What actually happens at Skip the Small Talk?

As one of our facilitators says: “It’s like speed-dating, without the speed and without the dating.” We’ll pair you up and give you some psychology-backed question prompts (but you’ll always have the option to pick the question prompt of your choosing or make up your own), and then have you switch partners so you’ll get to talk to a bunch of people throughout the event. We always start and end with the same question prompts (that you can still always opt out of), but our middle question prompts are always different.

Is this a networking event? A speed-dating event?

Not exactly. Some people attend for the feeling of aliveness that comes with meaningful conversations, some people attend to make new friends, some people come to practice their social skills, and some people come for approximately one billion different reasons. However, we want to be aboveboard on this: Skip the Small Talk may not be a great fit if your primary goal is to find new business connections or to find a romantic partner-- you are likely to come up short, and the people you talk to will catch onto your vibes (even if you think you’re really good at hiding them-- trust me) and will likely not be super happy with you.

You say your events are “trauma informed.” What does that mean?

There’s a lot of discussion within the psychology community about what “trauma informed” actually means. In this case, we use it to mean that we designed the event with folks who have experienced trauma/ may be experiencing symptoms of PTSD in mind, and we have specifically sought feedback from folks with PTSD in order to tweak our events to be as comfortable and fun for folks with trauma as possible.

For example, we encourage folks to do what they need to do to feel comfortable throughout the event, whether that’s standing up or using fidget toys or leaving early. We also always preface our events with some gentle reminders to be compassionate to yourself, as well as some other good stuff that research suggests is helpful for folks who have experienced trauma. And we are conscientious about things like noise level and doing things with consent (e.g., we won’t give you any materials without first announcing that we are coming around to your table). Those are just some examples, but we think they capture the gist of the things we considered and solicited feedback about when designing this event!

A great thing about this approach is that when we design events for those of us with the most needs, everyone ends up benefiting. All the examples we mentioned in that last paragraph makes for a better event for all of our guests, not just the folks with PTSD. So even if you don’t have PTSD or if you haven’t experienced significant trauma, you’re likely to have a better time because of the little details we’ve tweaked in the event to accommodate folks who have experienced trauma. And if you do have PTSD and end up coming, you’d be in good company– we get a surprisingly large amount of feedback from guests with PTSD who say that this event was the most faith in humanity that they’ve experienced in a while.

So, whether you have PTSD or not, we think you’ll benefit from the extra care we’ve put into making our events trauma-informed.

While the specific precautions taken may differ city to city, we are constantly adapting to the recommendations of local and national health officials, as well as adhering to specific regulations agreed upon with individual venues where we host events. To learn more about these protocols, please review the ticket page of the particular event you’re interested in attending. If you’re not comfortable attending our in-person events, we also have online events available which may be found at www.skipthesmalltalk.com/online

I’m an introvert. Will I hate this?

We get this question a lot! Amazingly, some of our most enthusiastic guests who return event after event often tend to be introverts. We’ve asked introverts why they like Skip The Small Talk, and the top answers tend to be:

Because the event is structured, and structured well
Because the facilitator makes them feel calmer
Because it doesn’t feel awkward
Because they don’t have to make small talk
Because they know everyone else is there to get vulnerable and meet people, too

I’m an extrovert. Do you think I’ll be into this?

Skip the Small Talk is, in the words of more than a couple guests, “extrovert heaven.” We’ve asked extroverts why they like it, and the top answers tend to be:

Because they get to talk to so many people
Because the structure ensures that they get to have a lot of different conversations
Because they know everyone else is there to get vulnerable and meet people, too
Because it’s more comfortable than other ways to meet people
Because it’s the easiest, least creepy way to talk to a lot of strangers quickly

We often hear from guests with social anxiety that the only reason they attended is because their therapists encouraged them to come to a Skip the Small Talk, and they’re glad they did! In fact, a recent third-party study about Skip the Small Talk showed that 100% of people who attended an event in hopes of reducing their social anxiety ended up accomplishing that goal. And even some folks who didn’t intend to reduce their social anxiety reported that they did, too!

I’m a jaded miser and I hate people, so I can’t imagine enjoying talking to strangers for a whole night. Will going to this event further chip away at my ever-dwindling trust in humanity?

Look, we get it. It’s a hard time to trust in people. But if you have even a little bit of curiosity and you’ve read this far, we’re willing to bet that you’d have a good time at a Skip the Small Talk. In fact, a recent third-party study on Skip the Small Talk guests showed that the more depressed a guest reported feeling, the more their mood changed in a positive direction after the event. Anecdotally, that totally tracks; we get a LOT of feedback from guests who say that they usually hate other people or that they usually hate socializing or that they just were feeling sad or angry when they walked into our event, and they all consistently tell us that they especially loved (and were surprised that they loved) Skip the Small Talk. And out of 161 Skip the Small Talk guests surveyed, 100% said they’d recommend the event. So we think that’s all pretty promising.

I’m not in my 20’s-30’s, and I see most of the guests in your pictures are. Will I be welcome at Skip the Small Talk?

