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Rekindling Old Contacts is like Mining for Gold!
There was a time when people stayed with one employer for their entire working career, but those days are gone for most of us. My father worked for Xerox for over 35 years, so it's no wonder he's amazed at how much my sister and I have moved around in half our working lives.
All of this moving around does present problems for us though. One such problem is making sure our contacts are aware that we have moved to a new company, a new profession, or a new area of the World. After all do you really expect people to make referrals to you when they don't know what you're doing? If you do you may want to reconsider your thought process.
The good news is that rekindling relationships can be as exciting as it is challenging. It can be rewarding to find out what your old friends are doing, and they'll be excited that you reached out to them too.
The biggest challenge in rekindling the relationship is avoiding the appearance that you are renewing the relationship because of what is in it for you. In other words, your purpose for getting re-connected cannot be for the purpose of asking for something as the first order of business. The best way to reconnect with someone is to come to the table with what's important to them.
One way to do that is to reconnect with your contacts by inviting them to let you know what they are doing now, so you can be the one to find a way to make referrals. Chances are they have done no better job of staying connected than you did, so you're actually doing them a favor by reconnecting and placing your attention on what they are doing.
You will probably find opportunities to connect your old friends with people you know now, or people you knew in common when you were in touch with them. Either way, you'll hit a homerun by making this effort.
Consider contacting your people with an eye towards putting together a database of where they are, what they are doing, and how you can be in a position to make referrals to them. Imagine how popular you'd be with old networking contacts if they knew you were looking for ways to send them business. If that doesn't get their attention nothing else you can do will.
The beautiful thing about this approach is it works great no matter how far back your contacts go. You can connect with people from college, high school, or even grade school. It doesn't matter. They'll be delighted to hear from you, and who knows who is out here that could be an active part of your network? You're missing opportunity every day you allow to pass without taking action towards reconnecting.
Of course once people start reaching out to you the next step would be to have an organized, simple way to stay in touch from this point forward, and Biznik may provide the perfect tool for that purpose. Of course not everyone you know is going to be interested in a Biznik profile, not everyone will be involved in a business, but enough will that it may make sense.
Have some fun with this at the same time you begin experiencing how easy it can be to turn old friends into active networking partners.