Cappuccino Chat - Episode 30 - Marcus Lemonis

welcome back to another episode of cappuccino chat this time we're talking about a couple of lessons i learned when i got a chance to meet marcus lemonis so a couple months back my wife and i got a chance to meet and talk with marcus lemonis now if you don't know who he is he's the star of the tv show the prophet but he's also the ceo of camping world so i don't know if you're into camping arvine you might be familiar with camping world he is the ceo and if you ever get a chance to go to a conference or go somewhere and hear him speak you will not be disappointed this is not your typical uh interaction with a guest speaker where they get up on stage and death by powerpoint or anything i don't even think he used the powerpoint presentation to tell you the truth it got involved with the audience and got audience participation a hundred percent literally pulling people out onto the floor he wasn't even on the stage and talking with them giving them a mic and talking through different things now he did this for us in the it world because he understands the importance of it that it holds for small businesses and bigger businesses like his to some extent but definitely in the small business world and the help that we played in 2020 with those businesses being able to get through what happened with everybody with kovid and keep the businesses running remotely and things like that but two things i really learned from him are keep your communication simple and to the point now we in the it world have a big problem with this and i've been working on this for years and i try to do it but we like abbreviations for everything and the old adage of geek speak where you can't understand it's like hey i don't really care just fix it so right we can't talk to people like that we need to keep it simple and to the point he made a point of saying make sure you can talk to a third grader treat everybody like a third grader you could explain what you're about to do to a third grader there should be no reason someone can't understand the need for your services and for what you're trying to explain to them so this is you know really good for all businesses not just us um is when we're marketing to our clients when we're talking to our clients maybe when we're on site servicing our clients um you know if you're in professional services like that heating air conditioning again roofing tiling any of those things where you're interacting with the client a lot keep your communication simple and to the point next item that he said and a lot of people may not like this is keep communicating never communicate there's no such thing as over communicating we need to make sure that our clients understand what we do for them all the various services we offer how they go about asking us for those services right so it happens with us once in a while that a client will call up and say hey so-and-so is here to do this and we don't know anything about it and we could have helped them with it with our solution and made sure the transition went smooth for instance voice over ip phones so we do that well we have clients sometimes that maybe their current phone guys trying to get them off they don't realize that we do voiceover ip even though you know i may feel like i'm communicating the fact that we do do voiceover ip it's on all of our invoices that we offer this service my monthly newsletter that we put out is on this our quarterly and biannual conversations uh business reviews that we have we go over these types of topics that we do offer it and you know are you happy with these things even though i do that it still slips through so that adage of you know always be communicating is very important now you don't want to be annoying right so like today hey this and then tomorrow the same thing and then next day the same thing there is you know you don't want to come off as it being annoying but don't assume [Music] you're over communicating because you're most likely under communicating i know one example that comes up is um uh the uh soap play set yeah uh you get the monthly postcards from different stores and stuff that you go to right and a lot of these stores will just send the same postcard month after month after month after month maybe with a 10 off or a free this or did you know we have this or buy one get one off now we because we're getting something out of it we probably don't think it's over communicating but how often do we just throw those away or set those off to the side we do it all the time but i don't think that those people are over communicating um because what happens when you want to go to that store like i could have swore i saw this postcard the other day where did it go what happened to it and wouldn't it be nice if there was a postcard in today's mail and there it was that you wanted right so make sure [Music] you're communicating at the proper level no such thing as over communicating than being annoying hopefully none of you think i'm being annoying but i do these monthly videos i send out monthly newsletters we do do monthly postcards to prospects to try to get some additional clients and communicate and educate the community these are all things of ways that we like to communicate with our clients and educate them about certain topics as it relates to i.t and technology so again if you ever get a chance to see marcus lamonis i highly highly recommend you go see him speak you will get something out of it he will tailor everything to the audience and speak on something that's very relevant and helpful to your industry or those in the audience if we can ever help you with your it and break down that geek speak please reach out to us 760-770-5200