During the week I co-hosted the Start-Up Smart Awards with editor Oliver Milman at a beautiful venue in Melbourne.
Start-Up Smart is one of the six Private Media websites that I publish. This audience is new to me and I assumed I was virtually unknown to them too. That was undoubtedly true for most, but not all.
Soon after the formalities were over, a couple of women made a beeline for me. They were keen to introduce themselves to me as former readers of Dolly magazine during my editorship.
That happens more often than you would think. Clearly teenage girls of 20 to 25 years ago had a strong, personal connection with the magazine. So my former Dolly audience is now in their mid-thirties. Sometimes thirty-something women say hello to me in the street because they assume they actually know me. My mother did the same thing to the singer Maria Venuti when I took her to the opening night of The Lion King some years ago. She was so familiar that my mother felt comfortable speaking to her like she was a friend.
The two women who approached me were part of the start-up business community. In the 20 or so years between reading Dolly and attending the Start-Up Smart awards, they have become smart, savvy business women. Honestly, I felt so proud of them. And I was pleased that they felt comfortable introducing themselves to me and declaring themselves Dolly groupies. Successful people confidently take risks.
One of the women proudly informed me my legacy was that the magazine I edited for impressionable young minds prevented her and her friends from letting teenage boys talk her into doing things she might have regretted. I was happy to hear that because back in the day my Dolly team and I often used to say that if we saved just one girl from making a mistake from poor judgment then we would have done a good deed. And there before me was proof that we did.
The result of the meeting and quick dart back down memory lane was that we have made a personal connection that could have business benefits in the future. I likened this to the connections that many men appear to have no problem making as the result of a school or family network. They stand around discussing the school they have in common and then a business handshake ends the discussion. We discussed a magazine we all recall fondly as our connector at a business event.
Whatever the reason for making a connection, it’s positive to take a chance and confidently reach out. Successful people do.