Are you ready to elevate your leadership game? In this episode of the People Strategy Forum, we dive into the art of enhancing leadership through conversation with Ronen Olshansky of Connected Success. With a wealth of experience coaching CEOs and leadership teams — and a background spanning Wall Street, tech, and consulting — Ronen reveals how building authentic relationships and fostering team trust can skyrocket your leadership impact. Discover how strategic conversations, vulnerability, and generosity create a culture of connection, and learn the high-return practices that drive team success. Tune in and unlock the power of relationships to lead more effectively!

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Ronen Olshansky – Enhancing Leadership Through Conversation

Welcome to this episode where we delve into the art of leadership through effective communication with Ronen Olshansky, CEO of Connected Success. Ronen brings a rich tapestry of experience having coached CEOs in leadership teams at Ferrazzi Greenlight, and leading Cross Campus and innovative shared office space that has nurtured over 5,000 members.

With a background in finance and consulting at prestigious firms like JP Morgan, Chase, and Lehman Brothers, Ronen has mastered the dynamics of building community and making strategic decisions. We explore how leaders can enhance their influence and effectiveness through conversations that matter. Ronen will share insights into creating a culture of connectivity and understanding within teams essential for any fast-growing company. Join us as we uncover the practical strategies for enhancing leadership through the power of conversations, helping you lead more effectively with your own team. Welcome, Ronen.

Ronen’s Background And The Creation Of Connected Success

Thanks for having me on the show. It’s a pretty long curvy, windy journey. I started on Wall Street, went into tech and management consulting, and then I started to do more and more entrepreneurial things. The real shift was when I started working with my longtime friend and mentor, Keith Ferrazzi. You may recognize Keith, author of several books on relationships and networks, one of the eminent team coaches in the world. He brought me into his organization for Ferrazzi Greenlight in 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, to coach leadership teams. Since then, Keith and I have not only been coaching together, but these past years were very cool years. We spun off a new company around relationship building and networking.

Tell me a little bit more about this new spinoff. What is that like?

In our coaching with leadership teams, this probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you or your audience, what’s more determinant of success is the relationships among the team than the individual aptitude of any one person. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s the strength of relationships. Those relationships are based on the trust that so many CEOs want. A lot of our coaching clients come to us and say some form of, “The people on my leadership team don’t trust one another.” There’s no silver bullet there. It’s built on a relational foundation. Leading with generosity, opening up to vulnerability, creating candor, those same things that work on leadership teams also work in how we develop our individual relationships and our network.

Keith wrote a book about it several years ago and it’s probably what he’s most famous for. He’s written a few great books, but this was his first and probably his most famous. We sat down at the beginning of the year and we said, “With a world of AI and people coming back on events, people need something that’ll help them be more effective at building deep relationships and building a network around them, and a book can only get you so far.”

We have started a business called Connected Success and we took that book and other thought leader content, and we created a system out of it. It’s an eight-week program, completely online, that teaches people to be more effective relationship builders. We have had about 150 people from 25 different countries through that program in our first year.

You are on your second iteration of that, is that correct or is it your third?

No, we had just graduated our second class.

How do you go about selecting the professionals? There’s a very limited space. What is the best candidate for your program?

There’s an application process because this is a community we are building. We want to make sure that anyone who makes this investment, not just money but time, is going to get the outcomes they want. You get on the phone with an enrollment advisor, you talk through your specific challenges and goals. The personas that we are attracting are very interesting.

Twenty-five different countries from around the world. Very diverse geographically. Very diverse in terms of industries and roles. Interestingly, almost completely split evenly between men and women, but these are people who are generally in the later half of their careers. We are seeing a lot of mid-level, high potential managers, leaders who know that to get to the next level, they need to be better at executive level relationship building, or better in building relationships with partners or clients.

We are seeing people from the sales business development role express interest. We are seeing a lot of people who are in a transition, so different roles within the company, or moving industries, or even starting a new venture, and know that they want to build their network ahead of when they might need them. Those are the three types of people that we are bringing in.

Let’s dive into this program a little bit more. What are the things that they are going to be learning in this program, and why do they matter?

The “Connected Success” Program And Its Four Key Outcomes

Why do they matter? Let’s start there. It seems like AI is taking over more and more things that we had previously thought were inherently and always going to be human. In a world where that’s happening, you and I can at the press of a button meet one another. You can meet anyone in the world at the press of a button. That’s amazing.

