Opher Brayer’s Blog

Written by Donna Abraham, MA, RDT, Communications Specialist
Boyer Communications Group, Inc.

Have you ever had the feeling that there is a parallel you, living in a parallel universe, doing things that are parallel to you life? Well, this belief was strengthened for me when I was introduced to another “small but might company” called the Brayer Group.

Our small but mighty company, Boyer Communications Group, (note the similarity – Brayer/Boyer) based in Manhattan, opened a branch of our Communications Training in Israel about 6 months ago. We teach Presentation and Business Writing Skills workshops to companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Pepsi, Hershey, NDS, just to name a few.

A friend of mine had been at a training day given by the Brayer group at her company, and suggested that I get in touch with the Brayer Group for what could be a mutually beneficial business collaboration.

Upon meeting Dan and Maya, I was struck by so many similarities in our companies’ philosophies and goals. We discussed a joint company meeting when my CEO, Brad Boyer, was in Israel about a month later.

Brad and I arrived at the Brayer office after a long day of meetings and running around Israel. You see, it was Brad’s first time visiting Israel, and my goal was for him to fall in love with our “small but mighty country.” He was well on his way, and had been highly impressed by what he had seen and whom he had met up until this point. The Brayer Group was no exception.

 After a light dinner, (which as Brad was quickly learning, nothing gets done in Israel without there being food close at hand) we got down to business. Brad set out to show, in a nutshell, how we teach people to organize presentations. We all sat down and hammered out the basis of a presentation, each person working on a topic that was part of their professional or personal agenda. We were highly impressed, though not surprised, at how quickly the Brayer gang produced the presentations in our method, and even though the hour was late, very clever key points were emerging.

In the spirit of teaching by example, Brad was writing a presentation on his impressions of Israel – before being there and during. Brad shared with us that though he knew better, he reali zed what a tremendous job the televised media does on scaring people to death and making unfortunate situations magnified to the point of monstrous dimensions, similar to what he had experienced living in New York during 9/11 and having the rest of the world tell him he was crazy for being there. (Don’t I get that everywhere I go in the world when people hear I chose to move back to Israel!)

In his typical wacky way, Brad described how he felt Israelis were very different on their home base rather than elsewhere in the world. “Israelis are like Texans.” He said. “They don’t travel well. At home, what seems charming and fun can seem very out of place anywhere else in the world. So to sum it up, Israel is like Texas – only with Hummus!” We all were quite amused with the analogy.

After the mini-training session, the to brains of the operations, Opher Brayer and Brad, disappeared into Opher’s office for a one-on-one meeting of minds. We practically had to drag them out of there for it was getting late and I knew Brad still had to pack and we had early meetings.

As Brad and I walked out, all he could say was “Wow!” It was quite overwhelming for both of us to se the meeting of parallel universes, and imagine what could happen if these universes shared resources. The world would never be a dull place again, that’s for sure! Much, much more to come…