How to Build More Meaningful Relationships with Networking Pro Susan McPherson

Show Snapshot:

When was the last time you made a deep connection that enriches your life?

If you are ready to make more meaningful connections—the kind that adds value to your work, career, and life—meet networking pro Susan McPherson, author of the new book,
The Lost Art of Connecting.

Susan walks us through the power of generosity and other tools for building relationships that lead to happiness and fulfillment.



In This Episode We Cover:

1.    Connecting as a superpower.

2.    Why every person we meet deserves our time, interest, and kindness.

3.    Susan’s “Gather, Ask, Do” method for building meaningful connections and how to blueprint it in your life.

4.    How to break the hermetically sealed bubble that keeps us connecting with people who look like us, sound like us and think like us.

5.    Why women are natural networkers and connectors.

6.    From Zoom Life to IRL – how to reenter the world and start reconnecting post-pandemic.

7.    Ideas to bring intention to your networking.

8.    Networking for introverts, ice breakers for conferences (and cocktail parties), networking hacks, how to follow up, and more.

9.    Plus, the power of being direct.


Quotable:

Every single good thing that has ever happened in my life, happened because of connections. And I still remember at age 16, my late mom saying to me, ‘It’s not what you know but who you know.’

It was instilled in me at a very young age, that every single person in this world that we end up coming across or meeting, is deserving of our interest, our curiosity, our attention, and probably most importantly, our kindness.


More Resources: 

Susan’s website

Susan on Social":

Instagram

LinkedIn

Susan’s LinkedIn newsletter

Susan’s Book:

The Lost Art of Connecting


Transcript:

Katie Fogarty (0:07):

Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. When was the last time you met someone new? And I’m not talking about a simple, “Hi, nice to meet you,” interaction. When was the last time you made a true deep connection that enriches your life? My guest today is a woman who’s all about meaningful connections; making them, nurturing them, and having them add value to your work, career, and life. 

Susan McPherson is an angel investor and the CEO of a communications consultancy focused on the intersections of brands and social impact. But she is also the author of the new book, The Lost Art of Connecting, which offers tools for building meaningful relationships. In our hyperconnected world, where we can have thousands of LinkedIn connections, and zillions of Facebook friends, genuine human connection is still what we really want and need for happiness and fulfillment. I am so delighted to have Susan with us today to help us discover how to be and feel more connected. Welcome Susan.

Susan McPherson (1:10):

Katie, I am so thrilled to be here and congratulations on all you have created. I am such a fan.

Katie (1:16):

Aww, that’s so great to hear, thank you so much. I’m super excited, I’ve been following you on social media, I see that you practice what you are passionate about and what you preach. You are always shouting out women in your life, you’re active in founder communities, you support budding entrepreneurs, so I’m really, really thrilled to have you here and to share you with the audience today. And I want to ask you about the first line in your book to get started. The first line of The Lost art of Connecting says, “Connection is my superpower.” I would love to hear what connection means to you and why did you decide to write this book?

Susan (1:56):
Well, I have to say that every single good thing that has ever happened in my life, happened because of connections. And I still remember at age 16, my late mom saying to me, “It’s not what you know but who you know.” And I grew up, a long time ago [Katie laughs] back in the late ‘60s early ‘70s, and I was the progeny of parents who were serial connectors. So, when my mom said that, she was actually doing it. I joke, but every morning at the breakfast table, I would literally vie for real estate for my bowl of cereal because my parents would have the five local newspapers plus yesterday’s or the day before’s New York Times, splayed out, where they would have scissors and they’d be madly clipping and cutting and then going to their respective typewriters to send or type short little missives, and then send them off into the US mail. And I just assumed everybody’s parents did that. And of course, as I came of age, that wasn’t the case, but it was instilled in my at a very, very young age, that every single person in this world that we end up coming across or meeting, is deserving of our interest, our curiosity, our attention, and probably most importantly, our kindness. And that has been what has carried me through all these 50-plus years later.

Katie (3:22):
I love this story so much because I am thinking back to my own parents who are serial connectors as well. My mom was just embedded in our community, she knew everybody in the small area that I grew up in, in New York City; we lived in the neighborhood and she was jut a mainstay of that community. But my father was somebody who loved to connect on a bigger scale. He used to take us as young kids to the Democratic National Convention and to conferences and all these things and he would always drive me crazy because he would stand in the doorway of whatever event we were in, and we could never go in. Finally I was like, “Dad why are you doing that?” And he was like, “This is the best place to see everybody. They have to walk through the door.” And he wanted to shake every hand, talk to every person and have every conversation so I just love the fact that this is something that was baked into you at a young age. 