In a world with those dynamics, the soft skills around relationships are even more important. One thing I have read is we are entering a relationship economy. It’s important to invest in the skills of how to build a relationship consistently with depth, expressing authenticity, empathy, and building trust. That’s why this is important. We can talk about what the outcomes are for an organization as a whole. What does a company with deep connections and networks look like, and why is it better?

We're entering a relationship economy, so it's important to invest in the skills needed to build relationships consistently and with depth—expressing authenticity, empathy, and building trust. Share on X

What do you get out of the program? The outcomes are generally fourfold. One is a system, and this was fundamental to what we designed. When we did our research, a lot of what we heard was, “I don’t know what to do, when to do it, who to follow up with? I keep losing touch with people.” Filter failure. “I know thousands of people, but who’s important?”

One is a system of processes, practices, and tools. The second is new mindsets and new strategies, mindsets around leading with generosity and authenticity. What does that mean? Mindsets around the power of vulnerability and its ability to create emotional contagion and quick connection between people. Shifting mindsets, overcoming limiting beliefs, and overcoming common myths about networking. One big one is that extroverts are great at it. Introverts are terrible at it. Complete myth. That’s the second outcome is the mindsets and strategies.

The third one is becoming more comfortable interacting with other humans, so batting practice. This is a community that is learning together and practicing these skills together because a book can only get you so far. For a lot of people, batting practice is valuable. The fourth is adding incredible human beings to your network. It’s been cool to see what happens over eight weeks. It’s online, but you can facilitate real depth and intimacy online, and then in our graduation, they took the opportunity to meet in person. Seeing those relationships form and where they took them, those in and of themselves are valuable as well.

I can see how this would be a great program. Let’s dive into this a little bit more as far as relationships in general. If we look over the past several years, how have the relationships evolved, especially in the leadership realm?

There’s so much that’s changed. Leadership, there are a lot of different dimensions to it. Are we talking about relationships among the leadership team? Are we talking about the relationship between the leader and their direct reports? Where do we want to take this?

Let’s start with the leadership team itself, because that is a framework of how well we are going to be with our direct reports. We can go into that second, but let’s talk about the leadership among our peers.

From Serendipitous To Engineered Interactions In Remote Work

The big shift was with the pandemic and with the shift to remote work, we went from serendipitous interactions and serendipitous structures to engineered structures and interactions. What do I mean by that? The serendipitous water cooler conversation no longer happens. The meeting together at conferences or events no longer happens. The physical contact, the high five, the hug, “Good job,” doesn’t happen anymore, but you still need to generate results. You still need to hit those metrics, and so that presents a significant challenge.

We worked through things like how many days in the office and things that I don’t think are all that important. What Keith and I worked with our clients on is what we call high return practices. We have a library of what we call high return practices. Things that we have learned that work within our research from coaching other companies, from Keith’s writing, and these are engineered practices for everything from keeping energy levels high to ensuring high candor in the room to making sure people are not withholding information, saying what needs to be said, specific stuff.

I will give you an example, and by the way, we call this concept co-elevation, the leadership team rising together, rather than viewing the CEO or the leader as the center, as the hub. The CEO shouldn’t have to be responsible for maintaining the team’s energy. The team can do what we call an energy check-in at the beginning of a meeting. On a scale of 1 to 5, put into chat what’s your energy level right now and why? Identify the people that are 1s or 2s and double click on them. “What’s going on with you? Do you need some support?”

 

The team can do that. The CEO doesn’t have to be responsible for that. Bold inclusive feedback. Our data shows that on an average Zoom, only 4 people out of 10 leave that Zoom reporting that they felt heard. You can design breakout room interactions to increase that psychological safety, bring people back to the main room, have them do readouts so they feel like they have been heard. These are engineered interactions, not serendipitous that we needed to utilize in a world of virtual work.

When we are diving into relationship building, it’s so important for the leadership team or the executive team to be effective in what they are doing on a day-to-day basis and their discussions and so forth, but it’s unavoidable at times that there’s going to be some friction. What are the best ways for leaders to remove some of that friction that has occurred between maybe a couple members of the team?

We have one of our high return practices, we call an open 360. It’s a very streamlined 360 degree process you can use on a call where you go around and everyone says, “One thing I admire and respect about you is X and in service of your success, one thing I might suggest.” This goes back to the idea of making the team responsible for crossing the finish line together, which includes coaching one another and providing feedback.

