My Pinnacle Network

Grow Your Business Through Networking

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Visitor days in November

photo of Steve Dubin, founder of b2b networking organization My Pinnacle Network

My Pinnacle Network will host a Visitor Day at each of the four meetings in November. All those meetings are virtual.

For schedule and Zoom info, email admin@mypinnaclenetwork.com scroll to the bottom of the newsletter. Here are some of the open seats at each group:

My Pinnacle Network-Mansfield:
Nov. 6 at 9am

  • Commercial Real Estate
  • Cost Segregation
  • Business attorney

My Pinnacle Network-Marshfield
November 6, 8:30am

  • Financial Planner/401 (k)
  • Accountant
  • Banker
  • Business attorney
  • Cost Segregation

My Pinnacle Network-Newton
November 14, 7:30am

  • Commercial lines Insurance
  • Commercial realtor
  • Videographer
  • Immigration attorney
  • Business attorney
  • Estate or succession planning attorney
  • Cost reduction consultant
  • Recruiter
  • Events consultant

My Pinnacle Network-Westborough
November 5, 8am

  • Commercial Lines Insurance
  • Business attorney
  • Bookkeeper
  • Social media
  • Videographer
  • Graphic designer
  • Security

If you would like to attend Visitor’s Day at any of the groups, drop a line to admin@mypinnaclenetwork.com.

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Finishing strong

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=909704">Gerd Altmann</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=909704">Pixabay</a>

The next Coffee with the Coaches workshop—Sharpening your 4th Quarter Focus—shares an approach to evaluating every area of your business to prepare for the last quarter of 2024. The workshop takes place online at 9am on Tuesday, September 17.

Why it matters

A strong 4th quarter can turn a good year into a great one. Or salvage a less-than-stellar one. It can be as simple as identifying:

  • What’s working
  • What’s not
  • What could work better

Going deeper

After an initial presentation, business coaches Ed Grant of The Alternative Board-Nashoba Valley and Flavia Guerreiro of The Alternative Board-MetroWest, will lead breakout sessions for attendees. Our coaches will then lead each person through an evaluation process using the stoplight technique.

With each attendee, the coaches will focus on one or two areas of your business, including:

  • Marketing and Sales
  • Operation
  • IT/AI
  • Customer Service
  • People & Culture

RSVP

You can sign up by clicking here or the button below.

Back story

Coffee with the Coaches workshop series is sponsored by My Pinnacle Network, which hosts monthly B2B networking meetings for groups covering the regions of Westborough, Newton, Marshfield and Mansfield.

Connecting with the coaches

Ed Grant – LinkedIn

Flavia Guerreiro – LinkedIn

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Coffee with the Coaches offers Time Management webinar on June 19, 9 A.M.

Time for time off. Will your work schedule cooperate? The next Coffee with the Coaches webinar, sponsored by My Pinnacle Network, offers some tried and true strategies for working smarter, not harder. That free webinar will take place at 9am on June 19th.

The featured coaches for Time Management webinar are Ed Grant of The Alternative Board® (TAB) in the Nashoba Valley, Massachusetts and Flavia Guerreiro of The Alternative Board® (TAB) in Metrowest.

The one-hour interactive webinar will include actionable advice and participatory breakout sessions. The session will focus on:

•             Prioritizing your to-do-list

•             Simple and helpful time management habits/tools

•             Buying back your time

To attend the webinar, please formally RSVP here or by contacting Steven V. Dubin at SDubin@MyPinnacleNetwork.com or 781-582-1061.

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LinkedIn for Better B2B Networking

If you’re a B2B professional or a business owners whose customers are other businesses, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better prospecting tool than LinkedIn. Yet very few take full advantage the many benefits of LinkedIn.

Get Better at LinkedIn

Tuesday, January 30 at 9am, Barry Braunstein of Barry Braunstein Photography will share his secrets on and how he used LinkedIn as a major tool to build his business. The LinkedIn for Better B2B Networking presentation will include:

  • LinkedIn Overview/reach – why it’s one of the best tools for B2B
  • Different ways to effectively use LinkedIn as part of your overall marketing strategy
  • LinkedIn tools for sales people
  • Some best practices for building your personal LinkedIn Profile
  • Success stories using LinkedIn

Barry began his photography business a few years ago after a long career in high tech sales. He’s been able to leverage LinkedIn and other networking efforts to garner such clients as Needham Bank and Hyannisport Research & Development. Barry is a recent winner of the My Pinnacle Network Networking Ninja Award for Most Ubiquitous—Barry gets around to many networking circles.