So Susan, your book is built on what you call The Gather, Ask, Do Method. I would love for you to share with our listeners what this is and how it works. 

Susan (4:26):
Sure, sure. Well the book is a business book. However, I decided back in the mid-nineties when the Internet launched and I would trudge home every day from work carrying my laptop and plug my laptop into the wall to send and receive my emails in between when I was doing my dishes and getting my computer all sudsy from the dish soap. But there wasn’t a “work Susan” and a “home Susan.” It was hard enough to be one Susan, I didn’t need to be two. And so, even though the book comes across as tips for our professional livelihoods, it very much stems from the person within that business person. 

The Gather, Ask, Do methodology which is played out throughout the entire book works for our personal relationships as well as our professional. I will just give a 30,000 foot view, because if anyone ends up reading or listening to the book, there’s an audio version that I recorded, the hardest thing I’ve ever done by the way, it made writing the book a lot easier when I had to read it out loud [both laugh] but I digress. 

The actual Gather, Ask, Do starts with connecting with the most important person in your life and that is yourself and thinking very intentionally what your goals are for the next four years, four months, heck, even four weeks. And who is it that you want to connect with or reconnect with that is going to help you meet those goals? And vice versa; how are you going to help them meet their goals? The people that you connect with. Also in the gather phase, you think about what your superpowers are. Because I fervently believe, and one of the underlying themes of the book is the notion that, we lead with how can we help versus what can we get. And if we’re going to truly help others, we need to know how and what our superpowers are to do so. Lastly, in the gather phase, you think about all the ways you are going to break that hermetically sealed bubble that tends to keep up connecting with people who look like us, sound like us, the same age as us, the same race and cultural heritage as us. 

The ask phase is where you learn to ask the meaningful questions of others so you can find out what their hopes and dreams are. And if you listen carefully—which I learned in the research for the book that we are woefully bad at, myself included—you can get to the do phase, which is my favorite place to be. And that’s where you take all the data that you listened to from others and you become reliable, responsible, trustworthy because you follow through on what you said you were going to do, in ways you’re going to help and support. And I just want to add a caveat: this doesn’t mean not taking the oxygen mask first. This actually means that when we lead with helping others, the help comes back. So, I have lived this and you so lovingly shared at the beginning by looking at my socials, but we have all the ways in this world to be supportive of others, both in-person and online.

Katie (7:42):
I love this so much. When you said that this is a business book but that the principles can be applied to your everyday life and everyday relationships, I could not agree more given what you just shared. My day job is helping people with their LinkedIn profiles, and job hunting and career advancements, et cetera. And people sometimes feel like being active on LinkedIn or networking is so transactional and can feel really icky and when I talk to clients, I always encourage them to think about networking as being generous. How can you be helpful? Because particularly for women, who are the majority of my listeners, women are trained to be helpful, we give to other people, we’re trained to be generous and we enjoy it and we’re good at it. So, to think about networking or relationship building as being generous I think is something that people feel really, really comfortable with. 

Susan (8:42):
Absolutely. And I say that, I’m not anti-networking. But there’s a reason I didn’t title the book “The Lost Art of Networking.” Because I like to think that this is more about the one-on-one, one-on-two and building longterm, non-transactional relationships and thinking about things over the stretch of time. There’s another theme in the book and that is the creation of constellations. If we look back in antiquity when people would look up in the sky and try and figure things out, they assigned stories to what they saw. And I like to think when you make introductions and connections between one, two, or three people, you’re creating impact, you’re creating happenings, you’re creating storyboards, because you don’t know what actually is gonna come from that. And honestly, when they looked up at the sky they sure as heck didn’t really know what was going on. And just frankly Katie, the only constellation I have ever seen in the sky, even with a telescope, is The Big Dipper. [both laugh]

Katie (9:42):
I’m with you on that one. Sometimes I can make out The Little Dipper. I have a son who was fascinated with this and I have been peering at a lot of stars myself. Susan, we are emerging in a post-pandemic world. We’re gonna be taking a quick break, but I want to hear, when we return from the break, how people re-enter their lives. People are returning to work, they’re returning to in-person events, the holidays are approaching. I want to talk about how people can get back in the game of connecting after this quick break.

