Who sent you work and then went quiet?

The thank-you you've owed Dana since spring

A project ends, the invoice gets paid, everyone says "let's stay in touch," and then nobody does, you included.

Dana hired you in 2024. The year after, she sent you two more clients, and one of them paid your rent for half a year. You meant to thank her properly. You meant to check in when her company opened the new office. Then a project ran long, the next one started early, and the note you owed her slid to next week, and then the week after.

Eight months on, you see her name on a conference agenda and your stomach drops a little. Writing now means explaining the silence first, and you can't find a way to do that without sounding like you only write when you want something. So you put it off for one more week.

You never see what this costs you. Dana doesn't send a complaint. She just stops thinking of you first. The next time someone asks her "do you know anyone good?", another name comes to mind, and you never hear the conversation happened.

Meanwhile your own work runs the way it always has: busy, then quiet. When the current project winds down you start wondering where the next one comes from. You know the answer is the people who already trust you. You also know you haven't spoken to most of them in a year.

The last-contacted column that stopped in week two

You have probably tried to fix this. A spreadsheet of past clients with a "last contacted" column, filled in for two weeks and never opened again. A reminder every quarter that you snooze every quarter. A CRM that wanted you to log every call, which turned keeping in touch into admin, so you stopped.

Every one of them asked you to do the remembering, and remembering is the first thing to go when you're busy doing the work.

Monday at 7, the note is already written

Now picture the same Monday with Reconnect nudges running. On a week when nobody is due a note you get no email at all, but this week someone is.

Before 7, the agent has gone through everyone who has sent you work and found that Dana has been quiet the longest. It has checked your sent mail for the last time you wrote to her (January) and when her second referral came in (March). Then it has read your past emails to her and written her a note in your voice.

At 7 the email arrives. Dana is at the top, with each date and where it came from. Two other names sit below her, each with a line on why now, and the note to Dana is at the bottom.

You change one sentence, paste it into a reply and send it before your first call. By lunch she's replied: she's been meaning to write too, and there's someone she wants you to meet.

The list of people you owe a note stops living in your head. And when a project ends, the people most likely to send you the next one have heard from you recently.

You still choose who gets a note and what it says. The agent keeps the list.

How long is too long to go without contacting a past client?

Long enough that writing now means explaining the silence first. Reconnect nudges doesn't count months on their own: its instructions rank referrers first, so Dana at eight months comes ahead of someone you last wrote to two years ago who has never sent you anyone. Each Monday it names up to three people, the cap its instructions set, so the list stays short enough to act on that morning.

How do you reconnect without it feeling like a sales pitch?

Write about something in their world, like a new office or a project you finished together, and leave out any ask. That's how the note to Dana reads: it asks how the team settled into the new office, and it doesn't apologise for the eight months. A job change is the easiest reason of all, and Network updates is the agent that watches for one: what to say when a former client gets a new job.

What Reconnect nudges does each week

This is the agent behind YouSpot's who should I reconnect with? page, and what happens after the email lands is yours to decide.

It drafts, you send

• It doesn't send anything for you. You copy the note into a reply and send it yourself, or leave it.
• If nobody's due for a note, you get no email. No "all clear" message.
• It won't nag you about the same person with the same reason two weeks running. It brings a new reason or a different name.
• It only runs because you turned it on. Pause it from its card and the Monday email stops until you switch it back on.

Get your first nudge today

1. Sign in at youspot.com.
2. Connect Gmail. Connect LinkedIn too if you'd like your connections in the shortlist; it works without it.
3. Open Agents and pick the Reconnect nudges card.
4. Click Try it once to run it now. The first email arrives in your inbox within a few minutes.
5. Click Keep it running weekly to keep it on. After that it shows up every Monday at 7.

If you spend your day in Claude or ChatGPT, you can ask there too: once YouSpot is connected, "Who have I let go quiet who's sent me work before?" gets you the same names in the chat. Here's how to connect YouSpot to Claude.

Change who it looks for

The instructions are plain English, and you can change them in the edit box on the agent.

If your past clients bring you more repeat work than referrals do, change "Rank referrers first" to "Rank past clients first". The agent will then surface the client who hired you and went quiet, ahead of the person who sent you someone else.

If there's someone you're in touch with in other ways, add a line at the end: "Leave out anyone at Kestrel Partners; I see that team every month." They'll stop appearing, and the three spots go to people you might have missed.