Joe Livecchi, a media entrepreneur, is a friend.  Joe's family was an incredible addition to our trip.  Here is his account of the experience.

December 26th 2:30am, Jamaica, NY
The alarm clock is especially cruel this morning. I jostle my wife and two young kids (Sophia 12, Grace 8) to wake up for our 5:30am flight en route to our immersive mission trip in Guatemala. On paper, the trip sounds amazing. Daily mission trips to orphanages, schools, shantytowns and impoverished villages where we will put into practice the philosophy of Serve and Grow. Serve others and grow individually and together as a family in the process. Right now, that doesn’t mean much to my family. They are tired, worried about our safety and getting sick abroad.

We have a handful of sustainable growth projects we are hoping to accomplish on the trip. There is also time for some play, nice meals out, and opportunities to mix with the locals. We drop our bags at our hotel Casa Santo Domingo in Antigua. It’s a former monastery converted into a beautiful historically rich hotel. The expansive grounds are dotted with tremendous art, foliage, exotic birds and several stand alone museums. The staff wear traditional Mayan garb and speak little or no English. Massive volcanoes, ancient ruins and centuries old cobblestone streets surround the city of Antigua. Almost instantly we are transported to another time and place.

Our mission group is an eclectic mix of families and individuals. Students. Physicians. Authors. Executives. Children. I'm not sure why but I'm surprised the group is so friendly and warm.

Still sluggish from the travel, we accept an invitation to visit a renowned coffee plantation in Antigua. Our gracious hosts treat us like family and provide us with lunch and show us the process of harvesting beans for coffee. The quality beans will be sold to Starbucks in the U.S. The locals in Guatemala City will sell the lower quality beans for consumption.

Here, there is no minimum wage and coffee pickers work for as little as a few dollars a day. I cant help but wonder what life is like for the women we see balancing 30 or 40 pound sacks of coffee beans on their head as they retreat from the miles of lush green sun dappled fields. Beauty and poverty sitting so close together. This is the story of Guatemala.

Read more →

1 comment // In Philanthropy

If you’re like most of us, you know there are things that you do better than anybody else – areas where you believe you’re nothing short of genius, whether you say it out loud or not. Does your current work allow you to tap that genius?

If you’re like many people – and Gallup studies unfortunately back this up – the answer is no.

Enter Practical Genius: The Real Smarts You Need to Get Your Talents and Passions Working for You, Gina Amaro Rudan’s new book that shows you how to identify, express, sustain, and market your genius to the world.

Today I’m happy to share “Identify Your Genius,” the first step in the book’s 5-step program. The goal is to:

• Identify the foundation of your “practical genius,” which are hard assets – your skills, strengths, and expertise.
• Identify your soft personal assets – your passions, creative abilities, and values.
• Identify the sweet spot where the hard and soft assets meet.

Gina calls that sweet spot “the other G-spot.” (I’ve worked with Gina personally so can testify that her great sense of humor isn’t only on the page, she carries it with her!) She writes:

Think of your other G-spot as the ultimate measure by which you make every decision, whether it’s choosing your next employer, your next lover, or the next place you want to live. You can also consider it a formula that will never fail to hold you accountable to staying at the authentic, powerful core of who you are. The other G-spot is a place that is never tilted too far toward the soft (personal) side of who you are nor too far toward the hard (professional) side of who you are. Once you find it and learn to stay there, life becomes much easier, goals become more attainable, relationships prosper, and you will find that achieving results is far easier.

What about you: Have you identified your personal brand of Genius – and are you getting to use it at work?

6 comments // In Personal Development

Today's post is a Master's Mission from the team at myGreenlight, drafted from their recent Social Capitalist interview with author and investor James Altucher. If you aren't familiar with James, I highly recommend you check his work out. He's carved a personal brand out of unflinching (and hilarious) honesty in writing and talking about his rollercoaster of successes and failures. His stories and advice are almost guaranteed to help you let go of excuses and get to work! - KF

On the latest Social Capitalist webinar, guest James Altucher introduced myGreenlight to what he calls “The Daily Practice,” four steps that put you in the right place to succeed by helping you create better ideas and more energy. It was “The Daily Practice” that picked James back up after each of his failures and ultimately led him to success.

