13/40 - Staying In Touch

In his book, Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi talks about the power of "loose connections." While I'd never heard it called that, I realized that it was something that I'd been doing for a very long time.

The basic idea is that not every connection has to be deep and consistent, but that there is power in being able to cultivate a vast network of people that will always take your call, even if it has been a long time since you last had a meaningful interaction. That book was written well before social media made the art of the loose connection even easier than it used to be.

In middle school, my best friend was Josh Williams. His mom Debbie was my Mom's best friend so it worked out well. He was a couple years older than me and the closest thing I ever had to a big brother. We played Legos together and he was the one who convinced me to buy a Macintosh Apple Computer in the early 90s.

In high school, our paths diverged but we did our best to see each other when and where we could in Dallas and Chicago (where he moved after high school.) It wasn't really until our late 20s that we reconnected in earnest when he moved back to North Texas with his family.

Both of Josh's parents were entrepreneurs and Josh quickly followed in their footsteps forming multiple companies in the early 2000s. One of the companies was built on top of the very early version of Facebook and was a game that I really loved playing. It evolved over time and eventually was positioned very well to be an app on the brand new iPhone. I was an early user of the product and gave as much feedback as I could.

I was in the process of finding a way to move to NYC and sent out a going away invitation to Josh. He didn't know that I was leaving my Dallas job and called me when I was driving through Tennessee in my Uhual on the way to New York. He told me that they needed someone to do "BizDev" for the startup and I told him I didn't know what "BizDev" was. He told me it was "like sales, but less aggressive more like partnerships."

That phone call was what got me started in technology and that company launched me into the career that I have had these past 12+ years in startups and founding teams.

You never know who you meet when you're 11 years old that will change the trajectory of your life then and again later on. It is okay to lose touch but never lose the connection.