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Adding value to your IT infrastructure

Jason Gazaway

CEO Daily Update – 10.26.2020

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Christmas Cards? | 3-Play Face Masks | 2960 Series Catalyst Switch | Hiring for Talent | News to Start Your Day

Happy Monday!

(October 26th is Nation Pumpkin Day! So whether you are carving it or drinking a spiced version, enjoy!)

Happy Monday, all!  

I hope you all had a good weekend. I spent most of the weekend not feeling well, so I was glad to be mostly better and able to attend church with the family yesterday. The autumn colors here in our little corner of Georgia are beautiful right now. Some of the leaves are beginning to fall, so we’re enjoying them while we can. I usually schedule family pictures for us around this time, but this year I just wasn’t feeling it for some reason. Just one more thing on the to-do list, I guess. I’m embracing simplicity where I can.  

One of the reasons I like fall family pictures is because it helps me prepare for sending Christmas cards to our friends and family. I enjoy sending and receiving cards. We usually hang all of the cards we receive up in one area of our home. It is a nice little moment to enjoy, seeing the smiling faces of people we care about all in one place. The last few years it seems like I have received less and less cards from others. I wonder how families will choose to handle that task this year. Will job changes or losses keep them from sending? Are more people craving some sort of connection so they’ll be sure to send cards or letters? I’m still debating embracing a year of simplicity (no cards) vs keeping tradition (sending them).  

How does your family handle sending cards? Are you doing anything different this year? 

Christin 

Today’s Product Updates from Rebecca:

Monday… we meet again! Who else is ready to start the week strong!? No better way to do that than by snagging some awesome PPE at phenomenal prices!  

One of our absolute best deals is on our 3-Ply Protective Face Mask. This is a box of 50 classic 3-Ply Protective Face Masks! Stay protected while maintaining comfort with these masks! We also have 3-Ply Protective Face Masks for Kids available! Adorable designs + great everyday protection!  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 10.26.2020

CEO Daily Update – 10.23.2020

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Planning & Creating | The Lesser-Known PPE | The Loveable SFP-10G-LR | Rhythms & Sabbaticals | News to Start Your Day

Woohoo! Its Friday! 

(October 23rd is National Boston Cream Pie Day. Go enjoy one (or your favorite dessert). Calories don’t count on holidays.)

—— 

At the beginning of 2019, Craig presented me with a Goal Planner from Cultivate What Matters.  

I’m sorry to say it sat on my desk until almost September of that year. Because I hadn’t been the one who was introduced to it, I didn’t really understand how to use it, and we ended up spending half of our year selling off pieces of another business we owned, buying a house and moving. I bought the author, Lara Casey’s, audiobook (Make it Happen) at some point and really enjoyed what it had to say. Her main message: surrender your fear and live on purpose. 

In 2020 I decided to buy myself the new Goal Planner and actually put in the work on the front end. What did I want this year to look like? One of the exercises in the beginning of the planner leaves a space for a word of the year. I had been praying each time I sat down to work through these exercises, and I knew immediately what my word was for 2020: create. 

I imagined that my year would be spent exploring my creative side: more photography, decorating our new home, exploring painting perhaps. Little did I know that most of my creative energy would be poured into business activities. Last week when Jason wrote the daily email he mentioned that he had a phrase for this past year, and that his phrase took on new meaning during the course of the year. Needless to say, I can totally relate. When I agreed to jump in and help Craig with a few things this spring/summer, I had no idea I would find myself hiring and onboarding a fractional CMO and marketing firm. 

We met the firm we’re working with through Craig’s CEO group. Initially, we reached out to their CEO for advice on building our own marketing team. (Remember that lesson we learned from selling PPE about being more intentional?) We liked what they had to say so much that we decided to hire them! It has been fun work to walk through the discovery exercises with our new CMO and Marketing Manager. (Warning: buzz words coming your way.) We’re exploring customer personas, defining what we want our voice to be in the market, and we’re looking for ways to engage and add value to our customer and potential customer interactions.  

