Ten Thousand Coffees: Building Professional Relations, One Cup at a Time

{Image Credit: Ten Thousand Coffees/Facebook}

Relationships are the core of a burgeoning and valuable life and just as we societally have basic needs to fulfill, we also have that one rudimentary need to feel belonging through valuable and advantageous relationships. In this rapid age of technology, we have all had the opportunity to connect with others through social media and advance our learning by interacting with those we admire or those who simply make us feel enlightened. Networking has grown in recent years and is now more than ever about making connections and building enduring, mutually favorable relationships.

In a world of being constantly connected, our generation has the greatest access to information and technology like never before. Yet, despite these developments in our social medium, there’s an increasing challenge that many young professionals continue to face and much of it has to do with the lack of opportunities.

A social network that is helping to bridge the gap between today’s leaders and the ever-growing social generation through a conversation over coffee is Ten Thousand Coffees. The brainchild of 27-year-old youth advocacy expert and entrepreneur, Dave Wilkin, Ten Thousand Coffees hopes to equal out the playing field for everyone by utilizing technology to its greatest capacity and injecting conversation—one of our most influential social tools today.

In an article for The Huffington Post, Wilkin understands the power and effect dialogue has, with hopes to revolutionize and bring benefits to the age-old adage of, “Let’s get coffee.”

Ten Thousand Coffees founder Dave Wilkin (left), and John Betts, CEO of McDonald’s Canada, chat business over coffee. {Image Credit: Ten Thousand Coffees}

“Think of all the great ideas and insights that have come from a conversation,” he wrote in a blog for The Huffington Post. “Having coffee with someone is so simple, yet has endless potential.”

By democratizing opportunity and connecting professionals with the next booming generation, his mission with Ten Thousand Coffees is simple: Connect students, recent grads, and young professionals with industry professionals in a desired field of interest, and inject stimulating and potentially life-changing conversations. Throughout our lifetime, thousands of conversations have led to occasions where careers have transformed, insights have shaped organizations, and top talent has been found.

The social network accommodates both Novices and Experts. Young professionals can sign up, create a profile, and as a Novice, request meetings with Experts in an industry that they strive to be part of. Alternatively, as an Expert—why not pay it forward? Sign up and share wisdom with those of the next generation. Users can browse the community by industry, organization, and location and find interesting people they wish to connect with. By allowing a cup of coffee to be the link in connecting you with someone who has traveled the road long before you have, is one of the most positive experiences you can be a part of.

Ten Thousand Coffees is an impressive mentorship movement, guiding young professionals up a path of healthy discourse and limitless creativity to better our world. By sharing ideas, seeking advice and having a better understanding of what to expect in a chosen field, forming relationships over coffee conversations that benefit both individuals allow for meaningful connections and opportunities that will ultimately help in one’s growth and development.

No matter the relationship, it is an evident fact that there hasn’t been any other beverage that has connected more people than a cup of coffee and as Wilkin puts it, there is more than meets the eye behind that brewed cup.

For more information on Ten Thousand Coffees and how you can join the enterprising network, visit them at their official website and on social media at Twitter and Facebook.