Yes! While our events are currently centered on guests in their 20’s and 30’s and the majority of people who show up tend to be in that age range, guests of all ages attend and have reported having a nice time. Please be aware that some of our venues have age requirements due to legal drinking age, which is always listed clearly in the event description when relevant.

I’m skeptical of things that cost money, and the way I picture you, you’re wearing a monocle and swimming in bathtubs of my money a la Scrooge McDuck. What do you do with the money you get from your events?

While we’re kidding about the Scrooge McDuck thing, it is a totally fair concern! We wish we could make these events free, and long-term, that’s our hope, as our mission is to make these events as accessible as possible. To give you a look under the hood, that money goes partially to the facilitator for any given event, including their time spent training; so much mental health work like this is massively undervalued and the training to become a facilitator is quite rigorous, so while we know there are lots of folks out there who would be happy to do it on a volunteer basis, it is important to us that it be a paid position. The money also partially goes to someone who has really generously taken us on as a side project at a super deep discount to help us expand to new cities, and partially to operating costs like our website and whatnot. Our founder has also chosen not to take any profit from these events, so 100% goes into making more of these events happen. And we’re doing it as “leanly” as possible, often relying on friends and folks like you to spread the word as opposed to spending lots of money on advertising. We assure you there are no bathtubs, gold-coin-filled or otherwise, involved.

All that said, we care about accessibility and we want you to attend whether you can pay or not! If money is a barrier for you to attend any given event, please let us know at info@skipthesmalltalk.com– we’d love to chat and figure out how we can have you there!

Why are your dating events priced differently from your other events?

Due to the more structured nature of our speed-dating events, we can accommodate fewer people, and we don’t want to cut corners by paying our facilitators less than usual. Our dating events are also more labor-intensive for our facilitators for a variety of reasons, including the need to carefully match our guests and send individualized match emails after the event.

Regardless, we wanted to make sure we were fairly priced compared to other speed-dating events. According to our research, it turns out we’re usually the cheapest dating event in any given city. Guests who have been to different kinds of speed-dating events often tell us that we put a lot more work and thought into our events than the average speed-dating event while charging a lot less. And we plan to keep it that way!

What’s your refund policy?

Unfortunately, since we are not a big business and we depend on every ticket to help us fairly compensate our facilitators and other staff, we are unable to offer transfers or refunds. If you realize that you are unable to attend an event, you are welcome to pass along your ticket to a friend or to anyone else; when our staff checks them in using a guest list, they can just say that their ticket is under your name.

What are some examples of Skip the Small Talk questions?

Here are a few examples:

Describe the kind of person you would like to be. What things are you already doing that are consistent with that version of yourself?
What are some things you’re proud of that you don’t usually get to share with people?
If you could go back in time to meet yourself when you were 10 years old and could give them one piece of advice, what would it be?

Can I arrive at an event late/ Can I leave an event early?

If it’s your first Skip the Small Talk, we highly, highly recommend that you arrive on time. We go over some important stuff and coming late can feel disorienting and overwhelming if you haven’t been to a Skip the Small Talk before. That said, if coming late is the only way you can attend, we still think it’s better than nothing!

If you’d like to leave early, that’s not a problem at all-- leave whenever you’d like! You’re also more than welcome to take a break or leave and then come back at any time-- you may just have to wait a few minutes before we can pair you up with someone to talk to.

I want to hire you for my office/college/etc. but I’m nervous that the question prompts you’ll use are going to be too personal. Can you customize your question prompts?

In short: yes! We have no interest in making things awkward for you around the water cooler or campus library! We’ve hosted lots of events for college and corporate settings, and we pride ourselves on being able to adjust our question prompts’ level of depth to be just right for any given group of people. In fact, we have a pool of question prompts that we’ve found works perfectly for college settings, and a different pool of question prompts that we’ve found works perfectly for corporate settings. Within those pools of questions, we’ll choose the prompts that we think would be the best fit for your community based on the information we gather from a brief intro call with you.

At the end of the day, though, you know your community best! That’s why we’ll always invite you to pre-approve any question prompts we use for your private event in advance, and we’re always eager to adjust our question prompts based on any feedback you may have.

Interested in chatting more? Reach out to Ashley at ashley@skipthesmalltalk.com to set up a quick info-gathering call in order to see if it’s a good fit!

I’m nervous about attending my first Skip the Small Talk. Can you say something nice to me?

Absolutely! It takes a lot to get vulnerable with strangers, but you probably know you’d get something meaningful out of it, or else you probably wouldn’t be reading this. Good for you for doing (or considering doing-- that counts, too!) something that’s a little scary but that you think would be good for you! You deserve good things, even if they’re scary or difficult.

And hey, the single most common piece of feedback we get from guests is that they were nervous coming into the event, but ended up loving it and wanting to come back. In fact, as of writing this, we’ve taken a survey of 161 guests at our public events, and 100% of them said they’d recommend this event to someone else. So I hope you’ll give us a try-- if you’re interested enough in Skip the Small Talk to read this far, I have a strong feeling you’d get a lot out of our events. Hope to have you there.