We know you all enjoy a good daily email 😉 What other ways do you like to engage with companies you know? Social media? YouTube? Educational articles? Blog posts? Forums? Perhaps we’ll send a more thorough questionnaire out at some point, but for now I would love to hear from you if you have the time for a quick reply. Help us be a better resource for you! We truly want to add value (to your IT infrastructure and beyond). 

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 10.23.2020

CEO Daily Update – 10.22.2020

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2020 Lessons Learned  | Thermometers Update | Best Rack Mount Kit | Change Your Thoughts | News to Start Your Day

Happy Thursday!

(October 22nd is National Make a Dog’s Day! So go treat your furry, four-legged canine friend to a special treat or buy them a new toy!)

As most businesses probably are this time of year, we are looking forward to 2021 and starting to make plans. What do we want to focus on? Where can we improve? Where do we want to be at the end of 2021? It has been an unusual year for us all, so this year’s planning discussions feel quite a bit different than they have in the past.  

Besides the obvious market disruption that COVID was and is for nearly every business, some things that were different for us this year have been our product mix, marketing methods we’ve tried, and how we communicate with our customers (like this email). When we began selling safety supplies in March, we did it to serve a need, to attempt to be profitable through a yet-to-be defined season, and if I’m being honest maybe a little bit because we were bored. We had no idea adding a new and vastly different product line would change our business so much.  

When Craig and I started selling pre-owned networking equipment out of our garage in the earliest days, it was in an environment where customers were plentiful. The business really thrived in those days because of Craig’s ability to BUY well. The selling part was easy. When the CK webstore took off and we were selling more accessories, customers just came to us. At least a hundred new customers a day placed orders on the site back then. We did not have to hunt them down; they just needed what we had. Then we entered our awkward teenage years as a company, making our way through by pivoting rapidly from opportunity to opportunity. By the time we reached 2018/19 we had somewhat matured and had leaders over most critical areas, Craig had a vision for where he wanted to go, but the how was still a bit fuzzy. 2020 was supposed to be a year of reaping the rewards of hard work that had been put in during 2019 to really define the roadmap of where we wanted to go. Enter COVID. 

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 10.22.2020

CEO Daily Update – 10.21.2020

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Lessons from Homeschool  | Most Popular PPE | 7965G VoIP Phone | Set Clear Expectations | News to Start Your Day

We’re halfway there! It’s Hump Day!

(October 21st is National Reptile Awareness Day…with Halloween close by, I guess this applies to Slytherin House as well.)

This year for homeschool I am walking through a United States history curriculum with my girls. We started in 1000AD with Leif Erikson coming to North America, and we’ve worked our way up to the early 1700s. Last week our lessons were about Benjamin Franklin. We talked about his Poor Richard’s Almanac, and the girls had a project to cut out and assemble an elementary version of it. Inside there were several pre-printed words of wisdom:

  • Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
  • Haste makes waste.
  • A penny saved is a penny earned.
  • Half the truth is often a great lie.
  • Honesty is the best policy.
  • The rotten apple spoils his companions.
  • Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.
  • Well done is better than well said.

Timeless wisdom. In some ways these things seem to be reminiscent of a time past, but in reality I believe they are just as relevant today as they were when Mr. Franklin printed them. I think we (all humans) often make things more complicated than they have to be. I seek to intentionally speak and live more simply than my detail orientated brain would like because I believe there is wisdom in it.

King Solomon was given “wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore” (1 Kings 4:29) and said in Ecclesiastes 1:9:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

Timeless wisdom. 

—-

I am thankful today for being able to homeschool my children and learn lessons with them all over again from an older (and hopefully wiser) point of view.

What is something you are thankful for today? What wisdom do you have that you can share with others?

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 10.21.2020

CEO Daily Update – 10.20.2020

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Confessions | Gloves Everywhere | 3850 Series Switches | What’s My Role? | News to Start Your Day

Happy Tuesday!

