Networks We Nurture, Mailing Lists We Delete

A story about people who matter.

Somewhere after 45, we want quality relationships instead of acquaintances. We get smarter about our gifts and limitations. There’s an urgency that comes as we move closer to death and notice that time, money, trusted friends, and our usefulness to others shifted.

What If That Phone Call Was A Wakeup Call?

I deleted 43 emails and the contact cards that matched each email address last Tuesday before 9 a.m. I recognized most of the senders the way you recognize a face on an airplane. Enough to nod, not enough to speak.

That same week, one phone call. Forty minutes. Someone who knows what I’m actually working on, what I’m afraid of, what I would do next if I weren’t being careful. I hung up and sat still for a moment because that’s what happens when a real conversation ends.

That’s the main point, isn’t it? Not how many people are in your network. How many of them would call?

That’s when I decided that now, June 2026, is the time to purge my mailing list and give my attention to people who want a meaningful relationship, an intimacy found in direct contact with me and a few others in a community built upon what they say in the next phone call, in the next conversation.

Who Stays and Who Goes?

Networks have two layers, according to people who research the topic for a lifetime. There is the inner core of relationships where you know the person well enough to call them without texting first and they trust you the same way. Depending on which network researcher you go with, that inner core is 12, 75, or as many as 150 people, according to Oxford anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

“Why are so many of our connections superficial and transactional? And why do they get us nowhere in our personal or professional life?” — Janine Garner, It’s Who You Know (Wiley, 2017)

The outer core is a casual layer of social networks. Most of us have thousands of acquaintances and call them connections. I no longer have the energy or the need for connections and mailing lists. Instead, here’s how I’ll end the final chapter on decades of network building and put all attention on the GPC Community I’ve been building for five years:

• Everyone who stayed in touch and subscribed to this Substack are safe. (If that’s you, make sure you are a subscriber and not a follower–big difference.)
• The other 5,000 who stepped into my mailing list in recent years and remained silent in the shadows are the ones who will get a final, polite, individually-addressed email asking if they changed their mind or reasons about to belong to my custom cohorts of professionals, or communicators, or mavericks (the everyday genius).
• Do they still want individual attention from me or access to members of the private community? Do they still value human connection more than artificial intelligence because laughing and thinking hard what they do best?
• I’m a journalist and advanced mentor but not a mind reader. I’m not a mass mailer nor do I pound people with repeat emails with the assistance of mindless robots that care nothing about you. That’s why my curiosity is worth one final touch to the number or email you provided when you asked to be connected through LinkedIn or a form on my website.

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression” 1953, Gwilyn Price, Westinghouse Electric Corporation

“Opportunity knocks once. After that he has his own key.” 1950, Mae West

• Also, what about the people who hand me a business card with the hope I might read their mind and know why? What about the people who form a network through Substack, and talk with each other, not really asking me to do much more than provide a safe place for them to gather and find each other? Stay or go?

What Happens to Your Network When You Stop Being Useful?

This is a hard question for gifted senior professionals, and it’s one that no networking book addresses honestly.

At some stage — retirement, illness, a career pivot, a loss of status — your network gets tested. The transactional relationships drain away. The mailing list goes silent (because you’ve stopped sending). What remains?

This is why I built a community for people like me who want relationships built on mutual recognition and genuine affection. We must stay honest with ourselves and each other and ask, Have you tested those relationships lately?And if you haven’t, how do you build now for a future when you’ll need them most?

As we get older and place more emphasis on questions of legacy and vulnerability, this is exactly what we must ask ourselves about networks, mailing lists, or communities.

Needs change. Mailing lists are for reach. Networks are for exploration or opportunities. Communities are for deep relationships and others investing in your wishes and remaining days.

What is the value of a mailing list if you’re not selling? I stepped away from consulting and into community building and advanced mentoring five years ago. Consulting demands selling. A mailing list creates audience, not intimacy. My GPC community is something different and harder to name. They’re not my network but they’re not nothing. They are witnesses — they receive my thinking, they find each other, and they sustain a gathering place. That has value, but it’s a different kind of value than a network. It’s called a private community or brand community. The brand is the identity and shared purpose of the people who gather there.

What Do We Owe Each Other? When Does the Debt Expire?

Let me be extremely clear about what I mean about relationship. It is as equal as possible and not transactional. Do I mean just for now or what does reciprocity look like across a 20-year relationship?

Equality in relationships is dynamic, not static. The mentor who helped you through a crisis five years ago may now need something from you. The brilliant peer who was your intellectual equal may have moved in a different direction. Mailing lists require nothing of you. Networks make demands. How do you know when those demands are healthy and when they’ve become extraction? This is the question gifted professionals struggle with most — because we give disproportionately and often don’t notice until we’re depleted.

The executive loneliness literature is pointed when it speaks about gifted, senior, neurodivergent professionals who are often overcommitted but relationally starved. Executive loneliness is triggered by high expectations, pressure, and responsibilities that often lead to isolation. Common triggers include fear of showing weakness, maintaining a successful image, and lacking support. The prescription is joining a confidential peer group and personally belonging to a community where one can be their authentic self.

So, Who Are The People That Matter?

When it’s time to let go of the mailing list and time to let go of the network with no contact by you or them in three years, maybe it’s your time to stop thinking about who is no longer in your life, and it becomes about the person you become afterward, with the core that cares.

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