Give A Shit: 5 Sales Lessons In H.E.A.R.T. From (Almost) 5 Months Of Couchsurfing (For Under $5000)

Developing Connection & Character Through Adventure

In the summer of 2009, I undertook a European sojourn – a one-way ticket to Paris won in a one-sided wager, with only a bag, a backpack, an empty guitar case, and the call to adventure.

Photo by Inside Weather on Unsplash

.My dad, in his signature style of paternal encouragement, offered this prize by challenging me to learn Rimsky-Korsakov’s classic Flight Of The Bumblebee. Sometimes a little extrinsic motivation goes a long way. As for the empty guitar case, I figured it would make for a fun side quest and better story to find a guitar during my travels. I was not wrong, but that’s another story for another time.

That was pretty much the extent of my planning. It was an exercise in living whimsically. As an aspiring jazz musician at the time, my outlook was steeped in improvisation, making it up as I went along.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I went on to travel for just shy of 5 months. Traveling at a leisurely pace, I visited just over a dozen cities during that time: Paris, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Barcelona, Paris reprise, Berlin, Prague, Munich, Utrecht, Amsterdam, London, Oxford, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness, Glasgow.

I returned to Canada at the end of November to an emotional reunion with my father waiting at the airport.

Despite a bohemian disposition as a young idealist with an antinomian bent fuelled by post-modernism, I learned valuable lessons around courage, self-reliance and extension during my time in Europe. 

I was a lot more frugal then—a kinder way of saying cheap or stingy, though attitude makes a difference. I suppose it’s how you frame it—resourceful? Innovative? Intrepid? At the time, I remember my nutrition plan amounting to maximizing calories per euro (cal/€ for short).

During this whole trip, I stayed in hostels or hotels 8 of the 150 or so nights of my travels.

How?

Couchsurfing played an instrumental role. I’ll be forever grateful for that platform and community helping to facilitate those experiences. (As a tangential aside, one of the most interesting places I stayed was in a closed-down school in Kent inhabited by caretakers to prevent vandalism.)

Though it was in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and the exchange rate wasn’t particularly favorable, I managed to scrape by on scant resources. In my naivete, I felt untouched by global affairs.

An important part of that was successfully persuading strangers into letting me sleep in their homes.

Put like that, it sounds quite manipulative or transactional. 

In fairness, I stayed my first month in Paris through one friend I made a couple years prior during the Montreal jazz festival, which deserves its own story. Several other nights over the months were accounted for through family connections – running into my mom while she and a friend were visiting Berlin, and staying with relatives in Scotland.

Couchsurfing As Sales?

As alluded to above, sales is one counterintuitive way to frame the couchsurfing experience.

For starters, it helps that hosts are kind enough to open up their homes to travelers, a particularly niche market. Generally speaking, there are more surfers than hosts, creating tension between supply and demand. Logistics aside, in terms of a traveler’s plans and host availability, what distinguishes one potential surfer from another?

It comes down to how they present themselves both in their online profile, but also in their initial message.

Having gingerly dipped my toe into the freelancing pool in search of copywriting gigs on Upwork during April and hiring talent last fall for formatting help with my book, some similarities emerge.

A helpful way (to my younger self, anyway) I’ve found to frame sales in recent years is connection.

While business can be merely transactional out of necessity, convenience or commodification, the relationship between seller and buyer matters, especially as modern culture is inundated by advertising and individuals become both more sophisticated and jaded.

And while time is an important factor in building relationships, connection moves at the speed of trust. My various experiences with couchsurfing, hitchhiking, performing and personal development attest that trust can build surprisingly fast given appropriate circumstances. 

For example, I fondly remember hitchhiking my way back to Paris from the south of France after missing a rendezvous with my ride—the last leg of my journey was with a gendarme and her daughter on vacation making their way to visit Paris for the first time. It was a strangely intimate juxtaposition as a foreign traveler feeling the vicarious joy of a national discovering their own capital.

On the topic of sales, I recently listened to Jordan Belfort’s Way of the Wolf, and despite his somewhat checkered background portrayed in The Wolf Of Wall Street, highlights include the inspired discovery of his “straight line” sales method, the importance of selling on both emotion and logic, and the critical role of first impressions.

