Introducing Gino Dion
It is amazing who you might meet if you open yourself up to new experiences. Even more amazing when you find a mover and shaker you didn’t know about in your own backyard.
That is exactly what happened to Greg when he decided to attend a conference for the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas. NAB is conference for broadcasters and their equipment manufacturers. Greg decided to attend to see what connections he could make through networking, but it wasn’t necessarily a conference for filmmakers to pitch their ideas. He left with a quorum of industry people from New Brunswick, Canada and this is where he met Gino Dion and the two became fast-friends.
Gino works for a company called IneoQuest, which is a multi-national company offering products and services for the monitoring of video quality. Broadcasters use products from IneoQuest to guarantee their transmissions. We all can imagine how important such a service is by considering, what would you think would happen if the transmission of the World Cup final went down? Disaster!
Gino comes from a small town in New Brunswick, where there is sometimes a belief that, “when you come from a small place, you can only do small things.” Gino couldn’t disagree more. He has taken time out of his schedule to speak to students at his local high school to tell them that not only can they do big things, but their small town roots can actually act as an advantage. He cites his experience of growing up poor in a small town and having to fight for every scrap he got as one of the major reasons he eventually became IneoQuest’s vice-president of engineering. He saw detractors of his dreams as challengers, and used his determination as fuel to get to his goal.
Gino takes pride in exporting his New Brunswick cultural values and says that simple things like holding a door for someone or saying hello to a stranger has been able to set him apart in the business world. Another example of small town service is whenever Gino sells a system to one of his clients, he writes his home phone number on his business card. He tells his client that they can call him at any time, day or night, if they need him for something. Gino told Greg when they went into a dueling piano bar in Vegas that they would own the bar by the end of the night because they were New Brunswickers. That’s exactly what they did and a wild time was had by all.
In this episode
Greg remembers the great times spent with Gino in Las Vegas. He notes that friendships made at trade shows can turn into great business relationships and that putting yourself “out there” almost always pays dividends. Dave is struck by Gino’s suggestions of how to make your customer service more personal. We all agree that great things are available to you if you open your eyes to opportunities and it doesn’t matter where you came from.
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