Every couple years our family ventures back to my wife Sony's native country of Brazil. When we do this it always offers an outside looking in perspective on what we are doing at CNP and gives me a chance to reflect on the things we should be focusing on to ad value to our customers. I am often making comparisons between the many cultural differences and observations about the many similarities . My analogy is that it is the same ice cream with slightly different flavors. Our second home in Navegantes SC is a community exploding with tourism and the people come from all parts of Brazil to vacation there. In some ways it is a step back in time since there are a lot of local folks that have not caught up with use new technologies since this grew out of a fishing village. Many of the visitors are well in pace with the trends of globalization so this makes for an interesting perspective on how technology is getting integrated in to the commerce and culture here. It makes me remember the importance of human relationships and something we should never lose in our engagements with customers or friends and family.

One interesting example of this community is when I wanted to purchase a used bicycle and was asking a group of older local gentlemen for directions to a place that would sell me a good used bike, since a gringo on a new bike stands out and I just want to blend in and relax a bit when I am here.

The response was... "go up the road to Edwardo's place and ask anybody" since everybody knew the guy that sold used bikes. Well I think you can get the idea here that these directions implied first the value of reputation since Edwardo's place was just an ordinary house of someone respected in the community. It emphasizes the importance of gaining the trust and awareness of real people in your community since it is often how others will navigate to your business. In a virtual web world this is kind of like saying "go to Google and type in "XYZ" then read the comments of others for direction".

I will be the first to admit that I am a bit of a geek and I like my techno toys/software and all of the magic they can do but one of the lessons I take from this is how important it is to not get distracted by all of the "cool" technologies we have and lose sight of developing real relationships in the right circle and community of your piers.

The priority should always be the relationship and the technology should never get in the way or distract from nurturing quality relationships.