It’s been an extraordinary four weeks. I've been hypnotized, performed in an improv show, visited New York, Columbus, and Chicago, seen one of my heroes speak, spoken in front of 500 people, and seen IntelliContact grow from 36 to 42 employees as we've added Sarah, Leah, Elsa, Jeffrey, Desmond, Richard, and Natasha.

On October 15, I met Rye Barcott in person for the first time. Rye is as class of 2001 UNC graduate who has been an officer in the Marine Corps for the past five years and now is doing a Masters in Business Administration/Masters in Public Policy Joint Degree at Harvard, which is exactly what I want to do in a few years. Rye is the founder of Carolina for Kibera, which I have blogged about recently on my Anti-Poverty Campaign Blog. It was a transformational experience to speak with Rye and pick his brain for a couple hours at Franklin Street Pizza & Pasta and East End Martini Bar in Chapel Hill.

After six weeks of Level I Classes at Dirty South Improv in Carrboro, NC, I performed in an improv show with 13 other class members on October 16. I played in four scenes. I was Luigi, a plumber from the mushroom kingdom with a superiority complex, a french man in a ski lodge, a kissing cousin from Alabama mad at his wife about a mayonnaise sandwich, and a rambunctious little kid on the top floor of the Sears tower. I love doing improv and feel like it's almost the other half of me. After acting like I'm 35 every day running a company, it's nice to act like I'm 10 for a few hours every week.

I went to New York October 23-25 to go to the ClickZ Email Marketing Summit, meet a friend Ilia Nossov from Buffalo, meet with IntelliContact customer Jed Freifeld from Treats4Pets, meet with our largest customer, and have a press tour interview with Fortune Small Business magazine. I went to Columbus on October 27 and 28 to speak at Ohio State University with Adam Witty, Michael Simmons, and Sheena Lindahl as part of the Extreme Entrepreneur Tour, and to Chicago November 2-5 to speak at the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization conference and judge their Elevator Pitch competition, which was won by Jordan Clancy of Embry-Riddle with his idea for a multi-university student union in Daytona Beach, Florida. The three other judges and I listened to fifty-two 90-second pitches over the course of six hours.

Speaking at the CEO conference was such a rush! The room was packed, with about 150-200 attendees. There was so much energy and passion in the room that day. I started by running from the back screaming, got everyone up out of their chairs to get the energy up, tested some new material like the who got lucky line and the motivation jump for $10 (borrowed from Michael Simmons), got those with business ideas who had business cards up in the front to exchange contact info with people looking for business partners who didn't have ideas, talked about my passion for reducing poverty and hunger in developing nations, and went through my 10 steps to build a company to $1 million in sales presentation.

This Friday I had the opportunity to meet one of my heroes for the first time. Jeffrey Sachs, a development economist from Columbia, came to UNC to speak at Memorial Hall in front of about 1000 attendees. He gave a moving presentation on How to End Extreme Poverty by 2025 based on his book, The End of Poverty. The event was put together by the Millennium Village Project at UNC, Duke, and Bennett College. I'm really moved by the work of the student members who've created this organization. They created it based on Sachs' response to a student question during a video conference with Sachs in Fall 2005. The question: "What can we as students do to help the fight against global extreme poverty." The response: "Help start a Millennium Village." The result: A year later the first-ever student led project is well on its way to raising the $1.5 million needed to make Sauri, Kenya the first-ever student-led Millennium Village Project.

Sachs noted that we live in a great moment and have the potential for the first time in human history to end extreme poverty in our lifetimes. He said eloquently, "the us vs. them mentality is absurd, and it's over". Sachs gave six steps toward achieving the goal.

1. Grow more food.
2. Control malaria
3. Ensure clinical health services.
4. Provide safe water
5. Provide food at schools
6. Provide connectivity to end isolation

At work, it’s been hectic yet engaging. Our growth remains very strong and above our projections. We’re up to 6,763 customers as of today. I've spent the past few weeks managing the growth and dealing with some situations that come up when you're growing very rapidly. In addition to traveling, I've been working on interviewing and training, planning the next iteration of our product and brand vision, planning for office space needs, and interfacing with one of our larger customers. It's a very exciting time to be at Broadwick. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to continue to lead 41 people every week toward reaching our goal of becoming the leading worldwide provider of communication software.

These past few weeks I’ve hung out with a lot of great people while traveling including Amy, Sam, Anthony, Demetrius, Joel, Hayes, Caitlin, Jason, Zola, Jesse, Josiah, Yuri, Jed, Adam, Michael, Sheena, Katie, Brock, and Ilia. Thanks to all of you for making my life invariably richer and for some great times.

Here's to the Rutgers' Scarlett Knights, with hope they can continue their miracle season, to the San Diego Chargers, who just beat the Bengals 49-41 and kept me half occupied while writing this post, to the Florida Gators, for holding on to a 17-16 victory and their hopes of a football national championship by blocking two field goals and an extra point, and to the fact the basketball season at UNC is about to be underway.