The 500 Lunches Effect #author Nick Bendel

The 500 Lunches Effect: How social courage changes everything .. explores a simple but powerful idea: many people’s lives and careers are limited not by ability, intelligence or opportunity, but by hesitation in social situations.

The book began with a personal experiment. Curious about how relationships shape opportunity, Nick Bendel set himself an unusual challenge: to have lunch with 500 strangers. Over several years, he reached out to people from a wide range of professions and backgrounds – entrepreneurs, artists, politicians, executives, academics, community leaders and many others – and invited them to meet for a simple one-to-one conversation.

What began as a personal challenge quickly became an education in human behaviour.

Again and again, the lunches revealed how much opportunity flows through relationships. They also revealed how often people hold themselves back from those relationships – not because they lack interest or ability, but because they hesitate. They hesitate to reach out, to introduce themselves, to ask a question, to suggest a meeting or to pursue an idea.

The book introduces the concept of social courage – the willingness to take small interpersonal risks in everyday situations. These are not dramatic acts of bravery. They are simple behaviours: sending a message, starting a conversation, following up with someone, asking for advice or exploring a new connection.

Through stories drawn from the 500 lunches, the book examines how these small actions shape careers, relationships and opportunities over time. Readers encounter a wide range of people whose lives changed because they were willing to initiate a conversation, ask a question or say yes to something uncertain.

At its heart, the book argues that in a complex and fast-changing world, relationships have become one of the most reliable ways to discover ideas, opportunities and perspectives. Yet the behaviours that build those relationships remain simple and accessible to anyone willing to practise them.

Blending personal storytelling with practical insight, The 500 Lunches Effect shows how repeated small acts of social courage can quietly transform a person’s confidence, network and direction in life.

To connect with Nick ...
https://www.nickbendel.com/
https://www.nickbendel.com/book/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-bendel/ 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good afternoon, Nick Bendel. Welcome to Yellow Shelf, Nick. Well, thank you, Joe. So good to have you here. Your book is available now, so I'm super excited to have you on and share with the audience. Love the title. The book is called The 500 Lunches Effect. Congratulations. Tell us all about the book, Nick.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, this is going to sound a bit odd, but I had lunch with 500 strangers over a six-year period from August 2019 to August 2025. I I met people from all different walks of life, all different ages, all different backgrounds, all different professions. And I I did it, Joe, because I wanted to improve my social skills, uh, strengthen my mindset, build a great network, learn from the people I met. And funnily enough, many of the people I had lunch with would ask me, Oh, are you planning to write a book at the end of this? Is that what this is about? And I would always say to them, I don't have plans to write a book. I don't have plans to not write a book. I'll get to the end and I'll decide. And a bit over a year ago, as I was nearing the end of uh this wonderful adventure, I decided, actually, I'll write a book.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

And Nick, I mean, it's it sounds insane, but it also sounds like um, you know, such such a courageous thing to do. Such a, I can only imagine there were times, particularly maybe in the early days, that you were nervous or you were not sure who you were meeting or how it was going to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, I I was certainly nervous to begin with because you'd imagine someone who has 500 lunches that they must be an expert and very and very outgoing and have great social skills. That was not me at all. I'm even after all this time, my social skills are much, much better. But I I still prefer to be at home on my own with a tea and a good book.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

I was not the sort of person who would want to meet 500 strangers for lunch. I I didn't even want to meet one stranger for lunch.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

So, yes, to begin with, it was very much out of my comfort zone. But you do anything enough times and it becomes normalized. So I don't know, after 20 lunches, 30 lunches, it felt normal for me. And what I had to remind myself after I'd been doing this for a while, was I would show up to these lunches and it would be normal for me. I was having two, three of these a week, but the person I was meeting, it was their first lunch with a stranger. And so I'd have to remind myself that even though I was comfortable, they were probably nervous.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, yeah. And the great thing about the book, and you I know you probably have to talk a bit more about it, but you know, it's there's it's storytelling in the book, and it's and I guess that's what I enjoyed about looking at the book. There was storytelling and there was also advice around being courageous. So, do you want to share that piece of the book?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Well, probably the the main theme of the lunches and and then the book itself is this idea of social courage. And by social courage, I mean doing something where you don't feel ready, or you might be judged or criticized, you might uh there might be scope for rejection, you might be embarrassed or even humiliated. Uh, in a work context, social courage might involve asking your boss for a promotion or volunteering to lead a project or cold calling a potential client or maybe giving a speech at an event or attending a networking event. Uh in a personal setting, social courage might be volunteering to be the coach of your child soccer team or maybe asking someone out on a date. And with these examples, Joe, we often know what to do. It's not lack of knowledge that usually holds us back, it's this self-doubt that we feel. And so the way we we do the hard thing is not by acquiring more knowledge. We generally already have the knowledge, it's by demonstrating this thing I call social courage. And I needed social courage to have these lunches. The people who I invited needed social courage to accept the invitation. And through meeting a lot of these people, many of whom were very successful and high achievers, I learned from listening to them and their stories that they had exhibited a lot of social courage over the years in building their business or achieving a great career or accomplishing some sort of incredible goal. Equally, Joe, they would tell me about times in their life where they'd fallen short, and often it was due to a lack of social courage, or or they wouldn't tell me directly, they'd be telling me about something they wanted to do, but they'd say, Oh, you know, Nick, uh, I'm not quite ready, or I'm not good enough, or not right now. And I'd look at them thinking, but you are enough. You you do have everything you need. I wish you could see you the way I see you. And it was just that lack of social courage, and all of us have had this in our lives so many times. I I've had a lack of social courage hold me back so many times, and it wasn't until I had these 500 lunches and met so many people and so many different types of people that I discovered it wasn't just me with this social courage problem, it was everyone.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, so true. I so true. And Nick, um, you know, reading your book made me think about, yeah, like I know we were sharing off camera, you know, my journey diving into Yellow Shelf, like not like no, it's believing it was a good idea, having a you know, a few people suggest it might be a good idea, but just doing it and continually doing it and learning from it.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Well, can I ask you, Joe, when when you started, you've done hundreds of these interviews now, but at the start, was it scary? And did you feel getting judged, laughed at, criticized?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Absolutely. I mean, I was like, oh my god, you know, I'm going gray, and I'm, you know, oh my god, I talk with my hands, you know, and people are gonna not like my voice. Like there was a hundred reasons why I didn't think I should do this, but there was also this, you know, little voice somewhere that was like, just do it and don't worry about that. So yeah, but I mean, admittedly, I wouldn't have done it as a 20-year-old. So it's sometimes it's with maturity and longevity that you do. You can be a bit more courageous.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

