Save Your Asks: Evolve Your Networking Currencies. Grow Your Influence. Triple Your Business.

By Chris Tuff

Despite being more connected than ever before, many are also more isolated. 

The tools and technology available today have pushed business owners, entrepreneurs, and motivated professionals toward shallow, surface-level engagement, robbing them of connections, opportunities, profits, and fulfillment.

In Save Your Asks, bestselling author Chris Tuff shares his transformative approach to building genuine, productive business relationships. No more stale bagels or burnt coffee, no more “speed dating” networking meetings, and no more high-pressure networking groups. Just a simple, innovative system that encourages genuine interaction and fulfillment while building deep connections with prospects and referral partners.

Featuring some of the most innovative CEOs, athletes, auctioneers, surfers, and others, Save Your Asks will help you:

• Develop an authentic personal brand that people actually remember
• Identify your “networking currency” and use it to generate results
• Avoid the “askholes” and others who will hold you back
• Land more business by mastering “the art of the ask”

Chris Tuff is on a mission to help business leaders create connections that make work cultures thrive, improve retention rates, and multiply sales. Save Your Asks is the motivated networker's ticket to achieving those results, and more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Panta Press
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781631956287

Chris Tuff

Chris Tuff was one of the first advertisers to work directly with Mark Zuckerberg in 2006 and filmed one of the first “viral” videos, which landed him on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Tuff’s natural ability to connect with his nearly 80% millennial and Gen Z workforce led him to publish the national bestselling The Millennial Whisperer in 2019. A global movement soon followed, as the Atlanta resident shared lessons on empathy and genuine connection at work on some of the largest stages in the world including such Fortune 100 companies as Nike.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Surfer Raimana Van Bastolaer has spent most of his life disconnecting from everything most people chase. And yet, he’s one of the most connected people I know; a nonstop networker who brings pure joy to everyone he meets. He’s also one of the greatest super-connectors in the world. You may ask yourself, how does a surfer who spends most of his time in the middle of French Polynesia become one of the most connected people on the planet? Well, he lives his life where his passions, talents, and networking currency (surfing) collide. That attracts people to him and makes building his connections a natural outcome of the way he lives his life.

Raimana is legendary at Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch (home to the most exclusive man-made wave in the world) and Teahupo’o (the gnarliest wave in the world). Raimana knows the waves of Teahupo’o better than almost anybody else on this planet. To watch him ride a wave is to watch a force of nature, and to talk with him is to talk with a man who embraces his power to connect with other people. This ability to connect has allowed him to pursue his passion while making a massive impact on his community.

Raimana is also one of the sport’s greatest ambassadors, writes Jamie Brisick for Outerknown.¹ He has shared his native Tahiti with thousands of traveling wave riders. World Surf League commentator Strider Wasilewski knows all about this. He and Raimana have been close friends for many years. ‘Very few people open their home and heart to surfers traveling through where they live the way Raimana does,’ said Strider over email. ‘He’ll help people out without even knowing them. A guy’s boat burned down— Raimana found out and gave him money to get home, and didn’t even ask for it back. Raimana is connected to people everywhere, a pure connection of aloha and good mana. No matter the color, no matter the finance, billionaires to bums—Raimana is connected!’

I was introduced to Raimana by a guy named Jasen Trautwein, who you’ll meet later in the book. When I asked Jasen at the end of one of our meetings, Who’s the one person in your ridiculous network of super-connectors I have to meet? he told me I had to meet Raimana. Knowing the surfing world very well, I asked, The Raimana who’s partnered with Kelly Slater, the one who almost lost his head by a Jet Ski at Teahupo’o?! Yep, that Raimana.

Jasen then shared the story of when he first met Raimana on the back of a Jet Ski. For those of you not familiar with big-wave surfing, the only way to access the waves is for someone to tow you and your surfboard to catch the waves. You can’t just paddle yourself out there like you can surfing small waves off the beach. Raimana was towing Jasen on the back of his Jet Ski. Most of the time, the person towing you wishes you good luck and turns back to shore. Not Raimana. Raimana knows every person he encounters shares at least one passion with him—a passion for big-wave surfing—and likely many others. So when he tows people out, he takes that as an opportunity to make a deeper connection.

