Here’s a simple and effective way to change your career over the next 12 months: invite someone you appreciate professionally to lunch once a month.

It’s easy, just send a text or an email that goes something like this:

“Hey, PERSON, I really admire the way you go about your work and I’m hoping you will let me buy you lunch to chat about your career path.”

Flesh it out, fluff it up, and make it your own, but that’s the gist. Don’t complicate it. If you think it needs to be more difficult you are absolutely overthinking it.

If you approach these conversations with a genuine desire to listen and learn, you can turn the cost of 12 meals and about 12 hours of your time into a broader network and a collection of remarkable insights you might never have discovered on your own.

BONUS POINTS if you reach out to people you don’t already know well. You will be surprised by how many people are flattered by a request like this and enjoy talking about their experiences for an hour. I dive deeper into this on the podcast.

(If you see the value in how a prompt like this could help you level up your career with almost no effort, I’d love to chat with you about how I could help you grow even further.)