Connective Tissue

I met my wife on a blind date set up by a mutual friend. I met the guy who would end up being my roommate all four years in college because we were randomly paired together at our future college during a preview weekend. He and I then joined the same fraternity because my cousin was already a member. I get the chance to catch up with Bugg over beer and wings at least once each summer because of the work I do each year with the Lakeland Economic Development Council. I got that gig because I met their talented team during a visit they took to Nashville back in 2015.

I only have three board meetings left as a member of the Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee board. After six years of service, it will be time for me to move on at the end of June. Last night, after our meeting, someone asked me if the board was in a better place than it was back in 2014. That’s an easy yes.

As I glanced over at the junior members making the way to their cars, I recalled my initial meetings with most of them (a lot of my role as a board member has been to recruit new members). They’re a talented and qualified group and each one found their way to PCAT because they knew someone already involved.

Connections matter. It’s the only reason people usually visit a church for the first time, decide to try a new restaurant, join a club, or contribute to a cause. This is why if you want to meet over coffee, I say yes. But it’s also why I won’t connect with you on LinkedIn unless we’ve met in person and had a chance to get to know each other.

In my first job out of college, working in events for a major hotel chain, I worked with a sales director who was known to say that “Nothing happens until someone sells something.” This was his self-important way to motivate his direct sales reports and remind those of us in operations that even though they weren’t slinging tables and food, his team were still working hard.

Now I’d like to see his sales adage and raise him a social one: “Nothing happens until someone knows someone.”

Connective tissue

I’m not a doctor (but I know a few), so forgive my cursory explanation of connective tissue. While you may have heard of this bodily phenomenon, let me tout its importance to you now. Connective tissue is the stuff inside all of our bodies without which we couldn’t move, function, or basically survive. Connective tissue is the stuff that connects bones to bones and tissue and other stuff so we can walk, run, and jump. It’s also the stuff that lets big time organs expand and contract. It doesn’t get the billing that a lung or a knee gets, but without connective tissue, those things are just piles of cells begging for movement.

In addition to making our body “work”, connective tissue also does slows the spread of pathogens. What are those? The bad stuff, like bacteria and viruses. The healthier your connective tissue, the healthier your are. You’re literally better when you’re connected.

Get with a group

Group fitness classes will continue to be on the rise. This isn’t just because we are more likely to try a class if we know someone already enjoying it. It’s also because when we do something hard and challenging with a friend, we’re more likely to see it through. And if that hard thing is a fitness routine, then we’ll be more likely to start and continue healthy habits (read all the data here).

In other words if you want to get in better shape next year, don’t make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. Make a resolution to make a friend. (Plus, you have someone to go out with for margs later.)

The Gap

There continues to be value in gap filling. I’ve heard Jeff Cornwall say on more than one occasion to business students, “There may be a gap in the market, but it doesn’t mean there’s a market in the gap.”

He’s right. It’s easy to think that just because no one is doing something, your discovery of this white space will bring you fame and fortune. But, maybe there’s a gap for a reason. After all, there are no vacuum/microwave hybrid appliances. And while an initial daydream may convince you this is a good idea (“I could heat my frozen burrito while I clean! And then instantly suck up the crumbs!), most people won’t pay a premium for this “convenience.”

The ultimate literal gap filler? That award goes to the crew who won the contract to dump 55,000 dump truck loads into Merten’s Hole at Nashville International Airport. As part of its expansion, the Nashville airport needed to fill a hole near the apron. Since they had just leveled an old parking garage, they had the waste. Now they just needed a gap filler. Congrats to Eutaw Construction Company (again, someone/something you’ve never heard of) for cranking up trucks and filling that gap.

When you bridge or fill a gap, you’re creating an opportunity for something remarkable to happen. When we launched Cool People Care in 2006, we wanted to connect the gap between young people who wanted to volunteer and nonprofits needing their help. We used the early proliferation of social media and digital communication to do that and connect those two groups. Nothing happens until someone knows someone.

And at Batch, we connect artisan makers with corporate and online buyers who want their handicrafts in high volume, allowing for efficiencies of scale. Previously, most of our makers only sold their items at festivals and fairs and to a small, focused online audience. We connect them to the masses. By then end of this year, we’ll sell our 1,000,000th locally made item since our founding in 2013. We are better when we are connected.

Missing

Connective tissue is critical and if we’re looking for that in our own lives, it’s time we became the connective tissue we want to see in the world.

The first question to ask is What is missing? What service could be offered? What could be improved? What would make this better? And if the answers to any of those questions lie in the connection of one person or one group to another, then you’re on to something. Keep running toward connection.

But here’s a better and deeper question to ask: Who is missing? Whose voice isn’t being heard? Who hasn’t shown up because they haven’t been invited? Who doesn’t have the connection they need to get involved? Who would make this group better, smarter, and more successful? Who has been left behind? Who has been left alone?

The value of a network grows exponentially with each node added. Bringing more people to the table doesn’t dilute our impact; it strengthens it. Invite someone in. Draw the circle bigger. We are truly better together.