A Challenge for My Business Owner Friends

I have an issue, and I bet if you own a business and over 75% of your time was or is focused on your business, we have a problem. What's the problem? It's really pretty simple.

Almost, if not all, of our social contacts are based on our business. Our friends are people in our industry, including suppliers, team members, and anyone we do business with.

When we leave our business, whether we sell, close the doors, or transition to family or managers, we will lose those contacts almost overnight. And then we find ourselves getting lonely because we've not built a social group outside of our business.

I'm in this place now. Over the past forty-five years, I've likely had hundreds of associates, friends, and acquaintances I've built. And, now that I'm for the most part retired, I'm seeing all of these contacts fall by the wayside.

That means I need to be looking for people to fill that void, and those people need to be ones who live within a short drive from my house. That's a challenge for me. I really don't have a good idea how to get started.

Building relationships with business contacts was easy. I just had to show up, and over time, I would establish friendships with lots of people. This was great, except for one thing. Almost all of them didn't live within a close drive, and all of them will fall by the wayside.

So, this is my challenge, and I'll bet that for many of you, it's also your challenge. While we're busy building and running a business, we rarely think about the day we won't have a business, and the social network that came with our business disappears.

In addition, at least for me, I haven't really attached myself to any local groups where I could establish local friendships. I can use the excuse that I was too busy in my business, but the truth is, I just haven't made the effort and easily found a group that resonates with me. And that's where my work needs focus.

If this is something you can relate to, why don't you leave me a comment with what your challenge is or what you've done to build a non-business network that you can tap into after you leave your business?