There’s no fee to attend LinkedIn for Better B2B Networking. Simply RSVP here or email My Pinnacle Network.

RSVP here for webinar

About Barry from Barry

I’ve been shooting since high school. After a long/successful career in high technology sales/marketing I decided to pursue my passion for photography as a business. I studied with the world’s top headshot photographer for more than a year. I chose to specialize in headshots for businesses, individuals, and creatives, trying to capture images amplify branding and show show the best of who people are. My clients range from businesses in biotech, high tech, financial services, law firms and other professional services/industries to authors, consultants, physicians and kids preparing to start their careers. I also use my skills to give back to the community. I am a proud member of a nationwide organization of headshot photographers, Portraits for Patriots (www.portraitsforpatriots.org) where we provide complementary headshots to transitioning military service members. I have a studio in Wellesley and also go on location for my larger clients.

For more information, visit https://www.barrybraunsteinphotography.com/

RSVP to Webinar

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Coffee with the Coaches. The free webinar series offered by My Pinnacle Network launches September 27, 9 a.m. 

Coffee with Coaches, a quarterly, free webinar sponsored by My Pinnacle Network will launch September 27, 9 a.m.

The first webinar topic is “The Value in Knowing Your Ideal Client”. The business coach series will be led by Lisa Levesque, of FocalPoint Business Coaching based in Foxboro, Massachusetts and Ed Grant of The Alternative Board® (TAB) in the Nashoba Valley, Massachusetts.

The one-hour interactive webinar will include actionable advice and participatory breakout sessions. The session will focus on how to identify your ideal client and how to tailor messaging to attract new clients of the same profile. To attend the webinar, please formally RSVP here or by contacting Steven V. Dubin at SDubin@MyPinnacleNetwork.com or 781-582-1061.

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Be my guest: The best and most underutilized newsletter hack

Many companies start newsletters with the best of intentions. Then work gets in the way. The weekly newsletter turns bi-monthly, monthly and then quarterly and then on no particular schedule at all. Before long, your customers and people in your network wonder if you have a newsletter at all.

How do you get back on schedule and stay on schedule?

First, recommit to getting a newsletter out on a certain day/week of the month. Create a budget of story ideas so you know what you will be writing about several editions in advance. And then, take advantage of the most underutilized newsletter hack out there:

Guest columnists.

Invite people from your orbit to contribute content every so often.

Wait a second. Isn’t this a newsletter for my product or service? Why bring in somebody else who will talk about something other than what my company does?

Well, first things first, you invite a guest columnist who does offer something of value to your readers. In the past, our sister company PR Works has welcomed contributions from business coaches, IT specialists, HR providers etc. Many of our readers own a small business and these topics are of interest.

So, how did that help?

First, it provided content. Don’t underrate that, especially when our readers found it helpful.

Second, it provides insight into the types of professionals we work with. It certainly doesn’t hurt your company image to be associated with smart people.

Third, it provides you additional audience members as your guest columnist will want to share your newsletter with their customers and network.

Our own Joe D’Eramo recently showcased this strategy. In case you didn’t know, Joe started a newsletter called My Home Office Hacks, sort of a virtual water cooler for people who work from home.

One of the work from home topics he addressed is what foods to keep in the house. He invited a Wellness & Nutrition Coach, Marissa Szabo, to share some pointers. That issue can be found here.

“This was by far one of our more read issues,” said Joe. “What was interesting was the amount of people who saw the article on LinkedIn. Those are largely people from Marissa’s network. It really was a win-win and we’ll have Marissa back at some point with another wellness tip.”

You can sign up for Joe’s newsletter here.

If you would like to be a guest columnist for an upcoming My Pinnacle Network newsletter or PR Pointer, drop a line.

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Take credit for networking

photo of b2b networking group My Pinnacle Network-Westborough.

At the My Pinnacle Network-Westborough meeting last Tuesday, David Allen of Balance Wealth Advisors encouraged members to take credit for “getting up and coming to a networking” by posting a screen shot of our zoom meeting and posting to social media.

