Kon'nichiwa!
In case you haven't figured out what I'm referring to… it's soup!
I just shared an extremely tasty bowl of ramen yesterday at what is arguably one of the best ramen places in Los Angeles, Silver Lake Ramen.
This was an overdue lunch with my amazingly open-hearted friend, Tiffany.
She and I first met last year a speakers conference in Colorado Springs. We immediately hit it off and agreed to stay in touch. We had a couple of Skype calls but I knew too much time had gone by since connecting in person.
So after a couple of back and forth e-mails, and scheduling snafus, we were finally able to make it work, and it was such an energizing and productive meeting, on many fronts.
Here's the thing. I've been making a concerted effort on a weekly basis, to reach out to several people whose friendship I either value or someone I'm only now getting to know, and would love to know better.
So whether it's an email, or a video, or a text message, it's finding a way to maintain and grow that connection.
This is important and too many people wait until the last possible minute to squeeze something out of one of their tenuous relationships, and usually only when they need something.
Anyone have a friend that suddenly appears out of nowhere on LinkedIn once they're lost their job?
Too little. Too late.
Ever heard of Dunbar's Number?
Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist who posits that 150 is the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.
It may seem like a high number to maintain, but I guarantee that if you approach this systemically and in small chunks, you'll find that you can easily work your way through this list.
You may be asking, how the heck do I keep track of these contacts? One tool that I found helps tremendously is FullContact. It's free to connect your address book, so I recommend you giving it a shot.
In case you were curious about all the other tools and resources we use here at FullCast, I recently published a blog post appropriately titled, “The Complete List of Tools and Resources We Use At FullCast“
In summary, keep working hard at cultivating those relationships. Water that flower a little bit every week. You won't regret it.