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b'Do you know your neighbors?\\n\\n\\n\\nSean and I know a couple of ours\\u2014but most are strangers.\\n\\n\\n\\nAt this point in time, not knowing your neighbors is pretty common. We mind our own business. We go about our own lives. We rarely intersect with the people around us\\u2013which is even more true today when we are not supposed to be intersecting with people outside of our own households!\\n\\n\\n\\nMost of the time this is fine, right? Maybe it\\u2019s not ideal. But it\\u2019s fine.\\n\\n\\n\\nIt becomes a problem when there\\u2019s a need. Maybe you just need to borrow a cup of milk. Or maybe you\\u2019ve got to leave town for a month to care for a family member. Maybe there\\u2019s an extended power outage in town.\\n\\n\\n\\nWho can you rely on?\\n\\n\\n\\nThis week, we\\u2019re wrapping up our series on relationship-building. We\\u2019ve looked at your relationship with yourself & your business, your relationship with your customers, and your relationship with your team. Now, it\\u2019s time to examine your relationship with your network. All the neighbors in your neighborhood, if you will.\\n\\n\\n\\nSo as I just alluded to\\u2026\\n\\n\\n\\nGetting to know your neighbors is a disaster preparedness skill.\\n\\n\\n\\nI heard Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown talk about this on the How To Survive The End of The World pocdast. Autumn said\\u2014and I\\u2019m paraphrasing because I have no idea which episode it was in\\u2014when you know who is around you, you have a better idea of how you can care for each other. You\\u2019re more likely to seek out community-based solutions when things go awry.\\n\\n\\n\\nThis idea has stuck with me. Partly because I heard it while walking through my neighborhood of strangers in the middle of an ongoing global health crisis. And partly because it got me thinking about my \\u201cinternet neighbors.\\u201d\\n\\n\\n\\nIt probably comes as no surprise that I am a huge proponent of getting to know your internet neighbors. And by that, I mean the people who are closely adjacent to you in your industry, in groups you belong to, and in the social media platforms you frequent.\\n\\n\\n\\nI feel lucky that I got on social media before we\\u2019d optimized our tactics and sliced & diced the amount of time we spend actually getting to know people in those channels. I really got to know my internet neighbors in those early years. We had each other\\u2019s backs. When something bad happened, we could come up with a solution together.\\n\\n\\n\\nWe knew each other so much more than just as personal brands or headshots.\\n\\n\\n\\nI think it\\u2019s legitimately harder to get to know your internet neighbors today\\u2013despite it being more important than ever.\\n\\n\\n\\nSo few people are actively engaging with social media. They\\u2019re planning & scheduling their content and then getting the hell off the platform.\\n\\n\\n\\nIn her book, Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino writes, \\u201cOn the internet, a highly functional person is one who can promise everything to an indefinitely increasing audience at all times.\\u201d That\\u2019s not advice\\u2014by the way. It\\u2019s a warning. And it\\u2019s one of the reasons why our internet neighborhoods feel so foreign and impersonal.\\n\\n\\n\\nSocial media has taught us to be flat, to optimize our identity, to be as consistent as possible for as long as possible.\\n\\n\\n\\nIn other words, we rarely have the chance to actually get to know someone as a human being. To get to know your neighbors,'