[Ad break]

Katie (11:17):

Susan, we’re back from the break. We have all been spending the last few months virtually, right? We’re coming up on two years now. We’ve been on Zoom, we’ve been sheltering in place, we have left our offices, but we have begun to return, people started back in fall, people are coming back to companies in the new year, the holidays are approaching, our lives are returning. How are we gonna connect if our skills have gotten rusty after so many months of Zoom? What would be your recommendation for connecting with warmth and comfort?

Susan (11:54):
Sure. Well first and foremost, give yourself some grace. I think yes, we are quote-unquote “going back” but I think if anything we are going sideways because we don’t know what we’re really going back two. Number two, know you’re not alone. In other words, if you’re feeling trepidatious, then everyone else is or at least the majority of people. They may be excited, but they’re nervous. It’s kind of like at the end of the winter when you first get your bike out of storage, for those of us who live in colder climates, I swear to you Katie, the first five blocks I’m on the bike I am convinced I am going to die. But then by the fifth block I’m like, “Oh I got this,” hopefully as I swerve away from traffic rather than into traffic. I do believe we have been connecting with others and meeting with people in real life since we were knee-high to a grasshopper so there’s no reason we won’t be able to. 

But I do want to remind listeners: it’s okay if you’re nervous, it’s okay to take your time, it’s okay to small. You don’t have to immediately throw yourself in a party of 100 people. The other thing is, thanks to the technology we have, we often can find out who is going to be in the room before we go and if you are trepidatious, nervous, or introverted and not feeling comfortable, and rightfully so, again after 18 months of isolation, I would suggest do a little research, find out who is there and pick maybe three people you want to meet. And when you go to the event, actually go with the goal of meeting those three people, learning three things about them, and then sharing three things about yourself. I’m a big believer in the “Ask” section of the book where I talk about learning to ask questions of others. But when we ask questions of others, we also have to be prepared to be a little bit vulnerable and be open ourselves and stay away from what I call the weather talk where you default to what you did over the weekend or what you had for lunch or what the weather was in Cleveland. [Katie laughs] I don’t know why I picked Cleveland. 

Katie (14:00):
Poor Cleveland. For all my Cleveland listeners, please hit me up and tell us what the weather is like there because we do care about you. 

So, Susan, I love the idea of going in with some intention, saying I’m really excited about the idea of meeting this particular person or this particular type of person but if you are shy or a bit introverted, what questions might you encourage people to use as an icebreaker if breaking the ice feels hard or uncomfortable?

Susan (14:34):
Yeah, well one piece of advice I always give and I live this advice, as scary as it may be, is when I see someone else alone at an event, and inevitably I’m always alone because I’m single, I will walk up to that person and introduce myself. And yes, 99% of the time, that person is relieved. There’s always that 1% that’s like, “Leave me the heck alone I don’t want to talk to anyone.” But most of the time, people are like, “Oh phew, I’m not alone anymore.” So that’s one suggestion. 

 Two, I like to have kind of canned questions and of course it’s going to be obnoxious after people listen to this podcast and then meet me in real life and I whip out the canned questions, but in other words things like, at the end of this pandemic, as we are hopefully getting to the other side, where in the world do you want to go and why? Or if you could solve one problem and money wasn’t an issue, what would it be? Or what was your favorite food as a child? That’s kind of a goofy one but it’s a fun one because then you actually can learn about somebody’s background, you know, if I said  blintzes it would all of a sudden give you an idea of something about me. Or if I said spaghetti with meatballs, I mean I’m being silly, but these types of things are not too invasive. You’re not trolling or digging in a way that would put somebody at an uncomfortable situation.

Katie (15:56):
Yes, that makes so much sense. 

Susan (15:59):
Yeah, the point is trying to get a little bit more than just the surface conversation.

Katie (16:04):
So, I have a good one for you, Susan. I had a guest on the show, her name is Nancy Davis Kho, she has the podcast Midlife Mixtape and she asks every guest what was their first concert? And I think that’s such a great question because people have all sorts of different answers to that and most people have seen a concert so you can learn a lot about people that way as well. So, I’m throwing it out there for all the music nerds in the show. 

Susan (16:30):
I love it! I love it, it just takes it out of the normal reel.

Katie (16:36):
And people get it. If you’re at an event or a conference or a dinner party with some strangers and you need to figure out a way of connecting with them, you want to tap into something that’s sort of universal. 

When you walk into a conference Susan, because I know this book is a bit about business networking, do you have any really tactical tips beyond the icebreaker? Do you set goals about the number of business cards you leave with or the types of conversations you want to have? Does that help give structure to your…? 

