Two Powerful Relationship-Building Strategies That Have Stood the Test of Time

My wife has a lot of friends. More friends than anyone else I know. She is wholly invested in her friends, helping or leading in the planning of birthdays, weekend retreats or celebrations.

While she does a lot for her friends, she also has no problem asking them to help her in return.

What amazes me most is that my wife will sometimes ask someone she just met for a favor right out the gate.  

These two relationship habits of my wife: Doing Things for Friends and Asking Friends for Things, has long intrigued me. For the longest time, I didn’t understand how or why asking for favors from friends helped my wife build so many strong relationships.

But, thanks to my Rich Habits Research, I learned that my wife was actually implementing two relationship-building strategies that have stood the test of time:

The Franklin Effect

The Franklin Effect is named after one of the most famous founding fathers in America –  Benjamin Franklin, who used it as a relationship-building tool. It has now become an accepted method for building strong relationships. Here’s how it works:

If you want to get someone to like you, either ask them for a small favor or perform a small favor for them. 

For some strange reason, human beings like doing small favors for each other. 

The Law of Reciprocity

The Law of Reciprocity states the following:

If you do a small favor for someone they will feel obligated to reciprocate.

The rich people in my Rich Habits study all seemed to have one thing in common – they had a lot of relationships.

Eighty-eight percent had 200 or more relationships. Conversely, 95% of the poor people in my study had less than 200 relationships.

When I dug deep into the reasons for this dichotomy, that’s when I discovered that the rich in my study were almost always using the Franklin Effect and the Law of Reciprocity for relationship building.

My wife, without knowing it, was employing both tools to build her enormous number of very close relationships.