Connection Pinball
May 21, 2012 2 Comments
Scanning my usual set of columns in Hootsuite this morning, I wondered, “Is there a blog post here – just looking at these people?”
In my DM column I saw Liz Marshall and Terry Starbucker. Yep, there was a story.
You see, I met Terry in our early days of blogging – probably 2008, at the famous Blogger Social ’08. Our friendship had little to do with my business at the time (which was and still is focused on pharma), but we were both blogging on marketing and business topics, and we hit it off.
In 2009, I made my only appearance at SXSW, mainly to chaperone my oldest son, who was interested in film (and, hey, what’s not to like about a father-son adventure to Austin?). Being disillusioned with a lot of the panels, I spent a fair amount of time in the Blogger Lounge, where, serendipitously, I ended up at the same table with Liz Strauss. We hit it off, too.
Terry and Liz insisted that I come to this rather small conference in Chicago called SOBCon the next year. It wasn’t in my pharma sweet spot, but I was still trying to find my place in the marketing/social media/entrepreneur world as well, and I liked the idea of a more intimate gathering of status-quo-breakers. So I went.
There I met Lisa Petrilli, also visible in my HootSuite columns today. And, Anthony Iannarino, Danielle Smith, Sean McGinnis, Angela Maiers – all visible front-and-center this morning on Twtiter, all met for the first time at a SOBCon event (2010 or 2011). Because LeadershipChat was born out of a collaboration between Lisa Petrilli and me that started at SOBCon, a whole other fleet of close connections has also been developed. And as I expand out of pharma into a new endeavor, it’s people like Carol Roth and Greg Hartle and Lou Imbriano and Jeannie Waters and Liz Marshall and Sara Goodman and Jesse Petersen and Becky McCray and Alli Worthington and Fred McClimans and Brandie McCallum and Sam Fiorella and Meghan Biro and Patty Azarello and Jeff Shuey and Phil Gerbyshak and many others who are my supporters, and cheerleaders, and brain trust.
All of this grew out of LeadershipChat and SOBCon.
Which grew out of becoming friends with Liz and Terry.
Which leads to the moral of the story. Make great quality connections, cultivate those relationships, and be ready.
It may seem a bit like a pinball game at times, but you cannot and will not lose when you make friends with great people!
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Networking is a great reward in life and business. Thanks for the mention!
Looks like your connections have lasted longer than a typical pinball game 🙂 Good thing, because I’m glad we’ve stayed connected.
I think the key is to keep flipping and keep moving and do our best to stay in contact. The closer the contact, the higher the score. And it’s all because of one shiny silver ball, er conference. Amazing!