During my first industry conference, I had dozens of fascinating conversations with the many visitors to our team’s booth. “I have a startup.” “I work in the media.” “I’m a professor at a local university.” No one person had the same background as the next, and everyone had an interesting story to tell.
Of course, people don’t pay 500 euros for kicks and giggles. They want to move their work forward, and that’s why most conversations at conferences follow the same pattern: “What do you do? What is your goal? And what can we do here together?” Both sides reflect on each other’s ambitions and try to find common ground.
After several days of meeting people and sparring with them nonstop, you’ll end up with dozens, maybe hundreds of potential starting points. Depending on how many notes you’ve taken, you might go home and think, “Okay, let me get working on these next week,” with the expectation of picking up every single thread once you’re back at your desk. At the very least, you’ll connect with everyone online, maybe follow up with a message.
This system is flawed and unkind. When you design your own business strategy, you naturally trade off time, energy, and resources. You’re not trying to follow every avenue. You know you must pick a lane and stick to it. But since no one wants to be the bad guy who rejects most people at a conference, we try to align, and that creates expectations. Yet, we could all make our lives so much easier if we traded just one question for another: Instead of asking, “What can we do here?” let’s ask, “Should we do something here?”
The if is more important than the what. It’s not the number of new contacts that counts. It’s how many remain after sending them through a strong, narrow filter of where your business needs to go next.
Thankfully, my boss understands this, and so she gave us a handful of channels into which to sort people before we even set up our booth. If someone ran a startup, I could point them to our accelerator. If someone worked in corporate, I could talk about our enterprise enablement workshops. And if they were just an individual trying to learn or educate about a certain blockchain topic, I showed them our online platform and open-source materials.
“What can we do here?” prompts you to be creative. To imagine until you can find an idea that seems feasible. But if you and a potential business partner are a strong match, the mode of cooperation should be obvious. If the what doesn’t appear on a silver platter, the odds of your collaboration leading to explosive growth are fairly low. So, at industry events, don’t look for common ground outside of trying to connect with people on a personal level.
“Should we do something here?” is a generous invitation. It’s a door that’s slightly ajar, just as happy to be closed again as it is to be fully opened. Let your should conjure an open crossroads in front of you and would-be partners. Approach it with a default: Most likely, everyone will go their own way, and that’s absolutely okay. And if the adventure ahead is indeed to be shared, it’ll be clear as day to everyone standing at the intersection—because the path that appears in front of you will glow in a color only this particular fellowship can recognize.
