You may or may not know that I am just a wee bit of an introvert. What this means is – I love spending time and connecting with my friends. But I need my solo time curled up in my favorite lounge chair with a good book. So, you might imagine that while all of the challenges over the last 18 months were certainly not welcome, the staying at home part might not have been too hard. It turns out, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
What I ended up learning is that we all have our people – the communities we’ve created around ourselves. These could be our families or friends – people in our orbit based on who and where we are, and those we’ve gravitated towards based on shared experiences, values or interests.
And then there are the people we seek out and invite into our community. These can be people we’ve lost touch with as we move through our lives and want to reconnect with, or new people we are introduced to in our travels and find interesting – maybe a bit different from others we are close with and want to get to know better. Either way, our relationships and the strength of our community is what sustains us by creating strong bonds, expressing care for our well-being, and keeping us laughing.
Creating our community applies as much to our professional lives as our personal ones. We have members and guests who are solopreneurs working from home or launching new brick and mortar stores; we have people who are directors of business development or sales in large national companies. What we all have in common is our desire to do great work, grow our business and make an impact. And while there is no substitute for plain hard work, we also cannot succeed in our businesses without our community.
In the business world, this is a deliberate choice to create relationships that foster far greater impact – and consequently, business growth – than simply chasing one transaction after the next. In the process, we discover different perspectives, and new partners, clients and mentors.
So – who are the people in your community you value, want to get back in touch with, and are excited to get to know better – and will be reaching out to this week?
