My business was completely online before it was cool to Zoom. Because most of our clients are in the US, or at least outside of the EU, I’ve always been virtual, and then our clients have moved to everywhere in France. And I always thought I preferred that – I could work from home, from Starbucks, or from the moon, and nobody would know the difference.
But after two and a half years of covid, we had our first in-person event, Bloom Where You’re Planted, at the American Church in Paris, this Saturday. Kim came up from Montpellier to help me woman the Franceformation table. And afterwards, we went out for apéro with some of our Paris-based Franceformation clients.
I have been riding the high of seeing all of our virtual friends and acquaintances in-person ever since. And it was so much fun to see all of the associations serving the American community of Paris and of France and to learn about how we can support them in their missions.
It’s wonderful to be able to meet fantastic people from all over the country, or the world, and I wouldn’t have been lucky enough to be able to hire Kim if we weren’t a fully remote company. (It would have been a terrible missed opportunity!)
But there’s something to be said for sharing a drink with someone, or connecting face-to-face, and for being able to do that hybrid half-hug, half-bises thing Americans do automatically when we’ve been in France for a few years.
My mind has been teeming ever since with tons of new ideas about how we can grow as a company and serve the community of Americans in France more deeply. And while it might take a while for things to percolate – I am learning not to try to do too many new ideas at once, at risk of not finishing any of them! – I am so excited for us to continue to grow and to be able to share them with you.
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