Embracing your Welshness could be the key to your success

In an increasingly digital world, where business travel is less and online meetings, workshops and events are now commonplace, we are faced with the challenge of building trusted professional relationships with less, or in some cases no, physical face-to-face time. Like many, over the last two years I have found myself developing close, productive working relationships with people that I am still yet to meet face-to-face. Whilst nothing can replace in-person facetime, we have to face that this is the reality and start maximising the tools at our disposal.

"With GlobalWelsh Connect, that common ground and foundation is your shared interest, passion, love, yearning or hiraeth for Wales. The platform is there to showcase your relationship with Wales and your passion to succeed in your career or business and how you would like to give back."

Whether you are looking for talent, customers, collaborators, mentors or establishing any other important relationship, the dominant digital platform is LinkedIn. The platform is a hugely powerful tool to build global connections and showcase yourself and your career. For Welsh people, wherever they are located in the world, or those with an affinity for Wales (studied, worked, lived, have Welsh ancestry), there is a complementary platform called GlobalWelsh Connect. While posting something on LinkedIn can sometimes feel like shouting out of your office window, hoping someone passing by hears you and engages, Connect is more like shouting into an echo chamber where the message is easily heard and repeated.

We all know that people buy from people and we spend a lot of time in our business life building relationships on the foundations of what we have in common. Getting to know people and finding that common ground can be challenging but is necessary to establishing meaningful long term relationship of mutual benefit.  It’s as much about the heart as the head.

"Through GlobalWelsh Connect you have an opportunity to reconnect with your sense of Welsh pride, enable your character to shine through in front of a world of friendly faces."

With GlobalWelsh Connect, that common ground and foundation is your shared interest, passion, love, yearning or hiraeth for Wales.  The platform is there to showcase your relationship with Wales and your passion to succeed in your career or business and how you would like to give back. Your Connect Profile is fundamentally different to the profile you would have on other business or social media platform, such as LinkedIn and should be complementary. 

Wales was the first country in the world to create a platform to engage diaspora in this way. With 3,500 members (and growing daily) across over 65 countries and over 120 industries, Connect provides the infrastructure for you to make the most of your Welshness. A feature rich place to do many things that are not available on LinkedIn - such as a dedicated space for project support, mentoring programmes, check-ins, trips to facilitate in-person networking. We also amplify member content across other social channels to over 13,000 people.

 We purposely have different fields for you to let others know of your relationship to Wales, such as:

• MyWales - what Wales or being Welsh means to you 
• Wales & You - Where in Wales do you feel most connected to? What is your connection to Wales?

"Wales was the first country in the world to create a platform to engage diaspora in this way. With 3,500 members (and growing daily) across over 65 countries and over 120 industries, Connect provides the infrastructure for you to make the most of your Welshness."

Through GlobalWelsh Connect you have an opportunity to reconnect with your sense of Welsh pride, enable your character to shine through in front of a world of friendly faces. You have an opportunity to contribute (even if you are living away) and make connections that you can not only catch a game of rugby or football with, but who can become some of the warmest and most meaningful business connections for you, your career and your business - whatever journey you are on.

Nowhere else do you have access to a professional community with something so fundamental in common, which makes building relationships easier, faster and more productive. Where just one connection can change your career, transform your business. We’ve seen it happen and we look forward to sharing those stories with you.

So, if you are fortunate to be Welsh or have an affinity for Wales, you have something no other country has to help you succeed in your career or grow your business, Connect!

Add GlobalWelsh Connect to your networking toolkit and join today >>

Photo by Catrin Ellis on Unsplash.<br />