are worth investing additional energy/effort into. And just because you want a deeper relationship with someone doesn’t mean they feel the same way about you (to be fair, they don’t know you all that well either!), which leads us to reason number two:

2. Being more visible and demonstrably generous/value-giving within your Category Three circle is valuable in further establishing your own reputation as a value-emitter and decreasing the inherent fuzziness attendant to casual connections. Staking an unambiguous position and offering value to others sends a powerful social beacon which is attractive to value-givers (the sub-demographic you most want to deepen your relationships with). Just as you are sizing up others for inclusion in your inner circle, they are doing the same, and giving them concrete examples of your good character is far more effective than just hoping casual relationships will eventually discover your best attributes.

The fuzziness of Category Three relationships goes both ways - there are amazing people you already know casually (whose extraordinary attributes you are unaware of, but would be deeply impressed by, if you only knew), and there are people who would be amazed by aspects of you, who don’t know you well enough to appreciate your best elements. Reducing the fuzziness helps us appreciate the best in people within our existing list of contacts, as well as letting our own finest moments be more visible by those who don’t know us well enough.

Category Four

Category Four People view you through a transactional lens. They know you and are in the position to do things for your benefit based on their access/ relationships/ resources, but expect some sort of tangible quid pro quo. The only reason they’ll do something for your benefit is if they’re compensated, in one form or another.

In many ways, Category Four relationships are the least-valuable part of your network but they are often necessary. Ironically, when people first hear about the concept of The Favor Bank, they imagine Category Four relationships to be the entirety of it, and understandably bristle at the idea of managing a complicated interlocking web of quid-pro-quos with other “what’s in it for me” transactional sharks, and are put-off by the idea entirely.

This is a mistake.

The significant distinction of Category Four from the above categories is that Category One through Three people are motivated to do things for your benefit because (at some level) they like you. By way of contrast, Category Four people will do things for your benefit because they view you as a paycheck, or source of access/ chits which they’d have a harder time acquiring without you.

What Category Four relationships lack in affection is offset by the fact that they are the most-reliable segment of your network. Affection may wax and wane, but transactional people can be counted on to act in their self-interest (whether they like you or not). Successfully managing Category Four relationships means gaining deep understanding what types of chits each Category Four individual are most-motivated by, and ensuring that you are a reliable supplier of said chits.

Those who have expert-level Mastery of navigating their Category Four relationships inevitably share a few traits: they have significantly high IQ and social awareness. They are willing to devote substantial effort in applying that above-average intelligence into developing and refining deep and granular maps of their all of their other transactional Category-Four relationships to stitch together meta-map of what each individual most keenly needs and has to offer, in order to maximize the likelihood of securing each transactional person’s cooperation when the time comes for you to make an ask of them.

Category Five

While individuals in the previous four categories would do things for your benefit with varying levels of motivation and effort, it’s important to acknowledge that there is a (hopefully-small) minority of people who know you, and view you in hostile terms.

For whatever reason, people in Category Five do not like you, and view you adversarially. Their rancor may be justified (you exposed a fraud they were perpetrating, you were the reason they got fired, you wronged them in some substantial way), or entirely illogical (you share a name/affiliation with someone who wronged them, they harbor a prejudice against some aspect of your identity).

Regardless of their history or motivations, what’s relevant to you is that the behavior of Category Five people is quietly (or openly) hostile to your interests. They know who you are and are aware of what you pursue, and take proactive measures to harm you - dissuading people they know to conduct business with you or disseminating negative information (true or not) about you to their network - effectively Category Five people are an ongoing anti-favor generator.

In a world of misunderstandings, interpersonal friction and flawed human beings, it’s nearly-impossible to enter your 30s without developing at least a few Category Five hostiles who will dog you the rest of your life.

The goal isn’t to have zero Category Five people in your life (this is impossible); when it comes to Category Five hostiles, the goal is to conduct yourself in a manner that minimizes unnecessarily additions to the roster of Category Five adversaries, as well as make yourself less-attractive of a target to existing Category Five people who already dislike you for whatever reason.

It’s important to remember membership in these Categories are not static - the aggregate effect of your behaviors and choices will elevate (or degrade) your relationships with everyone in your life, and thus improve or depress the value of your Favor Bank.

Over time, making a habit of taking the initiative to add value in the lives of people in your life will accomplish the following: 

• neutralize (or at least blunt) the hostility and damage authored by Category 5s in your life

• Encourage at least a few Category 4s to view you in a less-transactional manner and

• Motivate a subset of the otherwise-passive Category 3 people to be more like Category 2.

• Reward the loyalties of those who were already in Category 2 and 1 and deepen your relationships with them.
  

When we put it this way, it’s obvious that everyone wants a large and loyal squad of stalwart Category 1 and Category 2 loyalists who are actively rooting for your success and willing to put themselves through significant inconvenience for the joy of seeing you win … but these relationships don’t come into being by accident.

While large financial fortunes can exist unearned through inheritance (or luck), a deep and loyal Favor Bank is always the result of intentional decisions made by the individual and the reputation they’ve established over many years as a value-emitter into the relationships they’ve cultivated.

Follow-up essay on the topic: who would YOU be a Category 1, Category 2 for, and why? “You are an NPC - So Be a Good One”