While not everybody may be thrilled with how they look in Zoom world, it’s a good idea and practice for several reasons:

  • Content for your social media sites, particularly LinkedIn
  • Tagging opportunities on a LinkedIn post so you can be seen by the connections of your fellow networking group members
  • Tagging the companies of those networking group members, also bringing you to another audience
  • An increase in page views and reactions to your posts.

If you doubt the last one, give it a try with your next virtual networking meeting. To see what that might look like, check out My Pinnacle Network’s Joe D’Eramo’s post.

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Embracing the new workplace. Hiring and retention solutions in challenging times. Scheduled for Wednesday, December 8, 9 a.m.

Employers can’t fill critical positions.  More than 40 percent of current employees are resigning. Customers and clients are annoyed by lack of service, product and attention.  What can an employer do?

In response to this crisis, a complimentary webinar entitled “Embracing the new workplace.   Hiring and retention solutions in challenging times” is scheduled for Wednesday, December 8, 9 a.m.  To RSVP, please visit shorturl.at/buCIJ.

Employment expert panelists include Denise Noble of HR Engineers based in Franklin, MA; David Sawyer of Safer Places based in Middleboro, MA and Brad Pinta, Esq. of Pinta Law Group located in Quincy, MA.  Steve Dubin of PR Works, Plymouth, MA will moderate the discussion.  The panel will offer specific advice, tips and examples of how to attract and retain the best and brightest.

Noble will expand upon new methods of attracting quality candidates to the workplace and how to create a work environment that encourages employees to be heard, seen, valued and connected to a common goal.  Sawyer will outline how to use custom background checks to make a better and more informed hiring decision. Pinta will underscore his personal challenge with hiring and firing legal staff and the ironic litigation that could arise from these processes.

The business community is encouraged to attend. The event is sponsored by three leading organizations including My Pinnacle Network which hosts monthly meetings for business-to-business professionals at five locations throughout Massachusetts including Braintree, Mansfield, Needham, Pembroke, and Westborough; South Shore Networking Professionals which connects business people monthly at locations throughout the South Shore; and Rockland Trust, offering a wide range of banking, investment, and insurance services to businesses and individuals through retail branches, commercial lending offices, investment management offices, and residential lending centers located in Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as through online, mobile and phone banking.

Please RSVP for the event at shorturl.at/buCIJ. Or call My Pinnacle Network at 781-582-1061.

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Free webinar – Avoiding the Oops and Oy of Zoom. Set for Thursday, May 27, 9 – 10 a.m.


Lisa Fischer and Paul LaFlamme

We all have stories of Zoom meetings that have gone wrong during the pandemic.  All of a sudden, your video locks up.  Crazy background noise overpowers the conversation.  Your foreground is so dark it looks that the rest of us need night vision goggles.  Ah, the wonders of Zoom!

“Avoiding the Oops and Oy of Zoom” is a free webinar addressing the many challenges of Zoom. The virtual event is sponsored by My Pinnacle Network, Rockland Trust and South Shore Networking Professionals. The workshop is set for Thursday, May 27, 9 – 10 a.m. 

Among the topics to be discussed are –

  • What causes audio and video problems in zoom and how to quickly resolve them on the Fly.
  • Digital enhancements to lighting conditions and your appearance.
  • How to update your name temporarily for that Zoom call and permanently via the Zoom  website.
  • For hosts – managing security on Zoom calls.
  • Keep your Zoom client up-to-date.
  • How to work with Zoom backgrounds. Live demo to be included.
  • Some people look distorted on Zoom.   What causes this?
  • What accessories do I need to invest in for Zoom – including lights, camera, tripod, etc.?

Presenters include Paul LaFlamme of Centrend, based in Worcester and Sturbridge, Massachusetts and providing on-site Information Technology (IT) managed services and consulting to business customers throughout New England and Lisa Fischer is the owner of Lisa Fischer of Fischer Photography in Milton, MA and specializing in corporate and family photography.  Steve Dubin of PR Works based in Plymouth, MA will moderate the presentation.

My Pinnacle Network hosts monthly meetings for business-to-business professionals at five locations throughout Massachusetts including Braintree, Mansfield, Needham, Pembroke, and Westborough; South Shore Networking Professionals which connects business people monthly at locations throughout the South Shore; and Rockland Trust, offering a wide range of banking, investment, and insurance services to businesses and individuals through retail branches, commercial lending offices, investment management offices, and residential lending centers located in Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as through online, mobile and phone banking.

Click here to RSVP for the event or call My Pinnacle Network at 781-582-1061.