The other thing is that the CEO or the leader has to bring teams together in person. I don’t know what the magic frequency is, but it’s not as often as people think. When you are together, you over-index on the bond building and the visioning, not on the doing of the work. Those are two good tactics that a leader can use to drive for stronger relationships.

We have the leadership team, they are all gelling. Everybody is getting along. Now the next phase is taking this to a leader’s direct reports and the people that report to them. What is the next phase that leaders should be thinking about in that context?

Distinguishing Culture From Principles

Maybe I’m answering the question or maybe not, hopefully I am, but people talk about culture a lot. Sometimes you hear culture confused with principles or values. Our culture is about helping people who need help. That’s more of a value. That’s more of a first principle to me. To me, the best indication of a company’s culture is seeing how they meet, how they spend time together, and how they make decisions.

A lot of people talk about Ray Dalio at Bridgewater, and they look at the corporate culture that Bridgewater created. Bridge has a super high radical transparency, radical candor. Every decision is put on a board. Who made the mistake? Why’d you make the mistake, and what are we going to do about it? In full view. That’s the culture of the company. It’s defined by how they meet and how they make decisions.

The best thing you can do to cascade the culture you want is to model it at the leadership team level, because the rest of the company, your L1s and below will see that. Invest in the way that you spend your time and the health and the strength of the relationships on the leadership team. That’s where you get the most ROI.

The best thing you can do to cascade the kind of culture you want is to model it at the leadership team level because the rest of the company will see that. Share on X

It brings us back to this other point in the Connected Success world, which is what happens when you have a company where there are strong friendships, relationships, allyships across the organization, across functional lines? In those cases, you have glue that has some incredible benefits for the company, but also means that now it’s easier to cascade some of those cultural enhancements throughout the organization versus an organization that’s siloed.

It’s important for relationships not to just exist inside the organization, but to be effective with your industry peers and influencers, makers, or stakeholders external to the organization. What is the secret sauce here?

We call this within our co-elevation framework, teaming out. Keith has always been a big proponent. Who’s your team? Not just your organization. It’s some of your key partners or clients. Bring them into the meetings, bring them into the product review meeting. That’s one element of it. The other element of it is that we understand that we need strong relationships in the market on the sales and business development side and partnership side, but everywhere throughout the organization.

If your lead engineers have strong networks with other engineers at other companies throughout the market, they are going to have access to all the cool, new ideas. Now we get into the crux of our program beyond connections, and some of the core ideas here and this is one is so simple, but research shows, and it was a piece of research that was published in Harvard Business Review in late 2023, and it tracked 2,000 partners at professional services organizations in and around New York. What they were trying to research was what makes the rainmakers so successful?

One of the primary things is they found a persona called activators, and the activators spent several hours a week, it was calendar time, cultivating their network, and they protected that time. What did they do with that time? They simply looked at how they can feed that network with generosity, how they can be of service and support, introducing people to one another, inviting them to events, sharing resources. It’s amazing they beat out other personas. Other personas, for example, were experts. They spent their time writing articles to publish in the market, and hoped that would generate new business.

There was one persona that debaters, their whole strategy was, “I’m going to be so smart and so contrarian that you are going to want to do more business with me,” but the activators beat out the other personas by about 35%. One thing that’s important as a leader is not to take a transactional view of the time that your people are spending investing in relationships.

Assuming that they are doing it efficiently with a system, intentionally, that is a very valuable time, and shouldn’t be an afterthought. Most of us fail at networking, why? It’s because other things are more important and we try to jam it in here and there, and we think about it, but to be successful in relationship building, you need consistency.

You can’t be a dot in someone’s mental model that comes in strong and then disappears. You need to be a line. Ideally an upward sloping line. Every month or two, you are pinging them with something. Could be a simple, “I’m thinking about you, Sam. That episode we did is awesome. I enjoyed it,” but that puts you top of mind. That type of consistent follow-up being a line knotted dot is a great strategy.

You mentioned that providing them something of value. That’s typically the best way to stay relevant is understanding what was valuable to them, helping them out.

Leading With Generosity And Building Social Capital

The question then becomes, “How do you lead with generosity? How do you demonstrate value?” That’s the part that is a little bit more challenging, and conceptually it makes sense. We have a crowdsource list of what we call packets of generosity. Little things, the just-thinking-about-you message, thanking someone, providing feedback on something that they put out in the market, or commenting on a LinkedIn post. These are all small but significant acts of generosity that all fall into the category of adding value.