I I think so. I I think the older we get, the more we realize that a lot of these things we worried about were were were fake beliefs. We tell ourselves a lot of fake stories, and but but we only realize that as we get older and older, and then we think, oh my god, like what was I worrying about for these last 20, 30, 40, 50 years?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Yeah. Yeah. And Nick, tell us about, you know, you have the lunches, you go on that journey over a number of years. Um, then writing the book. So tell us a little bit about you as an author and then what inspired you to write and what that process was like.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

It was an interesting process, Joe. I I used to be a journalist and I indeed still own a copywriting agency. So I write for a living. Funnily enough, though, I I still found the writing process hard in some respects. It took four drafts before it got sent to the publisher. The first draft, the book was very, very different to what it is now. Uh, and and the problem with the first draft was I wrote it for an audience of one, namely myself. Uh and then uh I got professional help uh after that. Someone looked at the first draft and he didn't use these words, he was much more diplomatic than equipment, Nick, what you've written is completely useless. And uh so he gave me some valuable advice on things I needed to change. And the second draft, it was very, very easy to write, even though it was very different from the first draft, because the the four-month process of writing that first draft, I'd have to do so much thinking and so many ideas came to the surface that it was very easy to write the second draft. Uh, this book coach of mine looked at it, said Nick, that's great. The book is 90% there, just add a few things. I added them. He looked at the third draft, said, Nick, 98% there of the way there, just changed these few things, changed it. So after four drafts, it was good to go to the publishers. They had some editors who were fantastic. They made some tweaks, asked me for a bit more information. Funnily enough, Joe, by the time I sent it to the editors, I'd been thinking about these about the content for eight straight months, and I'd read and reread things so many times, none of the words made any sense to me anymore. And it was so valuable to have outsiders look at the words and and tell me what was and what wasn't working.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah. And Nick, do you want to tell us if we're watching anywhere in the world, we're curious about um the idea of 500 lunches, even how you coordinated that, where you know, where you went, that journey, because that that even that's fascinating. People who need and are curious to want to dive into this book. There's so much to the book. Tell us about your socials. Where do we find you? I know you've got a great website, LinkedIn, you're massive on LinkedIn. Point us in the direction of the show notes that I'll put in so people can get curious about you and the book.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Uh well, I would say just those two places uh webnicbendel.com and my LinkedIn profile, Nick Bendel. Uh, I do have an Instagram profile where I post photos of other people's cats and dogs. Um everyone thinks I have lots of cats and dogs. I don't, I just photograph everyone else's.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Oh, great. Nick, look, I'll put that in the show notes to make it easy for anyone who's curious to connect with you, to connect, hear about the the backstory, and then you know, dive into the book. Nick, what what social courage do you take forward? Or would you write again?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Oh, okay. I yes, I I do think I'll write another book at some point. I I don't know when or what it will be about, but uh at some point, yes. And in terms of social courage, one of the things I've learned, Joe, about social courage is it's very much like a muscle in that you have to keep exercising it and it grows. But if you stop, it shrinks. You just like with exercise, you don't wake up one day and say, Oh, well, now I'm fit, I never have to exercise again. I I have much more social courage than I did back in 2019 when I started these uh 500 lunches, and I'm also much more now that I understand the concept, that that also helps you. But I know that if I don't keep doing uncomfortable things, and if I don't keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone, that social courage is going to disappear. So I still force myself on a regular basis and will forever to keep doing these uncomfortable things.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Ah, so well said, Nick. I think um, yeah, your your book's actually quite inspiring when people get into it, and I would recommend people take a read because it's a bit of a reflection. It's I mean, it's your story, but it's also a reflection and how to reflect, yeah, on what social courage may look like for us. So well done.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Well, thank you so much, Joe. Uh, and I I I love the fact that uh I had the 500 lunches so other people don't have to. Uh there is something that people can learn in terms of social courage, which I think is maybe one of the most important life skills that exist.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah, couldn't couldn't agree with you more, Nick. Nick, I will love to have you back in the future when you write more books. No pressure. I just I think I've really enjoyed our chat and being able to share you as an author and share your work.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Well, thank you so much, Joe. And you're amazing. I'm really inspired by the hundreds of people you've interviewed. That takes a lot of social courage and a lot of consistency and persistence. So thank you for inspiring me.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Ah, Nick, I'd not really thought about the courage, so I don't want to think about it too much. I just want to keep keep interviewing authors and sharing them. So it's wonderful. We're we're blessed, aren't we, Nick?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

We are indeed.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Yeah. Nick, all the best. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Thank you so much, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Cheers.