The Value of Making Connections

 

Learning to communicate effectively is not something you can do or master in one day, but rather, it’s something you have to challenge yourself with everyday in order to live with purpose. Effective communication is not an option and it never had been, it’s what makes us human, it’s what makes life meaningful, and it’s an integral in order for you to get what you want.

Communicating effectively, at its core is nothing more than marketing, and although the word marketing leaves a terrible taste in our mouth, because of how much advertising we face each and every day, and with such persistence, but none the less, if you have something valuable you want to share with someone, you need to learn to market yourself and in order to do that you’ll need an effective and measurable plan.

There are really only two targets you can aim and shoot at. Your range will be short term or long term. Your efforts will aim to get something done immediately or you’ll have the courage to wait for something to grow and develop organically over time. Most of the communication done today seeks to be immediate. It’s a communication of some kind of crisis. Buy now. Don’t wait. Put our the fire and prepare before the next one starts.

Developing a communication plan for immediate gratification and results is very shortlisted and unprofitable. However, we do sometimes experience immediate and surprising results., but if you want to be a good public speaker for example, you need to plan to work and plan for five or ten, or twenty five years. There is little value in doing it for short gain, because making human connections is the most valuable asset you can ever have, and it doesn’t pay dividends until the very end of your commitment.

The best plan of effective communication for any business or any person is to aim for and build long lasting connections with people. There is a such tremendous value in making a connections. That’s the best strategy and most effective plan you can undertake. Successful people do this all the time. They outlast their competition. They are a force to be reckoned with.

There is strength in numbers, but only if the relationships and connections you’ve made are real and genuine, and for those connection to be real, you need to be honest and reliable. You have to care to show up every day. I have shown up every day. I have a dreamt of being a writer for many years. I put it off and I waited, but on January 20th, 2017 I started. I started with one post and then the next day I wrote another one. I write five hundred words, every single day, and I feel sick to my stomach if I don’t.

I have done this consistently and I continue to show up to write it every day. Why do I do it? A communication plan is empty without substance to communicate. I decided that I need to first develop the habit and prove to myself that indeed I a writer, not necessarily a good writer, but a writer none the less. Being good or being not so good, is not really up to me, its for everyone else to decide.

Writing is not a bucket list exercise for me. I don’t want to write one book, be proud and giddy to see in on a shelf in a bookstore, and be admired. I want to write and connect with people, like Stephen King, I want to sweat and toil for four hours a day, and I want my writing to replace my full-time job.

It’s very nice to have a professional communication plan. It’s very useful. It’s very nice to build a sleek website, have a highly interactive tweeter feed, and an instagram account that’s the envy of many people. It’s nice to share and gather likes, digital smiles, and count your views on social media, but if you don’t know what you want to say and why you want to say it, if you don’t know who you want to be and why you want to be it, everything you do will be for naught and it will disappear and become part of the digital waste that’s created each and every day.

Making human connections is what everything is about. Any communication plan will certainly reflect that. A good communication plan needs to have a long term goal. It needs to aim at getting to know people, connecting with them, and ultimately making a difference in their life. Why else would they care? We don’t need another product, another distraction, or another service to distract us from living. We need more humanness. We need more kindness. We need real human connection.

 

Delivered on September 11, 2018

Toastmasters International Meeting in Cobourg – First Speakers 368

Visionary Communication Pathway, Level 3, Speech 1