The Daily Practice:

1. Take care of your physical health. You can’t succeed if you’re sick and out of shape. Eating right and getting physically fit increases your energy and makes it much easier for you to succeed.
2. Take care of your emotional health/intimate relationships. If you’re in a series of bad relationships or constantly arguing with your family, spouse, or boss you are not going to have the emotional health to find the energy to build a business or succeed.
3. Mental health - flex your idea muscle. You have to be able to generate ideas and have the confidence that your ideas are good. Building your idea muscle requires practice and time just like building any other kind of muscle.
4. Spiritual health: Be prepared to surrender and find gratitude. You have to know that there are going to be times that are so difficult you will have to throw up your hands and say to a higher power, “I give up, I need help.” That can mean surrendering to the creative superpower inside of yourself or to a greater power outside of yourself. When you get to the point where you feel like you’ve done all you can, you need to be able to surrender and ask for help. When the help comes you also need to not take it for granted.

James believes that if any of these four things are out of whack you won’t have the energy to successfully put your goals first. They have to be working in conjunction for you to be able to rise up from failure.

Visit James' blog for a more specific take on how to institute his Daily Practice. Then take this week to try it out!

What tricks do you use to get your ideas and your energy flowing? Share with the group!

13 comments // In Personal Development

Frode Odegard is the Founder and CEO of the Lean Software Institute. He was part of RMA's pilot program and has recently re-joined the community. Frode is currently writing a book on Lean transformations in the IT sector.-KF

My initial motivation for organizing dinner parties was to make my relationship building more scalable.  When I say scalable I don’t just mean increasing the size of my network, I am also referring to getting more out of my time.  I spend almost half my time traveling overseas, and if I’m in Copenhagen, say, for a day, there is no way I could meet separately with each person there I’d like to stay in touch with.

Currency: If you are not a rock star, an investor famous for writing checks on a whim, or a hot model, chances are you have to put some thought into making yourself someone who can offer value. If the only value you offer is your products or services, then you are missing an important point – RMA teaches us the danger of self-similar networks, and that’s all you will get unless you broaden your audience a little bit and become proactive about what ELSE you can help people with.

For me, dinner parties provide a way to provide valuable currency – I can offer people the chance to meet other interesting people and have the kinds of discussions they’d be unlikely to have elsewhere. I can also provide personal advice and assistance when appropriate; we all know a lot of stuff besides what we currently do professionally, and many of us have had two or three careers already.

Outreach: My strategy for reaching out is a combination of individual invitations and invitation emails sent to several people at once.  I send the latter out roughly a week in advance. I provide a brief description of the spirit and purpose of the gathering, and a brief description of everyone else who has been invited. Attendees appreciate this because it gives them a sense of whom else will be there and who would be especially useful for them to connect with. I try to aim for roughly five people who have attended in the past and three new people each time.

In the invitation emails I often use the term “unnetworking”.  I borrowed the idea for this term from marketing expert Scott Stratten (@unmarketing on Twitter) and I use it to underscore that my intention with these dinners is to have fun and build authentic relationships.  The aim is for the atmosphere to be that of friends getting together.

Individualized invitations are driven by opportunity. When I meet someone interesting at a party or attending an event, I tell them about my dinners and invite them to attend an upcoming one.  I have the dates set 1-2 weeks in advance and keep a list in the calendar entry for that dinner with the people I am planning to invite.  In a few instances, I have connected with people on Twitter (@odegard) and they go into the list of people I’d like to meet in person.

Venue: Because my life is a bit nomadic these days, I use restaurants as the venue.  I want to stay true to the vision of the dinners being a joint experience with friends so we all pick up our own tab.  I try to select restaurants that provide a cozy ambiance and that aren’t too noisy.

Organization: In my Getting Things Done (GTD) system I also keep entries in my Agenda section for each city that I have visited or will visit around the world.  For each city I have a list of people I want to see again and people I’d like to meet.  So in addition to people I’ve already promised to invite, these lists provide triggers for whom to invite.  Each dinner is also set up as a GTD project, with a next action to reserve the restaurant and send out invitations.

Follow-Up: After the dinners, I try to reach out personally to each of the people who attended.  I want to make sure they had fun and made a useful connection.  They really appreciate that I care.  It is not uncommon for me to have 1-1 lunches or coffee to follow up with individuals on conversations that began during a dinner.

When was the last time you went to a dinner party?

