Use your whole network

As entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time networking to find clients, partners, and of course, deals. Each new person we meet has a story that we can learn from. Sometimes, we can even share advice or encouragement from our own experience. It’s a jungle out there and it’s easier to handle when we cooperate, share, and empathize with each other.

With each new person we meet and try to help, we start to carry more of them around with us. We wonder how they would approach each other’s issues. We focus on the things that matter to them. This empathy and concern for new contacts is wonderful for building new relationships. But it can happen lead us away from a focus on our existing contacts. And our existing contacts are the ones that got us to where we are. They’re probably still very valuable.

Abandoning dormant contacts isn’t a good long term strategy, but neither is limiting new contacts. Take time to step back and think about the people who mattered to you a year ago or a month ago. Shift your attention from the problems of the present to the solutions in the past and who helped you with them. You’ll see a pattern. You’ll know who to reactivate.