Six Chicks Walk Into a Bar…

Last night I went to see a show at San Francisco Sketchfest (a comedy festival that has been around for eons).  The show I saw celebrated the Women of Saturday Night Live (SNL).  The show featured 8 women who had been regular cast members, starting with the very first season (Larraine Newman) and including women from several years, some who overlapped in their seasons and some who didn’t.  The women included, in order of their appearance on SNL and the lineup on the stage:

Larraine Newman, Robin Duke, Julia Sweeney, Melanie Hutsell, Dr. Ellen Cleghorne, Cheri Oteri, Anna Gasteyer and Rachel Dratch.  Nora Dunn was supposed to be there too but bad weather prevailed.

What was remarkable about the discussion, which featured each women getting interviewed about how they came to SNL and their experiences while there. The moderator, oddly a man was chosen for the occasion, also showed key clips from each of their tenure.

What really stood out, in addition to how smart and funny each of them is, is how connected these women seemed even now though they spanned the 51-year time period of the show.  Many of them traced their roots to the Groundlings, which was started by Larraine Newman, so she is the mentor/mother to many.  Perhaps they are not all friends in real life, but the outward sharing of support, affection and camaraderie among them was remarkable, particularly as the moderator worked his way down the panel in order of appearance on the show.  They complimented each other, clapped and laughed for each other, patiently waited for each other to finish, and even apologized for transgressions long gone by which some had held in their hearts.

Many of the women spoke about how important camaraderie and connection is in sketch comedy, especially that borne out of their common roots, improvisational theater.  Over and over, they made the point that if you don’t connect, collaborate and act like a community when doing improv, you can’t make it work.  Over and over, they made clear the mutual affinity and respect they shared as members of a pretty exclusive club (only 57 of the total SNL lifetime 172 cast members have been female) but also talked about the importance of working together and sustaining friendships and relationships over time.  Several have worked together again since they left SNL.  They seemed quite happy to see each other and proud of each other’s successes.  It was super cool, not to mention damn funny.

I was particularly struck by this event for several reasons.  I have recently been thinking a lot about social isolation as a key cause of illness and worse because of the work I do as an investor, particularly the part of the work I do that focuses on social impact.  I’ve long dedicated a focused chunk of my time connecting with and mentoring other women, both before and after founding CSweetener, which lives on under the guidance of the HLTH Foundation. I have been involved for over a decade in a long-standing and amazingly tight-knit women’s network that I have written about before and which has resulted in some of my most treasured friendships, learnings, and numerous work collaborations.  But the importance of building a community and connection has also been very much on my mind because of a recent endeavor, Six Chicks. Here’s the story of that and, spoiler alert, there’s an ask at the end, but it’s an easy one and does not involve sending me cash.

A few months ago, I ran into a friend, Evelyn, who I had met around the time of the founding of CSweetener – 2014-ish.  She agreed to support that new endeavor financially and to use it at her then company to build an external mentoring program.  We reconnected again about 7-8 years ago and I remember how much I liked her and how we tried to find a way to work together though it didn’t come to be.  Then the pandemic came and we lost touch.  I ran into Evelyn by lucky chance a few months ago at an event and was delighted to rekindle the relationship.  We had dinner one night a few weeks later and she lamented how much her network of women leaders in the Bay Area had dwindled as the pandemic and working remotely disconnected people from each other.  She was searching for a way to fix that.

For some reason an idea struck me, which was this:  Let’s start a dinner “club” where every quarter we each invite two women to dinner, one who we know well but the other of us doesn’t know and one who we each don’t know well at all but wish we knew better.  Then the six of us would sit down for a meal and get to know each other.  We agreed to do the first one and see if it should be an ongoing thing.  No format, no content, no prep, no agenda, no expectations of anyone else.  Just six semi-random women having dinner and learning about each other and, hopefully, making new friends.

That dinner, the first of which I hope will be many, happened about two weeks ago and it was a love fest.  Each of us brought a long-time awesome friend the other didn’t happen to know.  Each of us brought one more person we had met only once but who had been so cool that they made us desire an even greater connection.  No one in the group knew more than one other person and even so, it felt like a reunion party.  We spent time on introductions but mostly spent time talking, dishing, laughing connecting.

It became clear during dinner that this was definitely “a thing.”  We decided to give it a name, Six Chicks, and to keep it going.  The challenge to each was to keep it going on their own. Evelyn and I are going to plan the next dinner a few months out with our four new recruits.  We suggested to the others that they each hold their own dinner of six, and so on and so on.  What the hell? This might actually turn a regular Wednesday night into something worth remembering!

