It’s funny what happens as people get better at what they do and it’s a shame that we treat them the way we do by taking them for granted. Let me explain. Sometimes, a business owner has an idea and starts. He grinds and works and promotes and works and develops partners and works and adds to the offering and works for over a year’s worth of months and watches his numbers double, then double, then double again, then explode!
Who else could I be talking about? Pete Caputa. WhizSpark. Art, Wine & Networking. The New England Business Expo. Remember Pete’s first networking event? Remember the events at SPQR? Remember June 20th at Higgins Armory Museum? Bloggers blogged. Networkers couldn’t wait for the next one. Pete was the talk of the town. Everybody wanted to be in Pete’s inner circle. He was the man. He knew how to throw a party. He knew how to attract a crowd. He was the guy that could get it done. Then came the Expo challenge!
Those of you who’ve been around for a while may remember the multi-day business expo. Thousands of people. For whatever reason, attendance dropped off. This year Cindy Skowyra and Dick Kennedy were determined to bring it back. Cindy filled the hall with exhibitors. Cindy and Dick met and teamed up with Pete. Pete and Luanne enlisted the help of the exhibitors and sponsors. Here’s some feedback.
I had a friend tell me that they came by our booth several times, but couldn’t stop in to say, “Hi.” because there was never any room in the booth. Too many people!
I typically visit every exhibitor’s booth in the show a couple of times. I was there all day and didn’t get to half of the booths.
More people registered for the Art, Wine & Networking event after the Expo than have ever registered before and there were walk-ins and there were stay-overs.
This was THE BEST NETWORKING EVENT THAT I’VE BEEN TO THIS YEAR!
Thanks, Pete! This was the explosion! You’ve set a new level of excellence. You should not be taken for granted. Every blogger should be blogging. Paul, Paul, Sharon, Jason, Mark, every 2.0 writer out there should be pointing to WhizSpark. Cindy, how about a thank you in the Telegram? (Incidentally, thank you, Cindy, because without your effort with the exhibitors, we wouldn’t have anybody in the booths to talk to. They wouldn’t have invited guests to attend. So, maybe Dick should run the ad and thank Cindy and Pete. They’re the ones that had the dream and made it happen.
So, let’s not take anybody for granted. This was awesome! Blog about it. Send them an email. Call them and tell them.
Oh, by the way. This weekend, Pete’s the man again. Don’t miss the Boston Home Show. Here’s Pete’s link: http://www.whizspark.com/es/viewevent.aspx?eid=1818. Maybe Pat Hoey will be running a big thank you in the Globe on Monday!
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RainMakers & Sales Rock Stars 
You beat me to it, Rick. I’ll have some glowing remarks to say in my blog, which I should finish by the end of tomorrow. Briefly, it was what my father-in-law used to say, “top drawer!” I left with a handful of business cards and I’m in the process of following up. I had some great discussions with a whole lot of people. I left exhausted but satisfied. I hope to have a booth next year. Great day.
Yes, yes! Well said Rick. I have thought about commenting many times, but, like the debts I need you to collect that are not painful enough yet, I just did not feel the proper motivation to take a few minutes. Well, this one certainly got to me. Pete has done a tremendous job bringing people together through these networking events and I can’t thank him enough. At each event, he (and you, but this is for Pete) always takes a few minutes to introduce me to someone that he thinks would be a good match for me on some level. With the hundreds of people in the room, he knows who will be there and who should meet whom. Kudos and thanks to you Pete and I am anxiously looking forward to the next event.
Thank you, Rick. The Worcester Chamber was amazing to work with it. They truly get it. They have amazing leadership with Dick at the helm. And Cindy, Sharon, Linda and the rest of the staff did an amazing job pulling long days and handling a lot of details under a lot of pressure. I am and was honored to work them.
Rick: Thanks for sharing all the positive feedback. I must say, I had heard about Pete’s events and I knew I couldn’t have him competing against me on the same day so the best way to do that was to ask him to join us. And I’m so glad he did. I do attribute an increase in our floor traffic and all the great networking that happened to Pete’s process. It really made a difference and brought people to the show. An ad? Well we are the Chamber and our ads are usually trade- however, I did make sure I got him on “Jordan Levy’s” show that was taping live at the expo that day AND I did mention him on the latest edition of “Region on the Move”! Thank you all for the support and coming to the show!
Facebook needs to do a better just with letting people create public personas though – these new public profiles are half-a**ed and broken.