Hi Friends!

"High Fives, Jake" has been the valediction to my emails since 2004 and the positive response rate, for both warm and cold engagements, has always blown me away. Over 50% of my recipients mention the high-fives in their follow-up emails, many times even people who think they're not interested in what I'm selling. High Fives started as a way to insert a humourous part of my personality into written communication but has become a foundational part of building relationships that last.

The amount of time we spend liaising online has eclipsed all other forms of communication, blurring lines that define our work/personal/email/Zoom/Slack/Teams/chat covid home-office personalities. In our frantic rush to exist in a covid and post-covid world, we need to put on the brakes to think honestly and strategically about how we adapt to these changes in our communication styles. Is there a wide gap between who you are in real life and how you present digitally? Does your true personality fail to shine through in your written communications? Is that gap causing stress and anxiety? Are there places where that gap can narrow for you? For me, a simple High Five has always kept me aligned and maybe it can help you too. So try it on, throw out some high fives this week and let me know how it goes.

Virtually Sanitized High Fives,
Jake