One of the women mentioned that there is a dating program called Dinner for Six. I didn’t know about it since I’ve been married since before dating was invented, but it totally makes sense. Six is a good number for a get-together because everyone can actually speak to each other.  Too many more and you have to mingle rather than make a more intimate connection. The best part about our thing is…no makeup required! No innuendo.  No worrying if there’s going to be a second date that leads to …something else. If you don’t like using the word “Chicks,” use something else.  No real rules here, just the way I like it.  It doesn’t even have to be women-only.  More on that later (#foreshadowing).

I was driving home from dinner and feeling ebullient about the potential for new friendships, new working connections, great conversations and how quickly six becomes sixty and six hundred and more.  I was thinking about how much I like the new people I met that night and how much I adored the ones I already knew.  With no obligation and no planning except a dinner reservation at a quiet enough restaurant to have a real conversation, we will fix that fraying network problem in a jiffy.

Maybe, Evelyn and I mused, we might have a once a year gathering of the masses we have catalyzed where we can all support each other and meet more people and laugh about the awkward moments and the best stories.  But mostly we are hoping to start a casual movement and to suck all of you into conspiring along with us in the creation of community that cares about each other.

It struck me I left the restaurant that I wanted to write about this experience because it was effortlessly joyful in a world where those words don’t seem to live next to each other often enough.  Effortless because hardest part was figuring out who to invite and making the dinner reservation. Joyful because it was just fun and easy and we all got along so well and giggled relentlessly which did not prevent us from having some deep discussions.

Here’s a funny look inside my crazy brain/train of thought as I drove home:

“Man, that was fun.  Those are some cool people. I can’t wait to see each of them again. I am going to write about Six Chicks.  Wait! if I write about it, people may start to write to me to ask to be invited and I don’t want to manage anything organized or make anyone feel left out if they don’t get invited.  And what if men also want to be included? I like lots of men and welcome knowing more of them (mansplainers excluded).  But if men want to come to the dinner, the Six Chicks moniker doesn’t work.  Six D*&#$ does rhyme, but it’s generally inappropriate and even less PC, even if it is relatively descriptive – but we don’t want to put anyone off…well, not unless the name fits.  We may need a new name for the male version…how about Six Dudes Having Food?  Lisa – you are insane.  Call Evelyn and ask if you can use her name in the blog post.”

That was my internal talk track.  I’m sorry you had to see that 

As I resumed driving home and turned off the chattering chipmunks in my head, I realized the song playing in my car was Find Your People by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors.  It’s a song that shows up regularly in my Spotify circulation because I have played it 11 billion times.  I included in a recent post about mental health. Once again it did the job.  It starts out like this:

You gotta find your people
The ones that make you feel alright
The kind you want to stay up with all night

Amen to that.

I decided that I knew a lot of songs that focus on the creation of meaningful friendships so I should create a playlist to play while building a community of friends and peers.  Here it is so you can exercise your Spotify downloading chops.  You can listen to your new playlist while following through on my asks below.

• Room on the Porch by Taj Mahal and Keb Mo
• You’ve Got a Friend in Me by Randy Newman
• With a Little Help from My Friends by the Beatles
• If You Go Down I’m Going Down Too by Kelsea Ballerini
• You’ve Got a Friend by Carole King
• Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper
• My Girlfriends are My Boyfriend by Demi Lovato and Saweetie
• Count On Me by Bruno Mars
• Find Your People by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors

Now, here’s are my two asks.  As I always say to my daughter, “you don’t ask you don’t get.” So, I’m asking.

Ask #1: Do this dinner with six thing:  Have your dinner, even if it’s at some crappy taco joint –  quality of food is irrelevant, quality of people is everything, so be selective. Make a point of getting to know a few new people you don’t know well or at all.  It turns out that people you barely know are flattered to be asked to dinner because you want to know them better – tell them that’s why you’re inviting them and the premise behind the whole thing – send them the blog post if you feel like it or just use the sample email I am offering up royalty free below.  Keep your group small and definitely keep it structure-free.  No agenda means no need to work extra hard to build trust or disappoint.  Give the effort a name or don’t give it a name – whatever.  But keep doing it.  Not just once, but repeatedly because it’s impossible to have too many friends.   Don’t worry about whether it’s women or men or a mélange of the two; make it meaningful for you.  Keep in touch occasionally with those you get to know. You don’t need to overdo it…just make sure you get a community out of this however you do that and not just a fly-by. If you do this and keep it simple, you will have an amazing cadre of people you can call friends afterwards.

Ask #2:  feel free to write in the comments section below the names of other great songs for this song list.  Feel free to let me know how dinner went.  Make it your mission to find connection in this world of complexity, disconnection and disagreement.   Get out of your house and make new friends.  Find your people.  You will be happier and healthier for it.

 

ps – text for sample invitation email: