Jeffrey E. Jessum

A few years ago, Johnny Multony, transformed from not fitting into a socially savvy kid, started the first-ever social detective agency. He was hired by other students in his school for help with common interpersonal dilemmas, such as cliques, dealing with disappointments, bullying, personal space, friends, body language, and much more.

Now, an opportunity of a lifetime, Johnny Multony has opened the Social Detective Academy! And YOU have been invited!

During your time at the Social Detective Academy, you will learn some of the most important things a social detective needs to be aware of. Learning these things will help you become a skilled social detective capable of helping others solve their social mysteries, just like Johnny!

But even more than that, you will learn the tools for becoming a social ninja, capable of navigating some of the most complicated social mysteries that you might face in your own life.

The truth is that some of the best social detective training involves learning how to be more socially skilled yourself. If you can effectively navigate your own social world, you will be much more capable of helping others become successful in their own social journeys. This is how Johnny’s first students learned to become excellent social detectives themselves–by practicing solving their own mysteries.

Throughout this book, you will have the opportunity to test your skills by trying to solve social mysteries alongside some of Johnny’s first students. These mysteries came directly from these students’ personal lives and show how they used their social detective skills to make their own social lives better. As you read through the chapters, see if you can use the tools you are learning to identify social mysteries you might have in your own life.

Some of the ideas in this book are going to be pretty easy and straightforward. You will probably understand them with very little effort. But some of the things we will be talking about might seem a little more complicated at first. If there is something that you don’t quite get right away, don’t worry about it. That is to be expected. Just keep going and don’t let it hold you back. You can always come back to it later on.

If you don’t fully understand something, you will still be able to understand later things in the book. In fact, some of the things in this book will probably make even more sense as you read later parts of the book, so if something is not completely clear, keep reading on and come back. Johnny actually encourages his social detective students to come back and reread things even if they understood them the first time because rereading about important ideas can help you to have a deeper understanding.

Each chapter will also have a social detective concept summary at the end. These summaries are there to help you organize the most important concepts in each chapter. They serve as a good reference guide to come back to if you need to refresh your memory later on.