The 50 coffees project (again).
By Lou O’Reilly
Founder, O’Reilly & Co
In 2012, having moved to Wellington two years earlier and now with a baby in tow, I found myself in a new city with no real business network. Having made the decision for my own mental health to go back to work, what’s a natural born hustler supposed to do? Starting another PR firm from scratch seemed totally reasonable in my sleep deprived state, so that’s what I did.
To cut a long story short, that business became Loud in Public. Word play based on my name and the album, ‘Punk in Drublic’ by NOFX, that very few people picked up on, but anyway.
Once the fun stuff of setting up the business was complete, it was time to get out there and meet people. Fortunately, it was around that time that I stumbled across a blog by Peter Thomson about something called the “50 Coffees Project.” The basic idea was that if you’re making a big life change, go have coffee with people. Lots of people. Ask questions. Listen properly. Then ask who else you should talk to next.
I mean, it’s brilliant, right? You just need one person to start, and from there the chain continues.
It’s networking and building a community but very naturally. No sales, no leveraging, no expectations. Just a chance to meet someone new, learn something new, and be connected to another person.
This concept was genius and suited me perfectly because I’ve always preferred talking to interesting humans over “business development.”
So I started having coffees. Lots of them.
I built a tiny website and wrote blog posts about the people I met and what they did. Founders, tech people, media folk, creatives, policy people, quirky people. Wellington is full of them once you start looking.
I honestly can’t remember if I made it to all 50 coffees.
But I remember like it was yesterday how that project utterly changed my world.
The coffees led to introductions, which led to projects, that then became clients, that then became lifelong friends.
Looking back now, a surprising amount of my career can be traced back to random flat whites with clever people.
Peter Thomson wrote that “the biggest changes in your life will only happen through the people that you meet and the conversations that you have.”
How true is that!
And lately I’ve been thinking about all this again because, in many ways, I’m back in another life-changing, rebuilding phase.
O’Reilly & Co is new. I am out on my own again after ten years of co-founding a PR firm.
And while this economy feels cooked and this industry is changing by the day, I’m giving it another crack in the exact same way I started my life in Wellington 14 years ago.
Today I caught up with my friend Laurna, our kids went to preschool together years ago. We realised it had somehow been years since we’d properly coffeed together.
Laurna and me, happy post coffee and amazing 10/10 yaps!
Laurna works in facilitation, communication, emotional intelligence, stakeholder engagement and helping humans adapt to the future of work.
Which is a polished way of saying she’s very, very good at helping people connect with each other properly. I like to say she is the facilitator of good things, but I know there’s so much more to it than that.
Anyway, after our coffee, I found myself thinking about the original 50 Coffees Project all over again.
How much good stuff still starts with a coffee and a yap.
How easy it has been to stop prioritising people and community, and how horrified I was when I realised that.
So I’m bringing the 50 coffees project back.
Over the next while, I’m going to start having coffees with interesting people again and publishing notes here on the site about who they are, what they do, and what they’re thinking about.
Not because I’m building some weird networking funnel, but because I have neglected this part of my life I loved so much, and it’s time to bring it back.
And also because every genuinely good thing in my career has started with a coffee and a yap first.
So if there’s someone I should meet, let me know. Or better yet, let’s grab a coffee.