Many years ago I was in France for a wedding and ended up on the south of France sharing a house with four other friends for a week after the wedding festivities concluded.  It was summer, but the weather was horrible; it was much more like a California winter … cold and rainy everyday.

Needless to say we spent more time indoors together than any of us planned and if it was not for our friend Jen, we would have been bored to tears.  Jen was a great dinner party hostess and fabulous artist from LA so each night she would engage (and refocus our disappointment) with a question that each of us must answer.  Our dinner conversations were in themselves wonderful adventures.  One such conversation I think of often.

Jen asked each of us to tell where we saw ourselves in 10 years.  I had just left the corporate world to develop my skills as a business consultant working for a boutique consulting firm located smack in the middle of in the hot bed of the nascent technology boom (South Park in San Francisco).  I had no real sense of what my next month was going to hold, let alone the next year, so thinking out 10 years was ridiculous.  When it came to my turn I had not given my response much reflection.  I had been way too engaged in how my friends were responding (typical of me).  So when Jen turned to me, I just let my heart speak: “I’m going to be consulting to my friends on their businesses so that they are more successful.”  It just rolled out.  I heard myself say it.  I saw my friend’s faces smiling nodding in agreement.  Yep, that was it they were saying.  Yep, that is it I responded back.

As the years have passed, I have now been in practice in my own consulting business over ten years, I often think about how right that vision was for me.  Friends that have businesses and need advice or support in it from time to time call and I consult to them.  But what has been so amazing is how individuals that once called me as total strangers and contracted with me to assist them, are now such dear friends.  My business has grown completely from those wonderful relationships and the trust and commitment that only come from true friends.

Thanks to all of you that I have been so fortunate to befriend in the pursuit of my vision.

Here’s to making new relationships and building on those that have already developed.