Quick update:
I’m home now.
These past couple weeks I’ve been cleaning out my parent’s house after moving them this spring to assisted living. Cleaning up 50 years of living and raising a family was a big job involving several rounds, five siblings and their partners, dozens of thrift store/metal recycling drop-offs, hundreds of charity box/furniture collections, and 3 dumpsters weighing over 12 tons. We’re mostly done and I’m mostly back in my life.
Thank you for your patience with a few late missives.
Your mid-week snack break is coming close to the weekend, which can only mean one thing: there will be beverages. Approximately 50 of them.
Allow me to introduce you to 50 Cups endeavor. Originally dropped as a networking concept in the book What Color is Your Parachute?, the idea keeps being reintroduced to the world.
Kiwi brand strategist Peter J. Thomson says that before he makes any big changes in his life he’ll share coffee and conversation with 50 different people. They don’t sip and idly chit chat, Thomson has a supply of pointed questions in his quiver.
These meetings with peers and mentors are carefully curated to provide him with insight and inspiration about his impending decision or shift.
In his book A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life, Hollywood producer Brian Grazer is a big proponent of weekly “curiosity conversations.” He meets with strangers and people outside of his circle to ask them questions about their life. These aren’t networking meetings. They stem from a desire to genuinely learn about other people.
I’m sure it's a lot easier to set up a meeting with a complete stranger if you’ve produced dozens of movies grossing a total of $15 billion dollars and have amassed multiple Oscars and Emmys with a Grammy to boot.
But us normal people, we can tackle these kinds of projects as well.
We don’t need to create an exact replica of an existing venture, but we can be inspired by others who’ve walked the pathand sipped the java. We can make our own structures, rules, and goals. In our can-we-please-enter-the-post-phase of post-pandemic, you can meet for walks or over zoom. You can meet for tea, craft brew or fizzy water.
Consider what a project like this would look like for you.
What are your goals?
What do you want to discuss?
What are you interested in learning?
Who would you meet with?
What would you ask?
Don’t forget to get yourself a new notebook when you start.
And, please, keep me updated.