Quick Advice For How To Spend More Time With Your Favorite Friends

You can be around people and still be lonely. 

You can rejoice in quiet alone time and still crave company. 

You can be in company and still feel like your social needs aren’t being met. 

As you ascend in your career finding friends who just “get” you becomes harder. 

Executives often tell me that they struggle to socialize and find friends that aren’t extended work colleagues. 

It isn’t just middle schoolers and high schoolers who find it hard to make friends, the older you are the tougher it gets. The more senior you are the more painful it is. 

Which is why holding on to those friends who you hold dear to your heart is so important. Especially after three years of jarring lockdowns that shook up any rituals, hangouts, and routine socializing. 

Auto-piloting your Social life is one of the most rewarding pieces of advice I can share that really works. 

• Add social connections to your work trips. - Arrive on work trips a day early and either take some personal space time or let those you have had a past connection with know that you are arriving early and suggest a pre event dinner or coffee. This works well for those you previously have worked with or those who live in the city you are visiting. (LinkedIn is great for location searching your connections)

• First Monday of the month dinner dates with your friends - I started this with a dear group of friends in Seattle eight years ago and even though several of us have moved cities, we still gather for vacations, dinners, and have had a continuous text chat that kept us all going through job moves, personal challenges, and the last three years!

• Reinstate those weekends away. - I’m just back from four days in Palm Springs with some close friends and it was pure bliss! In my first book Thoughtfully Ruthless I outline how every executive needs a Sensibly Selfish Charter where you commit to yourself your me time, couple time, family time, friends time, and pampering time. Many executives I work with have told me how they need to bring back these habits and routines.

To spend time with friends who energize you and inspire you sometimes you have to let go of those around you who don’t hold you up and support you. It’s why I dedicated a whole chapter in Thoughtfully Ruthless called “Divorce Your Friends” - it might sound brutal but some of you will be nodding right now about those you need to spend less time with or no time with. 

Enjoy your reconnections with friends! It’s worth it.

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Seattle’s Sculpture Park is a spectacular sight

I was lucky that I got to watch it be built brick by brick, bulldozer scoop by bulldozer scoop. 

Our apartment overlooked the whole park, which gave me the perfect vantage point. I’ll admit that I was a little jealous of the workers because at the time I was working in corporate life where it wasn’t always easy to see the immediate results of your work! I longed to stand alongside the groups of workers that gathered every morning in a circle to be told their jobs for the day by the supervisor. I used to marvel as I would see their tremendous progress at the end of each day as the sculpture park began to take shape with its winding paths, slopes, greenhouses, dramatic buildings and bridges. 

The closest I ever got to similar work was when we had just bought our first home in England and we decided to design and build our own outdoor patio and garden. From mixing cement to building walls, laying gravel and building flower beds the work was all ours. It was so satisfying to see the final result. (Though luckily back gardens in England are pretty small!)

Today is Labor Day in the US. A day where, since the 1800s, the contributions and achievements of American workers are celebrated. Usually with family and friends gathering with trips to the beach, pool, and parks. 

Whichever part of the world you are reading this, take a moment to appreciate, and thank the contributions of those workers around you. 

Jim Annes, VP Digital Operations at Ingram Micro published a brilliant piece yesterday about Labor Day and what it means to him. I loved his ideas particularly this part..

So what I propose is this. On Labor Day, set aside some of your time to do some labor. And then set aside extra time to make a few additional trips to Lowes or Home Depot as you make mistakes. Measure something twice and cut it once. Use a lumber crayon and square. Get dirty, frustrated and embrace the feeling of determination as you refuse to stop until you have done it right.

It may give you an appreciation for what labor is. It may make you think twice about the who and how of the next purchase you make. Pass out some cold bottles of water or cups of coffee and say thanks to the team fixing a powerline, busted main or building your retaining wall. Because a lot of work that benefits us all is being done by very few. 

My daughters spent their whole Sunday afternoon and evening building their new desks, chairs, and bedroom furniture. They now know the different types of screwdrivers, the value of carefully reading instructions to save having to start again!, and that manual work is hard work!

How are you sharing what Labor Day means to you? 

Fascinating News Roundup

• Do you know why your front line workers are quitting? - if only Air Canada would have listed to this supervisor before he quit after 7 years.

• Now you really need to get back to the office. - will this time it be fully enforced? The companies that are taking the flexibility back.

• Book Discounts: Kogan Page has all of their books 25% off until Sept 2nd. - Including two of mine! Rapid Growth Done Right and Words That Work use code FLASH25

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/

How Strong Is Your Digital Footprint and Why Should You Care?

Does it really matter?

I don’t have the time - why bother?!

Social media is a distraction and a waste of time!

My company is forcing me to repost corporate content on my personal social channels -is that right?

Can it really make a difference to my business?

I was speaking at Xchange’s conference in Denver last week answering all of those questions and more about why it matters and how to strengthen your digital footprint. 

I asked everyone in the audience to rate if they thought they were magnetic, memorable, a mystery, or completely missing when they think about their digital footprint. It was fascinating to see how many wanted to strengthen how they showed up digitally to their customers, partners, peers, and communities. 

Timing was perfect as an executive, Dawn Ringstaff, VP at Cloudflare, who had applied some of my advice, was in the audience and was able to tell the story of how she originally was a cynic about the idea of increasing their digital presence. We had discussed the idea of using video to share that she was hiring, she was reluctant, but did it anyway. Dawn made a brilliant video sharing that she was hiring. 

Dawn’s video captured the attention of a great candidate who was hired, started, and even was also at the conference so I got to meet them! Glad it worked out Jessica Chavez!

Customers, partners, your bosses peers, future hires, conference organizers, board members, and your peers are all googling you. Don’t be like the one executive I was working with last month who had an unusual name and STILL the third hit for his search on Google was his antiquated MySpace page!!

Many people ask me “ so what exactly is a digital footprint?” and my answer is simple…. Showing up digitally where ever your customers and partners hang out. 

Want to learn more?

• You can hear more of a recap of my talk from CRN’s coverage here. https://www.crn.com/news/managed-services/here-s-how-a-digital-presence-grows-your-business

• Chapter One of Rapid Growth Done Right gives you more details on your Magnetic, Memorable, Mystery or Missing evaluation and you can download that chapter free here

• Chapter ten of Words That Work has an Executive Social Scorecard that you can use to go deeper to understand the steps to increase your digital presence. You can view the Executive Social Scorecard here.

Share and tag me in your thoughts on this topic…

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/