March 18th, 2026

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How staying in touch built trust, opportunity, and long-term success.

If you had told the 29-year-old version of me that the people sitting next to me in an IT office in 1998 would still be part of my professional world in 2026, I would have laughed.

And yet, here we are at our Christmas party last year. Five of us – my husband (yes, I married one of them!), three contractors, and me. We all met in 1998. Twenty-eight years later, we’re still working together.

We didn’t plan that.

What we did, without really thinking about it, was stay in contact.

Not in a calculated way. Not “networking” with a hidden agenda. We simply maintained relationships. We checked in over the years. We stayed interested in each other’s journeys. We didn’t let the connection disappear just because our roles or locations changed.

So when I needed contractors for my business, I didn’t start from scratch. I already knew people I trusted. I knew how they worked. And when the timing aligned, I knew who to call.

Your qualifications matter. Your experience matters. But relationships are often the bridge between where you are and what’s next. When you stay in contact over the long term, you create a ready-made ecosystem around you. When you need something, you usually know someone. When someone else needs something, they think of you.

I can’t overstate how much this has shaped my growth.

If I could go back and give my younger self one piece of career advice, it wouldn’t be about chasing another certificate or mapping out a perfect five-year plan. It would be this: maintain your relationships. Stay interested in people. Don’t disappear just because your roles or locations change.

Twenty-eight years later, you might find yourselves building something together again.

This idea isn’t just personal experience. In the Forbes article The Currency of Connection: Why Relationships Are a Critical Driver of Business Success, the author argues that relationships are not a soft skill or a “nice to have,” but a form of real business currency that compounds over time. That’s exactly what this photo represents for me. None of us were thinking about future commercial alignment back in 1998. We were simply building genuine connections. Nearly three decades later, that currency is still in circulation. Trust was already there. History was already there. And when opportunities aligned, we didn’t need to start from zero.

From Transactional to Long Term

Most people tense up when they hear the word networking. It feels forced. It feels transactional. It feels like you’re supposed to be working the room with a hidden agenda. But that’s not what built the relationships in my story. What made the difference wasn’t strategic networking. It was simply maintaining connection over time. Here’s the shift that changes everything.

The reason maintaining relationships is more powerful than “networking” is simple. Trust grows over time, not at the moment of need. When you only reach out when you want something, the interaction feels transactional. When you’ve been checking in occasionally, staying interested in someone’s work, and sharing something useful without expectation, there’s already history there. There’s context. There’s familiarity.

And in the ISO world, where credibility matters and reputations travel, decisions are rarely made on capability alone. They’re made on trust. Maintaining relationships builds that trust long before an opportunity appears.

Next Steps for You

1. Start Before You Need Something.
   If you haven’t already, begin now. Reach out to one person this week with no agenda attached. The point isn’t immediate opportunity. It’s to build familiarity and trust long before you ever need it.
2. Be Genuinely Interested.
   Pay attention to what people are doing. If they change roles, launch something, post an update, acknowledge it. Congratulate them. Ask how it’s going. Relationships last because there’s real interest, not a reminder in your calendar.
3. Stay Visible in Your Own Journey.
   Let people see what you’re building. Share your work. Share your thinking. If people don’t know what you’re doing, they can’t connect opportunities to you. Visibility keeps the relationship active without you having to “network.”

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If you’re building an ISO consulting career for the long term, not just chasing the next client, then relationships and visibility can’t be accidental. They have to be intentional and sustainable. That’s a core focus inside the Successful ISO Consultant program, where we don’t just look at marketing tactics, but at how to build credibility, trust, and positioning that compound over time.