Shabbat Shalom!

Every Friday, I host a Shabbat for my friends, family, business associates, and other people I like or want to get to know.

Here’s a picture I did from a recent shabbat with friends — including Neville Medhora, David Hauser, David Kelly, and Billy Murphy.

Our Shabbat dinner recently with friends

The point of our Shabbat is to go DEEP into conversations, help each other in business… and just relax after a long week.

Shabbat isn’t only if you’re Jewish. Anyone can do their own Friday dinner to grow relationships and business partnerships.

Today, I’m going to show you how I do my Shabbat — so you can copy it.

Here are the 14 key parts:

1. Phones off. Start with everyone turning off the phone.
2. Warm up. I ask everyone to say “Oh yeah!” as a warm-up.
3. “Why do you do Shabbat?” Even if people have never done Shabbat before, I’m curious what they expect.
4. Three prayers. Candle prayer, wine prayer, and bread prayer.
5. Start dinner. At this point, people start eating — and chatting about things. I try to keep the agenda moving along, and let people have open discussion at the end instead.
6. Highlights of the week. Everyone shares something interesting about their weeks. After someone shares his or her highlights, everyone says “Dilly dilly!”
7. Kvetches time. For people who want to share their biggest complaint of the week. It could be anything. Whenever someone says a kvetch, we say “OY VEY!”
8. Thought of the week. I put a 15-minute timer on to discuss a specific topic. For example, recently we talked about how to balance work and a relationship. When people go deeper, it strengthens the bonds.
9. Financial session. Anything about money: financial questions, “Jew” hacks, lifehacks, books, stock picks, or financial sites that you found.
10. Single session. I’ll get people who are single to describe what they want in a partner. So if someone sees or knows someone who fits the description.
11. Announcement. Open session for anyone who wants to say something or anything.
12. Moment of silence. For 30 seconds, go around the room, look at every person’s eyes, but stay silent. This is AMAZING!
13. Blessing. Point out someone in the room, say something positive. And at the end of it, say “BLESS!” out loud.
14. Take a group photo. As my buddy Neville says, “Selfie or it never happens.” To end the Shabbat, we would do a group hug and then a group selfie.

Shabbat Shalom!

Challenge: Instead of doing the same stuff this Friday, host a dinner party this weekend. How did it go? Leave a comment below.