Relationships and Value: Considerations for Entrepreneurial Success

Recently, I read Gerard Adams’ article titled “Social Currency and Your Circle of Influence”.  Adams defines social currency as “your value to the world” and your circle of influence as the people you spend the most time with.  It’s a great reminder that to grow our entrepreneurial success, we must pay attention to both.  So, it prompted me to share some ideas to help you take action.

Evaluate Your Relationships

Let’s start with your circle of influence.  While the notion that you begin to take on the traits of those you surround yourself with makes complete sense, how often do you really evaluate the quality of your relationships?  As the saying goes, “old habits die hard”.  There is often a tendency to continue to hang out with the same people out of habit or because it’s comfortable rather than to take notice of whether it’s a positive relationship or not.

Call to Action – Relationships

• Define what a positive or healthy relationship means to you in both your personal and professional life.
• Make a list of the key people you spend time with in both environments and note whether they are part of your personal or professional life.
• Evaluate each relationship against your definition(s).
  • Which ones lift you up?
  • Which ones bring you down?
• For those that lift you up – identify strategies to continue to nurture and grow each relationship.
• For those that bring you down – you have 5 choices
  • Stay in it, as is
  • Change it
  • Change your view of it
  • Accept it
  • Leave it
• Work with someone you trust to help you put a plan in place to grow the positive relationships and effectively manage or shift the negative ones.
• Notice what happens as you consciously focus on crafting your circle of influence.

What’s Your Value?

Let’s move to your social currency or the value that you bring to the world.  You may be able to immediately articulate the gifts and talents that bring value to those you interact with. If so, go right to the call to action below and jot them down. In some cases, however, you might find that pinpointing the value you offer is more difficult – not because you don’t have value but because it is something that is so easy for you to do, you discount it and don’t see it as valuable.  If this sounds like you, enlist the help of those who are positive members of your circle of influence to help you answer the questions below.

Call to Action – Value

• What natural gifts, talents and strengths do you bring to your business/work?
• What is unique and different about you?
• Listen to your emotions while you work. What activity or activities bring out your passion and make you happy or satisfied?
• Share your value within your circle of influence and with all you encounter. Shine your light and watch your business grow.

Make a commitment to surround yourself with those who energize and inspire you and leverage your strengths while continuing to grow and develop. The combination will play a key role in your success.