 

In one pocket, you’ve got your little nuggets, those are easy to do. I’ve mentioned a few of them. Then you’ve got your truffles. The truffles you want to save for important relationships. The key introductions, the things that take up more of your time, but if you do that consistently and using a system, I promise you that over the course of 6 to 12 months, you are going to find yourself surrounded by 30, 40, 50 ambassadors who are committed to your success just like you are committed to theirs and you haven’t asked for anything yet. That’s the big thing.

Getting away from that transactional what’s-in-it-for-me model and reminding yourself, your goal is to get to know this person well. Take copious notes. Family that they had a surgical procedure, where they went to college, what they aspire to, what they struggle with, and what their dreams are. You need to understand a person and then have this generosity mindset for at least 3 to 6 months, and you build up that social capital with them, such that at some point, if and when you need them, they care enough about you to help you out.

We talked about maintaining these relationships with our clients and potential prospects that we were interested in doing business with, and so forth, and other professionals out there. What about our competitors, those that we might feel are adversaries to our business?

Turning Competitors Into Collaborators

That’s a tough question. To be quite honest with you, that gets a little bit out of my domain, and there are probably other people with expertise on competitors. The one thing you reminded me of is back in the day when I started a company called Cross Campus here in LA. We became the biggest boutique shared office coworking business in LA.

I remember I was talking to a venture capitalist, and the advice he gave me was, “Take your best ideas. Write them down on a piece of paper or in an email and send them to your biggest competitor because if they could out execute you, you are dead in the water already.” I tend to take that approach of execution, eat strategy for breakfast, and try to turn competitors into collaborators.

There’s a great piece of research. This was Thomas Jefferson. I got to find it. It’s called the Jeffersonian Effect. He took on one of his biggest political rivals. They didn’t like each other, and he sent him a book that he knew his rival would enjoy. What it does is psychologists think that it creates this dynamic where your rival then gets it and says, “He’s helping me. I must like him or he must like me,” and just the act of helping a competitor can breed this virtuous loop and create a positive relationship. Some of these things are counterintuitive. Go ahead and help your competitor and have them wondering, “Why did he do that?”

The other thing that I’d love to ask you about is that there are times when we are trying to build that relationship, and our first approach was we trip all over ourselves, and we don’t show our best selves. How do we recover from that and then start over and be more successful?

None of these are layoffs. These are the hard ones. Let me ask you a question. What do you do in those situations? Assuming it was a minor trip up.

The most important thing is to be human about it and to be authentic. It’s like, “It was a bad day for me. I’d love to kinda start over and I am interested in you and what you do. I want to see if we can take this to the next level and see if we can help each other out.” I’d take some approach like that.

Recovering From A Bad First Impression

A lot of these things rest on similar conceptual blocks. Vulnerability, “I struggled when I met you and you caught me on a bad day. I had a bad fight with my partner and you caught me at my worst.” Vulnerability and then fallibility, “I’m sorry, I messed up and I acknowledge that.” Those two things are powerful. I will share one very small mess in this Zoom world. Have you ever had a situation where you are in a conversation with someone and you are listening to them over Zoom, or in person? In this scattered attention world we live in, all of a sudden your brain wanders, and 45 seconds in, you realize you have no idea what they said.

What you do in those situations is just human. I stop and go, “I’m sorry. I got to stop you there. My brain wandered. I completely missed the last 45 seconds. Could you please repeat it for me?” Every time I do that, someone chuckles because they appreciate the humanness of it and like, “No problem. Here’s what I said.” Most of us would freak out for a moment and say, “What did I miss?”

Try to stumble your way through, which I also think is a mistake. Admitting failures and so forth. If people don’t understand that others fail at times or maybe are not their best selves at times, then that’s the fault of that individual person. We can’t be operating at 100% every day, every second. That’s important.

There’s so much data that has pointed to great leadership comes from being comfortable stepping into vulnerability and fallibility. I will tell you one of the interesting things about the program that we have run. It’s been a fascinating social experiment, bringing all these people from different cultural backgrounds to the table.

So much data points to the fact that great leadership comes from being comfortable stepping into vulnerability. Share on X

We have got folks who are training from India and Poland, and these countries where culturally, they were raised with ideas like, “Don’t be too nice. People will take advantage of you. Don’t show weakness or don’t show vulnerability because that’ll show that you are weak.” I can relate to that. I grew up in a Soviet background family. I didn’t see my dad cry until I was an adult. My best advice to them, and what we work on is shedding those things because they won’t serve them well, but it’s challenging. I’m empathetic to people who either culturally or by family background have been taught not to show vulnerability. It’s more common than you think. It’s more common among men than women. Society is changing so fast right now that all those old conventions are falling by the wayside.

