Have you ever changed your cell phone number? I did so yesterday for the first time in twenty-five years. Let me tell you, a lot goes into it.
It was slightly impulsive of me to do it. So, why did I? The truth is that about two years ago, I innocently applied for a loan online thinking it would quickly address a short-term need. Instead, it was one of those middlemen vendors who proceeds to sell your contact info to five new lenders every day in perpetuity for the rest of your life! Fuck me! 🙈 Honestly, this just may have been the worst mistake of my life! 
As you guys know, I live in two very different time zones (Florida and Hawaii) and do a fair amount of travel to boot. Even when I call my own mother, she starts the conversation by saying, “Where are you now?”, as if its some major mystery that needs to be solved before we can chat. 🤣
Due to my repeated timezone changes, I cannot begin to tell you how many 5:45 am cold calls I received in Hawaii or 10 pm calls in Miami while I was tucking in for bed. Why not just turn my phone off? That’s not really an option when real estate is your career, cause you need to take that 2 AM call when your plumbing breaks and your basement’s been flooded! Got it?
Sleep disturbances aside, I had to sit through thousands of the worst live sales pitches or voicemails I’ve ever heard in my life. Some people were so bad at their craft, I decided to coach ‘em up! They needed to do better, be better! I was just the guy to teach them! After all, I did train recent college grads to cold call the biggest companies in the world to secure internships for college students for a decade! I used to be the king of the cold call! My best employee cold caller ever was a young Cody Leclaire. He was a beast! Companies did not stand a chance of blowing him off! No surprise he is now the successful president of a major travel company www.PureKauai.com. Learning to successfully ask for shit is good training, so if you’re gonna do it, do it well! 
Usually, I just hung up in disgust as if a major violation of my trust had occurred. Each time I did this though, I kinda I felt like they won. I allowed them to disturb my peace. What kind of presence practitioner had I become? 🙈
Even on days when I found it in me to pleasantly listen to an entire sales pitch on how I could borrow a small sum of money that would not pay one of my ten mortgages or any of my major renovations for just one month (a bit snooty I know - but damn - take the time to get to know your lead better before calling!), I would still take a loss in the end by having to say, I’m not interested in your tiny loan offer at an egregious 33% interest rate over too short a payback period! I’m good Mr. or Mrs. Predator! Please stop terrorizing me every day with your weak ass offers!
Ok, so now you know my motivation. It was quite high, and I was not uncertain. 
First, you should know that there is no simple way to notify all your contacts that you have changed your number.
I mean - calling your cell phone provider to change your number could not be easier. It took less than two minutes. All I had to do was decide a zip code. Out of loyalty to my businesses in Hawaii, I asked for a new Hawaii area code and walla, I got one! 🌈
Creating a good strategy to let your contacts know that you have a new number is where the rubber meets the road and things get interesting.
My wonderful plan was to write a simple paragraph announcing that I, Eric Lochtefeld, had a new phone number and to please make note of it. What happened next was unexpected.
I started off by sending my message to every text I had recently received. I figured these contacts should be notified first because we had conducted important or fun exchangs in the last couple of days. The response was immediate.
50% of my contacts accused me of being AI. I had to prove I was me! I was asked things like - What did I tell you this morning? Who did I sleep with at your University of Dreams program?
I quickly surmissed that sending a friendly picture of myself having a cocktail would help prove that it was indeed me (like the one I posted yesterday in this group). This only solicited more AI conspiracy thoughts, so I started sending a thumbs up emoji.
Apparently, this is something that AI would do too! 👀 Result - more distrust!
My next strategic decision was to email all my investors my new phone number. This provoked several phone calls for verification purposes. Dang - even email from a trusted source can’t be relied upon to deliver a new phone number!
Next, I decided to go through all my contacts one by one in my phone. I was surprised to learn that there were several thousand. Makes sense after 20+ years that I would have a lot of numbers in my phone, but dang I thought, this might take a minute. Try three hours!

You would think that someone at Apple would have anticipated this eventual need and created a button in the iPhone that would send a trusted notification to everyone in your phone a message saying - “Hello, it’s me Lochte - your old pal! This is the new me I pinky swear!”
But no, you have to notify one contact at a time. So, I began with the A’s. This is when you learn why Apple has not invented such a function. Going through your contacts from two decades is an unexpected trip down memory lane.
The first thing that struck me is that I had quite a few people on my phone that are no longer of this world. That touched my heart and brought back a lot of fond and sad memories. I did not have the heart to delete any of them though. How could I? That seemed even more final than their death. 
Second, I quickly deduced that there were a lot of people that I no longer wanted to have my phone number. In fact, for every ten contacts I only sent my notification to maybe one. 🙈 It was rarely due to a soured relationship, but more about a future I did not see them in! 
This felt……well, very cleansing and super fucking final. Talk about putting a nail in the coffin on a past relationship. I would not even delete a person’s phone number that was no longer alive, but I seemed somewhat relieved to not give my new number to so many! 
I was suprised at how many vendors were listed by what they do - like Mechanic Mike, Toilet Tom, Oil Change Bobby, Bartender Betsy, AC Jerez, Massage Honest! There were some real keepers in there! I took great joy in sending them my new upgraded notification.
How did I upgrade? I started adding their names to my notifications to overcome the AI suspicions. This added quite a bit of time to the task at hand.
It helped tremendously, but not completely, cause once again, this is something AI would do! 😜