2 comments // In Relationship Management

I can’t get enough of Dr. Mark Goulston, who’s written a couple of books, including Just Listen: The Secret to Getting through to Absolutely Anyone, and who we bring into our offices on a regular basis for something like “team therapy.” We were lucky to get him to do an RMA Masterclass presentation recently.

During the presentation, Mark tells a great story about how he walked into an important meeting with a high-level contact and knew immediately that the guy wasn’t listening to him. At all.

Instead of writing the guy off as a jerk, he turned the tables and gave him the opportunity to be listened to – sometimes, there’s nothing more generous. It totally turned the situation around and earned Mark an ongoing relationship with someone who previously was a stranger.

Mark’s insight is that your first job isn’t to transact, but to relate.  You do this by asking questions that allow the other person to tell you:

• This is what I think.
• This is who I am.
• This is what I want to achieve.
• This is how you can play a part in making my life better.

Check out Mark’s blog for more great insight! And of course, get on the list to join RMA next time we open enrollment.

Do you have a story like Mark’s where your ability to listen won you a new ally?

0 comments // In Communication

I threw my hat in for the GMA advice guru gig, which was “come one, come all” for entering.  They’ve got some other entrants’ responses up on the ABC site today.

I thought I’d post a couple of my responses on the blog this week.

Here’s today’s. I hope you guys enjoy the shift from my usual workplace-relationships focus. But since business relationships are just personal relationships in more formal clothing, it’s not much of a detour at all.

1)    What would you tell his person: "Whenever there is an issue between my mother-in-law and me, my husband refuses to stand up for me. How do I get him to value our relationship more than the one with his mother? (150 words or less).

Okay -- first, stop draining yourself by competing with your mother-in-law.  I bet most of these fights are pretty unimportant – be honest, are you creating any of your own drama here?

When conflict is unavoidable, you have to get your husband thinking less about "choosing" and more about sticking up for you when he thinks you’re right.  Your husband deserves his own opinions, but when he agrees with you but sides with his mother anyway, there has to be clear accountability.  Say something like, "If you don’t have the integrity to support me when you actually feel I’m in the right, then I’m going to spend less time with your mother," or whatever consequence makes sense in your household.

Bottom line: you don’t have to be a victim here.  But you do have to be a little harder on your husband -- and a little gentler with the monster-in-law!

How did you improve your relationship with a monster in-law?

1 comment // In Relationship Development Skills

This is Tahl's dog, Bibi -- right on the cover of Time magazine two weeks ago...

Question for you: if you had the right connections to make something like this happen, no matter how outrageous, what would you do?

I really want to know -- 'cause it just might happen. Leave me a comment.

3 comments // In Business Networking

Google Alerts is a free tool that allows you to keep tabs on your most important contacts’ interests as they make news across the Web. When an alert comes through that, say, contact A’s company just announced a new CMO, or contact B’s favorite soccer team just won a match, I send them a ping (a quick email or text) with greetings, salutations, and some thoughtful or funny words. Though the content is helpful – and yes, you will need to do your homework in order to know what to track –  the truth is that these pings are really just an opportunity to check in and see how they’re doing, and how I can help.

Many of you may already be doing this, but for anyone who’s been lazy about getting Alerts  up and running, today’s tip is an excerpt from Mitch Meyerson’s Success Secrets of the Social Media Superstars, a collection of insider tips from today’s brightest social media innovators – including an opening chapter from me.

Dave Evans’ contribution, “Social Media in One Hour a Day,” included this great how-to on setting Google Alerts. I hope it’s the foot in the rear that you need to finally get yourself started – or to expand your use of this great tool!

Social Media in One Hour a Day

by Dave Evans

Featured Power Tool: Google Alerts – excerpted from Success Secrets of the Social Media Superstars

To set up Google Alerts:
1) Go to Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) and log in. If you need to create an account--if you don’t already have a Google Gmail ID--then create one now.
2) Type in the names of your brand, product, service or organization, or those of a competitor.
3) If you have a feed reader set up, choose “Feed” as the delivery; otherwise choose “email.” Figure 3 shows you how to do this.

Figure 3: Setting up Google Alerts, Step 1

4) If you chose “Feed” you’ll see a screen like that in Figure 4. If you’re using Google reader, click the link presented. If not, click the feed link and paste the URL into your feed reader.

