February 2025 - Bob Littell

Bob Littell, CLU, ChFC, FLMI President and Chief NetWeaver NetWeaving International and The Enrichment Company, LLC Member since January of 2025

After a 50+ year career in Financial Services as an agent, a manager, head of advanced marketing, and then Chief Marketing Officer for two insurance companies, Bob went into private practice as an independent consultant, expert witness, and columnist, writer and contributing editor for over a dozen trade and consumer publications including the Wall Street Journal, Kiplingers, Selling Power, Medical Economics, Atlanta Business Chronicle, as well as more recently, in Sales & Marketing Magazine. That also got him into speaking and Event Planning. Today, he is totally focused on spreading the NetWeaving concept and philosophy – known as the ‘business’ version of Pay It Forward – around the globe.

Fun facts about Bob in his own words:

“In 1967, I was the Buffalo Mascot for the University of Colorado. But it was not the glamorous thing it is today. The suit was an old pair of ragged gold-colored pajamas with a tail -pinned onto the rear end. The head was made of paper mâché and it had two strings dangling down. When you pulled on one of the strings, it made the two wooden eyes roll, while the other opened the mouth.

The first football game, when I was supposed to run out in front of the football team, (I had never run with the head on before), I thought you were supposed to look out through the little slits under the wooden eyes, but that didn’t work when you ran. I learned later that you were supposed to tilt the head way back and look through the mouth when you pulled on that string. Without that knowledge or coaching, as I ran out, I got disoriented and did a 180 and was run over by the football team. If that happened as it would today, I’d still be famous because it would have gone viral. A few years ago, they brought me down to the field to acknowledge the 50 years since Ralphie, the real live buffalo, replaced me.

My passion today at age 78, is all about spreading the NetWeaving concept and philosophy around the globe. NetWeaving is all about being a ‘connector’ of others, as well as a ‘gratuitous information and resource’ for others, but with no strings attached. You just believe in the law of reciprocity and that, what goes around, does come back around. I am living proof, with dozens of examples, that that works!

My favorite part of my job is connecting people whom I believe will benefit from meeting each other. After speaking and training about NetWeaving all over the U.S. and in a number of other countries for over 25 years, as well as planning and running a number of events, including 15 years of organizing and running the “Don’t Need to Read the Book” book club in Buckhead, I became disillusioned with how few people were actually setting up and ‘hosting’ meetings as I had suggested. Now with Zoom, it’s as easy to set up and host an introductory meeting of two or more people as it is to send an email.” (reference article in Sales and Marketing Magazine http://www.salesandmagazine.com – just search for NetWeaving).

A humorous recollection:  “I was Social Chairman for my fraternity back at CU. We had one of our parties at a horse farm barn in Boulder that had converted the upstairs hayloft into a party area with a raised bandstand at one far-end corner. With knowledge of only 2 other fraternity brothers and 3 other fraternity/sorority cook’s conspirators, at 11:00 that night, I brought up three 5-gallon tubs of ‘Jello’. Did you know that when Jello gets onto a floor, it becomes almost impossible to stand up. Along with the “Hairy Buffalo” punch (you know the ingredients), it was a great party. What we didn’t think of was that this was the hayloft of a barn – with slits between the cracks in the boards of wood. They called us the next day saying they were suing us for the cleanup (is it stalactites, or stalagmites that point down?). But then because of all the visibility they were receiving from the event, they not only dropped the suit, but they gave us the place the next year – at no charge – with the understanding – no Jello. That marked the beginning of my Event Planning Career.

I joined MPI so that I can demonstrate in real-life situations how my life and my PASSION for spreading the NetWeaving message has motivated me to not only speak at MPI Meetings and Events as I have done in the past, but to be a ‘catalyst’ within the organization. If meeting planners spend more time imagining the positive ‘take-aways’ from their meetings, and also, setting things up so that those ‘follow up’ and ‘follow through’ actions and connections will actually take place, more meetings will have the their real intended mission which is to create new and extended business and personal connections that result in new business opportunities and new friendships.