I was thinking about last weeks episode and how it was all about getting out during the summer months to network and continue to meet people. The following is a keynote address I delivered to the Sebago Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce in January of 2016 on the power in community. Having shared it with some friends I was encouraged to re-purpose it for the Women Taking the Lead podcast. I hope you enjoy it. It’s no secret that business owners like their independence. They like to set their own hours, be the ultimate decision maker and forge their own destinies. The same holds true for those shooting for the top levels of their organizations. They tend to be the people who want to be in the know and be the decision makers. However, rather than a state of independence, it is a state of interdependence that has worked to grow economies and organizations. It takes a village to raise a business In my corporate career I was absolutely the benefactor of mentoring and partnerships. But, much like how a grammar school child makes friends, these relationships came naturally and developed through forced interaction, from working in close proximity with others. When I started my business, however, the game changed. I had to seek out interactions and work at building business relationships. Working for myself, there is no such thing as a forced interaction. One of the greatest challenges my small business clients report is a sense of isolation and loneliness. If you are a business owner most people in your life cannot understand your challenges or even your work day. A few summers ago my sister, who lives over two hours away in Massachusetts, started a topic of conversation with the question, “you can work from anywhere, right?” I responded flippantly with, “That’s the goal"…and "Why are you asking?” Her husband would be travelling to Kenya for a month and my sister, being a mother of 3 and a nurse who works the night shift, needed someone to spend an extensive amount of time with them through the holidays to help. With the holidays typically being slow for coaching I agreed and scrambled to prepare to work a few less hours per day during the holidays. Now, during this time my sister would also be hosting 8 people on Christmas Eve, 24 people for Christmas and my brother and his family, a family of 5 travelling from out of state, would be staying for six days bringing the total living in the household to 10 for that time. After arriving I found out my sister, without consulting me, had changed her schedule so she could have the days my brother’s family would be staying off. This meant working double shifts of 3-11 and then 11-7 twice within the first 4 days of my arrival. I was shell-shocked by the amount of work I was not able to accomplish for my business. It didn’t occur to her to inform me of the change because my work schedule was flexible and I could "get it done at any time." I’ve joked about my flexibility in the past by saying, “this week I can work 50-60 hours whenever I want to.” On Christmas Eve she also informed me she hadn’t been able to get any of her wrapping done yet and she was going to be up all night getting it done. Since I would be bunking with her that night due to the arrival of my brother and his family, my brain froze with that information. I had already determined I was going to need to get up at 4 am to meet the deadlines in my business before the household woke on Christmas Day. At 12:30 am we finished wrapping and 3.5 hour later at 4 am I woke to complete my tasks. I kept reminding myself of the quote, “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.” Sometimes that thought helped. Sometimes. The next weekend it happened again, without consulting me two of her work shifts I had been unaware of were on the schedule requiring two double shifts in one weekend. I kept feeling like figurative bombs were being dropped on m