Susan (17:07):

Well, again, I go always back to the Gather, Ask, Do and I did that long before I wrote the book where I really kind of think about what are the long term goals and how does this fit into that? So, it isn’t necessarily about the number of people I meet but it’s who do I want to meet that’s going to not only help me meet my goals but know what I can actually do to help people, who do I want to meet that I can be helpful to? And then I look and see for instance, who is going to be in the room. And then I go hide in the bathroom. [Katie laughs

Katie (17:41):

You can probably meet a lot of people in that bathroom. I think there are a lot of people hiding in the bathroom with you. [laughs

Susan (17:47):
Absolutely. And just a side note Katie, I’m tiny, my license says I’m five foot so we’ll just leave it at that. But for years in the ‘90s and the ‘00s, when I would go to events, people wouldn’t see me. So, I often found that if I went with a plan to ask people questions, they were much more likely to engage. This is a wild generalization, but people like to talk about themselves, so if you ask them specific questions, you start the dialogue and I’m much more likely than to have them not look over my head, although it’s very easy for them to look over my head because I’m probably up to their chest.

Katie (18:22):
So, what is the “do” element here? We’ve talked a little bit about how you walk into a room, how you make other people feel comfortable. I love the advice to ask people questions about themselves because that’s a natural conversation starter. Once you’ve connected with somebody that you’re thinking, I love this person, I want them in my orbit, I hope I can continue to see them, how do you bring the do into the equation?

Susan (18:46):
Sure. Well, one of the underlying themes of the book is all about how do you lead with being helpful. So, I very often, and it is my calling card, I will say, so what are you working on right now? Or what are you hoping for right now that I can be helpful with? And if I’m listening carefully, I will be able to toss out ideas of ways I could be helpful. But I always have a little notepad with me, or I will use my handheld device and type little notes. I often will also take a photo of the person, not to share on social, but just so that three days later, I can remember who the person is because as I get older, my memory isn’t quite what it was.

Katie (19:25):
[laughs] Join the club.

Susan (19:27):
[laughs] And then, well we know the name of the podcast.

Katie (19:31):
Yes, exactly. We’re all a certain age, our memories are a work in progress.

Susan (19:36):
Always. And improving like fine wine. [Katie laughs] But honestly, if I leave the event, and I do this with online events too, I will follow up as quickly as I humanly can, okay? Now, sometimes that is not possible, right, because life gets in the way. But I do try to do the follow-up within a couple of days so that the person doesn’t forget who I was. And I also try to refer back to my notes or my photo to be able to drop in something we talked about. I like to call it the commonalities in the uncommonality of meeting someone new. And that way you remind the person when you follow up that you saw her, you heard her, you listened to her, which I think is one of the greatest gifts we can give one another in this crazy noise-filled world. So, to me, that’s the first step in the do, following through. 

Katie (20:31):
So smart Susan.

Susan (20:33):
Yeah, and it could be, I’m going to introduce you to blah-blah-blah, or it could be you had a talk about the best humus in Cleveland, we’ll bring up Cleveland again, and then you recommend a hummus in Columbus. I mean, I’m being silly, but sometimes, I don’t want people to think I’m running around and trying to help the world. I mean yes, I do try to help people, but this is also about just normal conversations and then following up and knowing that this is not all happening in a short span of time. This is over lifetimes. 

Katie (21:05):
Sure, relationships take a while to develop and build and you’ve offered some very smart tactical tips. What would you recommend for somebody who wants to resurrect a relationship that maybe let languish during the pandemic? Or after you’ve switched jobs or you’ve moved towns? How do you resurrect a relationship that’s no longer quite so robust?

Susan (21:26):

I believe being very direct is your best friend in this case. And use the pandemic for God’s sake. It’s been nasty to us, let’s take advantage of it any way we possibly can. So, I would reach out to someone and say: it’s been very challenging the last 18 months, I’ve lost touch with lots of my friends or former colleagues. You were important to me, I would love to see if you might have 10 or 15 minutes to chat over the next month?

Katie (21:57):
And how could they say no? [laughs] That’s because it’s such a measured ask too because I really think that’s an important component to this whole process. You need to be measured in what you ask of other people, particularly as people look to re-enter or re-emerge and are busy managing their lives. If you’re coming with something small like; I’d love a coffee catch up over the phone, you know, I would love to hop on the phone for 10 minutes, it makes it easy for people to say yes.

