In 2018, Alexandra Friedman moved back to her hometown of Seattle to take a job at Amazon, ready to start a new chapter and make some new friends.
But she quickly realized while she was putting herself out there and meeting people at local events, “it was very challenging to connect, to go deep with people,” she says.
So she decided to throw her own dinner party on the roof of her apartment building with a big picture theme for attendees to discuss: fear. She invited people from work, people from the gym, people she met crossing the crosswalk, and afterwards they “were just raving about it,” she says. She realized others might be experiencing a similar need for connection.
Friedman ended up throwing monthly dinner parties over the course of a year and creating more prompts and programming to guide discussions. Eventually, after encouragement from participants, she started hosting $35 ticketed events.
Today, she runs a full-fledged friendship coach business, Connection Feast, where she works full-time doing one-on-one coaching, group sessions and the occasional workshop.