October 19th is Office Chocolate Day & National Suspenders Day…so wear your suspenders while eating chocolate today! (whether you are in the office or not)

Ok, you guys. Can I confess something to you? Some days it is hard to write these emails. On the hard days I either feel stuck in a “what in the world do I have to say that is interesting?” mode, or other days anything I may want to share feels vulnerable. I have a few tricks up my sleeve to overcome or push through those things (don’t worry I don’t picture you all in your underwear). But then there are days like today where we receive really impactful and meaningful emails from customers and … wow! Knowing we’re making an impact in someone’s everyday life, bringing a smile to their face or meeting a need they have by what we’re doing and how we do it, is real motivation.
 
One of our core values is Make it About Relationship, and the emails we receive with wonderful stories of how our team has impacted someone’s life helps me know that they are really living that out. I am a proud “mama bear” in those moments, and it makes me want to find more ways we can positively impact lives.
 
Some of you receiving this email came to us because you needed safety supplies, and we had them in stock. Others of you are a customer because of our core business, which is technology products. When COVID hit and PPE was difficult to find, we had customers ask us if we could source it for them. That began our journey into PPE, and it has been great for us. We strived to offer products at great prices, found products that others weren’t able to offer though they did come at a premium cost (I’m looking at you Clorox wipes), and will always seek to ship products quickly and provide exceptional (and unexpectedly positive) service. I think we always knew that selling PPE was a season for us, as masks and gloves and other safety supplies would at some point (and are now) more widely available. That leads me to confession #2: a couple of weeks ago we made the decision to begin exiting our safety supplies season.
 
Letting customers in on “inside information” probably isn’t considered a best business practice. To be fully transparent about it, we are hoping you will help us exit this season gracefully. As of right now we still have great stock levels on many products, but as we sell out of them, we do not currently plan to re-stock the shelves. We have learned SO much through this journey (I hope to be able to write about some of those lessons soon), and we are looking forward to being able to take those lessons and apply them to our core group of technology products. I hope you’ll continue to buy your masks, gloves and other safety supplies from us as long as we have it (and feel free to share the great deals coming your way with your friends). We would also love to serve you with any technology needs that you have now or in the future.
 
With much appreciation for each of you,
 
Christin

Today’s Product Updates from Rebecca:

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 10.20.2020

CEO Daily Update – 10.19.2020

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Donations + S’mores | 3-Ply Mask Deals | SFP-10G-SR | Confronting the Brutal Facts | News to Start Your Day

Happy Monday! Make it Great! 

(October 19th is National Chocolate Cupcake Day & National No Beard Day….what a weird combo.)

I’m back! Thanks to Jason for filling in for me on Friday. I usually try to do something more on the fun side with the girls on Fridays, but this week I was inspired by Craig’s recent cleaning out shenanigans to knock some items off my personal to-do list.
 
When we moved into our house about a year ago, I cleaned out my closet and donated much of it. I held onto a few things and sold them, but I still had a small pile of things that was becominig a nuisance. Since his Crohn’s diagnosis and subsequent diet changes, Craig has lost about 60 lbs, so he had almost an entire closet full of clothes to donate, sell or give away. Our usual outlet for donating hasn’t been available since COVID, but I was able to find a local clothes closet that takes in new or like new clothes, sorts them and then allows foster children to shop there. (Apparently many children in foster care come into their new homes with very little in the way of clothes.) They also help families who need it for whatever reason, mothers and children coming out of domestic violence situations, and house fire victims. Thankfully they had an appointment for drop-off available on Friday, so we filled the back of my SUV with what we had and gave it all away! I’m so glad we found a place that is blessing those in need in our community.
 
The rest of our weekend was good as well. We enjoyed a movie with friends in our outdoor “theater” (speakers + outdoor movie screen) with the fire pits going and marshmallows roasting. The girls loved it!
 
I have lots of different things on my plate this week, so I am praying for energy, stamina and clarity of mind around each thing I need to tackle. The right things at the right time, please Lord. I hope each of you has a productive and fulfilling week ahead.
 
Until tomorrow,
 
Christin

Today’s Product Updates from Rebecca:

Happy Monday! We are continuing to offer unbeatable deals on PPE!  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 10.19.2020