Susan (22:26):
Yeah. And look, there’s always going to be somebody who says no, and even in my grand age, I’ll be 57 in the next few days, I fervently believe that it is better to be direct. It still hurts when somebody ghosts you, but it’s just life. And I just figured let’s use this pandemic, we all have gone through it, obviously many have had different degrees of suffering from it, but I think it’s a perfect excuse to reach out to people, and like you just said, I think people appreciate when you’re direct and give them some sort of measurable, time restrained request. But I also suggest leading with how you can be helpful to that person; I’d love to reconnect, see what you’re working on, see if there’s a way I can be valuable to what you’re doing. I joke because I sometimes ask when I’m doing talks, I ask to see a show of hands of how many people receive outreach on LinkedIn, they will connect with somebody and then within two hours, that person will be selling them something.

Katie (23:32):
Yes, that’s such a terrible…it’s happened to me, I’ve been on the receiving end of that and it’s so off-putting and such a turn off and so disingenuous. 

Susan (23:41):
Yeah. And what if instead, the person did a little research for instance about your company Katie and said, “Wow you know I happen to know a funder who specializes in blah-blah-blah,” and then make the ask. Wouldn’t you be much more likely to have an interest in following up with that person?

Katie (24:00):
Of course. A lot of this is sort of common sense and good EQ and just really being respectful of other people. What would you say to somebody who says, “I hate networking,” if you wanted to encourage them to look at it as more connecting versus transactional? What would be your coaching?

Susan (24:21):
I would say, I hate it too. [both laugh] I’d remind them to look it up in the Merriam-Webster dictionary because there’s a reason “work” is in the word networking. And I would say, don’t try for one too many, I would concentrate on setting a goal for yourself, three people a week, five people a month, that you’re going to either connect with or reconnect with. And don’t think of it as quote-unquote “working a room” and shaking hands, and grabbing business cards. I don’t even have business cards anymore.

Katie (24:51):
Right, who does? [both laugh]

Susan (24:56):
So, I think, I also want to share something that I learned in the research for the book and that is, making a practice of meaningfully connecting in our lives actually extends our livelihoods and our lives as much as eating kale every day and running every day. Now, mind you, I love kale, I do live in Brooklyn, not Cleveland. I’m sorry I gotta get Cleveland off my mind. 

Katie (25:23):
We are pro-Cleveland! I have a lot of listeners also in Cincinnati, we are like, we love these areas.

Susan (25:29):

And we have a client in Cleveland, I’m going there in a few weeks, so maybe that’s why it’s on my mind.

Katie (25:34):
Maybe that’s why it’s on your brain.

Susan (25:36):
[laughs] But you know, anyhow, I’m being redundant, but I think it doesn’t hurt to realize this is healthy, this is going to be something you can be doing for yourself rather than something that is painful and again, back to that transactional kind of feeling.

Katie (25:56):
Right, exactly. Because we read about this, loneliness is the new smoking which is the new sitting, these are all things that are bad for your health. So, you have greater health, you have greater happiness, you’ve got greater longevity if you have healthy, strong relationships. So, this advice is so spot on. 

Susan, I want to ask you, because your work today is different I know from where you started 15 years ago, 20 years ago when you first launched your business. You are now an author, you’ve made the art of connecting a big part of your professional life beyond simply your communications work. What would you tell your younger self from the vantage point of what you know now about your life and the importance of meaningful relationships? What would you go back and tell yourself to do differently?

Susan (26:44):

Well, I think I would be what I learned in the book, from the research in the book, and that is don’t be afraid to be direct. In other words, when I am trying to accomplish something, let the person know without fear that they’re going to run away. So, I guess probably the macro version of that is have some confidence, right? Like so many of us women, we tend to wake up in the morning and have imposter syndrome. I would tell myself years ago to get rid of imposter syndrome.

Katie (27:17):
Yeah, so your sense of self-confidence evolved over time. Did it evolve because of your growing expertise? Did it evolve because of your age? Do you see a direct correlation between aging and increased confidence?

Susan (27:32):
Absolutely. And I was asked recently if I was to pick one word how I felt now in my fifties and I would say unstoppable. Because I am not a victim of letting myself get the better of myself. I’ve put those monkeys, I mean they come out occasionally, believe me, I don’t want to say they’re completely gone, but one monkey won out and I guess that would be number one monkey and that would be me. But it’s interesting and it may have stemmed out of always being the tiniest person in the room, to be insecure for that very reason. Right, when we’re othered for any reason, it’s scary. But you know, my business, I founded the company 8 years ago and 95% of the business has been inbound. So, what that has told me is the rich connections and communities that I have made such an effort to build since my twenties and thirties have come back. I mean, they may not be clients, but it’s through them, through others, through others that have come back or come through to do business with myself and my team. So, I think if I could tell that twenty-something who was nervous or trepidatious about taking all those meetings, I would say, “Good thing you did it.”

