The Big Reach: Jason Turcotte
Jason Turcotte reminds me of the month of March because he’s like a lion and a lamb.
The owner of Turcotte Data & Design and the managing director for BNI’s Western Mass region, Jason is firm, clear, concise and a bit rugged when it comes to networking through BNI. He’s a stickler for rules. He pushes hard, and he has standards.
This is how Jason is like a lion. (Besides, he’s formidable at 6’2” and 285 pounds.)
The lamb in Jason has a giant heart. He gives constantly to BNI members, both in his official role as managing director, overseeing 250 members and 11 chapters, and unofficially, as a mentor to countless entrepreneurs in the Valley. He sincerely wants people to succeed.
Jason grew up in a family with not a lot of nickels to rub together. He saw his parents struggle to make ends meet and provide for him and his sister. His mission in BNI is to help local business owners experience success so they don’t have to work as hard.
His focus is on education.
As managing director for 18 months, Jason has trained roughly 800 business leaders in good networking practices by leading classes called the Member Success Program and Advanced MSP.
He also has met with countless BNI members individually – in meetings the organization calls “One to Ones.” Jason always has learnings to offer his fellow colleagues. He looks for marketing possibilities they may have overlooked. He suggests prospects that may be a good fit for them. And he helps business owners focus on who their target audience is and how to go about getting in front of that audience.
He is a wealth of knowledge, and he’s always willing to share.
Jason thinks big. Last year, he was looking to connect with Beth Stern, wife of Howard Stern, to see if she needed help with her online web presence.
In BNI, you ask your fellow members to connect you to others through a personal referral. Through his requests in various BNI meetings, Jason got introduced to someone with a tenuous connection to Beth, who then in turn connected him to someone even closer. In two months, Jason worked up the Stern food chain to Beth’s agent, but he got no farther.
Still, he encourages others to think big.
He is innovative. His title with his business is president and chief experience officer. His wife, Lisa, who runs the web design business with him, is the operations ninja.
Here are some tips for success from Jason:
- Live a life of Giver’s Gain. Strive to help others succeed without expecting something in return, and success will come back your way.
- Don’t give up. If you give up, you’ll never know how close you came to success beyond your wildest dreams.
- Adhere to a business growth system, or model. Have a vision and a system for getting there, whether it’s BNI or some other business growth model. The closer you follow the system, the greater results you’re going to get.
If you want to see Jason the Lamb in person, stop by a meeting of the Mill River BNI at the Quality Inn in Northampton some time on a Wednesday morning. You’re apt to see Jason babysitting for a BNI member’s infant daughter so the baby’s mom can attend the meeting.
Nothing like seeing that big guy holding a tiny little child.
It’s all in the giver’s gain.
To learn more about Jason and Turcotte Data & Design, visit http://turcottedata.com/. To learn more about the BNI River Mill Chapter, visit http://bniwmass.com/ma-western-mill-river-bni/.
