Two conversations earlier this week were genuine gamechangers for me. Most of us spend more time than we care to admit wandering roughly in the direction we are headed. Then someone hands you a map and you realize how much ground you were about to cover the hard way. That is exactly what happened.
Let me tell you how these conversations came to be.
I belong to a professional community called Recognized Experts. As I prepare to launch my first book, a friend asked if I knew Miki Feldman Simon. She explained that Miki had just launched her own first book and that it was one of the best launches she had ever seen. Miki and I are both REX members, but we had not yet had the chance to meet. I reached out using our shared community and our mutual friend as a bridge. She generously offered me not just an hour of her time, but all of the hard-won wisdom from her own launch experience. It was genuinely priceless.
Earlier this year, I joined a national professional networking group called ProVisors. During a meeting with one of its members, she asked if I had connected with Dr. Sarah Reiff-Hekking yet. She thought we should know each other. Sarah is also a coach, has been in ProVisors for several years, and has done a remarkable job building relationships within the community. She accepted my invitation to meet without hesitation, shared insights that will meaningfully accelerate my own integration into this network, and offered to be a resource for me going forward.
What’s important to notice about both conversations is this: I was not asking for referrals. I was simply sharing what I was working on. And because I did, both women thought of people in their networks who could help me right now, at this particular moment in my journey. If you know my work, you know I call these people “local guides.” They are the ones who have already walked a stretch of the road you are just beginning. They shorten your learning curve and help you navigate terrain that would otherwise take months to figure out on your own.
These two conversations did exactly that.
So here is the question I want to leave with you.
Who in your network knows what you are up to right now?
