Rob Lawless from Norristown has embarked on a quest to make 10,000 friends and share their stories together with a joint picture on his Instagram page, writes Fabiola Cineas for Philadelphia Magazine.

Most of the people he meets up with are young professionals from Philadelphia, but he also gets together with people like Tracy Davidson and activist Asa Khalif.

Lawless used to work a regular desk job at Deloitte, before he switched to the sales team at a tech start-up.

However, Lawless found the 30-minute cold calls he was making at his new job were too short to form the type of connections he yearned for. This spurred the project which became his full-time gig after he was laid-off in June.

Nowadays, his days are filled with meeting new people, usually 5 a day for an hour to two.

And while his 10,000 goal might seem daunting, it is not arbitrary.

Lawless followed the advice of Malcolm Gladwell who argues in his book Outliers that 10,000 hours is the “magic number of greatness.”

The Young Norristown native believes that by the time he is done, he will better understand what the people around him value.

Read more about Lawless’ journey at Philadelphia Magazine by clicking here.