Relationships are Everything - Thoughts on People Back in the Real World

Delegates at the 2021 Kidskino Event.

Just as in our personal lives, relationships matter a great deal to us all in business. You might say the effect of these past few years on us at home and at work is that those relationships are actually everything.

From how our business lives go on day to day, right up to the strategic developments and key moments where a business gains strength, stability and starts to see a path forward for clients and staff to engage in deeper conversations - these are some of the things I’ve been thinking about recently. 

After almost 18 months out from the conference and event space, I attended an in-person event in Warsaw last week and this reminded me about the topic of relationships we have at work and how important they are to us. The event was with the marvellous Kids Kino team. I was given the chance to co-present along with my friend and colleague Japhet Asher from Polarity Reversal to a select number of content producers from across the EU, and discuss with them issues around multichannel sales and marketing, as well as look into how they could own their destiny through thinking about how to get the most out of their digital content. 

It was particularly interesting to hear what their thoughts and feelings were on these matters - many spoke of issues with the costs to set up a delivery platform associated with digital content, how to grapple with the editorial production issues and combine those issues with marketing channels on a national and international scale. 

I was so pleased to hear stories of how they had to think again about their content production during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. It was their ingenuity, their belief and their relationships with their teams that brought them through everything. But there was also one more thing and something that came up in our open discussion time at the end of the session. Courage. 

The very thing that stood out from our relationships was courage, courage to do your own thing and courage to move beyond what we consider are the boundaries of new business.  It was neatly summed up in this quote I used in my talk from Jane Austen at the end of the session:

I remembered that the real world was wide,

and that a varied field of hopes and fears, 

of sensations and excitements, awaited those 

who had the courage to go forth into its expanse,

to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils

I suppose this quote for me is relevant to the business world as many literary ones are. We all reach a form of crossroads at some point in our lives, and now like the character in her novel Charlotte Bronte we have all spent our time in our form of isolation. Getting back into the world has reminded me of how brave everyone has been in their adaptation to the changes and now we face new challenges going ahead - as we all go forward into the expanse of our world again to seek real knowledge of life, amidst all of its perils.

Neal Hoskins 
Content Marketing Consultant for Wonderz