I talk to people. I talk to the people in line at the store. At the next table. Sometimes waiting for a light. On the plane. I get three basic reactions:
- People ignore me and/or look at me like I am crazy.
- We do a bit of banter.
- I stumble on a career builder / business lead.
A few months ago I was eating at the bar of a restaurant and started talking to the guy next to me. Turned out that his brother-in-law was a senior exec at Comcast and they were starting to think about how to apply natural language technology to their TV business. Just so happened that AB2, a natural language company I am involved with, was a good fit. Introduction followed.
Yesterday I was flying from NYC to Portland and my seatmates were a NY media couple. The woman works in PR and the guy is a freelance journalist who writes for Money Magazine.
Guess what? He is interested in the premise of my Boomercide book (go ahead and buy it) and wants to learn more. It is, after all, about financial planning via picking your end date (and yes, it goes beyond to discuss the extremely important issue of our retirement savings deficit which affects all of us.)
So… talk. You never know. Your next personal or ad agency business development or even career-building score could be sitting next to you.
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