Reconnecting

Today I am teaching a Master Class on how to reconnect with people from your past.

This came as a real surprise to me, and I have to thank my long time friend Steve Harper for encouraging me to write this stuff down!

He has listened to me as I reached out to 40 people, most of whom I have not talked to in years. Like most of us, I am doing this because I have to. This is a time when I am changing what I do for a living and embracing the opportunity to do new things. After exiting the company I co-founded a decade ago, I really didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do next. One thing is for certain, I really wanted to reconnect to the people I lost touch with when changing industries, geographies, and professions.

My limiting belief was that “people from my past don't really want to hear from me.” I don't know how this limiting belief formed, but I was pretty heavily invested in it!

So, it's been 6 weeks. How is it going?

I started small, reaching out to people who I had a fairly good feeling would be open to responding, and they did.

What I didn't do was the classic business networking stuff. I genuinely showed up, was open/vulnerable, and asked questions instead of reciting my business successes and failures.

That first group of eight people not only was willing to hear from me, they have become a big part of cheering me on! So I reached out to the next group, and the next, and the next…

100% responded. That's right, every single person, some of whom I haven't spoken to in this century, came back right away. This says a lot about the quality of people I've been fortunate enough to know and work with. But it also blew my limiting belief apart.

In the master class today I am going to talk about how I did it, and give some thoughts on how you can do it too. If you would like to know more, please by all means sign up for the class or get in touch with me and I'm happy to discuss it.