November 18th, 2009, was a fairly fantastic day for me. I awoke in my hotel room in Manhattan and navigated rush hour subway traffic to check in at VaynerMedia – working headquarters of the infamous Gary Vaynerchuk. In between directing his troops, and an MTV video shoot, Gary squeezed in 25 minutes with me to sample Canadian wines, discuss playoff beards and the future of social media. 20 minutes after wrapping that interview, I was in the rental (thank you ZipCar!), winding my way up the highway to Hastings-on-the-Hudson (45 minutes and a world away) to meet up with the one and only Seth Godin. (links go to the interviews… apologies for the sound quality… it was in the early days. We’ve upgraded tech since)
In the span of 5 hours, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with two of the leading business minds of our time. Different content, totally different and a fantastic experience on both ends.
November 2009 kicked off a 26 month mission of sitting down with the North America’s leading business minds in candid, uneditted video interviews. As I near the end of the project, I can safely say that the conversations I’ve had – and the thinking I’ve been exposed to through the experience – has been life changing.
While each conversation is a gem unto itself, the themes that have emerged through the conversations (over 12 hours of on-camera discussion at this point) have been as captivating as they were unexpected. Regardless of where these people were, regardless of their area of expertise, I was fascinated to see how often conversation came back to the same point: The radically different world we live in (now vs 20 years ago) has fundamentally changed the way we need to interact with our professional lives. The specifics of that (and how to do it) are the focus of my ongoing research and client work in 2012. While I plan to continue hosting interviews into 2012, we’re moving away from the “once-a-month” structure we’ve had to date, and hosting them more on an adhoc basis.
Instead, you can expect more insight into my research, as well as short, “vignettes”, piecing together relevant points from various authors, as we pursue a deep-dive into the world of professional maturity and the magic of creating win-win relationships for employees and their companies. It’s a new world we’re a part of, and it’s just starting to get interesting. There’s lots of research yet to go, but one thing that seems to be unanimous is this: The people and companies that are winning are the people and companies that give a damn. That are willing to stand for something, state their beliefs and, most importantly act on them. It’s inspiring to see.
