1182: The Lost Art of Connecting with Susan McPherson

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
So Money, episode 1182, Susan McPherson, author of the book, The Lost Art Of Connecting.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
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**Susan McPherson** (0:34)
We have learned just how important our meaningful connections are, right?
How important it is not to take those for granted, right? And to actually stay in touch with people.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:45)
Welcome to So Money, everybody. I'm your host, Farnoosh Karabi. Hope you're having a great start to the week. Our guest today is a friend, serial entrepreneur and connector, communications expert, Susan McPherson. She has a new book called The Lost Art Of Connecting, The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Business Relationships.
Even before the pandemic gripped the world, we had become a nation engulfed in loneliness. The loneliness epidemic is here. People have hundreds, thousands of friends on all the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, so many connections, right, on LinkedIn, but real connection remains rare and elusive, and the pandemic in some ways has only worsened things. Susan's book talks about how we can reverse the growing trends of disconnection to forge meaningful connections in business and in life, because ultimately that is what supports a rich life, right? We're here to learn about our money, but before we get to our money, we have to talk about our relationships, the people we surround ourselves with that add to the quality of our lives. Susan's book walks through gathering, asking and doing, the three steps for building meaningful business relationships. And really, these are not just business relationships. We talk about how these can be relationships in all realms of your life and how this book doesn't just have business applications, but also a lot of meaning in our personal lives. Soledad O'Brien, one of my idols, broadcast journalist and producer, talks about Susan's book and she says, one of the most important lessons we can learn in this technology-heavy world is how to push back against self-absorption and gadgets and make space in life for the wonders of human interaction. Susan's book is one step toward that.
Here's Susan McPherson.
Susan McPherson, welcome back to So Money. It's so nice to catch up. It's, we were neighbors in Brooklyn and the pandemic happened. I moved. This is kind of our first time having a real chat since all of it.

**Susan McPherson** (2:55)
And you know what it seems like yesterday.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (2:58)
Unbelievable. It seems also like yesterday we were at your rooftop and you were discussing your book project. It was just still in the kind of incubation phase at that point. I think you were still doing the proposal. So fast forward to today. It's really special to have you on to talk about the book, which is now out. It's called The Lost Art Of Connecting. Oh, hits home. The Gather, Ask, Do method for building meaningful relationships. I mean, I have to ask, as you're writing this, the pandemic happens, almost gives new meaning to what you were intending to write. Or was it more just reinforcement?

**Susan McPherson** (3:37)
You know, it's funny because the original thesis impetus for the book was all about the fact that we had become over-reliant on technology, had lost our humanity when it came to building connections, and literally use clicks, likes, follows as our means of measuring our credibility, right? When it turned in terms of connectivity and networking. So that was the proposal. Of course, obviously, once I started writing last February, a month in, the whole world changed. And that thesis became a little kind of, I guess you could say fusty because the only means of connection we had was, you know, the clicks and the likes and the follows.
But I will say now, one year later, as we are finally having that glimmer with, you know, hundreds of thousands of people getting vaccinated, you know, people, not as many people suffering and dying, thankfully, we have the do-over opportunity. And when in life do you actually have a chance to reset?

**Farnoosh Torabi** (4:41)
Do you think we've learned though? I feel like as human beings, we tend to forget, we don't learn from our mistakes as we would like to think. And so what would you like us to reflect upon and think differently about when it comes to connectivity? Was this past year a complete step in the backwards direction? Or did we actually make some subtle improvements in how we interact? Look, this morning I talked to my accountant on Zoom. I haven't ever done that.