When business dinners are really friendship dinners that are really business dinners that are mostly friendship dinners…

Some people hang on for all the wrong reasons—to consume, to take, to watch your every move and try to be you. Others connect and stay connected for all the right ones: to contribute, learn, support and be supported and become even more authentically themselves.

This is a LinkedIn follower who traveled from Dallas all the way to Detroit in 2018 to hear me speak at a conference, connected with me after… became my first coaching client… consulted for the practice, traveled and created content on the road with me when I didn’t have an assistant… laughed, cried, plotted and planned with me. Hooked on my leadership books, she was even inspired to seek her coaching credentials. She is one of my go-to women’s empowerment coach facilitators for SOAR Women’s Leadership Academy.

She isn’t in it because of who she might meet along the way. And she has met some heavies. She isn’t even in it for the money. (We had a tiny tussle over the check tonight, for example.) If we are really honest, she should probably send me an invoice for something she did for me last year when all those big tech companies closed their fists to leadership development programs and laid off so many workers. I’m still waiting on it.

She says that I will continue to wait.

She’s in it for the mission. She believes in it.

We get into good trouble for women and women of color. She’s the only kind that I manifest for in person after hours when it’s dinner and homework time with the mini. It’s worth passing off those duties to family when it’s time to reconnect and solve every issue the world serves up… from #ReesaTeesa to the need for more evidence-based, trained and credentialed Black women authors and coaches in the leadership space.

Lola, you’re one of a kind and a rare blessing, my Sister. Looking forward to toasting life and leadership again soon, and congrats on your recent C-Suite appointment.