My name is Rob Lawless.

I’m 32 years old, I’m originally from Norristown, PA and I enjoy meeting new people.

Back in May of 2013, I graduated summa cum laude from Penn State University with a degree in Finance and minors in Accounting & Entrepreneurship. After graduation, I began my career with Deloitte Consulting as a Business Analyst in Strategy & Operations. It was my reach job at the time, but about 1.5 years into it, I pulled a Millennial move – I took a large pay cut and left the Powerpoint decks and spreadsheets for the laid back, $24 million venture-funded RJMetrics.

While at RJ, I worked as a sales rep where I cold emailed people every day asking them to hop on the phone for 30 mins to chat about our product. And my job being sales, I often received responses like these actual replies (s/o to all my reps still in the game):

• “Take me off your mailing list, cockroach”
• “I understand that this is your job. This being said. If asking a girl out for coffee and she ignores you twice and finally says no, you do NOT ask whether this is a no just now or a now forever – and you certainly do not ask her why you are not her type” (Disclaimer: I have never used this strategy on girls)
• “Not interested (and you’re really starting to annoy me)”

So along with a bunch of factors that I mention in my first blog post, I started this project to see if I could meet with people to chat for an hour for absolutely no reason and held my first meeting on November 11, 2015. I was rejected way less, the responses were all positive and encouraging, and I’ve met amazing people with incredible backgrounds who would all consider themselves normal.

On Monday, June 20, 2016, RJMetrics was acquired by a larger company, which didn’t require my position, so I dove in full-time on my endeavor to meet 10,000 different people for an hour each.

Since then, I’ve met over 5,400 people from over 90 countries around the world. I’ve driven across the country six times and have been featured by some awesome press sources, including Ryan Seacrest on his nationally syndicated radio show, “On Air with Ryan Seacrest,” as well as “Your Morning,” a national Canadian morning show and the TODAY Show with Hoda and Jenna! I also appeared as a guest on the Kelly Clarkson Show alongside Jane Lynch and Jo Koy where the audience was made up of ~100 friends from the project – an awesome experience!

I love adventure and I love potential – over the last 7 years, I’ve found this project to have both so I’ve been greatly satisfied with how it’s gone so far and can’t wait to continue giving it 110% to see where it takes me in the future!

Last thought, I’ve had a great experience meeting new people – if you feel so inclined, give it a try and let me know how it goes for you :).