Welcome back to the Blog!

It’s the Holiday Season here, and our minds are on you – our Local Links Community, the Business Family we choose.

We sat down with Colleen Valadez of Beach Cities Networking Group earlier this month to talk about Community.  A lot came out of this interview that we didn’t necessarily expect.  We enjoyed the chance to get real with Colleen and talk about the emotional reality of being an entrepreneur, the challenges we face, and how we can work together to strengthen our communities and support each other in our goals.

Here are just a few highlights from the interview.  We hope you enjoy this as much as we did!

BRIAN FIFE

What about what about your business? The you know, what’s the reason that people should – I mean, I know personally why I reach out to you, but I want you to help tell people why, and I’ll be here to happily agree.

COLLEEN VALADEZ

You know, I think we have a unique blend of how we’re doing things. And we want everyone to excel equally, which doesn’t always happen that way. But I think our members feel really supported.

I’m not somebody who is in an office somewhere far away. I know every single one of our members. I’ve seen every single one of them. I’ve emailed every single one of them. They text me. I’m talking with them. I’m not distant. You know, as far as owning the company, I’m in the thick of it.

I go to all the meetings. Now I can because we only have, like I said, eight. If we start getting ten and 20, I’m not going to be obviously be able to go to all of them all the time. I would have to rotate them, but I’m in there with everybody, you know? And the mentoring, I think, is a little different perhaps than you know what it is and some of the other networking places.

And we’re not pressure cookers. You know, we don’t pressure anybody if you don’t come to the meeting or you don’t come with business for somebody else. There isn’t some horrible circumstance attached to it. So. I think we just support our members a little different way.

And it wraps back around to the whole family thing.

BRIAN FIFE

(Laughing) Nice – bringing it back to the original topic.

COLLEEN VALADEZ

Yeah. Did I do that well?

BRIAN FIFE

That was great.

COLLEEN VALADEZ

Well, it’s kind of like that, you know, it’s like you got to treat them like family and not, you know, it requires some patience because talking to over 100 people at any given day, having the ability to talk to over 100 people a day, and they’re asking questions and they’re there, you know, I might get 20 people in a day from different chapters saying I had an issue today or I had a family problem today or I had, you know, I can’t do this because I got to go over here.

And people don’t realize how many people I’m talking to and supporting every single day who who I am on the back end of, you know, trying to help them and connect them to others. So we we try, you know, I think our our membership has a different tempo, a different feel to it than perhaps some of the other networking groups.

BRIAN FIFE

Yeah, I would agree.

I mean, I’m of the mindset that you’re growing, you’re growing a group. Focused on kind of taking away a little bit of the loneliness that comes with being a business owner.

It sounds strange to say it that way and maybe if someone is listening that doesn’t own a business, it can be quite lonely in some weird way to be an entrepreneur. You’re oftentimes stuck in your own decisions by yourself.

And I mean, even just last night, I was sitting there trying to come to a decision, and there’s no one often times to talk to about it. And so you’re creating an environment where business owners, I think, feel a little less alone in that.

COLLEEN VALADEZ

And I think us partnering together and 2022 is we’re going to knock it out of the ballpark. Somehow, we’re going to do that and people are going to realize as being an entrepreneur, yes, it’s hard at times. It can be equally as rewarding, too.

It’s like having children. You know, once you have a child, your life is never the same. And it’s one of the most precious things you could ever do is bring another person into the world. But they also can make you go crazy and make you think, What did I sign up for here? You know?

We want this journey to be authentic. We want it to be fun. We want to have more fun. Life isn’t just all about work, you know, we want to have some fun along the way.

So I think the strategizing together is going to be good. I think that that constant connections that we’re making with people, we can find the answer for anything that people need. We always find the answer.

For more on this and other great interviews, please visit our podcast page at https://anchor.fm/local-links-connects/.

Thanks for reading, Everyone, and we’ll see you in 2022!