Figure 4: Setting up Google Alerts, Step 2

That’s it. You’ll start receiving alerts automatically. As noted, if you’re using email delivery think about adding inbox filters to automatically route these alerts.

You can get a copy of Mitch’s book as well as audio and video bonuses at http://www.SocialMediaMarketingSuperstars.com.

What are your savviest tips for staying up-to-date on your network?  Also, need help know what your most important contacts' interests are? Read How to Turn Two Minutes Into a Lifetime Connection.

5 comments // In Relationship Management

My friend and international bestselling author Jon Gordon has released a new book called Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture, about how to create a winning team and culture of greatness. Below you’ll find an excerpt on how to improve your work relationships with positive reinforcement.

Soup is a quick, entertaining read that will give you practical insights on:

•    How culture drives behavior, behavior drives habits, and habits deliver results
•    Creating relationships that are the foundation for successful careers and winning teams
•    Building trust, creating unity, and enhancing team engagement (amongst staff, volunteers, etc).

Buy a book today and you’ll get a free downloadable SOUP ACTION PLAN + access to an exclusive Group Coaching Session. The Action Plan is a 32 page document that will help you put the strategies in the book into action. Details on that offer and more about the book can be found at http://www.jongordon.com/soup-promo.html.

And now, an exclusive excerpt from Soup:

The Power of Positive Interactions
By Jon Gordon

John Gottman's pioneering research found that marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions. When the ratio approaches 1 to 1, the marriage is more likely to end in divorce. Additional research also shows that workgroups with positive to negative interaction ratios greater than 3 to 1 are significantly more productive than teams that do not reach this ratio.

So what does this mean for you and me? For most of us it means we need to increase the number of positive interactions we have at home and at work and reduce our negative interactions.

We need to engage each other with more smiles, kind words, encouragement, gratitude, meaningful conversations, honest dialogues and sincere positive interactions. And to foster these actions we need to create personal and team rituals that help us interact more positively. If we make them part of our organizational process and individual habits they are more likely to happen.

You might make it a point to smile at your co-workers and customers more often. As a manager, spend more time praising your employees for the things they do right rather than always focusing on what everyone is doing wrong. A manager I know makes it a point to personally praise 5 people every week. As an organization you might gather all of your employees on a call once a day to share a positive message. Or perhaps you might gather your sales team together each week and have your team members share success stories. The ideas are infinite. The key is to intentionally cultivate more positive interactions to fuel success.

However, please know that this doesn't mean we should never have negative interactions. Sometimes we need to confront a situation to move past it and, as we know, ignoring problems that stare us in the face doesn't work. Negative interactions are necessary so long as they occur much less frequently than positive interactions.

Positive interactions are essential to a healthy marriage, positive work environment and individual and team success. In this spirit when you are finished reading this, I encourage you to go thank someone at work or at home and let them know how they impacted your life in a positive way. Then make it a habit.

About Jon
Jon Gordon is a speaker, consultant and international bestselling author of several books. His latest release is Soup: A Recipe to Nourish your Team and Culture. Jon helps individuals, organizations and teams develop positive strategies for enhanced leadership, teamwork and sales performance. Learn more about Jon and his latest book at www.Soup11.com.

How have positive interactions impacted your relationships?

5 comments // In Relationship Development Skills

Talking about building relationships and service at TED

Back from London, Bahrain, and Amsterdam -- what a trip. Feeling reflective as one often does after a lot of travel abroad.

The act of service has been transformative in my life personally. I grew up being taught the power of "paying it forward" in my life by all those who were there for me as a child and young man. Then it became more evident after publishing Never Eat Alone. I began to stand in front of audiences and give my personal testimonial for a life transformed through a life of stronger relationships... I had to hold the mirror up and ask every day if I was living up to my books and talk? And the answer was not always yes!

But a few years ago I began a new chapter in my life of service. It started with Meals on Wheels and the weekly transformation I gained reaching out and touching individual lives so directly in such simple but powerful ways. I guarantee I got more out of it than anyone I delivered that meal to.

Service has now become a contagion for me! I make every effort to tie in acts of direct service around every major trip I do. My work to bring our message to individul children and to help those serving others use our work to better their lives and service... This is truly the joy of my life today.

4 comments // In Site News and Happenings, Uncategorized