Greetings from the beautiful Kingsmill Resort and Spa, along the beautiful James River, in beautiful Williamsburg, Virginia. It’s so beautiful here, I may just puke.
On Friday, I wrapped up a couple of days of inspiring speakers and tremendous networking opportunities at the Virginia Council of CEOs retreat here at Kingsmill. In fact, the entire retreat turned out to be slightly profitable, as I cleared $250 at the poker table last Friday night.
It was a stellar week at Madison+Main, and this week we have decided to tell the story in pictures.
Monday 4/22 – Below is a photo of the front page of last Monday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch; tangible proof that our integrated PR campaign for Richard Bland College has been a great success. Congrats to President Dr. Debbie Sydow, whose energy and enthusiasm has been detailed in multiple publications recently. Special thanks to Account Executive Sarah Dawes, the architect of this PR campaign.
Tuesday 4/23 – Below is a screen capture of a new TV spot that we produced for the Vintage Virginia Wine & Food Festival. I’ve always known I had a talented team, but I had no idea what wonderful actresses I have around the office. Special thanks to Sammy, Sarah, Dorsey and Mackenzie – stars of the Scott Harris mega-production. Click here to see the TV spot, click here to get your tickets to Vintage Virginia. Our entire team will be there and we hope you will join us June 1st and 2nd. (You do like wine, don’t you?)
Wednesday 4/24 – Special thanks to Angie Baker from Vitamin T, sponsor of this week’s lunch and learn at Madison+Main. In addition to a great talk on finding talent, Angie dropped off these little robot guys, who we’ve been playing with all week.
On Wednesday I traveled down to the Virginia Counsel of CEOs retreat at Kingsmill, but before I left I broke out the good stuff to celebrate the five-day weekend. It is not often that you get to try “The World’s Best,” but on Wednesday afternoon, the Main-iacs and I sampled the World’s Best Bourbon, Pappy Van Winkle’s 23-year reserve; the World’s Best Rum, Havana Club 7-year; and the World’s Best Scotch, Johnnie Walker Blue Label. The world class liquor sampling was the perfect end to a perfect day.
Thursday 4/25 – On Thursday morning I heard an extremely inspiring talk by Bill Taylor, founding editor ofFast Company magazine. I’m a huge fan of Fast Company, and Bill’s talk left my head spinning with crazy new ideas.
Speaking of crazy ideas, our non-profit client Positive Vibe Cafe held the Coaches’ Cookoff at Benedictine last night, and Richmond Spiders coach Chris Mooney and VCU coach Shaka Smart went head-to-head in a fundraiser for the Vibe. Below, Senior Account Manager Katie Hurst gets a hug from both coaches.
Friday 4/26 – I woke up late Friday morning after closing down the pub at Kingsmill Thursday night with about 30 rowdy, bourbon-filled CEOs. Many times you go to a conference and the speaker will leave five minutes after the presentation. However, I was lucky to spend some extra time with Wharton Business School’s Stuart Diamond, the author of Getting More and the world’s foremost authority on negotiating. Here’s a pic of Professor Diamond and Rainbow Station CEO Gail Johnson negotiating with the bartender to keep the bar open for an extra half hour.
Here’s another picture of Dorsey’s dog Pippin; there’s no reason for this photo, we just took it and I arbitrarily put it in the email.
The REAL highlight of the day is that I shared three meals Friday with Melissa Ball, CEO of Ball Office Products and my buddy. We shared breakfast and lunch together at Kingsmill and Friday we treated our spouses to a big, fat steak dinner at Morton’s. We worked hard for it, we owed it to ourselves,#dontjudgeus.
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