never eat alone blog

Happy Halloween!

Carved by the Ferrazzi Greenlight team

Podcast - BuildABear and birthday parties for RobertWilson and HillaryClinton

Audio (mp3): BuildABear, AuntRose, RobertWilson, and HillaryClinton

Link: Build-A-Bear founder Maxine Clark's new book The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart

Link: Meeting Robert Wilson

Link: Hillary Clinton

Peer to Peer Advisors

Keith Ferrazzi

Because most of our Ferrazzi Greenlight Professional Development engagements are with Fortune 500 clients, we've been looking for ways to make our content available to folks in smaller businesses as well. After all, they can't get there alone either.

So I'm really proud to announce our new partnership with Peer to Peer Advisors.

Peer to Peer Advisors produces exactly what its tagline says: Roundtable Forums Where Smarter Business Leaders Meet. And when we learned that the organization's founder Ken Cook believes as strongly we do in the power of peer-support communities and networks, we joined forces to launch a year-long series of Focused Growth Workshops for small business leaders.

Learn more about Focused Growth Workshops produced by Peer to Peer Advisors

The Focused Growth groups start meeting in Hartford and Stamford, Connecticut, next week, but we're also exploring the possibility of expanding to more cities. So contact Peer to Peer Advisors if you want in this first series in Connecticut or if you want to participate in or help us start groups elsewhere.

We have arrived...

Ian Ybarra

Steve Yastrow has a great post today on the Tom Peters blog about teaching a hotel industry audience that business is human. My only qualm is when he said

...we have arrived at a point in time where genuine human encounter in business is more valued than ever. It is accepted and expected to go beyond the strict bounds of business to create meaningful business relationships.

he should have made those last three words "meaningful personal relationships."

Link: TomPeters.com - "We are now allowed" by Steve Yastrow

(Thanks to Howard Mann at DigTank for the tip.)

Podcast: Uncle Keith goes to Build-A-Bear

Audio (mp3): Uncle Keith goes to Build-A-Bear

Link: Build-A-Bear founder Maxine Clark's new book The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart

Spot Me gadgets for conference connections

Consumer Electronics Assoc. economist Shawn DuBravac pointed me to this report on a cool gadget used this past summer at the World Economic Forum in Tokyo to facilitate more connections between attendees.

The Spot Me gadgets that the World Economic Forum is distributing to participants are incredibly cool. The size of a small PDA, it has the complete schedule and list of participants programmed into them, but the neatest part is its radar function which checks the surrounding area and tells you who is sitting near you. Plug in the people you want to talk to, and the thing will buzz when one of them are in your range. Send messages to them, set up appointments, awesome. I had heard about a similar function that was used unsuccessfully as a dating-match service, but gizmos like this seem infinitely more suited towards business networking.

Link: Spotme | Conference Navigator

One Red Paperclip

In case you haven't heard about this yet...a Canadian man traded his way up from one red paperclip to a house in about a year. This has to be the ultimate example of how no matter what goods or personal currencies you have, they can be so valuable to the right people.

Link: Official site: http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/

Link: Wikipedia: about one red paperclip

(thanks to Jeff Muzzerall for the tip)

New column in Brandweek, calling for VP of High Touch Marketing

I've got a new column out in Brandweek discussing the methodology that drives our High Touch Marketing consulting practice at Ferrazzi Greenlight. If on your team there's not one individual who's ultimately responsible for making sure you are building the most important relationships to your organization's success, please give it a read. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Brandweek - "Wanted: Intimate Marketing Relationship"

Podcast: Mind/body relationship lesson from Rob Notter

Audio (mp3): Strengthening your mind/body relationship for improved wellness and less illness.mp3

Link: Rob Notter's Whole Life Institute

Does drinking more help you earn more?

Ian Ybarra

CNNMoney.com reports that a new study published in "The Journal of Labor Research says that drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than those who refrain from drinking...Those who drink socially, for example, may have an easier time finding a new job if they had made more business contacts, the authors claim, or they might strengthen relationships with co-workers or clients that could ultimately affect their salary."

I bet Freakonomist Steven Levitt would advise us to note this study shows mere correlation between social drinking and higher income and not causality. Or that the cause-effect relationship might even be the reverse, that people do more social drinking because they earn more and thus have more disposable income. Still, it is probably good advice to never drink alone.

CNNMoney.com: "Drinkers Earn More Than Teetotalers"

Talking w/ Jack Welch

Audio (mp3): Speaking at the World Business Forum and interviewing Jack Welch

Jack Welch answers Keith's question at a World Business Forum luncheon


Suzy Welch discovers her new favorite book. Well, next to her and Jack's book, of course.

It's still all about people

Even when you're trying to create the world's largest supercomputer.

Matt Blumberg, a great friend of mine from Yale, just launched GridRepublic, which allows anyone with a computer to "run a screensaver that allows their computers to work on public-interest research projects" when they're not using their computers.  

They got the technology down. Now it's all about getting people to contribute, to share their passion by picking the projects they want to generously offer their unused computer resources to.

See how you can contribute at GridRepublic.org