I know the type. When I was a VP at a big company there were so many people who acted like “friends,” always wanting to grab coffee or lunch and “pick my brain.”

I left to start my own consulting business and “Poof!”, a lot disappeared. Later, when I founded my own startup and wanted a simple favor (like downloading my free app and trying it), more disappeared. Some of these people I had done much larger favors for in the past.

Sad. But, what goes around comes around. When people are insincere and just use others, they slowly but surely lose all of the valuable people in their network who see through it all.

The upside is that you end up with a tight list of true friends. The people who are still around, through thick and thin over the years, and genuinely just want to catch up with you from time to time.