Several years ago, I was a guest speaker at a business event in Slough. There was a sign-up sheet for my newsletter and I collected quite a few contacts that got added to my mailing list. One of them was Abhi, a video producer, and she has received this newsletter ever since.
About 18 months ago, she invited me to join her networking group as a guest. As we had met so briefly years before, I couldn’t remember her and it was an early morning slot and I was unable to go for some time. For some reason though (perhaps because she was gently persistent) I did end up going along and was quite taken with her brief presentation about a video she had just finished filming. It was a sensitive but fun promotional video for the Great British Skinny Dip and it was her sense of fun but also responsibility that appealed.
We stayed ‘loosely’ in touch via LinkedIn, and I noticed via one of her posts that she had moved to Germany so assumed that our paths probably wouldn’t cross again.
But a few months ago, one of my clients was looking for a video producer for a training course she was running in Milan. It was for a breast cancer charity and it needed somebody with sensitivity. I was one of the presenters, and I instantly thought of Abhi. Travelling from the UK or Germany to Italy – probably not much difference in cost.
I introduced her to the client, they discussed the brief and agreed to work together. So despite a slightly inauspicious start in Slough, the first time we worked together was at an international event in Milan. Not a bad outcome, and demonstrates the benefit of staying connected even if you don’t see the immediate requirement.