11 of 100 – Appreciate our Worldwide Connectedness

It was because of a job I had college that I made my first international phone call. I needed to reach a client in Bogota, Columbia to resolve a customer service issue. I remember getting off the phone thinking, "Wow! I just spoke to someone countries away."

That sounds so odd today, given how easy it is to communicate across continents. And it make a huge difference in so many aspects of our lives.

When I went away to Indiana for school, it meant disappearing from my Miami hometown. Making cross country phone calls, the only way to communicate then, was expensive. It would cost my then girlfriend (now wife) close to $100 a month to make short, every other day phone calls. That was painful. Staying in touch with anyone other than close loved ones was not something I could afford. So when anyone moved away to another state, even a few counties away, contact via phone calls wasn't something you could do easily.

Today, it's so different. The question is what form of FREE communication will I use.

When I look at my business today, I have client all over the U.S. and Canada. I have a clients in Australia, Colombia, Dominica Republic, the UK and Switzerland. I have team members working with me that are in the Philippines, Bangladesh and India. We email, chat, Hangout, GoToMeeting, Facebook, WhatApp, with each other at about zero cost. We can work almost as well as if we were working face-to-face.

What's interesting is I know about how these people live. I know about their customs and ways of life. In the past, the only way I could do that was to pick up a book, watch a movie or travel there.

Now I'm posting something on Facebook and my friend Michi and Jacomo will like or comment on it. We are so powerfully connected and distances is meaningless.

My daughters stay in touch with their college friends as if they lived across the street. They can keep these ties strong because it's possible. Its a luxury we didn't have before. As much as people complain that personal devices are a nuisance, they signify a way of maintaining ties we should cherish.

The other day I got a call from a team member in Bangladesh and I took the call on my car Bluetooth speaker. I remember again thinking to myself, "Wow! I just spoke to someone on the other side of the planet while driving."

Somethings never change.