You brought up a good point about different cultures and so forth, and relationships are built differently in different cultures. I know that’s a deep topic, but when a leader comes into a situation where they recognize, “Perhaps this individual is from a different culture or maybe they have a different mindset.” Are there any types of first steps or best practices to engage in that situation?

Building Cross-Cultural Connections

In my research, I went deep into things like the power of the smile. There are certain things I thought were global like smiling. Smiling is pretty close to global. There are certain cultures, interestingly, where if you are smiling, it might make people distrust you. Soviet era Russia was like that. I researched that walking slowly says some things about you, but in other cultures it has conflicting signals. Using things like that.

My advice to a leader, and my advice even to people that we are working on relationship building is there’s nothing wrong with telegraphing where you are going to go or asking for permission. For example, if someone, and we call it a Johari Window. There’s a concept in psychology of a Johari Window. Your Johari Window is how much of your inner self is exposed to the world.

Some people close the Johari Window. You’ve had these conversations where it feels like pulling teeth, and so it’s hard to get them to open up. Some people fling their window wide open and wear their life on their sleeve, and within two minutes you are hearing about their bitter divorce, also not great. There’s an art to this.

There’s nothing wrong with asking, “I’d like to talk about some personal stuff. How would you feel about that?” Asking for what you want to discuss, game planning conversations. “I’m a big fan. Sam, we have 30 minutes. I’m looking forward to this. I’d love to talk about a couple of things. Maybe spend a little bit of time on this and this. What do you think and what do you want to spend time on?” Talk about the talk. That’s a very powerful tactic when it comes to trying to create connection, especially when someone is from a different culture where they might have different norms or morals.

One other thing is that it was Steven Jobs who said, “I can only have a deep relationship with so many people,” and he had a number attached to that. Is anything true to that science there?

Dunbar’s Number And Relationship Management

I will start out with something that I find fascinating. It’s not Steve Jobs. I will have to look into that, but there’s a sociologist in the ‘50s named Robin Dunbar, and you’ll often hear people refer to the Dunbar number and it’s 150. I have a slide on this I can share with you. He theorized that humans can maintain five loved ones, deep relationships, or friends. I don’t remember what the 50 bucket was, but 150 was meaningful connections. This has now taken on a life of its own. You see this in organizational design, you see it in military structures, this idea that you can only maintain 150 meaningful connections in your brain.

Guess where he got that from. The science is completely shady. He was a primate specialist who studied the size of primate social groups, looked at the size of their brains, compared them to the size of human brains and extrapolated to that 150 number. There’s no science behind it, but there is some truth to it. In the program, we refer to that number as a guidepost, but then I like to apply the 80/20 rule and create a tighter circle of 30 to 50. We got a dashboard and we use the dashboard to track those 30 to 50 relationships. Why 30 to 50? If we go back to something I said earlier, the key to building relationships is consistency, is being there regularly with touch points. Think about the time it takes to maintain that.

If you’ve got 150 people, and let’s say you sit down each week for 2 sessions, and I call them network activation sessions. I have a Wednesday afternoon and a Thursday afternoon, 45 minutes each in my calendar, and I have batched throughout the week all the cool things I want to do when inspiration strikes. “I’m going to send this to this and I will introduce Sam to this person.”

If you sit down for those two 45-minute sessions, you get 8 to 10 reach outs per session if you want to be in front of someone every 2 months. That’s not easy to do. Take that to 30 to 50, and it goes down to about 2 to 3 reach outs. Maintaining that meaningful network, maintaining it with follow-ups is what drives the ideal number.

 

Whenever we go through this, there’s always 1 or 2 people who raise their hand and go, “Can I push it to 100 or the Dunbar number of 150?” I say, “Start small time, it will tell, but here’s some factors that influence that. One, do you have an assistant to help you?” That’s a huge difference. “If there’s someone who can help or support you, push past 50.” Two, are you willing to invest more than about 5% of your work week developing your network? 5% of your work week is about 2 to 3 hours.”

