Episode 843 Relationships versus Friendships-1
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 843 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:07] Kim Avery: [00:00:07] I'm Kim Avery author of the prayer powered entrepreneur. And I challenge you to focus on your calling as a Christian entrepreneur. One way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.
[00:00:20]Scott Maderer: [00:00:20] what relationships in your life do you need to deepen into friendships and what relationships in your life are okay. Being where they are as a business relationship. And by that token, what relationships in your life do you perhaps need to cut out completely because they're not bringing you health.
[00:00:41] They're not bringing you a good mindset or a good belief. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling [00:01:00] in the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:01:01] We'll learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:11]In today's episode about investing in others by stewarding your time. I talk with you about why the time you spend networking, maybe more about relationship building than friendship building. I talk about why building both is valuable, but we often spend all of our time on one or the other. And I also share why it's not bad to recognize that you can't be friends with everyone.
[00:01:36] As we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great. If you could support this podcast and do it without taking too long, it turns out you can't. All you have to do. It was use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show.
[00:01:54] Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from [00:02:00] Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. So on Monday, one of the things Mark and I were talking about is this idea of networking with others. And one of the things that comes about with talking about networking is what is it really about?
[00:02:18]I'm part of a business networking international business group where. We meet together in a very structured way. And we work to grow each other's businesses and to help support each other, to pass referrals back and forth and these sorts of things. And that is one of those things where I really love the structure and why it's about, and one of the core values of that organization is about building relationships.
[00:02:45] And what's interesting when you think about networking is a lot of times people talk about making friends. They talk about having friends and building friends and don't get me wrong. It's important to do friendship building. It's [00:03:00] important to have people in your life that you consider friends, but I want to separate that from relationship building, you can build relationships with other people without necessarily developing a friendship with them.
[00:03:14] Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you develop a relationship with someone that's a productive one for when it's somebody that you hate or you absolutely can't get along with though. Honestly, you can, there are ways you can do that. Instead. I'm talking about the fact that the goal of networking is to build connections and relationships and understanding.
[00:03:37] But not necessarily to end up with friendships. What's funny is if you concentrate on making friends that often out of that business relationship, doesn't come a lot of business. The old joke is, your family knows you. They like you, they're invested in your success. They want good things for you.
[00:03:57] And yet, oftentimes they're not. Somebody who [00:04:00] refers your business very well. They may not even do business with you at all. And that's in part because there's a difference between having a business relationship, our networking relationship, and a friendship. They're both good things. They're just different things.
[00:04:17] Oftentimes we spend all of our time on one over the other. We'll focus all our, of our time and energy on building networking relationships and being business-minded and growing referral partners and these sorts of things. And we'll ignore having friends and folks that we can call on and go hang out with, or have a get together with.
[00:04:38] By the same token. I've seen people who are all invested in having friends and ignore the business relationship side. And neither one of these is really a great way to go. It's again about balance. It's about finding a way to have a little bit of both and not necessarily always with the same [00:05:00] people.
[00:05:00] Either you can have a friendship. That's also a business relationship. But you can also have a friendship that isn't a business relationship, or you can have a relationship, a business, one that isn't about friendship. All of those are possible States, but what ends up happening a lot of times is when we focus first on friendship, we focus first on trying to have people like us.
[00:05:25] We want people to like us as a friend is we end up trying to be friends with everybody. And the truth is this becomes why I'm talking about this on a time day, because the truth is when you try to be friends with everybody, you will discover that there are so many demands on your time that you end up letting somebody down.
[00:05:49] One of your friends gets left behind. One of your friends gets overlooked. One of your friends gets ignored and don't get me wrong. This doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you evil. There's [00:06:00] nothing. About that makes you inherently bad, but it's about focus and energy too. You can love everybody.
[00:06:09] You can treat everybody with respect and fairness and kindness without trying to be friends with everybody, because truly building a relationship or building a friendship, either one of those takes dedication. It takes time. It takes energy. It takes investing in getting to know the other person. It takes being interested more than you're interesting.
[00:06:37] In other words, focused on the other person more than trying to tell the other person about you. In both cases, the process is very similar, but the outcome and the goal is a little different because you're not. Focusing first on friendship. What's funny is out of that kind of relationship building. I've made dozens and [00:07:00] dozens of friends, but I first built a business relationship with them that later grew into a friendship.
[00:07:06] And that doesn't happen all the time. I'm pretty deliberate about who I call my friends. And it's a relatively small number of people because the truth is. For me, at least if somebody is truly my friend, it means if I think about my priority list, if I think about what's important to me, God is first family is second friends is up there, close to number three, number four in some cases.
[00:07:30] And what that means is if the friend comes to me and says, I need your help, I'm going to drop other things, to be able to go help them. I'm going to ignore things that might. Maybe I want to get done or maybe I think I should get done so that I can go take care of my friend. And I can't do that with every person in the world.
[00:07:50] Now, maybe that's just how I'm wired and other people don't treat their friends that way. Maybe this is unique problem for me, but I've actually based on observation based on [00:08:00] seeing people. I think it's more widespread than that. I think that oftentimes we try so hard to be friends with everyone that the, we end up straining ourselves and letting something drop.
[00:08:15] And we either let some of our friends down or we let other commitments down so that we then feel guilty and frustrated and burned out and tired, which is not good for us. Or for our friends. So identify what relationships in your life do you need to deepen into friendships and what relationships in your life are okay.
[00:08:38] Being where they are as a business relationship. And by that token, what relationships in your life do you perhaps need to cut out completely because they're not bringing you health. They're not bringing you a good mindset or a good belief, or putting you in a good place. And then begin to cultivate those [00:09:00] relationships into that direction.
[00:09:02] Thanks for listening.
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