Engineered serendipity

Welcome to all 138 of you who have joined in the past few weeks. I write weekly on insights and tactics around building an incredible network of clients, collaborators, and community.

Thursday mornings I tend to work from coffee shops for a change of pace from my normal basement office/lair. This past Thursday, instead of my average coffee shop, I switched it up and went out of my way to a different spot. Annoyed that they were cash-only that morning, I ordered and sat down at an empty table (emptier than usual, because who carries cash?)… to find myself sitting right next to an old friend of mine.

Serendipity is a magical thing.

We’ve all had experiences like the above. Backing that up, we are constantly bringing to mind certain people, seemingly randomly - one thought leads to another, to another, and suddenly we’re remembering a client we haven’t spoken to in a decade.

As much as I love and believe in serendipity, we can’t solely rely on it.

Can you engineer serendipity?

I think you can. After all, one of my projects was incorporated as “Serendipity in Software, Inc.”

Taking Action

Can you create a serendipity machine? All you need is a process that resurfaces relationships you might have otherwise forgotten about (hint: these aren’t the people that keep showing up at the top of your LinkedIn feed).

This can be done with a simple spreadsheet, a product like Relatable which tracks last contact date, or even… yes I’ve seen it in action… a shoebox of business cards you randomly sort through.

The question for you next is… are you going to reach out.

Further Reading

The New York Times has a great guest essay - For People to Really Know Us, We Need to Show Up