Me and the Pokemon GO guys are out here creating high-value networks

I got coffee with this lady the other day so I could ask her some questions about the real estate business. She’s a designer and business owner, but she recently got into real estate as well. Getting coffee with people who are actually doing things is cool because you get to pretend that you are also doing things. Things like getting into real estate. Why not? Why not get into real estate? You know what I mean? I don’t know anything about real estate, but I can learn about it and get into it maybe. I don’t know. It seems like a good hustle to casually pivot into when you’re almost 30 and walk dogs for a living. I’ll just have to study some different real estate materials and take a test first. And that’ll be the beginning of me crushing it in real estate. But also, the way I understand it, even if I started doing real estate today, I’m not gonna make any money for awhile. So that sucks. But after I learn about how properties work and all that, I figure it’s just about building your network, real estate-wise.

That’s how you succeed in pretty much anything, though. Building your network. But also, the network you build has to be good. Just because the network exists and has a lot of people in it doesn’t necessarily make it a good network. I have spent the last four years of my life in New York building my network of open mic comedians. Maybe the worst kind of network to build. Just an overall bad time investment. Some of the networks that exist in this city are wealthier and more powerful than I can comprehend. I could at least make an effort to move in that direction. And instead I continue to hang out in the same dark rooms with the same baristas and waiters and dog walkers and bartenders that I hung out with yesterday, hoping the dumb jokes work this time. Full-on delusion. A little community of enablers pushing each other further and further into mental illness.

At least when I’m walking dogs, some of my clients are rich. And it’s good to be around rich people, even if they talk down to you. In fact, the more they talk down to you, the more valuable their networks probably are. And those are the networks you want to be around.

But there are also networks you want to avoid. My brother plays a lot of Pokémon GO, which I recently found out is still happening. The other day he was in a park near our apartment capturing a Pokémon or training a Pokémon or doing whatever you do, and he noticed a couple other guys playing Pokémon GO as well. They all introduced themselves and started talking about Pokémon GO. Apparently these guys’ enthusiasm for New York’s Pokémon GO community was entirely too much. One of them started sharing some tips for how my brother could start getting plugged into the local scene. I guess the whole thing got a little evangelistic, so at that point, my brother started trying to get out of the conversation as soon as possible.

I’m not shitting on Pokémon GO or the people who play it. Actually, the NYC Pokémon GO community might be pretty cool, I don’t know. I’m sure a lot of them probably have good jobs and happy lives and stuff. And when they have time, they go on little Pokémon adventures or whatever. I imagine plenty of them are losers, too. But that goes for literally every group of people. Overall, I’d still bet that the network of Pokémon GO fanatics in NYC has a higher value than the network of amateur clowns I’m now part of. I bet those guys in the park were having a genuinely good time, teaming up and capturing Pokemon. You can make fun of adults who do that, but I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years meeting up with other grown men in basements so we can take turns telling each other how much we want to kill ourselves, each of us hoping our version is gonna be funnier for some reason. And that’s a way dumber life than playing Pokémon GO on the weekends.

I think for now I am going to shift my networking focus to the rich people I’ve met because I walk their dogs. See where that goes. When I finish a walk, I always send the owner a few photos of their dog that I took over the last hour. At first, I only did this because my boss told me to. It’s a nice little thing he likes to do to show he and the walkers who work for him care about the dogs. And dude, I’ll be honest. I’m just a few weeks in, but I am fucking crushing it with these dog photos. Really working the angles. People walking by on the sidewalk give me a lot of weird looks, but it’s paying off. The dog moms are loving these shots. I’m a little offended that my boss hasn’t posted any of them on the company Instagram yet, but that’ll come with time. What matters is that I continue to hone my craft. And the richer the dog mom, the more glamour shots I’m gonna get of her poodle mix before taking him back to their apartment on Central Park West. It’s called building a network, ever heard of it? I don’t even do standup anymore. I’m a full-time dog photographer with a budding career in real estate.

So yeah, if we’re just talking networks, I’m leveling up, big time. Even some of these dogs are looking at me with contempt. Those are the dogs you want to be around. They’re usually more photogenic anyway. Beautiful day like today, perfect lighting in the park? It’s grind time, baby. Ten-minute walk tops, then we’re finding a nice little spot in the grass and settling in for a 45-minute photoshoot. Your dog doesn’t need exercise. It needs new headshots that remind you how much you love this dog you don’t have time to hang out with. Yeah I look like a dumbass, but the smart people walking by know what I’m building.