Steve Levinson is a long-time client who has become a cherished friend.
The fact that he’s a brilliant and insightful Ph.D. in psychology and a world-renowned expert in human motivation (and also very funny) is gravy.
Over the years, Steve has taken as much interest in my business as I have in his, and I can’t tell you how valuable his insights are to me. (We even like it when the server goes down because it gives us an excuse to catch up on things.)
Hey, let’s create a business together!
After knowing each other — only virtually — for about a decade, we finally met in person in July of 2010. The Levinson’s daughter had just moved to Atlanta, so Steve and his wonderful wife, Teresa, acquired a compelling reason to fly (from the outer reaches of northwestern Minnesota) to my neck of the woods every few months.
It involves food
We talk about life and family and pets (Teresa will think that’s redundant, since I already mentioned “family”) and work. We talk about politics (and I thought Margie and I were liberal!). And we marvel out loud at the fact that we have not known each other for decades, because that’s how it feels.
What we don’t talk about much is the still-mythical “joint venture”. Respecting that our better halves haven’t been involved in those discussions, Steve and I don’t want to hijack our precious brunch time with such matters. At most, one or the other of us will mention it in passing, and then we both bemoan the fact that we haven’t done much yet to progress the idea.
We bemoaned again the last time we got together, at the end of April.
And then we did something about it.
Bi-Weekly Tuesdays with Steve
We committed to a regular bi-weekly video hangout.
No agendas necessary. No need to shower or shave. The only requirements are a high-speed Internet connection (more of a challenge for parts of northwestern Minnesota than I would have imagined), access to a Web conferencing service (e.g., Google Hangouts, Skype, GoToMeeting), and a working Webcam (more of a challenge for some people from northwestern Minnesota than I would have imagined).
I’m happy to report that Steve and I have followed through on those hangouts. Our third in a row was yesterday. I’m still on a high from that meeting.
Is our joint venture ready for funding? No, far from it. But the value of these regular face-to-face confabs is inestimable.
I highly recommend you try it yourself.
Jeff! I hate to find out you are cheating on me in a blog post! I am a psychologist too you know. Ha ha! Really though, great relationships are priceless and it’s lovely when we find a brand new BFF.
Heh Heh!
I’ve told Steve all about you, Judi: that you, too, are a brilliant psychologist; about your lovely B&B (to which I referred him the first time he came to ATL); about the great chats you and I have.
(Come to think of it, it’s probably starting to sound as if I’m running a huge scam, pretending to have a Web services business when all it is is a front for getting psychotherapy for free.)
LOVE this! Have a gal that just moved away and we should try to make this a habit… with Facebook it’s so easy to have a generalized friendship with hundreds of people, but with face-to-face interaction… I’ll agree…that’s priceless! I’m going to do this!! Thanks Jeff!!
If you use Google Hangout, you can stream the “meeting” (there’s a bit of a delay) and even save it to your YouTube channel. (You’d have to watch your language, of course.)