Hello Summer!

What a great time for vacations, family picnics and building memories with friends and family.

My sister has come to town to visit with her Ohio family and friends. During the visit, she and my mother have been taking time to reduce the clutter and prep for my mother to move locations. While the activity may not be on the Marie Kondo level, their concentration has been on old paper records, and a drawer full of cards my mother has received over the years. As they begin to sort and discard, it gave my mother another chance to read the cards and notes, remembering each event as well as the giver. What a blessing it has been for her to relive those relationships in her life that have been meaningful to her.

Our daily business in economic development relies on our skills as relationship builders to be successful. You know the sayings “nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care,” “relationships are built on trust,” and many others. My question to you this month is how do you go about building those relationships? We send an email, shoot a text, MS Teams, Zoom, or one of the many other apps available to us. It gives us a fast, efficient method of making those contacts, after all, we are busy! The need to make the touch is so important.

Or is it? By now you are tying my thoughts together. You all are a pretty smart group. Take some time, grab a pen, a notepad, a blank card, or even a special event card and take a moment and share your thought instead of the congratulations by text or email. While I agree, it takes effort and a little time, and if you are like me your handwriting is atrocious, it still makes a difference on a personal level. To see your personality in your handwriting. Writing a note rises above the din of all the emails and LinkedIn congratulations that fill our inboxes in a day. When we see a handwritten note it brings back other memories and arouses our other senses of touch, smell, and the sense of the soul. There is power in the human connection of writing and receiving a letter.

That leads me to a last remaining thought or two. Touchstone Energy has the tag line in their logo of “The Power of Human Connections.” If you have the availability to access and use their resources, it is such a great tool in your toolkit of economic development and relationship building.

The last shout-out is for NREDA’s annual conference this November in Albuquerque, New Mexico whose motto is “Change Your Perspective.” The committee has put together an agenda designed to reach out to a wide variety of interests. Our pre-conference and general session speaker this year is none other than Ginger Johnson, who will provide us with great insight into being “Powered by Connection.”

Come join us, connect with others in your field, and take time to stand out in the crowd by writing a note or two, or three to someone.

The quote of the month is “To write is human, to receive a letter, Divine” – Susan Lendroth