The Sunday shortlist, Crazy Encounters, Life lessons, and a Mobile Application: Rozy
How I turned my amazing experiences in college into a helpful mobile application to help people better their personal networks
My Background
I have always been someone who values personal relationships, connections, and keeping in contact with people. There is nothing more important than building a network of people that you can count on and create memories with. I thrive on the opportunity to share stories, catch up on recent life events, and just chat about anything that comes to mind. It is the unique interactions I have with each person that make each of them so special.
The Sunday Shortlist
This is why I look forward to Sunday. On Sundays I would think about someone I hadn’t spoken to recently, and just give them a call. In college, I decided to make a list of these key people, spanning many different parts of my life and domains. Some were mentors, some were friends from my hometown, and others were past co-workers. My list grew, and evolved into the “Sunday Shortlist,” even thought it was no longer so short. I was reaching a point where it was hard to keep track of everyone I hoped to stay in contact with, who I hadn’t spoken to recently, etc.
Great things came out of simply keeping that list alive. I was able to stay in touch with friends from the past that I had met by random chance and many are still great friends today. For example, when I called my good friend Jaclyn while I on a bike ride and casually asked “what’s new?” She told me that she had just confirmed a cruise trip wherein her mother was getting married. We joked about me attending and crashing the wedding… and fast forward a few months later, that actually happened!!!
Along came Rozy
When it comes to working out, I’m the annoying person who tries to exercise (no pun intended) some of the characteristics from my first paragraph: I try to make friends even at the gym; I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so, but I was never opposed to it!
I would help people and try new lifts or exercises that led some people to ask me about them and vice versa. The gym to me is such an organic environment to meet people, which was great since went all the time.
There is one memory of all that really stood out to me. During my senior year of college, there was one guy that I saw almost every time I went to the gym for months, no matter what time or day it was. It became funny after a while; we would nod at each other, occasionally even spot each other, but never talked. It was very much a non-verbal friendship, and that was fine, it was understood that we were “cool.”
One day, I was at the infamous Kilroy’s Sports bar with my roommate, we’ll call him NN (no-name). It was nearing closing time, just after 3 A.M., so we figured it was time to leave. We waddled out of the bar one after the other, and I literally bumped into a guy on departure. It was no other than the guy from the gym! We were both so excited to see each other and gave a long overdue bro hug. We chatted for a bit before his ride arrived, and just as he was leaving he said “let’s make a bet.” I accepted, even before hearing what it was. “I bet you won’t remember my name, but I’ll remember yours.” I figured this was a no-brainer. I’m really good with names, and take these relationships seriously, so I took the bet and we went our separate ways.
NN and I went to the gyro truck to get our usual from Shafiq before calling a Lyft. We arrived back home by 4 A.M. and went right to sleep. I woke up the next morning and I of course forgot the guy’s name. In fact, I initially even forgot about the bet! It wasn’t until two days later when I was at the gym and saw him, where he blurted out “Hey Tyler,” almost obnoxiously to make me look bad, because he knew damn well I forgot his name… and he was right. This actually went on for a few weeks, and boy did I feel bad, but he refused to tell me his name. The worst part was I saw this guy more than ever, so he had ample opportunities to rub it in.
Finally, it was graduation night, and there he was at the same bar where we officially “met” I told him to let me buy him a drink as it was the least I could do. He told me he wouldn’t take it, but he’d let me in on a little secret. He said “as soon as we went our separate ways, I wrote down your name and the bet in my phone. The next day I looked at it and never forgot it since.”
It was something that was simple, but so genius, and so aligned with my goals of maintaining connections. It taught me about a simple act of going the extra distance to capture a memory and keep it alive. This has helped me tremendously to this day and it was all thanks to a guy nicknamed Rozy, to whom I am forever grateful.
Ironically, a few weeks back I tried to find him on social media, and because I did not work on a solution yet, I had to resort to primal options: I posted on facebook:
“Does anyone know a guy with the nickname Rozy that graduated from Indiana University in 2018, was in a frat, and worked out a lot….”
I thought this was hopeless, but within a few days I received messages from a ton of people with suggestions. However, none were the right Rozy. It was amazing how many other people met the same criteria. Thankfully I eventually found him on Linkedin and this search furthered the need for some solution, I was still unsure what that would look like.
Leveraging Notes
I figured this was something I could easily implement right away, so I did. Whenever I meet someone new, if I envisioned we would stay in touch or the encounter would be useful to recall in the future, I would write it down. Before I knew it, I had a running list of unstructured notes with random encounters, which was way less organized and filled than the original shortlist I started off with. But just like that list, this had some great stories come out of it.
One time NN and I went to the bar on a quiet Wednesday evening for tacos. We arrived early to beat the rush, so our server was bored and able to spend a lot of time chit-chatting with us. After she left I did a brain dump of everything I could remember she had said. Fortunately for NN who was interested in her , I was a great listener and remembered a lot. It was like deja vu, a week later, we did the same thing, so NN could see the server once again. But this time would be different; since I sent NN the note, he started off on the right foot because he was able to pick up the conversation where they left off the previous week. He seemed to magically recall specific things they had discussed and boy was she impressed. She even stated that most people wouldn’t have really paid such attention and made the effort to remember all those key details. I would definitely call this a win in my book and it was something that was so easily achievable yet definitely not a seamless solution.
I also leveraged this simple act professionally. I was at the gym and saw a guy wearing a t-shirt with a slightly obscure icon on it that I thought I recognized. I inquired about it, and I was right: it was the icon of a not-so-common software I had used a few years earlier when working on my first mobile application. He was so happy to see that someone else knew it, we chatted for a long time and after we went our separate ways, I started speed-typing in my notes whatever I could remember. We eventually met up for drinks a few weeks later. At that encounter I explained to him my current student status and goals, and a few weeks later I had gotten an interview out of it, so another win I’d say, but still not seamless.
Now meet (Virtual) Rozy
After a while, I decided it was time to put my technical background to use to solve this problem. I was able to describe it in 2 functions or use-cases:
- It is difficult to quickly and conveniently capture an encounter with someone. Here’s why
- You can meet someone during transportation or in passing and have a very limited time to speak
- Very often where we meet someone dictates what social media we add them on, i.e. a bar == social media, a conference == linkedin, etc.
- — — There’s a lot of information you want to capture, which could take time and effort
- — — This is worsened when you want to capture a group of people you met
- You and the other people both have to put forth effort to get the information logged on your phone
2. It is very difficult to precisely recall memories with a person. Here’s why
- You might forget which social media account you added someone on
- You may only remember certain key characteristics about the person
- You may only remember certain key characteristics about the meeting or encounter with the person
- Maybe you just want to look at the people you’ve meet to see who you have not contacted in a while
This is where Rozy comes in. Rozy helps you organize the different people you meet and connections you make throughout the different stages of your life. Rozy is the only place you need to go to store this information now, so that you can reference it in the future, accomplishing the two functions above.
Get Involved
Have some feedback, head over to my Reddit community to converse!
Get Active
Here are some links so you can check it out:
The first version of the app is just the beginning, helping you get started on saving those different connections or “roses” you already have in your life. Future versions will have integrations with maps, social media, and sharing functionality, so you can exchange your rose information with others!
Reach out to me if you have any questions: rozycontact@gmail.com