If you are at a point in your life or career where your network is so important and you want to develop it, and you are like, “I’m going to put in 5 to 10 hours a week,” sure, bigger network. Maintain a bigger dashboard. The third one is relational memory. There’s a type of memory that certain people have. My business partner Keith Ferrazzi is a freak of nature when it comes to this. He can hold in his brain 500 to 600 different people, how he knows them, who they know, what they are doing in their life, where they are struggling. It’s not photographic memory, it’s not a memory for names, it’s relational memory. If you are blessed with that, you can push past the 50 a little bit.

Here’s my final question for you. I know we are running low on time. In relationship building, there’s the role of the connector in bringing people together. How important is that in a relationship?

The Role Of Super Connectors In Networking

We call them super connectors. We have got specific roles that are valuable in any network. Super connectors, cheerleaders, rising stars, mentors. We won’t go through all four of them, but in the program we go through strategies for all four. If you find someone who plays that role, then they are a valuable person. Super connectors. They know a lot of people. They host events. That’s very valuable.

The way you can find out if someone’s a super connector, certainly if they are hosting a lot of events, but it’s that person in your life who always knows the great pizza place in New York, or, “I have got a great graphic designer for you.” They are always thinking about how to connect people. Having some of those around you can be very valuable.

What are the key things that you want our leaders to walk away from this conversation?

Vulnerability and fallibility, I’m sure every leader or many leaders who are tuning in to your show are already thinking actively about that. Think about intentional time in the calendar for network development. Not necessarily for you, maybe for you as a leader, but for certain people within your organization. Think about what it means to have an organization where people have strong allyships, friendships, relationships across the organization, and how you can foster that.

Whether it’s training them on how to be better relationship builders, whether it’s bringing people together for all companies or offsites. Whether it’s creating coworking days regionally, where you invite people to get together at a coffee shop or a coworking space to work in person together, the data is amazing. Your team will be better in times of crisis. Quicker path to decision and innovation, lower attrition, higher resilience. Keith likes to say that in organizations, networks are more important than org charts. Think about your organization from a networks standpoint, not an org chart standpoint.

I know that there are a lot of our leaders out there who are thinking, “I want to be part of that next group of 150 of Connected Success.” How could they apply?

We are running Beyond Connections 3, our third cohort. We are going to cap it at 150. We are about halfway there. Go to our landing page. It’s ConnectedSuccess.com. You’ll find a link to it and it’s easy. Book a call. We have an amazing enrollment team. They will have a conversation with you or whoever in your company you think might benefit from this.

The other thing is we have had so much interest now. The outcomes have been so surprising and positive. We have companies coming to us wanting to create a corporate training program out of this. We are now slightly modifying the experience and the content to support 20, 30, or 40 people from an organization to all go through the experience together. The benefit there is not that they learn these powerful mindsets and practices, but they practice them together, and the other outcome is they have developed stronger relationships coming out of it.

If anyone’s interested in that, connect with me at [email protected], and I would love to talk. We are looking for our first several corporate pilots, so it’s a great time. The other thing I’d say is Keith released his book. He published Never Lead Alone on the heels of several years ago, Never Eat Alone, and I would encourage any leader who’s interested in this idea of flipping the leadership model so they are not at the center of everything. They could be freed up to go up and out to do the things they want to do, and who are interested in this idea of co-elevation, to read that book. Never Lead Alone is a wonderful book.

Thank you so much, Ronen. This has been a great conversation, hugely impactful to me, and I’m sure many of our readers out there. I want to thank you personally for joining me on this discussion.

Thank you. I enjoyed it.

You take care, and to all those who are tuning in, we’ll see you in the next episode.

 

Important Links

• Connected Success
• Ronen Olshansky on LinkedIn
• Ronen Olshansky’s Email Address
• Never Lead Alone
• Never Eat Alone

 

About Ronen Olshansky

Ronen Olshansky is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive dedicated to fostering deep human connections in today’s fast-paced world. After earning his degree in Economics from Yale University, he began his career on Wall Street and in management consulting. In 2012, Ronen co-founded Cross Campus, establishing seven coworking spaces across Los Angeles that serve over 3,000 members. He later collaborated with Keith Ferrazzi, author of “Never Eat Alone,” to become CEO of Connected Success, leading the Beyond Connections program, which has engaged participants from more than 25 countries. Ronen is also a partner at Ferrazzi Greenlight, a boutique team coaching institute. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a mentor at the LA Cleantech Incubator, and a board member of the Yale Club of Los Angeles. Beyond his professional endeavors, Ronen is committed to helping leaders develop essential soft skills like empathy, communication, and collaboration to thrive in the modern economy.