We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashley Kirsner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ashley, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

One problem that folks who host speed-friending and speed-dating events don’t talk about very often is making events accessible. I noticed that a lot of event hosts just accepted that their events had no BIPOC in attendance, or just accepted that they couldn’t accommodate folks with a variety of disabilities.

So, we decided that we should have a different approach for our speed-friending and speed-dating events; when we got feedback about an issue of inclusivity, we did our absolute, earnest best to address every piece of feedback we received, even if only given to us by a single guest.

When neurodivergent guests gave feedback that it was too loud in certain spaces to concentrate on their conversation partners. throughout the event, we actually had a physicist help us develop what we call “sound screens” to isolate noise and make it easier to have a conversation in an otherwise noisy space. When BIPOC guests said they wanted more folks who looked like them at our events, we started giving out a limited number of free tickets to BIPOC, no questions asked. When one guest asked if ASL could be an option that we offer at our events, we started offering it as an option for every event in every city. When a guest with POTS, a disorder that makes it difficult to stand up, asked for more options to stay seated, we baked in an option for any guest to stay seated for the duration of the event.

This approach led us to be known as a particularly welcoming and inclusive event, which I feel is one of my greatest accomplishments as a business owner. For the first few years, hearing feedback that we weren’t as inclusive as we could be was difficult to accept. It feels hard to know you’re not being as welcoming as you intend to be! But I knew that even though it felt difficult for me, it was much more difficult and painful for the folks who felt like they were being edged out of our events, even if it wasn’t my intention to do so. So, after lots of experience receiving feedback, now the primary feeling I experience when I receive feedback about how we can be more inclusive is just gratitude that someone felt comfortable enough to be honest with me, and that I get the opportunity to do a better job at something I care deeply about.

Ashley, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was volunteering at a suicide hotline when I noticed that regardless of what people were calling in about, they didn’t seem to feel comfortable opening up about it to their loved ones. However, they seemed more than happy to open up to a stranger. So, I was wondering if we could get a group of strangers to agree to be a little more vulnerable with each other, and hopefully go home to their loved ones feeling a little more comfortable opening up.

So, I designed an event based on psychology research (I had been involved in social and clinical psychology research for about a decade) where we used meaningful question prompts to help people open up to each other in structured conversations. For example, you might answer a question prompt like, “In what ways are you different from the person you were five years ago? In what ways are you the same?” Or, “Describe yourself through the eyes of someone who cares about you.”

The event was supposed to be three hours long, but we had to kick people out after seven hours because they wouldn’t stop talking to each other!

I had imagined that we would just host one event and that would be it, but the people who came begged me to host another one. So I did, and people showed up in droves to that one, too. I kept hosting, and people kept showing up, so here I am, seven years later, with a group of wonderful facilitators hosting these events across the country and internationally.

And a funny thing happened– people started making lifelong friends at these events. It turns out that when you open up to someone, you end up wanting to keep hanging out with them. So, we started hosting speed-friending and even speed-dating events that had a significantly higher success rate than the industry standard. We’ve become known as the go-to event for people looking to make new friends, meet new people, or even just get a dose of connection or restored faith in humanity.

As for what I am most proud of, I’d say I feel the most pride in our facilitators. These are some of the kindest, warmest people you will ever meet, and they all go through a rigorous training program before facilitating. Our work truly wouldn’t be possible without them, and I will be forever grateful to them for carrying out our mission to make people feel more socially connected.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

One of the “near death” moments for Skip the Small Talk was the pandemic. We were no longer able to host in-person events, so we were afraid we might not be able to make it. But thanks to the incredible support of our community, we were able to successfully move our events to Zoom.

It ended up being a gift in some ways; we got feedback from the disability community that our online events were more accessible to people who were unable to leave the house, so we decided to keep hosting online events indefinitely. We also started offering online team-building events and college events, including orientation, which helped remote teams feel more connected and helped college students get to know each other despite being physically apart.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

The single biggest thing we’ve done to build our reputation is to listen to our guests. We’ve gotten a great reputation for being inclusive and accessible, and that’s not because we were perfectly accessible to begin with; we did our research and listened to feedback about where we were falling short. And the work has been well worth it to be known as the main way a lot of people in their 20’s and 30’s make new friends or meet new people.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.skipthesmalltalk.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skipthesmalltalk
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skipthesmalltalk
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/skip-the-small-talk
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/talkbignotsmall
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@skipthesmalltok