Grateful to lend a helping hand...or couple ideas, :)
Giving without receiving is an underrated activity.
especially when the recipient is appreciative of the effort, :)
One of the most gratifying aspects of being a business owner is the ability to help others even when they don’t even ask for it.
And it’s not even the grand gestures - it’s the little things.
I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a collection of amazing and driven speakers and authors who not only work with me in some capacity, but they’re friends as well.
They offer advice and council not simply because we’re connected on a professional level, but because that’s what friends do.
It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, know what I mean?
I recently had one of those moments with Ian, a photographer colleague and friend of mine - and didn’t even realize that I was offering one of those moments until after the fact.
While I was cruising around Instagram, I came across one of Ian’s IG Stories:
First of all, I was psyched for him because he was shooting, which, I mean, is kinda important when you make your living as a professional photographer, :)
But then, I thought about how much of a nice touch that sign is to greet his clients at the front door. It adds to their experiences and allows for him to put them in a good mood before they even get their foot through the studio door.
As I took a second look at that chalkboard, that got the idea nugget generation side of my brain going into a bit of a creative frenzy.
As soon as my mind started to go in a content creation direction, I opened up the chat window and wanted to share the stream of consciousness thought with him.
So, I sent him this idea with respect to how he can leverage that cool chalkboard on his front door:
Although written in half-gibberish, Ian is used to reading my idea nuggets and gets where I’m going with the thoughts.
Once I was done going down the creative rabbit hole, I completely forgot that I sent this to him and moved on with my day.
Fast forward a couple days, and I received a lovely response from him:
And I value helping others, :)
You know, as business owners, we spend so much time working with tunnel vision, blinders on, whatever you want to call it, in order to figure out how to grow from where we are to where we want to be.
But sometimes, it’s just a wonderful opportunity to take the business owner hat off and simply share your expertise without asking for anything in return.
Relationship building is not just about growing a network and seeking to profit off of that effort. It’s about valuing and nurturing the relationships themselves.
Even though this was a small thing, it was a reminder that it’s a good thing to let your friends and colleagues know that you’re thinking about them in your own way.
Since my love language is service to others, this type of gesture is right up my alley, :)
It’s a pretty magical experience, lemme tell ya, :)
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If you know anyone that would benefit from the words that fall out of my head and onto this screen, please encourage them to sign up for my list so they can receive some magic in their inboxes, too, :)