Have you ever been to Indonesia? We haven’t yet, but it’s definitely on our list of places to travel. Not only to see the most famous part, Bali, but the many other interesting things about Indonesia.

The two ships I have been on this summer (one with my husband, Hans, and the other with 3 of my 5 kids) have been mostly staffed by Indonesians. They are the most precious people! Even though we have very different beliefs and lifestyles, there are so many beautiful things about these people. I have had something so confirmed in my heart about them that I just had to write about it to you today.

I had a meeting last week with the captain and the hotel manager on the ship. I’m looking at possibly chartering one of two ships to have a whole DaniJohnson.com community cruise. We would go to some very specific historic places and just be able to vacation together and learn together and have our families mingle together. When we were traveling this summer on these ships, the only thing missing was you!

In this meeting, I said to them, "Your staff will be so very blessed by our clients, because we teach them some very profound people skills, similar to how you have trained your staff."

The captain and hotel manager snickered and said, "Yes, absolutely. There is continous development of communication skills and people skills here on our ship. However, the Indonesian people are naturally like that. If you visit them in their country, no matter who you are, they will invite you in for dinner. They see everybody as a guest. It comes naturally to them, which is why we have targeted them for these luxury ships. They are so good at treating people with honor and respect and making them feel at home."

I wanted to share that with you today, because it relates to a concept I’ve been teaching about for 24 years or so. It’s called friends first. It’s a concept you can use at work, at home, at the grocery store today. What does friends first mean? It’s simple. It means you treat everyone as though they are a friend first.

When you do this, you disarm people. You may be thinking, "Dani, why do I need to disarm people?" It’s really simple. Opportunities always follow relationships.

Where does money come from? From people. What about opportunity? It comes from people! If you treat people with honor, you will always have plenty of money and opportunity.

You may be thinking this sounds like manipulation, but I promise you it’s not. Every human being wants to be honored and respected. They want to feel comfortable. They are looking for people they can trust. It’s very easy to build trust when you treat everyone the way you treat your best friend.

When you smile and treat people like a friend, it makes people feel comfortable. It makes them feel better about being with you, working with you or even doing business with you.

On these two trips we have taken this summer, it was not the ship, the food or even the different cities we have visited that made the trips memorable. It has been the beautiful Indonesian staff. It has been so fun getting to know them and learning about their beliefs.

When someone treats you as a friend first, you somehow get interested in who they are. So I’ve been able to learn a lot about who they are and their way of life. I’ve learned about their customs and their mindset.

So if you ever want to share your product or service, or even your religion or belief system with others, lead with being a friend first. Be one who knows no strangers. I talked about that in my latest book, First Steps to Wealth. Treat everybody as though they are family or a highly honored guest. As you do that, you immediately disarm people and begin to build trust. You start forming a relationship by simply treating them like a friend. And what follows that? Opportunity.

Through forming relationships with these beautiful Indonesian people on the ships this summer, we have made friends who we will go visit when we travel to Indonesia in the future. We have very different cultures, spiritual beliefs and economic backgrounds, yet there is no tension between us because of that. There is only honor and true friendship.

Today, treat everyone you encounter like a friend. You will be amazed by the opportunities that will open up for you. You’ll be shocked by how easy it is to share your product or service with others if you just follow this simple strategy.

Take a minute right now and send this message to your friends, family and co-workers! A quick and easy way to continue building good relationships with the people around you is to just share helpful information like this. Just post this link on Facebook and Twitter!

I’m so excited to talk to you LIVE this Sunday night on The Dani Johnson Show! Join me at 9 pm ET/8 pm CT!

In great faith,

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