I love you, bruddah, said Raimana as he pushed Jasen off the Jet Ski. And just like that, they were bonded for life.

You see, it is genuine connection that makes relationships last a lifetime.

And sometimes the universe has a way of giving you the signs that you’re on the right track, that you’re doing the right thing. Two weeks after I interviewed Raimana on FaceTime, I was kiteboarding the Outer Banks with two of my best friends, Hank McLarty and Pete Boulden, for my 40th birthday. After kiting more than 70 miles, we were sitting at a picnic table, talking about the epicness of the day over fish tacos and Topo Chicos.

I heard a familiar voice through somebody’s smartphone. It was Raimana. I knew it. I could never forget that voice and the passion with which he spoke. Never one to shy away from meeting someone new, I turned to the nearby table from where the sound was coming.

Are you guys talking to Raimana? I yelled. Sure enough, they were FaceTiming with Raimana, who was in the middle of French Polynesia. I popped in on the call, all of us amazed at how small the world can be. From the other side of the world, he had just connected me with a new network of kiteboarding friends from California.

Raimana Van Bastolaer is one of the 40-plus people I had the great fortune to interview for this book. His story of rising through the surfing world is a prime example of the art and science of saving your asks.

I asked Raimana why he pushes people away using the words, I love you, bruddah. Is it deeper than knowing you met someone who shares a passion with you? Is it just a way of wishing good tidings? Or is it something more?

It turns out that it’s all this and more. With those words, Raimana wants to send the message to the surfer that This is your time. Appreciate it. Go for it right away. At the end of the wave, you can think about anything else. But enjoy the moment now. He is also saying, "This is a gnarly wave and you might die, so I want the last thing you hear from me to be I love you." Raimana makes a bond for life in this moment because he is intentional about making a genuine connection.

Read This Before You Do Anything Else, Especially Starting a Side Hustle

Full Disclosure: I think everyone should have a side hustle, which we will discuss later.

But I also know that starting a side hustle, when done well, improves your performance in your primary job, contrary to popular opinion. For example, I have never been as productive at my agency than after I started my side hustle, writing The Millennial Whisperer and the book you hold in your hands. The key is to find the right side hustle and pursue it in a strategic way that causes your primary job to benefit as you build more momentum in your side hustle. When you do it this way, both your primary job and your side hustle become better because of each other.

If you run an organization, this might sound scary. But if you want better employee retention and happier and more fulfilled employees, you must accept this. Even better, you should encourage them to pursue side hustles (as long as they do not compete with your company and offerings, of course).

Moreover, getting team members into more of an entrepreneurial mindset will shift the way they look at their jobs. As my friend, Vincent Pugliese, who leads a mastermind community called Total Life Freedom, says, We’re not being taught to be entrepreneurial. We’re taught to get on a bus, follow orders, stand in line, and not question authority. By 10 years old, this robs kids of so much of their curiosity and puts them on a path away from entrepreneurship.

Vincent has helped hundreds of people start and grow side hustles. In doing so, he is constantly amazed by how much each side hustle impacts employees, even if they never intend to turn those side hustles into full-time hustles. A job is where dreams go to die, Vincent explains. Jobs kill more dreams than anything else. People set their expenses based on their salary and end up with car payments, mortgages, and debt. They become dependent on the job. By their 20s, they often give up on any dream of starting their own business. When someone ends up in that situation, one of the only ways to escape without going into even more debt is to use a side hustle to lower expenses and increase income.

But again, starting a side hustle doesn’t mean building something that takes you away from your main job. In many cases, just the opposite is true: people build side hustles that make them better at their main jobs. They use their side hustle to make connections that increase sales for their main job—just like The Millennial Whisperer led to me landing several new clients for my ad agency. And the same is true with this book. I’ve made many connections from writing this book that led directly to opportunities for my