What?! You’ve never met??

Here’s some fun GJ trivia: sometimes we write our “adventure entries” (aka: blog posts) together, sometimes just one of us writes it, and other times we write segments of it separately and then come together with our writings like surprise reveals and then have fun seeing how we can bring the two together.

In preparation for today’s adventure entry, we both wrote our own, came together for the reveal, and decided each story needed to be its own entry. And with that, here’s Georges’ version...

The world is in constant change and with change comes new habits. We live in an era where technology is part of our everyday life. It has been for decades, however, with covid19, technology became an even bigger aspect of most people’s lives.

While some businesses encountered difficult times, new companies that would have maybe taken years to grow suddenly exploded. People from all generations and all parts of the world embraced new technology and quickly created new habits.

Let’s take live streaming for example. Years ago we used to say “let’s skype” and we “skyped” - mostly for business purposes. Then there was “let’s facetime” each other - where live streaming became more “friendly” and less “business like”. With FaceTime all one needed was a cell phone.

Fast forward to today, we now “Zoom”.
Yes, my friends, we have created a new verb, “to zoom”.
AND, the world is “zooming”.

Not so long ago people used to travel, go to work in offices, meet at conference rooms. There was a lot of “normal” people-to-people interaction, or live interaction I should say. Basically people would meet in person.

With the inability to travel and get together in person, well, we now get together on zoom.

We still continue to “go to work”, have scheduled meetings, or simply get together to just catch up with friends and family. However, it is all happening virtually.
Yes, that’s right, all through screens.
And with that we also have created, without necessarily being aware of it, a
different sense of reality, a different perception.

Janelle and I have known each other since June of 2019. She lives in the United States and I live in France. We were both enrolled in a training program about memberships and our first meeting was on Zoom. Our second meeting was also on Zoom. Our third meeting was… let me think! Yep, it was also on zoom.

We continued to meet on zoom regularly and it was almost a year later that we decided to start a business together.

Then you know what we did?

Yes, that’s right, we continued to meet on Zoom.

Everybody that we’ve met with, whether individually or in group settings, has been through a screen, and we’ve become very comfortable interacting on Zoom. It’s our “office”. It’s where we provide support and training. And everyone that has had regular interaction with us, who knows us as GJ, has also become very accustomed to working with us, as GJ, on zoom.

Remember when I was saying that extensive virtual meetings had created a different perception? Well, after a while we tend to forget that we’re actually on screen in a virtual environment, and we get to know people soooo well that we start making assumptions.

We were recently in a meeting, and what happened got us all to laugh. As the conversation started to move from business to more casual, something was said that got the person we were meeting with to realize we actually have never met.

Yep, you heard it correctly, we’ve never met in person.

And we got a big “What? You’ve never met?!”

The expression and total disbelief was absolutely incredible. It was followed by a pause and, “It’s amazing how much presence can go through a screen”.

It was surreal to realize that after all that time, all those meetings and interactions, people know us and refer to us as GJ and yet, when they realize we’ve never met in person, it comes like a huge surprise.

This is a result of having embraced new habits, new norms, new technology, new ways of working and interacting with others and with each other.

Stay tuned for Janelle’s version of “What? You’ve never met?!” to come in the weeks ahead. For now, let me ask you...

What new ways, new norms have you embraced that have created a big aha moment? A big surprise reaction?

-Georges