Regarding first impressions, he claims you have about four seconds to establish authority before which it becomes increasingly difficult or nearly impossible to recover. 

In those four precious seconds, as he puts it, you have to be “sharp as a tack, enthusiastic as hell, and an expert in your field.”

In a couchsurfing context, how does that translate to standing out amongst other potential travelers?

Reflecting on my process (and to fulfill the promise of my headline) – I would say it was about five things.

To make it both cute and memorable since I’m making this all up anyway, let’s use the acronym H.E.A.R.T.

1. Humanity

2. Enthusiasm

3. Attention

4. Relatability

5. Trustworthiness

H Is For Humanity

As a budding (reluctant?) salesman myself, this bears repeating. For whatever odd reason, perfectly normal and sociable people often become weirdly robotic as soon as the conversation turns to sales.

Why does this happen? Probably for a number of reasons, including performance anxiety around what to say, what not to say, when to say it, navigating a conversation, self-confidence and confidence in what is being asked, and being overly attached to a particular outcome.

What does it mean to be human? In this context, start with Covey’s maxim of “seek first to understand, then be understood.” Be curious, ask questions (without excessively interrogating), and take turns disclosing something relevant about yourself, like the social equivalent of a collaborative ping-pong rally.

Other contenders for ‘H’ include humor and humility – two traits that disarm our social defences and lay the groundwork for connection.

E Is For Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is about channeling excitement into whatever it is you’re into – so while this might seem like it’s reserved for extraverts, that’s not the case. If you’re more on the introverted side, let your freak flag fly. Whether that’s collectible card games, painting miniatures for tabletop wargames, or spending Friday nights roleplaying into the wee hours of the morning, passions and interests are opportunities for connection.

Why does this work? There’s something powerful and alluring about unapologetically accepting what we like (and don’t like) commensurate with the intensity you bring to bear.

It breaks the spell of apathy, of uncertainty, of being merely meh.

Don’t be lukewarm.

A Is For Attention

This is about actually reading the profiles of potential hosts, looking for and mentioning what you have in common to connect over (see above). 

And during actual interactions, paying attention and listening to your host. 

Give the gift of your presence.

Strike the balance of self-sufficiency in planning your own agenda but don’t be so jam-packed you neglect to share or include your host, circumstances permitting.

R Is For Relatability

What is it to be relatable but to connect over our common experiences of being human? While the details are unique and individual to each one of us—finding and sharing common ground leads to connection.

Hosts are usually travelers too—I fondly remember being inspired by the travels of some of my hosts hitchhiking across Europe, Africa, and South America, and tree planting in Canada.

Other contenders for ‘R’ are reciprocity and receiving. While these may seem contradictory, to fully receive the kindness of a gift with gratitude goes a long way. 

Think about the last time you offered praise to someone and the difference it made between watching it land and the common scenario of someone squirming while deflecting your words, minimizing your gift and their own self-worth. It’s sometimes painfully obvious how uncomfortable others can be with receiving.

As for reciprocity, this doesn’t necessarily have to be tit-for-tat, but making some kind of overture, whether an act of service, sharing a story or experience, helping clean up, cooking a meal, offering a small gift or otherwise demonstrating appreciation, is the currency of connection.

T Is For Trustworthiness

What makes someone trustworthy? 

At the core of trust is a sincere and genuine alignment among intent, words and action underscored by prosocial intent and receptivity. 

The saying “mean what you say, say what you mean” comes to mind. 

While trust is built over time, it’s also developed through shared perspectives, experiences, relationships, common interests or activities.

In my experience trust is accelerated through navigating difficult circumstances together, i.e. “do cool shit together.”

As I learned last fall in Dark Canyon, according to Charles H. Green, trustworthiness is a function of the sum of credibility, reliability and intimacy divided by self-orientation.

• Credibility is competence, authority and expertise (do they know what they’re talking about?)

• Reliability is follow-through and integrity (do they do what they say?)

• Intimacy is rapport and a sense of safety with sharing (do they care?)

• Self-orientation is the fulcrum of balancing their needs with yours (how much are they in it solely for themselves?)

Summary

In short, to summarize this whole piece—to sell is to connect, and one secret to sales is to give a shit: about your experience, your environment, about your word, about yourself, and about others.

PS Here’s my couchsurfing profile for more shits and giggles.