In this episode, I’m sitting down with Marc Gordon.

He’s a marketing expert, award winning keynote speaker & internationally recognized thought leader in the field of customer experience.

Tune into the episode…

In this episode, I’m sitting down with Marc Gordon: a marketing expert, award winning keynote speaker & internationally recognized thought leader in the field of customer experience.

And, I’m asking him about EACH of these 3 things!

I wanted to know HOW he became a marketing expert, he shares tons of tips for those who aspire to speak on stages like he does, and he gives us the rundown of what’s required to manage your customers expectations and have a great customer experience inside of your business.

We talk about:

Speaking:

What have you learned about the art of public speaking & delivering impactful presentations from stage
Any tips for delivering a memorable keynote?
How do you fight nerves going on stage
In your opinion, what’s 1 essential quality of a great public speaker?

You’ve appeared on a variety of news outlets, stages, podcasts, radio etc.

How did you begin to get Media Exposure on your brand?
What tips would you offer to a listener who aspires to put their message on mainstream media, like you have? Where do they begin?

Running Your Business Today...

What does a current ‘week in the life’ look like for you
Is there a tool / tip / resource that helps you run your business smoothly?
Anything exciting coming down the pipeline that you’re working on?

The visionary life podcast is a place where big sky thinking is welcomed, and conversations about daily Betterment are essential. You'll hear from successful entrepreneurs, creative thinkers, and visionaries just like you so that you feel less alone as you pursue everything you want, and deserve in this lifetime. If you're ready to stop living an ordinary life and start living a visionary life, then welcome home.
Mark Gordon is a marketing expert and award winning keynote speaker, an internationally recognized thought leader in the field of customer experience. He gives us the rundown of what's really required to manage expectations and have a remarkable customer experience inside of your business. Being in this business is a gift of taking the highest level of care of yourself, so that you can show up at 110% Anytime you are client facing. Jarrett talks about how to take care of yourself so that you are the most important asset in your business. And without your health without your vibrancy, without your creative ideas, you're not doing much good, right?
Mark Williams is a marketing expert, an award winning keynote speaker and our customer experience expert. We need more spotlights to be shined on Canadian entrepreneurs, authors, experts, and I'm really thrilled to be able to sit down with you.
Russell started his career in automotive marketing and has since developed a niche as a customer experience expert. He says the key is to build on managing expectations. The better you are at managing customer expectations, the better and more fulfilling an experience can be.

A lot of our listeners are in their first one to two years of starting their business. So it's not like they have a customer experience team, per se, but it's them. They're the ones running the sales calls and working with their clients. What is a really great customer experience? And why is it even important?
Every transaction should be easy, convenient, and stress free for the customer. Easy means that the customer shouldn't have to work hard to find you or connect with you. Convenient means that customers should be able to reach you on their terms. Stress free means that they shouldn't question what they're doing. They should never have to second guess.
Businesses need to make it easy for customers to find us, easy for them to contact us and easy for us to communicate with each other.
In most cases, the whole easy part is influenced by the business, not the customer. A business needs to be there for its customers in a way that is easy for them. And if they can only come up with one or two ways like that, there's a problem there.
I was having a hang up the other day, I was looking to hire a service provider, but it needed to be location specific. And I landed on somebody's Instagram profile. And first off, I couldn't figure out what their name was, like I saw they were the human behind the business. It felt so hard that I didn't even make the initial connection.

