I was having lunch recently with my friend Matt Simpson, who owns Infusion.  He was telling me about a mutual friend Phil Poje, that just started a new company here in Kansas City called Tech Orchard.  Matt and his team did all the design work and web site and they made sure the site was live well before the launch of the new iPhone 5 that is supposedly happening on October 14th.  Phil was the Chief Marketing Officer for Stallard Technologies before starting this venture, so he is very familiar with the business of dealing in used technology gear.

The concept is that Tech Orchard will buy your old iPhone or iPad and send you a check in 3 days or PayPal payment immediately once the condition of your used equipment is verified.  I had an old iPhone 3G that has been collecting dust on a shelf for over a year.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Tech Orchard would give me $105 cash for it if it was in good condition!  I filled out the simple form on their web site and got a bubble mailer sent to me in short order.  Dropped the old iPhone into the mailer and shipped it off.  I got an email confirmation that they had received it the next day and now a check is in the mail for $105.  This was about the easiest process I can imagine and I would much rather have cash than a boat anchor.

If you remember in my last blog post, I mentioned that I would be having lunch with Matt and joked about the fact that “people don’t want to know what I had for lunch.”  Well, I had a great salad and a cup of steak soup at Nick and Jake’s.  It was excellent as always.  The point here is that real conversations happen over lunch and often they are stories worth telling.  Matt and I talked about a lot of interesting topics, goals for our businesses, trends in social media, the brand development work that Infusion is currently engaged in and more.

The important thing to note, this is yet another example of how simple word of mouth can have a dramatic impact on your business.  Matt did the creative work for Phil’s new company.  Matt told me about it.  I had a need for Phil’s services.  I tried the services and liked the result so much that I decided to blog about it.  There is a strong chance that 3,000+ people that Mic and I are connected to might hear about Tech Orchard.  What if 1% of them tried the service out?  That is 30 people.  Assuming the average purchase is $105 like mine (and that is on the low end) this could be more than $3,000 of business for Phil.  And I am just one person.  Phil is going to grow his business successfully by being well connected, telling good stories and delivering on his brand promise that Tech Orchard is the easy way to sell your old iPhone or iPad.

If you have an old iPhone or iPad sitting around, go to www.techorchard.com and trade it in for some cash!

We talk a lot about being consistent with your messaging when it comes to pace (at least weekly), voice (fun, professional or somewhere in between) and platform (social networks, email newsletters, marketing pieces).  One of the questions that we hear all the time is “How do you come up with things that are worth saying to your audience?”

I have been doing this for so long that it comes naturally.  I have to remind myself that not everyone has experience writing, thinking like a blogger, or paying attention to the things that happen every day that are worth talking about.  You might be doing this kind of activity for the first time in your professional career.

I thought it would be good to walk you through a day in my life and show you the many opportunities that occur to talk about your staff, your company, your clients and more!

Before I do that, here is a quick list of things that you should consider talking about:

1. Clients
2. Vendors/Partners
3. Projects
4. Things that caught your attention
5. People, people, PEOPLE!

September 7th, 2011

6am – Personal and Business – For Me, They Are The Same Thing
Got up and went to LifeTime Fitness with my brother Mike Terry who works for Ingenix.  Talked about the fact that Adam Rector from Beautiful Outdoors was coming by the house today to give me an estimate on some landscaping work in the back yard.  Mike mentioned that he needs to have some work done in his back yard as well and wanted me to have Adam give him a call.  (Later in the afternoon, I did refer Adam to Mike = Word of Mouth Referrals in Action #1)

8am – Creating my Daily To Do List, Checking Emails, Etc.
Came back to the house to clean up and get to work.  Checked my email and started making follow up calls… this involved a list of people and companies that is too long to even try to include here.  Took me about an hour.

9am – Mic Rocks, T-Shirt Talks
One of the things on my follow up list was to talk to Mic about the “Avoiding People That Suck” T-Shirts.  The article he wrote was a huge hit and Brett Gibson at AdventureTech asked when the T-Shirts would be available!  (Mic is creative and driven and I could have written a blog article about him!)  He is working with a good friend of his, Molly Beacom at Image Market on pricing, etc.

10am – Public Service Announcement
Started errands, including going to Commerce Bank to make a Blue Gurus deposit and then to the post office to mail off my quarterly estimated tax payments.  Yes, they need to be sent by September 15th, so count this as a friendly reminder to get on that if you do quarterly estimates.

11am – New Client
Got a call from Donna Rimbo at Christ Church in Overland Park.  She was referred to us by one of our clients, Tommy Wilson at the Downtown Council of Kansas City.  (Word of Mouth Referrals in Action #2) We had a great conversation for 30 minutes about a potential project we could do together.  I told her how we do what we do.  She mentioned that their committee had been talking about this project and when Donna mentioned that she was going to talk to Blue Gurus that one of the committee members started raving about us.  (Yay!)  She said based on our brief conversation, the strength of the referrals and the respect of peers, they are not looking at other companies to help them with this project!  A new client for Blue Gurus and a testament (nice word choice?) to what we keep saying about the power of word of mouth and building a positive reputation for doing what you say you are going to do.

12:30pm – Technical Work
My friend Matt Simpson, owner of Infusion, asked me to help him out with a client project involving WordPress.  I spent 90 minutes getting the project done and following up with Matt on next steps.  Oh, and scheduled lunch together for September 21st at Nick and Jake’s.  I had to include this detail because so many people say “I don’t care where people are going for lunch.”  Hey, if you don’t care… fine.  It’s part of my story though.  You won’t care about every part of this story, that is normal and even expected.  Some people live near Nick and Jake’s.  Some people own Nick and Jake’s.  Some people love or hate Nick and Jake’s with a story of their own.  You get the point… it’s not just about what I had for lunch.

2:30pm – Writing My Blog Update
Sat down to write my blog update with nothing particular in mind.  Thought about all that had happened today and thought about the fact that there are dozens of stories involving people and companies that might be worth talking about.  Realized we hadn’t done an article on the blogging process, so why not document the day!

In Closing…
If you read this whole article, you prove my point.  This thing was WAY TOO LONG.  You must care about me, Mic and Blue Gurus to have gotten through it… and that is the whole point.  People want to hear what is going on in your life because they CARE about you.  In a 9 hour period today, I connected with dozens of people, representing dozens of companies.  Helped my brother out.  Earned a new client through a word of mouth referral.  Did billable work for a client.  Crossed off the majority of the things on my To Do list.

I could expand on any one of these stories to create a great article that talks about specific people and companies.  (Did you recognize any of the people or companies?  Do you know them?  Have you done business with them?)  This stuff matters.  Look at what you and your company are involved in on a daily basis and tell your stories!