Katie (28:51):
Yes, absolutely. Because you built this rich network of people that have supported you in so many different ways. You’ve just taken on recently a new role, you just said you’re about to be 57 and you were a brand new author by the age of 56. The reinvention has been happening, what’s exciting about that, and what do you think is in store for you next?

Susan (29:14):
Well, that’s a really good question and I wish I had a crystal ball. I honestly would love to fall in love. I have been single for way too many years and I would love to have one last love or maybe a couple more loves, depending on how long I live. And after this year of you know, the Zoom-based book tour, I’d like to get out and do more public speaking once the world comes back or comes to wherever we’re going, and continue to do the board service work that I’ve been doing. I serve on the board of The 19th which is an amazing media platform centered at the intersection of women and public policy. And then I also serve on the board of USA for UNHCR which is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Katie (30:08):
This is so fabulous. You’ve got such a full plate and I also love that you put out into the universe that you want to find love. It’s a lot like networking, you have to let people know what you want to be doing for them to think of you, to make introductions, to say, Susan is dynamite and I know the perfect man, or the perfect woman, or the perfect person, or the perfect whoever, and to make those introductions. Because that’s how it works. Believe me, I’ve told every person I stand next to for five minutes too long that I have a podcast. I’m like, “Guess what! I’ve got a podcast.” And this way people know what you’re doing, what you’re excited about. So, put things out into the universe because that’s how the universe knows how to deliver.

Susan, I want to head into our speed round since I know our time together is coming to a close. And this is something that I love doing because I could talk to all my guests all day long but we have a limited timeframe and a speed round allows us to learn more about you and hear more about your thoughts on a quick range of subjects very quickly. So, I’m gonna ask you for a one or maybe two-word answer to complete these sentences.

Susan (31:15):
Okay.

Katie (31:15):
Running my own business is _____.

Susan (31:20):
Beyond amazing.

Katie (31:22):
I think I know the answer to this one but, my superpower at work is ______.

Susan (31:27):
Connecting!

Katie (31:28):
[laughs] My surprising superpower at home is _____.

Susan (31:35):
Okay to be alone. [laughs]

Katie (31:37):
That is a superpower, believe me, that’s a superpower. My favorite way to connect with people is by phone, email, LinkedIn, or in person.

Susan (31:46):
In-person.

Katie (31:48):
On following up, email or snail mail?

Susan (31:53):
Email.

Katie (31:54):
My out-of-the-box or unorthodox networking idea is _____.

Susan (32:02):
Showcase people.

Katie (32:04):
If you want to move from networking to genuine connection, always remember to _____.

Susan (32:09):

Ask.

Katie (32:10):
Love it. On weekends you will find me _____. 

Susan (32:14):

At the dog park.

Katie (32:15):
If I weren’t running my own business, I would be a _____.

Susan (32:19):
Astronaut.

Katie (32:20):
[laughs] I love it! [Susan laughs] that is a fun one. Somebody said quilter last time and I thought that was pretty fun too, but astronaut is amazing. Susan, this was a lot of fun. I really appreciate connecting with you, learning more about your recommendations for our listeners who are moving back out into the world and looking to build rich, meaningful connections. Before we say goodbye, how can A Certain Age listeners find you, your work, and your book The Lost Art of Connecting.

Susan (32:54):
Well, thank you, Katie, this has been a joy, and thank you for all that you do. It’s really, really remarkable. People can find me on all the inter-webs @susanmcp1 my company is McPherson Strategies, and I’m based in Brooklyn so I’m always happy to meet New York City people in real life. And lastly, the book can be found at any bookstore or book online website that you purchase from. Both the hard back, the Kindle version, and the audio version.

Katie (33:26):
Fantastic. I’ll put all that information into the show notes.

This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday to hear how non-profit leader, Trish Tierney grew a small organization into thousands of volunteer advisors from top companies like Google, Yahoo, and Kraft Heinz, all working on projects that support women’s rights and social justice leaders across the globe. Tune in to learn how you can get involved. 

Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time, and until then: age boldly, beauties. 

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Friends Don't Let Friends Age Alone with Nina Lorez Collins