What Happened When I Called One New Person a Week
Networking from home has become a seriously valuable skill
About a month into the pandemic, I received a flurry of emails that boiled down to this: Half of my work contracts were being cut. At first, I was frantic. But quickly, I was able to replace the lost contracts with new ones. How? I owe it all to a practice I’ve been doing for the last three years.
Every week, no matter what I have going on, I reach out to one new person who is doing something I think is cool and request a chance to talk to them on the phone. I know this might sound terrifying — trust me, as a guy who grew up with social anxiety, I get it. But the benefits have been incredible: After making more than 200 of these calls, I’ve created a vast network of people to share ideas and opportunities with.
This past month alone, I’ve spoken with the former chief of human resources at Apple, a professor of entrepreneurship at Duke University, a man whose devastating personal loss prompted him to quit his job in investment banking and become a…
