Maximizing a connection like Adam’s made practical sense strategically but also afforded us the priceless advice and guidance we needed to launch with laser-like focus. As an example, one of my first mentors, Adam Block, with whom I worked in the early 90s at Sony Music (before my daughters were even a proverbial twinkle in the eye), provided invaluable support and insight. My children were successfully building friendships and shared experiences in their digital worlds, as real as any they also built in the backyard, and likewise, so was I.įor instance, the reason my company, Stellwagen Ventures, operates in the verticals it does today – music, sport, investment, media and entertainment – is because our network does too: my partner, Matthew Baxter and I have cultivated professional and personal experiences that have led to invaluable relationships across a multitude of industries.
It dawned on me that “face-to-face” wasn’t as necessary for cultivating connections making them mutually meaningful was what mattered. At the same time, I was growing my online network with colleagues and friends across the country and around the globe. Gaming, Snapchatting, making videos for YouTube – it seemed like fun, but it sure didn’t look the way my adolescence did. When my girls and my two younger sons were in middle school, like many parents, I found myself irritated by the time and attention they gave to their screens.
I know that my guidance will be helpful (whether she wants it or not), but while she begins her professional career and I launch a new phase of mine, I’m struck by what we are learning from each other – particularly about networking in the 21 st century. I have been offering the kind of advice a parent does – stay focused, tune-up the resume, hustle. She and I find ourselves startled at how quickly time has passed of course, but also in the pleasant situation where our goals are similarly aligned for perhaps the first time. My eldest daughter, one of beloved twin girls, is completing her final semester at Providence College, and she is filled with equal parts excitement and dread.
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