They missed the first two parts of that right, the easy and the convenient. Right there. Were there were over two, right there. And what ended up happening is you left.
Are we supposed to figure out where our customers are hanging out? Or contact us through the medium that's most convenient for them? So when you say convenient, I want to double tap on that one.
As a business, you need to be accessible to people in every form. And it's really not that difficult, by the way, because there's so many tools now to tie everything in. So if somebody reaches out to you through almost any platform, you will be notified of it instantly.
What do you do when it's not easy, convenient or stressful for a customer to reach out to you? What are some of the side effects that occur when a customer is having that negative experience? And they're like running up against a brick wall? Like, why does it matter? What are the potential outcomes of ignoring these concepts?
Well, there's essentially three when it comes to delivering a negative experience. People are quick now to post a negative review on Yelp or any kind of review site give me a one star out of four or five or just to share their experience in a Facebook Post.
What are some of the positive outcomes that can come out of a focus on customer service rather than customer experience? What do we gain from focusing on making the customer experience amazing, and how can we use this to help us grow our business?
In many cases, having an ordinary experience that brings you joy and contentment can be enough. It's not always about under promising and over delivering, it's really just about promise and deliver. How can you complain about getting exactly what you believed you were going to be getting? It doesn't take a lot of work. Companies in all kinds of industries, b2b or b2c?
You can get an equally great experience at both places. You're not expecting CAG level service at McDonald's. At William Sonoma, premium quality, higher prices, great service, if they can deliver on those, and you end up paying a higher price, but you get something really, really great backed by great service. So it's very possible.
Hey, visionary, are you always trying to find clients you're not reaching your monthly income goals? And you're only half booked or partly booked and you'd love to become fully booked? Well, I've got all the answers for you. I want to help you take your business from partly booked to fully booked. The workshop is going to be held on Thursday, August 25, from two until 4pm. Eastern and it's held on Zoom.
A lot of businesses want to surprise and delight their customers. But when you do this, you're increasing your costs and it takes more time and effort to deliver something that you normally wouldn't. Second of all, your customers don't always know that it's a surprise, they don't know it's an extra effort or a bonus.
I want to shift gears a little bit to talking about your speaking career. A lot of listeners who one day would like to be speaking on stages, right? They know they have some sort of like juicy concept that they're still kind of marinating in. I'm curious, do you have any tips or just takeaways on what you've learned about public speaking?
I'm going to open up the honest book here and let everyone know, first off. I still get nervous, very nervous. And luckily that energy goes as soon as you know, I hit the stage. But backstage, I'm a wreck. Now some speakers aren't but but me that's, that's the way I am, he says.
You don't have to present a college course, in the span of 30 or 45 minutes. The audience will pick it up, you just have to be yourself by yourself amplified. When I'm on stage, I communicate much the same way as I'm doing with you right now. But it's amplify, because obviously you and I can have that same energy now, as I do on stage.
You have to amplify your energy a little more, really connect with the audience. I see so many speakers who disrespect the audience and don't praise them. I like to treat the audience as if they are a guest in my home, I want them to feel welcome. And that's the hardest thing to get these days is people's attention.
I'm wondering if you can talk about the early days of your career and how this part of your life really took flight. How did you get into speaking? Was it something that you just put together a little roster of what you could talk about, and then you went out and pitched or did it kind of come naturally?
In his early 20s, I did stand up. And I was also involved in enacting and things like that. And so it, I've always liked the idea of performing. And then about 1012 years ago, I really decided that I had something to give with regards to educating smaller businesses. By the way, if you're looking to speak, you know, your listeners have to know don't take it personally.
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I think that's one really important note from the story you told is to think back, what are some of those things that inspired you as a kid? Or what are the moments that you felt like, Oh, I wish I could do that?
A lot of people still have this terrible fear of public speaking, but if you're truly passionate about it, you will push back that fear. If you go up and you just share a story, and there's so many avenues now to do that. It's a rush and other people be like, You know what, I tried it, and not really my thing, but I gave it a try.
Did you ever have to invest in like formal coaching or education? Or how did you learn the art of a really good speech, or talk?
I've been very lucky, I joined caps, the Canadian Association of Professional speakers a number of years ago. And that is a great environment, I recommend anyone just to Google them. There's other speakers who have much more experience than than myself or anyone other people have been doing it for 30 years. So really the a lot of what I've learned not only from me refining my own skills, but also from my colleagues and other speakers.
Every day, I make a list of what I need to do. Over the course of the day, that list will get longer and shorter as I add new tasks or complete tasks. But every night, at the end of the evening, I will just take a quick look at what I have to do the next day. I use a CRM, I use HubSpot, to manage my communication with various clients. And over the course of the day, I could be doing anything from being on a podcast like yours to having a consulting call, which I do a lot of. I never really know what's going on from day to day.
Every day is a little bit different for people who run their own business, right? That's what makes it exciting, you never know what's going to happen in the next 24 hours. What are you excited about right now, as a business owner? Like, what are you working on that your company is doing?
I am working on a book, I've been asked to to write one for a number of years now. So the book is going to be called selling happiness, how to deliver experiences that inspire loyalty and drive sales. It's very slow process, but I'm about maybe a quarter of the way through it.
I've also been approached to pitch a television show, which is going to be called the tentative name is business 9119. So it's kind of like Bar Rescue, but it's not industry specific. So we'll see what comes of that. Oh, yeah, I love those shows.
Mark Zuckerberg has written a book called The Happiness Project, which he hopes will be an incredible resource for people who are looking to deliver happiness. He says if someone wants to stay connected with him, where should they go? And how can they find him? I would totally watch that show. I want to watch like someone revamping a business.
Well, thanks, Kelsey. I'm a big fan of Facebook and LinkedIn, those are my two platforms of choice. And I share a lot of information through these platforms, tips and tricks and, and videos and how tos and all kinds of stuff. So I love to share and just give content away as much as I can.
Mark, thanks for tuning in to this episode of visionary life. I love bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis. So it would mean so much to me if you could help me out by rating and reviewing the Show in your iTunes app. There'll be a link in the show notes. Also support the show by taking a quick screenshot of the episode and sharing it on your Instagram Stories.