In this solo YouTube episode, Shaun Whynacht shares three business pet peeves and actionable advice. First, he criticizes the use of generic, free email services (e.g., Yahoo, Hotmail, even Gmail) for business, arguing that branded email addresses via G Suite or Office 365 enhance credibility, brand awareness, and provide reliable, spam‑filtered communication for a modest monthly fee. Second, he calls out poor voicemail etiquette, urging callers to at least leave a brief message after the beep to signal a desire for a callback. Third, he champions text messaging as the highest‑open‑rate channel for reaching customers, especially when calls or emails go unanswered, and recommends using a CRM (Keep) that supplies a business number for integrated calling, texting, and email marketing, noting a baseline cost of about $60 USD per month. Shaun wraps up by urging listeners to adopt these practices to improve professionalism and client engagement.
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Are there things that are a pet peeve to you? I guarantee there are. And today's episode, episode number 83, it is April 22nd. That's what we're going to talk about. Pet peeves, my pet peeves, and how it relates to people conducting business. And I'm sure there's going to be a couple things here that you're going to hear that you can say, yes, Shaun, I completely know what you mean. And unfortunately, there might be a couple things that you're doing that you might be like, cringeworthy. So let's get right into that and find out how we can improve. That's right, we are talking about pet peeves here. I'm gonna say tonight it is 9:06 PM when I'm recording this episode. I've, like I said in previous episodes, I've committed to doing these every single Friday. Today was just one of those days where it was just back to back to back Zoom calls and meetings, and I absolutely did not have the time to put this episode together until now. And I went out and did some shopping and came back, and I was like, oh shoot, it's— I gotta do the episode. So out to this studio I went, and here we are because I'm committed to you. But that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about pet peeves. And why is this a topic that I wanted to talk about today. It's because I was working on a project, um, today, or actually this week, a little bit today, but this week around clients' email. Okay, so email is not my pet peeve. It is when a business is just adamant to stay on a free email service like Hotmail, like Yahoo, Even at Gmail. I mean, my belief is that you need to brand everything you do. Not only is it gonna help you in business be memorable, people are gonna remember who you are and build that awareness, but it's credibility. I mean, if you're going to get an email from, you know, joescarpentry@yahoo.com versus joe@joescarpentry.com, which one seems more credible to you? Yeah, if you're anyone that has, you know, any sense of credibility there, you're gonna know it's the joe@joesconstruction.com, right? Not the @yahoo. But why, why are we keeping these emails, people? Why are we doing that? G Suite, it's like $7 a month for an email address. You know what, you can get Office 365. I don't know what the exact price of that is, but you get a branded email. You know, that's the first thing, just branding it and having that email address. But the second thing is what you get with that. I mean, let's use G Suite because that's what I'm, I'm versed in. That's what I use in my business. That's what I help clients get set up on. Now you've got everything from the Docs, the Google Sheets, the Google Slides, that whole suite of products. Now Office 365, you got the whole Microsoft Word, Excel, all that kind of stuff. It's all cloud-based. It's fantastic. But you also have like the best spam filtering out there, the reliability of sending. You've got Google Drive for your storage, all in that $7 a month that you pay per address. Now if you got 3 addresses, obviously do that, it's about $21 in there. But this is, this is a pet peeve of mine, right? I see it all the time and I know that it's free and it's simple to get it set up, and that's why you've probably done that. But that it's time to put on your big boy and big girl pants and let's get real, right? Are you going to buy cheap parts for your car? Are you gonna buy cheap products? Would you put in a generic name pacemaker if you needed it? I hope not. So why are we skimping on these areas? Okay, so that's one of my pet peeves in business. The second thing is when somebody calls and listens to your voicemail message and does not leave a message. Oh, come on, if you're one of those people, don't. Okay, there is a proper way to leave a voicemail message. One of the things you want to do is you want to at least Give them a sense that you want them to call you back. So if it gets to the point you're listening to the message and it goes beep, right? Be like, hey, it's Shaun, just calling to talk about whatever. Or hey, it's Shaun, give me a call back, here's my number, or whatever it is, right? If you don't want to leave that long message, but don't listen to the whole thing. Let it beep and then hang up. It's absolutely annoying, okay? The next thing is text messaging. There is such a huge opportunity for you as a business owner to utilize text messaging in your business. I have come up against several people who will remain unnamed who are against that, right? They say, I don't use text messaging. I don't want to use text messaging in my business. Well, the reality is your customers do. And if you are sending emails, if you are calling and they're not answering, I guarantee if you send a text message, you will get a reply. I do a lot of business in the professional service industry, financial advisors and things like that, and I've heard time and time again that they can call clients, they can email clients, but they send a text message and they get an answer and a reply back because text messages right now are the highest open rate, the highest view rate, whatever you want to call it, of any type of communication out there today. You know what? People are busy. They're not always available to answer the call or answer the phone. They might be in a meeting, but they can get a text message and they can reply back. Emails are not being responded to immediately, so text messaging is the way to go, and you're going to see more and more of that. So just to recap my pet peeves: number 1, non-branded, non-credible email addresses. The next thing, voicemails— leave a voicemail if you get to the beep. And number 3, embrace text messaging. This is a huge opportunity for you. And if you don't have the ability, if you don't want to use your phone to send text messages, there's tools out there. Keep— we are certified, 10 years certified partner with Keep. We use the CRM, gives you a business number. Not only can you call out from it, not only can you receive calls from that number, but you can text from that number. And our package, I mean, what we use is about, well, $60 US a month. For a whole CRM, email marketing system, text messaging. It can go up from that if you need more users and more contacts, but it gives you the ability to communicate the where, the way, and the where your customers are. So just think about it, right? Just think about what I've said in this episode and consider it in your business.
