I have 20 coffees booked in June

This week I’m thinking about: showing up without a plan 

I have 20 coffees booked in June. ☕️ 

Not because I have a strategy, but because I left my corporate job, I’m starting my own thing, and honestly I have no idea where to start. So I decided to just drink coffee and see what happens. 😅 

Some are with people I haven’t spoken to in years, some are with people I’ve never met, and a few are with former colleagues who have built entirely different lives while I wasn’t paying attention. 

But so far, here is the thing I keep coming back to: having coffee meetings doesn’t feel like work. Which means I have to keep reminding myself that they are. That this is the job right now. Not a Teams meeting, not a presentation, not tweaking the website for the seventh time, just sitting across from someone and being genuinely curious about what they’re doing and what they’re building and what they’re figuring out. 

After 15 years in the same company, a network doesn’t disappear, but it does go quiet. So that’s what June is about. Reconnecting, catching up, seeing where life took people while I was busy inside one organisation. 

As I mentioned many times before, I’m an introvert. Networking as a concept makes me tired. But one person and a coffee? I can do that and I can enjoy it. And I might be trying to convince me that this is right, but twenty coffees in a month, one conversation at a time, feels like a perfectly legitimate way to start a new business. 

I’m also realising something I had genuinely lost sight of after 15 years inside the same company. There is a whole world out there. People building things I didn’t know existed, doing work I didn’t know was possible, living professional lives that look nothing like the one I just left. It’s equal parts exciting and disorienting and exactly what I need to see to feel thrilled, excited and empowered. 

One thing worth your attention (and mine) 

There’s solid research on weak ties, the people you haven’t spoken to in a while. Research consistently shows they are more valuable for new opportunities and career moves than your closest connections. Your close network mostly knows what you know. The person you haven’t spoken to in three years is often sitting in a completely different world. 

Something to try if you feel inspired and adventurous 

If this post inspired you a little and you want to challenge yourself this month, pick one person you haven’t spoken to in over a year but have genuinely thought about recently. Not to ask for anything, just to find out what they’re doing now. Send the message today and see what comes back.