Are You as Excited as I Am?

Joe Greeley here, with Nimlok Minnesota.

Here’s what’s on my mind – Are you as excited as I am?

Recently I had a conversation with a new client contact that we got here for one of our existing clients, and it brought me back to my childhood. Or at least youth, if you will.

When I was thirteen years old, I needed to find a job. In St. Paul there’s not a lot of options, but there’s the obvious ones.  First is the paper route. That was nixed right off the bat by my parents. I’m pretty sure they knew they were going to be helping me, rain or shine. Can’t say that I blame them – I’ve got two kids of my own. I don’t think I’d want to do that, either.

Next there was babysitting. Again, I didn’t really want to do that. I already had a younger brother and younger sisters that I had to watch, and I’d had enough of that. Lawn mowing.  Hmmm, I don’t mind lawn mowing…not so bad, but you don’t get to talk to anybody.  A lot of movement, which is good, so let’s call that plan ‘B’.   Plan ‘A’ turned out to be caddying at the Town and Country Club right here in St. Paul. I could make my own hours, walk around, meet wonderful, different people all day long, get a load of this – cash at the end of the day.  No taxes? To a thirteen year old, absolute heaven!

Anyway, long story short, as I got to fifteen I got to get a real job.  I got a chance to work in the bag room. I got a chance to work for the head pro by the name of Terry Hogan.  Terry was a wonderful man, is a wonderful man. Terry was excited to be there every single day. He was excited to see me, he was excited to see his entire staff, he was excited to see the golfers and the members when they showed up. His enthusiasm, effort, and attitude rubbed off on all of us. We all worked hard. We had a lot of fun, we all got along, and we all wanted to work really hard for Terry.  And he did that – he was the engine that made it all happen. It was wonderful memories for many, many summers, throughout high school, and even into college as a summer job. We enjoyed every single one.

That brings me back to the client conversation that I had recently. The client was new to the company and was really just thrown into the fire as the new events manager. The program was hurting, or maybe even dying, but it was really, really struggling – wasn’t doing well.  I didn’t get a chance to talk to her before her first show, so she went, she got back and we were able to talk.

I asked her, “Hey, how did things go? How did things turn out? What went well?” She said, “You know Joe, it was fantastic! I work with a great team of people.  They were all there to help, pitch in, do what was ever necessary. We had a lot of fun together, we enjoyed our time.  We’ve got some minor tweaks that we need to make.  We talked about how we could improve.  You guys did a great job.”

I thought, this is wonderful! How did this happen?  The last person that had this job said, “Oh it was awful. The sales people don’t want to be there, they won’t lift a finger. They just complain. They’re just so picky.  I don’t want to be there, I hate traveling.”  I thought, that’s the message we used to get.  But get a load of this, that’s the message the staff got. In one clean sweep, this new person almost turned the entire program around. It was amazing!

So I asked her, “Why do you think it went so well?”  She had absolutely no idea.  Well, I know – because she had the ‘Terry effect’. Terry had just that – the enthusiasm, the effort, the attitude, he was excited to be there! This person had the same thing.  And in one clean sweep, turned it around!  No new exhibit, no new technology, no new big product launch, no whiz-bang giveaways.  She was able to turn it around in one clean sweep.

So today is really about the importance of being excited, having that enthusiasm about your trade show, your trade show program, and make it to a point it’s infectious and the people want to be there.

I will leave you with this in closing.  Somebody famous said this (and I don’t know who), “There’s nothing more contagious than enthusiasm.”   I think it fits here perfect.

Anyway, that’s what was on my mind – let us know how we can help.

Thanks!